Necessity is The Mother of All… Documentation?
Most small business owners don’t have an abundance of extra time–and if they did, they probably wouldn’t use it to create documentation for their business. It’s a dreaded task that often only gets done out of necessity.
This isn’t something to feel bad about. Creating documentation takes a lot of time and energy, and that time and energy is probably going toward serving your clients and running the back end of your business–which are critical if you want to stay in business!
This has been the case at For the Love of Systems. Except for a few key standard operating procedures (SOPs) and guidelines documents that I’ve been adding to over the last 2-3 years, we don’t currently have a massive library of SOPs.
That’s actually what inspired this email–my own experience with creating documentation as we onboard a new team member. I don’t dread it in the way that many small business owners do–but I also haven’t been able to dedicate a lot of time to it because of competing priorities and a desire to not work 80 hours every week.
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So when it’s time to create documentation, where do you even begin? The answer to that question is going to vary depending on your unique business and its unique situation. With our clients, we look at things like:
How much capacity does the business owner have?
If there’s a team, how much capacity does the team have?
How much experience does the team have?
Is the team in front of a computer all day, or are they out in the field with clients?
What software tools are already in place?
How tech-savvy is the team?
How defined are the current processes?
What processes create the biggest impact?
And so much more!
Since all businesses are different and there isn’t a step-by-step approach you can take, I want to inspire you with some ideas to consider as you’re evaluating your unique situation and looking toward your next steps:
You have to define your key processes before you can document them
Guidelines can be easier/faster to create than SOPs, and they’ll provide you with “guardrails” to keep experienced team members aligned without step-by-step instructions
Guidelines are always helpful, but be aware that you can’t lean on them as heavily if you’re hiring someone inexperienced
“Just in time” documentation like screen recordings and checklists are amazing bandaids for when the situation is urgent
If you want your checklists to serve as something more than a bandaid, consider putting them in project management software as part of a digital workflow
You can’t document everything at once
Outsource to a professional service provider who won’t need training–like a bookkeeper or social media manager. You get immediate impact without needing to have a lot of documentation in place (shout out to Bloom Bookkeeping who was my first “hire” in For the Love of Systems)
Done is better than perfect.
And with all that, what can you do right now to move closer to having documentation that supports your business growth?