How do you
- Respond to inquiries and select vendors?
- Handle new orders, and keep track of sales? (if you’re a business)
- Keep track of members and donations, and prepare for audits? (if you’re a nonprofit)
- Train new team members (if you’ve got team members)
Lots of this information is in your head (and, if you’ve got them, in the heads of your current team members). This works great when you’re starting out and doing everything yourself. But as your team and business grows, it’s very easy for this informal approach to result in inefficiencies, avoidable errors, and missed opportunities.
Every organization needs up-to-date documentation to keep everyone working on the same page.
It’s easy to push it to the back burner while you focus on everyday matters. But a crisis can come at any time, whether good (a massive new opportunity comes up and you have to double your team overnight) or bad (a key team member moves on to join a competitor) – only then do you realize the importance of having things written down!