Do you even know what’s happening?
You’ve done it for years, it seems simple, and it just works.
This is the liberating phase of running a small business, where everything just happens and there is little effort.
EXCEPT, is all happens because you are doing it. And in fact, this is the exact reason a small business struggles to grow, and why the ‘owner’ often feels trapped. Never able to hand over tasks and a slave to the constant actions needed to run the business.
So what can you do?
There is a simple solution to this, yes it takes a little work, but I’ll simplify that for you today.
Manuals and Playbooks.
When did you last take a flight? Think about it, you boarded the plane, and as you did you probably saw the pilots talking to someone in a fluorescent jacket and working their way through all the buttons and switches. What were they doing?
A checklist!
They have a manual and a system to check the plane before every take-off and after every landing.
Do you have the same for your business?
The only way you can hand over tasks so you are no longer the slave, and importantly so you can grow and develop your team, is to create manuals (aka playbooks) for every task.
This may seem overwhelming as there are so many tasks to complete, and over time you will need to do them all, but to start with, find the task that takes a lot of your time that you don’t need to do, and that if someone else did would free up your time and energy?
Using that task, walk through this process and begin transforming your business and life.
How to create manuals:
Record the action.
This one is simple, film yourself doing that task that you want someone else to do. Key here is to narrate it too, talk through it as you do it. And that way as soon as you’ve finished, you now have the material to give to others to learn and watch.
2. Bullet Points
For the leaner, summarise the key steps of the video with clear bullet points. These do not contain detail, the video shows that. But serve as a reference for future.
3. Check list
This is the step by step actions that need completing within the task. Again not great detail but simply stating what should have been done.
4. Train and review
Now it’s time to show your videos. Get the team to watch these and attempt the tasks. At the end, check the checklist. Was all completed? If so the task should be done. If all completed but task failed then you may need to go back through and refine something.
This is all simple action, but imagine a business where everyone knew what they were doing, there was a checklist to ensure completion, and you didn’t need to be there?
Have a go.
With love,
Tom