Episode 483: Systems Champion with David Jenyns

Welcome to another episode of the Above the Business podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have a repeat guest. I am so excited about this one. I love talking about systems. I love talking about process in the business. We have a repeat guest, David Jennings. David is the author of Systemology. We had him on the podcast in the past. So excited about his new book that is just about to come out, depending on when you're listening to this, and it's all about having a systems champion in your business. If you've not listened to the podcast with David, we actually are going to re-release or recast. If you go back and listen to that episode with David and then bring this one on, we cover so many different topics in this. We talk about AI, how do you leverage AI in, in the business, what is a systems champion, and what is an amazing analogy to think about your role with systems in the business and really creating a systems culture. We cover that and so many other things. I think you're going to love this episode with David Jennings. David, welcome back to the Above the Business podcast.

Hey, Bradley, an absolute pleasure. I was having a look at our last call. I feel like it must have been about a year ago now.

Yeah, yeah. Look, maybe even a little bit over a year ago.

So good to be back.

Yeah, great to have you. Well, uh, I was telling, uh, you before we got started that your book Systemology is actually in one of my list of goated books that I recommend to, to all of our members to, to, to read. Why don't you take us and link between that book and then your latest book, which at the time of this recording is just about to come out. So I'm personally really excited about putting it into my, my Kindle and, and starting to, to read it myself. But once you link us back to where was this book inside of you, when did you begin to kind of realize, okay, this is what the second book is going to be? Take us through that.

After the release of Systemology, would have been a couple of years in, I was obviously working very closely with a lot of business owners personally. We also launched our Systemology and Systemologist Network where they're coaches and consultants that work with business owners. I started to spot the common themes between those that made it work and those that didn't, and those that really built a systems culture and had the biggest impact. And I did talk about it in Systemology, this idea of a systems champion, but the more I've looked at it, the more I realize it's the linchpin because systems and processes are always important, they're never urgent. And for the busy business owner, they're always focusing in on important and urgent, which means systems forever remains on the to-do list. So you really need someone who continually champions this forward, someone who makes sure that when the business owner gets distracted or working on the next project, that systems development and building a systems culture is not forgotten. So that idea really started to surface and I started getting more and more case studies where the business owner would say, ah, you should chat with my systems champion. And then I even started interviewing systems champions looking for what are the qualities between what makes a good champion versus not a good champion. And I then got to a point where I was like, I felt like systems for small business just as they get starting was an underdone area and not much work on it. So that's why I wrote Systemology. And now I feel like I'm in completely green fields here. No one's talking about this particular role that I believe is essential in be— building a systems-driven business. And I thought, you know what, I'm gonna pull all of my best ideas from the research and working with business owners and put it into this book and effectively have it as a manual for the systems champion on how to help the business owner build the systems culture.

Oh my goodness. You said so many like buzzwords, things that I took away. Systems forever remaining on the to-do list. Let me be the first to admit, I've shared it on this podcast so many times that I had heard that for years and I never— I felt like it was like, what am I going to do? Lock myself into a dark room for 2 weeks with, you know, just a bathroom and water and get it done. And I just was— it was, it was challenging. It was always on the to-do list for me because I, I felt like that it was just a struggle for me to do it. And I could never figure out why. Well, you shared so many things there that I've circled, highlighted. One of the biggest is that systems remain forever remain on the to-do list. That was certainly the case for me. But one of the other things that you mentioned that I want to kind of dive into, this idea of a, the systems champion, is I'd love for you to talk about maybe the personality, the general avatar or profile of the entrepreneur, and how, as was the case for myself, that I intellectually understood that the business needed to be systems-driven. Like, it didn't need to be personality-driven or Bradley-driven. But I was never able through, you know, I was either putting out fires or running around. I never felt like, until I finally did, but that I was able to do that. And some people seem to be a little bit more naturally hardwired. Can you just kind of talk about that and maybe the profiles that you see with entrepreneurs and small business owners and why we find this topic or the execution of this to be so difficult in business? Hmm.

