Issue 14 - November 26, 2010
Hey Genc,
Is your business not performing the way you want? Even after you've spent the time and resources to develop systems, that are supposed to make your business run the way you want?
Well today you'll find out the "missing link" that some business owners miss when implementing systems. The missing piece of the puzzle that causes them frustration. And can lead to things getting worse, instead of better.
Just follow my recommendations below, and you'll see how you can organize your systems in such a way...
That Will Help You Work Less... Experience Less Stress...
And Enjoy Your Business More.
Because after all, that's what we all want from our businesses.
Next, we're going to visit a common fascination with my ability to consume vast amounts of reading material. While internalizing it so I have total recall of the points I feel are most important.
So if you've wondered how I can manage so much information (as I read an average of 5 books every week)... so you can try to do the same... you'll find today's answer in our Reader Q&A Session extremely useful.
As it includes my process for indexing key points for future reference.
Which when applied and practiced, can become one of your greatest advantages.
To higher profits,
Rich  YOUR BUSINESS BIBLE
When I talk to most entrepreneurs, they tell me they're not happy.
Their business isn't performing the way they want it to. Their staff members aren't working the way they should. The money isn't coming in the way it needs to. And the entrepreneurs themselves are working 100 hours a week with nothing to show for it but a load of stress.
The problem? These entrepreneurs don't know how to make their businesses work for them. Instead, they end up working for their business.
If you have a business for the purpose of doing work your love... Enjoying more time with your family... Or earning enough money to live your dream lifestyle... Then working for your business is the wrong way to approach things.
Fortunately, as I've addressed in this space before, you can solve all these problems and achieve your business goals... Simply by installing standardized systems inside your business.
I've written before about which systems you need and how to implement them. But today I want to discuss something a little different: How to organize your systems once you've created them.
You see, some entrepreneurs go through all the effort to develop systems only to find they aren't being used in their company. This is because the systems aren't organized in a way that makes them easy to follow.
More often than not, this happens when a company has one bulky procedure manual that sits on a shelf... Gathering dust... And is never read or used.
Obviously, this isn't the goal here. So let's talk about the right way to organize your systems.
To ensure that your business reaps the full rewards of the systems you and your team develop, I recommend creating three procedure manuals. Here they are:
1. The Role-Specific Manual
2. The Functional Manual
3. The Comprehensive Manual
Let's talk about each of these separately. This way you'll be absolutely clear on how best to organize your business systems... Which will help ensure that they'll be followed exactly as they're laid out.
Role-Specific Procedure Manuals
The role-specific procedure manual documents tasks and activities that a person in a specific role is to responsible for. These are the procedures that a person in a particular role does without involving other team members. In this situation, the individual in a specific role is 100 percent in control of the procedure and is held 100 percent accountable.
Most role-specific manuals will have about 20 to 30 systems that the employee in that role is responsible for. Of course, there could be more or fewer. It really depends on the role.
Having role-specific manuals gives your employees a sense of security. They know exactly what's required of them... And they know exactly how they must go about performing their tasks.
It also makes it incredibly easy to train the next employee you hire for the role. The role-specific procedure manual becomes the training manual for future team members filling that role.
In addition, each role-specific manual is like doing an audit for every position in your business. It'll uncover any and all inefficiencies that might exist. It will also reveal any roles that are currently under-leveraged in your company.
Functional Procedure Manuals
Each functional procedure manual covers a series of processes or systems that require close coordination of several team members to achieve a certain outcome.
For example, there's a functional procedure manual for Founder's Club. It documents every procedure that is required for Strategic Profits to deliver everything we promised to Club members.
It includes how we conduct the webinars... How we update the platform... All the steps involved in getting reports into the hands of our Founder's Club members, etc.
It not only includes all the steps required, it also spells out who is responsible for completing each step. It also includes a calendar for when each step needs to be done.
This way every team member knows where he or she fits into the big picture. It also explains what will need to be done in case a team member isn't available on a day when his/her task needs to be done.
The Comprehensive Manual
The comprehensive procedure manual houses all the systems and procedures for your entire company.
When most business owners think about a "procedure manual," they are really thinking about a comprehensive manual.
But it's a big mistake to give every employee a copy of your comprehensive manual. They don't need all the information inside it. It's usually too big to easily manage. Plus, it puts your entire business in jeopardy because every employee has a complete picture of everything that's done in your business.
So, the comprehensive procedure manual is solely for you and your management team.
Every other team member will have a copy of other manuals: Their role-specific manuals and copies of whatever functional manuals they participate in.
Developing Your Business's Procedure Manuals
Just to be clear... You don't really go about creating a comprehensive manual. Instead you create the role-specific and functional manuals. By doing so, you'll be building your comprehensive manual.
If you've got a team already, I recommend you assign each member to develop his or her own role-specific manual. Managers should create their own role-specific manuals too, but they should also create your functional manuals.
Whether or not you have a team yet, I recommend you create your own role-specific manual. It'll give you the opportunity to improve your own performance... And also lay the foundation for ultimately handing off many of your responsibilities to your growing team.
This, in turn, will help you work less. Experience less stress. And enjoy your business more.
Resources To Grow Your Online Business...
Today's Question and Answer with Rich
Question: When you summarize books, do you use a special software to tag this information so you find it readily?
Rich's Answer: I used to. I don't really do that anymore.
What I used to do is mind map all my books. The branches would act as tabs or tags for me to find stuff. And I could create new mind maps of all the different books that shared that one branch name. Therefore I could create a mind map of what all these other books had to say about that.
But I don't put my book notes into mind maps anymore. When I get my book notes back, before I put them on my iPad, I do tag them. But I just tag them with their overall topic - self-improvement, marketing, logic, argument, small business, big business, etc. In iBooks I can view it by tag.
In general, with my reviewing of books, my goal is to make all the material I found useful. Ultimately somewhat unconscious by reviewing it frequently enough, and making connections in my mind often enough, that I have it easily accessible in my mind. And I'm able to develop ideas on the fly with it. That's generally my overall goal.
It's not necessarily to have a collection books I can refer to for a very specific thing. In general, since I do review the books, I have a general sense of what each book covers. And if I want to get the same outcome of what I believe someone would want, based on that question that you asked me, I would just go to those four or five books and quickly speed read them again in my app. I have quick reader on my iPad. Then after I'm done speed reading, I would use my mind to develop the ideas I just re-exposed myself to.
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