Do you have SOPs for your business?

Hey 👋, funny you should ask about processes 😄

I'm an engineer at https://www.airmanual.co/, a startup where we focus on giving teams a faster and more effective way of sharing their processes/SOP's. As such, I have a lot of opinions!

1. We have tonnes of SOP's. Just checked our db, and we have 505 for our team of 5. Some of these are drafts, and some will be placeholders (there's no process written up for this, in the meantime ask X for details)

2. Loads of reasons.

In general, they help us move fast in urgent situations , and also move fast in the long term, by avoiding common mistakes, building up a store of expertise, and saving weeks when onboarding new team members.

They also give business owners space to step back from the business every once in a while, to simply take a holiday, or focus on strategy.

Run like clockwork, the checklist manifesto and traction are two good books to read on the topic.

3. We use them mainly for delegation, but also to make it easy to pick up and put down roles when necessary. For example, I used to do tech support, but onboarded another engineer into doing it using our onboarding SOP's, and the tech support process we'd documented.

6 months later I find myself moving back into this role, and I can follow our processes, rather than relying on my previous experience. Even in 6 months I've forgot a lot!

4. We have a long roadmap at Airmanual, but I think it's the best tool out there (and we've used lots of others for years in the past, and felt the pain of scaling a business with other tools first hand).

The biggest pains people have are:

1. Not having a clear approach, and feeling overwhelmed
2. People not using SOP's after they've been written
3. Slow tools, with old UI's, that make it more confusing than it needs to be
4. A feeling that they can't just spin up a quick process, and that you need to get it right first time (hint: you can't get it right first time, and even having an empty process with a good name helps others, as at least they now know that a responsibility exists!)

If you have any follow up questions (or anyone else), just give me a shout!

1. Do you have SOPs?
   Some.

2. Why do you think they're important?
   For consistency. To be able to quickly pick back up with processes that you might not execute often like quarterly taxes. To be able to train someone else, hand off the process, and get the same consistent and correct results.

3. For what do you use them (for yourself/delegation/automation)?
   For myself right now with things I'm not super familiar with or that I do infrequently.

4. What's the biggest pain with your current solution?
   My current solution is a Google doc. I'd like to be able to have a checklist assigned either manually or automatically. My biggest pain in my day job is not being able to assign processes and checklists to other people

Hey @nafetswirth!

Yes we do - only KEY processes although this is mostly because I consult in quality and operations management.

Do you have SOPs? - Yes, we document our key processes (not everything) as we’re a startup so who can be bothered. Do what matters.

Why do you think they're important? - multifaceted answer but here goes.

The effective documentation of SOPs within a business has a few benefits, if there’s a key process that impacts customers/sales directly, then documenting this in an SOP enables the organisation to understand the current state. If things start to go south, they can evaluate that process and look for continuous improvement through it. Without an SOP it’s a bit trickier. With that being said, it also standardises processes so each member of staff (or even 1 person) is consistent with what they do. This is key to maintaining results. Consistency.

My rule of thumb is, if you need to have it explained to you 2/3 times and don’t do it regularly, it’s worth documenting.

Additionally, our plan is one day we may sell our business, we have a nice suite of documentation, and playbooks etc., that we can hand over and not one single element of the business is dependent on us. Therefore, reducing the likelihood of us getting tied in.

For what do you use them (for yourself/delegation/automation)?

As above really, to enable continuous improvement.

What's the biggest pain with your current solution?

We literally just use google docs and lucid chart, no complaints really.

Hope that was helpful! @alex365 anything you want to add?

Thanks!

A