Systemising Your Business

When I read the E-myth by Michael Gerber and later when I discovered Work the System by Sam Carpenter I understood exactly what they meant.

I had seen the result of a non systemised and unorganised business and how it negatively affected the lives of the people running it. Only I didn’t realise what the problem was until I read these books.

I put it down to lack of experience of the owner, or lack of management skills when in truth these things wouldn‘t have mattered half as much as they did if they had systemised their businesses.

I helped systemise a business for the first time in 2005 and learnt a lot about how to do it and how not to do it. I learnt that a system needs…

Creating – the starting point is the development of a system that will allow you to overcome what needs doing, provide what the customer wants and do it in the best possible way. So you need to create a system.

Measuring – once you’ve created a system you can only know if it is the best system by measuring the results of the system, so you must measure how the system performs.

Consistent Implementation – the system must be implemented so that it is done the same way every time.

I also learnt these truths:

• When an employee starts is the best time to implement a system. Having a documented system on day one and asking them to follow it is far easier than imposing a change on an existing employee.
• When a employee leaves, if the system is properly documented, it’s a lot easier for someone else to take over the system
• A system can’t be in someone’s head, otherwise when they’re ill or leave, you have no system and your business is people dependant.
• In designing a system it helps to specify the result you want and draw the system in a flow chart as well as documenting it. The flow chart helps to ensure you don’t miss out any stages.

I also learnt there are different types of systems…

1. Hard Systems – such as your signs, your computer, etc. Changing a sign, computer, etc can improve the performance.

2. Soft Systems – the way you do things, such as a selling system.

3. Information systems – that provide the information against which you can benchmark in order to compare and adopt best practice. For example, if you know 80% of your sales come from 20% of your people, you want to try to replicate the system that they are following.

Since 2005 I have developed an approach to developing systems for businesses, this approach starts with my systems development questionnaire which uncovers all the things you need to make your system. Then it goes on to help you develop your businesses systems

Systems development is included in our Business Adviser Package and is also available as a standalone service.