Putting the pieces together

It is an undeniable fact that there are lots of moving parts in any business. Often, the difference between a productive, successful business and a disorganized, dysfunctional business is whether or not these parts are moving together. This can be the difference between a streamlined, well-functioning machine and one that regularly breaks down.?

There is one key piece for your organization to run like a well-oiled machine, your team members need to be on the same page at all times - both literally and figuratively.?

This is where Standard Operating Procedures or SOPs come into play.?

Let me tell you a quick story. We worked with a client last year that was baffled as to why they didn’t feel like they had all their processes documented and the fact that what they had documented wasn’t useful to their employees. As part of our engagement we got access to their current documentation to evaluate it. Any guesses on how many documents we found??

217.?

217 individual documents (most of them were up to 4-6 pages) with what they believed were the processes that their business ran on. Now I am not a math wiz by any means, but that’s over 1,000 pages of documentation. Can you imagine needing to write over 1,000 pages of process documentation to describe how your business works? Ouch!?

After diving into their documentation we quickly realized that the vast majority of it was how-to documentation. How to do this one step in this one software. How to submit this one form on this one platform. Directions to the post office (not kidding). How to set up your email signature, etc., etc.?

Now I am not saying that how-to’s like that are not important (except for maybe the directions to the post office), but what they were missing, like so many other businesses, is the overall picture and structure of the business and their key processes and standards.

Which brings us to the difference between SOPs and How-to’s.?

Think of How-to’s as individual pieces of a puzzle. We need all of those pieces right? But, SOPs are the border of the puzzle and the box with the picture of what the puzzle is supposed to look like. Without the border pieces and the picture of the puzzle you would be sitting there trying to complete it for a long, long time.?

Your SOPs give the 30,000-10,000 foot view of your business. They have macro and micro flowcharts for your key processes, they have written processes, they have checklists, they have loom videos, they have decision frameworks, etc., etc. The SOPs take you from the big picture into the details - your how-to’s.?

If you find yourself wondering why the different pieces of your business are not working as well together as you’d like, take a look at your documentation and ask yourself what you really have documented. Do you have your big picture funneling into the details or do you have standalone puzzle pieces that don’t make sense??

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To find out more about the work we do at Launch Point, visit?launchpointco.com?or message me here on LinkedIn if you'd like to hear more about how we help businesses with process, systems, software and streamlined ops.?