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How To Write Standard Operating Procedures Into Your Business

“What would we do if you were hit by a bus?” (Or in our case….living in the Philippines…a Jeepney!) This is a question Joe and I ask often from both ourselves and the key personnel in our business. We say it jokingly, but it’s become the lexicon in our business that refers to the fact that we must not be the gatekeepers of information. We have to consistently pass on the keys to others as Empire Flippers continues to grow.

The difference between a profitable freelancer and a profitable business is the success with which you are able to transfer skills, automate processes, and effectively remove yourself from the machine. This isn’t as easy as it sounds…many successful freelancers we know spend a ton of wasted time, effort, and energy trying to make this transition and might have been better off where they were.

There are no guarantees here, but your best chance for success will be to create a set of rules or procedures that can be organized and followed by others within your organization that will cut the cord between the IP in your head and your team.

How is this done? Creating Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) empowers your team with the knowledge, process, and guidelines to continue on with what you’ve built so far and allowing you to continue to expand your empire. You could be looking to execute marketing plans for your e-commerce business and need a keyword research or backlink building SOP for a search engine optimization (SEO) campaign, or SOPs for paid social media or Amazon campaigns. Whatever processes you’re trying to document, in this post, we’ll cover how to get this implemented in your business from start to finish with the following steps:

• Breaking Down The Project Management Process
• Visual Mapping
• Tier 1 SOPs – 30K foot view
• Tier 2 SOPs – Documenting The Details
• Quality Assurance
• Additional Resources

Before we get into the details of how we use SOPs in our online business, I wanted to give you a few warnings. We’ve had quite a few discussions recently with friends and peers regarding SOPs and thought I should point out a few cases where this will and will not work:

“Established Process”

If you haven’t worked out many of the details and don’t have a track record of success, you should NOT be worrying about SOPs. They can be helpful for an established, growing business, but are often HARMFUL in the early stages. You can end up handcuffing yourself at a point where your business model needs to be extremely nimble. If your business is still in a rapid state of flux, I would recommend waiting until things have settled down.

“Team Blowback”

Some employees (and even partners) believe they work better in a slightly chaotic, ever-changing environment. Creating SOPs with work templates, instructions, etc. will change the dynamics in your company culture and you may come across some resistance. The best way to work through this is to make sure those team members have buy-in and are empowered in the process…more on this later.

“No Quick Fix”

In fact, you’re likely to spend quite a bit of productive time in setting this up and you might feel that time could have been better spent. You have to commit to your SOPs for the long haul…if you’re not ready to do that, Stop. Now. The work is front-loaded and the value is in the long-haul here.

Breaking Down The Project Management Process

Ok, so I’ll assume that you already have a working process (either in your head or somewhat documented) that you’re working with. The important things to consider here are:

1. Linear Vs. Parallel – Which pieces require a previous step to be completed? (Step A and THEN Step B) Which can be done independently and/or in parallel with other steps?
2. Group By Skillset – Someone that’s particularly capable when it comes to coding may not be the most prolific content writer you have. Even if you have team members that have cross-skills you can utilize now, remember the “What if he/she got hit by a bus” question. Grouping by skillsets will be better for your process in the long run.

Take podcast publishing for example. I’ll need to have my podcast edited BEFORE I have it transcribed…it’s a required step. Let’s say I’m also looking to have unique cartoon images created for each podcast. That will be a separate, parallel step created in the SOP.

Even if the same guy/gal that creates the image is the person uploading the content to my blog today, I’ll want to break those steps out because I know they’re different skillsets and that may change in the future. If any of the steps require decisions to be made based on a feelings or something much more subjective, I would consider “subjecting decision making” to be a skillset on its own and break that off as its own step accordingly.

Visual Mapping

Once you have those processes broken down it’s usually a good idea to visualize them as well. I like to use a whiteboard in my office:

But you can also use a virtual service like Bubbl.us:

Don’t worry that this is still fairly basic or high-level…we’ll be getting into the details later. The goal here is simply to make sure that you understand the pieces involved and to make sure you haven’t missed anything. This is pretty straightforward in the example I’m showing you, but I’ve done this for much more complicated projects filling 20+ whiteboards, hundreds of steps, etc.

