Odds are you have written one already. You just did not know that is what it was called.
When we started out, we were writing standard operating procedures before we had ever heard the term. Someone would ask how to do something for the third time, and rather than explain it again, we would write it down properly, step by step, and hand it over.
It was only later, reading about ADDIE and how adults actually learn, that the vocabulary caught up with the work. Those step-by-step documents had a name. So did the one-page reminders we had been calling cheat sheets, which turned out to be job aids, or quick reference guides.
If that sounds familiar, you are already doing this. Here is the language for it.
An SOP is a standard operating procedure: written instructions that take someone from the beginning of a task to the end, answering the questions that come up along the way.
The "standard" part matters. An SOP is not one person's way of doing something. It is the way, agreed on and written down, so the task comes out the same regardless of who does it or how long they have been there.
The part people skip is the middle. It is easy to write the first step and the last step. What makes an SOP genuinely useful is that it answers the questions that surface between them: what if this field is blank, who do I send it to, what happens if the amount is over a certain number. If your reader has to ask someone, the SOP is not finished.
Forget formatting for a moment. There is one question worth asking about any SOP you write.
Does this make the job easier, for the person doing the work and for the person managing it?
Both halves count. A good SOP means the employee is not guessing and not waiting on an answer. It also means the manager is not answering the same question every week, and is not discovering at month end that three people each did it differently.
If a document does not do that, it is not really an SOP. It is a formality, and people will quietly stop opening it.
You do not need a heavyweight template. You need these things present and findable.
Software procedures are the ones people expect, but the most-used SOPs in a business are often the everyday administrative ones, precisely because everybody has to do them and nobody does them often enough to remember.
The clearest sign is repetition. If you have explained the same process more than twice, or if the answer lives in one person's head and everyone knows whose, that process is waiting to be written down.
The second sign is inconsistency. When the same task produces different results depending on who did it, the procedure is not standard yet.
The most common mistake is writing for the wrong reader. An SOP written for the person who already knows the process makes perfect sense to them and nobody else. Write it for someone doing it for the first time, and it works for everyone.
The second is length. Nobody reads eleven pages standing at a counter. If a procedure has grown that long, it is usually two procedures, or it is one procedure that needs a quick reference guide beside it.
The third is leaving it to go stale. A procedure that no longer matches the software is worse than none at all, because it teaches people that the documentation cannot be trusted. Put an owner and a review date on it and it stays alive.
Tell us the processes that generate the most repeated questions, and we'll turn them into documentation that answers them.
Book a Discovery Call →
