How To Find A Systems Champion

I know, James, again, you've seen quite a few of the different options working offshore, working local. I'll throw to you again and if you can maybe share with us some stories on, on when it's worked and, and what you've seen work.

Yeah, I, I was thinking about this and I thought of actually two very extreme ends of the spectrum because, look, context is everything. And I just wanted, you know, like, Dave, that spectrum you put up there is really good. And one of the examples I'll use is actually Lady Alison. So she was in one of the earlier cohorts of the Catalyst program we were running. And look, I don't know whether she was just determined that she wanted to do it all herself or that she could make do without a systems champion. Because, I mean, like, we've been banging the systems champion drum for a while now, Dave, haven't we? But, and I don't know, maybe we weren't banging it loud enough early on and she was determined to do it herself. But, and she pushed, I pushed her really hard to say, no, no, no, you need to get someone on board. And much like that story I told you earlier about someone who waited five months, Alison, and about three or four months into a six month journey, she basically, she decided, yeah, okay, I've got to pull the trigger. I thought I'd actually give this to you in her own words. So.

Just put this on.

I've got a recruit I've got to find. I've got an interview, I don't have time for this. I'm doing Systemology for a couple of hours every week and now I've got to go and do this. I was just going to make Systemology four hours, five hours a week on.

Top of the homework.

And I went, okay, I trusted him with the ccf, now I'm going to trust him with this. And then you gave me the plug and play of here is the ad for your Systems Champion and here is your position description. And I swiped it completely and just changed systemology for my business and it snagged me the most incredible systems champion. And that was a game changer.

So the systems champion she's talking about that happened to be a virtual assistant. Now I'm going to give you some context around this. Systems champion in their personal life had read Systemology. Now that is not normal thinking about, you know, those disclaimers, this is not normal to just be able to go put an advert on like a Filipino online jobs board and then get someone who's read Systemology in their personal life. But where we're going is that, you know, it was a lower cost. They slipped straight into the role and yeah, they had a full time position to really get on board and get up to speed. And the thing is, it didn't necessarily accelerate the outcomes for Alison. It made them possible. She would have failed if she didn't get that systems champion in place because she just had no time. She was running a very successful, you know, 40 team member business, I believe and she just had no capacity to take on any more work. And she was, you can hear from the tone of her voice, she was just trying to squeeze it in and it wasn't working. So her being able to get that person who I worked with closely and they had like, if we think about the list of things that they had up on screen before, there was probably about four ones of those that she was really, really strong with and she just dropped straight into that role. Now the cool thing is, is that person, after going through that journey, I think within 12 months of jumping on board with Alison and Alison had worked with remote before so she had some skills about how to work with people from overseas. That person stepped up into an operational management capacity. Think about that. They've been picked up, you know, from random using this job at job description that I believe Dave will be handing out later on as well. And they've picked up someone who within 12 months at a lower cost has been able to step into a management role or a leadership role. It's pretty incredible. So that's one end of the spectrum. The other end of the spectrum, however, is Doug and Andrea. Now Doug has, is a family business at the Sydney Violin Centre and so he actually brought his wife Andrea in to work. Now Andrea, she has extensive experience in consulting at a suite C suite level in the corporate world. So she was taking a break from that. She stepped back. And I'll let you, Doug, share about what happened.

I convinced Andrea to come join the business because you. Andrea's got a very unique way of looking at things and I just knew that this would work also that she, it wasn't likely, at least at the beginning to get pulled into many other things and could solely focus on that. And I think if we didn't do that we wouldn't have made the progress so quickly. It costs, it costs something to do this, but.

It pays back in droves. So what you've got set up to have a systems champion is absolutely essential and for that person not to be the business owner, it's absolutely essential.

So look, Doug and Andrea, they're a bit different now. That was a family business that had been going on for about three decades and they'd already had lots of sort of management consulting experience in the past about different ways they can improve their business. And when they realized that systemology would work for their business, they went really gung ho into this. They knew that they wanted to move fast. They decide to allocate someone full time and they were happy to invest in getting that result because they knew what the outcome would be because they want to be able to scale their business. And they had also chosen a situation that because Andrea wasn't already involved in the business, that they knew that she wouldn't get pulled in and get pushed around by the busyness of the day to day of the business. Right. And so thinking about how you're going to structure things to make sure that whoever comes in business, whether it's, you know, someone lower cost from offshore or whether it's someone local, in part time, full time, how are you creating an environment such that they're not going to get pulled into the day to day and you really cordon off this time for them to do their work? I've seen wives, girlfriends, I've seen mums in law step into a systems champion role. Okay. Full time, part time, local, offshore. You don't need for this to be a forever person. You will get some wins out of putting someone into that role for, you know, at least six months, but more like 12 months to get those wins and they can start to impart what they've learned from their role to, you know, version two of your systems champion. Okay.

Love it. I love those videos as well. You're gonna have to teach me how to do that because they are exceptional. Okay. So if I had to choose, you know, gun to the head. All right, Dave, you can only choose one type of systems champion. What is that? Systems champion? Well, firstly, I mean, I'm going to say you'll pick whatever is right for you in the moment. But if I had to pick one method, it would be the apprenticeship model. Much like you might get an apprentice in the trades based business where they come in and they learn the tools of the trade. You want to get a systems champion almost like an apprentice. And while they might be typically trained on how to do the work, they might not know skills of how to run a business that sells and delivers doing the work, if that makes sense. They have the eight qualities. They're young and they're curious, they're ideal, potentially for some sort of leadership potential later on so they could be groomed into that position.

Quite a few of the examples when I pull it out, whether it's Portavac and thinking about Cane or Bio optimizers and it's Hayley or Mokani and Co or Caleb at Lime Therapy, I'll talk about a little bit later. Getting the right person and this apprentice can be fantastic. Thinking of your business as a school and effectively you're teaching them how to become the owner of a business that delivers that. I recently interviewed that guy, Ryan Stannard from Stannard Homes. I mentioned him earlier runs the 15 million dollar building company out of Adelaide. His daughter is a great example of that. Listen to the interview. We'll make sure to get you the link for that. Inside the Circle community She started out as wanting to be an interior designer. She got schooled underneath their interior designer and learned from all of their systems and processes. That interior designer resigned after about four months. She stepped up into that role because she'd already done it and started to really systemize that. Then she got elevated into the systems champion role and now Ryan said that she is possibly the most knowledgeable team member in the business and she's like 21 or 22 or something like that, but she just knows how everything works in the business. He took seven weeks off in Christmas, just passed with her pretty much at the helm. So and I've got numerous examples now of this working. So it's my mission to create a career path for the systems champion to take these junior apprentices and train them up on how to become the most valuable asset in your business. You may or may not have this person right now and you can just get started. But the goal you will find to always have an apprentice in your business and they'll work closely with you and the leadership team to keep building this out and really make your business repeatable. I hope you enjoyed that clip. Just a heads up, it was a snippet taken from the Business Systems Accelerator program which is the world's first training for systems champions and to help you build a systems driven organization. If you'd like to find out more about the program, head over to systemology.com BSA and I'll see you in the next video.