Standardising Operating Procedures

Do you brush your teeth the same way every day?

🐕 What about walking the dog?

Is it something you have ever actively thought about? Does it even matter to you or anyone else whether you do these things the same every time?

📨 But now, what about the method you use to check your emails or Slack/Teams messages when you’ve come back from a holiday?

For this one, it may not matter to anyone else. But maybe it really matters to you.

🔂 For example, my method tends to start by scanning down the list of emails, selecting the ones that are ‘junk’ (automated unread prompts where the notification also exists in another application, spam, or weekly reviews of content I missed). This helps me get an accurate number of the messages I have.

Next, I read the messages that look like I am CC’d but not responsible for follow-up, these are easy wins and help me get my brain back in the game. Then, I return to the bottom of the list, starting with the messages I received first and focusing on low to moderate difficulty. I only leave or re-mark something unread if it requires more focused attention or discovery.

Because I have already scanned all the unread titles in this process, if I read a message or task where there is a thread, I will read all the thread replies throughout my inbox before I respond.

Finally, I’ll return to those few deep-dive emails and get to work. Unless something is complete, I will leave it unread. If it needs additional time to explore, I schedule myself time in my calendar and I try to respond to the thread with a plan of action and estimated time for completion.

In this instance, there’s little to no impact in terms of accuracy or efficiency using my method or any other. From a mental or emotional perspective, however, these little routines don’t really matter, but they do. They can make us feel centered.

If you’ve ever started your first day back after holiday by jumping straight into a heavy meeting or trying to pick up a task you hadn’t planned on, your entire day may feel out of whack (or maybe you just crave structure less than I do!!) I highly value flexibility and being agile but within constraints that also help me to feel grounded and focused.

On the spectrum of what matters, developing our own routines is critical for gaining and keeping momentum. ⚠️ 

But PLEASE hear me that we must differentiate between effective routines and Standard Operating Procedures. In this article, we’ll explore some keys ways to define standard operating procedures that help you work smarter and make a real impact to your work. This will not include documenting or standardising how you brush your teeth, walk your dog, or answer emails.

Defining Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

Aside from a dictionary definition of SOPs, I want to hone in on two aspects of the word ‘standard’ that are critical for differentiating what you should standardise from what you could standardise. This term is relevant to being:

• Formulaic: In this use of ‘standard’, we speak to making a process or procedure repeatable or scalable. The benefits of making operating procedures formulaic include:

  • Ensuring critical steps do not get missed

  • Understanding the required components that help us define ‘done’ and appropriately planning time or resources

  • Removing redundancy or confusion- we often see the effect of this through confusing or non-existent documentation, contradicting information in different systems or locations, etc.

  • Enabling delegation of critical tasks or entire processes with minimal support or detailed management

• Quality: In this use of ‘standard’, we speak of ensuring that the result of processes or procedures utilise quality standards that will help make the most of your efforts (e.g. ‘up to standard’). The benefits of making operating procedures defined by quality include:

  • Developing a clear understanding of the relationship between inputs and outputs- a great principle here is the GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) principle

  • Aligning day-to-day work (business as usual or BAU tasks) with your strategic goals

  • Quieting perfectionistic tendencies which inhibit us from delegating and focusing on our highest point of contribution

  • Facilitating growth of approach parallel to growth of your skills, acumen, team, strategy, etc.

SOP pitfalls and transferable principles

You may be falling into an SOP pitfall if your answer revolves around:

• Expectation: It’s what other people do, so I’m doing it to tick the box, to tell people I have SOPs and can pat myself on the back for running my business effectively

• Micromanagement: My way is not only the best way, it’s the only way and it’s my business so everything must be done how I would do it or like it to be done

Taking the two definitions on ‘standard’ above, let’s hold them up against the initial examples presented to unpick these pitfalls.

🪥 Brushing your teeth or answering your emails- when we teach children to brush their teeth, there are some critical principles around quality (make sure you brush front and back teeth, make sure you brush for long enough) but this is where standards basically end. Your teeth are not inherently less brushed if you start on the top teeth or the bottom teeth nor if you start on the right side of your mouth or left side of your mouth.

Transferrable principle: 

Developing SOPs for these kinds of tasks will just make you a micromanager, will limit your own growth, the growth of your team’s skills, and will make those around you generally less happy. The biggest issue from a business perspective is that the value of any outputs here is individually low. You might have the most grammatically correct email EVER but will this really matter a week or a year from now?

Focusing on documenting and standardising these kinds of tasks feels easy because they are so replicable. Answering emails, like brushing your teeth, might be a staple activity of your day or week. Just because it is a repeatable task, it doesn’t need to be a standard operating procedure. Just because it would be easy to standardise the way your team answers emails, documenting and enforcing these standards don’t encourage quality and they bring very little value to a task.

As functioning professionals, there should be some element of autonomy and trust! I will make a hard case that in 99% of situations* (*I have no research backing this statistic), you have bigger problems if you need to standardise these tasks. ❌

Instead do this ✅:

• Create templates for frequently used processes (email responses like invoices). The focus now becomes on saving time and effort drafting emails and enabling more important tasks. This isn’t a SOP, it’s just enabling good practice and efficiency.

• Discuss expectations early and often. This isn’t about dictating, it’s about aligning. If you’re a consultant, this might mean outlining communication preferences (e.g. I will not check emails outside of working hours or all tasks must be signed-off in writing before increasing billable hours) or a structured brief that will help you minimise back-and-forth before you can get to work.

🐕 Walking the dog:

This is another representative task that we should focus on outputs over inputs. Opposed to teeth-brushing tasks, there is real benefit to undertaking a task like this in non-standard ways. Switching up your dog walking route can help keep your interest fresh. Some days you might have the weather or energy for a long walk, while other days might be focused on efficiency. Some routes might be better for helping build our muscles through resistance training, while other routes might help us train for sprinting at pace.

