How to Systemise Your Business Processes (So They Don't Live in People's Heads)

There’s a question I ask every business owner I work with: “If your best employee quit tomorrow, how much of what they know walks out the door with them?”

The answer is almost always uncomfortable. Because in most businesses doing $2M-$15M, the processes aren’t really documented. They live in people’s heads. In habits. In “the way Sarah does it.” And that’s fine — until Sarah goes on leave, or gets sick, or decides to move on. Then you discover that nobody else actually knows how to reconcile the accounts, or handle a warranty claim, or onboard a new client properly.

This is the systemisation problem. And solving it is one of the highest-leverage things you can do for a growing business.

Why Processes Stay Undocumented

It’s not laziness. There are real reasons most businesses haven’t documented their processes:

It feels unnecessary when things are working. If jobs are getting done, why write it all down? Because “getting done” and “getting done consistently, efficiently, and correctly every time” are very different things.

The people who know the process are too busy doing it. The person best qualified to document a process is usually the person with the least time to do it. That’s a structural problem, not a motivation problem.

Previous attempts were painful and useless. Someone once created a 40-page operations manual that nobody read. It sat in a binder on a shelf, got outdated within months, and the whole exercise felt like a waste. So nobody tried again.

The solution isn’t to create a corporate operations manual. It’s to build lightweight, living documentation that actually gets used — starting with the processes that matter most.

The 3-Level Documentation Framework

Not every process needs the same level of documentation. Match the depth to the stakes.

Level 1: Checklists. For simple, repeatable tasks where the risk is skipping a step. Think end-of-day closing procedures, new job setup steps, or vehicle inspection routines. A checklist takes 15 minutes to create and prevents 90% of “I forgot” errors.

Level 2: SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures). For processes that require some judgment or have multiple paths. Think customer complaint handling, quoting procedures, or quality inspections. SOPs include the steps, the decision points (“if X, do Y; if Z, do W”), and the expected outcome. Budget 1-2 hours to document each one.

Level 3: Workflow Maps. For complex processes that cross teams or systems. Think the full job lifecycle from inquiry to payment, or new employee onboarding. These show who does what, when, and what triggers the next step. They take half a day to map properly but they reveal bottlenecks and redundancies you didn’t know existed.

How to Document a Process Without Losing Your Mind

Here’s the approach that actually works. It takes about an hour per process and produces something people will actually use.

Step 1: Record it live. Next time the process happens naturally, have the person doing it talk through what they’re doing while someone else takes notes. Or have them screen-record it if it’s a computer-based process. Don’t try to document from memory — capture the real process, including the workarounds and the “oh, and I also check this” steps.

Step 2: Write it as a numbered list. Not paragraphs. Not flowcharts (yet). Just a numbered list of steps, written in plain language, that someone with basic competence could follow. Include the decision points: “If the customer wants a site visit, go to step 7. If they’re happy with a phone quote, go to step 10.”

Step 3: Add the “why” for non-obvious steps. If a step exists because of a past mistake or a specific business rule, note it. “We always confirm the site address by phone (not just email) because we’ve had two instances of techs going to the wrong location.” This context prevents people from skipping steps they don’t understand.

Step 4: Test it with someone who doesn’t do the process. Hand the document to a different team member and ask them to follow it. Watch where they get confused. Those confusion points are gaps in your documentation.

Where to Start: The Five Processes Every Business Should Document First

If you’re not sure which processes to tackle first, start with these. They’re universal, they’re high-impact, and they’re usually the ones with the most variation between team members.

1. Customer onboarding. From first contact to “this customer is fully set up in our systems and ready to be served.” Every handoff, every data entry, every communication.

2. Quoting and pricing. How do you build a quote? What’s included, what’s excluded, what are the standard margins, and who approves discounts? This one leaks money when it’s inconsistent.

3. Job completion and invoicing. What happens when a job finishes? What triggers the invoice? What information needs to be captured? How does quality get checked?

4. Customer complaint handling. When something goes wrong, what’s the process? Who responds, within what timeframe, with what authority to resolve it? This one protects your reputation.

5. New employee onboarding. What does someone need to know, have access to, and be trained on in their first week? Most businesses make this up every time.

From Documentation to Automation

Here’s where this connects to real business growth. Once a process is documented and standardised, you can see clearly which steps are mechanical and which require human judgment. The mechanical steps — data entry, notifications, status updates, document generation, scheduling — are automation candidates.

You can’t automate what you haven’t standardised. If every person does the process differently, there’s nothing consistent to automate. But once you’ve got a clear, repeatable process with defined steps and decision points, turning those steps into automated workflows becomes straightforward.

Systemising your business isn’t glamorous work. It won’t make for exciting LinkedIn posts. But it’s the foundation that everything else — delegation, automation, scaling — is built on. Without documented systems, you’re scaling chaos. With them, you’re scaling a machine.