Key Takeaways:
- Each department in a business has its own functions and roles.
- Good business health means all department subsystems are in good health.
- The Critical Client Flow (CCF) is the first step to systemization, but it doesn’t address all areas of the organization.
- Minimum Viable Systems (MVS) tackle other important systems and can produce a compounding effect.
- MVS for business are crucial to achieving sustained growth and transformation.
Say your respiratory system isn’t working well, and you’re not doing anything to make it better. It’s going to start affecting other organs, functions, and in the end, your overall health.
A business system is just like the human body. Each department acts like a different body system helping to keep it alive. If one or more of these departments and their subsystems perform poorly, they can hurt the overall health of your business.
So how and where do you really start with creating and maintaining subsystems?
Building Business Subsystems? Start with the Critical Client Flow
The first step is to identify the different departments in your organization, such as:
- Marketing
- Sales
- Operations
- Finance
- HR
- Management
Once you figure out what your departments are, it’s critical that you have an understanding of the essential function of each department. Similar to the systems of the human body, each one of the different departments has a particular area of responsibility.
With the different roles of your departments in mind, apply the 80/20 rule. Ask yourself: What are the 20% of the subsystems that deliver the bulk of the results for each of these different departments? This in turn, will lead you into thinking about the Critical Client Flow (CCF) to help you identify the most important steps in each subsystem.
So let’s say in marketing, we’re thinking about one system, lead generation. A simplified CCF outline may follow the steps below:
- Generate leads through Facebook Ads, YouTube Ads and referrals.
- Capture an incoming inquiry, schedule a Zoom meeting and prepare a proposal.
- If a client is ready to go, issue an invoice and onboard them.
- Deliver the primary product or service.
- Potentially get them to come back.
Similar to this example, there are other essential systems in other departments that you can apply the CCF to. Keep in mind though that identifying the most crucial 10-15 systems in your business and applying CCF on each is really just the first milestone in business systemization.
You may think that having just a few systems in place will magically transform your business, and when you don’t quite see the wins you imagined, you may get tempted to abandon systemization. This is where you need to move into the second step and next milestone, Minimum Viable Systems (MVS).
Understanding Minimum Viable Systems for Business
Once you’ve implemented the CCF to determine the most essential systems needed for the business to operate, you can focus on adding more systems that bring value. This is where you think about your MVS.
Taking our marketing department example, a subsystem for weekly emails might not be the most important component of marketing. It may not have popped up on the CCF, but it is a task that can help your business grow. Hence, you might consider adding it to your MVS list for marketing.
Another example would be the subsystem for weekly sales meetings. Although this isn’t critical to running your business, it is important in keeping you updated, identifying potential problems and brainstorming department improvements.
In short, MVS is all about expanding beyond the CCF. This is where you build additional important systems that will have a compounding effect, adding a little bit of value until your business starts to take off, begins its journey to sustainable growth and reaches escape velocity.
Systems are the Key to Reaching Escape Velocity
Systematization requires effort and patience. At first, it will feel like not much is happening in the first part of the curve when you’re putting your CCF and MVS into place. It takes time for the systems to compound, to build a systems culture, to get the team on board and to train new team members. One thing is certain though, systems are the key, and the sooner you start creating them, the sooner you’ll reach your business goals.
If you’re lost on where to start systemizing, we provide all the tools and support you’ll need to push your business to escape velocity. Take the first step to developing your systems by taking our systems strength test today.
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