A while ago, we mapped out a customer journey for one of our clients. (We map it out on a roll of brown paper, looking at all of the touch-points that the customer has with the team, and who is involved at each point.) Their journey was about twenty-five feet of brown paper long, and so confusing that my head hurt when we’d finished. 

The sales team were involved from start to finish of this journey; I’m surprised they ever had time to sell! The customer had to speak to four different people in order to do business with the team. Supporting the journey there were four teams, all over-lapping in terms of the roles they were performing, and all doing things in a very different way. 

What had happened was what happens a lot in successful small businesses. Maybe it’s happening to you. They had started small; the owner and three trusted team members all of whom were very clear about their role and very focused on it. Communication was tight, everyone knew what everyone else was doing and the larger business picture. They quickly became successful and with the success came a bigger team, and an even bigger team, until very soon they were a team of thirty. 

With such rapid growth ‘the way we do things around here’ had become confused, as each of the four original team members gave new people their version of what the operating processes were. Then those people trained others their way and so on until chaos reigned. As a consequence, their service and delivery times were poor, they’d lost consistency and they were losing staff almost as quickly as they could hire them. 

Our job was to work with the team to unravel the Customer Journey (always easier when you’re not in the thick of it), to look for the simplest route for the customer, and the most logical way to support their journey. And then with them, to develop the ‘one right way’ to do everything. To regain consistency from the chaos and to restore the company as ‘easy to do business with’ and a great place to work.

It’s easy over time particularly when you’re growing quickly to lose the one right way and that tight system of communication. Having those things in place at the beginning of your business, having the one right way, the ‘How To’ for each task and solid lines of communication embedded in your business gives you reliable foundations for growth. And the one right way isn’t stagnant. If someone comes up with a better way of doing things or technology allows an improvement then that becomes the new one right way and gets trained in using a new How To. 

Regularly reviewing your Customer Journey will ensure you’ve not added hoops for your customer to jump through as your business has evolved.

Do two things: 
1. Think about your Customer Journey; view it through your Customers’ eyes through each tiny step right from: 

• thinking about a product or service
• to choosing you, 
• to recommending you to others for great service. 

          - How simple does it look? 
          - How many feet of brown paper will you need?

2. Take your daily routines and start to develop ‘the one right way’ (your How Tos) with your team. Start laying those solid foundations for consistency and growth.

Thanks for reading :)

Many people I speak to can see the benefits of a systemised business. ‘Look at McDonald’s; look at Amazon,’ they say, ‘every really successful business is systemised, absolutely…there’s no getting away from it.’

But when it comes down to their own business you can see them coming out in a rash. The thought of systemising their business is just too overwhelming…

’I don’t have time’

‘I can’t afford it’

‘Systems are just a luxury’

I’ve heard them all.

The reality is that we all already have systems in our business; we all do things! But if the way we do things is not simple, logical and repeatable then we are wasting time and money and not achieving what every Customer (and every business owner) wants – consistency!  We’re spending time checking, correcting, complaining, working in our business not on it.

What I’m saying is that we have a choice, either:
a. do things haphazardly, with each team member doing things their way, reinventing the wheel every time a task is done, little being done the way you want it to be or

b. do every task in your business, in a simple, logical, repeatable way.

For me it’s a no brainer.

The question is not, ‘Can I afford to systemise my business?’ but ‘Can I afford not to?’

And the reality is, it’s really not the huge, overwhelming, expensive task you think it is.

You decide you’re going to do it, you start small, with your most routine, every day tasks and you ask three key questions:


1. ‘Is this task simple?’ 
Could anyone walking in off the street, (if it’s a basic task), or with the necessary technical knowledge (if it’s a specialist task) follow the steps to complete it?


2. ‘Is this task logical?’ 
Does the way we do it make sense? Can I answer the question, ‘why do we do it this way?’


3. ‘Is this task repeatable?’ 
Can it be done in the same way every time? Can I train people to do it this way?


A good system is simply a uniform and consistent way of doing things that makes your life easier.  If a system doesn’t make life easier – for you, your team, or your customer, then it’s the wrong system.

There aren’t five different ways to cook fries at McDonald’s; there is one way. There aren’t seven different ways to open up the restaurant and get everything set up for the day, there is one way. Everybody at McDonald’s at every level, knows ‘the way we do things around here’ and everything that is done, is simple, logical and repeatable.

