The Systems Approach

Every activity that takes place in your business has a system. A system determines the way the activity is carried out and what the results of the activity will be. These systems may not be documented or you may not even realize they exist but you will have them.

Its human nature to develop certain ways of doing things, it allows us to carry out activities without thinking too much about them, a way of structuring our knowledge of an activity into a sequence of tasks.

The systems that are carried out in your workplace will be a result of someone doing an activity over and over again until they develop a certain way of doing it, a consistent approach resulting in the same outcome every time. It’s a way that they understand and feel comfortable with.

Without systems our lives would be a whole lot more stressful and uncertain. But that’s not to say that the systems developed subconsciously within your business are the best systems, particularly if you have more than one person trying to achieve the same outcome, if they all have developed separate systems you will start to see inconsistent results. You will see inconsistent levels of quality and efficiency, and you will be relying on the ability of your employees to determine how something should be done and what the results should be.

Systemization is about understanding the current systems of work that each employee has developed and then improving on it to a point where you can be confident in saying that if the activity is carried out using a particular system you will be satisfied with the results of that activity. These revised systems are then documented and communicated throughout the organization, providing employees a structured way of doing their work.