Creating Processes People Actually Want To Follow

If you are an agency owner or manager and have created an SOP for your team only for your team to forget about them the next day, this article is for you.

We will discuss the 5 Keys of Process Creation, the 2 Types of SOPs you NEED, Where to Start in Process Creation, and How to Create Great Processes.

(TLDR at the end)

?? 5 Keys of Process Creation:

1?? Process Creation is Team Sport:

If you are an agency manager or owner and you are the only one creating processes, you become the bottleneck in problem-solving and instituting change in your agency.

The more of your team you can involve in process creation, the more ideas you will generate, and the better that process will be.

Additionally, if you involve people who actually do the work in process creation, they will feel a sense of ownership and want to improve processes in the future.

2?? Slow is Smooth, and Smooth is Fast:

You can create a process quickly and give it to your team, but that doesn’t generate buy-in.

More importantly, it doesn’t help your team think about how to improve things in the future.

It will initially be slower to work with your team on process creation, but you will get that time back quickly because your processes will be more likely to work and stick, and thus less likely to have issues and fail.

3?? Someone Must Own Each Process:

And that should usually be a Service Line Leader or Team Lead (if you follow my Service Line & Pod structure), or a functional leader if your agency is traditionally structured.

In cross-functional processes, like onboarding, that might be the Ops or Client Services leader.

While it could also be a project manager, in most agencies project managers lack the authority necessary to hold teams accountable to processes, so I don't recommend that.

4?? Processes Should Be Close To The Work:

When I first became a COO, I wanted to have a nice, centralized list of SOPs.

When we finally got them all together, I felt organized!

But guess what it didn't do?

Make it easy for the team to access them, which hampered their ability to follow them.

You should place process docs as close as you can to task creation in your Project Management System (like ClickUp or Asana).

This is also why we create Checklists / Templates (more about that in a minute…).

5?? They Must be Continuously Improved:

If your processes don’t change, guess what?

Your business is not improving because you are not evolving.?

Process change should be a regular occurrence in your agency.

It can be through large, multi-day events with sweeping changes.

Or it can be done daily with small improvements.

Either way, it needs to be done.

??? Real Talk About Process

One of your jobs as an agency leader is to create a culture of continuous improvement.

If you are always telling your team what to do (aka create SOPs for them), they will never learn how to improve things on their own.

You need them thinking, failing, succeeding, and iterating – and you should be guiding them each step of the way.

OK, now on to the fun stuff...

??? You Actually Need 2 Types of “SOPs”:

I know what you’re thinking… “crap, I can barely even deal with 1 type of SOP.”

That’s OK, hear me out… what you need is:

Playbooks and Checklists / Templates.?

Playbooks are how you document and train a process.

They are super-detailed documents that have:

1. A Process Value Stream of the overall process (A picture is worth 1000 words)
2. Each Task associated with the Playbook, in order
3. Any Key Points associated with the task, or tribal knowledge that a limited group of people in your agency know
4. The Time it takes someone to do a task, on average at a normal pace
5. Any Visuals that can help someone understand the task faster / easier

Playbooks also make it easy to onboard and cross-train new team members because all of the knowledge to complete a task is easily accessible.

While SOPs are usually created by a manager for a team, Playbooks are created by the team with the manager.?

Templates / Checklists are how you implement a process.

A checklist is just what it sounds like... a list of items that are important for a process that your team checks off as they complete their work.

A template is a standardized, pre-filled form that makes it easier for your team to complete their work.

Each part of a process should have its own Templates and Checklists that auto-populate upon task creation in your Project Management System.

When you update your Playbooks, you also update your Templates and Checklists, so everything stays in sync.

Where To Start

So you've got a ton of processes... where do you start? Run through this 3-point activity to find out...

If you've never done process creation before, the highest impact processes are usually client-facing:

• Onboarding
• Recurring Delivery

So look at starting there.

How To Create Playbooks (Small vs Large Teams)

Your situation will determine your strategy on how to create Playbooks. Here are ways you can go about each situation:

Ok, so we discussed:

• the 5 Keys of Process Creation: build them with a team, slowly, with someone who has real ownership, can place them near the teams work, and can continuously improve them
• the 2 Types of SOPs you NEED: Playbooks and Checklists / Templates
• Where to Start in Process Creation: the most important tasks, usually client-facing, and
• How to Create Great Processes: 2 options depending on team size

With this information, you should finally be able to Create Processes Your Team Actually Wants to Follow!

TLDR:

• Involve your team in process creation
• Create Playbooks and Checklists / Templates
• Focus on major processes first

Important Note:

People generally want to do well at their job. If you hired right, your people won’t wake up and say “how can I screw up my job today.”

So when they do mess up a process, it’s your job to figure out why, and how you can help them from making the same mistake in the future.

But Problem Solving is a whole 'nother article...