Tech Tuesday: Document How You Deliver Your Service Before You Try to Scale It

Many so-called experts will tell you that if you want to become “rich”, you need to scale your service.

They will encourage you to hire people as quickly as possible so that you are not the bottleneck in your own business.

On the surface, that advice sounds sensible.

But it is not the whole story.

Before you employ someone to perform a role in your business, you need to document the processes, tasks and standards you expect them to follow. If you do not have the role or process documented, there is a very high chance the work will not be completed to the standard you expect.

Not because the person is necessarily incapable.

But because you have not clearly shown them what “good” looks like in your business.

I see this time and time again. And it is not just in start-ups created by entrepreneurs. I have seen it happen with supervisors, managers, partners of law firms and business owners across many different industries.

Usually, it happens because someone is hired to fill a role that has never been properly documented. The person hiring them has the misguided belief that the new hire will simply “pick it up” as they go.

The problem is that when everyone is busy and there is no time set aside for training, new hires are left to sink or swim.

And while some people may swim, they usually only do so if their manager makes the time to mentor them, explain the process, show them how the role should be performed and check their work while they are learning.

Without that guidance, the new hire is far more likely to sink.

More often than not, the manager then does not get the result they wanted. Instead of addressing the lack of leadership, training and role clarity, they blame the person and fire them for not being a mind-reader.

Or the new hire becomes frustrated by the lack of guidance and leaves.

This is why it is so important to understand the difference between delegation and abdication.

Delegation means you remain responsible for the outcome. You document the task, explain the standard, mentor the person performing the work, guide them as they learn, and check the final result to make sure it meets the standard you want for your business.

Abdication is different.

Abdication means you hand over the task, want nothing more to do with it, provide little or no guidance, and then become annoyed when the result does not match the version that existed only in your head.

Many managers abdicate tasks and call it delegation.

They say they are too busy to properly supervise. But the consequences for the person receiving the task can be unfairly harsh when they are expected to guess what was required.

The manager then forms the incorrect view that “there are no good people out there”, and they either go back to doing everything themselves or continue hiring new people who do not last beyond probation.

Either way, they are losing time and money.

Because you cannot scale a service business properly if the people you hire have no clear understanding of how you want the work performed.

Think about it this way.

How would you build a LEGO battleship if you had never built one before?

You would follow the instructions.

Those instructions are the documented process for constructing the battleship.

Or think about how McDonald’s scales. They do not leave every location to invent its own process. They document the tasks, the timing, the standards and the steps so that the service can be replicated consistently.

Scaling is not magic.

It is not just hiring more people.

And it is definitely not handing work over and hoping for the best.

If you want to scale your service business effectively, you need to first document how you deliver your service, what standard you expect, and how each part of the process should be performed.

That documentation becomes the foundation for training, consistency, quality control and growth.

It may not feel urgent when you are busy.

But without it, you are not really scaling.

You are just creating confusion faster.

If you are a law firm or professional services business and need help identifying which processes should be documented — and documenting them properly — before you scale, get in touch here.