Organise

Some years ago, ı was joint owner of Planet 13, a rock ’n’ rollinspired clothing store. It was a fun but incredibly hard business to be involved in.

If you’ve ever operated a retail store, you’ll know what I mean. Every month, even before you make a single sale, you’ve got to fork out for rent and wages. The overheads are sky-high, and you need to make a truckload of sales just to reach break-even.

Fortunately, I was working with some smart partners, and from day one our goal was more than just selling T-shirts. We were building the business with the view to sell it as a franchise. Our first store was the prototype – it was our opportunity to create, test and measure. We honed our business and developed a manual that detailed every step of how to run a successful store.

As we grew, we opened a second store, kept improving our systems and stepped out of working ‘in’ the store. We grew some more, hired staff, moved to our head office, built out our wholesaling arm and prepared to sell our first franchise.

I remember that part of the journey vividly because this was a key part of my role.

When it came time to sell the first franchise, I was selling our winning business model. I was selling our step-by-step systems, ‘our way of doing things’. They weren’t stored in fancy software, no wikis or cloud-based solutions – all of our systems were printed and stored in a simple binder. We had one manual for the team members in the store and one manual for the store owner. It was simple and it worked.

And you know what was most exciting? This was an asset we created out of thin air, and one that could then be sold many times over.

The money is in the systems¶

This burned a valuable lesson in my brain: extraordinary leverage is created any time you create something that can be sold more than once with minimal additional work.

It sounds obvious when I say it, but who wouldn’t want to do work once and continue to get paid for it over and over?

I’ll save the rest of the Planet 13 story for another day – I’ll tell you about the shopping centre that tried to sabotage us by letting our competition open up three doors down from us, how we got caught in the global financial crisis and all the other sordid details … but for now, to cut a long story short, while Planet 13 isn’t around to this day, the lessons I learnt in the school of hard knocks will stay with me for a lifetime.

This might be outside your comfort zone, and maybe you’re not ready to hear it, but it is my belief that you should always be building your business with the idea that one day you will sell it. If you decide to sell all of it, part of it, or not at all, obviously that’s up to you, but one thing is for sure: building it with the idea of eventually selling it ensures you build it on solid foundations.

Systems-run businesses are always worth more¶

You probably already intuitively know this to be true, but there are a range of reasons why. Most obviously this is because systems-run businesses function without key person dependency. They work without the business owner or any specific team member being essential to their operation. They’re more efficient, more reliable and scalable.

Systems give the potential acquirer confidence that the business will continue to perform well after the sale. Your systems are the blueprint to your successfully run business, and they’re worth their weight in gold. If you store your systems in the cloud, then they’re worth their storage space in gold.

I personally believe that systems are the most important asset within your business. If you want to argue that the people are more important, I’ll challenge your point, reminding you that, like it or not, people come and go.

No single employee, at any level, should be so critical to a business that they’re irreplaceable. In fact, if you have someone in your business who IS irreplaceable, you have a big problem. Because what happens if that person gets sick, or someone in their family does, or, worse, they get hit by a bus? You’re in trouble.

Systems, on the other hand, are the only assets that will stick with you through thick and thin, that can serve your business for decades and can even be replicated within new future ventures. They will be your library of solutions to common business problems, no matter what business you’re working in or on.

I know you’re already sold on the idea of systems, so no doubt I’m preaching to the converted, but the reason I’m labouring the point is to ensure we’re both on the same page. The money is in your systems.

I know of one enterprising businessman who has built and sold his plumbing business twenty-one times to date. Each time he builds it quicker and better than the previous and sells it for higher and higher valuations. He starts by purchasing a failing plumbing business, then deploys his team and they install his systems to turn things around. At last count he sold his most recent company for tens of millions of dollars.

That’s leverage and pure genius if you ask me.

Where do you store your most valuable asset?¶

Does your team know where to look to find your systems, or are they scattered across your shared drive, in folders on your team members’ desktops or dumped in unorganised folders in your Dropbox account? You probably need a better plan than that, and that’s what this chapter is all about. Let’s look at how you will organise your systems and how you will create responsibility and accountability.

