When ego needs to step aside and systems need to come into play.
Find your failures…
I heard a successful entrepreneur say recently that the key to his success was a simple one, “find failure points, and fix them”.
This notion is really simple I know, but when was the last time you looked for your failures? It is too easy to focus on what is good and find new ways or ignore the mistakes. When in fact if we faced those failure points head on, we could fix them and make our business and our lives that much more successful and fulfilling.
Most people in business run a hobby or they find themselves now shackled to their once hobby. Something you were so passionate about in the beginning becomes a struggle and you wonder how on earth your business, your baby, become such a chore.
The answer, just like we mentioned above, is simple. You are lacking systems and failing to fix problems. When we start out we ride the wave of passion and enthusiasm, willingly taking on all the roles and responsibilities, but if we want to go from that place to opening up more of our bandwidth, more of our energy, we need to create systems around what we used to do and instinctively know how to do (because it is our business after all), so that others can come in and take over with ease.
This process of building systems will allow for expansion and growth of your business, it will increase the salability of your business and give you more time to do the things you want to like holidays or spending more time with the family.
So we’ve said it enough and you get it! It is time to build systems and here are my 5 steps to doing just that.
1. Find a problem.
- be specific and identify real problems in your business, empower your team, the people who actually do it to find and tell you where the issues are.
2. Start with the end in mind.
- work back from the problem that you want to fix and find all the steps needed to amend it. Working blindly towards an issue will make it harder to see what’s wrong. In doing this you need to identify the exact points that need doing or implementing. Essentially here you are creating a checklist to get a job done.
3. Fill in the details.
- now do through that checklist and fill in all the details, and I mean ALL the details that need doing to accomplish each point. This is so that anyone can complete the task, with or without you.
4. Review and simplify.
- it is key here that the review process is done with those who will actually be doing the task, ask them to identify pain points or elements of the system that will ‘not work’ or cause issues. Once you have these, change the system to adapt to their pain points.
5. Run the system and monitor results.
- just because you have created the system and consulted all who use it, does not mean it will work. You now have to be prepared to fail. Yes, the first way to really test a new system is live, be prepared for it to fail and if it does, go back to step one.
There you have it, creating systems is simple, it is laborious but it is worth it. If you really want to reach your potential and achieve what you know you can, there comes a point when ego needs to step aside and systems need to come into play.
With love
Tom