You have created marketing strategies, hired sales associates, and created products to inspire business growth. You have taken classes, built plans, and talked through ideas with your team. But have you set up organizational systems to support business growth and keep your business on the trajectory you envision?
Setting up building systems that grow with your company and underpin business growth is the best way to create stable, consistent growth. Additionally, established policies, processes, and procedures help your employees provide a consistent experience to every customer.
How to Create Organizational Systems that Grow with Your Business
If you have an established business, you likely have systems in place. They may be informal systems that you carry around in your head - or more formal written or recorded systems.
Here are the steps to take when building efficient systems while continuing to run your business:
1. Lay out existing systems
The first step in creating effective organizational systems is to record existing systems that are working. For example, if your sales team and product manufacturers have processes and procedures that produce consistent results, now is the time to write them out.
2. Collaborate
You have employees who are demonstrating excellence in their assigned tasks. Collaborate with these employees and find out what systems they use. What personal policy do they consistently follow to ensure outcomes? Your employees likely have fantastic methods that can be replicated throughout their department.
3. Make systems accessible
Having policies, processes, and procedures is not enough. They need to be made accessible. Employees need to:
a. Understand what processes and procedures they are expected to follow.
b. See how their work meshes in with the overall systems utilized in the company.
When employees have a greater understanding of the value of their work, they do a better job and can think more collaboratively.
4. Do what you can to make the systems better
Systems grow, develop, and evolve with a company. Keep this in mind as you build your business systems and ensure they remain dynamic. Some ways you can continue to improve systems are:
- Listen to clients, employees, and contractors to find ways to make systems better.
- Perform surveys.
- Review systems when a new product or service is introduced.
- Perform occasional run-throughs of various processes and procedures to see that they are still working.
5. Monitor metrics
As you change systems, make sure to monitor the related business metrics. Did the changes you made improve things, or did they make them worse? How is your team’s performance responding to a system change?
Monitor metrics so that you know what is working and what isn’t.
The Business Success Consulting Group team specializes in establishing business systems within companies. If you find any of the above steps challenging, get in touch! We are here to help.
Resources:
If you want to learn more about how business systems can be used effectively, listen to our podcast Systems Simplified. We recommend starting with the interview with Rachel Charlupski of The Babysitting Company. That interview provides more tips and strategies that you can utilize when establishing business systems.