It’s also time to break a few of the old misconceptions around what your systems manuals will look like.

The old ideas of printing out big, thick manuals and sitting them on a shelf to collect dust are obsolete. But similarly, the idea that you’ll need complex enterprise-level software with built-in learning management systems (LMS) using SCORM is also flawed. All these thoughts are holding you back.

Start with simple¶

Yes, the times have moved on since my Planet 13 days and while the tools may have changed, simplicity has remained.

The fact is, if you can never master the simple, you’ll never master the complex. So before looking at all the bells and whistles, automated solutions and new, shiny objects, let’s agree to keep things simple.

There really are only two tools we need to get right.

1. You need a central location where all your business systems are stored. Getting this right gives you and your team certainty around how tasks are successfully completed.

2. You need a way to create accountability and hold your team to the standards you have de fined. This ensures you get the performance you desire.

Now, there’s a chance you already have both these covered – it might just be you need a little tweaking to ensure you’re using these tools correctly.

Without thinking about all of the tools and software you currently use (accounting, CRM, marketing automation, proposals, etc.), I just want to focus on two tools and what I believe you need to build a truly successful systems-centred business.

1. Systems management software
2. Project management software

Systems management software is where your systems are going to be stored so they can be easily accessed by you and your entire team. It will become the ‘how-to’ manual for everything in your business: every role, every task, documented and centrally stored.

Then there’s project management software (sometimes referred to as task management or jobs management), which acts as an accountability and management tool. The goal of this software is to track all of your projects and ensure that every team member knows the tasks they should be working on and when they’re due. This also gets all your team communication, relating to any project, out of your email and into a central location.

This is so important, let me say it more clearly. Stop using email to manage your jobs and stop your team from communicating via email. With email, tasks get forgotten, details get overlooked and due dates get missed. And to be clear, I don’t hate email; it’s an amazing tool, it’s just horrible for project management.

When you stop and think about it for a moment, you already know this to be true. Have you ever tried to give someone a task via email only to have it forgotten ’til weeks later when you ask, “Hey, did you ever get XZY done?”. The other person looks at you sheepishly and says, “Whoops, sorry, I forgot about that” or, worse, they have no idea what you’re talking about. This is all too common when you’re trying to run projects via email. Communication is key – fix your team communications and you’ll solve 80 per cent of your problems. Great project management software goes a long way to getting things on track.

The magic pair¶

Together, these two tools (systems management and project management software) allow tasks to be assigned with clear, easily accessible instructions that leave no room for confusion. Your team will be crystal clear on what needs to be done and where to look for the answers if they’re not sure about something. This will dramatically improve your team’s efficiency and eliminate excuses.

For micro-teams (or very small businesses) there’s a chance you can get away with just the systems management software. However, as you grow past more than a few team members, you’ll quickly realise it’s one thing to have systems, but it’s another getting your team to follow them.

If someone is new to a task, they’ll most likely follow your system diligently on the first few occasions, but it won’t be long before they feel comfortable enough that they’ll stop referring to it. And that goes double for the knowledgeable workers who helped create the system. Moreover, it’s also probably unrealistic – and unnecessary – to ask your employees to reread the entire system every time they complete their tasks.

That’s where your project management software steps in. They may not always read the system, but you can insist that they check off the key steps in the process as they go along. The secret to ensuring your business develops a culture where systems are not just created, but actually used, is to introduce some level of accountability.

Use project management software to create milestones or checkpoints for the tasks that your team has to check off as they go along. The checkpoints for a task can be templated so, once set up, it’s a snap to duplicate. And if you use the documented steps as a guide to creating checkpoints, the hard work has already been done. The end result is a uniformity of results that reduces errors and waste to a bare minimum.

Even better, for recovering micromanagers like myself, it’s reassuring to know that, just because you’re extracting yourself from your business, it doesn’t mean you have to completely lose touch with what’s happening on the frontline. When properly organised, you can use these tools to jump back into your business at any time and quickly get up to speed, even if your attention has been elsewhere for months.

