An unorganized business will struggle like a wounded warrior to a competitor who operates next door with a well-organized system. Between the two, well-organized or unorganized, guess which business model will smoke! The answer is very simple. Knowing what works best is not as hard to do as doing what needs to be done. Trust your system, not your talent. Build a system you can trust and allow it to become the boss.
Five very average basketball players can whip a group of talented, disorganized egos if the average players have a well run system of play. The well-organized average group of players will destroy the unorganized talent day in and day out. In fact, the disorganized talented ones will eventually become frustrated and may even break apart because they cannot stand losing what their egos suggest they should be doing to win. They may run away from losing. Trust your system, not your talent. Talent is a good thing to possess, unless it decides to remain disorganized. Disorganized talent is vulnerable to a competitor who has less talent but more organized in effort. It happens to the best of them all of the time.
McDonald's does not stand behind the counter and wait for a customer to walk in and order a Big Mac, then start the grill to fire one up to show the customer how well they cook hamburgers. No way. When a customer comes in and asks for a Big Mac, the McDonald's clerk does not say, "Oh wow, our boss forgot to order some in...we are all out! Want some fries? We cook some really mean fries."
Kill the trust we have for our talents. It does not produce a smoking business. Learn to trust the art of a well-designed system. Learn to manage that system with all of your trust. Make sure the holes in that system are always fixed and keep that system honest.
Turn your talents loose on developing a very systematic, successful way to do your business. Use your extraordinary talents to develop a great system. Trust your system. Submit your well-protected talents and allow them room to grow the art of producing a well-organized system to become the king of your operations. System is king, not your talents. Your talents have limitations. Those limitations will be the death to your business if you learn to trust them too much.
If you go to McDonald's in New York because you want a Big Mac and they run out of Big Mac's before you arrive, you may not go to McDonald's in New Jersey on your next trip because you know there is a chance they might be out of them. You do not like to be wrong. Guessing if McDonald's has Big Mac's in stock is not how McDonald's wins. McDonald's success comes from the art of practicing a well-organized system. They have plenty of Big Mac's in stock and you know that. You will not be wrong when you choose that place. McDonald's success does not come from great hamburgers. In fact, McDonald's system is run by a bunch of under-talented individuals. McDonald's system kicks fanny next to a good cook with a little burger stand next door. Get serious with your business plan. Use your great talents to organize how you want your business to run and teach it how to become well-organized. Build a beautiful system. Trust your system. Watch your business smoke. Let's ask a few questions about our own systems. Let's see how well they are designed.
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| We Each Get 24 Hours Every Day! |
We will call this process the "McDonald's Way". McDonald's does not cook the best foods in the world. It just sells the most fast foods. McDonald's success relies on its system to earn your repeat trade. When you take the family on an outing and drive to another town you get hungry. The troops want something to eat. You do not pull off the freeway and wander through a strange downtown to find a little local burger stand to try one out. There is too much risk involved with that process. You can pick a little burger stand, "Bob's Best Burgers," order a meal for everyone in the vehicle and begin eating. You will discover some surprises in that process. It will take you quite a bit of time to figure out what to order, a little more time to figure out how much it will cost and you are not sure what kind of food will come. Your choices will be confusing to you since this is your first time at "Bob's Best Burgers". And since this is your first time, you do not know how to order the food in a quick and easy way. It requires you to work harder on placing an order. The people operating the kitchen are nice but in no particular hurry to help you get on your way. In fact, they want to know where you are from and where you are going? They notice you are not a local folk. All you want to do is feed the troops. You are not too interested in a personal history review for the nice people cooking the meal.
Get serious. America picks its political leaders this way. It accepts no blame for the ills of the country and places the blame on those in the chairs. Americans select the ones to be in those chairs because they ran for office with a presentation for offering the best system to select. How simple can this be? Why risk being personally wrong with your choice for selecting a newbie of talent when you can blame all inevitable wrongs on the ones you already knew where wrong? Get serious. Market your business with this process in mind. It is how the mass think and behave. It is what it is. Recognize the "McDonald's Way" and learn how to dovetail your business model to capitalize on that process.
Sometimes we try too hard. Sometimes we rely on our raw talents too much. Sometimes we want all of the glory. Sometimes we need too much recognition. Sometimes we want too much control. Sometimes we want to make all of the decisions. Sometimes we need to do all of the work. Sometimes we want to do all of our best ideas. Sometimes, sometimes and sometimes. When will we learn how to allow the business model to be the boss? McDonald's allows the business model to be the boss, not the manager nor the owner. McDonald's system works well because the system is the king. If you were to compare the McDonald's system with your own business, who runs the show? You or the business model? If your business model is relying on you to run it, you do not have the system concept figured out yet. You are relying on your talent to make it happen. How is that working out for you? Ask that same question of McDonald's. I have eaten at many McDonald's restaurants in my life and cannot tell you who their owners are. I don't care, and neither do you. The owners and managers of McDonald's system understand this very well.
You might excuse this angle of thought from your particular situation. You may think you are too small to consider thinking on larger ideas for developing a great system. I am sure Mr. Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's, struggled with this concept as well. I am sure he had similar thoughts and excuses at one time or another. Maybe your excuse is that you only build houses and garages for a living, one at a time. Maybe your excuse is that you are a plant manager of a small potato processing facility. Maybe your excuse is that you sell musical instruments to school-aged children. Maybe your excuse is that you manufacture natural yarns. Whatever the excuse, you are where you are with your business model because you do not allow your business to become king. You are still trying to be the king.
If you are still trying to be the king, the last time I checked it out, you only get the same 24 hours everyone else gets. If you remain the king, you have placed an enormous limitation on your growth potential. You need to sleep, eat and have a life. You will not be able to compete with a well-organized system if you have time limits to respect. You will remain small in revenue production and your costs will continue to grow larger and larger every year. You know the profit gap is shrinking in on you and the pressure is mounting every year. That problem will continue. It may also be exactly why you are becoming frustrated with owning your own business. It may be your own fault, you are trying to remain the king.
Allow your business model to become the king. Allow your model to organize itself into a system that cannot be beat. Define what that system will do, what it will look like and learn how to do it well. Make sure what you allow your business to become is something that can be taught and managed by many other people. Give up your well-protected throne. Turn it over to your business model. Trust your system, not your talent. Quit trying to remember to order Bic Mac's on time. Start learning how to smoke in your business affairs! Permit many others to get a lot of the credit for your success. This is a huge step in order to make it big. Better yet, crumble away from these thoughts and efforts and spiral downward some more.
The real trick to expand is to expand. You must expand your thoughts, your system and your model. If you refuse to expand, you refuse to expand. Quit expecting expansion without expansion. The two cannot be the same. If you do not expand your model, you can remain the king of it all, and learn how to better manage whatever each 24 hours can produce. That is the clean of it all. I have eaten a lot of Big Mac's in my life and not one of them was the best hamburger I ever experienced. Not once did they tell me they were out of stock, either.
Until next time...
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