As you know, Admin Slayer’s 2019 theme is Resilience. Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, or stress. It’s the capacity to not only recover, but to spring back into shape, stronger and more powerful than before. We think resilience is one of the key ingredients for success in business, love, and life.

Each month, we’ve been bringing you practical, concrete ways you can build resilience in all areas of your business, including your finances, your team, and your new business pipeline.

Resilience is multi-faceted, which is why it’s taking all of this year for us to write about it - and we’re not even trying to cover every aspect.

One of the strongest powerhouses behind resilience in your business is this month’s key topic: Process

We talk a lot about processes at Admin Slayer - in fact you’re probably not going to go a full year without at least one article from us about the value of written processes, and this year is no different. In the recent past, we gave you the handy How to Create a Process and Planning, Process, and Creativity, and we would hate to leave you wondering: “What will they say about processes next?” (We know you were absolutely wondering this; honestly, who wouldn’t?)

Why do we harp on and on about what may be the most boring, painful task you’ve ever had to be involved in?

Because it works.

Boring, maintenance-focused, consistency works.

It makes your business reliable, so your customers keep returning. It makes training and setting expectations for staff simple, so they don’t quit, get fired, or take key knowledge with them when they leave. It makes it clear where you’re winning and where you’re losing in your business, so you can create effective, efficient, financially-savvy decisions. It makes knowledge transferable, jobs you don’t want delegate-able (that’s a word now), systems scale-able, and your business valuable.

As we hammered home in Creating a Resilient Company: Your Company Shouldn’t Need You, the most powerful thing you can do to add value to your company is get out of your own way.

You can do this with confidence if you have powerful, useful, and well-maintained written processes.

Why We Started Writing Procedures

The biggest hero cookies I ever received in my past life as an employee is the one practice I got into when I arrived at a business with zero written processes and had to figure things out from scratch. It was one of the most frustrating experiences I’ve ever had (and I’m writing this like it happened once but you know what? It was every single time). My boss knew that stuff had gotten done in the past, but she didn’t know how. Trial by fire, for both of us. Luckily, we managed through it - but we were both worse for wear at the end of it, and it had cost the business in time and money.

During that trial, while fires kept lighting themselves and I kept throwing oil on them (hint: that doesn’t work) until I figured out where the extinguisher was, I started writing stuff down. Stuff that worked. Stuff that didn’t. Why each one did or did not work. What the goal was with each action - and the kindergarten easy, step-by-step process required to do it right.

At the time, it was just for my use, because my memory is like a sieve and I knew there were way too many things for me to know, and I would save myself and my company time and money by not relying on the inherent weaknesses of the human mind, which may be limited by capacity, food, sleep, stress and so much more. I assumed that there would be a day I would come into work not having a clue what my job was, and that I would very much appreciate having it documented so clearly that it would be impossible for me to mess it up.

Those days happened. My little procedure manual helped. When I learned new things, I updated it. I added to it. When I reviewed processes that had aged, I made sure they were up to date. Tired me would show up and know what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and how it would impact my next job and the jobs of people around me.

I left one of these behind me every time I got a promotion and every time I left a company.

The reference letters I’ve received since were outstanding. People I run into 10 or more years later say:

I know YOU. You wrote the manual.

(And I ask them if they’ve updated it… I sure hope so!)

You know what it gives them (more than reasons to compliment me)? A business that is easy to work for. A business that is easy to work with. A business that makes money, and they know exactly why.

A business of value.

Your Operational Meal

Imagine your business operations are a meal. You have key components to that meal: your carbs, your fats, and your protein.

Your CRM system, your task management system, your project management system - these are your carbs. They give you some heft, and some structure, and shoot you a chunk of easy-to-use energy right away. These systems are the wheels that turn in your business. But you know what? They stop without the other pieces.

Your VA, your team, your key strategic partners - these are your fats. They keep your life running smoothly, organize your calendar, set up your meetings, coordinate your files, and lubricate the wheels on your systems so they keep turning, turning, and spitting out the work and the money that runs your business.

Your carbs and your fats can work together for a while, without your protein. They can. But, over time, things start to fall apart. You start to miss certain pieces. Everybody gets tired. Something is missing. The energy starts to flatten, even if you add more carbs (New apps! New software! New something!). Your operations start to get fat, old, and sick.

