There’s a question that reveals a lot about an operation: what happens if the person who manages this disappears for two weeks? In most companies the honest answer is uncomfortable.
The invisible dependency
The password to the domain registrar, the order in which month-end is closed, the trick to make the old system export correctly. None of it is written down. It works because one person remembers.
That isn’t a process. It’s a habit, and habits leave with people.
Writing it down takes a week. Recovering it takes months.
One page per process
The format doesn’t need to be sophisticated. One page with three parts is enough: what comes in, what is done and what goes out. If a process doesn’t fit on a page, it’s usually several processes mixed together.
Why it’s efficiency
Documentation is often seen as bureaucracy. In practice, it’s what allows someone new to start in days instead of months, what makes automation possible and what stops a resignation from becoming a crisis.