Recently, a few situations have come up repeatedly and I want to take a moment to dive into this idea of SOPs or Standard Operating Procedures. In case you don't know about SOPs, we all have them even if we don't realize it or have conscious thought about them. For example, many of us drive the same route to work every single day, eat out at the same breakfast place every weekend, or check our email first thing every morning. These SOPs allow us to save brain power for the important decisions, the out-of-the-ordinary questions that make up the entirety of our days working as problem solvers. We have a set of instructions that get us from point A to point B and most importantly, we know it works. Until it doesn't.
Road construction, the closure of your favorite weekend eatery, or an internet outage can derail the best-laid plans. So tell me, how do you handle these unexpected situations? Does your SOP have a backup plan, can you switch up your routine on the fly or do you completely find yourself derailed and shutting down? How important are these SOPs to your everyday life? I have come to realize that SOPs have a place in our world, they are important, but they are not the magic needed for success.
We need to understand that the ability to overcome these unknowns is what allows us to grow, allows us to change, and maybe challenge some of our beliefs about the best way to do something. Take Gen Z, the newest generation to enter the workforce, they have very different beliefs on the ideal work environment than say the Boomers. Just because their SOPs about work environment are different than a Millennial, doesn't make them wrong, it just makes the idea different. We should all take a step back put on our judgment-free hat and realize that SOPs are simply a guide, not a hard and fast rule.
So what about rules, I am not suggesting that we don't need them, we do. We need them for order - like red lights, where we all know to stop. Life and work without rules would be chaotic. I believe that a rule is an SOP that we all agree to abide by with our teams, colleagues, and clients. For example, we don't simply hang up on people when we don't agree with them. We don't treat our teammates with disrespect when they ask for help, or do we? And what, you might ask yourself, does all of this have to do with ME?
Well, let me tell you...over the last few weeks, months, and even years, the executive team has been working to capture all of the ways that we have come to be successful. Many of these operations, policies, procedures, or regulations have been written down, typed up, and stored away on the shared drive, for you to find if you are interested. Still, many other procedures live in the brains of the executive team, department managers, and all of our individual contributors. Yet, I have found over time, that even the best SOPs change, and shift to represent the diverse culture of those who call Soils and Structures, their job.
The policy that worked 5 years ago, may not work this year because we have grown, evolved, and changed. We have found new or better ways to do things or not do things. I would like to suggest that maybe SOPs hinder our growth and development, that they can be too rigid, and that we have been able to grow and evolve despite the written, SOP. So maybe, just maybe, SOP's are not the secret sauce we all imagine it to be.
And finally, if SOPs are not the secret sauce to our recipe, how do we become successful at what we do? My answer is that we build success by getting better at what we do, every single day. We build on what we know, we fine-tune and make minor adjustments to the final product, then readjust and fine-tune again. This process repeats, and that is how you build a successful business, not because someone wrote a policy and stuck it in a shared drive somewhere.
If you can keep your team happy, your customers satisfied, and new clients coming in the door, then you have found the magic sauce but you didn't need me to tell you that.
Make it a great week.
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