Your SOP Might Not Be the Problem

Writing another SOP might be a complete waste of your time.

I say that as someone who was hired specifically to help a business with its SOPs.

They already had them.

Organized. Documented. Sitting neatly in a digital library.

What they didn't consistently have were the outcomes those SOPs were supposed to produce.

That's a very different problem.

And it's why, when an owner tells me, "We need a better process for this," I'm probably not going to start by looking at the process.

I'm going to start with the result.

What isn't working?

Not why isn't it working.

Not who isn't doing their job.

And not which SOP needs to be rewritten.

We're not there yet.

First: What outcome aren't you getting?

Customers aren't getting called back quickly enough.

Jobs aren't hitting their labor targets.

Proposals aren't being followed up.

Invoices aren't going out on time.

Whatever it is, get specific about the result first.

Then we can start working backward.

Because businesses are complicated machines. Sales affects operations. Operations affects customer experience. Staffing affects capacity. Capacity affects scheduling. Scheduling affects labor. Labor affects margin.

So when someone tells me, "This is an SOP problem," I hear them.

But I'm not accepting the diagnosis yet.

First, who owns this?

Once I know the outcome we're not getting, this is where I'd go next.

Who is accountable for it?

Not which department.

Not "the office."

Not "the sales team."

Who is the one person who owns the outcome?

And then I'd ask that person.

What exactly are you accountable for?

What does a good result look like?

How do you know when you're not getting it?

What do you monitor that would tell you something is going wrong?

Sometimes we don't have to go much further.

If nobody is quite sure who owns the result, we've already found something.

If three people think they own it, we've also found something.

Because when everybody owns something, usually nobody really owns it.

And sometimes the person who doesn't have clarity is you, the owner.

That's okay.

We're diagnosing, not assigning blame.

Okay. They know they own it. Now what?

Now I go down another level.

Who is actually responsible for doing the work that produces this result?

That's an important distinction.

Responsibility is who performs the work.

Accountability is who owns the outcome.

Sometimes that's the same person.

Sometimes a manager is accountable for an outcome produced by three other people.

Either way, now I want to understand what's happening in real life.

Do the people doing the work know what's expected?

Do they have enough direction?

Do they understand why the process exists?

Is there an SOP, checklist, policy, training—or whatever else they need to reliably produce the outcome?

And then I want to know:

How are you actually doing it?

Not how the SOP says you're supposed to do it.

Show me what you actually do.

That's where things usually get interesting.

Don't automatically blame someone for deviating from the SOP

Let's say the documented process says one thing.

Your employee is doing something different.

It's tempting to stop there.

There's the problem. They're not following the SOP.

Maybe.

My next question is:

Why?

Because their answer matters.

Maybe they read the SOP when they started, followed it five times, and six months later they're operating some loosely assembled version from memory.

That's a problem.

Maybe nobody ever properly trained them.

Different problem.

Maybe they know exactly what they're supposed to do and simply choose not to do it.

Now we may have a performance problem.

But here's the one owners sometimes miss:

Maybe your employee stopped following the SOP because the SOP doesn't work very well.

They've adapted around it because reality doesn't look like the process somebody designed on paper.

If their reasoning is sound and they're consistently getting a better outcome, I'm looking at the SOP—not the employee.

You can follow an SOP perfectly and still fail

Here's a simple example.

A customer calls with a problem.

The SOP says the first employee should send the customer to Department A.

Department A determines that it actually belongs with Department B.

Department B eventually gets the customer to the person who can solve the problem.

Everyone followed the SOP.

Perfect compliance.

And the customer just got bounced between three people to get one problem solved.

So let me ask the question that actually matters:

Did the process work?

If the intended outcome is a good customer experience, I'd say no.

I'm a big believer in speed to solution.

When someone brings you a problem within your role, part of your job is figuring out how to get them to the right solution in the fewest reasonable steps.

That requires judgment.

An SOP should create consistency.

It shouldn't eliminate people's ability to think.

This is where owners can waste a lot of time

Let's say customers aren't receiving proper follow-up after estimates.

The owner says:

"We need a better follow-up SOP."

Maybe.

But I'm not touching it yet.

Let's diagnose.

Nobody clearly owns the follow-up result?

Accountability problem.

The salesperson didn't understand what was expected or how to do it?

Training problem.

The process is clear, reasonable and understood—but someone knowingly isn't following it?

Potential performance problem.

The salespeople stopped following the process because experience showed that the prescribed follow-up actually irritated customers or hurt results?

Potential SOP problem.

One bad outcome.

Four completely different fixes.

Imagine how much time you could waste solving the wrong one.

And here's another uncomfortable reality

You also have to know who you're handing the process to.

Some employees can be given the outcome, the process and a few guardrails and they'll figure out everything in between.

Great.

Most owners aren't going to build an entire company filled exclusively with people who operate that way.

And someone's capability can change relative to the business.

The employee who was fantastic when you were doing $750,000 may struggle when you're doing $2 million.

The business got more complicated.

The decisions got bigger.

There are more handoffs, more people, more exceptions and more things happening simultaneously.

That doesn't automatically mean they're a bad employee.

It does mean you may need to manage differently.

Somebody might need:

Explain it.

Show it.

Let them do it.

Look at the result.

Compare it to what was expected.

Correct.

Repeat.

Then, when they've got it, hand them ownership.

Giving someone an SOP isn't the same as transferring ownership.

So what would I actually do Monday morning?

I wouldn't start rewriting your SOP library.

I'd grab a piece of paper.

First, make a list of the outcomes that aren't where they should be.

Not the causes. Just the results.

Then take one.

Who is accountable for it?

If you can't name one person, start there.

If you can, talk to them.

Do they know they own it?

Do they understand what a good outcome looks like?

Can they connect what happens underneath them to the result they're accountable for?

If the answer is no, stop.

You have something to fix before we ever touch an SOP.

If the answer is yes, go down another level.

Who is responsible for producing the work?

Do they understand what's expected?

Do they have sufficient direction?

Do they understand why they're doing it?

And then ask them to show you how they actually do the work.

Compare:

What you're trying to achieve.

What your process says should happen.

What actually happens.

Now look at the gaps.

That's where I'd start diagnosing.

Maybe you need a better SOP.

Maybe you need training.

Maybe someone needs to be held accountable.

Maybe you have the wrong person in the role.

Maybe your process made perfect sense two years ago and your business has simply outgrown it.

But now we're solving something we actually understand.

That's the point

Business problems rarely arrive neatly labeled.

A sales problem might actually be an operations problem.

A people problem might be an accountability problem.

A cash problem might start with pricing.

And an SOP problem might have absolutely nothing to do with the SOP.

That's why I don't like prescribing from the symptom.

Diagnose first. Prescribe second.

Because writing the SOP isn't the finish line.

It's the starting line.

Tiffany K. Founder, Advisor For Hire