Brad Sugars on the Hidden Cost of Verbal Processes in a Growing Business

Verbal processes feel fast when a business is small. The owner explains how the work should be done, the team nods, and everyone moves forward.

A new person learns by watching someone experienced, a customer handoff happens through a quick conversation, and routine decisions are handled by asking whoever knows the answer. That informality can work for a while, but it becomes expensive as the business grows.

Work that “everyone just knows” eventually turns into repeated questions, missed handoffs, inconsistent delivery, and owner dependency. The process may still exist, but if it only lives in people’s heads, the business has no reliable way to repeat it.

Verbal Processes Feel Efficient Until the Business Grows

A verbal process usually starts as a shortcut. The owner has the answer, so explaining it out loud feels faster than writing it down.

A manager knows how to handle a customer issue, so the team asks the manager instead of building a repeatable standard. A senior employee understands the handoff, so the business relies on experience instead of documentation.

In a small team, that can feel practical. The same people handle the same tasks, the owner is close enough to correct mistakes quickly, and informal communication covers the gaps.

The problem appears when the business adds more customers, more team members, more offers, or more complexity. The process that once lived comfortably inside a few people’s heads starts to break under the weight of growth.

Work That Lives in People’s Heads Creates Hidden Costs

Undocumented work creates a cost the owner does not always see on a profit and loss statement. It shows up when a new team member asks the same question several times because there is no clear standard to reference.

It shows up when one person handles a customer issue one way, while another person handles the same issue differently. It also shows up when a task takes longer than it should because the team has to reconstruct the process from memory.

These breakdowns do not always look serious at first. A missed detail gets corrected, a customer receives a follow-up, or the owner steps in to clarify what should have happened.

Over time, those small corrections become a tax on the business. They consume attention, create frustration, and keep the company dependent on whoever carries the process in their head.

Memory Does Not Scale

A growing business cannot rely on memory as its operating system. Memory changes from person to person, and that creates inconsistency as the team expands.

One employee remembers the customer onboarding process clearly, another remembers only the first few steps, and a third adds their own interpretation because the standard was never written down. The customer may experience three different versions of the same service without the business noticing immediately.

That inconsistency affects customer confidence and team performance. Customers notice when delivery feels different depending on who handles the work, and employees hesitate when they are not sure which version of the process is correct.

This is where Brad Sugars’ systems-first method has practical weight. As the founder and owner of ActionCOACH, which his site describes as the largest and most successful business coaching franchise in the world, Sugars built his reputation around ideas that can be taught, repeated, and applied beyond one person.

Verbal Handoffs Create Rework

Handoffs are one of the first places verbal processes break. A salesperson speaks with a prospect, then quickly tells operations what the customer needs.

A manager gives a team member a few instructions between meetings, or a customer service issue is passed along with only part of the context. The work still moves forward, but the missing details create drag.

Operations may deliver something slightly different from what was promised, a team member may need to ask for clarification, or the customer may repeat information they already gave. That extra work is not always caused by poor effort.

It is often caused by poor transfer of information. A documented handoff reduces that risk by defining what information must be captured, where it should go, who owns the next step, and what standard must be met before the work moves forward.

Undocumented Standards Keep Owners Involved

When standards are not documented, the owner becomes the standard. The team asks the owner how to handle exceptions, what quality level is acceptable, how to respond to a customer, or whether a task has been completed properly.

The owner may feel useful in those moments, but the business is quietly reinforcing dependence. Routine work keeps returning to the person who originally created the standard.

That is not the same as leadership. It means the business cannot make ordinary decisions without going back to the owner’s judgment, memory, or personal preference.

Brad Sugars defines a true business as a commercial, profitable enterprise that works without the owner. That kind of business needs standards that exist outside the owner’s head and can be used by the team without constant explanation.

What Growing Businesses Should Document First

Owners often delay documentation because they imagine a giant operations manual. That is usually the wrong starting point.

The better first step is to document the areas that create the most repeated questions, rework, missed handoffs, customer complaints, or owner interruptions. These are the points where missing structure is already costing the business time and consistency.

If the same customer onboarding question appears every week, start there. If quotes are prepared differently depending on the salesperson, document the quoting process.

If delivery mistakes keep showing up at the same stage, write down the handoff and quality standard for that step. The goal is not to document everything at once; it is to remove the most expensive confusion first.

Simple Systems Make Delegation Safer

Delegation becomes risky when the process is unclear. The owner hands off a task, but the team member does not know the expected standard, required steps, or boundary for making decisions.

The work comes back incomplete or inconsistent, and the owner concludes that delegation does not work. In reality, the task may have been delegated without a usable system.

A documented process makes delegation safer because it gives the person a structure to follow. It also gives the owner a better way to review performance without correcting based on preference or frustration.

This strengthens both Systems and Team. The business becomes less dependent on individual memory and more capable of training people to produce consistent results.

Move the Process Out of the Owner’s Head

A growing business does not need more verbal explanations. It needs more usable standards.

Start by identifying the tasks the owner explains repeatedly. Look for the handoffs that break, the customer issues that return, and the decisions people hesitate to make without approval.

Those are the places where the process needs to leave someone’s head and become part of the business. A simple checklist, template, decision rule, or handoff form can create immediate improvement when it addresses a repeated friction point.

Brad Sugars emphasizes building a business that works without the owner so owners can spend more time on what matters. If your business still relies on verbal processes, download Brad Sugars’ free Playbook for Scaling Beyond the Founder to review the systems, leadership habits, and growth strategies needed to move from operator to owner.