Marie Kondo Your Business Systems 

One of the biggest struggles of building systems in the business is figuring out where to start. 

Should you start with the basic tasks that every floor staff does? Or more complicated tasks that you need to get off your plate? Or maybe the ones that are always getting performed incorrectly? 

They are all important for various reasons. Some make them easier to train people, some give you more time and some improve the operations of the business as a whole. They all feel as if they are of equal importance. It's also very easy to overcomplicate; where does it go? how should it be written? Do I need to make videos? Where do I store the passwords... and on and on we spiral and fail to actually get anything on paper.

Just sitting down and writing SOPs is (unbelievably 😂) very few people's cup-of-tea. So maybe starting with the SOPs is the wrong move. 

If you feel overwhelmed by the thought of creating systems. Then start with the decision to eliminate. 

Figure out what things you are doing in your business that may not be serving the business or are redundant and get rid of them. Start spring cleaning and throw out the old. There are probably time-consuming, wasteful activities that you are currently doing in your business that, by eliminating them, could save your business time and money - and make staff a lot happier. 

At Kilo, I have tried to get rid of as many meetings as possible. Everyone is happier and feels less frantic when we have fewer meetings. I was still holding onto our Monthly All-Hands meeting up until 2 months ago. I didn't want to let it go. I thought it would be great for everyone to see each other once a month and hear what is going on in the company.

It wasn't. 

Some of my engineers live on the west coast of the USA, some live in Europe. I have a website developer in India and one in Mexico. The meeting was in the middle of the day for my East Coast North Americans. It was not a convenient time for anyone. This meeting took me 2 hours to prepare for every month, and it was usually just me talking at everyone for an hour. This meeting, while only an hour - was actually costing the company ~24 hours of time and salary. That is half a week's worth of work! 

I cancelled it and we've replaced it with a sexy little internal newsletter that I send out at the beginning of every month. Here is an example: 

Yes, it's called, "Kaleda Connell's Kilo Chronicle". No, I don't know how that happened.

This has not only saved our team time but has saved me a ton of work. The newsletter is far easier to prepare than my slide deck. The team stays working and reduces task switching. 

Everyone is happier.