CAPABLE - SOPs
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Like many things in business, SOPs are often overthought yet under-executed. As the handoff from ownership to employee begins, founders often find themselves explaining every detail of their process rather than clearly defining what a quality result should look like.
The purpose of an SOP is to ensure teams produces a consistent product; no matter the circumstances. A perfect SOP can handle exceptions, and allows flexibility.
Effective SOPs
An effective SOP should answer the following questions:
What are the steps involved in the task?
Where are the required materials located?
How can an employee assess their success?
Need an example? - and maybe some caffeine? Here’s a SOP for making a Latte.
Steps:
1. Grind 70g of espresso.
2. Load the espresso into the portafilter; ensure the portafilter is filled evenly.
3. Tamp the portafilter; ensure the coffee is packed evenly and fully compressed.
4. Insert the portafilter into the espresso machine; place a 4oz glass under the filter; tare the scale.
5. Depress the lever fully to pull the shot; raise the lever once the scale reads 45g.
6. Fill a milk pitcher with the creamer listed on the order.
7. head into the pitcher.
8. Steam the milk to 140F - 150F, ensure air is incorporated.
9. Combine the espresso and milk into a cup.
10. Clean the portafilter, milk steamer, and espresso filter.
Materials and Tools:
1. For espresso, we use the coffee beans labeled “blend” in the plastic container under the counter.
2. The grinder is located to the right of the espresso machine.
3. The portafilter is attached to the front of the espresso machine.
4. 4oz cups are located on top of the espresso machine.
5. Tamper is located in front of the grinder.
6. Pitcher is located on the sink-rack.
7. Cups are in a rack above the espresso machine.
Assessing Your Work:
1. A latte should take between three and four minutes to be make.
2. The latte should fill the cup to a half inch below the brim.
3. An espresso shot should take 25-35 seconds to pull.
4. Milk should expand by 25% to 35% while steaming.
5. The portafilter, espresso machine, and milk steamer must all be completely clean after serving the drink.
Yeah, but we don’t make coffee - how would this translate to my business?
Most clients are creating or selling something much more complex than a latte. Here’s a more general methodology that covers most operations a business may encounter:
Recipe
1. Create a flow-chart for each recipe, accounting for all variations.
2. Use consistent and simplified language for easy sight-parsing. Use the exact same words when referring to the same task across recipes.
Manufacturing
1. Have layers of SOPs with increasingly more detail. This ensures SOPs are easy to read and allows employees to reference only what they need as they memorize and master sub-processes. This also allows you to reuse base-level SOPs across different products.
2. For example: “Oak Table [Tallow Finish] Assembly” with sub-SOPs “Tallow Finish” & “Panel Joinery” with sub-SOPs “UV Finishing Chamber” & “Laminator Operation”
Brand:
1. Create a style guide. This should include:
• Brand colors [HEX and RGB]
• Paragraph styles with both CSS & plain text attributes.
• Every version of the logo in small PNG, large PNG & SVG. In both light and dark colors.
• Use of uppercase and lowercase.
• Email signatures.
• Margin, spacing & justification guidelines.
• Select SEO keywords.
2. Create SOPs for specific content.
• For any process that does not involve creativity and is done on a computer, take a screen recording of the process. Don’t move too fast or too slow. There are software tools that help with this process.
• For content that is consistently created, such as invoices, business cards, technical documents, create a template in a software like InDesign.
Sales:
1. Create a flowchart demonstrating the ideal sales process. This allows you to create loops when a process is recursive for an undefined number of iterations. This chart can have multiple inputs and tangents, but ends in a “Won” or “Lost”.
2. If applicable, create template emails to handle certain inquiries or claims.
These suggestions aim to make your content more engaging, structured, and consistent, enhancing its effectiveness while maintaining its usefulness.