Becoming a Smooth Operator (Part 2)

Continued from “Becoming a Smooth Operator (Documenting Your Operational Protocols)”

In the first half of this post, I made a case for the importance of documenting your business’s operational protocols. Let’s take finance, for example (although we could just as easily talk about sales, marketing, project management, administration, or any other area of your business).

In finance, their are certain things that need to happen at certain times, on a very regular basis (Paying bills, generating invoices, making deposits, etc.). When these things don’t happen, or don’t happen when they should, it can create some major operational challenges for your business. A missed credit card payment, for example, can affect your business’s credit rating. A missed deposit can affect your company’s cash flow. A lost invoice can affect your relationship with vendors.

Any of these issues would generate a good deal more work on the back end than the amount of work normally required to complete the original task, how and when it was meant to be completed. In the interest of leveraging your time and energy, it pays to manage your business in such a way that this extra work can be avoided.

In addition to the added work involved, consider the amount of stress these challenges cause, and the affect that this kind of stress has on employees, and on your company culture.

Any of these issues could also be avoided by creating and following a set of operational protocols for the finance department. These operational protocols would outline all of the different tasks that need to be performed, state who should perform each task, and distinguish how and when they should be performed. In addition, the operational protocols should cover who to report to when each task has been completed, so there’s no question as to whether or not it has been completed.

When all of these operational protocols are thoroughly documented, they start to provide a foundation for accountability. In other words, when all of your business’s standard practices and procedures have been defined, they can easily be assigned to employees. They can be added into job descriptions and job accountabilities, and the documentation helps reduce the learning curve and the training time needed to effectively delegate each task.

From a leadership or managerial perspective, well-documented operational protocols can shift your experience of running a business from constantly chasing results and putting out fires, to steadily moving toward the fulfillment of a long-term vision. Documenting your operational protocols allows for a whole new level of consistency and performance, and the potential for long-term, sustainable growth.

If you’ve been running your business by the seat of your pants, and you’re ready to kick the habit and become a smooth operator, here are some tips for getting started…

1. Tackle one small section of your business at a time. The thought of documenting your entire operation can be very intimidating. Start small. Pick one area of your business to go to work on first. When that’s done, you can pick the next area.
2. Within the area that you’ve chosen, identify all the tasks that need to be completed on a regular basis, and record them on a list.
3. Then, for each task on the list, describe exactly when the task needs to be completed, how it needs to be completed, and by whom it needs to be completed.
4. Next, for each task on the list, describe who should be notified when the task is complete, and how that person should be notified.
5. Put all of this information together in an easily accessible place. For example, a binder, or series of binders, organized by department, with a thorough table of contents.
6. Create a management checklist for each area of your business. Use these checklists to help you ensure that your operational protocols are being followed. After all, if they’re not being followed, what good are they, right? Your checklists should give you a visual representation of the operational status of your entire business.

For more tips on documenting operational protocols for your small business, feel free to contact me by email at erek@vervecoaching.com.

If you enjoyed this post, subscribe to Verve Coaching by Email

Possibly related: