Which is better? Video or written SOPs?

Okay, great.

Welcome to today's episode, my name is Tom Rolley for www.systemio.dev, I want to look at the important topic of process documentation.

And there are two schools of thought one is written, that it's documented either in a soft copy or a hard copy, actually written out the document.

The second school of thought is, hey, just video it.

And that will be the documentation, you can see what's going on, you can talk through the instructions.

And I want you to look at this because this came up, I just went through and found a better way of scheduling my YouTube posts, we have some problems normally using Hero posts.

io for Facebook and Instagram, quote cards, but He just is not handling the YouTube planning for whatever reason it's throwing up errors.

Perhaps there are too many people using that particular IP, I don't know, it's just not working.

So I pivoted off that and found it plantable.

io.

So we're going to keep Facebook and Instagram over on hero posts.

But plantable can take YouTube, the disadvantage of plantable is that it has no connection to Google Drive.

So it means downloading the video and then uploading the video.

Look, it's not a big deal.

This doesn’t work that I do anyway, once this is actually dialed in.

But in the initial stages, I was like, Alright, hang on, I'm just going to document this with a video.

Now, I want to test this and make sure that it works before I hand it off to my team.

And I went to it and it's like, oh, man, it's in a video.

And this is what I wanted to discuss with you.

Because the video is awesome at documenting what is going on in the creation of a system, it actually allows me to see the steps and go through them, particularly if I'm working with a client's system, and they can actually video the system and document it out for me.

But when it comes to actually do the work, the video is less exciting.

It means I gotta watch it.

I gotta go.

Okay, yep, copy, copy, pause, do the work, pause the video, play the video, do the work, it just is far less effective.

Then written documentation.

In my experience.

Now you might be different.

You may be like, You know what, I love watching the video, and then I do the work and watch the video do the work.

For me, I get better the more that I run a system, you probably do too.

And so I lead needless instructions.

So how my documentation is actually structured once it's written down, or once it's created is that it's designed to be able to be used at a first-timers level that if I've never done it before, there's enough detail that it's specific enough that someone could go through and do the work successfully.

But if I've done it 510 20 times, like there's some work that gets done on a daily basis.

And so I don't even need the detail.

I don't even need the headings of the work.

I just need to know the system comes through.

It's like, okay, yeah, that process, I'm going to schedule it to YouTube.

If you've done that 2030 times you do it once a week, seven times like it's not that hard.

There is a learning process that happens.

And so the documentation allows for a first-timer.

It allows for someone who's done it five times or 10 times.

It allows for changing of processes and notification to other team members that hey, this process has been updated.

And it also allows for someone who's done it a lot to actually just go through and click Yep, I'm on that process.

And then it's done.

Video.

Not so much.

Not so much.

Yes.

You're done.

I'm just doing it.

Oh, would you like to make chili? I'll tell you what.

I think if we look at it, are there any instructions? Okay, no, that's probably the point.

Let's have a look at we can see the instructions.

Okay, here it is.

Here it is these three steps here.

Okay, you gotta get those things ready.

And I'll finish this.

I'll see you soon.

Isn't that interesting that on the side of the jelly are the three instructions that need to be done?

follow those instructions.

And by tomorrow we will have a jelly.

Your business is not that dissimilar.

There is no video on the side of the jelly packet.

It sounds ridiculous, but we can read that we can check it in the actual action execution of your SOPs.

In my personal opinion, written documentation is superior to the video has its place as we discussed already.

The first one is the documentation of what's already going on.

When you go to systemize your business, you can record what systems are already being done, but they just appear in your head or in your team's head.

And there is one more place where videos are effective.

And that is, when you have a stable system that's documented out, you can also add in as an additional video of running through the stable steps.

So that might be a link that they click that runs through the detail.

So they've got it written, but also they've got the video.

Alright, I hope that was helpful for you if you need specific help with Systemising your business so you can free up your time or you can increase the valuation that you can sell your business for.

Then head over to www.systemio.dev.

Go grab the training there.

Look forward to talking to you about your specific situation where you want to take your business.

And I look forward to seeing you on tomorrow's episode.

I'm going to go make jelly.

I'll see you then.