Let’s face it, most entrepreneurs are really busy people.
They are focused on launching their new products, raising capital or a
multitude of other things. And, with the
limited number of hours in a day, who could fault them if they let documenting
their business processes slip down their priority list. That is, until one of their key employees
quits with all that institutional knowledge undocumented in their head, and you
are screwed, scrambling to pick up the pieces with no roadmap to help you.
This is a common problem that most entrepreneurs simply
don’t think about until they have been burned by a departing key employee. So, before you fall into this camp, be
warned: documenting your business processes as you go is mission critical from
day one. You never know when someone is
going to be hit by a bus, and all your systems’ login information and passwords
are lost forever, as an example.
WHAT NEEDS TO BE
DOCUMENTED?
Take a pause and think about all the areas of your
business that needs to be documented.
Where do all my customer contacts reside? What was the last conversation my sales team
had with my contacts? What is our
desired layout for all marketing pieces and brand messaging? What techniques or phone scripts do we use to
convert leads into sales? What should we
be upselling to clients? What is our
handoff procedure from sales to operations?
What is your policy for handling customer complaints? Who has access to our bank accounts and
accounting systems? How should we be
collecting unpaid accounts receivables?
What rules do we follow in building our technology code? And, the list goes on and on.
THE TRAINING BENEFITS
FROM DOCUMENTATION
Yes, it is a daunting task . . . the first time. But, once it is done, it can be easily
maintained and updated from there. And,
most importantly, it serves as a really good tool to train new employees
with. So, not only is it a way to protect
yourself from losing institutional learnings locked away only in the heads of
your employees, it is a great way to come across as professional to new
employees, to help them better understand the processes needed for their jobs. And, the faster a new employee is onboarded,
the faster they are producing valuable results for your company.
HOW THE DOCUMENTATION
SHOULD BE STORED
Make sure these processes are centrally stored on your
internal drives and are accessible to all employees that need to have access to
such files. Perhaps segmenting your
procedures by key department (e.g, sales vs. operations), and by level of role
with your organization (e.g., Vice Presidents have access to more than
Managers). You don’t want 100% of
employees having access to 100% of your sensitive files for security reasons. So, make sure only the people that need to have
access to those files, get access to those files.
EMPHASIZING THE
IMPORTANCE WITH YOUR TEAM . . .
Make sure the importance of having these processes documented
is ingrained into the DNA of your company.
Let them know it is part of their job, to make sure these processes are
documented, learned and followed by their teams. And, most importantly, updated as they may be
changed over time. Most processes are
typically not set in stone, they are fluid with the needs of the business or
its customers. So, keeping the processes
updated is critical to make sure new employees are learning the most current
procedures.
. . . WITHOUT
OVER-PROCESSING YOUR COMPANY
That said, you don’t want to suffocate the life out of your
business by having too many procedures.
You want your organization to remain as flexible and nimble as the
market demands require. So, it is much
less about have a “process tsar” enforcing all your processes and making a
militant environment for your staff (where they will most likely quit), and
much more about letting your employees know the importance here, and having
them tackle it in digestible pieces as they have time. But, they do have to make time.
So, I know it is a pain in the butt, but get your processes
written down while you can, before you actually need it. You certainly don’t want your chief engineer
leaving for another company before he clearly has documented all the “patches”
only he knows exist in the millions of lines of code in your technology. And, for those of you that ignore this
warning, prepare for a rude awakening when you need it most.
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