The numbers are gloomy. Statistics show that of one hundred new business startups, eighty will be out of business within five years. Too often, the causes of these failures are recurring inefficiencies and their offspring: fire-killing and distraction. Most business owners wake up in the morning with only a vague sense of their ultimate, primary goals. In order for a startup or small business to succeed, the owner must proceed with logical direction and sensible protocols.
Here are five potent strategies to auto-pilot your small business so you can find more freedom and make more money. This is about becoming efficient….
1) “Get it”: According to Fast Company magazine, the average executive wastes six weeks every year looking for lost information. By “getting” how linear systems permeate every moment of the day, you can implement a system improvement organizational strategy. Do this, and you’ll escape fire-killing and inefficiency.
2) Be set apart: Approach your business from an “outside-and-slightly elevated” vantage point that sees the world as a collection of linear systems. Different from the mental posture most people pack around, this mindset formulates the day’s happenings into visible, separate, and individual elements, arranged in logical sequence. This approach will also help circumvent the endless fire-killing (mole-whacking) found in so many small businesses and within the departments of large corporations.
3) Act, don’t react: Take time to write the three types of documentation necessary for organization, efficiency, and action: The Strategic Objective, General Operating Principles, and Working Procedures. These documents will allow your employees to relax with their jobs because they don’t have to “wing it.” Note: The book, Work the System, goes into specific detail on how to write these three vital documents. See www.workthesystem.com.
4) Don’t “do the work”: The reason a successful business owner can work a few hours a week, or take an extended vacation without stress, is because he or she has created systems, implemented written procedures, and learned to delegate. Successful people don’t work harder; they work smarter – and most recurring processes can be either automated or delegated. Focus on what needs to be done to make the business grow, and delegate, or automate, the “work.”
5) Consider using the “three essential tools of control”: In your business and your personal life, center your efforts around three primary tools: a digital voice recorder, Microsoft Outlook, and your cellular phone. None of these tools are new, but if you can muster up the necessary self-discipline, and have the patience to work out the details of how the tools interface with each other to suit your own style, you will experience significantly more control and peace in your day. Note: For further information about these tools of control, see: http://www.workthesystem.com/tools.
Wondering how to apply these concepts to your own small business or startup entity? Attend Sam Carpenter’s Work The System Boot Camp October 20 and 21, 2008 in beautiful, Bend, Oregon. Designed for the small business owner or corporate department manager, this two-day, intensive, intimate-group program goes to the heart of the WTS process with the intent of helping you launch your business (or department) into an organized, efficient, self-sufficient, and profitable organism. All elements of the methodology will be addressed with plenty of Q&A time and interaction with Sam.
Everything covered in the two-day seminar is pointed toward preventing the day-to-day fire killing found too often in small businesses or even in departments of large, relatively successful corporations. The ultimate aim? Launching you toward a life where you can “work less and make more.”
Come mentally and physically prepared to focus, and ready to tackle your own most sensitive business issues. You will leave with a different perspective of your life and work, with 100% of the resources necessary to institute the Work The System methodology on your own. See www.workthesystem.com/bootcamp for more information, and to register.
