Document your processes

How often do you perform a complex task only to find that the next time you need to do it is weeks away and you have forgotten how. So you scratch your head, pester some colleagues for their memory of how it's supposed to be done, use a bit of trial and error and rationalise that hey, that will do and get on to the next challenge.

If you and your team are working like that there are many likely pitfalls. You are obviously wasting time and effort - both yours and your colleagues. You may have changed the methodology without improving it.

By documenting "how we do what we do around here" you provide your whole organisation with a how to guide. This guide can save big time and money when training new people, handing over responsibilities on promotion and is a valuable asset if you chose to sell your business.

So next time you start a complex process, document the steps. Stop banging your head against the wall trying to dredge out old memories of how you did it last time! You'll probably feel much more in control of your work, achieve improved outcomes and shorten the time to do each process. If the work you document is boring, there's even more benefit as you'll need to apply less effort to it and be rid of it sooner. And we all want to avoid the pain of boring work don't we?

I have been working with a recruitment company to document some of their key work flow processes. We have a series of screenshots of MS Outlook Tasks being Assigned to their team and then tracked to completion. We also worked on a standard Categories listing so the whole team is working from the same "page". They're excited about the potential efficiency dividends as the existing processes were not documented, contained duplications and lacked interoperability. So though there's a learning curve that chews u[p some time, the benefits far outweigh all investments in improving these processes for this business.