Hey, let’s talk systems here real quick.
What Is A System For A Business?
So, first of all “what is a system to me?” A system is a probability machine.
That means that if you follow the system, then the end result should fairly reliably be the same thing.
How Can I Tell If I Have Good Systems In Place For My Business?
Now how can you actually measure the quality of a system to see how good it is? Well, that’s how often that the end result comes out like you expect.
So a system that results in about 10 percent of the time getting what you hope is not super great. One that’s 70% of the time is looking a lot better. And so that number fluctuates for how strong a system is.
How Robust Are The Systems You Have Set Up For Your Business?
On top of that, you have to think about when you add stress to a system how robust is it? How much can it handle that extra workload?
And this is where a lot of entrepreneurs really get caught up.
When you’re kind of new and it’s maybe just you, the way that you can manage things when you don’t have too much on your plate isn’t as hard. And so you know you can spend a lot of energy to focus on something. And that means the systems don’t have to be super robust.
Whenever you add some more clients on top (so that your mental bandwidth gets decreased per client) that system, if it’s not robust enough, will really start to crumble.
You know, one example is, let’s say you have a meeting with a potential new client in the morning. Now when you’re earlier on maybe you have some extra time and energy to prepare and think about that. As you get busier and busier maybe it’s much more you just run through your things and show up at that meeting.
Now an idea of a system that might make that meeting more successful is
- making sure you get to bed at a decent hour the night before,
- not checking your social media or your phone so you’re not split off on a different pathway the day of (you can actually be focused in the present in that meeting),
- possibly preparing in advance some sort of structure for how you would like to present your offering.
All of those systems increase the likelihood that the meeting goes well.
Notice, there’s no guarantee the meeting goes perfectly. It just is a higher percentage probability.
The Two Types Of Business Systems
And here’s also where i kind of talk about there’s kind of two different types of systems.
1.) One is the systems and processes (the SOP’s of business)
Those are the ones you sort of follow almost like checklist style.
- I do this
- I do this
- I do this
- and then I have this output
Those tend to be very very cut and dry.
2.) There’s this more “softer” side of systems though in which you’re having to account for a lot more of your own humanity.
An example of this is, let’s say that once a month you would like to get your business financials up to date in QuickBooks.
Now, this is super important to do. It’s really important to know where you stand, to have a monthly profit and loss statement to evaluate your actual progress,s and how you’re moving month to month.
And if you just set that goal, the chances of it actually happening are almost zero. The reason being is that there are systems that you must put in place.
One of those systems is actually scheduling a specific time when you’re going to do that work. It doesn’t just happen that you get to match your transactions to the right categories and go through everything. You have to actually have some dedicated time blocked aside.
Now, beyond that, the next level of robustness is the day that you schedule that, not scheduling other really brainiac intensive work.
You know you probably shouldn’t be working on like a compliance manual for your business or reading over legal documents and then diving into trying to do QuickBooks, because your brain is going to be oversaturated with that detail-oriented work.
You know, having a casual meeting or a networking event and then doing QuickBooks might be a lot better fit.
But now, if you’re extremely introverted and networking events leave you extremely drained, then possibly that’s a bad fit so it’s really personalized and accounts for the human nature.
You Are NOT A Robot
So often, I see people try to set up systems that rely on them being a robot. And then whenever they fail they feel that they’re the failure and not actually the way that the system was structured.
And this also chains back into a previous video I did on Trick Candles (to help identify areas that flare up in your system as places and opportunities where you can make changes to have improvements).
So let’s start thinking about whenever you have hoped for an outcome and it hasn’t happened…
What was the actual likelihood that that outcome would have happened?
And what small tweaks and adjustments could you have done along the way to make that system more robust and increase the chances of getting what you wanted?
Good luck!
