One of the things I've noticed over the years is that every business develops its own way of doing things. It happens naturally. Someone figures out a better way to greet a customer. Someone else improves the quoting process. Your office manager develops a routine for onboarding new employees that works really well, so everyone starts following it. Before long, your business has a collection of little habits, routines, and best practices that make it operate the way it does.
The problem is that almost none of it is written down.
At first, that doesn't seem to matter. The team is small enough that everyone can ask questions, and the people who know the answers are sitting twenty feet away. If someone forgets a step, someone else fills in the gap. That's one of the advantages of being a small business.
As the business grows, though, something starts to change. New employees get trained by different people. Managers explain the same task in different ways. Two employees begin doing the same job differently, and neither one realizes it because they're simply repeating what they were taught.
Nobody intended for it to happen. It's just what happens when knowledge lives inside people heads, rather than inside the business.
I think that's where many growing companies start to feel inconsistent. Customers have different experiences depending on who they work with. New employees take longer to become productive because everyone trains them a little differently. Managers spend more time correcting mistakes because nobody ever agreed on what "right," or "done," actually looks like.
This is where Playbooks become valuable.
When I use the word Playbook, people often think I'm talking about a Standard Operating Procedure (SOPS). While they are related, I don't believe they're the same thing.
An SOP is designed to capture every detail of a process. Depending on the business, that's exactly what's needed. If you're maintaining aircraft, manufacturing medical devices, or servicing specialized equipment, every step matters. An SOP becomes your reference manual. A Playbook serves a different purpose.
A Playbook isn't trying to document every click of the mouse or every field on a form. It's meant to capture the common denominator that every member of the team should know and consistently execute. It's the handful of things that define what "good" looks like.
Think about greeting a customer. Your Playbook might simply say: make eye contact, greet them by name when possible, welcome them into the business, explain what happens next, and ask if they need anything before getting started. Those become the expectations that every team member learns, practices, and can be coached against.
If someone struggles with one of those expectations, then you can go deeper. That's where the SOP becomes valuable. The Playbook creates consistency. The SOP provides detail.
I think of it this way: your team should memorize the Playbooks and work with their manager on them. They should reference the SOPs when there is nobody whom you can ask for help.
That distinction has changed the way I think about documenting a business.
A good Playbook is short enough that people actually use it. It focuses on one repeatable process, clearly defines what success looks like, and becomes part of how new employees are trained. More importantly, it becomes something leaders can coach against because everyone understands what the standard is.
One of the biggest mistakes I see is owners trying to document the entire business at once. It's a massive project, and like most massive projects, it never gets finished.
Instead, pick one process. Maybe it's your sales process. Maybe it's how you onboard a new customer. Maybe it's how estimates are prepared or how your team handles customer complaints. Start with the process that creates the most inconsistency or the one that consumes the most time answering questions.
Build one Playbook.
Train your team on it.
Use it.
Improve it.
Then move on to the next one.
Over time, something interesting starts to happen. Your business becomes less dependent on individual people because the knowledge no longer lives only inside their heads. New employees become productive faster. Customers receive a more consistent experience. Managers spend less time reinventing the same conversations because everyone already understands the play they're trying to run.
I don't believe Playbooks are about documentation.
I think they're about creating consistency.
And consistency is one of the foundations of a business that can continue to grow without becoming completely dependent on the people who built it.