{"id":326,"date":"2023-06-01T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-01T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloudesigns.com\/blog\/?p=326"},"modified":"2025-03-06T01:46:45","modified_gmt":"2025-03-06T01:46:45","slug":"sops-are-like-a-dictionary-for-your-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloudesigns.com\/blog\/index.php\/sops-are-like-a-dictionary-for-your-business\/","title":{"rendered":"SOPs Are Like a Dictionary for Your Business"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What <strong>type<\/strong> of thing is the dictionary? And why does it matter to your SOPs?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Seemingly Well-defined Words Can Have Ambiguous Meanings<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I was recently made aware of confusion over a pretty standard word: &#8220;bi-weekly&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(If you&#8217;re using this word in your SOPs and thinking that it accurately indicates the frequency with which something should be done, I&#8217;m going to touch on why that might not be the case. But it&#8217;s not the central point of this post\u2026..)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to the dictionary\u2026.. If I were to tell you we&#8217;re doing something &#8220;bi-weekly&#8221;, I could be saying:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>every two weeks (a.k.a. every other week)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>twice a week (a.k.a. twice a week, every week)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>because &#8220;bi-weekly&#8221; is defined as &#8220;done, produced, or occurring every two weeks or twice a week.&#8221; So, <strong>by definition, you would be correct in assuming either interpretation<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When it comes to your real-life calendar, though, there&#8217;s a big difference between doing something approximately<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>2x\/month versus 8x\/month.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>See the problem?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Dictionaries are Both Normative\/Prescriptive Resources and Living Documents<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>As it turns out, we use a dictionary as if it&#8217;s a <strong>&#8220;normative&#8221; or &#8220;prescriptive&#8221; resource<\/strong>, that is, something that tells us how it is and how it should be done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But a dictionary is also a <strong>living resource<\/strong>, adding new words as they enter the common vernacular and become popular enough to document.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Remember when &#8220;meh&#8221; got popularized by the Simpsons in the 1990s and was added to the dictionary?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That means that a dictionary is also &#8220;<strong>descriptive<\/strong>&#8220;, that is, describing for us how words are used by everyday people &#8211; before that description sort of gets enshrined as the way we&#8217;re always going to do it now, because the dictionary says so\u2026.. (which is when it becomes &#8220;normative&#8221;\/&#8221;prescriptive&#8221;).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since &#8220;bi&#8221; simply means &#8220;two&#8221;\u2026.\u00a0 It&#8217;s kind of natural that when we smooshed together &#8220;two&#8221; and &#8220;weekly&#8221;, we ended up in a place where &#8220;bi-weekly&#8221; could go either way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s also why you might want to start using &#8220;semi-weekly&#8221; (&#8220;semi&#8221; meaning &#8220;half&#8221;) when you want to talk about something that occurs or needs to occur twice per week, and be more explicit with your &#8220;bi-weekly&#8221; references.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Just in case the interpretation matters\u2026..<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How Your SOPs Are Like a Dictionary<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Your SOPs &#8211; your standardized processes and procedures &#8211; are a lot like a dictionary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>SOPs are <strong>descriptive<\/strong>. You start out by documenting a process or procedure according to the way it&#8217;s done today.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>SOPs are <strong>normative \/ prescriptive<\/strong>. Once documented, the SOP becomes the go-to for how it <strong>should<\/strong> be done.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>SOPs are <strong>living resources<\/strong>. The world changes, and your SOPs need to respond. You modify and add accordingly.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>And, just like the dictionary might mark a word as &#8220;archaic&#8221; to indicate it&#8217;s not really used anymore, or even remove a word all together \u2026. you might find yourself phasing out or removing a SOP from your SOP repository.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Questions for Your Own SOP &#8220;Dictionary&#8221;<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>All of those different characterizations of your SOPs &#8211; descriptive, normative\/prescriptive, living resource &#8211; can make it seem like an overwhelming responsibility to create and manage your SOP repository. Here are some questions to guide you so that this is a manageable task:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>What process or procedure do you <strong>need to document<\/strong> so you can start using that document as your go-to for how it should be done?\n<ul>\n<li>These are things you do regularly and need a reliable\/consistent result.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What SOPs haven&#8217;t you updated in a while \u2026 in spite of algorithm changes or other <strong>changes that might influence the way things should be done<\/strong>?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What SOPs need to be phased out or retired \u2026 because following them now is just <strong>busywork<\/strong> and no longer feeds the business?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Share your thoughts in the comments!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Want some hands-on help or advice?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>If you need help documenting, revising, or retiring your SOPs &#8211; or collecting them together into a single repository that&#8217;s just as easy to use as a dictionary &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloudesigns.com\/contact-form.aspx\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.bloudesigns.com\/contact-form.aspx\">let&#8217;s connect<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What type of thing is the dictionary? And why does it matter to your SOPs?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloudesigns.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloudesigns.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloudesigns.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloudesigns.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloudesigns.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/bloudesigns.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":338,"href":"https:\/\/bloudesigns.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions\/338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloudesigns.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloudesigns.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloudesigns.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloudesigns.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}