Whether you are a solo-entrepreneur or business professional there are many things you do each week that would benefit from a strategic system to help you be more effective, reduce errors and stress, help you enjoy your time at work and give you more time to have fun outside of work.
Strategic systems are not static; they allow you to be flexible, creative, and spontaneous, and because they help you look at situations with a clear focus and a specific intention you can easily achieve your desired results. When you develop your strategic system you begin by setting an intention for what would be the best outcome in this area.
If we use the example of incoming mail: both email and snail mail. An intention you might set would be to handle it only once, sort it effortlessly, and help you leverage your actions for greater success.
Once you set your intention and define the focus you can develop a strategic system to achieve that intention. With the snail mail those systems might include scheduling fifteen minutes a day to look through the mail when it comes in. The system could include a three tier sorting; things to throw away, things to file, and things to take action on. You can set up further systems so an action required on the mail will automatically be handled. In the case of accounts receivable or payable, answering an inquiry, scheduling a meeting, or call back…
Your systems would also include a file for reading material or reference and for handling mail that needs to be redirected to someone else who can handle it more effectively.
With email you will want to have a similar sorting system. Filters can be helpful for directing the different email to corresponding boxes of important, reference, action, spam…
You can also have response emails set up for situations or questions that are frequently requested. This allows you to customize each response from a pre drafted template; cutting down your response time but allowing you to address each situation in the most efficient way.
Once you start designing strategic systems you will find that it’s beneficial to keep adding to the system. One process will lead to another and each step of a process will be incorporated into the strategic system. This will allow you to move from your definition of success in a given area to implementation of the best processes to achieve it. Your actions will flow seamlessly from one strategic system to the next and nothing will be misplaced or forgotten.
The process of building one strategic system on another is an excellent way to boost productivity, reduce costs, boost employee and customer satisfaction and increase your profits.
Because your strategic systems are fluid you can easily update them when new situations occur or when you want to change or improve your definition of success on a given situation.
Make sure your strategic systems define success, include an intention, and make sure they are simple, clear, and updated regularly.
Here’s a simple 8 step process to help you create your Strategic Systems:
1. Define what success in a specific area looks like
2. Set your intention for the outcome of the Strategic System
3. Keep it focused and simple
4. Get it out of your head and on paper: you want to develop a step by step blueprint
5. Look for ways to leverage one strategic system with another
6. Have a template for tasks
7. Keep it fluid and dynamic and update the strategic system at least once a month
8. Keep it in PLAIN SIGHT; if it’s in a drawer it won’t be effective
You can develop Strategic Systems for everything that you need to do. Customer service, order fulfillment, meeting agendas, marketing, client referrals, telephone scripts, sales information, inventory, peer review, conflict resolution, training proficiencies, matching job outcomes to job openings, employee feedback, new product or service development, converting web visitors to sales…
Strategic Systems are powerful because they get the ideas and information out of your head and onto paper. They allow you to see the big picture and focus on a fluid procession of details that help you achieve big picture goals. This approach will get you working on your business and not in your business. Because you have clearly determined your definition of success in each area you can use inspired actions, not reactions to effectively get things done.
All of these benefits lead to the ultimate benefit; you have more time and can have more fun because things are running smoothly. You don’t always have to be there because the process is clearly laid out in the strategic system manual for each area.
Start small and develop the powerful habit of creating a strategic system for each area of your business.
