Systems > Routines > Habits > Results

I used to think that ‘people managed people’. To a certain degree they do, but one of my early mentors, James Caan from Dragon’s Den and serial entrepreneur, taught me differently. In 2010 he helped me develop my business plan, and invited me to his Mayfair offices. We asked me to fill in the plan beforehand. 

We sat in his office, which is in the middle of his office building. It has glass walls on opposite sides, where he can see his staff in the adjacent rooms. He sat quietly and pensively, as he does, and said ‘watch this’. He picked up his phone and called someone. About 30 seconds later a man walked in and handed James a document of about 100 pages. 

‘This is his entire job manual. Everything that man does in this business is in there. This document manages him, so I don’t have to. They have to know I’m watching, but they don’t need me to manage them. This document has their entire role laid out. If he leaves, I can hire someone else who can follow this document and do the job well. I don’t like to rely on people, I like to rely on processes’.

‘Rob, this is what you lack in your business right now. You have a chaotic, entrepreneurial business that relies on you and your knowledge. Yes, you might love it, but that is a big risk. It will tie you to the business. It will make your staff dependent on you. It will limit your growth. Everything that’s in your head needs to be in documents like this. Every role. The company's vision and mission. The company business plan. And most importantly, everything you do, that only you know how to do’.

This was a great lesson to me. The funny thing is I’d read all the books like the E-myth, Scaling up, Built to sell, Work the System; yet I had no systems. Too many things in my business and life relied on me, my time and the knowledge in my head. Partly because I really enjoyed my work, partly because I felt too busy to write these systems, partly because I didn’t fully trust anyone to do as good a job as me (ironic because I’m chaotic), partly because I felt I’d been let down in the past, and partly because I hadn’t dedicated enough time to do these systems. 

Warren Buffett says “If you don’t find a way to earn money while you sleep you will work until you die”. Systems, or the creation of them in the first place, should take priority over single action tasks. There is no residual benefit from single action tasks, even if they earn a good hourly rate. Systems can potentially give you years or decades of ongoing leverage. Ring fence rock or pebble diary time to plan, create and write your systems, and ensure it is in your KRAs. 

I have a little leverage ‘hack’ in a later chapter that will make this even easier for you. A system is a way of automating a process or outcome without the need for your input. It could be an app, software, a checklist, A-Z process that someone or a computer can follow, anything that automates an action, a protocol or best practice way of doing something, an alert, trigger, piece of code, GPS, API; virtually anything. Anything that makes an action easier, better or faster. Anything that reduces (human) error or duplication.

So, in this order, you want to design your diary: systems lead to routines lead to routines which lead to results. Process equals outcome; focus on the process of getting to the result, not the result, and the result will look after itself. 

Taken from my new upcoming book “Routine = Results”. 

Anything you would like to add?

Rob