Last blog entry was all about writing key information down.  Let’s talk about the key areas of any and all businesses and what I would suggest you consider in essentially creating an operations manual for your business.

The goal would be that as you proceed through and complete your succession plan, the business could essentially run itself when the succession plan is finished.  As questions arose, on operational policy, this manual, could assist those in management to help them make decisions.  This would be like lending your car to a friend.  You do not have to ask them to read the owners manual front to back, before they can drive you car, but the manual would be there to assist should your friend need information and you are not there to answer every question.

In order to begin this process, you should:

1. identify and prioritize those areas most important to your business.  Each business has its own priorities and reasons why it is successful.

2. within those functional areas are subsets of processes and procedures that make that area function well

3. each process, whether formally written down or passed on with legacy systems, functions to advance the overall goals of the business.  How?

Thinking about these areas, and breaking each down into its essential component parts will help provide a framework for this succession plan and the operational manual.

See my checklist for assessing the health of your business: Checklist – link here

In future blog entries, I will go into more detail in each of the areas noted in the diagram above.

Learn, think, apply!