What is an SOP?

When it comes to explaining what is an sop or standard procedure, the best example I could think of for this video came down to salad dressing. Now, I know those of you who don't know me, who haven't been around this channel and haven't seen our videos about ClickUp and process and all the stuff in between, are probably thinking, who the heck is this crazy chick and why is she talking to me about salad dressings when I came here for a video about SOPs? Now, I promise if you just bear with me, it'll make sense. Because in this video, we're going to be talking about not only what is an SOP or standard operating procedure, we're also going to talk about what goes into it, as well as a bunch of pro tips along the way. But to get there, we need to start off with salad dressing. Now, let me explain the salad dressing bit. By trade, I am a process and ClickUp consultant. I help people document their processes and put them into ClickUp so their business can run a little bit more clearly and less chaotically. But as you might imagine, for someone who spends their day writing down how things are done, when it comes to freestyle activities, I am not the best, particularly when it comes to the kitchen and cooking and all that stuff. Luckily, my spouse is really good at that. And one of his specialties, one of his best things that he cooks is not really cooking, it's salad dressing. And there are times when he's away for work or we run out of dressing and I'm like, oh, man, I wish I could whip up some dressing on the fly. And I am just unable. I've attempted. And every time it's too sour, it's too sweet, it's too whatever. There's one missing thing that I need in order to bring that dressing to life. If he's not at the house, and that comes down to a recipe, a recipe that breaks down step by step, what goes into that dressing? How do you mix it all together and how do you make it taste so good? So that brings me back to our main point of this video. What is an sop? Well, ultimately, it's a recipe. Standard Operating procedure is a fancy business term for describing how a process is done. And if you want to get more granular, you're going to hear things like work instructions, which is even more detailed, or policies, which is even more broad. We're not going to worry about the semantics here. If you're talking about SOP in a business context and you're trying to write down your process. I want you to think of it as. As a recipe. We've all had these, right? Whether you're a terrible cook like myself or a great cook like my husband, odds are you have encountered a recipe in your life. And when we create SOPs in our business, our whole job is just to create recipes that someone else can follow. So to answer the first question of this video, what is an sop? An SOP is a standard operating procedure, which is really just fancy business jargon for a recipe. Now that we understand what an SOP is, I want to share a pro tip that'll help you actually implement this knowledge. Because knowing what something is is great, and knowing how to use it is better. And that's what we're going to get to by the end of this video. So my first pro tip for you is to make sure the expert is not writing the sop, which is going to be counterintuitive for many of you. But I want to go back to that salad dressing and give you an example. So one day I did ask Alex, I said, hey, could you write down how you make this dressing? And he said, oh, sure, no problem. He grabs an index card, and the next day I go to look at that index card, and it looks something like this. Now, Alex claims this is a bit exaggerated over how confusing index card was. I maintain that it was very confusing because I tried to follow the recipe he had written down as he created the salad dressing. But what I got out of it was a vinegary slew that did not at all feel or look or taste like the original dressing. And the reason for that is when Alex writes dash of this or pinch of that or one to one ratio approximately, he knows what that means. And that is why, to get back to our point here, an expert shouldn't write your recipes. An expert shouldn't write your SOPs because they have so many assumptions, things that they just assume people know because they know so much. Instead, the better way to approach recipe writing or SOP creation is to actually have the expert involved. Of course we want their knowledge, but to have someone who isn't an expert write the words to down. So if I were to watch Alex make the salad dressing and write out, ah, okay, he puts in about a quarter cup of this and a half cup of that and a teaspoon of this, I could then put things in words that I understand in my own language. So that way, when I reflect on that recipe or SOP later, it's already going to be in language I know I understand. Because I'm the one who originally wrote it. So to just be direct with it. If you are a business owner looking to create SOPs, the business owner should very rarely be writing the SOPs. Now the next question is, what does an SOP actually look like? How do I know I'm creating an sop? Well, unfortunately, there aren't any hard and fast rules, just like recipes. You could have a recipe that's a long novel, you could have a recipe that's an index card, you could have a recipe that's just a conversation, and all of those things are a recipe. When it comes to SOPs, the same is true. The three most common forms of SOPs are videos, text, or someone just talking with. All three of these communicate how exactly you get something done. And all three of these can act as a recipe. However, they're not all created equal. Video seems to be one of the most popular options when it comes to creating SOPs. This is recording how you do something and giving it to someone saying, hey, do this. Kind of like what YouTube is. The problem with this and also the problem with YouTube videos like this being your instructional content, is that even though videos are very clear, it's showing you exactly what you need to do is they're very time intensive. I can vouch for that. Videos take a while to create and they're very hard to update. So, for example, Alex could show me how to make that salad dressing by actually recording a video of himself making the salad dressing. And that'll be really clear. I'll be able to see that and know exactly what goes into it. But if Alex ever changes an ingredient, perhaps, or changes a