SOP docs vs tribal knowledge, which one actually works?

We had a temp cover our shipping desk for 2 weeks and the 15 page SOP didn't match what our lead actually does, so orders got delayed by 3 days. I rewrote the whole thing based on watching her for a morning and we cut that delay to zero, but now she says the new version is too rigid for peak season. Is anyone else finding that written processes and real workflows just don't line up, or am I overthinking this?

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riverhill1mo ago

That 15 page SOP was probably written by someone who hadn't actually touched the shipping desk in years, which is how you get a doc that looks right on paper but falls apart in practice. The real issue is that tribal knowledge is messy and living, so any static document is going to be stale by the time it's printed. But here's the thing, you might be overcorrecting by making it too rigid, because peak season is exactly when people need flexibility to skip steps that don't apply. What usually works for us is a one page cheat sheet with the critical must-dos, then a separate "this is how we handle weird stuff" section that the team adds to as they hit edge cases. You're not overthinking it, you just haven't found the sweet spot between a novel and a napkin note yet.