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Volume 02 · Four practical chapters

Make the business work when you are not there.

A dependable business does not live in one person's memory. It has simple ways of working that another capable person can find, follow, and improve.

Start the two-week test Choose a first system
01Spot the work trapped in one person's head
02Turn it into a clear, usable system
03Let the work survive a handover

Someone asks, “How do we do this?” Again.

The owner is out for one afternoon. A supplier wants an answer, a customer needs an update, and a staff member cannot finish a routine task without calling. Nothing is impossible. Everything simply depends on the one person who remembers the next step.

That is the moment this volume is built for. You will take one repeated task and make it usable by the whole business.

Your route through the volume

Build one system before you try to build them all.

Start with a task that happens often, causes delays, or requires a phone call to the owner. Then move through these four chapters in order.

1 Find the work held only in memoryUse the two-week test to see what would stop without its usual person. 2 Ask the six questions firstA checklist is not a system until it answers the whole practical problem. 3 Write the first version someone else can useTurn a repeated task into steps, checks, and a real handover. 4 See the same method in other businessesAdapt the method to your own kind of work without copying someone else’s process.

Before you begin

Pick a task worth rescuing from memory.

Good first choices include opening the shop, taking a customer order, checking stock, making a payment, or closing the day. Choose one that repeats often enough to matter and is small enough to finish this week.

  • It happens more than once a month.
  • Another person could eventually do it.
  • A missed step would cost time, money, or trust.
Find your first system