I was recently talking with a leader who is focused on maturing her organization’s operations, and I suggested she start with a small effort of establishing a single, central playbook document (e.g., Google Doc or Word file in MS Teams folder) where they can begin to capture, write, refine, and flesh out core processes. I suggested that she avoid over-planning and instead, create a simple doc, with a few headers and ask her senior leaders to start adding content, and they could refine their approach over time. Over time, there are lots of great frameworks to reference — Michalowicz’s Clockwork is incredible, Traction‘s EOS has some great concepts, etc.

For big or ongoing efforts like this, it’s tempting for some people (including me) to over-engineer and over-plan instead of getting started. And while planning is critical, there’s immense value in starting to build momentum, get something up and running, and iterate from there.

Adjacent points:

• Reid Hoffman (the founder of LinkedIn) once said, “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”
• BJ Fogg has a great TEDx talk on changing habits by making small, incremental changes like flossing one tooth:

• Be a Photographer, not a Camera Shopper