Tier 1 SOPs – 30K Foot View

Now that you’ve broken down the entire process and have the relationships straight, you’re going to want to document the higher-level steps required to fully complete the project. This Tier 1 SOP will include:

• Overview – A few sentences outlining the overall scope of the project.
• Goal – A brief description regarding the end-goal of the project and result.
• Access Required – A breakdown regarding the various levels of access to systems, which can include Google docs and Skype, as well as passwords, etc. that are required to complete this task, start to finish. (Note: We use LastPass to manage access, but we have included login/password information in these documents in the past. Go with the security measures you’re most comfortable with.)
• Responsibility – The person held responsible for keeping this SOP up to date.
• Date Edited/Editor – Last date edited and the name of the agent or team member that last made the edit.
• Project Steps – Usually just a few words, up to a sentence or two. Don’t worry, you can go into much more detail on the Tier 2 SOPs.
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) – Use this to answer any questions that come up from the team using this SOP. If there’s a major issue, you can adjust the project steps as necessary.

If you already have a team that’s been working on this project, this is a great step to involve your Team Lead, Supervisor, etc. You can use your Visual Map as a guideline and your Team Lead can help you double-check the overall process.

Tier 2 SOPs – Documenting The Details

Once you have the Tier 1 SOP completed, you’re going to want to break this down each step even further in your Tier 2 SOPs. This is your opportunity to be as detailed as you like. I would suggest going into enough detail so that you could hand this over to someone that knows the basics and they could muddle through it.

Our Tier 2 SOPs include the same sections we’ve covered above for the Tier 1 SOPs, so I won’t mention them again here…I’ll just mention that the Project Steps will typically go into much more detail and can include sentences or even paragraphs, where required.

At this point, Joe and I will typically leave it up to our Team Leads, for example Greg Elfrink who leads our marketing team, to work with their teams on documenting the Tier 2 processes, assigning responsibility, adding the FAQ’s, etc. We’ll likely look it over when it’s completed, but we’ve worked with them enough on this and trust that they’ll be able to complete it without us. In fact, because they’re often more involved with the details than we are, they’re significantly better at this level of documentation because they know the process intimately.

If this is your first time going through this with your team, you’re going to want to remain involved and see this all the way through. We’ve written about the skill transfer process in-depth and we also have an Empire Flippers podcast episode dedicated to the subject on our other blog and I’d definitely recommend checking those links out. Keep in mind that you’re going to be transferring two skills to your Team Lead or Supervisor here:

1. The skill or ability to perform each Tier 2 process from start to finish
2. The skill or ability to work with his/her team in creating the Tier 2 documentation

We’ll use our skill transfer process to ensure the Team Lead competently understands each Tier 2 document and then we’ll bring the rest of his/her team together to show the Team Lead how to involve the rest of the crew in Tier 2 documentation.

Quality Assurance

Once all the documentation has been completed, you’re going to want to review everything one last time to see if there’s anything critical that’s been missed. Once the process has been established and run for a while, you can also implement spot-checks that the Team Lead can perform to ensure the process continues to run smoothly.

Additionally, you’re going to want to schedule regular reviews of the process to implement changes, correct documentation, etc. Depending on the importance and flexibility of the process, you can set monthly or quarterly review schedules for the person responsible for the SOPs. You can and should include quarterly, semi-annual, or annual reviews yourself to ensure everything is up-to-date.

Additional Resources

There are a few mind-numbing resources for writing and implementing SOPs from the EPA and from the State of Maine, but they are overly-complicated, technical, and designed for much larger organizations. Here are our recommendations “for the rest of us”!

• SOPs And Procedures For Startups – This is a podcast episode from our friends at the LBP where they delve into the “why” regarding SOPs for small businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs.  Definitely worth listening to.
• How To Write SOPs – This article from BizManualz.com is fairly straight-forward and should give you a few tips when planning out your SOP procedure.
• 5 Mistakes Made With SOPs – A helpful article from DigiCast on things to avoid and ways to improve regarding SOPs.

I hope you find this helpful as you continue to grow and build your business up to the next level and improve your skills as a business owner.  Have anything to add?  Do let us know in the comments below!