Systemize Your Business
A simple system to eliminate chaos and build a calm, predictable company
Most small business owners don’t run their business; their business runs them. For years mine ran me. Long hours, constant emergencies, and zero control. It wasn’t until I built real systems that everything changed.
After I wrote the How to Take Control of Your Life article, I realized that a lot of people who like “systems” are small business owners, consultants, creators, knowledge workers or even manage a household and probably could use similar principles to take control of their business. Note: If energy or “open loops” are an issue in your life, read that article, because they certainly apply to business as well.
Now for business, we have a different set of things we can do to take control.
Have a Plan
It’s hard to overstate how important having a simple plan is, not only for your clarity of mind, but to get your team to understand where the company is supposed to go.
Most small businesses have no clear strategy or goals besides the whim of the founder at that time. The founder may have a vision with no clear goals, which will get you nowhere fast. Some founders have plenty of goals with no vision to guide them, which can actually be counterproductive (“chasing squirrels”).
You don’t need a formal 30 page business plan, but you want to have at least some kind of direction mapped out. This can be as simple as one page and just writing it down can give you lots of clarity that you may be missing from day to day.
It should include:
Vision. A clear vision that is well communicated puts the same picture in everyone’s head and can be extremely motivational and clarifying. This lets everyone know the future they’re working towards every day. This doesn’t have to be more than a few paragraphs.
Purpose. Answer this question: Why do you wake up every day and work toward your vision? Who are you serving? Knowing your “why” is incredibly motivational if it inspires you to action.
Core values. What does your company value and what do you stand for? Knowing this will help you differentiate between good and bad decisions.
Goals. Vision and purpose are great, but you need to have concrete, measurable goals, that you work toward. Definitely, you want goals for the year and many great companies have 3, 5 or even 10-year goals for things like product, revenue, profit, etc.
Scoreboard. Can I glance at the plan and know how we’re doing? A well-designed scoreboard (sometimes an electronic dashboard or even manually collected stats) will measure a handful of metrics (revenue, profit, number of leads, etc.) and let you know the status of your goals (usually green, yellow, or red).
Take the time to create your first plan, get it in front of your whole team then refer to it and keep improving it forever. You’ll be amazed how this simple one-page document can radically clarify what needs to get done and simplify how you operate your business.
Centralize Everything
Knowledge
Something like 25% of the average worker’s day is wasted just looking for things or information. How many times a day is your team asking how to do things, “where do we keep ABC”, “who’s our vendor for XYZ”, etc. This is insanity. You need to have a central source of truth where all those things live.
Then, use something like Notion or Coda to make this information accessible to your team in an intranet (private to your company). Things like:
Notices to employees (keeping them out of email)
Team Calendar, Payroll, Time Sheets, PTO requests, Training and Onboarding tools
The Scoreboard so everyone can see how the company is doing
Store your written procedures (see below for more on these) and instructions for updating and writing new ones
Keep marketing and sales information about your products and services
Store handbooks and other policy documents
Maintain contacts, phone and account numbers for vendors and other important contacts
Keep tracking documents like inventory and office supply lists
I can’t tell you how many problems will go away once you centralize all your business information, even if you’re a solopreneur. Then just tell your team “check the intranet” after that to build the habit and stop the constant interruptions. This is especially important if you ever want to step away from or sell your business.
Customer Data, Projects and Tasks
Some businesses are managed chaos. Cindy uses Google tasks, Dave uses Apple Notes, Joe uses a text file, Joanna keeps things in her head. This is not ideal because 1) things can slip through the cracks when someone is off, quits or is fired 2) you have no visibility on what’s being done or worked on in your business.
At the bare minimum, use some kind of shared spreadsheet to track customers, projects and tasks. I’ve seen businesses that still use faxes! There are literally dozens and maybe hundreds of great software solutions. Ideally you have a project management software and a CRM software to manage customers and perhaps a shared email inbox for sales and support. Spend some time researching them for features and price and make sure your team uses them.
Document Your Process and Procedures
I know: we all hate writing SOPs (“standard operating procedures”) but I’m here to tell you 1) writing down just your top procedures (or ones that give you the most hassle) will dramatically improve your business (and make your employees lives easier) and 2) having documented process and procedures is how you add value to your company and make it sellable (or able to be handed off to family, for example).
