Your team needs to own their roles AND their SOPs.
Here’s why:
- Personal responsibility: They own the improvement and the updating of the SOPs they use. When they own it, they improve it. When it’s imposed from above, they resist it.
- New standards lead to new SOPs: Every enhancement is a chance to refine and document. It’s a chance for them to get better at their job.
- Building new SOPs: Employees lead in creating their own procedures with you. You aren’t doing the lifting, the person who’s going to run the thing helps design it. You aren’t the bottleneck.
- Modular knowledge: No employee should have a monopoly over a process. If someone is a “black box” they can hold you and the business hostage. Documenting everything solves this, and keeps the A-Players who want to design a better business.
This streamlines the business, limits dependence on single points of failure, and ensures best practices.
Win for you, win for the customers, win for the investors, win for the team.