Seven simple steps to develop better business systems

A business with good systems is more efficient, more profitable and ultimately more valuable. But where do you begin? Most people don’t know where to start when looking at systems development. It’s hardly surprising: they were never taught where to start.

A recent article by Judith Lerner, Business Coach with E-Myth Worldwide, explains how to go about it.

E-Myth breaks a business down into seven major areas for management attention:

•  Leadership
•  Money
•  Management
•  Client fulfillment
•  Lead conversion
•  Lead generation
•  Marketing

Each area, taken in isolation, is a combination of little systems that work together.

One key point is how to approach the scope of the systems development project, and the other is how to begin it.

Have you ever seen one of those Magic Eye books or images? They’re pictures that, when you first look at them, appear normal: two-dimensional, colourful images of, say, a field of flowers. But when you hold the page up to your face and slowly extend your arms, focusing through (rather than at) the picture, a shift occurs.

Instead of the field of flowers, a three-dimensional image appears. Suddenly you’re looking at a labyrinth. As long as you hold on to that longer view, you can move your eyes and follow the maze.

As with any optical illusion, until you learn the trick, you can only see it one way.

Beginning your system development is a similar process of forcing your brain to see things differently. It starts with that acute awareness that the Technician, the Manager and the Entrepreneurial mindsets operate in distinctly different dimensions.

So, which perspective is required when thinking about the development of the financial management system?

All three have a part to play, but only one could effectively do the system development work.

Where to start

To build any major system in your business, start at the top with the result you’re seeking.

Ask the repeating question: “What do I need in order to get this result?” Keep asking until you get to the smallest parts. This is the managerial work.

Then, once you’ve identified those parts, create those systems and work your way back up. This is the tactical work.

It might help to imagine the trunk of a tree, with your repeating question leading you out along a network of branches that in turn lead to networks of twigs.

As you get out to the thinnest twigs, you’re getting down to the simplest parts of your larger system. You’re identifying the smallest essential components that contribute to the larger result you want.

What you find out there on those thinnest twigs are what we call ‘end systems’.

Maybe it doesn’t seem very dramatic to begin your financial system development by making sure you have a system for, say, capturing and recording your source documents, but only with that and other routine but essential end systems in place will you have a complete and robust financial system.

Having the little parts in place provides the nourishment that supports the larger, ultimate results.

Seven steps

Now that you know where to start, you can continue the process by implementing these easy steps.

1. Get to know the different voices of your Technician, Manager and Entrepreneur.

2. Recognise how your perception is altered, attention shifts, and priorities are reordered by which hat you are wearing.

3. Identify a system you think you need.

4. Using a spreadsheet, mind map, white board or blank sheet of paper (whatever you use to capture and save your thoughts), start with the name of that major system at the centre.

5. Keep asking, capturing the progressively smaller components with each of your responses.

6. Arrange all your captured responses in their logical, linear order – largest to smallest.

7. Start your system development by designing from the bottom up.

Your end systems will dependably feed each next larger assembly until you’ve reached the top.

For the full article, go to E-Myth. Do let me know how you get on.