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Lit­tle time for structuring

There is a lot to do in the begin­ning — both when the job is new and when the busi­ness is new — and there is hard­ly any time left for any­thing but the absolute essen­tials. If you have room to sketch out a plan or a process of how some­thing you are going to do from now on is done, it is of course an advan­tage, because then you can see in advance that it all fits togeth­er and that you include every­thing that is need­ed, before you proceed.

But that time is rarely avail­able. Please do not beat your­self up about it, change your per­spec­tive instead. Instead of cre­at­ing the struc­ture first and then exe­cut­ing, exe­cute the new thing in the most struc­tured way you can think of at the moment and cre­ate the actu­al struc­ture as you go.

Do it this way

The next time you do some­thing new that you will do sev­er­al times from now on, do it with good struc­ture as a guid­ing prin­ci­ple and doc­u­ment how you go about doing it.

So, when you cre­ate a new type of doc­u­ment for the first time as part of a new task, think briefly about the best place to store it in the long run. How should the doc­u­ment be named so that you can eas­i­ly dis­tin­guish it from future records of that kind? Which peo­ple or roles should you involve in this phase of the new process?

For each step, note how you do it. Com­plete a sim­ple ​“step-by-step” check­list, draw a flow­chart piece by piece in the eas­i­est way pos­si­ble, or doc­u­ment how the task is done in this first ver­sion in what­ev­er way you find easiest.

When the task is com­plet­ed, stop for a moment and ask your­self: ​“Was this good?”. If you find some­thing that you would be wise to do dif­fer­ent­ly next time, adjust the doc­u­men­ta­tion of how you did it. Save it where you have your check­lists, process maps, man­u­als, pro­ce­dure descrip­tions, and sim­i­lar struc­tur­al aids.

The next time you have to do the new thing (which is not quite as new as before), do not do it from mem­o­ry but take out the doc­u­men­ta­tion from the last time and fol­low it. If you find a bet­ter way to do a step, adjust it again. Grad­u­al­ly the struc­ture will improve and you will be able to per­form the task with high­er quality.

Progress quick­ly, but steadily

If you cre­ate the struc­ture grad­u­al­ly when every­thing is new, you will not be hin­dered in your eager­ness to learn all the new things or build the new busi­ness. At the same time, you take advan­tage of the expe­ri­ence you gain and grad­u­al­ly put in place a struc­ture that ulti­mate­ly can stand to be shared with oth­ers, mean­ing your col­leagues or the employ­ees who will take over when the job grows too big for you to han­dle on your own.

How do you do it?

How do you cre­ate a good struc­ture when every­thing is new? Please write to me and let me know!

(One way I cre­ate struc­ture is to ​“Do the rounds” in the morn­ing. Maybe that’s some­thing that could work for you too?)