Contrary to what they might tell you, McDonald’s franchisees have a great life. They have freedom to choose when they’ll work and when they won’t; when they’ll go to the golf course, or on holiday, or simply stay in bed. They have that freedom because their business has systems, because everybody that works in their business knows exactly the way things work, so they can trust their team to perform consistently every single day.

Freedom, Trust and Consistency – business nirvana!

And the only difference between them and you, is that they have effective systems.

So what are you going to do about it?

Do one thing: Draw a line in the sand and take small simple steps towards a more consistent and profitable business:

• make a list of your routine, daily, weekly and monthly tasks
• make a plan to take just one of those tasks each week and ask yourself if it’s simple, logical and repeatable as outlined above
• then make it so. Involve your team to make this an even more powerful exercise

Do that every week, and you’ll have 52 systems in your business this time next year! 
Thanks for reading.

A skunk as you know is something that stinks, and nearly all businesses have them. No, I’m not talking about issues with personal hygiene - your skunks are in your operation, your customer journey, your hiring.

So what does a skunk look like?
It looks like something that isn’t adding value to your business and may be actively detracting from it:

• an unnecessary hoop for the Customer to jump through
• an extra step/procedure which is adding cost and time but no value
• a process which has outlived its usefulness
• reinventing the wheel and waste in general
• a bottleneck

Imagine that you’ve only got one person trained on an aspect of your business and you haven’t got what they do recorded, as a How To, a system which anyone could follow. What happens when this person is sick or on holiday? Things don’t get done or not done to the standard you expect. Often it’s the business owner who has struggled to delegate, not willing to give up ‘their’ tasks for fear of losing control. 
I smell a skunk!

Say for example you had a problem with quality, so you added a layer of checking and that’s continued for several years. But you’ve never reviewed it since, to see if it’s still necessary. Quality has improved so you’ve left well alone. But what if the problem was fixed at source through recruitment, training or development and the checker has not found a problem in twelve months? It’s wasting time and money and robbing people of taking pride in their work. It’s a skunk.

Waste really stinks and it’s the little things that collectively can reek. When was the last time you found yourself asking, ‘Has anyone seen the xxx?’ Who was last to use the xxx I can’t find it anywhere?’ Or think of a time you couldn’t go straight to a file you were after online.

‘A place for everything and everything in its place.’ 

I love the factory idea of a place for everything and a picture of what should be there. (I imagine its what a Japanese garage looks like rather than my own!)

Waste also occurs when we reinvent the wheel; I know I’ve been guilty of it. You know those tasks you do infrequently where you think, ‘How the devil did I do this last time?’  And you waste time going round the houses to get it done. And you’re saying to yourself I really must make a note of this for next time but then you’re so relieved it’s done and your to do list is so long…. so it’s left till next time and round you go again.

How often have you added a step in a procedure without really getting down to the root cause of the problem. That sort of analysis and investigation takes a bit of time and you’re after a quick fix so you just throw money at it. But unless you’re lucky, meddling isn’t fixing. Similarly automating a process without first streamlining it can simply automate inefficiency. 

Have you ever recruited someone because they weren’t exactly who you were after but they were the best of the bunch and it was an expensive process? How has that worked out? They might have worked out well but if not, how expensive has that been to your business? 

As a customer just think of the last time you were infuriated by the hoops you had to jump through to get service. My pet one is telling someone your tale of woe having queued for twenty minutes on the phone only to be told that someone else has to help you and you’re back in the queue again and then having to re-tell the story… You feel yourself losing the will to live and, unless it’s a service or product you really want, you just walk away.

Solutions for skunks
I know it’s tempting to just kill a skunk when you spot one, and a quick fix will work for some skunks. But if you route one out at the beginning of a process it may have a knock on effect down the line. 

What you need is that helicopter view of your whole business, starting with a ‘warts and all’ look at your Customer Journey.  Working through the journey from start to end, ideally with your team, will show you the inefficiencies, the blocks and the weaknesses; you’ll be able to see how something at the beginning of the journey is causing a problem further down the line; or how you are a block at a crucial point.

With the whole picture in front of you, you can then make a plan to kill off your skunks, one by one.
Your business will never have smelled so good!

Do one thing: Take the Systems Scorecard and find out where the skunks may be lurking in your business.