Spot It.
How things get done lives in people's heads. When someone is out sick or leaves, everyone else scrambles. New hires learn by shadowing and asking questions. Different people do the same task in different ways, and nobody is quite sure which way is right.
Sight It.
Writing procedures sounds like a big, boring project, so it never gets started. The experienced people who know the work are too busy doing it. There may be a belief that the business is too small to need documentation. And past attempts may have produced long manuals that nobody ever opened, which made the effort feel pointless.
Solve It.
Start simple and build up:
- List the 10 tasks that would cause the most trouble if the person who does them left.
- Have that person capture the steps in writing, a short video or a few screenshots.
- Keep each procedure to a page or less.
- Store them all in one shared place everyone can find.
- Add a few more each month, and update them as things change.
A few short, useful procedures beat a thick manual nobody opens.
Fixed it yourself? Great. Want help making it stick? Talk to a Troubleshooter.