You might be absolutely convinced that you’re not a systems thinker. That you’re not the systems guy. That you’re more of a free-thinking entrepreneur who leaves systems thinking up to the geekier members of the team. You write notes on paper, you’re swamped with emails and your work gets done, not perfectly but at least on-time.
I’m here to tell you that you are a systems thinker and you’ve got systems thinkers wrong. Thinking in systems is grabbing a process and finding out how it changes over time. Take a teenagers room and you’ll see that a neat space becomes a mess through very specific inputs. It’s not the universe, some mystery wind or life, it’s half a process performed hundreds of times.
It’s the same with business. Perform a process a hundred times and leaving a small amount of chaos each time winds up being a mountain of chaos.
Our team sees it every week when we’re looking at the systems and processes that teams are using. They’re cobbled together systems and sticky-taped processes that have been built just-in-time to meet a business need. They’re not always bad but they’re a long way from a place where they can be constantly improved bringing more calm and more order to a business.
The first step to becoming a systems thinker is to take an elevated view of your business. Imagine it like you’re looking down on a LEGO village that you built. Customers come in, products get made, customers go out. Now adjust the variables, more customers, less staff, more products – what changes? What will break? Will you be able to keep track of everything that is happening?
This is just a first step to thinking in systems but it’s those slight changes in perspective that can make a huge difference in knowing what’s happening, what’s possible and what needs changing.
Part of our service offering is to develop systems that help owners of multiple businesses run their businesses from a central dashboard. Keeping all communication in one place with custom permissions for each business and department, ensures that nothing gets missed when managing more than one company. Get in touch to discuss how to streamline …
How easy is it to double the number of online reviews your business has? Not as hard as you’d think when you fix the leaky bucket that is the current process for most businesses. For one of our clients, they’d been using a NPS survey to monitor their key staff and how well they were …
I love health food stores and especially the ones where you feel less like you’re on the outside and more like you’re part of the family. In doing some innovation work for a health food store, let’s have a look at ways to experiment with their business model. Ideas include: Starting a paid membership program …
Grab a coffee, it’s late Friday morning and you’re getting admin done. Scan the forms, update the spreadsheets, send emails and make some phone calls. There will always be some mindless busy work but, if you’re like 90% of the population, you’re doing too much. Your hourly wage isn’t producing a sustainable ROI and your …
But I don’t think like that!
You might be absolutely convinced that you’re not a systems thinker. That you’re not the systems guy. That you’re more of a free-thinking entrepreneur who leaves systems thinking up to the geekier members of the team. You write notes on paper, you’re swamped with emails and your work gets done, not perfectly but at least on-time.
I’m here to tell you that you are a systems thinker and you’ve got systems thinkers wrong. Thinking in systems is grabbing a process and finding out how it changes over time. Take a teenagers room and you’ll see that a neat space becomes a mess through very specific inputs. It’s not the universe, some mystery wind or life, it’s half a process performed hundreds of times.
It’s the same with business. Perform a process a hundred times and leaving a small amount of chaos each time winds up being a mountain of chaos.
Our team sees it every week when we’re looking at the systems and processes that teams are using. They’re cobbled together systems and sticky-taped processes that have been built just-in-time to meet a business need. They’re not always bad but they’re a long way from a place where they can be constantly improved bringing more calm and more order to a business.
The first step to becoming a systems thinker is to take an elevated view of your business. Imagine it like you’re looking down on a LEGO village that you built. Customers come in, products get made, customers go out. Now adjust the variables, more customers, less staff, more products – what changes? What will break? Will you be able to keep track of everything that is happening?
This is just a first step to thinking in systems but it’s those slight changes in perspective that can make a huge difference in knowing what’s happening, what’s possible and what needs changing.
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How easy is it to double the number of online reviews your business has? Not as hard as you’d think when you fix the leaky bucket that is the current process for most businesses. For one of our clients, they’d been using a NPS survey to monitor their key staff and how well they were …
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I love health food stores and especially the ones where you feel less like you’re on the outside and more like you’re part of the family. In doing some innovation work for a health food store, let’s have a look at ways to experiment with their business model. Ideas include: Starting a paid membership program …
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Grab a coffee, it’s late Friday morning and you’re getting admin done. Scan the forms, update the spreadsheets, send emails and make some phone calls. There will always be some mindless busy work but, if you’re like 90% of the population, you’re doing too much. Your hourly wage isn’t producing a sustainable ROI and your …