« Return to Blog
Leadership-Featured

Theresa Baretta: Scaling Your Org with SOPs, Playbooks, and Systems (Ep. #30)

The BetterManager Team
Building Better Managers Podcast Episode 30 - Theresa Baretta

Building Better Managers Podcast Episode #30: Scaling Your Org with SOPs,Playbooks, and Systems

If you want to scale your business, organization or company, listen to some very functional ideas to get started with your team. The more time we put into the right systems, the more creative we can be at work.

In this episode:

Meet Theresa:

  • Theresa is an Operations Coachsultant™ and Client Experience extraordinaire with a knack for all things “left-brained”, including organizing, strategizing, and systemizing, make her an ideal fit for her “right-brained” creative CEO clients.
  • Through her 18+ years experience, Theresa works with creative consultants and strategists to streamline and systemize their online operations to run the right way with or without their direct involvement.
  • Life lessons from her family's noodle shop and how they apply to all businesses.

The Challenges of Fast Growing Companies

  • In their early stages, and growing at exponential rates, over and over again, what I found was that there was a reinventing of the wheel constantly.
  • Many problems are a byproduct of reinventing the wheel, that nothing was being done in the same manner, the experience varied from customer to customer and so it wasn't as consistent.
  • What we ended up doing was really envisioning how an ideal system or process would work, what is the the experience that we would want to have. Through that, we were able to design the appropriate systems, processes standards, so that we can then repeat it over and over again, and lessen the reinventing of the wheel.
  • It's important to move away from customization as well, to more of a standardized commitment.
  • I'd like to see as a productized element as well, especially if you're in a tech industry or in the service oriented industry. You want to be able to have something that  can be done by anyone on the team.
  • You have to have strong foundations for your standards, for your services for your systems to be effective.

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

  • The best impact that SOPs can have is truly at the team training level. Especially when you are onboarding new team members or if you have a succession plan in place. If you're you're elevating an existing team member into a different role and you need to backfill that role, you don't lose the knowledge of that role.
  • By having the SOPs they are going to be training based upon the best practices, the guiding principles that you want to see this new team member to be operating in alongside your business.
  • The beautiful thing about technology these days is it allows us to have access to elements that we can really draw in to power up the SOPs. Usually, when we build out an SOP, we want to keep it simple. So the first thing we always want to do is make sure that we are recording doing a screen or video capture of what it is that we do, taking the process from front to end, so that we can see it in real time.
  • You want to document it in simple steps and use different modalities. Identify the top five most important steps of each SOP, then break it out in words, audio, and video, because we all have different ways of learning.

Playbooks

  • The difference between Playbooks and SOPs is that SOPs are are more of "job aids" - they help you complete your tasks and functions with efficiency and effectiveness. A Playbook gives you more of the high-level view from front to end.
  • For example, if you were in a sales process, what happens at the Lead Stage? What are you looking for in terms of the KPIs or outputs that you're looking to achieve? And then if the Lead converts, you go into the Sales Process, you would need to make sure that the contract is signed, any initial payments are collected, then going through the onboarding sequence.
  • The Playbook can actually house all of those various elements throughout those different functions, steps and policies as well, so that you can go back and reference the best practices.
  • Options for making sure employees have access to their relevant Playbooks.

Creating a Business Culture That Supports Effective Implementation

  • Implementation starts with the culture first. So as managers, in order for our team to buy-in we need to lead it first. It's about encompassing the system's mindset first. So in everything that we're doing, or approaching or designing or bringing in as new, it's also about, "How can we bring this into a playbook so that we have something to start with?"
  • The best way to start is to just come together as a team and ask, "Where is the biggest need right now? What are we doing differently that varies from team member to team member?"
  • Model the teams or team members that are getting exceptional results. Start documenting the SOPs, then design the playbook with the best practices. Draw from what was positive, then outline what would be some of the risks and then embed them, and then that would become a part of the playbook. And then what we would do is house team members together and walk through each client together for the first few rounds in this new playbook implementation.

Downloads & Resources

Follow Theresa on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook. or at LoopLinkInc.com.

Subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcast platform!

Check out our blog articles on Leadership here.

About Theresa Baretta

Theresa Truong Baretta is an Operations Coachsultant™ and Client Experience extraordinaire with a knack for all things “left-brained”, including organizing, strategizing, and systemizing, make her an ideal fit for her “right-brained” creative CEO clients.

Through her 18+ years experience, Theresa works with creative consultants and strategists to streamline and systemize their online operations to run the right way with or without their direct involvement. Theresa wanted the flexibility to spend time with her family, and the freedom to serve in her passion: creating, designing and refining systems for other types of businesses.

Episode Transcript
(Click to open & scroll on the copy revealed)
BetterManager raises up Executives & Managers at every level