A Symphony of Order in Your Business

Credit: 123rf.

You want to bring order to your business; ultimately, a real symphony of order. So how imaginative are you? 

I want you to dream for a minute…

You come into your business on a Monday morning and find the offices, restrooms and production areas immaculately clean. All desks and work areas are clutter free and everyone is busy doing their work. Your business is buzzing with a quiet peaceful hum of a well-oiled machine!

Keep Dreaming…

No one comes barging into your office to say things like:

• “Hey Joe, did you hear about the big mess-up by the new hire in production?”  Or …
• “Hey Joe, our job for Acme Boots needs to be completely redone and we have several people out for vacations and personal events this week. What do you want me to do, Joe?”
• “Hey Joe, the toilets are backed up in the ladies room and the floors are covered with water, who do we call?"
• “Hey Joe, Betty in payroll lost the key to the personnel file cabinet where the company checks are stored … do you have an extra key?”

Doesn’t this feel good, dreaming you would seldom have anyone in your business asking these type questions before you even begin YOUR day? Or calling you on your cell phone to get answers at odd hours? If your business was truly in order, that would be a dream come true!

The Symphony of Order Gets Better!

You ask your bookkeeper for a few reports, because you want to see the the big picture of how your business is doing. The first report is the Profit & Loss statement. Profits are up. Fantastic! Then you look at your Payable & Receivable report. Good! You are owed a lot more than you owe others, all of your company’s bills have been paid in a timely fashion and those that owe you money are all well within your stated terms.

Life and business is good! Everything seems to be in ORDER! Keep dreaming …

You look at your estimated versus actual employee time reports and find your production ratios are leading the industry. Wow, this is amazing you should get an award!

Nice dream! Your sales manager reports that sales are growing and all of the sales team members are actually paying for themselves, not just living off of draws and draining company profits.

It almost seems like your business is running without you having to do much of anything.

Okay, You Can Wake Up Now!

Well, you probably suspected this story is actually a fairy tale for most small businesses, because they lack systems.

A business running without the owner’s constant onsite presence is what most business owners only DREAM about, when first starting or acquiring an independent business or even a franchise.

The sad truth about this dream story is, most small business owners are so bogged down in the daily, mundane operations of their business they don’t even know where to begin to fix it. Many become discouraged and no longer enjoy coming to the office, where everything is out of order!

To some business owners, their business has become a nightmare they can’t wake up from.

How to Bring Order to Your Business

Many owners, in the middle of their chaos, still dream and hope, even as they can’t really imagine their business ever running, without constant input from them and their onsite presence.

Still, they fantasize of a time when their business is humming along like sweet music, and they are the conductor of the symphony in black tails waving their magic wand. They dream that everyone in the company is playing, working and operating to their beat. It’s a dream scene they play over and over — a faraway place where their business is thriving and peaceful order reigns.

All is calm and all is bright. It’s an oasis with a bright future, one that they own.

Yes, even though most business owners would think our story was make believe — a fairy tale — this dream business can actually become a reality.

A Symphony of Order Comes with Systematization

Begin by reading just a couple of books, and watching a video about how a business should look and operate. Then making the decision to systemize your business by developing a written operations manual. This manual becomes the story of how your dream business can look, operate and perform.

Start implementing those written processes in your Operations Manual, one by one, never give up, never turn back — until the fairy tale becomes a non-fiction best seller, and YOU are the conductor of a Symphony of Order.

Did I mention? Great systems work!