McDonald's has an operations and training manual that is thousands of pages long. Starbucks's coffee manual for baristas is four inches thick. Parmasters Golf Training Centers has 2,300 pages of operations and training binders.

McDonald's has an operations and training manual that is thousands of pages long. Starbucks's coffee manual for baristas is four inches thick. Parmasters Golf Training Centers has 2,300 pages of operations and training binders.


Companies that plan to grow big define processes and document systems for every essential and minor operation in their company. Quantum Growth Consulting has defined 88 essential business processes and created step-by-step systems for each one. This obsessive organization and attention to detail results in what the franchise world calls duplication, the ability to have the job done well, the same way, every time.

The beauty of documented systems is (and this is true even if your business has only one location) once they have been tested, following your systems results in consistent, predictable, and continually improving business performance. The converse of this is that when you have consistently bad performance, you often have either bad systems or no systems.

It's the difference between ad hoc and rigor. Creative types typically like to do things ad hoc. They like to make things up as they go, always pushing the bounds and exploring new territory. They don't like to write things down and be stuck with any one way of doing something. So for these people, perhaps the most unreasonable thing you can do is expect them to figure something out, then lock it down. Add rigor and predictability to the process.

Predictability? Isn't that a bit too reasonable?

It's not predictability that's bad; predictability in systems is great. Being a slave to predictability is what's bad. Acting predictably in an unpredictable world is what's dangerous. We encourage repetition and consistency, at least for a while. Once you get the hang of how to do something so that it works, keep at it until you discover a better way. Don't worry, someone will slip up and make a mistake, and sometimes that mistake will improve the program. Go with it. Or the boys in the lab will hit upon something. Run with it.

Keep it up until the outside world shifts sufficiently that performance suffers. Then you figure out what's wrong and make the change. You evolve.

So when an employee's results go bad, find out if it's the person or the process. If you don't have any documentation, then you know where to fix the fault. If you have developed that three-ring binder, find out whether your people are following it. Are they checking off the checklists? Are the steps being performed with rigor? Do you even have a way to find out? If the system is being adhered to and you aren't getting the expected results, then the system is definitely to blame.

McDonald's has an operations and training manual that is thousands of pages long. Starbucks's coffee manual for baristas is four inches thick. Parmasters Golf Training Centers has 2,300 pages of operations and training binders. Companies that plan to grow big define processes and document systems for every essential and minor operation in their company. Quantum Growth Consulting has defined 88 essential business processes and created step-by-step systems for each one. This obsessive organization and attention to detail results in what the franchise world calls duplication, the ability to have the job done well, the same way, every time.

The beauty of documented systems is (and this is true even if your business has only one location) once they have been tested, following your systems results in consistent, predictable, and continually improving business performance. The converse of this is that when you have consistently bad performance, you often have either bad systems or no systems.

It's the difference between ad hoc and rigor. Creative types typically like to do things ad hoc. They like to make things up as they go, always pushing the bounds and exploring new territory. They don't like to write things down and be stuck with any one way of doing something. So for these people, perhaps the most unreasonable thing you can do is expect them to figure something out, then lock it down. Add rigor and predictability to the process.

Predictability? Isn't that a bit too reasonable?

It's not predictability that's bad; predictability in systems is great. Being a slave to predictability is what's bad. Acting predictably in an unpredictable world is what's dangerous. We encourage repetition and consistency, at least for a while. Once you get the hang of how to do something so that it works, keep at it until you discover a better way. Don't worry, someone will slip up and make a mistake, and sometimes that mistake will improve the program. Go with it. Or the boys in the lab will hit upon something. Run with it.

Keep it up until the outside world shifts sufficiently that performance suffers. Then you figure out what's wrong and make the change. You evolve.

So when an employee's results go bad, find out if it's the person or the process. If you don't have any documentation, then you know where to fix the fault. If you have developed that three-ring binder, find out whether your people are following it. Are they checking off the checklists? Are the steps being performed with rigor? Do you even have a way to find out? If the system is being adhered to and you aren't getting the expected results, then the system is definitely to blame.



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