Stop Shiny Object Syndrome In Business

I can fairly confidently say that I could walk into any business and I would be able to identify at least sort of that sort of 25% or plus of what we call waste or inefficiencies.

Today I'm joined by one of our systemologists, Greg Gunther. Now, Greg has been working with business owners for over 30 years and has got an amazing depth of experience when it comes to solving small business challenges. And systemology really fits like a glove with his approach. And I've had the good fortune of working with him on few different projects over the past couple of years. So most importantly, his heart's in the right place and he really does want to have the best for small business owners. Now, occasionally, Greg and I catch up and he mentioned that he and his business partner, Joshner, had just recently finished a white paper that was around the topic of this idea of moving beyond distractions. So I said, well, let's jump on a call, let's discuss it, and then that way we can share it with you and hopefully you get the insights as well. I feel like business owners, we're getting pulled every which way and often it's really hard for business owners to focus their attention. Yet some of the biggest breakthroughs come from focused attention consistently over a period of time on a very specific problem. So if we can remove distractions, it really is the key to executing more and also more quickly, like going from idea and strategy into implementation. So that's what I'd love to explore a little bit more today just to understand a bit more about, you know, what are the true costs of distraction here and not executing. And then most importantly, some tips that Greg has on how he moves his clients through some of these challenges and gets them getting action and results quicker. So firstly, just wanted to welcome you to the call, Greg.

No, thank you, David. And thank you for having me. It's. This is a very passionate topic of mine because I actually have a fundamental belief that we make business harder than it needs to be and there are always solutions to things. It's just that as you said a moment ago, it's about focus, where we put our energy and where our energy goes and things grow. So essentially that's where we're coming from.

Yeah, couldn't agree more. And I'd love to get some ideas on how you see this problem manifesting and what the problem is for business owners.

Yeah, and you know, you alluded to it in, when you opened up the, the title of our white paper about distractions. I think a lot of us find Ourselves in this sort of call it a whirlpool. You know, we just get caught up in so much of the, the day to day and we become, because of that, very reactive. So it's. We, we never really get that headspace to think about, you know, what, what is it that I'm trying to achieve here? Where am I, what's the direction? Where am I trying to take this business? Because we're so consumed by everything that we're doing in the day to day and you know, there's, I think, whatever, we're sort of in that sort of, you know, whirlpool, it's really hard to break out of it. So strategy, like for me, there's a differentiation between operations and strategy. I think a lot of us spend our time consumed by operations, running our business. So. And that's what operations does. And you know, when we talk about systems, it's about doing that a lot more efficiently. Strategy, though, is, is what shifts my business. And you know, a lot of people have great ideas, but they never really get beyond an idea. You know, it's because I'm just so busy operating. So this whole piece around implementing execution is a really, really important piece because nothing. Josh, my business partner that you mentioned, one of her favorite sayings is change doesn't come with time, change comes with action. And this is really what we're all about is how do we take away the distractions in order for us to get traction through taking action.

I love that. And really it speaks to the, the core problem that we try and solve at Systemology, which is to create the space for the business owner to be able to start to work on the business as opposed to in those operations. I find it always really hard to quantify the true cost of not working on these problems and not having space to work on strategy. I don't know if you have some insights on that.

Yeah, look, there's a lot of different research that floats around with that, Dave. But, you know, I think I can fairly confidently say that I could walk into any business and I would be able to identify at least sort of that sort of 25% or plus of what we call waste or inefficiencies. And if you think about that, if we could just recapture some of that back through having good systems, for example, just so that we were increasing and improving our efficiencies, all of that tends to go straight to the bottom line. In fact, one, one piece of research I was reading, only this Westinghouse Corporation have done a lot of research in this space around inefficiencies. They're big proponents of the seven waste theory, which Toyota developed. And what they say is that in any service based organization, there's usually about 50% in efficiency in a service based organization. So if we could bring back the cycle time, if you like, of doing something, the cycle time measured by hours or days, by half, that will give or deliver about 10 to 15% to our bottom line. So a lot of business owners think about when I'm in strife, cutting expenses, but we've already got a mechanism by which we could capture 10 to 15% of that just through improving efficiencies. So that goes straight to the bottom line.

