How To Systemize Your Trade Business

We need to think about how do we reach minimum viable systems. So the next exercise, all I've done, this document here or this graphic here, if that is your business as a system, and then we've got these subsystems and then you'll start to identify if I had to apply the 8020 rule, everybody familiar with that 80 20, what is the 20% of the systems that deliver 80% of the impact here? If each department has a particular responsibility, and if you had to pick the 20 most important systems, what systems would you pick? If marketing's job is to lead, generate, then what are the 5, 7 at most systems that you go? Without these systems in place, I don't think marketing could do its job. I want you to think about that. And I've got a worksheet here. Now, all I've done is I've taken the same thing, I've now put it on into a little worksheet that you can think through this particular exercise and what you'll do is, and I might borrow yours just for a moment if I can. You've all got one of these. All I want you to do is go through each department and you will start to think about what are the minimum number of systems for marketing, sales, finance, hr? Just do your best guess. As the gentleman up the back mentioned, involving your team in this process is a great idea. And also listening in as I'm giving you instructions is also another great idea. So you want to make sure that you listen in for the instructions. So what you end up doing is at some point you're going to have a go at this now, but at some point, if you met with your finance person or your bookkeeper and you said to them, what do you think the most important seven systems in your department are? Work with them, engage the team, get them buying into the fact that we're about to start documenting process, but for now we can get a little bit of a draft. Now, there's another worksheet here also. If you get stuck for ideas, here is a bunch of little prompters that'll give you some ideas. The way I like to think about it though, is think in terms of triggered tasks. What is something that happens on a certain trigger, like, ooh, someone calls and we handle the inquiry? Well, that doesn't happen on a particular cadence. It happens when it happens. That's a triggered task. What happens daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually. So if you think about it through that lens in each department, it might also give you some other ideas and you'll go, oh, you know what? I think in the management department, we need to have an annual planning meeting. And I say we need to capture what you're currently doing, not what you'd like to be doing. It's the same rule as the critical client flow. But if you know that you do annual planning and that potentially is something that's mission critical inside the management department, you write that down. Does that make sense? I just want you to work through your minimum viable systems and we'll probably do that for about five minutes. So you guys can make a start unless there are any questions. So that's pretty clear. Perfect. Guys.

What we've done is also printed out this because this is the layer below that for the finance section. This is an example of the Pravar. Pravar Finance Modelling management reporting system that we have. So if you're into the finance section, the one below that around, how can you manage pipeline? So it'd be pipeline planner. How do you manage margin? And be the quota margin tracker? So this is then the layer below that to be able to help narrow your focus as well for the finance section. Okay, so that's why we've printed this out, to be able to support what Dave's doing. Yeah.

Rock and roll. All right, let's bring it back in. We're into the final run before our tea break, so we'll just get everybody's attention and we'll come back. It would be great maybe to start off just with some shares. I don't know if anyone wants to grab the mic if this is new for you to think about your business through this lens. If you can start to see your business as a collection of systems and we'll grab some feedback up the back here.

We discussed on our table, like, some roles are really regimented. Like for me, I was sharing that our council really regimed, like payroll every Wednesday.

Yep.

Structure like this. Whereas some of my operations stuff's really hazy for me, so it's difficult to actually structure that as easily.

Yeah. It's interesting to see certain departments oftentimes sometimes have more natural alignment with systems. Finance is a great one. Finance tends to have a particular rhythm to it. Some of the other departments less so. Marketing, for instance. Some people don't even think of marketing as a system. It's a creative thing and we just kind of do it. But all great businesses, when you get down to it, they have got to a point where it is. So that's a great aha for you to think, oh, how do we apply this? Same thinking. Apply the same thinking that you figured out over here. How do we now move that into other departments and what things need to happen? Excellent. I like that one. Yep. Another one just here.

What I've noticed, specifically for me, the systems in my business are more heavy in the areas that I'm more interested in and I'm better at.

Yeah. It's funny because some people almost have the opposite. Some people I see, they're either heavier in it. If you've got a little bit of a bent to systems. Other people, it's the opposite. The areas where the business owner is on the tools or doing the thing, the systems are less there and it's almost like that part of the business relies even more heavily on them. But it can vary. But that's a good one. Yep. Any other ones off the back?

I actually thought, yeah, the marketing want to be easy. I just put in there that I contract that out and then actually went through the actual whole process that we do with marketing. There's. I think I got about 15 to 20 steps on the page and I was like, fuck, yeah, we've got that dialed in.

But, yep.

Sometimes through that exercise, I wouldn't have thought about that.

Yeah. And sometimes as well. If you've got a very skilled outsource provider, you. I mean, do you need to document exactly how they're doing Facebook ads? If they're running your Facebook ads, who knows? Maybe one day, if you brought it in house, maybe, maybe not. But maybe the system is you meet with them every single month. And what is it that you ask on that call? How do you look at the results? How do you keep them accountable? So that can kind of give you an idea of certain things. If you're paying a premium price to get an experienced consultant in, you may or may not need to systemise everything that they're doing, because that's why you're paying them the premium price, to take that off your plate.

How you managing that?

Yeah. Yep. How you manage them? One day you might bring it in house, maybe, maybe not. Anyone else? No. Did you find that helpful? Actually, we got one up here.

I thought I'd just jump in and check because I'm in the process of doing this for a building company and we have project managers and carpenters, and like Adrian was saying, that can be quite varied in what they do. So writing a process for them struggled with, but I broke it down with the start and finish. What information do they need at the start?

Yes.

And how do I want them to finish? And the middle was a Bit hazy, blur out, but. So, for example, at the start, they need to know, understand the scope of work. They need to build the quantities. They need to know what the plans are.

Yep.

And that's as simple as I made it, love it. And that even helped them because when they got to site, they were like, where's my bill of quantities? Where's my plans? Where's my scope? And that even then, ask other team members, well, I need this information. So it's simple.

Yeah, excellent insight. It's almost like you're systemizing the parts that you have control over. What's the point? Yeah, you're not micromanaging, you're systemizing the bits. Well, how can you give them everything that they need to make sure that they've got the best chance of delivering a great result? It's up to them to deliver the great result. But you want to give them everything in a nice package so that they go, oh, that's easy to work with.

And then the outcome at the end, check that the client's happy, check that you've reviewed the scope and you've done everything, and then let administration know that the job's closed. So how do you start? How do you finish? The middle? Still blurry, but yeah.

Yep, I love that. Some good insight there. Anyone else? Any final ones? Was that helpful? To try and start to think about your business as a collection of systems, and then it makes it really solvable and you can start to get an idea of where do you work. The whole idea here is we want to turn this into a little bit of a game. We then transfer what you capture on the critical client flow and MVs. And actually you'll find that the critical client flow kind of lives inside the MVs, as in some of the systems that you've identified in your critical client flow might actually then appear in your MVs. But we're just kind of expanding it out beyond just those critical systems as we move into the department. Critical systems, Then what do we do? We then transfer it to a spreadsheet and we'll talk about who's going to actually do this work in the second part of today. But we get it into a spreadsheet and it becomes a game. The aim of the game is to turn everything green. And you turn it green once the systems champion, or whomever has met with a knowledgeable person, recorded what it is that they're doing, got it loaded into a central place and started to get some basic version one documentation down. And we just systematically work our way through and we do it in, like, sprints. That's the other thing. That's how we move away from overwhelm. We think about, well, what are we going to do in the next 90 days? And depending on whose responsibility it is, every 90 days we figure out, well, what's the next sprint? And then over time, we start to systemize all parts of the business.