■ · Operations
Systems and procedures: make good work repeatable
If the right way to do something lives only in someone's head, the business depends on that person remembering, being there and never leaving. Written systems turn good work into the normal way work gets done. Write it down once, and everyone wins, including you.
Work on the business, not just in it
In The E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber describes owners who spend all their time doing the work and none building the business that does the work. His advice is to build the business as if you were going to copy it many times, like a franchise: every important task documented so anyone trained could do it the same way.
You don't have to franchise anything. But writing down how work gets done is what lets you hire, delegate, take a vacation, use technology and eventually sell.
What's worth documenting first
- Anything done every week or month, like invoicing, the monthly close or payroll.
- Anything that goes to clients, where mistakes are visible.
- Anything only one person knows how to do.
- Anything that has gone wrong before.
■ Find the slowest step
Fix the bottleneck, not everything
Eliyahu Goldratt's business novel The Goal makes a simple point: any process is only as fast as its slowest step. Improving every other step doesn't help if work still piles up at the bottleneck. His approach, in plain terms:
- 1
Find it
Where does work pile up and wait? That's the bottleneck. Often it's an approval, a review or one busy person.
- 2
Use it fully
Make sure the bottleneck never sits idle or works on low-value tasks.
- 3
Line up the rest
Pace everything else to the bottleneck, so you don't pile up more work in front of it.
- 4
Expand it
Only then add capacity: training, software, another person.
- 5
Look again
Once it's fixed, the bottleneck moves somewhere else. Find the new one.
■ Tool
Procedure writer
Write one procedure at a time. A good test: could someone new follow it without asking you a question?
A procedure is a checklist with a reason
Written procedures are how you stop drift. When the right way is written down, a shortcut is visible as a shortcut, not quietly becoming the new normal.
Write each procedure for a stranger. "The office manager opens the client list…" It forces you to include the steps you do without thinking.
When something goes wrong, check the procedure first. Was it missing, unclear or not followed? Each answer has a different fix.
Start with the procedures that cost the most when they go wrong. You don't need fifty on day one. You need the five that matter most.