“Develop and maintain proper procedures for your business to grow and prosper.”
Today’s Coachcast is about developing and refining proper procedures to allow your business to grow.
Developing and maintaining proper procedures if one of the most difficult things for businesses to do yet it’s one of the most important. The difficulty often causes many businesses to avoid the process and ultimately hinders their ability to grow successfully.
What:
Formal guidelines, outlines, processes, standard operating procedures (SOPs) and other tools that guide your employees on how to do their jobs.
Why:
If you want to take you business to the next level you need to have procedures to operate your business at that level. You cannot grow to a $50M business with procedures for a $500K business. To be successful you must have the procedures first.
How:
Understand that not everything needs to have a formal procedure and these procedures are not supposed to dictate employees every action. They are designed to give them the guidelines on how to perform their job in the proper manner that meets with your company’s culture and expectations.
To develop proper procedures we need to:
- Start with the big picture items like; purchasing, project controls, reporting, project accounting, safety, etc.
- Develop an outline of the steps associated with each item
- Further define the process, tools, templates, timelines and guidance for each step
- Formalize into a written plan – can be a word doc or presentation – create something
- Refine – these procedures should be reviewed during the closeout process of each project and quarterly
- Make changes as necessary to adjust for errors and keep in line with your vision
Creating proper procedures will help your business move to the next level and maintain a consistent level of service.
Take-Action Items:
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Develop procedures for the big picture aspects of your business
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Create a written program
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Review and refine as necessary
