Systems – Harnessing The Power Of Consistent Behavior

Are you in control of your systems, or are your systems controlling you?

In this episode of “The Business You Really Want,” hosts Gwen Bortner and Tonya Kubo invite you into the world of systems and how the behaviors within your business shape the results you see. Whether you’re running a solo operation or managing a growing team, understanding and optimizing your systems can lead to more efficiency, less stress, and greater success.

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Systems – Harnessing The Power Of Consistent Behavior

Do you have systems in your business, or do your systems have you? If you’re me, it’s more the latter than the former. Gwen is the queen of systems, by the way, just in case you didn’t know that. In this episode, I think it’s really important to talk about identifying and optimizing the behaviors that shape your business. I’m Tanya Kubo. I am here with operations expert extraordinaire. I love this. As the lead host here, I get to say all sorts of ridiculous things about Gwen, and she can’t stop me because we’re recording. As we are here, Gwen, at the end of our introductory Gears series, in which we’re exploring the five key operational functions that make up the engine of any business, we have come to the last and most certainly not least. We have talked about goals. We’ve talked about effectiveness. We’ve talked about accounting.

Last episode, we talked about resources, and today we’re talking about what I believe is the most misunderstood business function, which is systems. Gwen, you don’t know this, but several weeks back, you gave me a definition of systems that absolutely blew my mind. So much so, I scrawled, “Must plug this in my notebook.” This is how you know business. It’s scrawled several pages back, as that was weeks ago, but it blew my mind because I am one of those people who has spent years saying, “I got to work on my systems. I need better systems. I don’t have any systems.” I hired people.

The people told me I didn’t have systems too, so it’s not like I was the only person who thought this. But when you said systems are actually behaviors, I went, “Now that you mention it, maybe I do have systems, and I don’t like them because I don’t like the behaviors I have.” Start us off there. Explain to me how I have systems if I don’t know that they’re there.

Systems Are Behaviors

Everybody has systems. There is nothing that happens without a system. You may not have consistent systems. You may not have documented systems. You may not have systems that are producing the results that you want. Those are very different kinds of things, but systems are happening all the time, everywhere, around everything, all the time. When someone says, “I don’t have any systems,” that is not true. They have systems. They may not have documented systems. They may not be consistent systems. They may not be the systems that they want because a system is just the way you do something. It is a behavior. The way you answer the phone, or don’t answer the phone, is a system. Even your personal thing. By the way, this can be used for phone calls for those who don’t know.

Not by me, Gwen.

I know. On very rare occasions, only under duress.

I will slack you.

That too is a system. All of that’s a system. It’s a behavior.

If systems are behaviors, and I don’t think I have systems because I don’t know they’re behaviors, let me see how much more circular logic I can throw into this, how do I know my behaviors? How do I figure that out?

That is an observation activity, and this is why most people don’t think they have systems. It’s really hard to observe ourselves. I use the phrase, “You can’t read the label from the inside of the jar.” That’s what the situation is. It’s hard to observe yourself. If you’re doing it with some level of consciousness, you actually can. To say, “So what do I do when,” I’m going to keep picking on the phone. The phone rings. What do you do? There is a system that we all have. It’s so automatic, we don’t even think about it as a system. I know when the phone rings, the first thing I do is look to see if it is a number that my phone recognizes. Caller ID. We’re old enough to have not had caller ID.

I know. Remember when the phone rang and it was a mystery?

It was a mystery. It was a total mystery. The first thing I look at is whether it’s anybody I know. That’s part of my system. If it’s someone I know, then I evaluate, can I answer it now, or should I answer it now based on anything else that’s going on? Like if you and I are recording, like right now, and the phone rang, I’d be upset that I haven’t turned it silent, which I haven’t. But I would look and see, is it one of only a person or two that I might answer the phone for because it’s actually potentially urgent? Right now, I’m not expecting anybody to have any urgent issues, so I wouldn’t answer any call. That’s part of my system.

If we weren’t recording, maybe you and I were just chatting, depending on who it was, I would say, “This is so-and-so. Let me find out if this is important.” Other people would be like, “They can wait,” and I would send them off to voicemail. But if it was a number I didn’t recognize, I’d immediately send it off to voicemail. All of that’s a system. Most people don’t think about it that consciously. They’re just doing those things, but that’s why it’s also a behavior. That’s your behavior of how you answer the phone. That behavior is, in fact, the system.

I know I can find out my behaviors by observing them. We tend to be terrible at that, so I can probably do a task study or a time study. There’s one way to do it.

Part of it’s being aware. I hadn’t prepped that whole conversation that we just had, but because I’m good at observing, I was able to say, what would happen if the phone rang right now? Here are the first two questions my mind would do. If you start paying attention, you can say, I know that if a number I don’t recognize comes up, I always send it to voicemail. You can start paying attention to your own things and say, what am I doing here? Why am I doing that? That’s really the question. Why am I making this choice? Why am I making this decision? What is the trigger for the decision, or why am I doing it? I’m not going to answer the phone. The phone doesn’t ring. That’s the first thing.

That’s a good point. So the phone ringing is the trigger?

Yeah.

