Ultimate Guide to Systemize Your Business

To organize your business operations, we need to know what we’re organizing! For this first step, challenge yourself to document a list of actions you’d like to have become more process-driven.

 

For example, if your business is solely a YouTube channel, your areas of responsibility might be:

You may need to revisit this chart a few times until it’s 100% accurate… and that’s okay!

If you’d like a step-by-step exercise to help you capture all of the processes in your business, check out our free training, The Blueprint, which introduces the Process Org Chart™ exercise we developed for defining your business processes! Watch now.

Now that we know what you’re looking to organize, let’s capture the frequency (or “cadence”) of each activity. This frequency will help us establish our business routines as well as aid us in prioritizing.

 

For example, if your business is solely a YouTube channel, your cadence might be:

At this point, it can be very helpful to introduce a work management software at this stage. Our go-to recommendations (which we also personally use) are ClickUp and SmartSuite. (For a comparison of these two options, read this article.)

Pro Tip: If you have a process in your business that happens “upon request”, record your turnaround time instead. For example, for “Responding to Client Emails”, you might record, “Within 1 Business Day”.

When people think about defining their business procedures, this step is usually the first that comes to mind! In this “how” phase, we want to capture our methods (or recipes) for HOW we get the work done.

 

Usually, this is done by bringing some kind of instruction document, such as a standard operating procedure (SOP) or a process map.

 

Don’t let fancy terminology scare you, though. Our goal here is not to create a dusty policy binder you “think” you should have! Instead, we want to create reusable templates, guides, and maps that will tangibly help your day-to-day work become easier to execute, excellently.

If you need a jump-start documenting your standard operating procedures, join us for our next live SOP workshop! You can grab a ticket right here and take “Write SOPs” off your to-do list in one go!

Now that we know the major processes in our business, we’ll want to start delegating responsibility for those processes. Common groups to pull into a process at this point might include:

Notice how half of these options aren’t even human? Yeah! Even if you’re a one-person business (also called a “solopreneur”) you can and should be thinking creatively about delegation!

To many business owners, systemizing your business can feel like a guessing game.

 

“Should I template this workflow? Well, maybeeee it would be helpful…”

 

When you’re in a busy workplace without free time to spare, these guesses can be expensive! Rather than guessing which process(es) will improve the efficiency of your workflows, use real data!

 

Here are three practical ways to improve any process when systemizing your business WITHOUT guessing:

Bonus points if you combine all three of these strategies. 😉

You don’t need to invest hours of time locked in a room with a policy binder to develop strong business systems! The steps are clear and quick!

Then, once you work through those first few steps and establish a baseline foundation of processes, you can focus on the fifth, final, and never-ending step:

With this as your guide (and some regular effort to make it happen!), your business becomes a self-improving machine that gets better, little-by-little, every day.

 

Are you ready to get started?

 

Start DIY-ing this approach by subscribing to our YouTube channel or speed up your learning journey by enrolling in ProcessDriven Foundations™. Our signature program guides you through every step of this journey while giving you personalized support and swipe-ready templates to save you the trial-and-error!

 

We’ve already worked with 1,700+ teams on this journey and we think the results speak for themselves. Will you be next?! 🤓