What a Style Guide Is For at Five People

What changes as people are added

With one or two people, consistency is maintained by somebody seeing everything before it goes out.

That person holds the standard in their head, and a one-page note is enough because it is a reminder rather than a rulebook.

At around four or five people, three things happen at once: material is produced without passing through one person, new people arrive who never absorbed the standard by osmosis, and suppliers are engaged by whoever needs them.

None of those is fixed by a longer document. They are fixed by the document answering questions it previously did not have to.

The failure looks like this

• Two versions of a document template in use.
• Somebody choosing a colour because it looked right.
• A supplier who was never sent the page.
• A new person copying an old file.
• Material produced that nobody senior saw.

The fourth is the most common mechanism. Somebody producing their first document finds an old one and copies it, so a mistake from two years ago propagates rather than being corrected.

Add answers, not rules

The principle for growing the document, and it keeps it from becoming the version nobody reads.

Every addition should trace to a real question somebody asked or a real mistake somebody made.

Somebody asked which logo to use on a dark photograph, so that goes in. Nobody has ever asked about the minimum clear space around the logo, so it stays out until they do.

That produces a document shaped by your business rather than by a template, and it stays short because most questions never arise.

It also means every line has a reason, which is what stops somebody deleting the document as bureaucracy.

What usually needs adding at this size

The additions that most businesses reach in the same order.

Document templates, actual files rather than descriptions, for quotes, invoices, and letters, so nobody builds their own.

A short note on writing: how formal, whether you use first names, and two example sentences.

Photograph guidance, meaning where the approved ones live and what makes one usable.

Social posting basics, if more than one person posts, which is mostly what needs approval and what does not.

And who decides, which is the item that matters most and is almost always missing.

Name who decides

The single most useful line in a guide at this size.

Most inconsistency comes from somebody making a reasonable decision alone because there was no obvious person to ask.

One named person, with a note saying to ask them when the document does not cover it, resolves that without adding any rules.

It also produces the additions, since every question they answer is a candidate for the next line.

Where that person is unavailable, say what to do: use the closest existing example rather than inventing something.

A worked example

A business grew from two people to six over eighteen months.

Their one-page specification had worked well and was still accurate, and their material had nonetheless drifted: three quote templates, two versions of the email signature, and a leaflet a supplier had produced in the wrong colour because nobody sent them anything.

They kept the page and added four things: the actual template files, a line naming who to ask, a note on where photographs live, and two example sentences showing the tone.

It went from one page to three.

The drift stopped, and the item that had the largest effect was naming who to ask, which was one line.

Give it to people on their first day

The distribution change that matters as headcount grows.

Somebody joining absorbs the standard from whatever they encounter first, which is usually an old file.

Handing them the current document, with the template files, on day one, sets the reference point before a bad one is established.

Include it in whatever else new people receive, so it is not dependent on somebody remembering.

The same applies to any supplier, who should receive it when engaged rather than after producing something wrong.

Most inconsistency at this size is a distribution failure rather than a content one.

Templates beat instructions

The most effective form the guide can take as the team grows.

A document explaining what a quote should look like will be interpreted. A quote template file will be used.

So convert as much of the guidance as possible into things people can start from: document templates, a social post template, a slide layout, an email signature block to paste.

Store them where the guide lives, so finding one finds the others.

That reduces the reading required to almost nothing, which is the only way a standard survives being applied by people who are busy.

Delete the old files

The step that stops the copying problem at its source.

Superseded templates, old logo files, and previous versions of documents sitting in shared storage are what people find and reuse.

Move them out of the working folders rather than leaving them alongside the current ones, since a folder containing four quote templates guarantees the wrong one gets used.

Keep one archived copy somewhere clearly marked, if you need the history, and remove everything else from where people look.

That takes an hour and prevents more inconsistency than any amount of written guidance, because it removes the possibility rather than warning against it.

The counter-case

Growth is not automatically a reason to expand this.

A business of five where only one person produces material still only needs the page, and headcount is the wrong trigger.

There is also a real risk of expanding it because it feels like what a larger business does, producing a document that describes an identity nobody is failing to follow.

And a document that grows faster than the problems it solves becomes the forty-page version that started this, which is worse than the page it replaced.

Expand when material is being produced without a single reviewer, add only what somebody asked, and prefer templates to instructions.

The trigger and the additions

1. Expand when several people produce material.
2. Name who decides when it is unclear.
3. Add only what somebody actually asked.
4. Supply template files, not descriptions.
5. Give it out on day one.
6. Send it to suppliers when engaged.
7. Keep every line traceable to a mistake.

Step two is the highest-return line in the document, since most drift comes from somebody deciding alone rather than from anybody disagreeing with the standard.

The version to start from is covered in a consistent look without a style guide.

Frequently asked questions

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