Reading a Business Between the Lines — Part 6
What Does Your Business Keep Asking You Twice?
Yesterday, we looked at what your business needed you to know. Today, we're looking for something even more revealing: repetition. Because when your business keeps asking the same question, it may not need another answer. It may need a system.
Good morning.
Yesterday, we started reading the list.
Every time your business reached for you, we asked you to pay attention to what it actually needed.
Not just:
“They needed me.”
But:
“They needed me to know ______.”
That little difference matters.
Because sometimes they didn't actually need the owner.
They needed information that currently only exists inside the owner's head.
Today, I want you to go back through that list and look for something else.
What did your business ask you more than once?
The Second Question Is Different
Somebody asking you a question once doesn't necessarily mean anything is wrong.
Business is business.
Weird things happen.
Customers come up with situations you've never seen before. Jobs change. Equipment acts crazy. Somebody needs clarification.
Sometimes the owner really does need to make the call.
But when the same question keeps coming back?
Now I'm paying attention.
Maybe somebody keeps asking:
“How much do we charge for this?”
Or:
“What do I tell the customer when this happens?”
Or:
“Where does this job go next?”
Or:
“Which material are we supposed to use?”
Or maybe it's not even the exact same question.
Maybe it's five different questions that all point back to the same missing piece.
Repetition is your business trying to show you where knowledge hasn't become a system yet.
Don't Write the Encyclopedia Yet
This is where business owners can make another mistake.
We realize we need systems, so suddenly we're going to document EVERYTHING.
We're going to write the operations manual.
Create 147 SOPs.
Build seventeen checklists.
Make a flowchart that requires its own flowchart just to understand the first flowchart.
And by Thursday we've created a 200-page manual that nobody—including us—is ever going to read. 😂
That's not what I'm talking about.
I'm saying let the business tell you what needs to be documented first.
How?
Listen for the questions it keeps asking.
Build the System Where the Friction Already Exists
If nobody ever asks you how to do something, maybe that's not the first thing you need to spend Tuesday afternoon documenting.
But if you're answering the same question three times a week?
There's your candidate.
And “system” doesn't have to mean some giant complicated piece of software.
Sometimes the system is a checklist.
Sometimes it's a pricing sheet.
Sometimes it's a note inside the customer's account.
Sometimes it's a production standard.
Sometimes it's three sentences explaining what to do when a particular situation happens.
Sometimes it's simply making a decision once so your team doesn't have to ask you to make the same decision every time.
That's the part I think we miss.
A good system is often just yesterday's answer made available for tomorrow.
Your Assignment for Today
Go back to the list you've been building.
Don't add anything complicated to it.
Just put a little mark beside anything that has shown up more than once.
Same question.
Same problem.
Same decision.
Same information somebody had to come find you to get.
Those marks are important.
Because we're no longer guessing about where your business needs a system.
Your business is showing you.
Before you build another system, find the question your business is tired of asking.
Remember, the light at the end of the tunnel may be you.
— Ruben Escalona
Behind the X's & O's of Business
Red Alpha Studios