Why Write a Playbook
Clarity, transparency, and time
Last year the team at NEVERBLAND created our Studio Playbook. It includes everything new starters (and old hats) could ever want to know about how we do things at NEVERBLAND HQ; what we eat for lunch, how we onboard new hires, what we do on Fridays, and of course how we design and launch successful websites and digital products. It’s all there.
We’ve taken inspiration from our own experiences, what’s worked and what hasn’t, as well as the impressive industry documents, blog posts, and articles that already exist. In particular I’d like to shout out to Thoughtbot, We Are Next, Y Combinator, and all the contributors on Medium.
You rock!
Now that it’s done(ish), I wanted to take some time to articulate why we felt it was important to get it all down on paper. Hopefully it will inspire others to do the same.
1. Take a good look in the mirror
Forcing yourself to explain how you do things highlights any gaps in your operations and pushes you to tackle any niggling inefficiencies that have previously been neglected.
When committing your workflows and values to paper, you’re nailing your colours to the mast, so you’ll want to justify every detail to make sure it’s the best it can be. Doing this helps bring clarity to the team, and shapes a consistent and coherent approach to your work.
And then, once completed, you have a standard to hold yourselves to.
2. Sharing is caring
Our Playbook is a living, breathing document that everyone at NEVERBLAND can edit and add to. It’s a Google Doc so there’s no worrying about accidentally deleting content or changing something back to how it was.
By giving everyone ownership and involvement it drives each team to clarify their workflows and take an interest in what everyone else is doing, encouraging best practice and synergy across the company.
We also share our Playbook with friends, potential clients, freelancers, and partners. Transparency is an important concept for us. By sharing our innermost workings with the world, it shows that our methodologies are properly thought through, tried and tested.
The next step for NEVERBLAND will be to share our Playbook with the wider community. We’re not quite there yet (the perils of being perfectionists) but one of our fundamental values is Open Collaboration, and that shouldn’t just mean between colleagues. We’ve benefited from others sharing their knowledge on the world wide web so we want to do the same.
3. Ease the onboarding
The main ingredient of a good onboarding process is time. Something we’re usually short of. See First Impressions for the rest of the recipe.
Your Playbook should be an extension of the more traditional Company Handbook. It can cover the nitty gritty that often gets overlooked or de-prioritised in that hectic first week. With the more day-to-day (but equally important) details on process and structure written down, you have the head space and time to bring new starters up to speed on the things that are most important — the vision, the culture, and their specific role.
You can even send out the Playbook before they start — the more you can prepare new employees for the first day, the more you set them up to succeed from the moment they step into the office.
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