Scaling With Business Processes - Case Study

But if you want to run a proper business and be able to get stuff out of your head, start writing, writing things down and being able to share it. And it doesn't have to be a big, a big step to start. You don't have to do and solve all of your world's problems.

Hi, it's Dave from Systemology. I'm just shining a light on business owners sharing their systems journey. I've got Mark Anderson here from anchored.com maybe just to start, Mark, if you could introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you guys do over at Anchored.

Okay, so yeah, name is Mark Anderson. Anchored Height Safety. We enable safe access at heights. We install permanent ladders, platforms, walkways, guardrails, static lines, anchor points and things like that to make sure people can work safely at heights. And then also the maintenance and recertification of those of that equipment. So Height Safety equipment needs an annual inspection and our team go and do that inspection.

Ah, very cool. And how long has the business been around for?

So the business has been around for about 20 years, but we bought it three years ago. So. Yeah, before Anchor Height Safety, I was working at Bosch for about 20 years in automotive development.

Yeah. Okay, so I feel like you're a systems guy from way back when it might be programmed into your DNA.

Maybe. It is. It is. And to be honest, when we bought the business, that's what we were looking to do. So we were looking for a basically a oneplus business, one that was at the limit that it could go with a single owner and a couple of staff. And I wanted to take what I knew from Bosch and water it down considerably to something that we could apply to small business. Yeah, that's sort of how I came come across Systemology and System Hub by. It was through. Through one of my coaching through Prava. Yeah. And yeah, I was looking at some old videos of Rob's and did a presentation and it was like, well, this is codified. Exactly what I want to do. Rather than reinvent the wheel, how about I take what you've done and run with it?

Yeah, perfect. And over the past three years, like when you took over the business, were there many staff and kind of where have you got it to now?

So when I took over, we had three staff plus myself, and now we have 15 plus myself. So. Yeah, 16 in total.

Yep. And you took over three years ago? That must have been. Is that just before COVID or in the thick of.

Was in March of 2020. It. We took over on January. Oh, sorry. On The Monday of the Friday of the first lockdown. Wow.

What a time to take over a business. Well, the good thing is that's like a baptism of fire. If you've made it through the other side, then you can weather any storm.

That's the way I like to look at it. Yeah. I was in construction, so thank my lucky stars that I wasn't taking over a cafe or something like that. That would have just been decimated. Yeah. But still there was a lot of challenges.

Yes. Yeah, I could imagine. And the good thing is safety equipment, it's necessary. And especially if the construction industry kept on moving, I could see that your business would have to as well, because it's about keeping people safe. So.

Yeah, so we managed to work under the construction umbrella and obviously they. That continued in Victoria, as we know. And then we reached some points where construction was also stopped. So we sort of pivoted the business and refocused on the safety of existing installs and how we could look after that. And that was a. We had an announcement one Monday evening. It's always burned in my memory of as of tomorrow, there'll be no more construction. And the next morning we. I sat with my operations manager and we just set up the whiteboard and yes, drew out how on earth we could continue trading and working.

So when you took over the business, were there many established processes or things in place at that point? Like it sounds like you would almost got a clean slate when you pivoted anyway.

Yeah, I did. Well, even when we took over the business, the previous business owner declared that training wasn't his forte. And basically this is the business. There you go. So I had to pick up what I could, what he was showing me and from what I found out about the industry, because I came from outside of the industry and run with it. There's some fantastic training from our suppliers and there's also the Working at Heights association, which has also got some great information and yeah, managed to get the information we needed and we've really grown in how we do business since then and. Yeah, I mean, to the point now that I'm actually one of the directors on the board of the working of Heights Association. Well played. Yeah. Not being involved in an industry to being on the board in months and yeah, just running with it. Yeah.

I think two key things that you mentioned there really stood out for me. One, and it's something that Michael had said to me, Michael Gerber had said, he'd said that every business is a school. And you mentioned the other guy didn't see himself as a training person. And that represents a good opportunity because once you recognize that it really is all about knowledge transfer and bringing new team members on and quickly skilling them up to make them as productive as possible in the shortest amount of time. So I thought that was astute. And the other one you mentioned, not being able to work on the tools, which is the classic E Myth situation, where it's the technician that has the entrepreneurial seizure and because they know how to do the thing, it's really easy for them to get sucked back onto the tools. And I think by you, coming from an outside perspective, you then would look at the business as a business and think about it working independently of you because you aren't the technician. So I thought, I don't know if you did that consciously or if that was just fortuitous.

