Unknown Speaker 0:03
This is the smooth operator Podcast. I'm Adam Liette, director of operations for a seven figure online business and eight year veteran of Army Special Operations. On this show begin with the tactical, nitty gritty of what it really takes to run a thriving online business because at the end of the day, operators lead the way. Welcome back smooth operators. Hey, man, last week, we talked about SOPs, right how much I love SOPs and how easy they are to actually create as part of your process. If you need to review that go back to Episode 70. And just how easy it is to make SOPs and then create a library of SOPs, it's really, really simple. But here we're going to talk about actually making them work for us. And the phrase I use is operationalizing, our SOPs, making them part of workflows, making them something that can be usable. Because a Google Drive folder filled with SOPs, it doesn't do anything for us. Okay, your team is not going to go to the library to look for an SOP. They might I mean, I shouldn't say they won't. But you're not putting it into their direct line of sight. You know, have you ever done that little trick with yourself? Where have you, if you put your your vitamins on your, you know, on your pantry, you're gonna take them, right or if you keep a jug of water next to you, that's what I use. Now, if I keep a jug of water next to me, I drink water all day. If I think drink, right, that's a mantra I got from one of my mentors. We put things in our purview. Because it emboldened us to do them, it makes it part of our rhythm makes it part of our of our life. And so you need to do that with SOPs as well, we have to operationalize our SOPs. So there are so many different tools you can use to actually do this. And all of them have their own specials, you know, flavor, the one that most people that I know, and I speak to use process street. So in all fairness to process Street, like it's a great piece of software. It really is. I really like process Street, in its functionality. When it's a process that, like I'm completely taking over. Or if I have to x, you know, build a process and export it to someone. You know, that's not on my team. It works really well for that. But here's the problem. You're switching systems. I don't know about you, I don't manage projects. In project process Street. I use Asana. And it doesn't matter if you don't use Asana, you can use Trello. You can use Monday you can use doesn't matter. like project management software is an entirely different thing. And most of our big projects are actually done in project management software. That's what I use for actually, not just the big projects. I use it for everything. I manage meetings in Asana, I manage recurring tasks. I manage marketing campaigns, I manage content marketing, I manage everything I possibly can I manage my daily to do list, and my morning routine and evening routines and a week routines. All of this is organized for me, in Asana. It's one tool, one view of what I need to do to be successful. But when we use something external, we're asking our team to switch systems in order to then follow that SOP. Does that make sense? Not in my view, for a couple of reasons. Not only is there that context switching, switching when you're having to jump to a different system to get that SOP. But you've lost a couple of things. You've lost the ability to do cross collaboration. So a lot of times some projects I'll be working on will take a bit from me. Then I'll need another team member to jump in and do another part and then another team member to jump in and do another part. And then a contractor to finish up with this last part. It's not just me, it's doing it. It's not just a team member that's doing it. It's multiple team members having different pieces of the pie. When we organize our SOPs into our project management suite, we're opening up the potential to easy cross collaboration We're enabling our operator or our project manager to do something as simple as assign the sub task. And then check back to see if it was done. No asking required, no slack messages, no voicemails, you check, and you see if it was marked complete, then you know it's done. That's the accountability piece of it. We need to have the ability as leaders as operators, to look at our projects and know what's either pending, what's not complete, and what's complete. Building your SOPs into project management tools allows us to do that. So what you can do is actually I create templates. And these templates are workflows, they follow that step by step process required. And it can be anything it can be for content production, podcasting, video editing, creating a course hiring, onboarding, graphic design task, you name it, if it is a process, you can build a template for it. And then what I do is I'll have a resources section in my Asana project, I always put it at the top, the very top. And if I need a video editing tasks done, I just duplicate my template, my templates built, it has all the steps, visual aids, links to videos, explanations, all the things needed by my team to be able to jump in, even if they aren't familiar or are newer and need those reminders on what to do. They have it right there in front of them. And it takes obviously just as much time to build it this way, as it does to build it in like a process street. But now, it's right in front of our team members faces, they see a task they see they're assigned to it. And right there on the assignment is how to do it. This step by step process, also then allows you to put your SOPs in context with the whole picture. So I don't know what kind of projects you take on. I'm primarily in the course creation business. That's what I've been doing for years. Courses are not easy to create. There's a lot of moving pieces that go into, of course, it's very important that we're seeing tasks and subtasks in context, with the bigger picture that helps us just from the project management side alone, helps us to see everything that needs to be done. Everything that we need to manage, we're able to see it from one point of view. We're not having things going here and here and here. And our team members are also able to see that to all about big picture vision. I'm all about taking people that are working for me, and showing them how to do things at a higher level, showing them that there are things happening, that they're not directly involved in, but their contribution is part of a bigger picture. It's part of a bigger project, and they are a essential gear to keeping that project moving forward. And when you do that, what are you really doing, you're building your next level of leadership. You're building the next generation of Management at your company. You're constantly leveling people up, you're showing them what's happening. Anytime you can do that, in context of doing a project brother, you're winning like you just are your winning because your team is now going to have a greater understanding of things. And it all starts from something as simple as making these SOPs operational. Your people are also going to see the benefit of the end process. It's something as easy as saying, Hey, I created this template for you guys. Here you go follow it step by step and they're gonna go wow,
Unknown Speaker 9:39
this was really helpful. That made this job super easy. What does that do for you big picture. It makes it so much more likely that they are going to happily and joyfully jump into the SOP process with you because they've seen In the end results, they've seen the end benefits that it made to their own lives. You know, someone once told me, If you want to sell your team on something, to do something for you, don't sell them on it, and how it's going to make your life easier, sell them on it on how it's gonna make their life easier. This is actually putting it right in front of their face. Showing them, okay, here's the end result. Wow, this is really helpful. Great, here's how I made it. Their beginning with the end in mind, they're able to then see that, you know, we can as leaders just mandate and order people around. I don't know about you, man, this is not. That's not how I choose to lead. I tried to lead with influence. I tried to gain followers, people that want to follow me, people that I can tell things and they're going to follow through. Not because I ordered them to, but because I already lead the way. Any chance we can have to lead the way. And it's in the tagline for this show, right? This is leadership. Okay? This is influence. Showing them the end result, showing them the end in mind. And then enabling them emboldening them to go through the process. This is how you win. This is how you build teams that are diehard believers, that will follow you through anything. Because they know that really everything you're doing is in their best intention. It's for them. And you just inspire people to go to the nth degree with you. So I hope this helped hope. Seeing SOPs in a bigger context, and how we can operationalize them make them part of our process. It's not just about creating videos for the sake of it. It's about then putting it into project management. So it becomes real, it becomes tangible. It becomes something that's useful when it's useful, and it's used. This is how we win. This is how we move forward. This is how we continue to advance to the next level. So get out there operators take charge and lead the way. Before you bounce out here. I have a free strategy session available exclusively for my podcast audience. And this 30 minute phone call will unveil the immediate steps you can take to operationalize your business and put you back in the driver's seat. Just go to www dot Adam liette.com and click Start Here.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai