How to Speed Up Your Company’s Progress
BySales take longer expected. New employees, software and equipment all take too long to get up to speed. Isn’t that your experience?
To speed up your progress, install more systems.
One client followed this advice when he hired his last two employees. He had the old and new employees write down everything you need to know to do the jobs well. Checklist, systems, schedules and so on. One of the new employees suddenly needs to leave, but their documented systems will help his next hire get up and running in days – not weeks or months.
Your company’s systems are like a railroad track. Make them solid, clear and straight and your business will speed along.
Here are five steps for developing solid systems:
1. Write your outcomes. What will be different once this system is up and running? Focus on results, not activities.
2. Write out the steps. What must be done to move from A to B? WHO will be responsible for doing WHAT by WHEN?
3. Where’s the danger? Look at each step and ask yourself “What could go wrong here?” Think ahead and identify all the possible problems.
4. Add preventives; things you can do to prevent those problems. Add contingencies in case the problem crops up anyway.
5. Monitor your progress. Who will be making sure things are “on track?” How often? I what manner?
The biggest reason companies don’t do this is because they fool themselves into believing they don’t have time. A second reason is they don’t have a process like this to follow. So here’s a gift in the form of a more detailed template you can use for systematizing, and speeding up, almost any area of your business. Go to www.DovGordon.biz/systems.html to get it.
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2 Comments
September 15th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Your comments seem so obvious but so essential in making all information seamless. When we bring on client we start with objectives and then develop a detailed work plan with who is responsible and deadlines plus all the steps needed to complete the task. After it’s done, we evaluate and reevaluate how to do it better and faster for the next assignment. Systems are great as a framework but it’s also important to be flexible as well because new opportunities come up and we must be responsive to them too. The professional is always working this fine balance.
September 15th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Hi Esther,
Yes. And as simple as it is, it’s often not done, for any number of reasons.
Someone read this article and remarked “I wish we had a simple approach like this back when I worked in BIG COMPANY. Instead we went in circles and reinvented things all the time.”
When you’re in the forest, it’s hard to see the trees. So even clients of mine who KNOW this process and they KNOW the other structures I teach (now free at http://www.DovGordon.biz/7minutes.html) often find themselves a bit “out of sorts.”
Since they have the foundation, I can quickly show them where they are “on the map.” This helps them see their situation clearly and know what to do next.
Dov Gordon