It was. Well, it was a result of the type of how we were looking for businesses to buy. It was pretty much going to be outside my area of expertise. My area of expertise is running automotive development teams in advanced driver assistance systems. So I'm not going to really buy a business that develops advanced driver assistance systems. So it was going to be outside my area of expertise. I've created, I've developed my expertise in that area. But it's working on the tools is not what I bought the business to do. And yeah, I've read a couple of Michael E. Gerber's books and yeah, certainly smile when he talks about, talks about that situation.

Interested to know how you navigated through like the differences between systems and process in big business versus small business because you've seen it in big business. And sometimes when you drag systems from big business to small business, it really introduces a lot of red tape and slows small business down like you have. There's a level of efficiency in being light on your feet when you're small. I don't know if obviously you're kind of following the systemology framework, but I don't know if you've got any comment on, on the differences.

Yeah, so I guess coming from a business like Bosch, there is, yeah, obviously a lot of red tape and there needs to be and then there needs to be that workflow and you have completely distinct business units that will look after different areas of the business and you need to have that clear workflow. What's important, I think is to understand the concepts of that workflow. And almost even though at the start I was wearing most of those hats, I actually had a series of post it notes of Basically what hat I was wearing at the time that I could sort of put on my screen. And so if I start. Or beside my screen. So if I started to diverge from the work that I was intending to do, what hat am I wearing at the moment? Am I wearing my. I had someone doing the invoicing, but. So I wasn't wearing the invoicing hat, but it was. Am I doing a review? Am I doing scheduling? Am I doing quoting? What task am I doing? And sort of still using that concepts of departments but applying it to myself.

Yes.

Yeah, but you're right, it's very easy to overburden a small business with that level of process. Having said that, the tasks still need to be done in the right order and I think that's where applying systems in a methodical way is important in terms of. To get the workflow done in the right order. And I mean, when I'm onboarding new staff, I talk about being effective rather than being efficient. Yep. And the whole concept of not just doing the right, not just doing things quickly, but doing the right thing in the right order and then doing it quickly is, is what's important. And, and that's been the huge investment that we've made over the last three years is really focusing on that.

When in that journey did you come across systemology? Like did you start building systems in and systems thinking from day dot or did you wait until you got more team members or did you. You know, I'm just interested to know how you got started and where the idea of a systems champion came in. I know you've got someone who's probably sharing a couple of different responsibilities, that being one of them, but I'd love to kind of know a bit more about how you got it started and when.

Yeah. So in terms of formally writing them down and putting them in a central location and, and, and, and, and that happened about six months or so into buying the business. Um, but in terms of understanding that workflow and breaking it down into the, the tasks that really happened at the start. And I needed to, I needed to understand what the processes were so that I could delegate the work even to the installers. I needed to understand what they were doing so that I could estimate time, so that I could. When I'm doing quoting, so that I could schedule appropriately. And for that I sort of needed to apply that the systems concept or the sort of chunking of time and what was going to be achieved in that task. So in effect, basically from the start, I needed to be thinking about how stuff was going to work, but then actually documenting it and having a resource around it was. Yeah, was. I mean, not a long time, like only six months or so.

But yeah, I think the good thing about that as well, it's. There's a reason for the change and the team would be accepting of it. I mean, new owners just come in, of course there's going to be change. I know sometimes people struggle with when to introduce it or how to introduce it and what the resistance is. Whereas I'm imagining you probably didn't receive too much resistance from existing stuff or maybe you did. I don't know if you had any resistance and how you navigated that.

Yeah, it's different. People react in different ways, obviously. And for people that are on the tools that have been doing it that way for the last two or three years, for me to come in as an outsider and tell them how to do something was not going to work. I needed to understand how they were doing it and then provide some direction of how I would like it done if I wanted it changed. But as compared to in the office where I did have a lot more experience, certainly being as a project manager and understanding that workflow and then also through coaching I was getting at the time or getting through prava, I was able to apply the intent that I had for the systems and the workflow and how stuff was going to be done a lot, a lot more easily. And certainly the person I had at that time long suffering in terms of the number of the amount of change and evolution that she, I'll say endured. But it was constant evolution of, okay, we're doing it this way. Okay, good, we've outgrown that way or we need to change this bit because we're no longer doing something correctly. So she was on a learning path for 12 months or so of just constant change.