A word of caution¶

Before I take you through the rest of this chapter, if you already have your systems management and project management software selected and they’re working for you, there’s no need to switch!

No one piece of software is going to magically solve all your problems and, ultimately, it doesn’t matter so much which tools you use. The key is just to have something to meet each of these two key areas.

If your current software stack isn’t working for you, you’re going to need to weigh up your options, since there’s a chance you’re missing one or more of the key criteria I’m going to outline. You need to decide if it’s worth the effort of moving and learning new software or if it’s easier to find a workaround with your existing tools.

Either way, for the rest of this chapter, I’m going to assume you DON’T currently have a solution.

I’ve also separated the discussion of the criteria into two categories – project management software and systems management software – because I would advise NOT combining the two. It’s not that integrated solutions don’t exist, it’s that combining the two tends to come with compromises and unnecessary complexity.

I’ll explain more as we get into things. In short, trust me, keep your systems management and your project management isolated and you’ll reduce the likelihood of needing to switch software further down the road. You’ll also set yourself up in the best possible position should you decide to sell your business at some point. A stitch in time here will save you nine.

Project management software¶

Let’s start with project management software since there’s more of a chance you already have something in place. Project management software is designed to cover the ‘who does what, by when’ aspect of task management.

There is a range of non-industry specific tools out there, including Asana, Basecamp, Trello, Podio, Teamwork, Monday and many more. And then there are the tools optimised for specific industries.

Be mindful of the latter group because these can sometimes be overoptimised for specific tasks at the expense of important departments within your business. For example, some software packages built for trades-based businesses focus exclusively on the scheduling and delivery side of your business. While this is important, it can be frustrating when you realise you need more than one platform to manage all the other departments within your business.

That said, depending on your business, its industry, the size of your team and what you do internally versus outsourcing, you may need one or more of these specialised platforms to function efficiently. For our purposes, project management software should be able to sit at the top level. It should cover all departments and set clear accountability for the actual doing of any work.

If you haven’t yet found a project management tool, here are a few criteria to look out for:

• Basic task creation
• Sub-task creation
• Task descriptions and links
• Task list templates or duplication
• Permission levels and project visibility

✅ Intuitive and easy to use¶

Let’s look at each of these in more detail.

✅ Basic task creation¶

At a minimum, your chosen software should allow you to:

• Create a task
• Assign the task to a team member
• Tag other team members who need to receive updates on the progress
• Set deadlines for when the task needs to be completed

To be honest, you’d be really hard-pressed to find a project management software that doesn’t have these basic features. These are the fundamentals of good project management. But don’t assume – check that these fundamentals are in place.

✅ Sub-task creation¶

Again, this is a pretty standard feature, but it’s critical so be sure it’s available. You need to be able to split individual tasks into a series of subtasks based on the required steps in the documented systems that you’ve created. These sub-tasks should also allow for assigning – it’s this feature that will allow you to create true accountability in your team.

Sub-tasks are ticked off as the team member completes steps, which also allows you to ensure projects are progressing as planned and gives a place for comments and questions where they arise.

✅ Task descriptions and links¶

It’s always helpful to be able to add notes and links directly into a task. Although it sounds obvious, some highly specialised software applications are so streamlined they don’t allow for this.

I also consider this critical because one of the secrets to making your newly documented systems work is having them handy, right where the team member is getting information about the task they’ve been assigned. That is to say, you literally want to post the link to the step-by-step system at the point at which the task is assigned.

This is important for two reasons. First, it helps team members who are new to the task to quickly understand the steps required, and second, it clearly sets expectations. Your team will come to learn that by marking a task as complete, they are effectively agreeing that they have completed it to the standard outlined in the system.

This helps immensely with compliance and removes the “but I didn’t know” excuse (more on this later).

✅ Task list templates or duplication¶

Given that the systems you create will typically be for tasks that are repeated often, it’s a huge time-saver if you can set up new tasks from a template. This feature typically works by allowing you to create a new task from a previously created template, containing the standard description, subtasks and links. Then it’s just a case of modifying any specifics, such as the assigned team member and the deadlines.

