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Three roles, not one
- Contributors — the people who perform the task. They know the real sequence, the shortcuts and the failure points.
- Approver — a leader with authority over the outcome. Approval means accepting that this is how the organisation will do the work.
- Owner — a named person responsible for accuracy, questions and review dates. Not a department; a person.
In my engagements I facilitate the drafting with your contributors and apply consistent structure, but approval always remains with your business. I do not sign off your procedures, and I am not a substitute for specialist legal, safety or compliance advice.
Why authorship matters
Procedures written by someone a step removed from the work tend to describe how the task was imagined rather than how it is done. Involving the people who do it is the single most reliable way to produce something they will use. It also captures knowledge that would otherwise sit only in experienced heads, a risk explored in what happens when critical knowledge lives in people's heads.
What approval should actually check
- Does the procedure serve your Business DNA? See what Business DNA is.
- Is it consistent with your policies, legal obligations and any sector requirements?
- Are the critical steps and escalation triggers clear to someone using it under pressure?
- Is there a named owner and a review date?
Version control and review
Airline operations depend on everyone using the same current revision of a procedure. A crew member cannot be working from last year's checklist. Businesses face the same problem in a quieter form: old copies in shared drives, printed versions on walls, attachments in email. Good governance means one current approved version, a visible revision history and a review date that someone actually honours.
Your Company Operations Hub is designed around this: owners, versions and review dates stay visible, and employees find the current procedure rather than an old copy. I support six-monthly training, refreshers and updates; material changes to critical procedures should be communicated immediately rather than waiting for the next cycle.
How governance connects to risk
Clear ownership is a risk control in its own right. When something goes wrong, the organisation knows who to ask, which version was in use and when it was last reviewed. That link between procedures and risk is the subject of what business leaders can learn from aviation risk management.
Frequently asked questions
Can the owner and approver be the same person?
- Yes, in smaller organisations that is common. The important thing is that both responsibilities are recognised and recorded, not that they belong to different people.
How often should SOPs be reviewed?
- Set a review date that matches the risk. I work on a six-monthly training and refresher cycle, but critical procedures should be updated immediately when something material changes.
Who approves SOPs you help document?
- Your business does. I facilitate and structure the documentation; content approval and operating decisions always remain with you.
What happens when an owner leaves?
- Ownership should transfer to a named successor as part of their handover, with the change recorded in the revision history.
See how I work for the full engagement, or book a discovery call to talk through your own governance.