I have a sneaking suspicion that it might be innate. I'm not sure. I used to, uh, the very first system that I ever remember seeing was a system that my dad put together for my brother and I called the sheet. And we would basically earn pocket money for doing different activities around the house. Cleaning our room, being good to each other, putting things back in the fridge, going to bed by a certain time. And then at the end of the week, you'd add up all of the points, and then we'd get our pocket money. And I loved the sheet, maximized it every week. I got maximum payout. My brother, on the other hand, he hated the sheet. He didn't participate. He never got any pocket money. And looking back now, it makes me realize that there are some people who will follow the system, and then we'll— there will be those that don't. Now, in life, you don't get to choose your family. They are who they are. But in business, you do get to choose who your staff are. And what I've realized is that it's quite natural for business owners not to be systems-driven, and it's very common for the visionary founder to move quickly, break things, put their attention where it needs to be, um, get things off the ground. Not great on follow-through necessarily, but more just quick start. And they're not necessarily as strong with the documentation side of things, process and follow-through. And for that reason, they tend not to be great at process. Now, If we all agree that systems-driven businesses are better businesses, which they are, and I don't think I've ever had a discussion where the business owner and I haven't agreed that systems-driven businesses are better businesses, then if you're not very strong in it, you want to make sure that you surround yourself with people that are. So that's the systems champion, that's your operations manager, that's even when you're recruiting and everything. So for me, it's not that I love documenting process. I don't even necessarily like following process because I am a bit of a visionary creative founder, but I fell in love with what the process brings. I've seen the difference between a process-driven business versus one that's not, and they're night and day difference. So I lead from the front for my team. I let them know that this is important. I support the team members in doing it, and we showcase and celebrate systems success. And I really think about recruiting systems-driven people in the organization. So it's, it is possible not to be a systems person or see yourself as a systems person and still own a systems-driven business. It's more common than not. I see business owners who aren't strong at this.

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree with that. So it brings up a really important question, and I'll ask that question in just a second. I want to share with you that the number of business owners that I have seen, they didn't have the language that you just gave us about a systems champion. There's one business owner that listens to the podcast, Tyler. I'm going to shout you out here. He was really able to go through and document his systems in the business. And when people other people in our community ask him about that, he's very quick to say he has an executive assistant, EA, but is that effectively operating in this, in this exact role that you're talking about? So here's the question: somebody's listening to this and says, yes, that, that's what I'm looking for. I don't need an integrator, to use that language. I need a systems champion. That, that's exactly what I need. Well, David, how do we go about finding those? How do you recruit? What are you looking for? What questions, how would you know that somebody is going to be able to step into that role as systems champion?

You want someone, and oftentimes this systems champion, depending on the size of the business, I almost feel like they come before an integrator because oftentimes some of the best systems champions I've seen are juniors and they are like young apprentices. They might be trained on how to do the technical work, but they don't know how to run a business that delivers the technical work. They're young, they're hungry, they're curious, they've got leadership potential, and they, they've got great follow-through. They intuitively create checklists and processes, like naturally. That's inclination. To put that sort of thing in place. You don't have to kind of say, this is, you know, you've got to be this way. You don't train it in. They have some of that baked in. Some of the reasons why I'm going for and seeing success with someone who might be a little bit younger, you just wanna make sure that they're very comfortable and confident with new technology and trying new tools, especially with everything we're seeing with AI. You want to make sure that they're comfortable with that sort of thing. And they're reliable, they can kind of work autonomously, you know, they've got— they're just good, studious, hungry, wanting to make an impact inside the business. They tend to be some of the best. Now, I've seen systems champions of all different walks and sizes. I've seen people who are traditionally trained in process offshore, onshore, young, old. So it all works in between, but I find that makeup that I just talked about a moment ago probably leads to some of the biggest success.

