Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 – What are Systems and Why do You Need Them?

Chapter 2 – A General Outline to Creating Systems

There are basically five steps to integrating systems into your business.

• Recognize your systems. Chances are you’ve already discovered the best way to do a number of things that relate to your business. The first step to making them into systems is by realizing that you have them and that they can be worked on to make them better.
• Examine each system in turn.
• Tweak your existing systems. Now that you recognise your systems for what they are, you might be surprised to find some very obvious ways in which they can be improved.
• Document your systems. This makes it easier to recognize mistakes, to improve the systems when they’re faced with new challenges, and to share them with your employees.
• Maintain your systems. Keep adjusting and tweaking until your systems are just right.

We will go through the creation of three different forms of systems based on the five points above:

• The Big Picture System – Where and how you want to steer your business year by year. As the top dog in your company, this is one that you must write solely by yourself (unless you have partners of course). Then you can share it with employees for feedback. These are the overall goals your business will work toward.
• The Decision System – The principles by which you will make decisions, big and small, that affect your business. Think of this being akin to a country’s constitution. This system is based largely on your ideal version of your business – when customers sing your praises to their friends what do you want them to say?
• The Day-by-Day System – Your daily workflow. This is how you change your business from one that reacts to mistakes into one that is (virtually) mistake-proof. Think of the Day-to-Day system as your assembly line where the real work gets done – first we do A, then B, then C. If D arises, then we hop over to E. You’re going to eventually create one for every type of work process that you encounter in your business. So perhaps one for sales, one for customer complaints, one for filing, and so on. This is one you can share with all your employees – they’re the ones that are going to know the various jobs best after all. This approach also has the added bonus effect of making your people feel emotionally invested in your company – they had input in creating your business’ backbone.

There is one main action you have to take in order to create effective systems – take a step back. Look at your business as a whole and the individual workflows from a bird’s-eye view.

If you’re caught up in the midst of a workflow you’re going to have a much harder time recognising problems. So look at your systems from the view of a project engineer and not as the worker who tightens the screws or drives the transport trucks.

To be continued, look for your next BOSS email……

Introduction

You’re working killer hours but you’re not making much money.

You keep making the same mistakes over and over again.

You’re just plain stressed out.

Creating your own business is a labour of love to be sure, but it’s also a seemingly endless source of overwhelming anxiety. No matter how many hours you put in you never seem to pull ahead far enough to where you’re able to take a breath, never mind actually enjoying the fruits of said labours.

This book is going to help you reduce stress, recognize and fix errors, and overall help you feel like you own your business instead of the other way around.

How? By showing you the power of setting up systems.

Once you codify how your business works best (including how you should, or should not, respond to mistakes) you’re going to find that:

• You feel like you’re finally in control.
• You’re getting ahead of your mistakes and that you’re no longer making the same errors over and over again.
• You’re more focused on what needs to be done to grow your company instead of merely treading water just to stay afloat.
• You’re working less but making more money.

The systems you’re going to set up will act as maps for you and your employees to follow. You’ll have ongoing procedures and emergencies down to a fine art, and you’ll be better prepared for the next unexpected event.

You might even have some fun.

Ready to take control of your business? Then let’s get started.

Chapter 1 – What are Systems and Why Do You Need Them?

First of all, let’s define what we mean by a “system”.

A system is where every step of a procedure is clearly defined and documented.

In other words, it’s the recipe of the business world. Let’s say you’re the one handling customer complaints for your business. But you get sick one day and can’t come in. The queries and complaints don’t get sick though, and they keep arriving at their usual pace.

If you haven’t laid out a recipe for success when dealing with those complaints then none of your employees are going to help resolve the situation with your customers. They’re not going to know how big of a refund they’re allowed to make. They’re not going to know if they’re allowed to substitute a newer model of widget for the older model that the customer has in their possession. At worst, they’re not going to know that there’s any sort of complaints email address or database at all.

Without you there dealing with the complaints they are going to back up. Customers will feel snubbed and they will leave you, and thanks to social media they’re going to let all of their friends and colleagues know that you dropped the ball.

But with a documented system in place your employees will know both who should take over handling the complaints in your absence and how much leeway they have in making a customer happy.

In addition, you’re going to have any easier time recognizing where your workflow needs help. If you’ve categorised how (for example) a client’s file moves through your system, you’ll be able to see the exact point that the file’s work gets bogged down. This is much harder to do if you approach your work in an undocumented and haphazard fashion.

A third benefit is that, now that you’re able to recognise and shore up your internal workflow, you’ll no longer have to roll up your sleeves and jump in very much, if at all, because there are few if any more emergencies. This will free up big chunks of time that allow you to get back to steering your company from the top down.

Last, your employees want to do good work for you. Too many businesses try to get ahead by doing exactly what they shouldn’t be doing – putting obstacles in the way of good employees that includes confusion and a lack of guidelines. Systems enable your employees to do what they want most to do – turn in a good day’s work. If employees don’t know how to make you happy… well, they won’t.

Every action you take in your business is one piece of a system. Every system comes together to make a whole – your business. The better your systems are the better your business will be.

To be continued..