I’ve written quite a bit on using leverage to grow your business. Leverage has a root word — lever. A lever is a simple machine that relies on a fulcrum to multiply input which increases output. One critical area you can use leverage in your business is in creating processes.
As a small business leader, one of your primary responsibilities is as a manager. A good manager is someone who defines systems that allow you to scale what you do. In fact this is so important that I believe the quality of your product or service is dependent on the quality of your systems.
Over the years, I’ve read lots of books on how to create systems in a business. I get all jazzed about setting up new systems, and then immediately some curveball gets thrown my way which crashes my nicely defined process and I get discouraged. I don’t think I’m unique in this problem. I’ve seen this happen to even the most stable businesses.
The truth is that we all have unplanned circumstances that mess up our plans. When this has happened to me, it’s been easy to fall down the trap of believing that my business is too unique or custom to have a process. This just simply isn’t true. Every business has curveballs thrown at it every day. But that doesn’t mean you can’t create and manage processes in your business to plan for this reality.
While I recognize my need to create systems in my business, I’ve found that there are hurdles to overcome that limit my ability to implement them. Hurdles like variances in process or bad documentation or employee ownership. I’ve created a series of how-to articles to give you some direction on overcoming these hurdles in order to better implement systems.
Over the next couple of days, I’m going to be posting these articles. I hope you enjoy them and use them in your business!
