Welcome to Part IV of Anatomy of a Foolproof System. Today I pick up where I left off last week with steps 4 through 6 of the Six Steps to Effective Business Systems.

The next step then is step 4 – Resources. You list the resources that are required for the systems. It might be staffing, job positions, specific equipment, work space or supplies, or information required to perform the work in the system. You include the quantity of each resources needed to successfully perform the steps in the system.

Step 5 are the Standards and Tracking. The standards are the yard sticks that tell you how well or poorly your system is working and whether or not the results of the system are acceptable, unacceptable, or outstanding.

There are three kinds of standards and they correspond with the three basic parts of the system. The resource, or the input standards, the work process standards and the results of the output standards.

The first and most important standards are the standards for the results. The whole purpose of a system is to produce results so shouldn’t every system have standards for producing those results? The answer is, “Yes, of course!”

Rule one is that you must have one or more result standard for every system. And unless the work is properly done, and unless the resources are adequate, the system won’t produce the results you need. So you may also need to work standards and resource standards in there.

Work standards have to do with the quality and timeliness of the work done. Service has to be done properly. The people serving customers have to have the right attitudes and behaviors. The work methods must be sound and efficient.

Resource standards ensure that supplies used in the work are of good quality and quantities are sufficient. If you have low quality supplies, poorly maintained equipment, bad working conditions or poor resources of any kind, you won’t get the results you need, no matter how good the work is.

If it’s about numbers and output, then quantify. Give it a number in your standards. How many have to be produced? How many phone calls need to be made? How many supplies should be consumed? How quickly does the work need to be done and by when? How much waste is allowed? How precisely must the holes be drilled, or the painting be done? When standards are subjective and not easily measured then quantify them with a rating scale of some kind.

Standards provide directions for how well to do the work. They also give you the key indicators that you will use for tracking and evaluating the performance of the system. Tracking is the way you keep an eye on how well the system is meeting its standards. You’ll need to establish how to measure and observe the performance of the system, including its costs and the income it produces so that you can detect problems early and keep track of the system using both quantitative measures and qualitative observations. You’ll probably select system results and key standards as important indicators of system performance.

Don’t go crazy with your system tracking. It takes time and effort to monitor a system and too complex a tracking and reporting process is just going to reduce the effectiveness of the people operating the system, and reduce the productivity of the system. So whenever possible you should just tap into the normal flow of information that’s generated rather than inventing unnecessary tracking requirements. For instance, sales people generate sales receipts, order forms, contracts and the like. Get your monitoring information from those sources rather than inventing additional paperwork for sales people to fill out. It saves time and effort, improves accuracy and is much quicker.

Step 6 – Documentation. If it’s not written, it’s not real. The system isn’t complete until it’s finalized in writing so it can be used by anyone associated with it. Do document the system. Get it written. It’s not a complete a system until it’s written down in some form. It is a system if it’s not written, but it’s an informal system and then it will operate according to the whim of whoever is doing it, who may or may not follow it completely.

In conclusion, remember the mantra:

Focus on results. Systemize everything. Delegate everything you systemize.

Also, don’t forget to balance your systems. The output from one system must be appropriate as input for the next system in line. It mustn’t overwhelm the next system, nor should it be so small that the next system doesn’t receive enough input to keep it fully occupied. You need system design that balances the output with the input, the output and the capacity. One of the main reasons businesses fail is not from lack of work, but from too much growth and no balanced systems to cope with it. That results in missed deadlines, unhappy customers, stressed employees and you end up with the business owner saying, “It’s all too hard. I’m going back to how it was when it was just me.”

So what do you do if you have people who won’t follow your systems? Join me next week when I share the 7 Reasons Why Systems Aren’t Followed.

Until next time…

P.S. If you missed any of the first three parts of this series, click the links below.
Part I
Part II
Part III

P.P.S. Learn more about working ON your business–talk to the coach! Click here to connect with me!