29 - What to Do If You Want to Systematize Your Business
But Do Not Have the Time to Document Procedures by Yourself!
Do you want to systematize and streamline your business so that it can run without you successfully?
If you are, you’re like many other business leaders, but there are two big problems that may arise from the need to systematize your business:
- You do not enjoy the process of documenting procedures, OR
- You do not have enough time to document and outline the procedures
After reading this entire article, you will have a better understanding of how to leverage the strengths and time of others to help you systematize your entire business, especially if it is not one of your strengths, or you simply do not have the time to do it by yourself. You will get specific instructions on how to get someone else to help you document procedures for your business!
1- Recognize That You Do Not Enjoy the Process of Documenting Procedures
First of all, thanks for being willing to be vulnerable and admitting that you aren’t the best person to document procedures for your business.
This is an important step to systematizing your business, giving others the power to do so on your behalf while you focus on other tasks that you are great at.
Without the right systems in place, your business won’t grow. You’ll be losing out on potential revenue, your employees will continue to be inefficient and customers will continue to receive unpredictable and unsatisfactory results.
By having someone else document procedures for your business you will be transforming it into one that is systematized and soon will be able to run without you successfully!
2- Recognize That You Do Not Have the Time to Document Procedures for Your Business
Let’s be honest, you know how important it is to document procedures for your business and the benefits that it brings. It is always on the top of your mind but the issue is that you don’t currently have the time to roll up your sleeve and get started because you’re too busy! There isn’t enough time in the workday to get to it because you are busy handling everything else.
If you’re feeling too busy it’s an indication that it’s time to systematize your business.
3- How to Calculate the Return on Investment (ROI) Of Paying Someone to Help Document Procedures for your Business
Before diving into the details regarding the three possible options that you have available, let’s discuss how you can determine and justify the Return on Investment (ROI) of paying someone else to help you systematize your business if you do not have the time to document procedures or you are not particularly great at it.
How much is an hour of your time worth? $300 an hour? More? To make my point clearer, let’s assume your time is worth $150 an hour? In this example it doesn’t make sense for you to spend hours documenting a procedure when you can simply have an employee that makes $25 an hour document the procedure.
Let’s say it takes two hours to document a single procedure.
That’s $300 if you do it yourself at $150/hr.
In this example, having an employee document the procedure will only cost you $50.
And once the procedure is completely documented you’ll be adding efficiency and revenue to your business because your employees will know the steps involved for getting that specific task done.
4- Where Do You Start?
At this point, you can already picture getting someone to help document procedures for your business but might not be sure where to begin. The first step in your journey to systematizing and transforming your entire business so that it runs successfully without you is to prioritize your business tasks.
There are two types of tasks that are the most important to have procedures documented for.
- First, identify the bottleneck tasks in your business. If a particular task is causing inefficiency in your business, you need to find someone that can improve the task and document a procedure so an employee can complete it efficiently.
- Second, identify the revenue generating activities at your business. Prioritize these by the revenue they generate.
Once tasks are prioritized you can have someone create the procedures with the instruction that it’s important to make the procedures as easy and efficient as possible so anyone could pick up the procedure and complete the task accurately and efficiently.
5- Solution #1: Instruct One of Your Employees to Document Your Procedures
The upside of having an employee document your procedures is that you won’t have to invest your own time and energy to complete the task. This frees you up to focus on more important aspects of your business like generating revenue. Your employees might also have ideas for how to improve procedures. You’re only capable of so much, but your entire team of employees has the brain capacity to come up with great solutions if you empower them to do so.
Note that unless an employee is great at documenting procedures, they probably aren’t fit for the task. To solve this problem make sure that you choose the right employee to handle the task of documenting your procedures.
6- Solution #2: Hire a Systems Consultant to Document Your Procedures
If you can’t document procedures and if your employees can’t then it’s time to look outside of your business for a Systems Consultant.
Bringing in someone from the outside can be tricky. They don’t know the ins and outs of your business like you or your employees do.
This is a challenge, but with a qualified systems consultant you will find someone that can document procedures and systematize your business, which will save you time and generate more revenue for your business.
Read the full article here: Sweet Process
All the best!
Patty Block