Yeah, for sure. So you mentioned something that's obviously a big topic. We did not really spend— I don't recall actually us spending any time on this last time that you were on the show, but, uh, and that is AI. And so how do we begin to kind of think about both our systems champion in the business as well as integrating and utilizing AI as a tool? How have you used it? How are you thinking about it? And how do you advocate business owners to, to, um, how do you really utilize this to create a system-driven business?

I I had a moment where a huge part of my business died when ChatGPT rolled out because we were offering documentation services for our Systemologists where they would record things getting done. They'd meet with clients, send us the recordings, we would do the documentation and deliver it back so that they could pass it on to the client. ChatGPT comes out. And almost instantly I recognized it, that, hey, we can take a transcript from one of these videos, feed it into ChatGPT, ask it to draft a process, and it does a pretty good first draft. And as soon as that happened, I ended up sharing it with our systemologists, and overnight that whole part of the business dried up. It— we were having a team of 10. I was able to replace into some different roles 3 of them, and I had to let go 7. And that was very early days with the launch of ChatGPT, and it made me realize that AI is going to revolutionize and disrupt every role, every industry, every business. So in some regard, that put this almost like sense of urgency in me to start acting. Now, some businesses are feeling it quicker than others depending on what type of your business you're doing and who you're working for, but this is very much coming. So it got me to then go really sit down and go, what, what other parts of my business could be disrupted? And maybe even the bigger, more important question is, what role does process play in an AI world? And I've watched different companies struggle and grapple with, how do I use AI? Where do I get started? How can I have it actually have meaningful value inside the business rather than just getting a photo of a cat holding your logo standing on the moon. Like, it can do lots of random stuff that doesn't really add any value. The question always is, uh, how can we get it meaningfully adding value? And that's when I realized process is one of the most important things to leverage AI because No matter what you end up using, the machines still need to be told what to do. And an SOP and defining what your core tasks are, how you deliver value to clients— this is just process thinking. We're thinking about how do you do what it is that you do. That's where you have to start. Then the question after that is and how can AI help me do that faster, cheaper, and better? And now I'm seeing more and more examples of this. The clients that are process first and then AI powered are the ones that are moving the quickest in this AI revolution because they're very clear on what they want the AI to do. So it's been interesting to watch. And you said, I mean, we didn't really have this discussion 12 months ago. Um, all of this has really rolled out heavily in the last 12 months, and that's the other hugely shocking thing, is the speed at which this is changing and rolling out. It is the likes of nothing we've ever seen before. So it's really important that business owners position themselves, and otherwise they're going to be the next Netflix or, sorry, the next Blockbuster or Kodak that failed to innovate while their competitors did. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree with that. So how would a business owner that wants to go and find an operations manager that really acts in a systems champion role AI-powered, so they see it as Systems Champion AI-powered, how would you go about, as the business owner, empowering, equipping that person to want to leverage AI? That's actually how I think about it is the AI gives, just like the Systems Champion AI gives us leverage to be able to do things a little faster, quicker, contextualize, etc. How would you recommend a business owner to think about the two of those together?

Hmm, there is a great, um, video worth watching. It's a man who dances on the hill at this, uh, rave party or this party, and he's dancing on his own, and then his first follower joins him, and then another follower joins him, and before you know, the entire side of the mountain is jumping and there's hundreds of people in this.

I've seen this video. I know which one you're talking about. Yes, I have.

