The effect of systems.
The #1 effect of Systems is Time-Freedom.
Systems allow the business owner Time-Freedom.
This is the primary reason to build systems.
What could do you do with the time that systems free up for the business owner?
Work on instead of in your business.
If you have systems, your staff can be doing the low-impact tasks that you would normally have to do. Simply because they have a system to follow.
When you work in the business, you should be focusing on your highest income-generating task.
But all too often you’re doing the nif naf and trivia of your business.
Instead of doing the one thing that brings the highest value to your business.
Obviously, the other thing you can do with the time freedom your systems provide is you can take some time off, or some time away from the business to fulfil your personal ambitions.
It’s alarming. The number of small business owners I speak to who do not take any time off.
Yet they wear it like a badge of honour.
‘I did 16 hours yesterday’ or they boast of 69-hour weeks, working every day, 365, 24/7. Hustle hustle, grind, grind.
But we didn’t start our businesses too, to be slaves to them.
We started our business so they could provide us with the lifestyle we wanted, the income we wanted or the time freedom we wanted.
If we are slaves to our business then we have made a huge mistake.
That’s what this program is all about.
It is designed to identify what is going wrong in your business.
Your business could be highly successful, but if you are a slave to it, I would argue that this success is coming at a pric
The 2nd effect of Systems is quality and standards improve.
The main reason for this is everybody does the same thing, no matter who does the job, everyone does it the same way.
That is the whole object of systems.
The ultimate systemised business in my eyes is a franchise.
If you could franchise your business tomorrow,(you could sell it in another town and it would run exactly the same as yours without you having to be there). You have reached the Zenith of systemisation.
Examples of really good franchise businesses, McDonald’s Costa Coffee, Starbucks.
The experience is always the same.
No matter where you go, you could even be in another country.
Yet the experience is similar.
Take McDonald’s as an example, how they systemise their business, they don’t hire the best chefs.
They don’t even profess to sell the world’s best burger, but what they do profess to sell you is a burger quickly.
And it will always be the same.
You can’t argue with the systems that they’ve built and the standards that they are able to achieve. Having a standardised way of doing something, by having a system, allows you to monitor, measure and improve continuously.
The best bit about systems is.
You can get your team to build the system, then self-evaluate, self-monitor, self-measure, and maintain or improve the standards that you set.
The 3rd Effect of Systems is you will have less churn, you lose less staff and you lose fewer customers.
Why do systems prevent you from losing customers?
It’s really simple, by building systems, you standardise the services you provide.
So the customer always gets a similar experience.
If that experience provided is to the right standard, then you will always meet your customer’s expectations.
Why do systems help your staff retention rates?
Your staff will know what is expected of them.
The main reason for business owners and staff falling out is not the quality of the work, but the continual questions to the business owner.
You might as well do the job yourself, because the member of your team, the employee doesn’t have enough automation to make decisions for themselves.
They don’t know the limits of their authority. Therefore they are always asking you and it gets to the point where you think, why did I bother taking them on in the first place?
This is a typical scenario for a bit of business in infancy.
A business without systems in place, can not grow and scale past adolescence.
Simply because the owner has too much on their plate.
This is where it can go really wrong. But if you build systems, the staff know the limit of their authority, they know what they’re supposed to do.
They know what is expected of them.
It said that we make somewhere in the region of 35,000 decisions a day, but some of them can be made in advance, using systems. Your staff know what you would do because it is built into the system.
When we encounter this. We do this.
When this happens, we do this.
When that happens, we do this.
Having a system to follow prevents reliance on one individual and endless questions.
The systems themselves, need to accessible in some form of operating manual, the standard operating procedures for your business.
This could be an actual folder.
An Online folder online or audio, video, text, or a flow chart.
However, you lay out your systems.
When that person gets to that point in your business, and they’re doing a task, they know what to do.
If X happens. And then if Y happens, they know to do Z.
Have you ever seen an airline pilot? They carry that big flight bag full of checklists.
They always follow them.
Even though they’ve done it, hundreds and hundreds of times, they sit there, they go through that same routine every time.
If an emergency scenario arises they have a system for it.
Imagine that same level of dedication and that level of process in your business.
When should you build a system?
You already have, but they’re all in your head and nobody else can access that without coming and asking you.
This means you are tied to every task your business does.
Therefore you need to get them out of your head.
Start with something you could systemise tomorrow, just record someone answering the phone correctly, then have a training session on it.
Use the audio file as the examplar, save it, put it in a folder.
Your systems, folder, the operating manual for your business has now been created. It will be built one task at a time.
The difference between a process and a system
Just about everybody uses the term process and system interchangeably, even I’m guilty of it.
What do we mean by a process?
What do we mean by a system?
They are similar, but there are key differences.
The Process is the steps required to complete a task.
Processes, improve efficiency.
A system is an interface between the person, the technology and the process.
There has to be a bridge.
The process will outline how it’s done and the system’s interface between how it’s done on the various technologies that we use to do it.
Processes improve Efficiency
Systems improve Effectiveness.
It is a subtle difference, but what they have in common is a need for optimisation.
You should always be seeking to improve them, you should always be monitoring and measuring to improve standards.
What is the difference between effectiveness and efficiency?
Aren’t they the same thing?
Well, there’s quite a neat little way of remembering them.
Efficiency is doing things right.
Effectiveness is doing the right things.
Very subtle, but ever so slightly different.
You can be efficient, really efficient.
For example, you have changed the two rear tires in record time, mega efficient.
But if that car needed its front tires changed, you weren’t very effective.
The system, the interface, between the person the technology and the process should have identified, which tyres to change.
The process was changing the tyres.
Now you can see how a person can be really efficient at changing tyres, but not very effective, simply because they changed the wrong tyres.