Today’s inspiration comes from the Golden Arches of McDonalds. I actually worked at a McDonalds when I was a teenager; it was one of my first jobs. Now I know lots of people are probably chuckling to themselves right now, but I have to admit, looking back on it now, it was one of the best experiences that I could have enjoyed. Why?
McDonalds does billions of dollars in sales every year, being run by a bunch of pimply-faced teenagers and a handful of immigrants who speak English as a second language. Now I will admit that their level of customer service and their speed and quality of food service have all taken a dive since the days when I worked there; but the fact that individual restaurants still rake in millions of dollars every year is an impressive feat.
Unless you’ve worked there, you really have no idea how much time and effort has gone into systems planning to properly operate a McDonalds location. Everything has a system. There’s a system for washing your hands. There’s a system for rotating inventory. There’s a system for making coffee. There’s a system for stuffing french fries into fry containers. There’s a system for building every burger. There’s a system for how to wrap a burger. Heck, there’s even a system for how to properly mop a floor. EVERYTHING has a system in a McDonalds restaurant.
THIS is why a McDonalds restaurant can churn out millions of dollars in revenue every year being run by teenagers and immigrants. They don’t leave any room for error. They don’t leave room for chance. Everything is designed to be replicable and designed to deliver the same result every single time.
In my experience, there are far too many businesses out there that leave their business to chance. They rely on hiring good people. But the problem with hiring good people, is when those people decide to leave, your good “system” leaves with it. It happens time and time again, and yet it is so easily avoidable.
Many business owners are hesitant to delegate because they are worried that the person who will be doing the job, won’t be able to do it as good as themselves. But there would be no problem if they documented how they did a process, and then taught that system to the new person. That way the new person should be able to get the same result as the business owner.
The other advantage of systems is the increased morale in your business. Why? Because when something goes wrong, it’s not a people-problem, it’s a system-problem. Front-line people are going to be much more likely to provide feedback about what happened and useful suggestions as to how to improve the system, when they know the finger isn’t going to be pointed at them.
If you’re ready to begin shifting your business from people-dependent to systems-dependent, then the first step is buying the book The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. Michael Gerber is a world-class business visionary that helps tens of thousands of business owners systemize and improve their business every year. The reason I suggest buying it is that you will want to keep a pen and a highlighter handy to scribble notes and highlight ideas. Using his lessons, start setting aside time to begin documenting your processes and building systems into your operations manual. You will thank yourself later.