The protein to your operational meal is the creation and maintenance of powerfully resilient processes. The clear reason why you’re doing a thing, when you’re doing it, who is playing which part, the itty-bitty, nitty-gritty steps along the way, and the end game… all in one beautiful clear written (adjustable, editable, scale-able) document.

Processes are not the dull, painful, albatross around your neck that so many of us believe them to be. Processes are the communication tools. They’re the expectation tool. They’re the Your Way™ that new team members understand instantly, that old hands own because they made them - they are your business.

How To Create - and Maintain- Resilient Processes

Remember: You don’t have to do it all

Yes, when you first get started, you are the one designing your processes. Those are your ideas made into reality. You are probably kind of excited about them in the beginning.

Then they get dull. You get bored. You move on to other, more exciting things. That’s fair. That’s how you roll.

But that doesn’t make procedures any less vital to the operations of a strong business. They still need to get done, you just don’t have to be the one to do them all.

Start Here, with WHY

Yes, we’ve written about this before, and we’ll write about it again. We’re going to keep on writing about this, potentially to the end of time. It’s that important. So here’s your refresher:

A great process should:

1. Help you tie in which tasks are important to your overall business goals. Do you know why you are doing something? Write it into the process. You may have a bad day, when you don’t remember why you are here or what you are doing. You may have a staff member who has a bad day, or a new staff member who has no idea what is going on. Write. It. Down.

2. Help you identify the right people for the right jobs and steps in the process. Not everybody is great at everything - especially things you think are easy. Understand the resources, tools, skills, and abilities that an ideal person completing this part of the process would need to be a rockstar at this particular step. With the correct, clear information, people will even be able to identify themselves, and know when to ask for help.

3. Improve efficiency. Mmmmm, we love efficiency. That tasty meeting of getting something done right, on time, and on budget. Yum. But how does your process improve efficiency?

   • It facilitates future training. Guess what? Your business will grow. Your staff will be promoted, or leave. Don’t hide your head in the sand. Make it possible for someone with the right skills and abilities to pick up a job easily, right now, and know when to ask for help.

   • Your key team members, who actually work inside the process, can review it for errors, updates, tweaks, and changes. Remember, the goal is not to have you writing all the rules. The goal is to create an organic, powerful resource that is the combined energy of all the smartest and most capable people in your business.

4. Help you apply similar principles to other areas of your business. When a process is constantly being rewritten, updated, and tweaked by various intelligent people, they’ll constantly be in How Can We Make Everything Better mode. This is a good mode. This is a useful mode. This is where real innovation comes from. Innovation isn’t new ideas that come out of nowhere. They are ideas that come from over there and are applied over here. They’re one of the reasons our team at Admin Slayer seems so amazing - we’ve got our fingers in so many industries that we can take this activity that’s common in that industry and apply it in your business, an industry that had never considered it before.

Now, Make Your Processes Resilient

Remember that all the good money is made in boring stuff. Reliable, well-maintained, and consistent businesses are the ones that win all the long-term horse races. Businesses have cycles and economies have recessions. You want your business to survive all that. Yes, you may have an exciting idea and a really interesting concept, but your business operations need to be all the things that make a business sustainable.

That means dull stuff, like maintenance and repetition. You don’t have to be the one to do it all, and you shouldn’t. Everyone should be involved because this is important. It’s the lifeblood of your business. You need to get it right.

1. Create, review, adapt, review, repeat. Your process creation is a cycle that starts with an idea and then is refreshed, updated and tweaked regularly. That’s the only way it will survive and become better. Processes will change with new technology, new staff, updated skills, new business lines, and more. They need to be revisited and refined to ensure your business remains relevant.

2. Make it part of your team’s job. Don’t just ask staff for input - put it on their performance reviews. Anyone involved in a process has the responsibility to update it. Task each team member with identifying which processes are working and which are not with regular updates.

3. Implement and test! Get your staff members to trade procedures and try to follow each other’s instructions, and take their feedback. Everyone has to get really comfortable with the reality that there will be change each and every time and that change is good. This review by outside parties ensures that stuff someone didn’t write down because “it’s obvious” is identified and fleshed out - because it won’t be obvious to someone.

Oh, and after that? Start all over again. The only things that are inevitable in life are death, taxes, and change. Each one of those is hitting your business on the regular. Stay resilient, and bounce back with processes that make your business more valuable each and every day.