How To Systemize Your Business

what's up everybody tim connolly here and i want to show you how to systemize your business in a super simple fashion that'd be super simple systems say that three times fast huh super simple systems super simple systems super simple systems i know there's a lot of training out there that says you need lots of sops super detailed standard operating procedures that cover every imaginable thing that happens inside of your business and i'm gonna tell you having seen behind the scenes of over 500 businesses in the last two decades seeing how they operate and fixing how they operate those procedures they don't ever get used the reason is they over complicate them we want to make using systems easy barely an inconvenience so we only need three things to systemize a business one you need a map of your business a diagram of how it works or how it should work two you'll need flow charts of each of your main systems and three you'll assemble all your tasks into procedures the first thing you should set up is a standard operating document it's kind of the table of contents of all your procedures it covers your mission it covers your purpose it covers the main systems contained within this document then you would outline each department to make sure that you are keeping your sops organized because when sops become this super long list no one will use them if no one knows where to find something it will be easier for them to just do what they think is right than to actually go search out to use the instructions to map your business it needs to cover everything everything from the how you generate customers all the way through to delivering your products and services to customer support and everything in between all the processes that make up your business need to be mapped out so that everyone can understand how this business functions and should function the flow charts to me are one of the most useful parts of systemizing it lets you see where you are and where you're going and all the things you need to do in between when building your flow charts start with the major milestones first what's the one thing for the entire process to work what's the next major milestone that takes you to the next milestone until you have reached the end of the process to make flowcharts really useful you need if this then that statement if something becomes a no then you return back to the beginning of that process until you can get a yes and move on to the next step and you do this throughout the entire process inside of every procedure you have the 5ws sequential checklist video documentation where appropriate and templates the five ws what when who where and why are critical for anyone understanding what they're about to do so what do the w's mean what is the task that's going to be completed what are you going to do and what the outcome should look like when is the start date and time the end date and time and the frequency it needs to be performed who is the job title not an individual person's name you could have that in there it's the position responsible for completing that procedure where is only necessary if there is a location let's say you do in-person workshops and you would need to include where this is occurring and the procedures for actually booking a conference table why is probably the most important part of this it lets people understand the meaning behind the work why should i even do this why is it important to the company why is it important to me the person doing the task when somebody comprehends the why behind a task they're likely to improve it because they'll understand how to make a decision in the best interest of the company i recommend sequential checklists not step-by-step instructions documenting every single step in a procedure may actually be important to the company but the reality is human beings get bored reading all those steps and they skip it and it's incredibly hard to get people to use it over and over again if it's so boring the second problem with step-by-step instructions is what you think are clear instructions usually aren't get two pieces of bread get some peanut butter get some gel open the peanut butter get a butter knife put the butter knife in the peanut butter take the butter knife out of the peanut butter you did it wrong on the other hand checklists are easy to complete actually they help someone complete the task because they're checking things off as they're getting done they understand the progress they see how far they're into the job and how many more steps they have to go and don't tell me your procedures are too complex for a checklist because when i was in the u.s air force i met a 19 year old kid he was a few months older than me and he was working on an f-16 fighter jet and he had a checklist of all the things he had to do when working on that engine i think it was at the time like a 30 million 35 million dollar plane and a 19 year old kid was following a checklist and each time he would do a task he would check it off on his clipboard and then he'd go to the next task check it off until he was done and knowing that he did a perfect job on this plane so it would never fall out of the sky a great way of documenting procedures is through video especially if it's an app if you're using software screen recording how things are done is fantastic but the number one thing you have to remember is to edit them no one wants to sit through a 40 minute ramble fest and waiting for software to load up and and all the delays that come from doing things in real time edit those videos down so they're very quick make them short 5 minutes 10 minutes at most then go to the next video until that procedure is done also use videos sparingly there's no need for you to create a million videos and waste a lot of time making them and waste even more time in the people who would have to watch them where they could be taught the lesson in maybe five minutes if you just showed it to them the next thing your procedures need are templates anything that's going to be repeatable like blog post templates email templates for any kind of follow-up or customer support and even templates for how to make standard operating procedures so that it makes it super easy to create more as you need them now to use your system well you need another system you need a system for ojt a second brain and qa ojt that's on-the-job training that means you show them how to do it then you do it with them then they do it while you watch and then they do it and you review it and then finally they do it on their own and later teach someone else but if you want your system to actually work you need to have a second brain most sops any kind of procedures they collect dust they are not getting used because people forget about them so what you do is you implement simple automation i use calendar events and reminders very easy you can schedule things out for when they need to happen who needs to do them and everyone gets reminded of what they're supposed to do and when they get their calendar event notification or their reminder there will be a link to the standard operating procedure they need to use for that task qa that's quality assurance someone needs to be assigned to review the work of others if you don't make sure that people are following your procedures they will stop following your procedures and there's two reasons for that one systems degrade over time so just because somebody is doing something now over time they're going to stop doing it by little degrees and then the second one is humans are fallible we all make mistakes we all screw up and we all get too busy to pay attention to the things that we're doing and we forget some steps we forget some of the critical elements of what we need to do so you need to have somebody who reviews these periodically so if you've included checklists inside of your sops well then somebody needs to make sure that the checklist was filled out that the person responsible for the task actually followed all the steps necessary to complete that task when you do this it's not about micromanaging it's about a culture of trust but verify making sure everyone does what they say they're going to do and can do and verifying that it was done correctly it will create a culture of competence and the final standard operating procedure you need to follow is to smash that like button subscribe if you haven't already and ring the notification bell so you don't miss out on training like this in the future and i hope to see you in the next video ooh shiny that's kind of peter mckinnon isn't it what's up you

Channel: Tim Conley

Views: 3,756

Keywords:

Id: PLi6kdBnMEQ

Length: 10min 47sec (647 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 29 2021