The System Maintenance Trick That Keeps Fast Growth From Breaking Your Business

Jul 10
5 min read

Growth doesn’t wreck a business. Standing still on your systems does.

No Passport Required

I flew back into the US a few months ago, bracing for the usual hour standing in the immigration line. Instead, there was a kiosk. It took my photo. Two seconds. I walked straight up to the booths. An agent called out my name; I stepped forward, and she waved me on. I never even got my passport out of my bag.

I stood there a little stunned. Somebody built that. And more than that, somebody kept coming back to it, testing it, fixing the parts that didn’t work, long after the ribbon-cutting was over.

When’s the last time you actually went back and checked on one of your systems, instead of just trusting it to still be doing its job?

The Charge That Disappeared

A few weeks later, I was at an Amazon Fresh store, walking my cart through the scanner to check out, no cashier, no line. When I looked at the receipt, I saw a charge for something I didn’t buy. I opened the app, disputed it right there in the store, and the charge was gone before I made it to my car. That’s a system somebody is still paying attention to.

Now think about the last time you tried to reach a company through a chatbot that couldn’t understand you, with no phone number listed anywhere on the site. Same idea: technology running the front line of the business. Completely different outcome. The technology isn’t what made the difference. Whether a person was still behind it did.

The Manuals We Kept Rewriting

When Hawaiian Vacations was still small, we didn’t need anything written down. We knew who did what and why, because we were the ones doing most of it. That stopped working the minute the company started growing past what a few people could hold in their heads.

So we wrote it down. A manual for every role in the company, not because it was fun, but because a business that only runs correctly when the owner is standing in the room isn’t a business you can sell, or leave, or even take a real vacation from.

Here’s the part nobody warns you about: the manual we wrote when the business was smaller didn’t match how we actually ran things once it grew. The business kept changing. The paperwork didn’t, unless we paid attention to what needed to change to keep up with the growth. We had to build the habit of going back through what we’d written before and asking whether it still held up. That habit, more than the manuals themselves, is a big part of what gave us the opportunity to sell the company to Alaska Airlines. The value of our business was directly impacted by everything we did to stay on top of the game and be the best we could be.

This is a fact worth noting: Buyers don’t generally pay much for a business that works because the owner is at its center and remembers everything. And they definitely pay MORE for one that works because it’s run by efficient systems that are kept up to date.

If you want the framework for building that kind of business, start with the 6 Principles Free Training.

Systems Are Never Done

This is the part that trips people up. You build the system, you train the team on it, you check the box, and you move on to the next fire. But a system isn’t something you finish. It’s something you continually nurture and improve..

Every system needs an owner: a specific person whose job is to notice when it stops working. It needs a date on the calendar for a regular review, not just a hope that someone will speak up when it breaks. And the documentation needs updating every time the business changes around it, not just once in a while or if you happen to remember.

Every system you rely on is already getting rebuilt by force, whether you touch it or not. Paper tickets became e-tickets. Punch cards became scanners. Cash became tap-to-pay. If you don’t update your systems on purpose, technology and growth will pass you by, leaving you wondering why your business isn't doing as well as it once did.

The system that saved you last year can be the one holding you back this year.

The Trick Itself

Here’s the actual trick, and it isn’t complicated. Put a repeating date on your calendar (quarterly works for most people) and treat it exactly like a dentist appointment: non-negotiable, not something you’ll get to eventually. On that day, pick one system and ask the people who actually use it, not just the person who built it, whether it still matches how the work really gets done.

That’s it. That’s the whole maintenance trick. It isn’t a new piece of software or a bigger team. It’s a habit of going back and looking, on purpose, before something forces you to.

What’s one system in your business that hasn’t been looked at since the day you built it?

For a free resource to guide you in building your business, grab it here.

This Week’s Exercise: Design a System

Pick one system your company depends on every week, or one that only you currently know how to run.
Break it into steps, in order, with enough detail that someone else could follow it.
Ask two people who touch that system if it matches reality.
Fix the gap you find right now, not “someday.”

Podcast Spotlight

Pursuing Freedom with Erin Bradley

The name of this podcast says it out loud. Pursuing freedom. That's what I spent over 40 years doing — and the travel company, the exit, the Alaska Airlines acquisition were just milestones along the way.

I started with a small marketing consulting business before the travel company ever existed. And for a long time, both of them owned me more than I owned them.

Erin asked me how that changes. The short answer: systems, open-book management, and learning to delegate without flinching every time someone does it differently than you would.

The longer answer is in the conversation.

🎧 How to Stop Being the Bottleneck in Your Business

Final Thoughts

I think about that immigration kiosk more than I probably should. Not because the technology impressed me, plenty of technology impresses me. It’s because somebody, somewhere, is still in charge of making sure it works. That’s the whole job, really. Build it once. Come back to it often. Make sure it is still fulfilling its purpose.

Ral West

Livin’ the Dream