Expectation Agreements: The SOP Reframe That Actually Works

Expectation agreements header. I was standing in front of twenty kids, and my equipment had just betrayed me.

It was a Z-Tag event—laser tag, the kind of high-energy event GameTruck coaches run every weekend. The taggers were supposed to connect to the system, each with a unique ID number. Simple enough. Except some of them had duplicated IDs, others had dropped out entirely, and now I had a crowd of increasingly impatient ten-year-olds staring at me while I fumbled through settings menus I barely understood.

I figured it out. Eventually. There’s a “re-enumerate” function buried in the settings that forces all the taggers to reconnect with unique IDs. Crisis averted. Party saved.

But here’s the thing: once I solved the problem, I knew I had to document it. And that’s when I faced a choice that changed how I think about SOPs forever.

The Documentation Trap

I could have taken the standard approach. You know the one. “The Settings Screen allows you to adjust system settings.” Thanks for nothing.

Most technical documentation describes what things are. It catalogs features. It labels buttons. It defines terms. And it sits in a binder somewhere, unread, while your team fumbles through the same problems you already solved.

I didn’t want that. I wanted my coaches to walk into high-pressure situations—twenty kids waiting, parents watching, equipment misbehaving—and know what to do.

So instead of documenting the system, I documented the success path.

Expectation Agreements, Not SOPs

Here’s the reframe: Stop thinking of these documents as “Standard Operating Procedures.” That phrase implies compliance. It suggests behavior control. It sounds like something HR makes you sign.

Instead, think of them as Expectation Agreements—documents that answer one question: How does someone know they’re contributing well?

To answer that, you need to address three things:

1. What is expected? Not “use the settings screen correctly.” The expectation is: The coach can fix common equipment problems fast, so the event keeps running smoothly.

2. What skills, tasks, or methods produce that outcome? Navigate to the settings menu. Find the re-enumerate function. Run it. Be patient while the system cycles through. Know that most problems can be solved from the command system without panicking.

3. What feedback loops show you’re on target? Watch the taggers reconnect. Check the event screen for unique IDs. Ultimately? The real feedback is the customer tip and the NPS score after the event.

When you frame documentation this way, it stops being about technical accuracy and starts being about setting people up to succeed.

Where AI Comes In

Here’s what I’ve discovered: AI is remarkably good at helping you build these expectation agreements.

You can take a messy process—something you do but haven’t documented, or an existing SOP that reads like a technical manual—and use AI to transform it into something useful.

The key is asking the right questions. And now that you know the three questions, you can prompt an AI to help you answer them.

Here’s a prompt you can copy and adapt:

I want to create (or improve) an Expectation Agreement for a process. An Expectation Agreement answers three questions:

1. What is expected? (The outcome or result someone should deliver)
2. What skills, tasks, or methods are necessary to achieve that outcome?
3. What feedback loops help the person know if they're on target?

Here's the process I want to document:
[Paste your existing SOP, or describe the process in plain language]

Please help me:
- Clarify the core expectation (what does success look like?)
- Identify the key skills and steps needed
- Suggest feedback mechanisms so the person knows they're succeeding

Frame everything from the perspective of someone doing the work, not someone auditing it.

You can use this to analyze an existing SOP that feels stale, or to create a new one from scratch. Either way, the AI will help you think through the three questions—and you’ll end up with something your team might actually use.

Why This Matters

Great documentation isn’t about covering your bases or creating a paper trail. It’s about helping people succeed before problems happen.

When I was standing in front of those twenty kids, I needed to already know what to do. Not figure it out live. Not call someone. Not dig through a manual that described what every button does without telling me when I’d need it.

Your team is in that position every day. Maybe not with laser tag equipment, but with processes, tools, and situations where they need clarity in the moment.

The question isn’t “Do we have an SOP for this?”

The question is: “Does our team know how to succeed?”

Your Homework

Pick one process in your business—something that matters, something that causes friction when it goes wrong.

