Being people dependent seems easier to many business owners and that’s what they choose over making their business a system of (proven) systems.
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They bank on people’s ability over systems. Dialogues like following are common in such organizations:
- If Patrik is here, he will take care of new business development, project management (and general administration also if needs be). He’s very skilled and do everything needed.
- If Maria is in the office, we cannot have problems with visa documents verification. She’s a brilliant employee who knows how to create visa processing file.
- Just because of Johan, our organization will be able to achieve 10 millions of sales in 2010. Johan knows the ‘magic’ sales formula!
- If XYZ person is available, ABC work will be taken care of…
- Etc.
For the short term, depending on people seems easier as it eliminates overhead of creating systems for your business and you start playing to your people’s abilities very quickly after you hire them.
But over the long term, it’s painful and can hold your business back. For example, think of the situation when:
- Patrik becomes handicap of his capabilities… or
- Maria wants to leave the job and cannot give sufficient time to train new hire… or
- What if Johan has some kind of hidden agenda (which is negative for your organization’s goals) which you figure out in early 2010 and you want to kick him out of the office?
And you build your business strategies around such persons.
It’s great to leverage people’s abilities but not so good to leave your business’ success on their abilities. To better handle such situations, you need systems.
You need systems:
- On which you can count on.
- Which are independent of persons.
- Which runs without Patrik, Maria, Johan or anyone in the organization?
- And.. you got it!
Systems are not overheads but investments – and effective systems will ensure handsome and consistent returns. That’s what businesses are for, isn’t it?