When Sh*t Goes Wrong

All that jazz about “work on your business, not in your business”… It usually refers to doing less of the day-to-day work so that you can focus on scaling the business, making more money, taking more holidays, or getting ready to sell.

As a business owner you’re told that you should create processes, policies, and procedures, and put systems in place. Delegate more of your day-to-day responsibilities, and automate everything possible. In fact a lot of the restaurants we work with have already created specs or recipes for their menu - it can be a bit time consuming, but it’s doable as it’s repetitive and you feel comfortable doing it.

One of the problems of “systemisation” arises when you’re trying to map out guides and processes for everything else - the stuff you autopilot. But the first problem is knowing where to start. You’re going to get yourself stuck in “analysis paralysis”, and you’ll probably give up. Do I start with a process on “how to open the kitchen”? Or “how to switch on the coffee machine”?

The trouble is, once you decide on a process i.e. “how to open the kitchen”, you then realise that you need a process for “how to open the restaurant” because they can’t set up the kitchen unless they know how to get into the restaurant, what the alarm codes are, what to do if there has been a break-in, and where all of the switches are.

You’ll then realise that when you come in to open the restaurant, you set up part of the bar beforehand, so now you need a process on how to switch on the coffee machine, sort the pumps out, check the cellar, and so on. Oh, and you also put away the deliveries that have been dropped off at some ungodly hour, usually missing something that you then need to call up about so there’s a process for that too.

Suddenly, that one process that you wanted to write is now 9 or 10 processes. So, you give up, and you carry on doing it all yourself. You’ll get round to it next week - you figure that you’ve got a good few years left in you before you even consider selling, and you can’t go on a holiday any time soon as there’s “too much going on”.

You see how easy it is to get stuck in this DIY cycle?

I don’t have an issue with the business gurus and coaches who tell us we need to systemise our businesses. In fact, I quite often tell clients the same thing. I genuinely believe that you can’t spend time focusing on your business if you’re spending all your time working in it. However, all these people singing from the same hymn sheet (me included) never speak about the very real reasons for needing to systematically remove yourself from the day-to-day running of the business.

Very recently, a close family member ended up in hospital unexpectedly for 10 days. I spent most of that time in the hospital with them. They were discharged with a “care plan” put in place - but it wasn’t adequate, so it involved me and 2 other family members going round to their house, doing the cooking and shopping, walking the dog, helping them to getting dressed, take medication, and so on.

Proper care should be in place within the next 3-4 weeks, but at that point 7-8 weeks will have passed. That’s almost two months of me not being in my business full time. I won’t lie; it has been a struggle.

I’ve got processes in place that took some of the strain off me and my team, but if I’m completely honest about it I wound up putting for too much on them. I managed to get what little I could polished off in between running around, but it has taken a toll on me physically, mentally, and emotionally.

I’m spending quite a bit of time on processes now - mainly picking out the processes that could’ve helped my team whilst I was uncontactable, and looking at the processes that - if they were in place - would have allowed me to be uncontactable for longer periods of time. Rather than analysing every process and sub process, I’ve just made a start on them - plain and simple. I’ve looked at what got missed whilst I’ve been out, and started with that.

I heard a quote from Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara. He said that you shouldn’t wait to promote someone until they’re ready, you should do it before they’re ready. If you wait for someone to have the experience that they need for the role, then they’ll never have that experience.

I believe that the same thing should apply to processes - don’t wait until you’ve got it all nailed down. You won’t know what you’re missing until you’ve started, and if you wait until you’ve nailed everything down perfectly then you’ll always be waiting. Get started, write something, record something, video something. It doesn’t matter, just get going.

If you need a bit of a push with where to start, check out this article on 50 Jobs to Give Away.