Transcription
To build Business Systems using the advice that you see all over YouTube will take you hours to implement. But if you use the tactics inside this video, you can systemize any part of your business in 35 minutes or less. I know this because unlike the general business gurus weighing in a process all over YouTube, I'm an actual process consultant. I've been specialized in this work for the last 7 years and worked with over 1,000 small businesses to systemize their operations.
I'll be boiling this all down to six steps. But to get us started, let's review the traditional approach to Building Systems. You can spot the difference. And of course, you can't really make fun of traditional Business Consultants unless you use a bad PowerPoint template with clip art.
Step one of the traditional approach for Building Systems is to make a diagram of everything your business does. You might hear people use value stream mapping or a business model canvas. Whatever method they choose to use, it will be convoluted, big picture, and often in a one-time diagram. Something you'll create once, forget all about, and throw back in your drawer.
Step two of the corporate approach would be to then zoom in, pick an area of your value stream map for your business model canvas, and figure out all of the steps involved in doing that thing. This will typically involve you using some kind of proprietary whiteboarding software, using specific icons with specific meanings to map out every single doodad and gizmo that you might have in order to do whatever the thing is you're trying to do. In my experience, small businesses will have anywhere from 200 to 500 things you do, AKA 200 to 500 processes. When you're done learning how to process map and creating a process map, you'll have a diagram of what you do that's so complicated that no one else on your team but you understands what it's for.
But that's okay, because in the next step, you are going to grab your hands, put them on a keyboard, and type out instructions for everything you just already put on that map. But don't worry, this is definitely more intense than just a copy and paste exercise because this is when you want to start creating work instructions. These instructions spell out piece by piece by piece every step you need to do to accomplish a process. So, for example, your process might be sending an invoice. Your work instruction will tell you every single step you need to click on and open and review in order to send that invoice. In the traditional approach, work instructions will typically be a 15 to 30 page long Word document that will take you anywhere from 90 minutes to 3 hours to create. And you'll need at least one of these for every one of those 300 processes in your business. Are you starting to see the problem now?
Once you've documented your process so thoroughly with such detailed instructions that you basically want to call it your Mona Lisa, go grab a stranger or a small child and have them try to use those instructions. Our goal is to have instructions so clear, even a small child could follow the steps to achieve the desired outcome. If you have failed, which is the normal expectation, and your work instructions do not work for your 5-year-old, uh, you need to go back and fix this system. You're going to keep working and working on perfecting those work instructions until anybody can follow them, and then you're finally done and can get back to your actual job.
This traditional approach is not wrong. In fact, at a very basic level, this is what you're going to see consulting companies do for the Fortune 100. It's what you're still going to hear taught in MBA programs. I think that's also why you'll hear so many business gurus go on YouTube and talk about this approach as if it's revolutionary because it happens to be what they learned inside their MBA program back in the 80s. But here's the thing: we are not in an MBA program. We're in the real world. Most businesses out there are small businesses, like yours, like mine. We don't have time to kill. So I think it's time we acknowledge that even though the traditional business system approach might be what you learned inside a textbook, it's not what actually works in the real world. So we need to stop treating it as if it does.
So what's the better way? Let's head over to the whiteboard and find out.
Step one of this new way is to pick a needy area. Yeah, I know. I told you this was going to be simpler. To identify the needy areas in your business, you can go through a 32-step prioritization exercise. It all... I can't even keep a straight face. Did I get you? Did you believe we had a 32-step exercise for this? Little... don't be so gullible. We're trying to keep this simple. Uh, pick a needy area of your business. So what I'm talking about with needy is, I want you to think about a part of your business that is generating value. You know it's valuable, there's no doubt, and it is a giant pain in your ass. Okay? So for one reason or another, it hurts right now, and you know it can generate a lot of value for stakeholders. Some common examples of needy areas to start with would be things like onboarding, delivering your service, the sales conversations that happen before onboarding, uh, maybe your content marketing. You just want to make sure you're picking something that you know will have a ton of value for your business, but something about it isn't quite working right now, and it's kind of painful.
Now, this is the beauty of small teams. In a bigger corporate environment, you might need a 30-step exercise to be able to go through this. But in contrast, I'm guessing small team operators like you could probably name the neediest part of your business in about 30 seconds. You know what else just takes seconds? Liking and subscribing this video. Just a funny coincidence there.
To translate this into process jargon, these areas are going to be called your systems. Now, once we've picked out our needy area, AKA a system, we're ready to move on to the next step, which is when we're going to pick out our needy activity. Basically, what I want you to do is think about the system you identified in step one and start to figure out the actual actions that happen to make that system hum. For example, if our system was focused on how we deliver trophies for our sign shop, pretend that looks like a trophy with a little bottom on it. God, that's so bad. If our system is how we deliver these orders, the question would be, what activities, what actions happen to make this possible? So, in the case of the sign shop, it might be ordering the parts, it might be designing the plaque, it could be engraving the plaque, assembling the pieces, putting it in a box. These are all activities that happen within the area that we're focused on. Make sense? Okay, good.
Cuz I'm going to throw one more piece of jargon at you. If you figured out these activities, what you've really figured out are what business geeks will call processes. And what I want you to do now is, when thinking of all of these activities, which of these hurts the most and has the potential for giving the most value? Okay, so you see some parallels here. We're prioritizing every step of the way. In the case of this trophy shop, my most painful but most valuable activity is around ordering. I know that's an area I want to focus on, and if I just make it a little bit better, it'll feel a whole lot better because of that. I'm going to focus on step, step two, for my process, gave my activity for ordering materials.
