Quick answer: Start with the next task you hand to somebody else, and have them write down the steps while they do it. Documenting from memory stalls almost every time, because the exceptions that make a process work only surface when a real person hits them.
You know the moment: somebody asks how invoicing actually works, you start explaining, and four minutes in you realize the thing has eleven branches. So you say “just send it to me, I’ll do it”, and now you are doing invoicing again.
You have probably already tried the obvious fix: a quiet Friday, a blank document titled “Processes”, a genuine intention to get this out of your head, yet two hours later there are three half-written pages about onboarding and something urgent has come up.
That Friday fails for a specific reason. Memory hands you the steps and quietly drops everything around them – the exceptions, the judgment calls, the decisions you make so fast you never notice making them. What you write reads fine and works badly, and the first person who follows it is back at your desk within the hour.
Where do I even start?
Start with the next task that interrupts you, not with your most important process.
The instinct is to map the whole business first, which is why most people never write anything at all. Instead, look at what lands on your desk this week that shouldn’t have: the refund request, the sales handover, the monthly report nobody else can produce. That becomes your first document, because it is live and the details are still attached.
Which processes should I document first?
The ones that happen often and currently only work because you are involved.
Two questions sort your whole list: how often does this happen, and what happens if I’m not there? Anything frequent that stops without you goes first, because that is the gap you pay for every week.
Resist starting with the complicated things – pricing, strategy, the annual insurance renewal. Those come round once a year, and you’ll write them badly before you’ve had the practice.
Why does nobody follow the procedures I already wrote?
Usually because they were written by the person who no longer needs them.
An expert writing a procedure skips everything that has become obvious to them, and obvious-to-the-expert is the exact part that stops everybody else. It also misses the two things a real person needs most: what to do when the situation doesn’t match, and who to ask.
Sigma Growth Specialists’s point on this, after years with founders at exactly this stage, is that top-down documentation describes the business the founder believes they run. The version written by whoever does the work describes the one that exists.
| Written from your memory | Written by the person doing the task | |
| The steps | Tidy order, as you believe you do them | Real order, including the backtrack |
| Exceptions | Left out – you handle those on instinct | Written in, because they caused a problem |
| Language | Your shorthand | Words a new person understands |
| What’s missing | Invisible to you | Obvious, because they had to come and ask |
| What it costs | A Friday you never actually take | The time the task was going to take anyway |
My documentation is always out of date. Is it even worth it?
Yes, but only if the person using a document is allowed to change it.
Documents rot when updating them is a separate project that belongs to you. The rule that fixes it is unglamorous: whoever hits a wrong step corrects it on the spot, without asking permission.
Do I need software for this, or is a shared document fine?
A shared document is fine, as long as your team can find it without asking you.
The tools available now are genuinely good, and the failure is almost never due to the tool. One folder, obvious file names, one index page listing what exists. If somebody needs a link from you every time, it isn’t findable yet, and no software repairs that.
So what
Pick one task this week that shouldn’t be yours, hand it over to somebody else, and ask them to write down what they did as they did it, then spend fifteen minutes fixing what they guessed wrong. You get one process out of your head, plus a fairly honest read on how well you delegate.
FAQ
How detailed does a process document need to be?
Detailed enough that a competent new person can finish the task without asking you a question. You can run that test today: hand somebody the document and count the interruptions – anything past that threshold is writing you’ll have to maintain for no return.
Can’t I just record a video instead of writing it down?
Yes and no – recording yourself while you work is the fastest way to get a process out of your head, so do it, but nobody scans a fourteen-minute video for one of the last steps in a process. It needs turning into written steps (potentially by the first person who follows the process from start to finish).
Should I write these myself or get somebody to write them for me?
Neither, strictly – you narrate and correct, and the person doing the work writes. Handing the whole job to an assistant or a consultant produces a tidy manual describing a business nobody recognizes. Writing it all yourself brings back the Friday problem.
How do I document something I do differently every time?
Write down the decision rules rather than the steps. If the work genuinely changes each time, the repeatable part is how you choose, so capture the questions you ask yourself and the thresholds that move your answer. Three decision rules travel further than twenty steps built for one case.
Do I need an operations manager, or am I just disorganised?
If the same twenty small decisions come back to you every week, that is a documentation and delegation problem, and hiring will not solve it. If the decisions reaching you are genuinely different from each other and arriving faster than you can handle them, running the place has become somebody’s full-time job.
How long does documenting a process actually take?
About as long as the task takes, plus fifteen minutes, if you do it while the work is happening. Done from memory it takes an entire uninterrupted Friday, which is why it usually doesn’t happen.
The bottom line
The documentation you’re missing is a byproduct of handing work over. Hand over one task this week, keep what the other person writes, and repeat until the pile in your head is noticeably smaller.
Getting founders out of the middle of their own businesses is most of what we do at Sigma Growth Specialists. If you’re stuck at the blank page, the delegation is usually the thing to fix first.
