The Reason Why You Feel Like Babysitter Rather than a Manager
I’ve worked with a number of different businesses and people over the years.
Some complete failures beyond help, others that are efficiency profit machines and then there’s the best of the rest.
Your average company appears successful from the outside but when you look a little closer, it’s chaos.
The owners, managers and the staff are constantly flying by the seat of their pants, swerving to avoid icebergs and constantly fire fighting.
Most of the time it’s all hands to the pump, especially when things get busy.
You become a glorified babysitter rather than a leader. As an owner or manager, you can’t take a day off and the phone never stops ringing.
To put it bluntly, you’re running a business in the same way you walk a dog.. being pulled along and cleaning up the poop, who’s really in charge?!
And while you might say “well I’ve got to make hay while the sun shines” or “That’s just the way it is, it’s a busy complex business.”
I say that it might be successful for you, but working in chaos you’ll never truly reach your goals. Expansion and growth are problematic, inefficient and perhaps impossible.
You’ll never achieve any consistency if you’re constantly flying by the seat of your pants.
If there’s one thing in common that all the greatest business have it’s consistency, particularly in a customer service industry.
For all Mcdonalds’ moral faults, they have consistency dialled, as do Starbucks, and Amazon.
Whenever you use these companies, wherever in the world, they always deliver the same product and service. That’s why customers love it, they know they will get the same thing every time.
Stop the chaos and put systems in place
I know your business is different from Mcdonalds, and more personal than Amazon, but that doesn’t mean you need to work in inefficient unpredictable chaos.
Take a step back design systems that deliver the same results each and every time.
Sometimes that starts by simplifying what you do.
If I sit down in a restaurant and I’m presented with a HUGE menu, in fact, anything more than 10 items per course I am immediately worried.
Why?
Because how can a restaurant possibly cook all these dishes well. I’m thinking quality is probably poor and who knows what will actually come out of the kitchen. It must be chaos cooking hundreds of food variations.
On the flip side, a restaurant with a small menu pleases me.
It’s the sign of a business that has worked out what it’s delivering and concentrates on producing a quality product and experience every single time.
Each dish is cooked hundreds of times, day in day out with the process quickly refined and perfected.
The ‘system’ of cooking is perfected.
Think of your system as a recipe
If you feel like there’s so much going on that you can’t possibly put in exact processes and systems then start narrowing down your ‘menu’ or what you do!
If that’s not an option then develop a step by step system to delivering your core product or service with the same results each time.
Remove anything that is open to interpretation by staff or complex processes that require experience and judgement.
If it is cooking then remove the interpretation of ingredients, amounts, cooking time. Nail down the cooking process.
Think of your system as a recipe — this is what you need and this is how you do it. And you do it this way every single time.
That’s how you guarantee consistency. In the name of consistency squash discretion.
With a foolproof system, the chaos will turn into calm.
“Organize around business functions, not people. Build systems within each business function. Let systems run the business and people run the systems. People come and go but the systems remain constant” — Michael Gerber, E-Myth Revisited
With consistent results being churned out time after time, all you have to do now is keep an eye on your systems and vision to move forward. You can simply plug people in and out of your system as you need.
No longer are you chasing your tail, picking up the loose ends, or babysitting your team.