proportion or figures out a way to make it better, it's a lot of work for him to refilm that whole video. And beyond just how annoying it'll be to update me as someone who's trying to learn how to make the salad dressing is going to have to watch a 10 to 20 minute video every single time I want to see how to make the dressing. It's just not very skimmable and not very quick for me to use. So how does this apply to a business context? Well, I want to discourage you from using Loom, screencastify and other video formats for making your sops. Even though video is super clear, the fact that it is so locked in and time intensive to create makes it not one of the best ways to make a recipe. You really only want to do video content for SOPs. When something is locked into stone and you are almost never going to change it. Now I realize that recommendation breaks with almost everybody else you're going to hear talking about this topic. Almost everybody is going to instead encourage you to take the easy route, record a video and just give it to your team. But I encourage you to really think critically here. In the salad dressing example, how inclined would you be to watch a 10 minute video every time you need to make salad dressing versus just looking at a quick card or looking at a quick recipe? Exactly. That's why I don't think video is our best form of sop, even though it is the most common by far. The next format of an SOP or recipe is text. This could be handwritten, typed or something in between. And text is wonderful for SOP and recipe writing. It's one of the reasons why most of your recipe books are, well, books. The written word is easier to navigate, it's easier to skim and jump to just what you need. And most importantly, easy. It is easy to update, especially if you're using something like a Google Doc ClickUp task, something like that. Updating an SOP Changing one ingredient in the recipe is as simple as selecting the word and changing it. The downside of a text based SOP and the reason why many people procrastinate them is because they take a little bit longer. Now, I do not mean hours longer. Most of the reason why people are afraid of creating text based SOPs, even though they're easier to update and easier for people to actually use, is because of that time invested. They're worried they're going to be sitting there for three hours creating an eight page Google Doc explaining how exactly to do something. And again, if you Google what is an sop, most of the work instructions you'll see show up in those search results are those 8 to 10 page Google Docs. And who realistically is going to read an 8 to 10 page Google Doc for a task that itself takes only 10 minutes exactly? So one of the caveats for creating a text based SOP that I could not emphasize more is creating it in a light weight way. A very skimmable, easy to read, easy to write way. If you're wondering exactly what goes into an SOP and how exactly you do it so that you make sure it only takes 20 minutes to do. Stick till the end and I'll send you to our next video that'll cover just that. Now the final format of SOP is someone telling you something not recorded, but more so a conversation or a hey, watch over my shoulder. As you might have guessed Having someone look over your shoulder is the easiest way to teach someone how to do something. But because it is not recorded in any format, it is impossible to update. And because the information is being stored in minds and not in some external resource, well, our minds tend to kind of mix things up sometimes. So there's a high risk of things getting confused or confounded or just forgotten when you do this method. Alex has shown me how to make salad dressing countless times and I still cannot remember how to do it. So please avoid that mistake with your own team members, with your business. And when you're creating SOPs, I would avoid the someone telling you something approach unless you're combining it with one of the other two formats. So it is fantastic for you to explain to someone how to do something while they write the written SOP or while you record the sop. That hybrid approach is probably the only time I would want to incorporate the someone telling you something into it. Because if you don't record the someone telling you something aspect of this, the next time someone needs to learn it, you're going to have to redo that teaching again and again and again. And that gets really tiring. So. So just record that information in some way. My pro tip for this step would just be to leverage templates wherever possible. Whether you're doing video, text, or just showing somebody, create some kind of template for yourself to structure that engagement. If you're writing text, this might look like a simple outline. If you're creating a video, this could be a basic script of show me how, show me where and demonstrate. I don't know, whatever your flow might be. And when it comes to teaching somebody, give yourself a set window of time and an agenda. Whatever you're doing, however you're creating your SOPs, give yourself a template so it's less open ended and less overwhelming to create. I am almost certain that you already have the tools that you need in order to start practicing SOP creation. It is not a software or a tech issue here, it's a practice. It's getting yourself to write down how to make that salad dressing in a way that other people understand. That's what you have to commit to doing. Not to buy more fancy subscriptions because we know Silicon Valley has enough money now. If you've watched this video and you're thinking, okay, this is possible, I can do this, and you're wondering how that SOP should actually look. What goes into an sop and how can you start creating them? I have another video for you right somewhere on the screen here that I suggest that you watch next that will walk you through what exactly an SOP needs to include in it. Like what are the elements, what you can do to incorporate your team into the process of SOP creation so you can learn about the three steps to building systems here. You really want to watch this next because this is what it's going to take to actually implement this. If you enjoyed this video, please do like and subscribe. Leave a comment below to let me know what your thoughts are if you have any further questions. Thank you guys so much for watching and until next time, enjoy the process.