Written procedures are how you fix a process so it’s done right each time and, more importantly, it’s how you delegate that procedure to someone else so you don’t have to do it anymore. That’s the key here. Imagine having a cleanly written procedure for whatever big process you do, hiring someone and simply sharing that document with them (with a quick walkthrough training or maybe a video).
For more complex businesses you’ll want to document the whole customer journey from awareness (marketing) to sales, ordering, fulfillment and service. This is so you can “hold the whole thing in your head” but also so you can identify bottlenecks, simplifications and opportunities. Use a whiteboard or flowchart software and spend some time doing this to get a much better handle on how your company works.
Get Your Team Straight
Look at what we did above: made a plan, centralized information, centralized tasks, projects, customer data and documented our processes and procedures. Simply doing that is going to do wonders for your team. They’ll know why they work there are where they’re going (plan). They’ll have access to everything without having hunt for it all day or bother anyone (intranet), they’ll have a system that everyone knows and uses to do their work and they’ll have clear procedures so they can be trained right from day one and take over if someone is gone without it being a five alarm emergency.
This is going to make your business a much better, calmer and more predictable place to work at. You and your team are less stressed when things are predictable. Nobody likes working for someone who is scattered and all over the place. Establish a rhythm of regular check-ins, company retreats or events to further tighten this up and make your business a great place to work.
Speaking of that, here are 7 simple things you can do as a business owner to dramatically improve employee retention and happiness (and thus, your happiness):
Remember their birthday (and offer to give it to them off).
Listen to their feedback and ideas (see below).
Offer more time off in general.
Free meals: donuts, lunches, etc.
Minimize meetings and busy work.
Give them some flexibility and perks (if they’ve proven reliable and loyal).
Send a weekly email to everyone letting them know how things are going (put a copy of the scoreboard as a screenshot), what the priority is for the coming week or weeks and thanking individuals (“shout outs”) for great performance.
#6 mostly means if you’ve had a dedicated employee, you should show them the respect of additional benefits and flexibility like leaving early, being able to slip out to take the kids to get a haircut, not rejecting PTO unless absolutely necessary, deferring to them for advice and decisions, making them feel valued and important.
For point #2, you’ll want to maintain a list (on your intranet ideally or it could be an email or form) for employees to submit their ideas, fixes and issues. I’m telling you your business has problems and your employees know what they are. They’re simply not telling you due to fear or no way to do it easily. Let them know the “Issue List” exists and encourage them to use it. Importantly, visibly work on and fix the things they bring up and thank them for bringing them up. You want more ideas and feedback? Reward, don’t punish that feedback! Ask for issues at every team meeting.
On point #5, minimize meetings and busy work, you’ll want to think about your meetings and if they’re truly necessary or could they simply be an email or a post on your intranet home page? Some companies have zero meetings and I think that’s a mistake - you need occasional face time and collaboration, at the least to check in. But many companies have too many meetings and it drives employees crazy. At least make sure each meeting has a written purpose (agenda) and actual results and tasks that come from it at the end. Eliminating busy work should be obvious and you’ll discover that when you write your procedures and analyze them for efficiency. Many times there are complete steps that are unnecessary or were being done for a reason nobody can remember!
Get Rid of Toxic Employees
Finally, having a good team means getting rid of the toxic and underpeformers ASAP. Or sometimes just the people that nobody likes. I’m telling you right now that keeping those bad apples is ruining the rest. It demoralizes the good employees to see that you tolerate the bad ones. Oftentimes some are so toxic they’re holding the whole company back or literally terrorizing and “poisoning” the whole culture.
You probably are already thinking of someone on your team as I write this. Some of the best decisions I’ve ever made were to let someone go, even if I had to scramble for a few weeks to replace them. You can do this nicely and in a very professional manner but get it done soon. Nobody likes doing it but sometimes you have to suck it up, take 1 hour and meet with them, get it over with and then you’re free. Of all the things above, this may have the most dramatic effect on how you perceive your control of your business.
Summary
Taking control of your business isn’t about working longer or hustling. It’s about building systems. Systems allow you to have a more calm business which you and your employees will like much better. The steps are simple:
Have a Plan
Centralize Your Information
Document Your Process and Procedures
Get Your Team Straight
The business owners who do this are calmer yet more effective. If you are a business owner and would like to implement this in your business, visit SmallBizOS where we can do this for you.