March 31, 2022

Six ways to sell your team on a systems-based culture... it's not as hard as you might think.

In life as it is in business, you have likely heard me say that “Improvement isn’t inevitable, change is”. When anything new is presented to your coworkers or employees, the first reaction is usually one of disdain. “Oh no, here we go again with some flavor of the day plan that will waste our time!”  The key to overcoming this hurdle is through consistency and a genuinely enthusiastic presentation. As an owner, you must believe in the long-term, future vision of this change in order to be able to properly sell it to your constituents. And above all else, the benefit to the affected employees has to be at the root of your delivery. Here are six of the many benefits which will get your management team rallied around a culture of systems documentation. 

  1. A systematized business is easier to run because managers will not have to repeatedly answer the same questions over and over to their employees. Most people are not truly listening to you when you provide answer – they just want the answer without understanding the concept or having to figure it out on their own.
  2. Systems accelerate the execution of best practices and provide consistent quality. If a method works well with almost no failure, then why not just do things that way? Many employees will want follow their own method even if it often produces a bad result or worse yet, perform their work inconsistently. Why fail when you know how to succeed?
  3. It is actually possible to get everyone on board once they see the benefits of a systematized culture. If everyone collaborates to improve the workflow and process, then the lone wolf employee will become the minority and either quit or join the other cool kids who are systematizing their processes.
  4. When we hire a new employee, we won’t have to repeat the same training over and over again. And better yet, the new teammate will feel much more supported during their onboarding phase. The employee will get up to speed a lot faster and have a higher likelihood of sticking around if their work environment is organized.
  5. If employees want to take a well-deserved vacation or if they are out sick, their jobs can be covered for by co-workers. Think how much more you can enjoy that vacation if you are not getting phone calls with more of the same questions. Or you know this feeling… the dread of returning to work only to see a week’s worth of work to catch up on. My torture yourself?
  6. Promoting your employees will be much more efficient because the new role will be ready to walk right into. This is also seen when board members turn over their position at the end of a term. Will the job be done just as good or better than the previous person in that seat? There is only one way to guarantee that, and it is a culture rooted in systems.

Hopefully, these examples show you a little more about how I evoke change in an organization. The methods that I use to systematize are truly meant to make everyone’s life easier and are deployed in a supportive way. From the owner to the receptionist, everyone’s roles are equally important and can be improved through the documentation of the system.