Written By Peter Lohmann

Image from www.chiefsalesleader.com

Here’s a collection of concepts that I use when thinking about building a great process:

1. Have realistic expectations
2. Confirm you actually need a true Process (vs a reference document/Notion page)
3. Get crystal clear on what triggers the process to start
4. Start with low-tech
5. Enforce a culture of daily task completion
6. Contort your business to the tools
7. Standardize terminology, punctuation, and verb tense
8. Involve the right team members throughout
9. Use as few tools & technology as possible, but no fewer
10. Eliminate & re-order steps at every opportunity
11. Don’t overlap with another process
12. Don’t manually enter data at runtime if only used once
13. Just enough process – don’t overengineer, boil the ocean
14. Build for the common-case, not the rare exceptions
15. Minimize (but don’t eliminate) conditional logic
16. Put HOW to do it, WHERE you do it (self-documenting)
17. Make it easy & fast to start the process
18. Build in a few hours and deploy immediately. Capture the momentum
19. Improvements should be incremental
20. Don’t wait to start. “Minutes are hours, and hours are pain.” -Jon Matzner
21. You’re never “done” with a process

Resources & Further Reading:

Aimee Berkompas

• What’s in a System?
• Efficiency & Profitability
• How to think through a process (possibly my favorite article of all time on processes)

Other

• The Checklist Manifesto (required reading)
• Joshua Schultz Twitter Thread on Documenting Your Business
• Watch me build a process in real-time