A well-written, consistently followed operations manual will help you beat the odds and join the 20 percent of small business start-ups that are still around after five years.

In an operations manual, everything about your business is standardized and documented. It becomes a toolkit for replicating what you do. It can become your training textbook, saving you countless hours and helping people with different strengths and skill levels to perform tasks in the same way. Clients can also be assured of a consistent experience.

If you intend to franchise, documenting everything in an operations manual is essential. Mike Cotsworth of Car Connections Ltd. is planning to franchise his business soon. “Having a formalized system for franchisees to follow will prevent them from taking short cuts or dreaming up their own ways of doing things — which may dilute or derail a proven way of doing something,” he explains. “This has forced me to examine and define what the best steps are and write them down. Before doing this, I had it all in my head, so I worked by habit and experience. Now it’s being formalized into specific steps that someone else can follow.”

If your business is currently just you, clearly documented procedures are valuable. Carol Johnson, The BookStormer, helps authors bring their book ideas to fruition. “I documented each process in my work,” she told us. “I did this for anyone else I might train in the future, but having this process in place also lets me fine-tune it as I go. I can easily use it to meet each author’s specific needs. The biggest challenge for me was just sitting down and doing it.”

Write Your Manual

“When writing, you must think of your audience and set the tone accordingly,” Craig Dietz of Special Ops, LLC, advises. “Don’t use legalese, make it readable and use practical, easy-to-understand language. Know your topics and the people you’re writing to.”

Step One: Know Where You’re Going

Consider where you ultimately want to take the business, and keep this in mind as you write.

Step Two: Get Organized

Create an organization chart for your company. Draw boxes for each major area of responsibility. This offers a visual overview of the business that is easy to see at a glance.

Step Three: Start Writing

Set up a file on your computer or use a three-ring binder or notebook for your first draft. Assign a different section for each aspect of the business, then:

• Outline each section

• Develop a job description for the person responsible

• List all necessary tasks

• Write down exactly what is involved for each task

• Spell out step-by-step instructions and a sequence to follow for each task

Use pictures, diagrams or charts to illustrate or clarify your points.

As you write, think about all the things that could possibly go wrong, list these and build in action steps to correct them.

Step Four: Get Feedback

Ask several others with similar experience and backgrounds to those of your reader to look over the document and give you feedback. Find out if there were steps you missed, details you forgot to mention, or words and concepts they didn’t easily understand.

Step Five: Polish It

Write your second draft. If the manual is for others to use, consider hiring a professional editor.

Step Six: Schedule Regular Reviews

Set times, perhaps once a year, to regularly review and update your manual. If you have added new products, services or markets, or made any changes in the way you do things, this information should be included.

Don’t wait until the business is mature to write your manual. Begin now. If you can’t devote a large block of time, allocate several hours each week to the project. If you’re consistent, you will soon have it completed and be ready to grow a healthy, profitable business. You will also be able to enjoy a vacation, knowing that those left in charge are able to do a first-rate job of running the business while you’re gone.