Duplicating previously created or completed tasks is also fine, as long as the standard elements remain the same and the details can be modified as required.

✅ Permission levels and project visibility¶

Depending on the size of your business and the nature of your work, this might not be strictly necessary, but permission levels can be useful to limit what team members can and can’t access.

A department head, for instance, might have the ability to create and assign tasks, whereas a regular team member might only be able to access and comment on tasks to which they’ve been assigned.

There are obvious security benefits to this feature, such as preventing individual team members from seeing what other colleagues are working on or keeping certain client details confidential. But this feature can also be used to make the software easier for your team to use. With restrictions, you can make it so team members only see the tasks that they’ve been assigned and literally nothing else. This gives clear focus.

✅ Intuitive and easy to use¶

Due to the wide variety of variables between companies, industries and situations, it’s easy for project management software to quickly become overcomplicated. Just remember the key criteria I’ve outlined here and avoid chasing the latest and greatest shiny feature.

Unneeded features create complexity, complexity creates friction and friction lowers adoption.

There’s nothing wrong with a broad feature set in itself, especially if you know that you’ll have use for many of the extras. But an intuitive platform that can be mastered quickly is far more important.

Remember, it’s going to be your whole team who uses this program, and not everyone may be tech-savvy. If the platform is awkward to use, difficult to learn or even just slow when navigating from one page to the next, it’s only a matter of time before your team starts looking for ways to limit their need to use it.

You don’t want to find yourself in a situation where people only log in to the project management software once per day, right before they finish for the day, just to tick off everything. This destroys the core benefit of project management software, which is to get your team to use the systems and to record their progress as they’re doing their work.

Making the final decision¶

Before making the final decision on which project management software to use, put together a small focus group to test it out. Help them understand that the purpose of this platform is to make their job easier and get them to run a few projects and tasks through the platform, asking for their feedback.

Don’t expect ringing endorsements from everyone, but listen to the feedback and carefully consider any criticisms before you make your choice.

A word on automation¶

I love automation as much as the next guy. Who wouldn’t want the robots doing the work? But before you start setting up automatic triggers that fire once the previous step is complete or before you hook up Zapier to automatically fire a zap every time someone sneezes, let me suggest you try ‘human automation’ first. What’s human automation, I hear you ask?

It’s how Google approaches things – you know, only the biggest tech company in the world. It would be easy to think that Google would jump straight to automation when improving their search engine results. Of course they would rely on the machine to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to calculating things, right?

This isn’t the case. Instead, Google’s search team first identifies something they would like to improve. They then create a hypothesis and supporting documentation (a system) to test. Then the testing begins with thousands of manual testers, testing the results of the change. Google wants to fully test their hypothesis with human oversight before fully automating the system. This all takes place long before it is fully codified and then incorporated into the search algorithm.

So what’s the lesson here? Think like Google. Do it manually first, perfect it and then automate it. This applies to all things in business! There’s no point automating something ’til you’re sure it’s worth automating.

Systems management software¶

It’s more common for a company to have project management software or job management software than systems management software, which speaks directly to the primary reason so many businesses have trouble with their systems and processes.

Where do you think most companies store their systems?¶

They’re often scattered all over the place – they’re on people’s desktops, some are in Dropbox, others are in Google Drive or SharePoint, some are stored in Microsoft Word and others in text files. Some have wikis, WordPress plugins or even Google Sites.

The point is, if they’re everywhere, that really means they’re nowhere.

Systems management software solves this by creating a central location for all your systems and processes – it’s the home of your most important business asset. Systems management software is purpose-built to make this whole process of business documentation easy and fun.

So how do you find a platform that’s right for you? Here’s my buying criteria.

• Dedicated systems management software
• Attaching rich media
• Permission levels
• Sign off
• Intuitive and easy to use

✅ Dedicated systems management software¶

My first tip is to avoid storing your systems in document management or file storage platforms (like Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, SharePoint, etc.); these quickly evolve into an unorganised mess of random folders, files and inconsistency.

