I began my career in the Army National Guard as an explosive ordnance disposal specialist. That work runs on written procedures, followed the same way every time. Later, as Project Management Operations Director at Blattner Tech Digital Agency in Nashville, I built the project management standards our development teams used on every client project.
Those are very different jobs, but they taught me the same thing: a process that lives only in someone’s head isn’t a process. It’s a risk.
Start with the work you do most often. You don’t need a manual for everything. Pick the three tasks your business repeats every week, such as quoting a job, onboarding a new customer or closing out a project, and write down the steps.
Keep it to one page. A short checklist gets used. A 40-page binder gets skipped. If a step needs more explanation, link to it.
Write it for the newest person on the team. If someone in their first week can follow it, everyone else can too. That’s also the test of whether it’s clear.
Review it when something goes wrong. When a job goes sideways, don’t just fix the job. Ask which step was missing or unclear, and update the checklist so it doesn’t happen again.
Let it make you less necessary. The goal of a written process is a business that runs when the owner is on vacation. That’s freedom, and it also makes the business worth more.
Danielle Lemons is Vice President of Operations at DirecTech Connect, a Nashville provider of business phone systems, managed IT services, websites and digital marketing. More about Danielle.
Also published on Medium.
