Great tools for systemising your business
by Philip Scott
Quick bit of housekeeping: There will be no Brisbane South (Mt Gravatt) breakfast this month as our normal venue has moved inside the centre and will no longer be able to accommodate us. We are currently negotiating a new venue. Stay tuned.
I trust you all had a wonderful Easter break. As a workaholic myself I still managed to get some work in in between picnics and family lunches. Typically this work happened before everyone woke up and again after they all went to bed!
Our SAbona membership cards have been finalised and are being manufactured as we speak, so you will get yours very soon. Oh, thats of course if you registered! If not yet, go to www.sabona.com.auregistration.we
Last week I promised you some great tools for implementing systems in your business, and Im not about to disappoint you!
Something that is REALLY important in any situation, but especially in this case, is to not try and do too much in one go. Do things step by step (thats sort of what systems are all about anyway!) Dont worry about doing it RIGHT so much as doing it CONSISTENTLY!
Consistency is much more important than being perfect. With consistency will come perfection (or close to), but trying to have it perfect from the start will just take too much time and cause you to give up ... a big waste of time!
I love computers and software, but if youre more comfortable with pen and paper, then start with pen and paper! No point spending all your time figuring out HOW software is supposed to work. Some software systems are so powerful, but they are way to complex and that totally defeats the purpose! Unless you can get someone to adapt the software to work the way you do it will be a nightmare.
I previously mentioned one of my favourite (and FREE) tools called Freemind. Its great for a lot of uses like brainstorming especially, but also for jotting down notes! It is so simple to use and youd be amazed how quickly it helps you come up with things that you thought youd forgotten about! If youre really organised, itll be a great tool for you. If youre not very organised it will be even better for you!
Another one of my favourite tools is gliffy.com It is totally free to use, but with some limitations. To get past the limitations you have to register, but even then it is really cheap ... but its brilliant!
Gliffy is a flow-charting tool. Im not saying you have to start making flowcharts of all your processes ... but a visual presentation of something is so much more powerful, useful and effective than written documentation! And the best part about Gliffy is that you can have multiple people in your team work on the same flowchart at the same time if you need it!
Again the key is to keep it simple. If you do a flowchart and it starts looking complex to you, imagine how complex it is to someone else! SIMPLE! It really is the key. Freemind is a great way to organise your ideas and processes into smaller sub-processes and systems.
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