SOPs vs an Operating System: Documenting Isn't Installing
SOPs record the normal path through a task. An operating system adds the people and rules that keep a procedure working once the task goes off that path. Without them, the team follows the document until something unusual happens, then messages you.
I have no quarrel with SOPs. A good checklist is one of the most useful things a business can own, and for some work, nothing else will do. Closing procedures for a restaurant, lockout steps on a machine, a month-end accounting close, a safety walk-through before a crew leaves a site: these should be written down, followed to the letter, and never improvised. If that's the kind of work you've documented, keep it and tighten it.
The trouble starts when an owner has a folder of forty SOPs, a team that still messages them all day, and concludes that the documents weren't detailed enough. Usually they were detailed. They described the normal path through a task, and the owner's phone fills up with everything that isn't the normal path.
Why don't employees follow SOPs?
Most teams follow them right up to the first situation the document didn't plan for. At that point the safest move for an employee is to ask the person who wrote the rules, and in most small businesses that's you.
What changes that moment is giving the exception somewhere to go that isn't you, which is a question of ownership and limits. It's why I treat SOPs as one part of a larger build, and why I'd write procedures first where work waits on you, starting with the ones that touch billing or a customer order.
What does an operating system add to your SOPs?
What I call an operating system is the set of things that surround an SOP and keep it working. It's four pieces, and each one is small.
- An owner for each procedure, a named person who is allowed to change it.
- A rule for exceptions: who may deviate, how far, and what they do when the situation is outside that.
- A visible check that the procedure is being used, which could be a number someone reads weekly or a sample someone looks at monthly.
- A routine for editing, so that what people learn from doing the work ends up in the document.
Without those, a procedure is a snapshot of how someone thought the work should go on the day they wrote it. With them, it's a living instruction that changes as the business does.
How do you check whether your SOPs are actually used?
You can find out which situation you're in without any new software. Open the folder where your SOPs live and sort by last modified. Pick the ten that matter most and ask three questions about each.
- Who owns this, by name? Not "operations." A person.
- When did somebody other than the author last follow it, start to finish?
- What happened the last time it didn't fit the situation, and who got asked?
Here's how that tends to come out. Imagine a 16-person catering company with 41 documented procedures. The audit shows six edited in the last year. Most of the rest were written in a burst during a slow winter by a manager who has since left, and nobody is sure any of them is still followed. One document is very different: the load-out checklist for event days, which has been edited eleven times, with notes in the margin, because the lead who uses it every weekend also owns it. When the van changed and the order of loading had to change, he rewrote it that afternoon.
It's a pattern I run into often. Procedures stay alive when the person who follows them is also the person who may change them. A procedure written by one person to be followed by another gets stale the moment the work shifts. If your audit shows ten procedures and nine owners who are really the owner, that's the finding.
Who should write your SOPs?
The people who do the work, with someone drawing out the parts they do without thinking.
Owners often try to write procedures from memory, which gives you how they remember doing it five years ago. A better approach, which one law firm owner I work with is using, is to have the staff who do the task record their screens while they do it, and to have someone interview them afterward about the parts that aren't visible on screen, like why a file gets set aside or when they'd check with a lawyer.
They started with non-attorney staff, because it's lower stakes and builds momentum before anyone asks the attorneys for their time. New hires then shadow a colleague and document the process themselves as part of learning it, so every onboarding leaves the documentation better than it found it.
Along similar lines, I've told a few owners to skip the big manual and do it lightly. One document with two parts is enough to start: a cadence of what happens daily, weekly and monthly and who does it, and a systems section listing the procedures that exist. The owner does a task once while a team member takes notes, then hands the task over completely. It captures about eighty percent of what a manual would, and the remaining twenty gets added when somebody finds out they need it.
What should an SOP say when a step needs judgment?
Take an event-planning step from that catering company: "If the client changes the headcount, notify the kitchen manager." That's a legitimate SOP line and it leaves a hole. Does anyone say yes to the client? Up to how many guests? At what price?
The operating-system version replaces the hole with a decision. The event coordinator may accept an increase of up to 8% at the quoted per-person price, provided the kitchen confirms by 2 pm two days before the event. Beyond 8%, or later than that, the coordinator takes the new count and the kitchen's view to the owner. Anyone reading that line knows what they can do without asking, and the owner's phone stays quiet for the most common version of the question. I go deeper on writing these limits in the post about delegating decisions.
Should you delete SOPs nobody follows?
A document nobody follows costs more than the nothing it replaces, because it teaches the team that written procedures are decorative. If the audit shows a procedure that nobody has opened in a year and nobody could name an owner for, archive it. If you're not sure, ask the person who does the work whether they'd miss it. The ones that survive will have a named owner and a reason to be there, and that's a much better folder than forty documents of uncertain status.
What does a working operating system look like?
The folder gets shorter and the documents in it get edited more often. Each procedure that matters has a person's name on it, and when the work changes, that person updates the steps the same week without being asked. Unusual cases go to whoever the exceptions rule names, and the weekly check tells you whether things are being followed before a customer does.
Your phone is the clearest sign. The messages that used to start with "quick question" thin out, and the ones that still arrive are about decisions the rules deliberately left with you. After a week away, the follow-up should be a handful of procedures that need an edit, and their owners make the edits. Keeping them current from there is its own discipline, covered in why SOPs go stale in 60 days.
Frequently asked questions
How many SOPs does a small business need?
There's no right number. Start with the procedures where a mistake reaches a customer, a payment or someone's safety, and give each one an owner before you write the next. A short folder the team actually opens will do more for you than a long one that nobody can vouch for.
Who should own an SOP when the person doing the work is junior?
Usually that person, with a limit on what they can change alone. Small edits to the steps are theirs to make. Changes that affect a customer, a price or another team go to a named senior person for a quick look. Ownership stays close to the work, and the senior check covers the edits with wider reach.
Do I need software to run an operating system?
No. The four pieces are agreements about who owns each procedure, who decides exceptions, what gets checked and when edits happen. A shared folder and one number read each week are enough to begin. Software can help once those agreements exist, and it can't create them for you.
Could your SOPs use an outside read?
If your folder is full and your phone still isn't quiet, a Planning Call is a good place to work through the four pieces for the procedures that matter most to your revenue. You'll get an honest read on whether you need us for it.
