An operations manual from 2019 still governs the leasing process at a property that has burned through four managers since it was written.
A policy written for the operation you had three years ago is stale.
Some companies treat their operations manual as a finished document. It’s not.
Consider an operation whose leasing process has been reshaped by technology since the manual was written. It’s being run off policies built for a market that no longer exists.
Revising the manual on a regular cadence, at minimum once a year, is how institutional learning gets captured. Do that, and the documented standard stays relevant.
By 2023, four managers had cycled through, and the binder was still sitting there describing a process that looked nothing like how the work actually got done. No one had updated it. The job had never belonged to anyone. Someone has to own it.
An operations manual you never revise is just the standard you used to run, still pointed at an operation that has moved on without it. — Mike Brewer
Discussion Prompt: Pull your current operations manual and find the three sections most out of step with how the work happens now. Give each of those sections an owner, with a thirty-day deadline for the rewrite.