You might be absolutely convinced that you’re not a systems thinker. That you’re not the systems guy. That you’re more of a free-thinking entrepreneur who leaves systems thinking up to the geekier members of the team. You write notes on paper, you’re swamped with emails and your work gets done, not perfectly but at least on-time.
I’m here to tell you that you are a systems thinker and you’ve got systems thinkers wrong. Thinking in systems is grabbing a process and finding out how it changes over time. Take a teenagers room and you’ll see that a neat space becomes a mess through very specific inputs. It’s not the universe, some mystery wind or life, it’s half a process performed hundreds of times.
It’s the same with business. Perform a process a hundred times and leaving a small amount of chaos each time winds up being a mountain of chaos.
Our team sees it every week when we’re looking at the systems and processes that teams are using. They’re cobbled together systems and sticky-taped processes that have been built just-in-time to meet a business need. They’re not always bad but they’re a long way from a place where they can be constantly improved bringing more calm and more order to a business.
The first step to becoming a systems thinker is to take an elevated view of your business. Imagine it like you’re looking down on a LEGO village that you built. Customers come in, products get made, customers go out. Now adjust the variables, more customers, less staff, more products – what changes? What will break? Will you be able to keep track of everything that is happening?
This is just a first step to thinking in systems but it’s those slight changes in perspective that can make a huge difference in knowing what’s happening, what’s possible and what needs changing.
Working for a client as a Podio developer, we created a SOP App to house the procedures that staff commonly performed. The app needed to be quick to reference, quick to update and display the information in the Podio mobile app and desktop easily. The company SOP app included: Name of Procedure Outline of Procedure …
If you’re looking to build a classifieds website like Kijiji (Canada) or a marketplace like Gumtree (Australia), you could potentially use Sharetribe to build it but you will come up against some limitations in managing listings. Sharetribe is built more for, what I’ll call, persistent or permanent listings. These are marketplace listings where you list …
Have been looking at digital signage software options that are simple to use and don’t cost the earth. Before checking out the options, I thought that some simple options might be free with a reasonable upgrade cost being around $10 – $20 per screen per month or perhaps a once-off cost of under $200. Let’s …
Further question details We are a growing accounting firm that is focused on providing our clients with the best bookkeeping and tax experience possible, we are paperless, tech-savvy and we think outside the box. We operate with a start-up mentality where we constantly adapt to our clients and move very quickly. We’d love to automate …
But I don’t think like that!
You might be absolutely convinced that you’re not a systems thinker. That you’re not the systems guy. That you’re more of a free-thinking entrepreneur who leaves systems thinking up to the geekier members of the team. You write notes on paper, you’re swamped with emails and your work gets done, not perfectly but at least on-time.
I’m here to tell you that you are a systems thinker and you’ve got systems thinkers wrong. Thinking in systems is grabbing a process and finding out how it changes over time. Take a teenagers room and you’ll see that a neat space becomes a mess through very specific inputs. It’s not the universe, some mystery wind or life, it’s half a process performed hundreds of times.
It’s the same with business. Perform a process a hundred times and leaving a small amount of chaos each time winds up being a mountain of chaos.
Our team sees it every week when we’re looking at the systems and processes that teams are using. They’re cobbled together systems and sticky-taped processes that have been built just-in-time to meet a business need. They’re not always bad but they’re a long way from a place where they can be constantly improved bringing more calm and more order to a business.
The first step to becoming a systems thinker is to take an elevated view of your business. Imagine it like you’re looking down on a LEGO village that you built. Customers come in, products get made, customers go out. Now adjust the variables, more customers, less staff, more products – what changes? What will break? Will you be able to keep track of everything that is happening?
This is just a first step to thinking in systems but it’s those slight changes in perspective that can make a huge difference in knowing what’s happening, what’s possible and what needs changing.
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