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The Top 5 Systemisation Mistakes

business-systemisation-mistakes-rachelle-deem

I can say with a fair amount of confidence that most, if not all, business owners want to see growth and success in their business. 

When you google “how to grow my business” you’re hit with 998,000,000 results, which tells me 1. That people are searching for this and 2. Other people have “solutions” to this question.

In my experience, there has been a common missing piece in a lot of businesses I’ve seen that are struggling for growth and reach…

Systemisation.

If you want to grow you must create a systemized business. Because your business systems are essential to creating a structure that will generate revenue, that will produce your services and products, support your marketing and promotion and provide consistent results.

But while the process of systemisation can be approached in many ways, not every way is successful and there are several common mistakes that I see being made when trying to systemise a business

Not having a strategic plan

If you want to successfully systemise your business, you need to know what you’re building, why you’re building it, and where you plan to go with it.

You don’t have to sit down and create a 50-page strategic plan with graphs, charts, trajectories...and I’m not suggesting that you do.

What I’m suggesting is that you take some time, sit down, and write out your vision for your business. What do you hope to accomplish in the next 5 years? What will your business look like in 5 years? 

Having this picture in your head will allow you to prioritize the development, documentation, and implementation of the system based on this plan.

Looking for a “one size fits all” system

I’m pretty sure this is becoming one of my main catchphrases...there is no such thing as “one size fits all”.

You can not take something off the shelf, or attempt to replicate as-is from someone else and make it perfectly and automatically fit your business.

A successful system is customized to the vision, goals, needs, resources of that business. 

Design your systems to produce the results you desire and not what some guru or other business owner has told you is the ‘desired result’.

Not documenting

You can’t correctly repeat a system unless it is clearly documented.

If you have a system that has developed naturally over time and works well, document it. This is critical to the progress of your business. 

Even a system that seems 100% natural should be documented. It may be natural to you, but that does not guarantee it’s natural to your team. 

Documenting your processes ensures that everyone follows the same process, the same way, every time...and this creates consistent results.

I recommend using a Standard Operating Procedure (or SOP) template to help you with this and I have a free template you can download below if you’d like.


Lack of implementation

Inside of my membership program each month we implement a new business growth project and I break my projects down into 3 parts:

  1. Strategy
  2. Systems
  3. Implementation

I know from experience that implementation is where so many people come undone.

They get excited about the strategy, they dig into the systems, and when the time comes to implementation that hit a wall.

What they are left with is a truckload of amazing assets that are just waiting to be put into action.

Implementation can be hard and often it takes more than just you to get the doing done...often it takes a community to get the motivation to do the implementation.

But if you truly want to have a systemized business, looking at the strategy, and documenting the system isn’t going to cut it...you have to execute it.

As Peter Drucker once said, “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work”.

If you’re one of those people who get stuck with implementation (or strategy and systems) then take a look at my membership program, The Automation Success Lab. 

It checks all the boxes that I’m covering in this blog.

Business growth - check

Strategy - check

Systems - check

Implementation - checkity check check

Not knowing the measure of success

If you want to know how successful you’re becoming you need to have clearly defined and quantifiable results to measure against.

And you should document these.

The best way to determine if a system is working or not is by measuring how it meets the success metric you align with it.

If success is some unknown, unquantifiable state, how will you know when you’re there.

Give it a number...a revenue value, a client value, a program value, hours worked value….whatever suits your business.



Systemising your business is an essential step on the journey to business success. Without it, you may find yourself returning to the same part of the journey over and over again - like wandering past the same tree in the woods 3 times when you’re lost and don’t have a map.

Avoiding these common mistakes in systemizing your business can make your journey to business growth easier and more successful.

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