An SOP that nobody reads is worse than no SOP. It creates the illusion of a system while everyone quietly does whatever they want.
Why most SOPs fail
- No named owner ("the team" isn't an owner)
- No done-when criteria, you can't tell if you followed it correctly
- Written once, never versioned
- Buried in a folder called "Processes v2 - FINAL"
The four things every SOP needs
- A single named owner and a named backup. The owner is the person you Slack when the SOP is wrong.
- A trigger. When does this run? Weekly on Monday? On every new hire?
- Numbered steps with tool names. "Open QBO, filter by unpaid" beats "reconcile the ledger."
- A done-when criterion. A checkable statement, "invoices show 'sent' status in QBO."
Versioning
Every SOP has a version and a "last reviewed" date. Anything older than 6 months is presumed wrong until re-reviewed.
The failure-mode section
The best SOPs end with a "when things go wrong" block: two or three common failures and who to escalate to. This is the section your team actually reads.
Draft yours with the SOP Document tool.