Founders 7 Point System Development Checklist
By Josh Anderson
Use this list as a starting place to shift your team from setting and achieving one-off goals that are
A. Constantly changing
B. Add nothing to valuation of the business
To instead having them develop and operate systems that are:
A. Built for change
B. Enduring and thus build valuation
System Development
1. Purpose and Context (why, how, what)
Businesses are a collection of interconnected systems. Good systems are autonomous. But each system needs to be understood within the context in which they are running, otherwise, you have isolated islands. Make sure you are leading the development of systems that connect to one another.
2. Inputs and Outputs
Every system has a trigger to start and produces an outcome when it is done. For most systems, the input will be an output from another system. And for most system outputs will be inputs for another system. Creating this interconnection via inputs and outputs by owners to talking and agreeing on SLA’s is what enables amazing customer and employee experiences.
3. Things that are in the system
Systems are made up of things called elements. Those things are people, processes, technology, and content. When developing systems, list all the elements that will be needed, given the desired input and output.
4. Operational Order of the things in the system
Once you know what is in the systems, usually those things need to be in a certain order. This order is what makes a system repeatable and scalable. However, some systems are going to do things that produce a unique output every time. In which case the system type is that a
framework.
5. Timing of the things in the system
Systems themselves have that mini-input and output that not only tells you what to do next but when to do it! It is like the old saying, “timing is everything”. If you complete your homework a year late, you may not be getting the output you were seeking!
6. Instrumentation to determine the state
For every step in the process, create a way to determine the state. You will need this for the next step, reporting. Which leads directly to improvement. So, if a step in your system to determine whether a customer is willing to buy in the next 30 days, you might track the state of that question as follows. Start date and time, whether it has been Asked, whether it has been Answered, whether a prospect dropped off or went to the next step. If you can capture the context, that is extremely useful as well.
7. Measurements and reporting for failures and successes
Look, the reason systems are so powerful is because they tell you things that give your insight into exactly how well they are performing. The best reason to use systems is so you can continuously get better and better. But if you do not build the system where you can determine success and failure at each step, then you are going to be guessing why, for instance, why customer’s close rates for your sales system are low. You’ll ask your sales VP and they will say “We have a strong pipeline! Don’t worry about it”. Bad advice. Worry!
Final Step
Register for the webinar “How to lead the development of systems so you can stop Working-In-The-Business”.
In this webinar you will learn that working-on-the-business not only gives you the freedom you desired by being business owner in the first place, but that it is in fact the only way to raise the valuation of your business for a sell that will give you a retirement grade exit one day.
