Thanks to everyone who liked, shared and replied to my last post - for two or three hours after I published it, it was the most popular post on Substack and for the better part of a day, it was in the top 3 posts on the whole platform.
That’s solely down to you wonderful people clicking the like (heart) button, retweeting it and sharing it with your friends - I appreciate it a great deal and please continue!
The feedback and engagement about the framework that I outlined in the previous post indicate that a lot of people want some more information and help in how to go about getting things done.
I received a number of replies from people talking about their struggles with being both overwhelmed by the amount of things on their plate and underwhelmed by their ability to complete the things in front of them.
It was a bit surprising to hear the variety of problems that people presented to me. They included things like personal relationship issues, health/weight struggles, professional ambitions and difficulty in building momentum in building their own online businesses.
To address this, I’ve decided to create a three-part series of posts that will outline a system you can use to not only get more done, but get better outcomes at the same time.
This post is part one and is about establishing processes.
Standing Naked Outside During a Hurricane
In all of the feedback I received from my last post, one word kept coming up over and over again in both what people were saying and what they were describing…
Overwhelm.
One person described their personal life like a hurricane where everything was blowing around uncontrollably.
That was probably the most powerful imagery of everything I read.
Another person very succinctly said, “The amount of stuff I have to do to get my business off the ground is entirely overwhelming me and I spend all day watching Udemy courses pretending that I’m doing something productive.”
I replied to this person and said, “Do you feel like you’re standing outside in a hurricane?”
Their answer was telling, “That’s a good way to describe it, except I’m naked while I’m standing out there.”
Overwhelmed. Embarrassed. Afraid. Paralyzed.
These are not the words of people who are happy, successful and in control.
Everyone Wants To Be In Control
One time, about ten years ago during a performance appraisal, one piece of feedback that one of my staff gave about me was, “Sean is the embodiment of chaos. He likes change and the uncertainty that it brings.”
At the time, I could see how my staff would think that - I was constantly pushing the envelope, driving them and myself faster and harder all the time.
We were at the very bleeding edge of the technology field we were in and I was prepared to push the bounds of what was possible and practical.
To someone involved or observing, that would have looked like chaos.
Oddly, I’m not someone that likes to live dangerously. I always wear a seatbelt, drive the speed limit and often err on the side of caution rather than taking huge risks.
But when I look back at that time, I was in complete control.
I was in charge of calculating the risks, I knew what my tolerance for failure was, I had the resources to call on to carry out the work and I had a bunch of goodwill in the bank with my employer.
I also had a bunch of processes in place to mitigate risks and to continue to move things forward while were “swinging for the fences” periodically.
Ultimately, it was the processes that saved me on more than one occasion.
Understanding What You Do
Let’s change gears for a second…
Whenever I talk to new coaching clients about their business, the first question I ask them is, “What do you do?”
Every single person I ask that question to launches into some helicopter view, elevator pitch:
“My business helps single mothers manage their personal finances.”
“We work with our clients to help them identify and target their perfect customer.”
“Our business assists pet owners with socializing their fur babies.”
Uh huh… But that’s not what you actually DO.
The magic isn’t in your mission statement. You don’t succeed or fail based on a “feel good” aspirational vision.
You win or lose because of the THINGS that you do and how well you do them.
It’s all about the processes, baby.
Everything is a Process
Think about going to work in the morning…
You set your alarm the night before and maybe lay out the clothes you’re going to wear the next day.
You wake up, turn off your alarm, crawl out of bed and hop in the shower.
In the shower, you probably have a routine for how you wash and groom yourself - I’m betting you have a ritual that you follow for drying yourself and getting ready.
Then you go into your kitchen, maybe grab some breakfast and collect your things before heading out to your place of work.
That entire thing, starting at the night before in this example, is all part of your, “Get Ready For Work” process.
In fact, when I look at that, I see five or six different processes, but we’ll save that for Part Two of this series.
