Simple Workflow That Builds Your Business Systems

You want to get off the tools, but first you want your team to do things the way that you like them done. You want consistency and reliability and the confidence to know that work's going to happen without you looking over everybody's shoulder. And deep down, you know that systems and processes, they're the secret to making this happen. But actually, when it comes to documenting them, you feel overwhelmed. You sit in front of a blank screen and you get stuck. You're not too sure what to write or how much detail is enough, so you start writing a few, but nothing gets finished. And if you're one of the rare few that push through, you end up building systems the slow way. You type everything out from scratch. You spend hours writing and tinkering and over building, you end up creating documents that are way too long and way too complex, so the team never ends up using them. So, so what was the point? That's the reason your team keeps asking you the same questions again and again and again. It's why tasks get done differently every time, depending on who's doing it. It's also why you get dragged back into operations when things slip up and inevitably go wrong. The truth is, you don't need to write out giant procedures. You don't need them to be perfect. You don't need to capture every single variation. You don't even need to write it out by hand anymore. You just need one simple workflow that extracts what you're already doing, leverages AI, and then turns it into clear, documented processes that you can hand over to your team. This one simple system is going to build all of the other systems. And what I'm about to give you now is my system for creating systems. Now, I know that sounds like a little bit of a funny name, but it's serious stuff. This is the same system that I use to get all of my processes documented. And once you understand it, you can hand it off to your team and then they can follow it step by step and they can create the systems for you. So what is the system for creating systems? It's just a simple eight step process that anyone can follow to document best practice. It's probably just easier if I walk you through it and then towards the end I'll share a link with you so you can download it for yourself. So let's get started. So step number one is we just need to identify the result that we would like this system to produce. So we'll keep it simple and clear. Here you just think about, well, what is it that we want this system to do. Maybe it's something like, I want to respond to all of the comments on our Facebook page, or I want to handle an incoming inquiry and qualify them and then I can hand them off to a salesperson. Or maybe it's, I want to follow up a quote that's been issued out to make sure that they've got everything and they don't have any questions. The clearer that you can be about the result that you want this system to deliver, the easier it's going to be to get this documented. Now, step number two is we then want to identify who already produces this result. There's someone on your team who's already doing this. Now, we call that person the knowledgeable worker because they have the knowledge on how to do this task. Generally speaking, when it comes to creating systems, we talk about it being a two person job. You've got the person who has the knowledge and then you have the other person, the systems champion, who then captures that task getting done. Now that moves us to step number three, which is we have to choose the capture method. How are we going to record this task getting done? Now, if you're on the computer, you might use a screen recording like Loom or Zoom. If you're out in the field, maybe you use your phone or some sort of GoPro. Sometimes you might even just sit down and conversationally talk through the task. You could use a voice memo app on your phone to do that. The goal is just to identify how you're going to capture this task getting done. Ideally, you want to capture it being done in the moment and make it nice and natural and easy for the knowledgeable worker to do. Then that moves us to step number four, which is we just need to record the task getting done. Organize something with your knowledgeable worker a time when they can walk through the task and then just have them talk through the process step by step. You ask questions along the way to make sure that it's clear. Or if you're not sure why they chose to do something, just capture that, ask those questions. It doesn't need to be perfect. Just consider this first version that you get as version number one. We'll be able to clean it up as we go, but it'll give us a great starting point. That moves us to step number five, where we need to generate the initial documentation. This is where AI completely changes everything. You take your recording, you can get it transcribed depending on how you recorded it. A lot of the tools will do this for you automatically. Then you feed it into ChatGPT or even better, you use the AI tools built inside System Hub and within a few moments you will get the AI to draft the whole process for you. It'll be well structured, it'll have the clear headings and steps and logical flow. Then all you need to do is fill in the gaps. You'll add some extra screenshots, add a PDF of whatever the task is completed. You'll add some extra wording if something isn't clear, or links to whatever is mentioned inside the steps. We just want to tidy it up as best as we can. Step number six is we want to save this system into our System Hub account. Find the right folder. If this is a system about marketing or a marketing task, save it into the marketing folder. If it's about sales, put it into a sales folder. You just want to make sure that it's logically stored. And then you want to give the system a simple, searchable clear title that explains what this particular system is all about. And then step number seven is once you've got everything saved into a central location, we then want to review that system with the knowledgeable worker. We ask them, next time you're completing the task, can you have the System Hub system open so you can look at it and I want you to let me know if we're missing anything, if something's unclear, or if you think some improvements need to be made. You just want them to double check that everything looks right and that this system is going to be quite useful. And then we move to step number eight, which is we want to get the team on board and we want to integrate and deploy this system. So depending on the size of your team, if you've got a department head, they would be the perfect person to introduce this to the rest of the team. If it's just you, that's okay as well. You just let them know, hey, this is the process now that we follow when we do this particular task. Depending on how complex the task is, go easy on your team. The first time you might show them the system and say, well, hey, watch me do this task. Read through the process and see if you get your head around it. Then the next time get them to help you with it. So you do it together. And then lastly you then get them to do the task on their own, independently. And then you can look at the output and make sure that it delivers to the standard that's outlined in the system. And then you just want to let them know that they can then start to make adjustments and tweaks to the system. You want to have these systems continue to evolve and grow because nothing is going to be perfect at the start. Your goal is just to build some momentum, get them on board, start to delegate some of these tasks, build a systems culture where, hey, what we do here is continually improve the process. So let's recap these eight steps. Firstly, you want to identify the result. Then you want to identify who produces that result. Then we want to choose the capture method. We want to record the task being complete. We then want to generate a draft using AI. We then want to save that into System Hub. We then want to review that with the knowledgeable worker. And then lastly we want to integrate it and deploy it. So we want to roll it out for the rest of the team. Those steps sound easy enough. I'm sure you can follow along there. There is a little bit of extra detail and some nuance that I wanted to share with you. So I've put together the system for Creating Systems Template so you can download it in a moment. I'll show you where you can get that. The takeaway here is when you follow this workflow, everything gets easier. Tasks become more consistent because your team knows exactly what it is you want done and to what standard. Which means it's much easier for you to delegate with confidence. And team members can't use the excuse anymore. Yeah, but I didn't know because it doesn't live inside your head, it lives inside System Hub, which allows you to start to step out of operations and finally get things done the way that you want them to be done. This is the one simple system that builds all of the other systems. And the best bit is I didn't even design this system for you. I often say that the business owner is the worst person in the business to be documenting processes. What you should do is identify a team member that becomes your systems champion. Then you give them a copy of this template and then you let them run it. So let's make this super actionable for you. The next step, what I want you to do right now, is to download the system for Creating Systems Template. You'll find a link to it in the description beneath this video. Then I want you to identify your systems champion. Just hand them this template, ask them to run this workflow I on a simple task. If you want, it can be you. You can help them identify that task, find something that's painful for you, and you can become the knowledgeable worker working with them. You can record yourself doing the task. They'll feed it into AI, get it all drafted up, saved into System Hub. You can have a little bit of a look at it before it's shared around. You just want to get this workflow so smooth so that it's incredibly easy for you to capture best practice inside your business. And to do that, we do it with the system for creating systems. Once you get this right, you're going to love it. It's the start of systemizing your whole organization.