Does Your Business Work Without You?
During the festive time or during holiday breaks, you want to take time off to be with your families and friends. Are you able to take long holidays without comprising on your Revenue?
I guess, NO!
And that is why you should change the way you are approaching your business and hopefully, this will make you think about it. If you look at ActionCOACH definition of a real business,
A commercial, Profitable, Enterprise that works without you!
Now, before we look at HOW we get there, let’s first understand WHY?
If you have built a business around you, if you have to BE there, then you haven’t built a business, you have built a Job because it doesn’t run without you and if you have built a job, you haven’t built an asset. Eventually, we all build a business to build an Asset.
Now, let’s look at how can you build a business that works without you?
Through Systemising Your Business
Effective systems can save you and your team both time, money and frustration. The basic rule for systemizing is “Systemise the routine – humanize the exception”. Anything that can’t be systemised needs to be run by people.
Remember…
- Systems run your business…
- People run your systems…
- You lead your people…
When determining, where to start systemizing, Ask yourself…
- What are you doing on a regular basis that a lower-paid team member could be doing if it were systemized?
Systemise it, hand it over to the lower-paid team member and spend your time on higher-level activities – remember, the goal is to work on your business.
- Is there anything you hate doing which could be done by a lower-paid person if it were systemized?
Systemise it and hand it over.
Some Final tips…
- Don’t overcomplicate systems or people won’t follow them. Simplify everything!
- Have a checklist. Use a lot of photos, videos, tapes etc. This may be as simple as printing a computer screen or videoing someone doing the task at hand. This will make the systems much easier to follow.
- Document your systems in a policies and procedure or operations manual in an easy to access format.
- Allow the system to evolve as your business changes and grows.
When you build the business that works for you, it makes your life so much easier. Every system you put in place should save you anywhere from 5, 10 or 20 minutes a day or week and the more systems you put in play, obviously the less work you will eventually do and you put yourself out of a job, that’s the whole idea when you’re the owner of the business. The idea is to build the business up so that it runs with or without you and that’s what the system is all about.
The other important aspect is leverage. By developing a system, checklist, video or whatever methodology you are using, creating it one time and then people can follow it forever to do their tasks systematically, so the Systems run your business and People run your systems.
Systemization is very important to learn to run your business without you. We have a systems checklist covering the following aspects of the business:
- Daily Office Operation System
- Product Development
- Manufacturing and Inventory
- Order Processing and Tracking
- Invoicing and Accounts receivable
- Customer Service
- Accounts Payable
- Sales and Marketing
- People and Education
- General Accounting
- General Corporate
- Physical Space Management
Let us know if you need the checklist or advice on how to systemise your business, our business growth specialist, Anu Khanna will be very happy to help you.
