The key to writing the best operations manual for your business – delegate it!
Once you decide to create a personalized business operations manual to run your business more efficiently, you need to answer a very important question: will you write it yourself or have someone else do it? And, if someone else, who is the best person to delegate to?
To answer that, consider the following:
Do you enjoy writing?
Are you good at it?
Do you have experience articulating a task or organizing a mass of information into coherent pieces, at the right level of detail, and in the right order?
Are you more of a detail oriented thinker, a big picture person, or a little of both?
How much time can you devote every week to this project?
Do you have a clear vision on the best format and outline to follow?
And finally, when you think of writing your personalized business owner’s manual, does it give you a rush of excitement (even a small one) motivating you to get started, or do you feel a niggling sense of dread? Just one more thing to do…
Here’s the thing, if you aren’t looking forward to the task at least a little, then best to delegate it out. There’s no option to delegate the whole thing. As the business owner, you are probably the subject matter expert for much of the content. But, writing and organizing the information will take time, effort, and a talent for writing, and if you don’t have that, you will eventually lose steam, resulting in a mediocre product at best, or worse, giving up. That’s discouraging. And it’s draining.
I‘m not saying you can’t write it yourself, but for most business owners, this type of project is not their strength. Another option is to have an employee write it for you. Begin by asking them the same questions above. Just because they work in your business, does not mean they are the best person to write it.
A project like this is less about knowing your business and more about knowing what to include, how to gather the information efficiently, what level of detail to capture, and how to best to organize it. A third option is to hire a professional who has these skills, has prior experience writing a business operations manual, and has a ready-made template from which to start work.
This is an important piece of work that will take some effort. Do yourself a favor and set yourself up for success by delegating it out if it’s not your strength.