Like they study at business schools and they talk about the fact that it's how a movement is started. And the way I think about it is the business owner is the first dancer. The systems champion is the first follower. They come in and start dancing and then You're looking for those first few followers that join afterwards naturally. You don't have to coax them. They just get up there and start joining in. So the business owner needs to embrace this and start talking about it and leading from it. Then you get the systems champion who then starts to, you know, turn that lone dancer who's a crazy man into, oh, you know, something's going on over here. And then we're looking for those first few team members that naturally join. This is how we start a movement. This is as true for systems as it is for AI. We're just talking about creating a cultural change inside the organization. We want to start to have systems and AI conversation. We want to celebrate, you know, wins when a team member goes, ah, here's a prompt that I created and I use on ChatGPT, and then means that I can draft these responses quicker, and I combine it with this SOP and this email template, and we get a great result, and we all kind of celebrate and cheer. So it's— you want to try and build up this proof throughout the organization of lots of little system wins, and that's how you start a movement to kind of get more people on board and engaged and letting them know that this helps them do their work. The goal here is to make them more effective, get more output. Um, and you know, there needs to be some level of reassurance. Like, if, if you adopt this, you will have a place in this organization. If you don't and you get left behind, you're just going to get outbeaten by someone who does. So that's, that's kind of the big thing, message here. Like, to— this is you not being cruel to the team member, but rather delivering a dose of reality that AI is here and the genie is out of the bottle, and the best thing that you can do is learn how to use these tools.

Yeah, I agree with that completely. You know, I'm glad, um, I wanted to get to this one topic you just mentioned, which is around culture. And I was earlier today was talking to a business owner that is kind of look quite literally rebuilding his team, and he really wants to be a systems-driven business. And we were having this discussion about that it's your responsibility to initiate, and as you were saying, being the very first dancer And then the first followers there, but from the jump, even in recruiting, you have to let the people know that we're a systems-driven business. And that begins to embed. And I think culture and I think vision are two of the things, really probably maybe the only two things that a small business owner can never delegate. You have to own the vision. You have to own the culture of that. Can you talk a little bit more about when you have seen and get, maybe give a few examples of clients that you've worked for over the years of how they went from, you know, chaos, doing things at random, shooting from the hip, to really embracing this idea of being, having a systems culture, how that was initially driven by the business owner entrepreneur, and then obviously how that was able to kind of get embedded into the culture.

Hmm. One story that comes to mind, because it's fresh as I share it in the book and in the audiobook, I've included some interviews with the business owner and the systems champion, and that's Ryan Stannard. He runs a residential home building company in Adelaide, Australia. They do about $20 million turnover. It's quite common for trades-based businesses for the business owner to be on the tools, and when they're not working, the business isn't making money. Very common because normally the trades-based person, that's how they get started. They go to trade school, they learn their craft, and then they start doing the work. And it's very hard. Like, we— you learn that just because you know how to do the work, the technical work. It doesn't mean that you know how to deliver a business or run a business that does the technical work, because there's a lot more to it, you know, everything from—

indeed there is, isn't there? Yeah, that's so true.

Completely different skill set required. So, uh, Ryan, uh, self-confessed, he says, you know, if he can do it, anybody can do it. He's not um, you know, academically, you know, Superman level. He just, um, followed the process and did the work. He ended up identifying his daughter Erin as the systems champion. She came in, uh, to a role first and started working as an interior designer and systemized that role underneath their, um, their main interior designer. And then very quickly she realized, hey, this is an area of passion for me. And she ended up then jumping around all of the key roles in the organization where she would meet with them, identify their topmost important tasks in each department. She would then help them to record what they're doing. She would do the documentation, organize it, store it, and basically they built up this database, this central knowledge of information that the whole team could tap into. Took him about 12 to 18 months working with Aaron to really get this dialed in. And then just Christmas past, he ended up taking 7 weeks off over Christmas and basically put his daughter in charge when he went away because he said she's become one of the most knowledgeable team members in the organization. Because she just has visibility across the entire organization, and the business continued to function and deliver and build houses. And it's given him just a completely new perspective on business. He's off the tools, he's, uh, now looking at setting up another business in another location while that original business continues to run. And he's basically taking all of the systems from this business and then deploying them into this new business to rapidly build and scale it in another location. Wow. Um, but there's plenty of examples like that. There's another guy, um, he's run— Gary McMahon, he runs a bushfire management company, and he, he's obviously been trained in bushfire management. So his problem wasn't so much the getting of leads. He was oversubscribed because there's only one of him and spread very thinly across all of these different projects, and it created a level of chaos in the business. He went through this process, got an office girl, trained her up to be the systems champion, started building out some team in the office, very focused around process. He still does a lot of the bushfire stuff, but effectively what he's done, he's, he's removed absolutely everything else off his plate. He's completely systemized everything from handling those clients, invoicing, onboarding, setting them up, scheduling. All of that is now systemized. So he just does his unique bit of genius. It means he was able to significantly improve his bottom line, reduced his hours significantly, but is still able to do more than he was before because he's, he's taken everything else off his plate. And in the interview that I had with him, and the reason I mentioned him and he sticks out is because he said that Systemology saved his marriage. Oh, wow. He basically said he was working so many hours, weekends, nights, mornings, that it got to a point where, um, this gave him some of his life back. And that, that was a great example of going from that complete chaos Lots of other stories, exits, more profit. Oftentimes will depend on what the business owner is going for. Systemization tends to be a great vehicle to get to your goal quicker.

