How to Create Scalable SOPs for Growing Businesses

January 21, 2026

Published in:

Business Strategy & Growth

A female business owner reviews files on her organized but busy desk. — Photo by Canva

I often see the same pattern with growing companies. Revenue is up, the pipeline is full, and the team is expanding. In reality, the founder is exhausted and their internal communication platform is full of “Quick question” messages. That is usually the moment it becomes clear that the business is growing faster than its systems.

You cannot scale without processes, but you also cannot scale with the wrong kind of processes. Many companies start with what I call “static” Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). They describe what is happening right now for the team that exists today, using the current tools. As soon as something changes, the SOPs feel outdated, so people stop trusting them and go back to improvising.

What Makes Scalable SOPs Different

Scalable SOPs are different. They are written for the company you are building, not only the company you are running today. Many growing businesses have one person wearing multiple hats. For example, a single employee might be responsible for marketing strategy, content creation, social media, and email campaigns. When I document that process, I do not simply write, “Marketing Manager does all of this.” I want to create scalable SOPs for business growth, so I break it into roles such as Marketing Manager, Blogger, Social Media Manager, and Email Specialist. One person may own all of these roles today, but a scalable SOP is written as if each position already exists, so you can hand off responsibilities cleanly as you hire.

"Scalable SOPs are written for the company you are building, not just the company you are running today."

-- Adi Klevit, EO Portland

Scalable SOPs also live at the right level. Work instructions show the step-by-step actions inside a specific tool, while a scalable SOP sits above that. It explains why the process exists, what the objective is, what a successful outcome looks like, and how you measure it. It clarifies who makes decisions, what the boundaries are, and when to escalate an issue.

A key part of making SOPs scalable is deciding how much detail belongs in writing and how much belongs in another format. If you go too granular in the SOP itself, it becomes difficult to maintain. If you stay too high level, it is not usable. This is where video can help. Many companies use short videos to demonstrate work instructions and pair them with a higher-level written SOP. To keep those materials scalable, I suggest using an AI tool to assist with the scripts behind the videos so you can update a few lines when something changes instead of rerecording everything.

Another common mistake is trying to scale one part of the business in isolation. I often see companies improve their sales and onboarding processes so they can bring in more clients. That is positive progress, but if they do not strengthen the SOPs for delivery, operations, and customer success at the same time, the back end gets overwhelmed and the client experience suffers. Scalable SOPs require thinking in systems rather than silos. If you make one part of the machine faster, you have to make sure the rest of the machine can handle the new speed.

A Practical Framework for Building SOPs That Grow With You

Here is a simple framework that any growing business can use to create scalable SOPs for business growth:

1. Map your core processes end-to-end.

List the major processes such as marketing, sales, onboarding, delivery, finance, and HR, and show how work flows between them.

2. Stress-test your processes for growth.

Ask: If we doubled or tripled our volume, what would break first, and where are the bottlenecks and fragile handoffs?

3. Align each step with roles, now and in the future.

Tie key steps to roles instead of individuals, and separate the different hats people are wearing today into the positions you expect to have as you grow.

4. Document at the right altitude.

Write SOPs that explain purpose, outcomes, decision criteria, and handoffs, and attach tool-specific work instructions and short videos as a separate layer.

5. Build review and improvement into the system.

Decide how often each SOP should be reviewed, what events will trigger an update, and who is responsible for keeping it current.

One of the biggest lessons I have learned is that creating detailed SOPs is not enough. They have to be followed, measured, and refined. In my early work, I focused primarily on documenting processes. Now I place just as much emphasis on implementation and ongoing ownership. The real value appears when SOPs become part of how people structure their day, make decisions, and train others.

"The goal is to keep reality and documentation aligned instead of letting them drift apart."

-- Adi Klevit, EO Portland

With clients and inside my own company, we use a simple rule. If we notice that the way the team is operating does not match what is written, we pause and review the process and either correct the behavior or update the document. The goal is to keep reality and documentation aligned instead of letting them drift apart.

Scalable SOPs are not about adding bureaucracy. They are about giving your business a strong backbone so it can grow without everything depending on a few people answering urgent questions all day. If you want a practical place to start, pick one core process such as client onboarding or fulfillment and ask yourself: Could this process handle double the volume without breaking? If the answer is no, that is your invitation to start building SOPs that truly scale.

Contributed to EO by Adi Klevit, an EO Portland member who is co-founder of Business Success Consulting Group, which helps leaders create and document custom processes and tailor-made management systems that ensure consistency.