David Jenyns argues that the ability to build effective business systems is the "master skill" of business because it captures and transfers best practice, removes single-person dependency, and frames most business problems as systems problems (e.g., lead generation, sales, cash flow). He describes his evolving vision: initially an external "machine" to systemize businesses, later reframed as building an internal, self-systemizing machine inside organizations. A key linchpin is appointing a "systems champion"—often a junior, technically-skilled but hungry team member—who documents, organizes, and drives systemization. He illustrates this with Stannard Homes (a $15M Adelaide building company) and promotes the Systems Champion certification program (systemology.com/systemschamp).
Questions this video answers
August 28, 2025
systemology.com/systemschamp
$15 million
Adelaide
Chapters
I call the ability to build effective business systems as the master skill. The master skill because everything falls within the scope of this one skill. If you learn how to develop effective business systems, you're effectively capturing best practice, making that transferable. So that way, that knowledge, you move from this tribal knowledge to having a central business brain that we can then pass and set standards and expectations and how we like things done off to other team members. And the whole idea is to remove that key person dependency. And one line that I often talk about is this idea that every problem in business is a systems problem. So if you think about any challenges that you might have in your business, approach it that way. Hey, I don't have enough leads. You need to work on your lead generation systems. Hey, I'm having trouble selling or closing. Okay, we need to go to work on your sales systems. Hey, I'm having cash flow issues. Okay, we need to improve your financial control systems. Every problem in business is a systems problem. And when you think about it like that, it makes it very much a game that you can win. Because now you can go, what are we currently doing? Do we have a process there or what is it that someone's doing? Whether it's documented or undocumented, let's now make that the new baseline and then look to improve it from there. And then we can start to look in other industries and in our own industry and find best practice that's currently already working and borrow from those processes and then add it into your machine. And then that kind of makes it a little bit of a game that you can start to win. Now for me, once I've seen this, that's when I had my dream. I remember I was driving along, I live down in Melbourne and I'm just by the coast down here and I was driving around one of the corners and then I had this vision of, hey, yeah, I want to free all business owners worldwide from the day to day operations of my business. I'd just recently gone to a Michael Gerber workshop. It was the dreaming room out of Carlsbad, California. And really asking the question, why are you here? What's your business here to do? What's the purpose of? And it just hit me, hey, that's really what I want to do now. To free all business owners worldwide from the day to day operations. I thought I need to create a system that can extract and organize and optimize best practice. So I had this picture in my head. Initially it was a machine where I thought, oh, I can drop a business in one end and I just want a systemized business to shoot out the other end. That was my whole thought. I thought, wouldn't that be cool to have a business come to us, say they want to be systemized and. And we go, great. You hop into our machine and then it squirts out the other end. A well oiled machine. So that's what I went to work on. And we've been working on that with a good number of years, thinking about obviously the software, thinking about how to build systems culture and leveraging some of the new technologies. And then just recently I've had this big breakthrough that it's not that you need to stick your business into this machine and then have a systemized business squirt out the other side. You need to build a machine inside your business that systemizes your business. So rather than it being external, the idea is you need a self systemizing business and you need a way that your business systemizes itself. So that's really a big part of what this program is about. We need to build this systemizing machine in, inside your organization. And a real key part of that, like if I had to say the linchpin, that is one of the big sort of insights that I've had, the more that we've done this is this idea of the systems champion. They become a key driver in making this happen. Because we know business owners are busy leadership teams are busy systems and processes important, but not necessarily urgent, which means they always sit on the to do list. If I did an analysis of all of the top companies that have had extraordinary results with us, they all have this common element. They have a systems champion. And that systems champion oftentimes some of the best systems champions, they're the junior mechanic, the junior lawyer, the junior hairdresser. They're the person who's trained on how to do the technical work. And they're new into the industry and they're hungry and they want to learn, but they don't yet know how to run the business or all of the pieces involved to deliver that technical work. And we'll talk a little bit about who you are. And I know we've got some systems champions in the room. My big message here is if you don't yet have a systems champion identified, this is something that James and I will pretty much hold you to account through this whole program. Some people come in with the systems champion ready to go. Others, business owners jump in because they want to learn the process. And towards the end, or as they get going, that's when they tap out, they're limited on time. We need someone with capacity who can drive this forward and take some of these actions and help to support you. I suppose that's just keep it in your mind and we'll explore a little bit more about who's got that. We've got plenty of tools and resources. If you don't yet have one, I've got a masterclass. I'll share the link to Inside Circle. I referenced it for those Inside Circle already in the little community area. If you don't have that person, go through that program, use the job ads, use the position description and find that person. The stories that I've got off the back and a recent one I shared being Ryan Stannard from Stannard Homes. They run a $15 million building company out of Adelaide. He's a high school dropout who's built a systems driven company. His daughter just to the left of him there or the right depending on how you're looking at it. His daughter initially started off in the organization as an interior designer. The interior designer she was training underneath her resigned after about four months. Erin stepped up into that role and through that process she was learning what she was doing and documenting and organizing and putting all of that information to a single location. And then Ryan spotted this and said, oh you. Do you enjoy doing this? How about you do this with each of the key leadership team members? And she worked her way around the organization, meeting with each key leader, asking them, what are the essential tasks that you're doing? Can you show me how you're doing it? Can we like record videos of you doing it? Then she helped to organize it, document it, accelerated that using some tools like ChatGPT to take transcripts and draft up process, which is some of the things that we'll talk about. And now Ryan said that she's the most knowledgeable team member in the organization.
Just a heads up, that clip was taken from a session in our Systems Champion certification program, which is the world's first and only program for systems champions to help you build a systems culture and develop an AI first approach and roll it out inside your organization. To find out more, head over to systemology.com systemschamp and I'll see you in there.
