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Hello, I’m Deanne and this is KAOS Chronicles.
Every issue goes behind the scenes on the complexity that quietly slows organizations down. I write from the work itself, sitting alongside teams as we close the gaps between how work is designed to happen and how it happens day to day. I share what I’m seeing and what’s working, so owners, leaders, and stakeholders can build organizations that are sustainable today and ready for whatever comes next.
THIS EDITION: Why “Just Build the SOPs” Doesn’t Work the Way People Expect
I hear a version of this at the start of almost every SOP engagement.
An owner comes to me because something is breaking behind the scenes. Maybe onboarding has gone freestyle, or a process only works because one person remembers all the exceptions. They’re ready to fix it, and they’ve decided to invest in getting it documented properly. Then, a few weeks in, they hit a wall that has nothing to do with budget.
Time. Their time, or their team’s.
A quick note on terms. SOP stands for Standard Operating Procedure. It’s the written version of how a specific piece of work gets done, step by step, so someone other than the person who usually does it can do it the same way. It might be a one-page checklist or a short screen recording. What makes it valuable is that it reflects how the work happens today, and your team can find it when they need it.
Here’s the part that surprises people going in: I can’t write your SOPs for you in isolation. Not the ones that hold up, anyway. The real process, including the workarounds and judgment calls that never made it into any manual, lives in your head and your team’s heads. I can organize it. I can build the structure and the documentation system that makes it usable and scalable. But someone has to walk me through the work first.
That isn’t a formality before the “real” deliverable. That is the real deliverable.
When owners first picture SOP work, it often looks like ordering a finished product: hire someone, get a binder of documents back, done. In practice, it’s closer to renovating a house you’re still living in. You don’t get to leave for the weekend and come back to something finished, because you’re the one who knows where the load-bearing walls are. You know why the “wrong” way of doing something exists. Maybe a client burned you once, or a supplier has a quirk nobody wrote down.
This is also why I won’t build automation or AI tools on top of undocumented processes. It’s a stance I hold firmly. Automating a broken handoff makes the breakage happen faster. The same principle applies earlier on: rushing past the mapping work to get a “finished” SOP sooner produces a document that looks official and gets ignored within a month, because it was written around assumptions instead of reality.
The owners I see get the most from SOP work are the ones who show up for the unglamorous part: the walkthroughs, and the “wait, we do it this way” corrections. Not because they have spare time lying around. Nobody does. They show up because the collaboration isn’t overhead standing between them and the result. It’s what makes the result hold up six months later, when the person who used to carry all that knowledge is out sick or simply isn’t in the room that day.
And here’s what it looks like on the other side. A new hire opens the document instead of interrupting someone. A manager calls you with an update instead of a question.
If you’d rather hand this off entirely and stay hands-off, that’s a completely reasonable thing to want. I’d rather be honest with you up front: documentation that gets used is built together.
The gap between where you are and where you want to be is rarely about effort. It’s about having the right support to get there.
About KAOS Group™
Through our Organize. Optimize. Profit.™ methodology, we work alongside owners, leaders, and stakeholders to build and implement the behind-the-scenes systems that turn operational complexity into clarity their teams rely on, and uncover where automation and AI can take real effort off their plates.
The result is an organization that’s sustainable today and ready for whatever comes next, without depending on a key person.
Sometimes the most useful next step is talking it through with someone who’s seen it before. I’d welcome the conversation.