The escape plan
What should come out of your head first?
Rank the work that keeps your business running. Get the five processes to pull out of people's heads first, and a 90-day order to capture them and make them stick.
Name the work
What has to happen, over and over, for your business to run?
Pick every one that applies and add anything we missed. The actual repeated work, not departments or job titles. Most owners land between ten and fifteen.
How it works
Across the 16 businesses we studied, the average had 27% of their operations written down, and half of all role areas had nothing at all. The owners who got out did not document everything. They started with the few processes that carried the most risk.
- Step 01
Name the work
List every process that has to happen for the business to run. Not departments, not job titles. The actual repeated work. Most owners land between ten and fifteen.
- Step 02
Score the risk
Rate each one on four things: how often it runs, how much money moves through it, what it costs you when it goes wrong, and how much of it lives in one person's head. That last one counts the most.
- Step 03
Take the top five
Not alphabetical, not by department. The five that would hurt the most if the person who runs them disappeared. Everything else waits. Trying to document everything is why most owners never finish.
- Step 04
Name a person and a number
For each of the five, name the one person who actually knows how it works, and the one number that tells you it's working. One person, not a committee. If nobody can be named, that process is not ready yet.
- Step 05
Capture, then make them use it
Fifteen days to capture it, fifteen days to get the team using it, then move to the next. Written down is half the job. Adopted is the whole rest. A binder nobody opens is not a system.