Yes.

Yeah.

Is there, when you applied systemology, was there any particular things that like stood out for you or bits where you were just like. I grabbed onto that chunk of thinking and it really helped to roll things out, I think.

And it's probably, it's probably the bit that we're not doing as well still. And I'd say it's the systems champion and having. Releasing that role and finding the right person. Obviously growing a business through Covid, implementing all of this change, implementing all of this. We didn't have too much free resources to put additional headcount on to do it. So it was about trying to do things as effectively. Well, once again, coming back as effectively as possible. And I guess we didn't systemize everything and didn't process everything and we still haven't, we're still working through important stuff. But initially I, I did as much as you say, look, the business owner is not the best person to take that on. But having that process and systems background, I, I couldn't really delegate it in effective way for someone else to do it. I've also got an IT background, also understand computers and stuff. So to get someone else to do it was going to take a lot longer than it would have taken me. And by the same token, I'd only been in the business for six months or so and writing it down and getting some of this down paper was also clarifying to me what I wanted to do and how I wanted the business to run.

You touch on a point there that like the more that we've dug into the businesses that have had the best success, the common denominator is the systems champion. And then the of the ones that have the systems champion, the ones that have the best systems champions tend to be. It's people who are effectively like the apprentice. It might be the junior bookkeeper, it's the person who's training to be a lawyer, it's the mechanic, you know, first year because they. And it's that learning mindset right at the start where they're hungry to learn. And what a magnificent gift to give someone in that position to work closely with a knowledgeable worker and really codify what's being done. But effectively like you were in that role almost the same, you, you were curious and you're learning and you're motivated because it was your business, I think that was perfect for you to do.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think even in terms of prioritizing what, where do we start? And I mean I looked at and the first ones that I did was around initially around what are the training that I need the installers to have done and to be competent at and then how do I track that? So I mean the other thing with my industry is it's, it's not a trade as such. We don't have. You don't come out of a trade course.

Yeah.

With the height safety installation certificate or Diploma or Cert 3 or whatever. We're working on that.

I was going to say not yet. That's why you're on the board. Yes, exactly.

Yeah. I think it's something that will be very important considering we have people abseiling off our anchor points. And it's fairly important that they're in. Right. So for me that was a high risk part of the business that I wanted to make sure that we could quantify or measure the time of the training and make sure it got recorded and tracked and also provide the shortcut for the installers if they're seeing something they haven't seen before. Is there an installation guide that is maybe it's an old one which is still on paper that I can put in there that they can get access to and we've done that sort of thing. And then I guess the other ones was what are the high frequency things that. And that have a high impact. So during COVID communication was very important. Now when people start working remotely, we end up with emails, messenger, messages, FaceTime, WhatsApp, whatever. Yeah. So and, and I was getting messages across all these different platforms and having to monitor every platform under the sun just in case someone was trying to communicate with me. So I codified that and said, right, do these are the three platforms we use or four platforms that we use and this is the order of importance and if it's really urgent, give me a call. And that now is part of our onboarding process in terms of this is how we communicate.

Yes. So it sounds like it's good. You've got systems touching all aspects of the business. Like anything, it's always a work in progress and you'll continue to identify new systems and processes, but it's touching all aspects. And now you've doubled down on the idea of the onboarding which I think is so overlooked and missed for most business. But really that's where the rubber hits the road because that's when you indoctrinate or train those team members that this is how we do things here and you set the standard right up front. So I think like that setting up the onboarding. Are there any other tips like either you wish you knew when you got started thinking about systemologies, you know, systems, any insights or even something that jumps out at you where it's like a piece of advice where, oh, just this will help you as you start this journey?

Well, I think, I think it's to recognize that. I think if you look at systems from the outside, you've never talked about systems. You don't recognize that you already have a lot of systems in place. You just call them habits.

Yep.

