Do You Have Unique Methods?
Unique Methods
You have them. Get the real benefit. Document them.
Unique Methods is a concept that I learned from The Strategic Coach, Dan Sullivan. Everyone has processes that are unique to them. No two people go about writing a specification exactly the same, for instance. There are three main benefits to identifying your unique methods.
Once a process is on paper, it can be delegated or taught, freeing you to do other things or getting help doing this thing.
The exercise of documenting your process often leads to improvements in the process.
The more of your process that you can standardize, the less time is spent re-inventing the wheel over and over.
You can choose to do this solo, or you can get a group together and tackle the project together. There is no end to what you can think through this way. To give you an idea, here are some of the processes in our firm that we documented.
Writing specifications
Key steps of every phase of design services
Reimbursable Expenses process (we were leaving over $10,000 per year un-billed)
Invoicing process (we got invoices out two business days after the end of the month)
File naming convention
Standardized information locations
Typical deliverables per phase
Typical tasks for each phase of service
Bidding process
In quite a few of these instances we used the form below to document the final result. During the thinking stage of the process we found that sticky notes on the wall let us see the process better and make changes very simply.