Going into the office early. Working late. Brand meetings, conventions, lines at the airport, late night cocktail parties, getting up early to get through all the piled up email. Any of these sound familiar? Compared to even a few years ago, would you say spend more or less time in your business, putting out daily fires?
If you are like most business owners, you are working more and more just at the time in your life you want to be working less. So I’ll let you in on a secret. What’s keeping you working all those hours is lack of consistent, repeatable, sustainable systems throughout your company. Systems that once in place, and with competent staff (there’s another system), run smoothly without you. Yes, I said without you.
Free from the daily running of your business, free from those chores that keep you from enjoying life, enjoying your spouse, and frankly, keep you from spending time in vision and planning where your talents are truly needed and most valuable.
The interesting thing to me as I work with companies throughout the nation is that each company’s systems Achilles Heel is different. While one company may have a crackerjack marketing system, another may have virtually none. While one may have a seamless procurement system, another is still manually inputting prices. Even in highly successful companies with strong cash flows and good profits, I always find at least one or two areas that are in disarray from lack of true documented and applied systems.
The easiest way for you to pinpoint where your company may need stronger systems is to ask yourself this question: What are my three biggest business frustrations today? What are the specific frustrations that keep me working long hours and cause my blood pressure to rise just thinking about them? So, stop reading right now and take a minute to jot them down in the margin. If you don’t have a pen handy – get one. It’s important to take this step right now!
As you read what you’ve scribbled in the margin, ask yourself what business system these frustrations belong to within your business. Let me give you some examples:
Frustration: Competitive pressure is tanking our already low margins. System: Inadequate marketing and/or procurement system that stabilizes gross profit when pricing is under competitive pressure. (Note: this frustration could require more than one system to fully solve.)
Frustration: We keep having wild swings in our cash from fuel price volatility. System: No system that matches cash inflows with cash outflows so that business is only minimally impacted by inevitable fuel price swings.
Frustration: Customers who pay us late or not at all. System: Inadequate credit and/or collection system that doesn’t allow a customer to pay late. No system that protects company if customer suddenly gets into cash trouble.
Frustration: We can’t keep good drivers. System: Lack system to attract drivers who won’t job hop, create only high performance drivers, and keep them happy so they won’t want to leave.
So go back to your three frustrations and think in terms of systems. Prioritize the three, select one you will commit to change, and get moving.
But, wait. Stop!
You may just have realized that you really don’t know what system you need otherwise you would have done it! That’s what we discover with our coaching program clients. People comment that they’d never thought to do what we’ve asked them to do. The solution wasn’t in their realm of possibility.
That’s where I get excited. I love to see family business owners discovering sources of cash and profit leaks they didn’t know they had, and then creating better and better systems to plug up those leaks and capture those profits. The Japanese have a term called “Kaizan” which means translated to English is “continuous improvement”. Even if your company already has documented repeatable systems, you can and should be improving and tweaking them over time.
But, the first step for you to cure your three areas of frustration may be documentation, followed by virtually self-running systems — systems that actually prevent all those fires you’ve been putting out daily. Just imagine what your life would be like if you could implement consistent, repeatable, high quality systems throughout your entire organization. Can you envision yourself working “normal” hours, taking an extended vacation without checking email and voicemail?
