5 business habits to help you keep your SOPs updated…easily!

Building business habits to get your business in shape (just like getting yourself in shape!) tends to follow 3 major phases.

Phase 1: diagnose your problem areas
Phase 2: implement necessary changes
Phase 3: maintain those changes to keep consistent growth (or muscle building)

Unfortunately, much like most people during their fitness journeys (ourselves included!) so many businesses tend to fall off during that second phase once they’ve reached their first initial goal of “create an SOP”.

In this video, we’re going over 5 daily business habits you can implement inside your business culture that can help maintain and build upon all of the hard work you’re doing to make these changes – so you never have to start at phase one again.

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Getting your business in shape is just like getting yourself in shape

Let’s talk about how you can make sure your SOPs are kept up to date without making it a hassle.

Going back to the fitness metaphor, this would be the time when you sit down and analyze where you’re at physically. Things such as taking your health risks into concern, figuring out a goal, measuring your current body stats, and so on.

Simply put — you can’t move forward until you analyze your current situation.

Phase one is often exciting, it’s where you’re making plans, setting goals, and thinking about the journey ahead. Phase two, just like in fitness, is where we often see people start to drop off because it’s now where the rubber meets the road and you need to start putting these plans in motion.

Habits you need to incorporate process into your daily business routine

Once you start developing your SOPs and documentation, you don’t want to just toss all of that hard work to the wind, right?

Instead, you need to learn how to maintain SOPs and keep them fresh and up-to-date.

The secret to never letting your SOPs get out of date is to make sure the process is woven into the fabric of how your business works on a regular basis.

Here are five business habits successful entrepreneurs need to keep their processes running smoothly:

Habit #1: Answer Questions with a prompt to update the SOP

This can feel awkward at first. Our go-to here is to simply say, “since you’re in charge of this project, the SOPs associated with it are now your baby! Please make sure they grow alongside you.”

This might mean that you’re requesting teammates to edit an SOP when you hop on a call to walk them through a question during a project. This eliminates:

• 1) that same team member (or any newcomers!) shouldn’t have to ask that same question more than once.
• 2) their interpretation of the answer is now included into an SOP they should be referrencing daily
• 3) that’s one less SOP you have to update!

This small inclusion of SOPs in the everyday discussion demonstrates that the process is top of mind as a company.

Learn more about Business Habit #1 starting at 04:00.

Habit #2 : Process Based Performance Reviews

Here at ProcessDriven, we make it a point to connect with our team on a regular basis. We have monthly meetings between supervisors and their reports so that they can discuss any questions that they have, how their current workload feels, any hang-ups on upcoming projects, etc.

One item that is always discussed is, “What processes are you in charge of and how are they going? Should we outsource some of them? Are any of them unable to be done? Are some more time-consuming than you thought and are preventing you from getting more important work done?”

In your company, you should be going through all the SOPs your employee is in charge of in relation to their current goals. If it doesn’t directly impact a KPI or help in their job performance, figure out if there is a way to shift that responsibility to someone else. (Or if there is a way to add to the project so that it better meets the underlying goal of growing your business.)

Dive into the details of Business Habit #2 starting at 05:16.

Habit #3: Actually use your SOPs

If you’ve done the hard work of creating SOPs, you need to actually use them. If you notice something out of date or incorrect, change it right away.

Everyone in your organization should feel empowered to adjust or edit an SOP to keep it up to date. At the very least, they should feel able to make a comment on an SOP to open a conversation about how to change or update it.

Layla expands on this habit starting at 07:55.

Habit #4: Quantify and Report on Systemization

Another way to create good business habits around your SOPs is to report on them. One example from our own company is was presented to our audience during Layla’s Summer Lookback event.

To measure the growth of our company, we keep track of the total number of SOPs created and who was in charge of each one. We use a simple ClickUp Dashboard to keep tabs on: how many, the use case of each, and the key metrics associated with each SOP.

Pro Tip: Create a recurring task to remind you to update them regularly or check in with your metrics.

Learn more about Business Habit #4 starting at 10:08.

Habit #5: Make a Recurring SOP Building Event (Bootcamp Style)

If all else fails, go all-in Bootcamp style to get your SOPs up to date.

For bigger businesses, maybe this is one week where you and your team you get cracking on sprucing up those SOPs. Maybe it’s just one hour a week where everyone works hard to fix a few of them at a time.

For solopreneurs out there, spend one Friday per month going through all of your SOPs. Take the time to update and clean up any of them.

Get tips on how to coordinate a Process Bootcamp starting at 11:37.

All of these business habits seem easy enough. But like with building any habit, consistency is key! Making the time in your day-to-day to remind yourself and your team that developing a great process is top of mind, is the one true way to build successful business habits — and in turn, a successful business!