Operations Manuals - A Must Have for Your Business
February 13, 2007
Last week, I spent the entire week in the Caribbean. I had two people managing my business - one person looking after my customer support accounts (I answer upwards of 2,500 e-mails per day) and the other person looked after my daily operations and a few tasks for my clients. Before I went, I began documenting everything I did and I realized quite quickly just how important operations manuals really are.
Operations manuals serve as a road map for your business. It allows other people, outsiders if you will, to look at your business processes and know exactly what needs to be done, in what order it gets done and what the final outcome should be. They are a vital part of any business and a business can not grow to its full potential without them.
In the E Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber (whom I was privileged to meet in Vancouver last year) speaks about the idea that you should think like a big organization and plan like one. Develop systems and put things into place so that you are always preparing ahead for growth. I love this idea and I think its absolutely brilliant.
When you have procedures in place, it makes everything easier - training, leaving your business in someone else’s hands to go on vacation, expanding into more locations, etc. It just makes the management and the operation of your business seamless regardless of who is behind the wheel.
Mind Petals, a website for young entrepreneurs, recently blogged about this topic and they call their systems a “KB” or a “Knowledge Base.” They believe also that you should always document and systemize everything you do. So, are you taking the time to do this? Are you building your systems and your knowledge base?
They are quite simple to do. I used Google Docs to keep all of my Word documents in one place but you can simply keep a running tab of your operations on a daily basis. Keep a Word document open and document the various things you do that require YOUR knowledge to complete. If something happened and your brain was unavailable, you have to ask yourself, “Would someone else be able to walk in and do this without speaking to me?” If the answer is, “No”, you need to work on your procedures manual for that item.
Another alternative is to use MyHours to track your time for at least one week. This will give you an idea of the actual tasks you are doing each week and give you a basis for your table of contents.
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