Writing detailed instructions and building a go-to-manual is one of the best things you can do for your business.

Why is it so powerful?

Because it does three things.

#1 It makes you redundant

You no longer have to explain something when it is done again and again.

After being interrupted by his teammates at his fast growing startup CD Baby, that he later sold for $22 million, my friend and co-author on India 2014 Derek Sivers came up with a process and wrote about it in his bestselling book “Anything You Want”.

Whenever somebody asked him a question, he did this:

Now we are in the remote work world so you can do whatever is equivalent of gathering everybody around and follow the same process.

#2 It gives you clarity

Writing is a great exercise in finding clarity. When explaining something to someone in person you can’t be accurate all the time. But when you or someone on the team writes it down, they can also make it accurate by editing.

#3 It removes ambiguity 

Once you write an instruction and add it to a manual, everyone who uses it will have the same accurate description as everyone else. And, there won’t be a chance of saying something and someone understanding it as something else.

For more complex tasks you can use video and record your screen while doing that task, or get one of your team members to record their screen as they do a certain task.

You can use it for employee onboarding and training, client communication and most of all getting things done and many other ways.

What would you like to use it for?