Your car comes with an owner’s manual. So does your blender. Why shouldn’t your business have one?
There are more than a few books that have been called an owner’s manual for business — everything from Joe Kennedy’s The Small Business Owner’s Manual to the less literally named Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson have been offered that particular title. The fact of the matter is that there isn’t an owner’s manual that works for every business, though. Just like the manuals for a Porsche 911 and a Toyota Prius have different recommendations for maintenance and repair (along with just about everything else), each business has different needs in terms of a business manual.
For most business owners, creating a business manual is a matter of making sure that you can delegate certain parts of running your business, as well as have responses in place for situations the pop up. It doesn’t need to be a formal, step by step guide to what goes on under the hood of your business, but rather a changing document that provides a central location for information about your company.
Adding Information to Your Owner’s Manual
The specific information that can go into your owner’s manual depends on what purpose you need it to serve. Do you need to be able to hand it over to an employee and have them handle the day to day routines of the company? Do you need it to provide a reminder of all the ‘maintenance’ you have to do on your business — checklists for taxes and so on? Or should your owner’s manual provide guidance on what you want to do in a worst case scenario? Each of these options makes sense to include in a business’ owner’s manual. It’s just a matter of including the appropriate information:
- Emergency phone numbers for service providers
- Step by step instructions for handling tasks around the office
- Forms for tasks you routinely complete
- Dates for reoccurring tasks, like paying your quarterly taxes
- Templates for letters and other documents you routinely use
- Goals for the year and steps you need to take in order to meet them
- A copy of your business plan
- Training materials for new employees
Make your owner’s manual into whatever you need it to be.
Making Use of Your Manual
The difference between an owner’s manual for your business and a file folder full of information is that you need to be able to make use of that information. You may need to be able to run off a copy and hand it to an employee or look up information in a stressful situation. It’s important to organize the information in a way that it’s easy for you to use. If you’re depending on it to guide you through routine tasks for keeping your business going, such as filing yearly paperwork, an organizational method based on dates might make sense. Alternatively, you might organize it by task and create a table of contents that reminds you of where you placed information on specific tasks.
