This is you after you finish documenting your business! Yay!
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Documenting your business.
Building your “Business Playbook.”
It sounds so simple, until you get started. But you’re in luck because The Process Mavens do this work LITERALLY every day (and we’re pretty awesome at it, if I do say so myself.)
If you’re going to go it alone, here are a few important questions you need to ask yourself before you start documenting your business.
1 - What’s Your Vision for How Documenting will Make Things Better?
Why are you even doing this in the first place? As in, what is going to be the return on your investment of time and resources to undertake this project. Without one, it’s going to be tough to get this project done.
Are you sick and tired of clearing off two weeks from your calendar every time you bring on someone new?
Are you about to bring on a crap-ton of new employees and need to have a solid plan for how to train them all up?
Do you have ridiculously high turnover and are leaking money with your current inefficient onboarding and training process?
Do you have a handful of employees who know EVERYTHING about your business and you’ve got to get it out of their brains so you can finally start sleeping at night?
Are you looking to franchise your business and need to provide a handbook for new franchisees?
Is your customer service suffering because everyone is doing things differently and you need to document the one “way” so you can better retain your customers and build a more efficient business?
Are you looking to exit your business and need to document everything to increase its value?
All of these are compelling reasons to start building a business playbook and will provide a measurable ROI on your efforts for years to come.
You know what doesn’t? Documenting your business because you read in a book that you should. Whenever I get CEOs who “Just want to feel better having everything written down,” or who are clearly motivated just by “checking a box,” I’m wary. Nearly every time I’ve taken on clients like this, it turns out to be a tough project. There just isn’t enough pain or a big enough potential reward to propel the team forward through the project.
Also, you may just not be ready to document quite yet. If you’re a startup who is still figuring things out and doesn’t plan on a massive hire in the immediate future, it may seeeeeeem like documenting will solve everything. But it’s basically impossible to document your business when you haven’t figured out how things should work yet. Get your systems down … then later you can document how you do things.
Moral of the story: Make sure you have a clear vision for how documentation is going to change everything. (And make sure you sell the shit out of that vision to your team.)
2 - What’s the first small “win” you can get with this project?
Now that you’re clear on how documenting your business is going to change your life and the lives of your team members, it’s time to get focused.
Do not, I repeat, DO NOT start listing out all 807,898,615 roles, responsibilities and topics you want to write down and just start documenting. I can warn you against this with great authority because we used to do this here at The Process Mavens and we learned the hard way how overwhelming and demotivating this method is for most teams.
Instead, try this process:
1 - Make a short list of the problems you’d like to solve by documenting your business. For example, if you’re a fast-growing agency that’s going to be massively expanding in the next year, you might list out:
Make new-hire onboarding smoother and more automated.
Create a consistent 3-week training process for new designers so we can stop re-figuring it out.
Make sure everyone in the company knows our core values and how to live them.
2 - Decide on your first “shippable” documentation project, based on the problems you’ve listed.
You want to be able to create something fairly quickly, which you can start using with your team right away, so you can learn from the experience to make the next one even better! From the examples above, you might decide your first project will be documenting your “New Hire Onboarding,” which can be used with ALL team members in their first couple of days to learn everything they need to know about the company and culture. Done!
3 - Decide who will be responsible for getting the project done and when it’s due.
This one’s simple, but critical. Without ownership, it just ain’t happening. Trust me, I’ve learned the hard way.
4 - Figure out what “Done Looks Like”.
This can be as detailed (or not) as you want, but spend some time with key team members making a list of what the finished product needs to look, sound, and feel like. Questions to consider include:
How long should it take to go through the content?
How much video should be included vs. text?
Do we have an example we like? What do we like about it? What don’t we like?
What’s the tone we’re going for? (Ex: Casual, professional, formal, sweary, etc.)
What content must be included, no matter what?
And finally…
3 - What Tool Will You Use to House Your Business Playbook?
It’s funny, because everyone just wants to jump to this step first. They find their fancy tool and they dream about a beautiful finished playbook and sugarplums dance in their heads.
And there are SO MANY tools on the market for documenting your business. The truth is, pretty much any of them will work just fine if someone on your team is diligent about making sure the content gets used and stays up-to-date. Remember, software is just a tool … it won’t implement and maintain itself. (Yet.) :)
That said, I’ve never been shy about the fact that I heart Trainual.
It’s simple to set up, has dozens of pre-created templates already built-in, allows you to provide your team with only the content that’s relevant to them, and now that they’ve created lower-priced options for small teams, it’s accessible to just about every business. (affiliate link below)
I just can’t recommend it highly enough and it keeps getting better.
You’ve Got This!
Be clear on your vision for how documentation will change you.
Choose a small, meaningful “first win” and set yourself up for success.
Choose your documentation tool wisely.
You’re ready for this. Don’t aim for perfection, aim for one usable piece of content that will make a real difference in your business. And then do it again and again.
I wish I could walk everyone through how to get started with this process so we could share everything we’ve learned from doing this work over the past few years. But in the meantime, I’m going to keep sharing these tips.
I wish I could walk every one of you through how to get started with this process so we could share everything we’ve learned from doing this work over the past few years, but in the meantime, I’m going to keep sharing these tips with you.
I’m offering ten FREE 20-minute consultations on how to get started with building your Business Playbook. Click the button below to apply!