Transferable principle:

Valuing different approaches to these tasks will improve our creativity and curiosity. Trying to standardise here might take the joy out of these simple tasks and will increase a one-sided bias towards tasks that will stop you from seeing how processes can evolve over time or be automated. ❌

Instead do this ✅:

• identify areas where it’s important to keep your perspective fresh. Bring in consultants, mentors, or peer networking to help you from getting stagnant or taking your processes for granted.

• create a regular cadence to ensure critical tasks like analysing data or engaging with stakeholders isn’t overlooked but try varying up your approach.

🚫 The last pitfall I want to highlight is thinking you are exempt from the need for SOPs.

Here, I’m speaking directly to my consultants, my solopreneurs, and my founding directors. 👀

When you’re working alone, it’s easy to assume your own methods are ‘standardised’ but, like other contexts, your environment will always be evolving. I can guarantee that over time your documentation quality and ability to scale will be hampered if you ignore SOPs altogether.

When you’re working alone and fail to develop SOPs, this means 100% of your team is impacted by the cognitive load it takes to ‘decide’ fresh quality standards every time you undertake a task.

For example, natural evolution might relate to your tech stack. Maybe it was initially beneficial to get a flash drive or a cloud drive, create a series of folders, and save everything in one place. One you, one computer, one filing system. Over time, these static procedures might stop you from being more agile or result in confusing naming conventions, unsearchable documentation, etc. Maybe you use Microsoft Word but you get a client that uses Gdocs or Notion and over time you end up storing things in multiple places or you have one cloud version that’s synced and a static version that isn’t.

The clearest risk is to your business’s ability to grow, enabling the efficiency and accuracy you need to increase your profits. Mentally, this also puts a strain on your self-perspective. As a solopreneur, you are a single-point-of-failure and there’s no full-scale anecdote to this. But by the time you really need to delegate, you’re often in a mental place where it’s hardest to pull yourself out of the weeds and effectively speak to quality or strategic requirements. The real value in bringing others in to consult or collaborate (even in finding a virtual assistant!) should be increasing your perspectives or skill-sets, not creating an automated clone of yourself. Tips for creating your first SOPs

Ok, so by this point, you’re convinced that there’s real value in creating some standard operating procedures and you’re trying to steer clear of becoming a micromanager that creates processes for the sake of it. Some places to start might be:

Identify a process with high complexity and high visibility

Think about the workflows that are most:

• Critical and risky

• Long-winded

• Intrusive to your joy or impact

Some examples of processes or workflows with high complexity and high visibility are:

• Registering and onboarding users

• Producing and publishing content

• Responding to feedback and support queries

• Launching a marketing campaign

• Granting access or entitlement rights (licensure)

Some people like to start with the workflow they are most familiar with or that affects them most often, but challenge yourself to prioritise based on impact. Sometimes these will end up being the same workflow at the intersection of frequency and impact. If it’s not complex and not visible, it’s probably not very helpful to standardise or document.

Is there a specific workflow that you really HATE and you’d most like to delegate but you’re worried that steps may get missed or a contractor may not have the context to do it autonomously? If something popped to mind, this is a great place to get started.

Take an iterative approach

The process of creating an SOP is really beneficial for intentionality. The goal is not to get stuck ‘in the weeds’, it’s to help you get out of the weeds longer-term! It’s not just about having an SOP but the process of reflection you undertake when creating them.

Start by writing down a long-form explanation of your process. This often requires you to have completed the process several times before so that you are familiar with what is required. I like to do this by transcribing a video call with myself where I walk through the process step-by-step verbalising what I am doing and why I am doing it. Reflecting back on this transcript, try to edit your process into stages or clear steps. Identify what areas must be done in a specific way and which could be done in various ways or at different times throughout the process (e.g. I need to update my error log but I can do this either before or after implementing the solution).

I find it very helpful to use a Miro mind map. I create process blocks with arrows showing critical steps and then use sticky notes to identify required inputs and outputs from each step. This helps me focus on the ‘why’ rather than detailing out ‘how’ (click here and name it XYZ, then come here and copy/paste).

Return to this diagram either several days or a week later with the sole purpose of simplifying. Look for ways to automate steps or remove duplication of documentation using your tech stack. Look at the touch-points and see if varying up your steps can help you streamline back-and-forth tasks. For example, can you link your project management system to Slack or link your content management platform to email updates so that the answer exists in both systems without manually requiring you to do it twice?

Be sensible about documentation

There’s a fine line between context being enabling and debilitating. My article Sponge and Funnel: Approaches to acquiring and prioritising knowledge can help you understand if you tend to err on over-contextualising or under-contextualising. Consider where and to what extent you document based upon:

• Where will people naturally gravitate to?

  • Is there a specific tool or place to house documentation so it’s top of mind? Some people have great documentation squirrelled away deep in a system or tool no one ever thinks about and therefore never consults. Your documentation is only as good as it is visible and usable.

• How much will people actually read?

  • If you can make clear step-by-step instructions, don’t feel limited to a specific length but be cognisant of people’s internal churn threshold. If you give me 10 pages of paragraph-typed documentation for a process, I am going to try and avoid reading it. If you give me a table or a Miro board with visuals and screenshots that I can scan first and read step-by-step, it can be as big and windy as you like! Different workflows will have different thresholds for what feels manageable and clear.

• How often might the process change?

  • If your process is heavily dependent on external changes such as frequent software updates, high-level guidance should focus on enabling critical thinking and thoughtful response rather than dictating details.