Got systems?

Rob Averitt, right, and Rich McDonald are growing their business with better systems. Photo: FloralawnYou’d like to take your company to the next level but you aren’t quite sure how. You know this will require people to take more responsibility so you can be less involved in the day-to-day operations. But you’re uncertain about turning these things over to your employees. After all, what you’ve been doing has worked pretty well so far.

Sound familiar?

We’ve all heard that it’s important to have a clear set of systems from the very early stages of a business. But most business owners get so caught up in growing the business and managing employees that setting up systems takes a back seat to things that seem more urgent.

One of the main reasons given for not developing an operations manual and clear systems is a lack of time. However, time is exactly what an owner stands to gain by creating a system that will work whether they are present or not.

This scenario is all too familiar to Rob Averitt and Rich McDonald, partners at Floralawn, a $2.9 million business based in Lakeland, Fla. They founded Floralawn in 1992 and now have 40-plus employees servicing residential and commercial clients.

Averitt and McDonald are enjoying the success that comes with a growing and thriving business. However, in the past few years they realized getting to that next level was becoming more difficult than at previous stages of their company’s growth.

Some growth has been a result of acquisitions. In 2008, they purchased another lawn care company in their area that fit into their portfolio. One of the most attractive things about this company was it had very clear written systems and procedures in place, allowing them to integrate this company into their own easily. This acquisition also served as an eye-opener: Averitt and McDonald realized there was work to be done to establish a clear set of operating procedures for their whole company.

To get to the next level, they needed to evaluate how they were doing things, define what they want to become and determine what specific actions would be required to accomplish those goals.

“After so many years of doing things ourselves, it required a certain level of trust to begin to step out of the many roles we played in order to turn those day-to-day tasks over to someone else,” Averitt says. “We had to be willing to slow down the overall growth of our company for a season if that’s what it would take to get these things done.”
 

Getting Organized
One of the first things they did was to create an organizational chart. This process helped in several ways. First, it showed them how many areas of the company required their attention on a  daily basis. It also revealed areas that only required general oversight – where they had already done a good job defining specific job roles and delegating.

They also analyzed this chart to be sure that no one person had more than five direct reports, making this a benchmark for future growth so their managers and leaders could be more effective.

By developing this chart, Averitt and McDonald were able to identify where the up-and-coming leaders are in their organization so that they can mark a clear path for them to take on more responsibility and to be more successful.
As they developed an operations manual, they realized they needed clear and informative job descriptions for every role in the company. Doing so would make it easier when hiring, and provide a higher level of accountability by communicating what was expected of each person in the company.

Averitt and McDonald are also updating the company’s employee handbook. This book is particularly important when new employees have come into your company through acquisitions, and should be updated every year. It’s just one part of an operations manual that includes a complete description of every function within the company. The end goal is to have a manual that will serve as a training tool and as a reference for every function of their business.

Words of Wisdom
Asked what he’d tell other owners in need of better systems, Averitt offered this advice: “Make the task of creating a complete operations manual a part of your original and ongoing business plan rather than waiting to do it all at once.”

The author is a licensed professional business coach and owner of Fusion Business Development, www.fusionbusinessdevelopment.com.