Growing your business is like growing a succulent (like the ones I sell from my driveway!) – it takes time, effort, nurturing and business growth systems! That’s if you want your business to be sustainable and keep growing and scaling into the future.
Like a healthy succulent, healthy businesses need TLC (tender loving care) from the ground up – starting with your systems. Business growth systems are the key to sustainable growth and can be defined as:
“Business growth system is a holistic model or framework to strategically and sustainably grow a business by taking into consideration key interdisciplinary linkages between people, process and platforms with regards to both dependencies and impact on revenue as well as costs. (Source: Saul Delage)
Business growth systems: Where to start
More simply, a business system is a series of interdependent tasks or documented procedures that outline exactly how to do something. So where do you start when it comes to business growth systems?
1. Create your systems:
Start looking at the systems you have in your business and either create new systems or improve the ones you have in place. Read this blog for more information on where to start.
2. Document your processes:
The next important step is to document your processes. If you have systems in place, you may need to do this again depending on how long ago it has been since you have done this task. Processes change and steps are forgotten. Go over each area of your business and start documenting each task and how it should be achieved.
3. Standardise your business processes:
For each task there may be several different ways that it can be achieved. Standardising one single process for each task will make the delivery more efficient and effective.
What is business process standardisation?
Business process standardisation identifies the many ways a specific task is achieved in your business so a unified process can be created across the entire business and everyone knows how to do it.
A great example of this is the McDonald’s Big Mac. How many ways could you make a burger, cheese, then meat? Sauces, then cheese, then pickles? Meat, then pickles, then sauce, then cheese. The combinations are endless and it could be easy for an ingredient to be forgotten without an official “Big Mac burger process”.
4, Team and people’s responsibilities:
The next step is to clearly define every team member’s role and responsibilities, yourself included. This will allow you to delegate to other people to relieve the pressure off yourself. It’s the easiest way to clone yourself because you are transferring your knowledge through the process and not your time!
When you get your business growth systems right, they will determine the results you get. Get the processes right, get good results. If you’re not getting the results you want in your business, examine your systems and processes to see where the missing link is.
Download my free Business Growth Systems Checklist now!
To help you with this task, download my free Business Systems Checklist and Self-Assessment. Go through the checklist and compare each area of your business to it.
If you need to improve your systems and process for better business results, please get in touch and let’s have a conversation about how you can do this quickly and easily.
