This week, I had the opportunity to speak to a few business owners from various industries about their procedure management. The most common initial comment was “What do you mean by procedures?”. Frankly, I was quite surprised that I had to elaborate on what “procedures” actually mean. Eventually they got the idea and responded: “Ah-yes, we have such procedures”.

My initial thought was that people may not be aware that they are already performing procedural tasks within their daily business operations. Procedures may come in many different forms such as Checklists, To-Do lists, Routine operations, Manuals and Instructions.

In a nutshell, procedures are formed from a group of steps which are closely related and sometimes need to be performed in a particular sequence for that task to be accomplished. Procedures may not sound important at first, but are essential to operations and are the building blocks of your business. Even just a simple checklist is still considered a procedure.

Make sure you invest your time and effort into improving and constantly updating your procedures, so as to ensure you are forming best practises for both your management as well as operational level.