Yeah, and you kind of touched on that idea because that's easier to quantify also than something like the opportunity cost and all of the benefits then of the strategy component. Because if you don't have space to deploy some of these strategies, that's really where you're going to get some tremendous wins. But how do you even begin to quantify that? I don't know if you have any ideas.

Look, Dave, there is a process, like I just mentioned, the Toyota way. There is a process where you can identify what wastes are in your business. You can actually do an audit of your business, like call it a waste audit, where you're using these seven wastes that Toyota have identified in their own manufacturing processes. And we can do that audit. Any business can do that same audit in their own business. And what you're doing there is you're looking at things like rework, things I have to do more than once, or it could be transport. Like one of the typical transport ones is you're shifting things around more than they necessarily need to be shifted around. So if you work your way through that waste audit process, you can start to quantify just what does that actually mean? How much waste do I have in my business? And you can sort of multiply that out into hours or even dollars in some instances to quantify how much waste I've got. So I'm happy to provide a template for that. Dave, you've just touched on something there that's not in my white paper. But I'm happy to share that template with you.

Yeah.

Yep.

Let's circulate that because I feel like that's the first step, particularly when someone starts to think about systemizing, it's justifying that expense. Small business owners have limited resources and they can only allocate to certain things, often systems and processes, important, very rarely urgent. So it's Something that they don't get to. Whereas if we can actually quantify that, and still the bit that's the intangible bit that you can't really quantify then is the opportunity cost that, that you're missing out on by not having enough space to employ a new great idea or execute on something quicker. Some of the clients that you've worked with, I don't know if you've got any sort of top of mind.

Where.

You'Ve seen some of these challenges. And then I'd love to kind of explore a little bit about how you then work with the clients and what strategies that you kind of work through to help solve some of this.

Yeah, sure. So there's a few different ones actually, Dave, that come to mind, but I think, you know, one that I can quantify if you like, in terms of the result, because it did result in this particular business selling we did using Systemology. Dave. We worked with a business earlier last year, I think it was, and we worked with them. They're in the sort of building industry and you know, they had a desire to grow that particular business. They're in a fairly narrow niche in terms of what they were doing. It was around the sort of the fire extinguisher and smoke alarm type business. So it was quite a narrow thing and they wanted to take that business into the uk. So we were engaged to come along and help systemize. So using systemology methodology, we basically worked with that organization for a number of months just capturing some of those sort of core processes. And what they were able to do was to take that work that we had done and literally turnkey that into the uk. So he was able to establish his business in the UK just in literally a matter of weeks. So he had the people there that he wanted to employ or engage. In fact, one of them was a part owner in the business over there. And they literally were able to launch this business in a very short space of time, like a number of weeks. But it gets better than that. Actually. This particular example is one that's why it's top of mind is that business has since evolved and what he's done is he's, he's now, he's out of that business now. But I caught up with him for coffee only a couple of weeks ago because we reconnected and he said to me, he said, you know, I've, I've sold what you've done to me three times to three non competing businesses. So he said, I've actually monetized what, what we did together. And I said, that's really interesting. What do you think your return on investment was? And he came back to me. He pondered for a moment, but he, he came back to me and he said, I've got it in excess of 19 times return on the investment that I paid you. So. To which my response, Dave, of course was, well, I obviously didn't charge you enough for what we did. I love that.

One of the challenges that you would need to overcome is this idea of distractions. Because when you start working with someone, I think that's one of the benefits of working with a coach like yourself is it's almost like you've got a set cadence of when you're meeting with the client and there's a level of accountability and when someone pays for something, then they're really invested in getting the result. So I think there's something magical that happens by engaging someone and almost having that level of accountability and guidance kind of takes you through it. Are there other things that you can see or a framework or anything that you can share that helps people kind of cut through that distraction and help them go from strategy through to execution?

