Part 6 of my 10-part series Top 10 Mistakes Small Business Owners Make and How to Avoid Them.
Mistake #6 - Not Having A System of Continuous Improvement
I have two parts of my brain. One is the neurotic CPA-guy. This guy loves checklists, systems, order and discipline.
The other side of my brain, the black turtleneck creative guy, hates rules. This guy wants to avoid being boxed in and confined in anyway whatsoever. Don’t cramp my style. Let me be me, dude. You can’t systemize creativity.
Or can you?
What I’d argue is there is NO part of our business lives that can’t be improved by instituting some form of standardized process.
What am I talking about here? Checklists.
I know, I know — not the most exciting topic. But as Elle Woods said in Legally Blonde, “Let’s put the ‘FUN in FUNdamentals.” Yeah, that’s right a Legally Blonde reference. I’m not ashamed at all.
Why It’s A Problem
Standardization is the basis of improvement.
We all have repetitive tasks. Those items we do 3, 5, 10 — maybe even 100 times a week. We think we have them down. We’re smart, why would you need a checklist to do something you’ve basically got mastered.
The problem is inconsistency tends to creep it’s way into everything we do. If we don’t document our processes we can’t teach others. We can’t delegate our work so we can focus on bigger priorities. Worse, we can’t IMPROVE them.
Just putting what you do on paper, you’ll start to look at your work objectively.
It’s almost magical, you step back and realize that if you did things in a different order you could eliminate other steps entirely. You begin to reassess the tools your using, the time your spending, even the value of the end result.
Put it this way, if you aren’t consistently looking to improve your business processes, you’ll get stuck doing work that you don’t enjoy. You’re quality will go down. You’ll procrastinate on rote tasks that will just hang round undone forever.
But Kelly, my business just doesn’t lend itself to a checklist type of environment.
BULL.
If you didn’t have a repeatable process, you wouldn’t have a business.
Your customers are paying you with the expectation that you’ll deliver a certain level of quality.
How can you ensure consistency without some form of standardized process? Consultant, Web Developer, Virtual Assistant, Professional Speaker, Mechanic, Hair Dresser, Restaurateur, Accountant, Baker, Candlestick Maker….
We ALL rely on some method to our madness.
We just may not recognize it.
Symptoms
- You don’t have any of your processes documented
- You feel like you’re constantly reinventing the wheel
- You procrastinate on certain tasks because they’re always seem like such a hassle
- You’ve never stepped back and asked the question, ‘How could I make my life easier here.
How To Avoid This Mistake
Simple.
First, Start documenting WHAT you do.
Keep a log of the processes you do week to week and look for trends. Start with the highest frequency items.
When you find categories of ‘things’ you do that look repetitive note it as an item to start a checklist on.
The next time opportunity you have to do that process, start capturing the steps your taking to complete the task.
Your checklists don’t have to be fancy.
In fact, they’re better if they’re simple.
One trap avoid, don’t document the perfect checklist, start with its current state and work to improve with each iteration.
In other words, you’ll do a round. Capture it.
Then when you come back at it later, you’ll be able improve on it just a little bit more.
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