Business Systems Evolve Decisions for Growth
"In the last decade, while other franchise chains have bounced in and out of the Top 10 like corn in an air popper, Subway has topped the Franchise 500® list nine out of 10 years.", according to Entrepreneur magazine (Jan, 2010). Founder Fred DeLuca credits part of the success to the "luck" of Jared Fogle. Part of this lucky story is not luck but design. The sandwich building processes that help make Subway an excellent franchise also give employees the freedom to shift their attention from the product to the service, recognizing and engaging customers.
To get quick returns on improved or new systems, start with:
1. When mistakes and corrections tend to occur or require extra attention and care
2. Where customer facing engagement opportunities are spent on internal
3. Where specific training is needed for new employees
Read More about Business Systems at Work
Insight from the Experts
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| Evolution |
| If we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to keep getting what we're getting. - Stephen R. Covey |
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- When repetition is a good thing, follow Boeing and focus on the critical, controllable items first
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| Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. – George S. Patton |
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- Maintain engagement and flexibility by using systems as a platform for communication, collaboration and change
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| The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice. - George Eliot |
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- Align tactics to strategy and outcomes to objectives, proactively and retroactively.
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Document Your Systems the Fast and Easy Way
Carving out time to spend on strategic tasks like documenting processes can be challenging and just knowing where and how to start can be the trick to building momentum toward strong systems.
1. Get Help - Hire someone to observe what you are doing and record the steps
2. Do it the First Time - When you are learning something new, take notes
3. Observe an Expert - What are they doing, and how could you learn from it?
4. Ask for Advise - Look to mentors and colleagues for different expertise.
5. Get the External View - Be your own secret shopper to find opportunity.
Leading Edge Strategic Systems
- Individual Performance: Providing custom, strategic ideas, tools and techniques is essential to competitive survival. - Michael Schrage, Getting Beyond Ideas
- Disciplined Collaboration: Systems and tools are required to collaborate effectively without wasting time, money and resources. - Morton Hansen, Collaboration
- Decision Policies: Policies such as Google’s for data based decisions and outcome analysis ensure rational, smarter decisions .- Tom Davenport, Analytics at Work
- Checklist Adoption: Proven highly effective, checklists as a tool to improve outcomes needs to be more widely adopted. - Dr. Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto
- Innovation Review: P&G follows systematic processes and frameworks to decide and learn from decisions of investment and abandonment. - A.G. Lafley, CEO
The Bottom Line of Strategic Systems
Memory is fallible, crises hijack logical decisions, and training gets forgotten. Business systems, process and tools accept these realities and provide a way around, through, and past these and other barriers to assure quality decisions, actions and outcomes.
It’s hard to take time away from day to day pressures to focus on strategic activities like documenting, designing and evaluating processes. Yet, effective and properly managed systems, tools and processes accelerate growth by capturing sharing and building knowledge.
While changes and updates need to be vetted and managed, the temptation to resist change is natural human nature and can be balanced with a complementary process and system for revisions that allow for collaborated input at a suitable determined frequency.
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Ideas & Insights