Gregory Shepard walks through the Standardization phase of the BOSS framework, showing how documenting processes, organizational charts, and best practices captures tribal knowledge, cuts the 15% weekly time waste employees experience, and makes your company more valuable to buyers at exit.
Chapters
The standardization phase of BOSS sets the foundation for building and growing your company towards your desired exit. During the standardization phase, you'll learn the best practices for documenting your processes and ensuring that tribal knowledge and intellectual property stay within a knowledge base. We do this to prevent lost knowledge if someone leaves the company or is promoted to a new role. Someone leaving creates a hole, and it costs 30% of an employee's salary to fill that hole or hire a replacement. The knowledge base will serve multiple purposes, such as the display of a company's organizational chart— who's responsible for what functional area. It will display triggers— when do things need to happen. It will house accountabilities— who is supposed to do what. And it will show best practices— what's the most efficient process for any task. Employees have said they spent nearly 15% of each week reinventing the wheel, investing time and energy attempting to solve an issue, only to realize later that someone else had already come up with a solution. The knowledge base will also have tools and research, training and education, and references to other areas of BOSS such as the North Star. As you scale your business, this knowledge base will assist in onboarding new employees more efficiently, Reducing variation, and eliminating internal friction. Wasted time equals wasted money. If an employee is wasting 15% of their week and they make a $100,000 salary, that's essentially $15,000 a year you are getting zero return on. Multiply that by all your employees and you can see the wasted potential. Additionally, as you reach your exit funnel, your ideal buyer can clearly see and understand how your business operates. You are essentially handing them a manual on how to run your company, which can play a role in a higher valuation. The standardization phase of BOSS is one of continuous improvement. It's a living, breathing, fluid documentation of your business process. Standardization is the foundation on which you can build a successful, scalable business. To learn more about BOSS and how you can scale your business, please visit www.gregoryshepard.com and subscribe.
