When Did You Last Update Your Systems?

6 days ago

5 min read

I'm guessing you don't update them as often as you should, and technology isn't waiting for you to catch up.

A while back, when I flew back into the US from an overseas trip, I got in the Global Entry line expecting the usual routine, and instead there was a kiosk, so I stepped up, and it took my photo, which took maybe two seconds, and then I walked over to the immigration booths and an agent called out my name. I walked up, she looked at me, and she waved me on. I didn't even present my passport!

Incredible use of technology.

And as I walked out of there, I couldn't stop thinking about how many steps that process used to have, and how long it took, and how somebody, somewhere, had to sit down and ask whether there was a faster, easier way to get to the same result, and then keep asking it, again and again, as the technology changed.

So, let me ask you: when did you last update your systems? Not create them, update them. If you're like a lot of the owners I work with, you wrote the procedure, trained the team on it, and then never looked at it again, and I'm guessing a few of your existing systems are long overdue for an overhaul. That's okay. Noticing it is the first step.

Nobody tells you this when you write your first procedure manual, but you're not finished when the manual is finished. Every system needs to be re-evaluated and fine-tuned from time to time, either to make it more efficient or to update it to a newer process or a newer technology, and that isn't a sign you built it wrong. That's just what systems do, and it's the idea behind The System Maintenance Trick That Keeps Fast Growth from Breaking Your Business.

A system is never done. It's always a work in progress.

Which of your systems hasn't been touched since the day it was written?

Technology shapes systems, and if you've been in business as long as I have, you've watched it happen over and over. We went from writing everything by hand to AI, from key-punching to scanning, from paper tickets to e-tickets, from cash to e-pay, and from the horse and buggy to self-driving cars, and no, I didn't personally see the horse and buggy, but you get the idea.

Look at restaurants. More and more of them are using kiosks or iPads at the table or QR codes to speed up ordering, and airlines have kiosks for checking in and printing your own baggage tags. Every one of those started with someone looking at an old system and asking a simple question. My rule of thumb is that if technology can do it, use technology, and if you've still got a wall of file cabinets in your office, I walked you through how to make that switch in Are You Still Filing Paper? How to Ditch Your File Cabinets for Good.

If technology can do it, use technology.

Which task in your business is still being done exactly the way it was done ten years ago? Or even five years ago?

Remember, you can use systems in every area of your business, not just operations, so think about sales, marketing, hiring, onboarding, bookkeeping, customer service, even how your team requests time off. If there's no documented system, there's still a system; it's just whatever each person happens to do that day, and that's usually where the problems hide. I wrote about the warning signs in How to Spot a Broken System and Fix It for Good.

When I teach systems, I use the acronym SIMPLE: Standardization, Instruction, Manuals, Policies, Logistics, and Efficiency, and that last letter is the one that keeps the other five honest, because a standard or a manual that made sense three years ago might be slowing everyone down today.

If you don't design the system, the system designs itself.

Which area of your business is running on a system nobody ever actually designed?

Years ago, at Hawaiian Vacations, our marketing team asked me how I knew when to increase our ad spend, and I realized I didn't have an answer; I'd been doing it on instinct, so I spent weeks reverse-engineering my own decision until we had a rule anyone could follow: three consecutive days of a declining sales trend meant it was time to increase advertising. That one rule took me out of the middle of every advertising decision.

But a rule like that is only as good as the last time someone checked it, and today there are tools that can watch a sales trend for you and flag it automatically, which is exactly the kind of upgrade I mean. You're not ripping out what works. You're just asking whether there's a faster, easier way to get the same result, and I share a few simple places to start in Leveraging Technology to Support Expansion.

Don't rip out what works. Just keep asking if there's a faster, easier way.

If you rebuilt your most-used process from scratch today, what would you do differently?

This Week’s Exercise

List every area of your business (sales, marketing, hiring, onboarding, bookkeeping, customer service) and mark each one as a documented system, an undocumented habit, or nothing at all.
Pick one existing system and ask: Is there a faster, easier way to get to the same result? Write down at least one answer.
Find one task your team still does by hand, like paper forms, manual data entry, or retyping the same email, and look for a tool that could do it for you.
Put a recurring date on your calendar, once a year, to re-evaluate your three most-used systems.

Final Thoughts

That Global Entry kiosk took two seconds of my time, and somewhere behind it is a system that somebody kept re-evaluating until handing over a passport wasn't even necessary anymore. That's the whole lesson, really. Your systems are never done; technology will keep changing what's possible, and the owners who keep asking whether there's a faster, easier way are the ones who keep getting their time back.

So, this week, answer the question honestly: when did you last update your systems? Then pick the one that frustrates you the most and spend 30 minutes asking how you'd build it if you were starting over today.

Want your business to run more smoothly—and give you more freedom?

If your team still needs you to make too many decisions, updating a procedure may only be part of the solution. Through my one-on-one coaching, we create a strategic roadmap for what to eliminate, delegate, simplify, and systematize so your business supports the life you want.

Reply to this email and tell me: What keeps pulling you back into the day-to-day? We’ll see whether my coaching is the right fit for what you want to change.

To your freedom,

Ral West

Livin’ the Dream