I hired a management consultant about 1997 and was taken aback when he insisted my first assignment was to write a complete operations manual. He wanted me to account for every detail of how I operated my business and to literally write out a detailed “How-to” manual.
The idea was I should be able to hand anyone the manual and they should be able to run my business without having to ask me any questions.
It took me over a month. It was painful. It was one of the hardest exercises I’ve had to do for business.
But it was worth it.
I finally saw the big picture! I could turn over the operations of my business to someone and know they could learn how to do every task I ever had to accomplish.
I even wrote out a detailed daily activity descriptions including sample phone scripts for everything I had to do.
About a year later I hired an assistant and was able to easily convert my operations manual to the assistant’s manual. The amount of training time I eliminated was a major savings.
I highly recommend writing out your operations details regardless of how difficult it might seem.
While you’re at it, read The EMyth by Michael Gerber and you’ll realize the full impact of why you need to have your business operations in writing.