“It’s urgent. People on the team are making stupid mistakes.”
“We’re growing really fast, onboarding people every day and we aren’t doing it well.”
“We KNOW how to do everything we need to but we cannot get it done consistently.”
“We need to document processes but where do we get started?”
If you’re like a number of small businesses moving at the speed of light, working on new ideas and initiatives while you are also trying to do everyday things correctly it can feel some days like the sixth ring of hell. I get it. I understand the challenge.
And when it comes to stopping the insanity – building processes and procedures – it can seem like an impossibility.
“Look, we think It’s important but we can’t slow down right now to do it”
But of course you deep-down-inside know better. Those processes and procedures spell freedom for you and the rest of the team. They equate to quality, consistency, and an end to chaos. You simply have to accomplish this. So how?
Here’s a simple guideline we use at PlaybookBuilder to help our clients to focus, simplify, and execute.
NUMBER ONE: Change your frame of reference. You are NOT going to get your business ready to be franchised overnight. Take the long view and pick off bits and pieces one at a time.
NUMBER TWO: Focus first on what’s costing you TIME or costing you MONEY. If you have a fire in the kitchen you don’t worry about watering the begonias until you’ve addressed it. Start with the areas that are urgent and forget everything else. Sales? Onboarding? Your Critical Path? Safety?
NUMBER THREE: Get clear about this – taking on this project WILL result in time savings but only after you’ve built your Playbooks. Apportion time for this each week and you’ll reap the rewards later.
NUMBER FOUR: Get buy in. You need to set time aside for this project, and have influential people on the team behind you to accomplish it. Make sure key personnel are onboard with your priorities, goals, and timelines.
NUMBER FIVe: KEEP IT SIMPLE. Overdoing it and considering every single exception is how smart people convince themselves to postpone this project. Keep it simple. Map a process high level and layer in the complex ideas afterwards. Resist the temptation to incorporate every idea everyone has about every portion of each process until you have the skeleton in place.
There isn’t a winning team on the planet who doesn’t have a playbook. You need one. But instead of a seasonal sport, your team plays 365 games a year. It’s more challenging in business to slow down and define what you do and how.. But the need is no less urgent. Start small and get moving.
As Dan Sullivan likes to say, Progress not Perfection.