We all have processes and activities in our personal and professional lives that we need to repeat on a regular basis. Whether it’s submitting expense reports, onboarding new employees, planning events, or even getting the kids ready for school in the morning, having customized step-by-step guides can help streamline these tasks and make them more efficient.
The key benefit of creating custom guides is that you can optimize them specifically for the processes and activities your organization or family completes. A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work great since every group has slightly different needs and requirements. Custom guides allow you to tailor the instructions so they are perfect for your unique situation.
In this blog post, we’ll explore some tips on how you can build customized guides to document processes and standardize activities within your company, team, or household.
Table of Contents
Identify Which Processes to Document First
Before creating any guides, take some time to think about which processes or activities would benefit the most from having documentation in place. Getting buy-in from key stakeholders on what to tackle first is also important.
Good candidates for early documentation include processes that:
- Happen frequently
- Involve multiple stakeholders
- Are complex, with many steps
- Have variability in how they are executed
- Currently rely on tribal knowledge
- Experience periodic issues or bottlenecks
You likely won’t have the capacity to document every process from the start. Prioritizing based on what will deliver the most value is wise.
Select the Right Tool
You have a few options when it comes to selecting tools to create your custom guides. Microsoft Word or Google Docs are simple ones anyone can use quickly, although they may only allow for a bit of customization or interactivity. Specialized websites like stepbystepbot.com could be better options if you want to get more advanced with features like videos, branching logic, and embedded images.
Think about how much capability you need right now and choose tools that meet your requirements while also allowing room for growth. You don’t necessarily need complex software to document simple processes initially. But having the flexibility to add multimedia elements down the road is ideal.
Document the Current Process Objectively
Before making any improvements to processes and activities, document how they currently work in an objective, non-judgmental way. Resist the urge to include subjective opinions about inefficient steps while creating initial guides.
Interview people who regularly complete the processes in question and capture what they do in writing, screenshots, videos, or combinations thereof. The goal should be to record the process accurately as it exists today, different from how you wish it worked in a perfect world. There will be time for optimization later after baseline documentation is complete.
Solicit Feedback on Drafts
Once initial draft guides for priority processes are ready, solicit feedback from other people involved in those activities. Do the guides make sense to them? Is any crucial information missing? Are the steps correct and complete?
By gathering input and refining content based on what key users have to say, you’ll end up with much better custom guides – ones that match reality versus just your potentially biased interpretation of it. This feedback process also builds more alignment and gets colleagues invested in using the guides once finalized.
Look for Opportunities to Standardize and Optimize
After documenting current custom guides and getting stakeholder feedback, take a step back to analyze if there are any ways to optimize or standardize parts of the processes. Could some steps be reordered to improve flow? Are there unimportant activities adding complexity without a clear purpose? Can tasks be consolidated or simplified?
Don’t try changing everything at once. Focus on identifying high-impact optimization opportunities first before addressing minor inefficiencies. And involve the people doing the work in brainstorming changes rather than dictating fixes yourself. They likely have great ideas since they are closest to the processes.
Centralize Access through Shared Storage
Once guides are as optimized as possible for now, publish them to a shared storage location where anyone who needs them can access them easily. Google Drive and intranets like stepbystepbot.com make good homes for custom guides where you can control permissions and access.
Ideally, it builds permissions so updates can only happen in one place (like the source Google doc), but the published guides are read-only to prevent multiple outdated copies from proliferating. Establish a single source of truth.
Facilitate Usage and Feedback Loops
Simply creating well-documented custom guides alone won’t necessarily mean people use them or provide additional feedback for incremental improvements. You need to promote awareness of them through training and communications. Consider creating short videos walking through some critical guides.
Make it easy for people to submit comments on guides they use directly to guide owners. This facilitates continuous feedback loops so the content can evolve and improve over time. No process documentation is perfect from day one!
Treat Guidance as Living Content
Well-designed custom guides for organizational processes and family tasks should be treated as living content that needs ongoing governance to remain current. Review all guides periodically for required changes, additions, consolidations, etc. Quarterly may be frequent enough for stable processes.
Appoint guide owners who “sponsor” key processes and can serve as points of contact for any questions or change requests related to them. Guide owners should also proactively drive reviews based on business or family needs.
Conclusion
Creating customized guides for essential processes and activities takes work but delivers huge dividends through standardized ways of working optimization and skill building. It reduces tribal knowledge by capturing institutional wisdom. By investing time upfront to document unique procedures in your own words, images, videos, and flowcharts, you streamline any process or activity your team or household regularly completes!
What thoughts do you have on documenting processes or activities necessary to your group? I welcome your feedback in the comments below!
