The Law of Systems is like the glue that holds all of the other laws together in owning and operating a business. Gary Shotton #000421

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Systems Are Critical

By Gary Shotton

Hello, my name is Gary Shotton and I’m so happy to be with you again. Here is a part of inspiring better business. IBB talks. If you’re around me very often or for very long. You’ll hear me talk, many times on the subject of systems and processes, and so don’t get tired of that because it’s so important. I’m going to do another talk on this subject just from a different angle. And, you know, the analogy of our business climate, the way we do business is summed up with an analogy with the way our bodies work. I’m not a physician I’m not in the medical field but I know enough about our bodies that we are thinking towards the area of systems in our bodies. We have the nervous system that would detect something like I slammed my finger real hard and you know I’m feeling the end of my finger has the nerves are now real sensitive telling heals up. I have a digestive system I’m watching what I eat so I have a good healthy body.

I have a circulatory system so I check my heart to make sure my blood circulating I don’t have a heart attack about to happen. I have a respiratory system and I read the punch check my oxygen. You know, these systems are just, ever, ever intertwined with each other. You can’t take one system out of the entire body and then say, it’s going to work. If there’s actually a malfunction in the body or a sickness or disease or something normally it’s because one of the multitude of systems in our body are not functioning well. And if you go to the doctor, they’re going to first take your weight and they’re going to take your blood pressure well that’s your heart, the system we read your heart, and then they’re going to probably take a few vital signs of your pulse. Those are things that are telling you the very bigger parts of your body, what could be wrong. And how could it How can we find the problem the fastest, easiest, and that’s really dealing with one small part of your system in most cases, of course, it could bleed over into more than one, but normally it’s just something with one part of your body.

Well, the business has much a parallel to that. You see, I’ve been asked many times by people. Why did this business fail, what causes my business to fail? And I’ve done different teachings maybe the top 10 or 12 reasons that a business might fail, but it all reverts back to this primary lesson on systems that help you look at and understand how the systems work together, inside your company, and you’re always working on the system, you’re not criticizing the individuals you’re not placing blame, but you’re always taking responsibility as a company, to improve and operate the operation of your systems, and one of the keys to this is to pull in all of your key employees and then all of your employees to say, help me build the system. Even the person that’s sweeping the floor we have a new person that’s now hired and they’re going around sweeping the floors and carrying out the trash. And I noticed that they’re doing it a little different than the previous person. I think that’s great.

They’ve come up with a better, more efficient way to do it. And so we don’t leave the important things to be just determined by whoever, but we make sure that the important things in our company are documented and so we repeat the way we do something and making a part we call it a setup sheet, we say hey we made this very expensive part, and it worked really well so we need to document how that was in our little own method our little coding method to be sure that the next time that comes up we’re fast at setting up that that documentation so that we could be making the part, very quickly because time is money and we want to be quick and making our parts but we wanted to be right every time there’s every aspect of our businesses systems with every aspect of our company is important, and maybe none more important than the hiring system. We have learned that when we hire a welder that many times when we hire someone that says they have experience, they’re normally a little hard to mold into the way we do things.

So we have decided that unless there’s an emergency or something abnormal. We try to promote within someone that’s already proven themselves to be faithful in that area of work and then we train them bring him up the level by level by level to be a very good in this case welder. The same thing with the machinists, so the hiring system is very important. Well then it’s the training system the way we do training is important. We use little videos like this so everybody gets all the same message we want everyone to be on board so the only way we can gather 45 people together. At one point, efficiently, is to record what what’s going to be said and then they watch it on their own. We have the payroll system nobody wants, their check to be messed up, they want to be paid accurately. We want it to be paid accurately because if it’s wrong then we have to fix it. We have the quality systems, they’re very important.

We have the production systems we have the, the system of how we, we carry out the woods, the metal chips that we take out. I mean everything we have, we think in systems and we want you to think in systems. Now, this is why it’s so important that when you have a problem in your company, it’s probably not an isolated problem. It’s something that’s been brewing there. It could be a one or one and done kind of thing, but more than likely there’s something in there that needs to be fixed as far as the system goes, and we believe that as we’re teaching these lessons we’re teaching laws of business it’s kind of like going to medical school, and you’re studying how the body works, while we’re trying to give your insight into how a business, a successful business person thinks and acts and how somebody that’s successful can now share that information so that you can become successful, but it’s not going to be overnight it’s not going to be real quick because you have to kind of catch it.

Rather than we say caught rather than taught, because you have to be start thinking like someone along the line of business person so in this regard, we’re here trying to pass on the system how the systems work. Let me give a couple examples. This last week I was on a radio station a radio broadcast and we have questions and x answers at the end and somebody could call in it was in a foreign language they translated. And we said, they said, well, should I close early on Christmas Eve. How would I know if you should care closer here? I don’t know what to tell you but I can tell you this. Do you know the customer? See, there’s a value in knowing how a customer thinks, and how they react to your business. There’s a value in knowing how you think and how what you, what you’re qualified to do. But in this case, the answer to the question is not very has the answer from all the way across America to Africa that you should close it.

At 10 o’clock on Christmas Eve, or stay open till two o’clock. There is no answer but you, you need to know what your customers are expecting, not when all your competitors doing that you can do some things that would be make the answer you make the ads, you could do some little things like be close but give it a call, a way to call you or something when there’s all kinds of little ways to do this, but it was a not a foolish question, but it’s a question that only you that person could answer, if they know the customer. We talked about the importance of all things, of these laws but in my opinion, the law of systems and processes has to rank, extremely high in the importance of how you think if you don’t think of systems and processes in the way you’re doing business you’re going to lose out.

There’s inevitably, you’re not going to be able to document how you did something in order to repeat it, and you’re not going to be able to document what went wrong so you don’t repeat that systems and processes are going to be a part of everything you do. And we just strongly encourage you to zero in on that one, and these other things are kind of like sub headers quality of fish quality payroll. Knowing your employees training, all these other things that we’re going to talk about and things about you with your customer, they fit into the overall picture just like your body must function together in an efficient way your business must function efficiently in every aspect. And if one aspect is out of kilter, it’s going to affect the other. Well I hope you’ve learned something. Thanks for being a part of inspiring better business.