Similarly, avoid wiki-style platforms that requires coding, HTML or special knowledge to use. Any platform with a steep learning curve or one that will primarily rely on only a handful of team members keeping it up to date is doomed to fail. To build a systems culture, you want your whole team to ‘buy in’ and use it.

You’re looking for software that has been designed with the explicit purpose of creating, editing and managing your systems. If it handles your company policies and other training, that’s a bonus. Yes, it’s possible to hack other solutions together but this typically comes with compromises. Remember, your systems management software will house the most important asset in your business.

✅ Attaching rich media¶

When it comes to building your systems, you need all associated resources in one place. From spreadsheets, to images, to audios, to email templates, to videos, to flowcharts, to any other file types that can’t be added through regular text, it’s best if you can embed those directly into your systems.

For example, your original extraction videos should be embedded directly to the relevant system. The software might require you to first upload the video to a sharing site, such as YouTube or Vimeo, before you can embed the video, and this is perfectly fine as long as it can be streamed directly from the systems documentation page without having to go to an external site or having to download the video.

The key is to have everything in one place.

✅ Permission levels¶

It’s critical to have varying levels of access. Not all systems will be relevant or, for security reasons, need to be seen by everyone. You need to be able to assign systems to roles and then those roles to individuals, thereby limiting what they can and can’t see and edit.

This particular feature also allows for quick and easy reassigning of roles and associated systems when team members are moving up or on. This one is a biggie and often where non-dedicated platforms fall short.

✅ Sign off¶

Another handy feature and one of the secrets to compliance is to remove the possibility of a team member saying “I didn’t know.” Team members simply sign off and agree that they have read and understood a system. Be sure your systems management software has this feature.

✅ Intuitive and easy to use¶

Similar to my recommendation for your project management software, but perhaps even more critical here, is ease of use. Good systems management software should require almost zero staff training to get everyone up to speed. It should look and work in a way with which team members are already familiar.

Avoid excessive, often unnecessary, features that also overlap with the goal of your project management software. While automated workflows, active checklists, data collection, etc., all sound great, most of these features should live inside your project management software which manages the ‘who does what, by when’.

Rather than making decisions based on “Oh, wouldn’t that be cool” or “That looks like a great feature”, always come back to the primary purpose of the tool.

Systems management software is where your systems are stored so they can be easily accessed by you and your entire team.

Project management software tracks all of your projects, ensuring that every team member knows what tasks they should be working on and when they’re due.

Together, these two components are vital to your success in building a systems-centred business.

Software sorted – what’s next?¶

Time to make these platforms your own…

Step #1: Customise your project management software.

I’m going to keep these next two steps super short since it’ll be hard to give you direction other than the basics – this will depend heavily on your business, your team and the software you have selected.

That said, within your project management software, begin by setting up a workspace for each of your different departments identified (sales, marketing, operations, finance, human resources and management). Underneath the relevant departments, create tasks to match those identified in your Critical Client Flow and assign the knowledgeable workers related to them.

Step #2: Customise your systems management software.

Within your systems management platform, create folders (one for each of your identified departments, and sub-folders to help further organise things) and begin importing the systems you’ve created in early chapters. Assign those systems to their knowledgeable workers, grab the links to each system and post them in your project management software next to their corresponding tasks.

Don’t worry if you can’t visualise this just yet! It’s always easier when you see how someone else has done it. Watch a short video showing you how your project management and systems management software work together – it’s inside the resources here: www.SYSTEMology.com/resources.

Final word on software¶

To ensure this book stands the test of time, rather than recommending specific software we use by name, I decided to focus on the key considerations when making your decision. As I said right from the start, no software alone will be the silver bullet. See www.SYSTEMology.com/resources for current recommendations.

People are often drawn to bright, shiny objects, and while software may appear to be the missing piece that will solve all your systemisation woes, there’s much more to it than a piece of software. Transforming your business into a systems-centred business needs the right software, training, management and culture.

As you progress through SYSTEMology, you will learn how to install all of these vital components.