As a business owner, you are likely facing a number of challenges when it comes to scaling your organization and increasing profits. Perhaps you find yourself doing tasks that you don’t trust others to do or that no one else can do as well as you. Or maybe you’re struggling to reduce production timelines or eliminate inefficiencies in your business. Whatever your struggles may be, know that you are not alone. In this blog post, we’ll discuss how Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and how process improvement can help you overcome these challenges and bring stability and scalability to your organization.

Why SOPs are Important for Your Business

SOPs are critical for the success of any business, big or small. They create consistency, improve quality control, help organizations comply with requirements, provide a valuable training tool for new employees, streamline processes and reduce errors, improve safety, and maintain continuity of operations. By documenting and duplicating key elements of your business, you’ll be able to reduce training costs and time, improve customer satisfaction, and ultimately increase your income through increased productivity, quality control, and the ability to duplicate and multiply results over time.

Step-by-Step Guide to Developing SOPs

Here’s a step-by-step guide to developing SOPs that have worked well for myself and my clients:

1. Identify the process or task for which you want to create an SOP. If you are not sure what SOP you should create first, the rule of thumb is pretty simple. Either focus on the tasks or processes that are producing the most revenue, OR focus on the things you want to offload from your responsibilities first. Continue to work your way through your list until you are complete.

2. Map it out. Capture the process through a list of steps or drawings from start to finish, making sure not to miss a step. In order to ensure you don’t miss all the elements necessary to properly account for fully mapping it out, a best practice is to do so with your subject matter experts. This ensures you have the highest quality results.

3. Expand the steps. Write a clear, concise description of each step or action using simple language and active voice. I advise all my clients who are doing this with their team or employees to have someone narrate the process while doing it and have another record the process both with video and written. If you are a solopreneur or working in the digital environment. Simply record yourself completing these tasks and then you can go back and break down the video and document the process. From there you can create a clear, and accurate expansion of the steps.

4. Add important notes. This is the place you want to include special notes, precautions, or warnings. We avoid putting this in the expanded steps portion to keep those areas clear, concise and direct. This allows us to keep the SOP streamline for execution but also captures the information that can change from job to job or based on safety/regulatory changes.

5. Add materials. This is where you’ll list any special materials required to complete the process to standard.

6. Add resources. List any additional educational resources or training aids.

7. Test the SOP. Once you’ve developed your SOP, it is time to test it in low-risk or controlled environments to see how it works in practice. This can be achieved with your experienced team members to check on the validity of the SOP as well as the new or inexperienced team member to ensure your getting consistent and timely results.

8. Approve the SOP. Once the SOP has been tested and approved by the user, manager, and creator and the results are satisfactory, it’s time to approve the SOP for publication.

9. Publish and distribute. Make sure the SOP is accessible to all employees who need it and distribute it accordingly. It’s best to have hard copies available in all training environments and a digital version accessible to all employees at all times. G-Drives can be a very valuable resource and easily accessible.

10. Supervise and refine. Regularly update the SOPs to ensure they remain accurate and relevant. I often recommend an annual review of your SOPs, but some organizations can do this every other year. If your organization is often adapting to technological advancement or regulatory changes an annual review will serve you and your customer base best.

The Power of SOPs and Process Improvement

By following this step-by-step guide, you’ll be well on your way to creating a business that can duplicate results, reduce training costs,  reduce errors, and improve quality control and customer satisfaction. The knowledge you gain from developing SOPs and improving your processes is powerful and can lead to a massive multiplier for your income. Don’t put off documenting your processes, improving your systems, and developing SOPs. It could be the difference between struggling where you are and doubling your income within a year.

If you look at any successful business or organization they will have one thing in common. Systems and processes that can be duplicated within a very small margin of error time after time. Some of the best examples of this are The US Military, Apple, Nike, professional sports teams, and the list goes on. While the type of SOPs they create are vastly different, their ability to duplicate the results and processes shows their dependency on their standard operating procedures.

Conclusion

SOPs are the building blocks to a successful business that is prepared to grow and scale. They provide the stability your organization needs and the results your customers deserve. Because we care about your success we have attached a basic SOP template HERE. Or you can head on over to our resource page HERE to check out all the free resources we have provided to grow your business to 7 figures on your terms.