How to Uncomplicate Documenting What You Do
“...You do not know how paralyzing it is, that staring of a blank canvas which says to the painter: you don’t know anything.”
Maybe you know what Van Gogh’s talking about. You’ve been trying to get your standard operating procedures (SOPs) written for months. You know they’re essential to the growth of your business, and you’ve fought hard to make time to do it.
You grab your coffee and sit down, thinking to yourself, “This should be easy, right?” …then four hours later, the blinking cursor seems to be laughing at you. You start (with shame) to doubt whether you really know anything at all.
Why does documenting what you do feel so complicated?
The answer should make you feel great. It’s that you’re so good at your job.
You now know your business at an expert level. You’ve spent years, through trial and error, figuring out what works and what doesn’t. You no longer need to stop and think about all the little steps and micro-decisions. They’ve become compressed into one fluid sweep of intuition and muscle memory. It’s hard to say exactly how you do what you do. You just do it.
There’s a technical term for that level of excellence: Unconscious Competence. And since that term is a bit academic, here are some examples of unconscious competence we experience every day:
Tying our shoes (without thinking about it)
Driving home from work (without thinking about where we’re going)
Cooking a meal we’ve made over and over (without looking at the recipe)
In order to define a now-habitual process, you have to retrace your steps, teasing apart all those sequences, decisions, variables, and skills that have become second nature. You have to remember what it was like to be a newbie.
Can it be done? And if so, how?
Here’s Van Goh with the practical answer:
“Just dash something down if you see a blank canvas staring at you…”
Expect that Unconscious Competence is going to make you feel like an idiot. You’re not. You’re brilliant and the blank canvas feeling is completely normal.
It’s time to put some structure in place.
So how do you “just dash something down?” Great question.
Find a time and force yourself to make a start.
Address each of these core areas:
Marketing/Business Development
Sales
Operations/Production
HR
Finance
Customer Care/Retention
Limit yourself to the core process in each of those areas—the very basics. You can add more detail after this high-level pass.
Work inside of 1-hour time constraint for each core process. Do not get in the weeds.
Ask a subject matter expert inside the company (i.e. head of marketing, head of operations) to review what you’ve written.
Get feedback from those already doing that process most often. Tweak and repeat.
What if you do all this and you’re still stuck?
It may be time to bring in an outside set of ears. An experienced advisor will bring with them a huge mental library of business processes and patterns. They can ask incisive questions that uncover the essence of each distinct area of your business. They’re also far enough away from the work to think objectively. They’ll hear terms and instructions like a new employee would.
Most importantly, an outside expert is more likely to spot what’s been assumed but that actually needs to be defined.
If we can help you get through a stuck spot like that, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We get a thrill from helping small businesses reach operational clarity. It’s a 100% achievable goal.