So the rolling out of the systems is just getting the habits out of your head into a point that someone can replicate it. So don't complicate things, don't overcomplicate what you think a system is and how you roll it out and all that sort of stuff. I did one earlier today. We had a staff member. She had a failed computer. For whatever reason, it was doing a Windows update that took a lot longer and she couldn't get on for a couple of hours and she needed to work. And I happened to have another spare laptop in the office. So what she did is she logged onto the laptop and she didn't have access to all the OneDrive documents because you need to go in and set it up in a specific way. And so rather than. I could have. We do have an IT consultant I could have pointed it to, but I knew how to do it. So. But rather than just doing it for her, I said, well, hang on one minute. I set up Loom and I just did this from home. So I'm sitting at home at the moment. So I set up Loom, had her on the sharing screen, and then I talked her through it. Recording it over loom took four minutes, 30 actually do it. I saved it. I created a new my how to. How to set up OneDrive on your computer on System Hub and sent a link to everyone. If you need to set up OneDrive, this is how you do it. Done. So now, now that's done, I. I don't need to look at it again.

Yeah. I think that that right there is the thinking that once you get that thinking and you record it as you're doing it in the moment, like that ends up becoming the superpower, because you don't overthink creating systems, you just do it in the moment. Once you get comfortable with it, there's really no extra effort.

And that.

That just becomes a body of work that grows over time. And I've started using the language and it was interesting to hear you cite something similar. But effectively, I'm calling systems, they're documented habits. You're looking for the good habits that you want to replicate from your best team members and yourself, and you document those and you follow that system and you become consciously competent till the point at which you've done it so much that then it just becomes, you know, an internal habit. And you may or may not need to look at the system after that point, depending on what the task is and whether or not there are requirements for safety or not. That's probably another story, but I love that. Like in the tail end. I've got two questions. One, now that you've seen a business built on systems like this, could you imagine building a business any other way? Like I sometimes feel like once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Yeah, I think the answer to that, I think is it depends on how much you want to scale and how much you want to be involved. You're right. I can't unseat and I wouldn't do it a different way, but I don't want to be involved in everything and I want to be able to take some holidays and I want to be able to spend time with my family. And so for instance, even today. So I stayed home to prepare for this. I have been doing some other work and work's just been happening. I don't have to be there. When I started the business, I was taking every phone call. If I wasn't in the office, it was diverted to my mobile. I mean, on one day I received so many phone calls. On your Apple Phone, after you've received 100 phone calls, they start moving off the previously received calls list. That was less than one day in terms of received and made phone calls. And I was trying to quote and I was doing a site visit at the same time. It's impossible to be present with any of those hundred phone calls and the site visit and doing the quote, that's just not possible. So yeah, you're right. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. And I don't want to build a business where I'm such a linchpin that, that I can't do other things. So yeah, I couldn't do it a different way.

Yes. Yeah. If there's anything that you could say to someone who hasn't yet taken the leap of faith and got started on this journey, or maybe it's an earlier version of yourself. Pre Systemology, System Hub. Is there anything that you might be able to say to them that might kind of encourage them or get them to take that step?

It's. I guess the question is how much do you want your business to rely only on your knowledge?

Yeah.

If. And if the, and the answer is, well, I, I can't because then I have to be here. Or, or I do want it to just be reliable. I want to know everything. Okay, well that's fine. But you will be a sole opener and run, run a, run your own business and then once you stop, it will stop. Done.

Yes.

There is nothing to sell. There is nothing to pass on. There is nothing to. For it to operate if you're not there. So if that's what you want, then that's fine. Continue doing what you're doing and basically a big hobby. But if you want to run a proper business and be able to get stuff out of your head, start writing, writing things down and being able to share it. And it doesn't have to be a big, a big step to start. You don't have to do and solve all of your world's problems, just solve the. I was listening to one of your podcasts the other day and the guy was talking about what's going to affect the gp, what's going to affect your sales, what's going to and from myself in terms of what's high frequency, what's going to affect risk, what's going to have the biggest impact. Just pick one or two and once you start seeing the benefit, you want to continue rolling with it.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, a huge shout out to you and the team over at Anchored. I feel like you're a shining example of deploying early and seeing fantastic growth. And you know, that's only a few short years. I can only imagine as this starts to compound as systems do, they have a compounding effect. We need to have a part two in another five years and see where you're at.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Thank you so much for your time. If every anyone is looking for your services or needs some safety equipment for high access points, check out anchored.com and thank you Mark for for all of your insights today.

No worries. Thank you very much for your talk.