Ask yourself the three questions:

  1. What’s the real expectation? (Not the task, the outcome.)
  2. What skills or methods does someone need to deliver that outcome?
  3. How will they know they’re on track?

If you can’t answer those questions clearly, neither can your team. And that’s not a training problem—it’s a documentation problem.

Use the prompt above to get started. Let AI help you build something people will actually read.

Scott Novis is the founder of GameTruck and an accountability coach for the Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) Accelerator program, where he helps small business owners build systems that set their teams up for success.

To List Or Not To List

To List Or Not To List

Today’s question is about the validity of the humble to-do list. Or perhaps you think of it as the vaunted to-do list. It feels like a thousand years ago I heard a story about Charles M. Schwab, the President of Bethlehem Steel (not to be confused with Charles R. Schwab, the founder of the eponymous investing stock brokerage and financial services company).

Steel-Schwab, let’s call him, was obsessed with efficiency, and in 1918, he hired Ivy Lee, an efficiency expert, to advise him on how he could get more done. Lee’s advice, which later became known as the Ivy Lee Method, was the following:

  • At the end of each workday, write down the six most important tasks to accomplish the next day—no more than six.
  • Rank these six tasks in order of their true importance.
  • The next day, start with the first task and work on it until it is finished before moving on to the second task.
  • Continue down the list in order. Any unfinished tasks move to the next day’s list.
  • Repeat this process daily.

I read in the book The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes the “secret” method of billionaires. It was the same. Major a list with no more than six items. Later, Jay Papasan would write a book called The ONE Thing, and he would advise cutting the list to a single most important thing.

I can’t recall where I read it, but another method was to take a piece of paper (8.5x11 for Americans and Canadians, A4 if you are from the rest of the world), and fold it three times. You will end up with a sheet of paper that is about the size of a standard American Index Card (three inches by five inches, or A7 cards for all-yall in the rest of the world - ROW).

It is hard to fit more than six times on a piece of paper this size - but if you have really tiny print and you turn it portrait, you can pack a lot of information onto such a card.

But the real point is to focus. There are a couple of items here with Ivy Lee’s and Chet Holmes methods.

  1. At the end of the day, make your list.
  2. Decide what is most important.
  3. Focus on one item at a time and work it to completion.

I saw Mr. Papasan speak at an EO Arizona event in Scottsdale. What I recall from the talk is that they limited the list to one thing because it takes mental energy and self-discipline to force yourself to focus on a prioritized list, and it turns out humans do not have these in an unlimited supply.

Therefore, his advice was to pick one thing and focus on that. The one most important thing. After that, have at it, but make sure you apply your precious, limited self-discipline doing what is most important.

So in that regard, Lee and Papasan were in alignment. Choose the night before - which is a form of Hemingway Bridge, then decide what matters most, focus on that first thing.

Note: What is a Hemingway Bridge? According to Tiago Forte, Ernest Hemingway wrapped up each writing session by writing a few sentences about what he intended to do next as he ended his writing session.

Making your list at the end of the day has the following advantage: your head is already filled with the context of working all day. If you will, your working memory is loaded with context. You know what you wanted to get done when you ran out of time. You will lose this felt sense of what is important once your brain moves onto other tasks, like dinner, socializing, and resting for the evening. So capturing the intent while you have it all fresh in your memory is most effective.

But Does It Work?

Look, lists of things to do have been around forever. Human brains are great at storing narratives, stories, but not facts and arbitrary lists of things. Every home has some kind of recipe book, but I have never been in a home that had one book, let alone a shelf or cupboard full of story summaries. We remember stories. But steps, procedures, ingredients, we need mnemonic aids.

But the prioritized list? Well, there are two problems I have run into.

  1. Everything is important to someone. Very few people put things on a to-do list that does not need to get done (but it does happen).
  2. We don’t always control our lists. Priorities (and plans) can change in an instant.

In my next post, I will share the task management and list tips that have been most useful to me.