How we can make it last forever

Now that you have done all the hard work to document the processes, the most important part is yet to come – bring it to life and make sure it does not form part of the land of lost documents. The key take-away here is to make the documented processes easily findable. As soon as an employee needs to search for the document and struggle to find it, it creates too much friction and they will resort to doing things their own way.

If we do not document and share the standardised processes, we keep reinventing the wheel and miss out on the joy of seeing how these consistent routines get us closer to our goals.

“Goals without routines are wishes; routines without goals are aimless.”

Verne Harnish, Founder Entrepreneurs’ Organization, Scaling Up and co-founder of Growth Institute

Take action

Think of a few fun and practical ways in which you can share the documented processes with the team. To start you off, look at the list of ideas below on ways to share and store the documented processes that are easy to find and to be used by all.

Keep it simple: print and laminate your core processes and put it up in a conference room, kitchen or any place where it will be easily noticed.
Keep it safe: Create an internal shared storage or intranet site where you can organise and store all your documented processes. This makes it easy to access and update information. You can even gamify it by rewarding employees who contribute valuable content.
Make it beautiful: Use infographics to visually represent processes. They’re easy to understand and share. Tools like Canva can help you create visually appealing infographics. Infographics can easily be shared on WhatsApp, which is then also easy to refer back to.
Make it smart: Develop interactive digital playbooks using tools like Notion or Confluence. These platforms allow you to create dynamic documents with clickable links and embedded resources.
Make it fun: Turn the process documentation and familiarisation into a game. Create quizzes or interactive challenges that test employees’ knowledge of the documented processes. Platforms like Kahoot or Quizlet can be used for this.
Make it memorable: Turn your processes into engaging stories or narratives. This can make them more relatable and memorable for employees.
Make it easy: You can use an online QR code generator to generate a QR code from the links where you have stored the documents online. These QR codes could be attached to physical assets or documents where the process would mostly be executed. Scanning the code with a smartphone can lead employees to the relevant process documentation. It’s a quick and convenient way to access information.