Your a small business doing great things but time is short. How do you grow? One of the best ways to do that is by bringing in others to help, but will you dilute what is great about your business if others don’t have your exact skills, knowledge or aptitude?
Any analysis I do of a business show that many tasks are repetitive. In our book ’57 Ways to Grow Your Business’ we write about systemisation. One of the most important aspects of growing a successful business is making sure everything is done the right way, every time.
Systemisation is one key concept in one of my favourite books ‘The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber’ one of the great guide books for entrepreneurs. This what he wrote about the biggest fast food chain in the world:-
‘Have you ever wondered how Ray Kroc managed to get teenagers in California, New York, London and Tokyo making exactly the same fry? It is really quite simple; McDonald’s start with the same kind of potato. Each potato is cut into fries of the same size. At all locations, the fries are cooked in the same type of oil in the same fryer at exactly the same temperature for exactly the same amount of time. Is there any surprise that all fries come out the same?’
How can we learn from this? A lot of what goes on in a business is repetitive. That means that it doesn’t have to always be done by the same person. For a businessman to leverage his business there is a three step approach:
1. Take a hard look at what you do and what others in the business do.
2. Write down how its done (a template for how your business works).
3. Get your team to follow the systems all the time, every time.
Re-visit the ‘systems’ regularly to ensure they are still working and appropriate for your business as you watch it grow!
Contact us today for your free copy of our book ’57 Ways to Grow Your Business’
Article written by Kevin Begley for The South Warrington News
