Systems. Without these, whether manual or automated, life would implode all around us and a new form of anarchy would exist. Well that's probably a little dramatic but you get the point right? Without a system success definitely isn't on the agenda. Take the ants. They have a great little system to ensure their colonies survive despite the seasons. Look at Spain's amazing football team (even if somewhat boring) they have a system that they follow and it is very succesful. It explains the great gap between the amateur and the professional from the coaching staff, backroom staff and playing staff.
So why I am blogging about systems? System = Save Your Self Time, Energy and Money. This applies to everyone. It doesnt take a genius to work out that doing something efficiently and in a consistent manner translates either more time, energy or money. Take a paper run. Would it make any sense at all to deliver papers one house at a time on foot taking the most inefficient route? Of course not. Equally so it makes no sense to store the most used products at the back of the warehouse or take the slowest vehichle to the race track.
So this is just common sense right? In fact people are very resistant to systems as I have found in the past. It is mind blowing to see how some people train, study, run businesses and organise events. I am often found scratching my head and trying to work out how these lovely people get the job done when they seem to want to it the most difficult way. Remember those clever Bill Pay adverts with the chap struggling out the pool when the ladder was right next to him or the person with all the luggage stumbling along when the walk aid was right at hand...
When I often ask these chaotic entities I often hear the same objections about systems and solutions -
* Its always been done this way.
* It takes too much time to work out a system.
* It costs too much.
* I dont have the time.
* It simply wont work.
* etc etc
There are plenty more excuses (or reasons) that people dont want to invest or at least more importantly investigate into systems. One of the most glaring obvious is that people do things for themselves and not the organisation or their peers. This is fair enough I suppose but it certainly isnt the right reason to improve things for all and sundry.
Systems dont have to be expensive, complex or time consuming. I'm betting if each organisation or person chose one small system and put it in place right now that everyone would have more time to spend on other things. Here are some examples -
People
* Get an intray
* Put all of your new bills and letters in the intray
* Allocate half an hour every week to review this and action as due
* File the paperwork away
This is hardly rocket science but the time and money this small system will save certainly will stack up over time.
Organisations
* Write down the goals of the business this year
* Break it down into milestones and objectives
* Email a copy of this out every week to every staff member including yourself with a progress report
* Request feedback and ideas
So once again something very simple but so effective. Imagine having everyone understanding the goals and seeing the progress being made. Wouldn't that improve efficiencies and energy and thus save time, energy and money? Kind of like having a big scoreboard that all your players could see during a match? Where the score shows up and how much time to go......
So systems can be implemented everywhere by anyone and let me repeat; they are not too hard, too expensive or too time consuming. One of my favourite parts of my job has been implementing systems in TechFlare over the last 6 + years. From our job system, invoicing, sales, quoting and to many more systems it has been a thrill where processes have been run and things work smoother, faster and certainly save us more time, energy and money. I will be extra excited when I have a large chunk of my team running off the iPad to improve their efficiencies and the quality of work. Being able to improve the speed of delivery of quotes, job sign offs, project delivery, number of meetings and reduction of printing and luggage is just some of the benefits that these devices can bring.
Happy to hear your thoughts and ideas on systems!
Adios...