Entrepreneurs often find themselves in a perpetual juggling act, trying to balance growth, sustainability, and their own sanity. However, there’s a game-changer at their disposal, one that can transform business operations – it’s Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). But not just any SOPs – SOPs that rock, not suck.
In today’s episode, we talk about SOPs and why having procedures that don’t suck is the key to unlocking the full potential of your business.
SOPs are not just about creating a rulebook for your team to follow blindly, it’s about creating a symphony of efficiency, a choreography of productivity, and a masterpiece of consistency.
SOPs that suck are more of a hindrance than a help. They lead to confusion, mistakes, and frustration.
But SOPs that rock, on the other hand, lead to streamlined operations, empowered teams, and ultimately, a thriving business. It’s time to revolutionise your operations with SOPs that rock, not suck.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL DISCOVER…
- Breaking free from owner dependency – the power of SOPs (00:33)
- The ultimate guide to crafting SOPs that don’t suck (2:07)
- Involving your team in creating your SOPs – the game-changer for your business (05:05)
QUOTES
- “If you want to create SOPs that don’t suck, you need to make them usable.” -Carl Taylor
- “People own what they help create.” -Carl Taylor
- “If you’ve got people in a role, one of the best things you can do is get them to create the SOP so that they take ownership and accountability.” -Carl Taylor
WHERE YOU CAN FIND CARL TAYLOR
Automation Agency
CarlTaylor.com.au
LinkedIn
Facebook
Twitter
TRANSCRIPTION
Let’s talk about SOPs that don’t suck.
Welcome to Entrepreneurs Rising. I’m your host, Carl Taylor. If this is your first time tuning in, welcome. Glad to have you. Hopefully, if you like this episode, have a listen to a few others, and if you really like them, hit subscribe and continue to get notified every time we drop a new episode. If you’re a time listener, welcome back. Great to have you. And if you’re tuning in on YouTube as well as podcasting platforms, great for you to be able to see me. I can’t see you, but you can see me now.
Today I want to talk about SOPs. If you’re not familiar with the term SOP, it stands for standard operating procedure. If you want to build a business that doesn’t rely on you as the owner for the rest of your life, SOPs are what you need. Basically you need to document how you do things or how you want things done. And that’s an important distinction. There are two different ways you can do an SOP. You can do an SOP based on what we currently do, here’s how I do it. Or you can create an SOP of here’s how I want it to be done, which may not match how I currently do things. We can talk a little bit.
About that in a moment.
But SOPs are really crucial. They’re not the only thing some people think, oh, just building SOPs and systems is what’s going to build a business that works without me. That’s not true. We have a human element called people team. Very important aspect, because they’re usually going to be the people who do follow your systems and SOPs. And this is a crucial thing, because if you want to create SOPs that don’t suck, you need to make them usable. I have met countless people, and I’ve done it in my own business journey as well. Where in my it business, for example, we had these big fat manuals, physical printed manuals that we created, which was like all the SOPs. But here’s the problem. It was in this big manual. The team members very rarely went and picked it up off the shelf and opened it, even though they were encouraged to do so. And often the content was out of date. So physical printed manuals probably aren’t going to be the right thing, unless maybe you’re in manufacturing or you’re in a place like that. That makes sense. they’re not on a computer.
They don’t have a device or a screen.
So SOPs that don’t suck. The first rule is it needs to be accessible and it needs to be right where the team member needs to use it. If you have people where they have to go and search for it, you’re already creating SOP. That sucks. You want to have it right where they are. If they’re in the browser, you want to use a tool like guru, which is a web app which has a browser extension. And that means that if they’re in Google or wherever it is, they can click this guru and it can either automatically expose the SOPs and knowledge base that they need, or they can do a quick search, never leaving the tab, never leaving the browser right then and there. If you’ve got custom software, you want to build helpers and elements inside your software, which give them the SOP instructions inside the app, making it really clear so they don’t have to go and watch a video or go somewhere else. The second thing that you want to make sure is you want to ensure that you’re speaking for two different types of people, because you’re going to have two types of people who typically go through an SOP. you’re going to have people who are, um, brand newbies. They’re doing this process for the first time. And so those people need a lot of detail. They need handholding, they need videos, they need to know where to find this and how to do that thing that they’ve never done before. So they need a lot of detail. The second type of person who’s going to be using this SOP, and you do want them to use the SOP, are the people who have done this a million times. Because here’s what happens. If people get lazy and if they’ve done it a million times and there’s too much detail in the SOP, it’s easier to not use the SOP and just go from memory. But if they’re going from memory, I guarantee you they’re probably missing steps. Or if you’ve made changes to the SOP, they’re still doing it the old way and haven’t seen the new way of how it needs to be done. And so you want to create these more checklist, overview style, SOPs for those people, the people who have done it a million times, where really it’s just making sure they haven’t missed anything important and that they’re aware of anything that may have changed. And if they’re like, oh, I don’t know how to do that thing that’s new, or I’ve forgotten, they can click through. They can get into the detail that the newbies need to figure out how to do that thing or to remind themselves of all the details if they’ve had brain fog or just forgotten. So you want to have these two levels in your SOP. The high level overview checklists as well as the detail nitty gritty.
Here’s how to do things. So you need to make sure they’re in the right place, surfaced, not somewhere they have to go searching for, but they’re in the place at the time they need it. If you have physical bricks and mortar store, a simple SOP can be a sign up right in front of them where they are, which reminds them of something or tells them how to do something, right. It doesn’t always have to be this digital, complex thing.
The second thing you need to do is you need to have these two different levels, the two different ways that you’re communicating.
And then the third thing is, if you want to make SOPs that don’t suck, is you need to make it easy for you to create and for your team to create. Because SOPs that don’t suck ultimately need to be created, ideally by the people who do these processes over and over. In the beginning, a business owner often creates, here’s how I want it done. And they wonder why they can’t get their team on board. Because the teamwork involved in the creation process. One of the best things I ever got from a great book called The Great Game of Business is people own what they help create. They’re accountable, and they take ownership of the things they help create. And so if you’ve got people in a role, one of the best things you can do is get them to create the SOP so that they take ownership and accountability over improving and having that SOP, rather than you as the owner going, here’s how I want things done.
Now, that said, the quickest way for you as an owner to get things off your plate is to take a video. But I can tell you, watching a video is one of the worst ways for your team to learn how to do something, unless they visually need to see it as an example, but it shouldn’t be the only way that they follow an SOP. So you create the video, but you need someone or something to take that video and turn it into the, high level overview and the step by step details and screenshots. So this is just, again, a quick one about SOPs. It’s a really important thing you need in your business, but you do not want to create SOPs that suck because otherwise you’re just wasting effort. You’re going to create a big manual that no one ever uses and you’re going to get frustrated with your team because you’re like, it’s in the documents, why aren’t you using it? Of course they’re not using. It’s not easy to use. It sucks. It’s confusing, it’s overwhelming, and it’s easier for them to just do it without it. And then you get frustrated because they make mistakes, because the SOP sucked. Don’t make SOPs that suck. Follow these rules. If you need to listen to this episode again, or if you’d like some help, you can always reach out to me and talk about some consulting or joining the Dadpreneur programme. So until next time, keep up the journey.
Outro:
You’ve been listening to Entrepreneurs Rising. Thank you, dear listener for tuning in. I appreciate your time and look forward to connecting in future episodes if you would like show notes or any resources from today’s episode, you can find them at rising.show rising.show you can find the show notes for this episode and all other episodes as well as links to socials and or the ability to reach out and connect with me make your suggestions for future episodes. Until next time, keep up the journey.
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