It's Not Where You Left It.

I’m back from a whirlwind trip to Las Vegas, where we hosted 50+ TC Boot Camp attendees, three private coaching clients, a quarterly planning meeting for two of my companies and a scouting trip for a few long-shot investments. In two of the three private coaching meetings, a common theme we discussed was systems management. I reviewed business systems through three lenses: communication, oversight and recalibration.

Everyone seems to enjoy talking about systems, creating systems, perhaps even training their employees on new or existing systems. Since the first mention of “business systems” in 1980 by McKinsey and Company and through the creation and adoption of Six Sigma, business leaders throughout the world have been obsessed with automation and systems, to help eliminate defects in any process.

Sounds great, right? Just like “running a marathon” sounds great, the problem arises in the distance between idea and implementation. We all want to be in great shape. Getting off the couch and running every day is another story. We all want our businesses to run smoothly with maximum profit and happy stakeholders and shareholders. Systems oversight and management is another story.

Who Moved My Cheese? is a simple yet effective business fable about adapting to change and overcoming fears. The book has sold more than 26 million copies and remained on the New York Times business best-sellers list for nearly 5 years. It offers very little in the area of systems development, but it diagnoses precisely why systems fall apart and why we need them in the first place: change.

Your top competitors in business today will not be your top competitors five years from now. The problems you solve for your customers, clients, patients or donors today will not be the same problems you will solve a decade from now. Your employees, shareholders, stakeholders and strategic plans will change. Everything, in fact, will change; and that’s precisely why clients consistently travel to me with challenges and frustrations in dealing with change; anticipating change and overcoming their fears in adapting to, circumventing and even enjoying the change in their lives.

This morning on your way to work, your car keys were probably right where you left them last night. In business, however, nothing is where you left it. Change is continuous and often compounding or confusing for you and your employees. For example, if you left your employee training systems where you last touched them, perhaps when you started the business, they are not where you left them. Your training systems have, for good or for ill, been changed, improved, strengthened, weakened, diluted or condensed, etc.

Your systems have either adapted to or been run over by change. When’s the last time you took a look at them? How consistently and effectively do you oversee the systems in your business?

Things are not where you left them.