Hi All!
I had a lot of people ask me to share my Playbook templates that I mentioned in a comment I made last week on another post. Instead of one-off sending them out, I am sharing with the entire community here, along with some best practices. These are from my software company, but can be used as a general guide to make your own!
I've attached two documents to this post:
- The Playbook on Building Playbooks -- This is a Playbook on how to make a Playbook. In my company, the first question I always ask anyone on the team is, "Do we already have a Playbook for this?" And if the answer is no, we make one immediately.
2. Our Playbook Template -- This is what we use as a default framework for all of our Playbooks. When time comes to make a new Playbook, we simply "Make a Copy" and then rename the Playbook using the following format: The [Name] Playbook. For example, The Podcast Playbook, The Social Media Playbook, The Publishing Blogs Playbook, etc.
BEST PRACTICES:
When we create these Playbooks, we want to organize them in a way that whoever needs to find them can, fast and easy. In my software company, we have a Playbook Library broken out by Department, which I outline below, to keep them organized and we put each Playbook under the section that makes the most sense. We also label them according to the department. For example, if we have The Podcast Playbook that goes in the Marketing Department, we'll label that Playbook "MKT09 - The Podcast Playbook."
Marketing
Sales
Onboarding
Customer Success/Customer Support
Product
G&A (General & Administrative)
This library is where anyone on the team, current or new, can come to learn about EVERYTHING our company/team does. When we have a new Marketing team member join, this is one of the first places they go to to train themselves on what they'll be doing.
The key here is to make a Playbook for LITERALLY EVERY ACTIONABLE ITEM someone does in our company. Yes, even as simple as a Playbook for making coffee (if you still go into the office lol). The idea behind these is that we get 80% done which is 100% AWESOME (see Credit Due below, took that from my coach). This will expedite training and keep us organized, forever.
We make these LIVE DOCS as well, in Google Workspace, so they can always get updated in real time. It also helps big time with version control.
Credit Due -- I always give credit where credit is due. And, although these concepts have always been out there, the frameworks derived here are from a coach I had that helped me get organized. His name is Dan Martell.
Hope this helps anyone who needs a little organization in their company. If you have any questions at all feel free to reach out!