Developing Organizational Systems for Better Efficiency

by Carmen

 

Have you ever felt like your business will stop the day you don’t show up?  This happens to almost all entrepreneurs at first.  Sometimes it’s because entrepreneurs begin by filling every function their business has to offer, from answering the phones to actually making the product.  The business actually winds up getting limited by the number of hours the entrepreneur is capable of putting in.  Unless something changes, the business stops growing.  It also begins to resemble a job—something the entrepreneur absolutely cannot escape from.

 

This is usually the point where the entrepreneur hires his or her first employee—but often, this doesn’t solve the problem.  The entrepreneur gets caught up in trying to make sure the employee does things “right.”

 

Systems Are the Answer

 

A system is a specified way of doing things, and it can apply to every single part of your business.  You can develop the “best way” to answer the phones, and then you can write that way down in the form of a script.  From then on out, anyone who answers the phone need only observe the script to answer the phones just like you would.  If the employee leaves the company, the next employee just needs to stick to the script.  There can be scripts for sales presentations.  There can be specific instructions for marketing. These instructions can be as simple as noting that blog posts are written every Monday, direct mailers go out once a month, and follow-up calls happen every Thursday.

 

As you develop more and more systems you free yourself more and more.  You can turn your attention away from performing each function of your business.  Instead, you can work on finding other people to perform those functions.  You can verify they are following your systems, and then you can work on more systems.  This is what working “on” your business, instead of “in” your business, is all about.

 

Systems Give Your Business More Value

 

When someone buys a franchise they aren’t just buying a brand name—they are buying the specific systems that led to the franchise’s success.  Systems are the exact reason why McDonalds is such as success—most McDonald’s franchises runs exactly the way every other McDonalds does, regardless of who owns or manages any individual branch.  If you develop systems for your company you are opening up the possibility of turning your company into a franchise, creating a lucrative opportunity for your future.

 

If you’re not interested in franchising, you should know that you may be interested in selling your business one day.  Having systems in place, all carefully recorded in an operations manual, will make your business far more valuable.  A lack of systems means you’re really just selling “FFE”—furniture, fixtures, and equipment—as well as, perhaps, a location.  Offering systems means you’re selling a turn-key business that has been a proven success.  The latter is worth a lot more money, meaning you’ll enjoy a much higher return on your hard work and creativity than you might otherwise have.

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