A question I get asked all the time is: How do I know if my business is ready for systemization? However, the more important question is: What level of systemization am I ready for? There’s a big difference between those two because, in reality, every business is ready for systemization.
If you are just getting started with your business, you may need help defining and documenting your processes.
If you are getting ready to hire your first employee, you are at the point where you need to start creating a job description and defining what the tasks are that you are going to be delegating to this new first hire.
If you are at a point where you have grown to 20 employees, then you are ready for a different level of systemization to make sure that everything is standardized and well-documented so that you can grow and scale.
So in reality, every single business is ready for systemization. The difference is just in the level of systemization that they are ready for. One of the biggest misconceptions that we hear is people thinking they want to be like McDonald’s, where everything is systemized and standardized so that every location is delivering the same product in the same way every single day.
The truth is, McDonald’s wasn’t systemized right away or even over a 12-month time period. They have been working on this for decades, and they continue to hone in on their processes. They continually roll out new systems and processes to different locations, in different areas, with different groups of people so they can test and improve and gather metrics for decades.
You are not going to become like McDonald’s overnight, and that should not be the expectation. What is important is to think about what you need right now. Even if you are just one person running a business on your own, you still need to begin documenting and systemizing your processes so that when the time is right, you can hire team members.
If you wait to start documenting what you do and how you do it until you are ready to hire, you are going to be too overwhelmed to get everything documented, so you can make that first hire because you will already be running too fast. You should be working on your systems at every single level of business.
At OpsElevate, we offer several different levels of support for different levels of systemization. We have a DIY program if you are just getting into your business and you want to start documenting processes and maybe need just to swipe a few of our processes that you can customize. Inside SOP Simplified, you learn how to create and organize your systems and processes, and we give you a library of processes and templates so that it is easy to get your systems in place.
If you just need somebody to get the framework built for you and document as much as possible over six weeks, we do offer a six-week SOP setup. If you are in growth mode and looking to get ready to franchise or to open up new locations, and you are looking to do a deeper dive into automation, process development, and process documentation, we have our Power Process that was created for businesses that are ready to grow and scale.
Whether you are just getting started or you are ready to grow to new locations, systemization is the key to making your business simple. Visit our website to find the systemization option that is best for your current level of business.
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