Business Systems

The reason most small business fail is for two simple reasons:

1. Not enough money to start with (starting a business isn’t cheap)
2. Poor systems

Success or Failure

There are really two kinds of business, those who are successful, and those that aren’t in business any more. I can tell you the first year or so is really tough! Working mad hours, working like a mad man, and missing out on social time, and even having 5 minutes to yourself! I’ve just reached that plateau now where I’m able to take the weekend off, and not have to worry too much about work, and I can tell you, it make the last two years worth all the effort!

One of the most important things I setup when I started my business was simple systems to get things done. I was a shift manager at two McDonald’s Restaurants, where I learnt how to manage people within my first 6 months of becoming a manager, took on stock ordering, and stock management. By the time I left McDonald’s just under 2 years of being a manager (you’ll have to forgive me I’m a Gen Yer and it’s not in our nature to stick around too long [there is a bit more to the story (not in a bad way) but that's for another day]) I had completed two McDonald’s Management Training Courses, was capable of managing 20+ people on a shift, ordering stock twice a week, and managing stock levels, as well as stock counting. I was also learning the basics of scheduling staff. Funnily enough managing 20+ people during a shift was relatively easy thinking about it now. I used to have awesome staff who could give awesome service very consistently. (Sorry I’ve gone off track a bit, but it helps to know where I’m coming from).

So building systems in small business seems like a stupid thing to do for most people and I know why. See when you’re doing everything yourself (sound familiar?) you just get on doing it, and you tweak your process as you go along, then you forget what you did when you re-visit a particular task again because it was last month you did it, so you end up re-learning how to complete it most efficiently (AGAIN!). See, you manage to work out a lot of fast ways of doing things, over and over again, but never seem to feel like you’re doing it efficiently each time. So by coming up with a system of doing a particular job you can refer to it (even if it’s not written down - I’ll get to that shortly), you save time because you’ve worked out the best way to do it, every time, and without fail. Back the the McDonald’s thing… Making a hamburger is easy right, and there are 1000’s of ways to do it, but McDonald’s found the fastest way to making a burger every time, and they created a system to do it. McDonald’s is all about systems, which is really just a set of instructions for completing a set task. Everything mundane, or easy to stuff up can be systemized. A system isn’t supposed to make something impersonal, it’s supposed to make a task as efficient as possible. An example is probably necessary.

Processing the Mail

1. Check the mailbox (or postbox)
2. Open (and sort) all mail, discarding envelope

Pass it on

So you have your own little systems which are working well for your business, and things are really starting to pick up now! You get your first employee, or someone who does work for you on a contract basis. This means you’ll need to teach them some of your systems (probably not the accounting ones :P) If you have them documented, that’s great, but more likely than not you don’t at this stage. Teaching (and enforcing - this is important, and I’ll get there shortly) you systems to someone else is easy, because you’ve got them in place for yourself, it’s easy to teach someone else your systems for doing a set task. It’s important to make sure (by means of follow-up), that your staff are following your systems and not inventing their own ‘better way’. (Side note: employees think they’re smarter than you, and that your systems are slow ways to do things - of course you know better, because you’re tried it about 100 different ways, right?). So now they’re doing things your way, or using your system, things should be very smooth, and more profitable of course.

Successful Systems

So now you’ve got your first person, and business is booming… Amazing how easy a couple of systems make life easier, and with less stress. Your systems are important for your business, and they simplify task, and really add value to your business. I guarantee if you ask any small business owner who looks successful, or doing really well, they’ll tell you they have systems in place, and I would put money on it, they wouldn’t run their business any other way.

Now there are a couple of important notes… your systems should be reviewed, and your employees do like to try… but you need to see if their method is really smarter, or if they’re just taking shortcuts (I hear you laughing now, or screaming!). As your business changes, you’ll add, and delete parts of your whole systems, this is important, as your business will change, and will be a different beast than it was when you started, you need to keep it fresh. I have a simple rule, if things are stale, and you can’t get the fresh again quickly (say a few months), it’s probably time to get out (you need an exit plan - probably another post), because things will turn sour really fast (I’ve seen it before, and there is no shame getting out while the getting is good, and hopefully you’ve planned for that day too - again another post entry!).

I think that’s about all. Dinner time is up… another system… chew, swallow