Write your procedures once, use them every day
OCT 19, 2026 — 5 min read
Every company has procedures. Most of them are not written down. They live in the head of the person who has done it for years, in an email from 2021 that someone forwards on request, or in a folder named “Final” next to another folder named “Final (new)”.
What we mean by a procedure
A procedure is simply how your company handles a recurring situation. When a customer asks for a delivery date: who replies, within what time, using which price list and which template, and what needs a second pair of eyes before it goes out. It is a decision you have already made, written so that it can be used again.
“A procedure is a decision you have already made.”
Why it is worth writing down
- Replies and offers look the same no matter who sends them.
- New colleagues learn the way you work in the first week, not the first year.
- Work that follows rules can be prepared for you, so you only decide the exceptions.
That last point is the one that changes your day. Generic advice can tell you what a good customer reply looks like in general. Only your own procedures know what is true for you: your prices, your terms, your tone.
Write one in five lines
You do not need a handbook. Pick one situation that comes up every week and answer five questions about it:
- 1.What triggers it? An email, a request, a date.
- 2.What do you check first? A price list, a customer record, an earlier message.
- 3.What do you send or do? The reply, the update, the booking.
- 4.Who approves it, if anyone?
- 5.What should be logged afterwards?
Five lines is enough to get started. The first version will be wrong in places, and that is fine. It is easier to correct a draft than to write from a blank page.
Keep it alive
A procedure that is written once and never touched goes stale. The easy way to keep one current is to let real work correct it. Each time you edit a proposal because the procedure missed something, that edit is a note on how the procedure should read next time.
Over a few weeks, the library stops being a document and becomes the way your company works, in a form that can be used every day. It starts with one folder: brand guidelines, price lists, templates and customer lists.