Building ADHD-Friendly SOPs for Scalable Growth, With Skye Waterson

Points of Interest00:01 – Introduction: Marcel introduces Skye Waterson and frames the conversation around SOPs, documentation, and building operational “rails” that teams can actually use.01:07 – Skye’s background and motivation: Skye shares her journey from academic burnout to discovering adult ADHD and building a business focused on helping founders work with their brains, not against them.03:04 – Why ADHD frameworks help everyone: Skye explains how ADHD-friendly systems emphasize flexibility and challenge outdated assumptions about productivity and work structure.05:05 – First principles for ADHD productivity: The discussion covers practical strategies like rewarding task initiation and reducing reliance on working memory through better capture systems.06:56 – The core problem with traditional SOPs: Skye and Marcel outline why most SOPs go stale—delegated, filed away, and only referenced during onboarding or emergencies.09:18 – SOP neglect as a hidden operational risk: The conversation highlights how disconnected SOPs undermine dashboards, metrics, and leadership visibility.11:32 – Visualizing the business as a flow: Skye introduces her core framework: mapping the business end-to-end (acquisition through expansion) using a visual tool like Miro.14:02 – Why digital visual tools matter: Skye explains why paper-based process mapping fails and why digital tools enable iteration, ownership, and follow-through.15:52 – Assigning a single DRI per process: Each node in the business flow is assigned a Directly Responsible Individual to eliminate ambiguity and improve accountability.16:40 – Red, orange, green process health: Processes are color-coded to show whether they are broken, manual and CEO-dependent, or documented and team-run.18:09 – Tying SOPs to weekly cadence and metrics: Skye explains how reviewing SOP health alongside performance metrics turns documentation into an operational diagnostic tool.24:41 – AI and living SOPs: The episode closes with best practices for using AI to bootstrap SOPs, delegate ownership, and treat documentation as a living draft rather than a finished artifact.Show NotesConnect with Skye via LinkedInUnconventional OrganizationSkye’s Podcast ADHD Skills LabAI Chatbot: Message Skye on Instagram with the word “Marcel” and she’ll send you the chatbotSoftware as a Science BookMatt VerlaqueLove the PodcastLeave us a review here. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.