Does your business myth out?
Can I suggest you read the ‘E’ Myth by Michael Gerber. The book mentions creating an effective system of operation in your business, doing so can give your business a distinct edge over others who may be throwing caution to the wind without a system of operation. Here’s the link to find the book…
Think about it, you build a business to a certain point and then at some stage in the future you decide to sell it, retire or whatever. How will someone be able to step into your shoes and take it over?
What if you fall ill or you have to take a long earned trip and leave some one else to follow up?
I guess a measure of a businesses effectiveness in the long term could be gauged by this, the handover factor. How long would it take for someone else to take it on and get it up to speed?
Systems are also invaluable to assist the company to build on its strengths. Having a system to work with and ‘tweak’ will give your business the edge against most of your competitors. It can assist you to find loopholes and areas for improvement.
Of course all of this will only work if the staff have an input into it at some stage.
One business I know of spent a few weekends of hard slog by the management team to develop a system to be used by all the staff, before long the staff had let aspects of the new system slip, simple because they did not value it as they had not played a part in developing it. All the time that went into developoing the system went out the window for a while and caused some ’staffing hassles’
A smart organisation is a learning one, and this team learnt the hard way. Ask yourself this, If we could have a better system of operation, what would it be, what would it look like? How would it feel… and how would we include everyone in it so they ‘buy in’ to the process (new team members buy in easily, they have to accept the system as it stands).
In time bringing a new system in to being can be time consuming, so consider how best to implement it. Could it be done section by section? Could the staff be delegated some ‘downtime’ to focus on the developing the systems tasks? All in all, getting the results can be exhausting, however only if you let it. Of course remember planning to do this is half the battle, failing to plan can get you into hot water very quickly.
Checklists and other systems of operation are only going to be useful if they are valued by all that use the system, they can be easily followed by a new employee or business owner, and is set up in a manner that ensures it can be easily, readily and regularly reviewed to ensure it adequately reflects the organisations development. In the end, which would you prefer to buy a businesswith a system or a business without one…
Stumble it!