Yeah. And, and it's not even just getting to that end game, whether it is a successful exit or to a revenue or profit target. But it also, you actually enjoy the business a lot more along the way. Like you can actually enjoy the thing, you know, not just, oh my gosh, can we just get over the finish line so I can sell this thing and get out of here? I mean, it's actually, you can, you can enjoy it actually. Before I let you go, I want to be respectful of your time and I love having you back on. I could talk about this for hours, but I do have to ask that Um, we not only live in the age of AI now, in an AI world, but there, there's so many different tools. There's so many different software tools out there. And so I'm not asking you to, to advocate, you know, for one, one tool or another. More so the, the mindset for a business owner is that they can— I've seen so often that they're like, oh, you know, we're going to get this, this, this tool. And it's going to solve this, you know, system. We're going to put it in there and then they switch and then they find another one and then they switch another one. And there's constant, you know, just that their tech stack just gets bloated for all of these different things. How about what have you seen and what's your mindset that you would recommend to a business owner? Because obviously there's some great tools out there, some incredible software that can really help with some of these things. But for some people, I, what I end up seeing is they end up getting overwhelmed more than anything else.

Um, there's definitely this software creep. I think we all feel it when you look at your SaaS monthly subscriptions and it just keeps growing. You do need to hop in there and prune it because especially if you're a business owner who tries new things and you, you do need to audit what you're actually using. Like, I'm guilty of that for sure, trying new things, and then 12 months later going, oh wow, here are 5 subscriptions that we can kill straight away that we haven't used in the last 12 months.

Yeah.

So generally though, I recommend for most business owners, much like you're saying, I think just to keep it simple first. Um, I think process— like, there's 2 key tools I talked about in the original book. I bring it up again because I think it's so important. You need definitely one tool, some sort of project management that makes it clear who is doing what by when, because that helps you to build an accountable, transparent organization where it's much clearer who's doing what and it's visible to the whole organization. So I feel like that's a must. The other one is I still feel you need somewhere to store your process. And I mean, we're a little bit biased. We have a platform called System Hub for this, but I think you— if we recognize how important systems are, and even if they're the programming of the machines, you just, you need a central location where these can be stored, a knowledge base, a wiki, some sort of brain for the business. I think that's another critical piece. And then there's a handful of other ones, you know, there's whatever your office suite is, potentially some sort of CRM. You probably also need something for the financial space. Generally, each department will need a tool to help them do what they do. So you've got a couple of core central tools that are across all departments, and then you might have a tool depending on, you know, the sales team might need some sort of CRM, or marketing is going to need some sort of marketing automation to send out emails and those sorts of things. But try and go, what is the one most important tool for that department? And just stick with one for as long as you can before stuff creeps in. I think, um, and it was quite common for you build them up and it's almost like Frankenstein at the time. You try this tool, you add it in, you try this tool And then we went through a process just recently where we did an audit and then realized, oh, you know what, we can go from 10 of these little tools, or for us it just happened to be we moved into HubSpot and then we unsubscribed from a whole lot of things to kind of put it all into one. Yeah, didn't actually really end up saving us much money, but there was a lot of benefit from having all of the data in one location. So that way you've got one client record that all team members can tap into. So it's definitely a challenge. I don't have an easy answer on that.

