Vital Systems to Improve Your Day to Day Business Operations

Did you know 80% of businesses fail within the first 18 months due to poor operations management?

The good news is that you can easily fix these with some focused attention at creating solid day to day systems in your business. Here are some of the inefficiencies that cause a business to not be able to get to marketing and cultivate customer relations… activities that could allow them to make more money and grow but that all too often don’t happen because the team is stuck doing things that could be delegated.

Problem #1:  Email: Time to Conquer the Email Chaos!

Business owners get sucked into emails and waste hours of precious time trying to sort and find emails, figuring out what to say, and tracking whether they got a response. The good news is this can be fixed with strong folder organization, templated responses, and a tracking process.

The even better news is that once you have a clear system, an assistant can do the initial triaging and organization of the emails and the owner can have clarity on what to handle first.  For instance, an email folder for URGENT – must respond in 2-6 hours is great for triaging the top 1-2 emails each day that absolutely need to be handled by the owner. Then you can have another folder for items that need response in 8-18 hours. 

Finally, having a good system for naming these folders and creating a hierarchy so they all stay in the right order is what reduces mental energy. (*don’t worry if this type of “organization gymnastics is not your thing… we love helping business owners get this set up!)

Problem #2: Calendar: Take Control of the Madness!

All too often in a desire to please everyone else, the Business Owner let’s everyone else have control over their calendar … which puts them at everyone else’s whim!  YIKES!!

By taking time to create a block calendar, use calendaring links, and have clear boundaries one can claw back the precious time and feel better at the end of the day knowing you accomplished multiple things.

A calendar is a form of energy management.  It is exhausting to go from high level planning time to trench work for 30 min and then try to go back to that higher level planning.  This alone can be the difference between feeling exhausted at the end of the day and feeling energized.

Another example is batching meetings and then setting a break before going into a deep work session.  Often Meetings have fast agendas and are more high level.  A deep work session means fully engaging in that topic and excluding other things from the mind.  Understanding how you work and using the calendar to protect that work time can be one of your hidden secret weapons. 

Finally, a block calendar can reserve time for tasks you know you will need to get to so that you can finally tackle them.  For instance, Financial Controls time each week is key.  Admin and HR time is needed for final decisions.  In my days of running a litigation law firm I knew that “daily fires” would erupt each morning so we a block on the calendar before lunch for everyone on the team to handle any such emergencies. This kept the team from getting thrown off their schedule each day and turned us from being reactive into a proactive team.  

#3: Team Communication:  Setting the Stage for How and When to Communicate!

Does it feel like a free for all with emails, messages on Slack or Teams, text messages, What’s App messages and project management messages?   Setting forth a clear system for how and when people are to communicate on which platforms will go a long way to creating a more peaceful streamlined collaborative team.

The less number of places people need to go to receive or send communications, the more efficient their day will become.  In our business our Marketing Team spends time with Slack and Asana, while our Coaching Team uses Slack and CoachAccountable.  Having clarity gives everyone on the team the confidence to work effectively.

These are just a few ways to increase productivity, streamline processes with a clear plan and enhance business performance by having everyone on the team working in unison.

Ready to optimize your business operations with systems, we can help you document and implement clear strategies for YOUR team so your company can thrive.