How To Build Systems In Your Business

One of the first things Kev asked himself back in 2015 was: "How are big businesses, organisations and cooperations able to operate at scale?" "How are they able to have genuinely 10s of thousands of employees?"

It was one of the questions, which really made Kev get thinking about, if one day he had a business which is operating at scale, how is this actually going to be achievable? And one of the things Kev started to really think about was, when he starts to hire one team member, he can spend time with that member, and he can help that team member develop, grow, teach, learn and develop their expertise and their experience and competence. But, what happens if he then has 10 team members? Is Kev going to be able to spend all the time and hours trying to teach individuals and team members on how to do a specific task. And that's when Kev learnt the biggest takeaway, which I am going to share with you in this blog post. This is, we as business owners and entrepreneurs, we don't manage people, we manage systems, and it is systems which manage people. 

Don't mistake this as becoming robotic, you still want to have core values and represent, and you want to develop a culture within your business, which looks after people, but at the same time, if you are going to scale to whatever level you want, you have got to start developing systems, specifically if you want to start hiring 10, 20, 30, 40, 100 or even 1000 people. 

These are some great takeaways Kev got, from reading some great books like, Work the System, E-myth Revisited, and how you become and transition to a business owner. Then Kev started to think about how he wanted to develop a system...Well, how do you do that? How can we develop a system? If I said to you right now, if you wanted to operate at scale, just start developing systems in your business. And you might then start to think, how do you develop systems? What makes up a system? What are the components of a system? 

The more weeks that went on, Kev developed The Perfect System, and Kev put this into a workbook. If you want to go check this out, then definitely do so, as this will be massively beneficial to you. 

Here is the link if you are interested: https://www.systemise.us/affiliates

In this book, Kev got it down to 3 core stages in developing systems, and I am going to share them with you now. 

If you think about cogs in a machine, if one cog isn't connected to the other, they don't work. So, you have to develop all of these micro cogs, which fits everything together, so it freely turns everything and doesn't get jammed up of things.

The fundamental of a system, Kev has got it down to 3 stages. 

1. Trigger

A system which you develop has to be triggered by something. 

3. Outcome

You want to achieve an outcome. A system gets triggered, and you are then very clear of what your outcome is. Then, by knowing these two, you know very clearly what your outcome is and what you are trying to achieve. 

2. Process 

Any system which you have developed in your business, if you think about it in your business right now, this is what you are doing - something has triggered you, you know what your outcome is, and you are developing a process to achieve the outcome. 

Now, let's start to break this down a little more

How does this apply in real life? What kind of triggers are there in a business? There are many types of triggers. When you think from a frequency-based trigger, it could be something which you have to do daily. It could be a critical task that you have to do daily.

Frequency Type Triggers  

For example, the health of your account, checking your financials, checking your emails, whatever it might be, whatever system you have, there is some frequency type trigger. Daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, anything from accounting to team development, appraisals to VAT returns, it has been triggered by a frequency.  

So, you have frequency type triggers.

Operational Type Triggers

You also have operational type triggers. What are these? These are things like an email to come in, important emails which have hit your inbox which needs an action straight away, because the outcome could have a negative impact on your business.

This could be the phone ringing. The phone started ringing, it has triggered you, you have picked up the phone, and someone says that this needs to be done by the end of the day. All of a sudden, you have got an outcome and you are starting to think, that you need to take action on this. Or it could be something like in our business, in our warehouse, we have got an eCommerce warehouse, as an overview of our warehouse, we have got an inbound, our inbound is our trigger, our outbound, our shipping, is the outcome, and inside the warehouse, we have got a process which we need to develop.

Think about it from this point of view, when you are trying to develop systems in your business, think about it from a trigger point of view, a process point of view and outcome point of view. 

This then starts to really break this down into where you have to get really clear on what you are trying to achieve, and whatever your outcome is, and I am going to give you the eCommerce example, because we ship here in this warehouse. 

If you think about it, our goal is for our products in the inbound to be shipped as quickly and efficiently as possible, with the quality control that we need in our business for all the products. So therefore, we are in control of this particular process, this is the actual internals of the warehouse. By knowing what your outcome is, our outcome is, how can we ship as fast as possible as quality controlled as possible, how can we ensure that our process is as straight-lined as possible. 

The goal of any system ultimately is, how can you achieve maximum efficiency. 

What makes maximum efficiency? Well, maximum efficiency can be broken down into multiple components, too. So you start to think that all lines to shipping all achieve the same outcome, but there are some key components - they didn't all have the same amount of time. 

Then, you think, what is time? The difference is going to be a cost. If you have the ability to straight-line to maximum efficiency, you are also going to save cost, too.

Time = money.

You have got the upkeep of your warehouse, you have got your tools, you have got your staff members to pay and more. How you know if you have the maximum efficiency, is you are going to have to have that outcome in mind. 

If you are thinking about maximum efficiency and the 3 components involved in that. You have the time, cost and the outcome. 

So, how do you achieve maximum efficiency? It is going to be right in the middle. 

If you are developing a system, and you want to achieve maximum efficiency of your systems, then you have got to do it in the shortest amount of time, but that time still needs to achieve your outcome. It doesn't matter how long you have taken as long as you have achieved your outcome, but then the cost has to play in, because it doesn't mean that you have had the maximum efficiency in cost. 

It can take you as long as you want to achieve your outcome, but it has cost you 100x more money and more cost, so therefore, it's not maximum efficiency. 

Whenever you are developing a system, and you really start to brainstorm this in your own business, and you can split up. From operational, sales and marketing and accounting. Think about triggers, processes, system outcomes, and then maximum efficiency. They are really the key components to how you can start to develop systems.

Triggers, everything from operational triggers, frequency type triggers, and outcomes could be the sales you have had from a marketing point of view, generating leads, the revenue that you want in your business, and then the process - whatever process that you develop to achieve the outcome based off of that trigger, has to be from maximum efficiency. 

Any time that Kev is thinking about developing at kind of system, whether that is around the warehouse, whether its our operational team, our management team, any issue that occurs, anything where we failed or something's not working right, Kev is always thinking that he needs a system in place for this. 

What's our trigger, that needs to start the system? What's our outcome, what is our goal? And what is the process at the maximum efficiency? And by thinking of it in this way, you can start to develop systems in your business at a fundamental level.  

Further reading:

8 Considerations If you Are Going to Quit Your Job for Your Business

5 Hard Truths Why People Fail with Online Business