Yeah, look, there's probably a number of things actually, Dave. Like, you know, one of the things that we like to work with people is on is making sure that we've got the right people in the right seats, doing the right thing at the right time. And the reason for that is that we often don't have much role clarity in a business. So, you know, people have skills. We find a lot of businesses, you know, react to their recruitment process. So anybody that's sort of standing or breathing and I'm desperate for a position or to fill a position, we take them. And that's usually at your peril. So, you know, we try and get people understanding first and foremost, you know, what, what needs to be done in this place. So we really identify everything that needs to be done and then group that together into specific roles. But beyond that, it's then having the, you know, that sort of cross functional communication channel. So we set up a structured rhythm of meetings. So the meetings have a specific purpose, they have an agenda that's a standing agenda. Those meetings, depending on what meeting it is, will happen on a cycle of, you know, whether it's weekly, monthly or whatever. And the purpose of that is to really make sure that everybody is clear about what I'm committing to and how I'm having some difficulties and where I might need some help. So it's just really, you know, basically Helping everybody understand where they sit in the whole spectrum of things. And generally speaking, you know, whilst people hate meetings, it's one of the, you know, the big problems. It's not meetings that's the problem, it's just that those meetings aren't structured. They don't have good, solid, tight agendas with a specific outcome in mind or a specific objective in mind. So once we set all of that up, it's then a question of, and you use the word a moment ago, it's, it's keeping me accountable to that. So if I'm agreeing that I need to do certain things and I commit that to my peers, it's making me accountable to the fact that I've done that, I've achieved that. Because if I don't, potentially I'm going to be the loose link in the chain, the weak link in the chain and things start to fall around me. So, you know, it's, it's having a very structured approach and you know, we generally find that, you know, because people are already busy, it's, they're probably lacking capacity, but sometimes when we get to these things, there's also a capability issue because we, we're so ahead of, so full of running our business and reacting. Everything that's going on around me, I'm just not capable of really putting my head to mind to doing a lot of these things or setting a lot of these things up. And that's where, you know, people like ourselves come along, coaches come along and start to set up the structures and keep the accountability to it and keep that sort of, as you said, traction, keeping the distractions minimized so that we can get the traction to move forward.

So it sounds like a big part of the way that you work with clients. I suppose you first get an understanding of what's going on in the business, make sure that there's clarity as to who, who's doing what roles. Again, what this does is this starts to enable team members to take ownership of what they're doing, which is part of that first step of the business owner stepping away a little bit because it's someone's responsibility. And once you do that, that then creates the space for the business owner and the leadership team to be more strategic. So I think then it makes sense to roll out a meeting cadence and have specific agendas to say, well, what are the challenges that we are going to. And I know you're a big proponent of these 90 day sprints and identifying those challenges and then going to work on it and then having Some level of accountability, not only to your team because you're saying, here are the problems that I'm here to solve, but then potentially someone else as well, where, you know, you're going to meet them on a regular basis. So you need to go, well, I committed to this and I've made the steps forward.

And it's cultural too, Dave. You know, like you want to set up this culture of accountability. You want, you know, that we're like we always say to people, people, we're process driven. Business like underpinning a lot of this is having really good systems and processes because that's what, you know, that's the oil on the chain that keeps things running smoothly. So we, we need to be thinking in terms of our culture is such that we take responsibility for what we do, we're accountable for what we commit to and we're taking the business in a forward direction. So by engaging the team in this process, it's assisting with the buy in. You know, I know in the, the systemology model you, we talk about buy in, it's one of the key elements because if we don't have our team on board, effectively we're spending all of our energy covering and you know, this is where a key person dependency, particularly around owners, comes from, is they, they don't have that sort of trust and reliance on their team to step up or do what they do. It's what they need to do. So the owners typically step back in and just do it for them. And you know, that's, that's masking a much deeper problem.

Is that another example where you have worked with a client, where you take them through this framework that we're talking about now and how you work with the client? I don't know if you can tell us a little bit more.