For step three, we're going to start clarifying actions words, defining tasks. Another way to think about tasks is defining what is happening, when is it happening, and who is in charge of it. Okay, what, when, and who. It is normal to have many tasks for each process or many actions for each activity. So, if we're focused on ordering materials, we might have a task of checking all upcoming orders. We might have a task of calling our suppliers. We might have a task of checking in on the status of new shipments. We might have a task of receiving orders that came in to make sure there's no shortages or overages. All of these tasks fit in under this activity. While doing the step, I would suggest that you write out as many tasks, AKA what, when, who's, as you can. So we might have task one here, task two here, test three here. There could be a few of them. Write them all down so you have this information.
For step four, by the way, it's really hard to talk about process without talking about task because this is where all of your processes come to life. If you'd like me to go deeper on task management and create some more videos about managing capacity, due dates, or prioritization for a small team, uh, write the word "task" in the comments below. That will act as a vote to let me know you'd like to see more content like that. But for now, I will spare you that nerdy tangent I was about to take us on and let's move on to the next step, which is talking about delegation.
Now, just having this step in place with systems, processes, and tasks, you have already built a business system. News flash: it's this simple. Tasks are usually the step that most people leave out, but this is the real trigger that allows this whole thing to work because now we have a cadence, a reminder, a frequency for when we want to check in on these things and make sure they move smoothly. But just having a system isn't the same as building a business that can run without you because ultimately, who's in charge of these systems? If you're like most people, the answer is, is you. And you know what? Having a business system that only you can run is kind of like having a Netflix account and not sharing your password with all of your family members. It's just not the best way to do it. So what we want to do instead is add on a few additional steps here where we're not just building the system because you've already done that, we want to start delegating the system so it's not your problem anymore.
So to demonstrate that sharing is caring, in step four, we are going to assign an area. So up here at the very top, these systems we defined, we want to give that responsibility to somebody else on your team. And by the way, if you have a very junior level team and you don't think they can handle responsibility of an entire system, you can also delegate an activity, AKA a process. Either way, we want to start giving away everything we defined in number one and number two. To connect this back to business jargon, we would call this creating roles.
But Leila, what if I don't have a team? In that case, congratulations. Your team now consists of two people: you today, and you in the future. Make you in the future happier by doing this step yourself. Yeah, when we're assigning areas of ownership, we're including three things in that. The person responsible is going to be in charge of all the tasks in that area. They might not be directly doing them all, but they're responsible for making sure they all get done. They're also in charge of improving that area, making it better over time. And any mistakes that come up in that area, it is the responsibility of that assigned person.
Now, this concept of delegating ownership of a system can really trip people up. So I want to give you a metaphor to help it sink in. Think of your systems and processes as little babies, okay? They're babies you have that you have to take care of. If you were to do like most people do and you just delegate tasks, you hire a freelancer, you have a VA, you delegate things here or there, that's like getting your baby a babysitter. They'll do the bare minimum. They'll keep everyone alive, hopefully. And when you come back, nothing's really different than what it was before. You got what you need to get done, done, and nothing more. That is what task delegation is. And if you have a team of only freelancers, sure, that's where you're going to be. But for the rest of you who are building a company, who build a team, who have employees, we want to delegate areas. And unlike hiring a babysitter just to fill in for a few hours, assigning areas is like giving your child, your baby, in this case, a mentor. Kind of like the spoiled princes in those fantasy movies. We want to give your baby process someone to guide it through its growth, not only now and in the short term, but in its evolution over the future. That way, just like the absentee parents inside the fantasy novels, you can come back and check on your prince in five years, and it'll be grown up better than you expected, and hopefully not want to kill you. Okay, that's not a good joke.
When we're assigning ownership, we're looking at not only getting tasks done, that's a given. We also want to see improvements and mistakes handled with that person in charge. So for step five, we want this assigned person to start capturing our method. In other words, how we do what we do. You might hear me call this SOPs, standard operating procedures, or recipes. But there are so many different tools that fall under this toolbox. This might be things like templates to show how we send emails. This could be work instructions, which are basically just SOPs but super detailed. This could include examples of how you do what you do so people can get inspired. This could include software. This could include AI and so on and so on and so on. All we want to do here is start capturing how we do what we do, gather all those tools in one place. So that way, if your assigned person is out sick, changes jobs, gets hit by a bus, this all doesn't end up back on your plate. That is what step five is about, and it's the responsibility of your assigned person.
So if we add up the time estimates for each of these steps, we have a grand total of 35 minutes or less in order to systemize one area of your business. And here's where the real magic happens because unlike the traditional approach, doing this one section of your business at a time, and we're prioritizing in the first two steps, when you get through this in 35 minutes, you will immediately start getting the benefit. So if I go through this the first time and I fix the biggest problem I'm having, which could be ordering materials, it takes me 35 minutes. But if ordering materials takes me about 30 minutes a week, I'm going to make my time back almost in one week, and all weeks after that, it's just going to get easier and easier cuz I'm getting a better return on my investment. Then I can use that time I saved to reinvest in fixing another process, which will also save me more than 35 minutes a week. If you did this piece by piece for each area of your business and kept reinvesting the time you were saving, your business would be unrecognizable in six months. Meanwhile, the traditional approach will still be working on their process maps.
But earlier in this video, we talked about writing work instructions as these 15 to 30 page documents. How could you possibly write these in 15 minutes or less? Well, I've already taught this method to over 2,000 companies, and my personal average using this framework is about 12 minutes per SOP. Don't take my word for it, though. Try it yourself, and remember to enjoy the process.