The important take away here is that you understand how pretty much everything is a process when you look at it closely.
Systems are a Collection of Processes
If we go back to my question to my new coaching clients, “What do you do?”, you can now see that this is something of a loaded question.
I am looking for a couple of different answers:
The Helicopter Mission Statement
The Overburdened Avalanche of Tasks
The Blank Stare of Uncertainty
Invariably, people always give one of those three answers, although in fairness, the blank stare is just a person who has resigned themselves into a state of acceptance that they no longer have any clue about what they do - life is happening around them.
Where I tend to take the conversation next is into determining whether they can succinctly describe the high level processes that are the pistons that drive their business.
Most people don’t think like this. You absolutely should.
The best run businesses are a held together by a group of integrated systems, with each system being made up of a collection of well-defined processes.
Defining Processes: Beginner’s Edition
Some people “get” the idea of processes, but others don’t even know where to begin.
I’m going to try and make this easy for you.
A process is a set of steps that you follow to achieve a desired outcome.
A big part of a good process is that it’s repeatable and by following the steps you have a level of certainty that you will achieve the desired outcome more often than not.
Most people who run side hustle online businesses, “just do stuff”, they know what desired outcomes they want, so they just put their head down and fumble their way through.
Then a week or a month later, they discover that they have to do the same task again and they fumble their way through again.
The great Canadian singer/songwriter, Sarah McLachlan’s third album (a classic) is titled, “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy” - it’s a great album, but it shouldn’t be your motto in running your business.
The simple answer is, think about the things that you do to run your business and then just write the steps down on a piece of paper.
Documenting processes, at least to start with, is really that simple.
Look at the things you do repeatedly and do those first - just write down the steps that you undertake to get the outcome.
Be as specific as you can, but there’s no need to go overboard.
You should be aiming for defining a set of actions that a reasonably competent person could follow to get the outcome you want.
Start with the things you do most often and that you know the best, then work your way through to the things you do periodically.
Before too long, you should have a process manual for your entire operational business which is better than 80% of the people out there.
Processes are Living Organisms
It is vital to realize that your process manual is never “finished” - it will always be a work in process.
As things change or you start doing new things, you’re going to modify the existing processes or add new ones entirely.
In Part Three of this series we’re going to talk about process improvement, so for this section, we’ll not focus on that.
Having said that, it is inevitable that as you walk through your processes or give them to staff to follow, you’ll eventually find better ways to do things.
One of the biggest benefits of having a process is that it becomes a self-generating loop of continual improvement.
By battle testing your process in the real world, you’ll inevitably find ways to refine it or redefine it entirely and that’s something that you need to be fully aware of - this is a positive thing.
We’re Aiming For Reliability
The biggest benefit to a process is that it removes the variability too outcomes - we end up with something that becomes repeatable and reliable.
That doesn’t mean that it will be perfect every time, but your chances of success go up exponentially.
Think of a recipe for making fried chicken.
You can still burn the chicken or not put enough coating on the skin before deep frying it, but chances are, if you follow the steps carefully and you’re a reasonably competent cook, then following the recipe should ensure that you are able to make reasonably good fried chicken every time.
It’s reliable.
When you’re running your own business, having processes that you can hand off to a member of staff and be confident that they’re going to be able to get the desired outcome reliably is liberating.
Having solid processes is the surest way to avoid being overwhelmed.
So sit down and start documenting the various tasks and activities in your your business - write down what you do.
Once you get this kind of process manual in place, you’ll start to feel more in control and you’ll probably start to notice that things are happening faster and at higher level of quality.
Next Posts in This Series
Right now, this is looking like it will be a three part series.
Part Two is going to come in the next day or so and it will be about the idea of “chunking” and how you can integrate that with building processes.
Part Three is going to talk about refining processes which will show you how to focus not on just reliability but high levels of improvement.
Alright, with that, you should start documenting your processes while you wait!
Some Housekeeping…
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