Yeah, so there's probably a few examples I can think of, but maybe one that comes to mind was where it's actually in the health sector, the allied health sector. And you know, basically there was, I'd say the owner when we first met was bordering on depression. He, you know, it was very, you could see the stress. We met over a coffee and you know, he was visibly, you know, drawn and you know, to the point of even tearing up on a couple of occasions when we started to speak. But the issue was that, you know, he was the main revenue earner in this particular practice and you know, it was a practice that, you know, he could see if he continued on like that it was just going to be a total burnout situation. For him, in fact, he probably was bordering on that as it was. So when we went in and worked with them, the first thing we really discovered was that he didn't have the right people. There was no structure. And the people that he did have there, a number of them were actually not the right people. So there was an assistance that we put in place there to identify the structure we needed, what we needed from those people. And then we started to make sure we got right people in the right seats accordingly. From that, we then moved on to systemizing his business. So, you know, in his case, you know, much of it was in his head because he was the main revenue earner and he didn't really have much time free time because any time that he wasn't on tools meant that the business wasn't earning revenue. So, you know, we needed to get out of his head all of the things that he was doing because he was very good at what he did. How is it that you do this in such a streamlined way? Why is it that your productivity, he did have a couple of other employed professionals. Why is it that your earn rate is like about two or three times the billing of the other guys? What are you doing differently? So we're able to unpack a lot of that and put that into some really good systems processes for the business, after which we're able to recruit into. So it's really quite an interesting journey. And over a number of years, you know, that that particular business grew multiple fold like it was a much larger business. We started to recruit quite a number of people into, into the model to the point where he had an offer to have that business purchased. And it was a very attractive offer. I remember, you know, think hearing the actual offer come across the table, it was like about probably at least triple what he might have been worth. I would argue when we started with him, his business wasn't worth anything at all because it was all very much largely on him. But he did have, you know, good, good sort of patient client base there that people potentially would have paid something for. But you know, when this offer came along, he'd moved from a position of, you know, stress, probably, you know, depression, having no free time, to one where the business was quite profitable. Obviously came up invisibility from people looking to, you know, basically purchase a business and very profitable. And he was getting a lot of free time with his family. And it was really quite interesting because he, he ended up turning down the offer because he said, you know what, he said, I'm doing as well as I've ever done. I'm making money, I've got free time, I'm getting to see, spend more time with my family and even have holidays. He said, I don't, I don't think I need to do this. And I think there's actually more I could do. And he's since gone on and he's now doing a lot of, a lot of other work with other allied health professionals, helping them create what he's created for himself. So his legacy, if you like, he's paying forward, is that he's now taking what we created and doing that in the UK and New Zealand and here in Australia. So he's doing very well.

Yeah, I love that, that insight. And it gives a little bit of inspiration for business owners as well to know what's possible and if someone's feeling like they're in a similar situation, to know, hey, there are options here and you can go from that feeling of overwhelm to really turning things around. I think that's what business owners do best. Take challenging situations and make the most of it.

The other key thing he did, Dave, is that he implemented. And I think this is the key thing. Like, you know, as Joshner always says, change doesn't come with time, it comes with action. And to his credit, he was probably at a very low point and feeling the pain. But because of that, he knew he needed to shift. The change started with him like, so he was at a point where he wasn't blaming everybody else, he wasn't blaming his employees, he totally took responsibility for what he'd created and he was at a point where he knew he needed to change. So our role became a lot easier because he was at that point where all we really had to do was to set it all up for him and then keep him accountable to it. So each week we would be with him and just make sure, okay, did you do that this last week? What are you doing for the next week? And we just slowly but surely, one step at a time, pulled that business up and created it into what is now a multi million dollar business.

I remember, I think it was a Jim Rohn quote, or maybe it was Anthony Robbins. This idea that success leaves clues and there is a blueprint here for building successful business. And it is just a matter of getting to the point where you commit to it, lean in and have the accountability to keep stepping forward. I know, again, these are some of the topics that you explore in your white paper. I'm just wondering if you, if people want to explore that a little bit more or grab a copy. Where's the best place to send them.

The place to go to? Dave will have it available on our website. So our website is just your business momentum.com au so if they just go to resources on our, on our website, they'll find it there. Yeah.

Perfect. As always, Greg, I appreciate your insights. Your, you know, at the coal face, working with business owners, seeing this stuff firsthand and you're exceptional at the work that you do, so thank you again.