The test run: how I write policy that works

Two readers, Charles and Michael, asked me how I find the time to handle policy, and whether policy is the same thing as standard operating procedures. Let me clear a couple of things up, because this is close to my heart.

Probably half of the hard work I do, a fantastic amount of my duties, is making sure my staff know what I want them to do. And I mean know it in writing: written up, written well, and understandable. Whether you call the documents policies, company training letters, training manuals, or standard operating procedures, I do not care. You just have to have it written, and you have to make sure it is right.

The person doing the job writes it up

Here is how I go about it. The person who is doing the job now is the one who writes up how they do it. We call these company training letters. They put it all down to the best of their knowledge.

I have even written procedure on how to write procedure: how an author gets into the right mindset, how to think about the reader. But the starting point is always the same. The knowledge is sitting in the head of the person doing the work, and step one is getting it out of their head and onto paper.

Why the person doing the job and not the manager? Because the manager writes down how the job is supposed to go, and the person doing it writes down how it actually goes: the exceptions, the workarounds, the little steps nobody ever mentions out loud. That difference is exactly where policies fail.

Then comes the test run

A written policy is a draft until it survives what we call the test run.

You take the write-up and hand it to somebody who knows roughly what the area does but does not know how to do this particular job. You do not answer questions. You just say: please go ahead and do this. Then you watch.

Sooner or later they hit a line and you see the scowl. That look on the face that says I do not know what this means. You ask what they are not getting, you take the policy back, you fix the writing, you hand it back, and they go: oh, now I get it. You walk them through the whole letter that way, all the way down.

Then you find a second person and run it again. If they get stuck anywhere, you fix it again. Then a third person. You keep doing this until someone can get through the entire policy without asking anybody a single question. That is how you write policy. Not policy that sounds impressive in a binder. Policy that a stranger can execute.

Why it matters this much

There are only two reasons someone does not do their job: they do not know how, or they do not want to. Both can be fixed, but the first one is on us. A lot of people are perfectly willing; they would do the job if they knew how. It is our job as owners to tell them how, clearly enough that willingness is all they need to bring.

Watch out for writing that is overly pedantic, and really test the thing rather than admiring it. A policy nobody can follow is worse than no policy, because it convinces you the problem is handled.

And if you work at a company you do not own, do this anyway. Write up your own job so that it is duplicatable, so it is not stuck on you as a person, and show the boss what you have done. You want to become valuable in the eye of the person who makes the paychecks? Start doing this clever stuff. Become the one whose job others can learn from a page. You can become your own superstar.