Yeah, I agree with you. And there's not one, and I think that's what business owners think that they're going to try to find is one place that they can do, we can do everything. And HubSpot is incredibly powerful. It's probably one of the best up there with, say, Salesforce. But it has limitations too. Like it doesn't do all of the things that you mentioned. It's great on the marketing side, the sales side, and even some of the, you know, the client fulfillment side of it. But I mean, that's still, you need a project management tool to be able to do some other things. So yeah, I agree with that. And I think that that's, if nothing else, it's good for you to say that because business owners can recognize like, yeah, you are going to have a couple of different logins. You're going to have a couple of different tools that are doing specific things to be able to help your business to be systems driven. It's not just going to be kind of an all-in-one. And even that alone, I think, is going to be really helpful for business owners to know. David, tell us a little bit more about where they can pick up the book. Tell us a little bit around kind of your launch and things that you're doing with that. I'm super excited to be able to pick this book up myself. Yes.

So depending on when you're listening to this, the book may or may not be available on Amazon. That's going to be the primary point, and it'll be on Audible as well. If you're listening to this, you like audio, so there'll be an audio version of the book as well. It comes out late July, early August. I'm just getting that date finalized. And yeah, I'm feeling really good about it. I think this is going to really help business owners build up a systems-driven business. It definitely fills a gap in the market, I feel. And yeah, excited to see where it goes.

Awesome, Dave. I'm excited about it too. Uh, some major key takeaways for me. Once again, systems, culture, get it to where you bring somebody else in. And that video, I'll try to find that video and see if we can link it in the show notes, because the one that you're talking about with the guy dancing on the hill, I think it's such an awesome analogy. If people see that video, I'll try to find it on YouTube and try to think about that first person that's joining you dancing on the hill as your systems champion. And then you start getting everybody else. And before you know it, everybody's dancing on the hill. Such a great, such a great analogy there. Loved how you talked about integrating AI both for the system champion, but also just leveraging it as a tool in the organization. And then speaking of tools, obviously what we just talked about with just understanding that we're all kind of guilty of, of tech stack creep, as it may be.

Yeah.

David, it's always great having you, uh, on the podcast. I look back— I look forward to having you back on in the future.

Perfect. Thanks, Bradley.

Well, I absolutely loved that episode with David. Fantastic. Love his first book. So excited for all of you to be able to get his next book. Go and check that out on Amazon. We're going to time the release of this podcast right around kind of that late July time frame, so if you listen to this, it's probably already out. Go and check out his first book if you've not read Systemology, and you're definitely going to want to pick up this book. That's kind of a companion to that one. I want to give a big shout out to my podcast sponsors: Club Capital, Autopilot Recruiting, Coach P Consulting. If you want to be able to develop team members, one of the very first things you have to be able to do is you got to be able to find them. But before you can find them, you got to know, can I actually afford them? If you're an insurance agency owner, if you go to club.capital, they're going to be able to help you get on top of your financials so you can really informed decisions in the business about who you can bring on. Go to club.capital. And then when it's time, you decide it's— I'm going to start recruiting for that person. But maybe you've also understood that I always need to be recruiting. Autopilot Recruiting can help you to do that. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com. autopilotrecruiting.com. And of course, we actually, as I'm recording this, we're right in the middle of talking about what it looks like to develop our teams. What is What does it actually mean? Not onboarding, not the initial try, you know, training, teaching, but like, what does coaching actually look like? Well, one of the things it can look like is you using a third party to help you, but also help your team members. And Coach P can do just that. Go to coachpconsulting.com, Coach P Consulting. All right, everyone, love that episode with David. Go and check out his new book. Until next time, lead well and go be great.