Documenting Systems

I’ve observed my behaviors. How do I know when it’s time to document them? Because one thing that you and I have talked about a lot is that a lot of times, people think system equals SOP, or standard operating procedure, when in reality, the SOP is just cementing or standardizing the behaviors that we’ve been doing all along.

A lot of times, people think system equals standard operating procedure when in reality, the SOP is just cementing or standardizing the behaviors that we've been doing all along. Share on X

Often, when people first talk to me about potentially working with me, one of the first things they say is, so you’re going to document my systems? My first thing is, I’m not going to do anything like that because that’s not part of what I do.

This ain’t that.

Not that, and I’m not going to encourage you to have anyone else do that either, which always shocks people. What do you mean? Because we don’t know that those are the most effective systems that you have. Why waste time documenting something that we’re going to revise, improve, remove, delete, whatever it is. Documentation of systems is useful once you know you really have a useful, effective, proper, whatever term you want to put around it, system in place.

People assume that by documenting it, they now have a system. Nope. They had a system long before they put any word to paper. If we’re going to put word to paper, or computer, then let’s make sure we’re actually documenting what we want to continue to do for at least some extended period of time. It may not be forever. That’s also part of it. These things will change over time. Let’s make sure we’re documenting what we actually want to do, not necessarily what we’re doing.

Got it. We want to make sure that whatever we do document is productive in some way. It’s the best way we know how to do the thing in this given period of time. Is there a best way to document a system? I’m a big fan of a Google Doc, but I know some people like spreadsheets. Other people like task management systems.

No, there are multiple right answers to this. Within any organization, there are also multiple right answers to this. Getting consistent about how you’re answering that question really becomes the important piece of that. One of my things is, the fewer places that you have to change something when something changes, the better. I’m not a fan of having a whole set of, like, a project plan or a whole set of tasks in a system like ClickUp or Asana or any of those, and also duplicating that in some spreadsheet or Google Doc or any other place, because you have to change it in two places when something changes.

You can say the project plan for this launch can be found here in Asana and have it linked, so you know that the tasks themselves are listed out in Asana, and that’s the only place that you change it. When someone says, where do I find the project plan for this particular launch? If they go to the Google Doc, it’s like, go here. Here it is. We assume that that is the most current version. If anything needs to be changed, it’s often changed on the fly as people are doing. It’s like, we’re not using that software anymore. We need to use this other software or whatever the case may be.

Unconscious Behaviors

We’ve established that systems are really consistent behaviors that you document, but documentation alone does not equal a system. I love that you just pointed out that systems are not special software. There’s no right or wrong way. A system can be as easy as a handwritten checklist, it sounds like, or as complex as some interactive checklist system that you have with really pricey software that I’ve not heard of. I’m sure if somebody listening or watching knows of this pricey software, they’ll tell us about it. That’s the one thing I love about having conversations like this in public view, people can tell us the things that we haven’t thought of.

You’ve also talked about the importance of recognizing your behavior patterns. What it is you do, are you the person who’s always going to ignore the phone call that comes from an unrecognized number, or are you the person who picks up every phone call just because that’s your habit? I’m wondering about the unconscious behaviors. What about the behaviors that we have that we don’t know we have that could be either driving our success or maybe sabotaging it? What do you have to say about those?

This is the place where having someone work with you outside, an outside observer, really can be beneficial. You and I have had this conversation, I can’t even guess how many dozens, if not hundreds, of times by now, where you will say something, and I will say, what do you mean? Because for me, it’s so natural, it’s so subconscious and so automatic, I don’t understand that it’s unusual or that there’s a particular nuance to it that is different from what most everybody else in the world sees or hears or does. Having someone who’s able to actually look outside and say, do you recognize that you do this? For you to be able to say, no, why would I? Of course I do that. Because in our mind, that’s the thing. It’s like, of course I do that. How would you not do that?

How would you not?

How would you not? I know there are several times I’ve said that to you. What do you mean, how would you not? You’re like, no one else does it that way.

Nobody else would do that.

What? It seems like craziness. I am a really good observer of systems and behaviors, and I can’t see it about myself either. Sometimes you have to have someone else watching to see what that thing is, to see what that little magic potion, what that little phrasing, whatever. There can be all sorts of little things that really do make a big difference. You just can’t see it for yourself because it’s just so natural that it’s unidentifiable.

There can be all sorts of little things that really do make a big difference and you just can't see it for yourself because it's just so natural that it's unidentifiable. Share on X

This reminds me of a conversation we had. Might’ve been last week. Might’ve been yesterday. Time is a fuzzy thing for me sometimes. You were talking to somebody about, like you were talking to a business owner and there was a challenge with a staff member. You had pointed out to the business owner, you said, your staff member can’t get started on the project because you haven’t given them enough information. The business owner was like, I have. I told them this and this. You’re like, but that’s not enough for them. You’d said something which was, I bet you haven’t given them that piece of information because you want the freedom to change your mind later. They went, yeah. You tie it all to Myers-Briggs. As I was watching that interchange, I was going, so this is an example of how the business owner, because of their desire to keep things fluid so that they can change their mind, can kind of bob and weave as needed.

It’s been good for them. That’s been part of their success, right?

Right, that’s part of the success, but as they are developing team members into higher-level positions, it’s actually working against them because these individuals can’t perform at the level that the business owner expects because they don’t have the information that they need. That’s the most concrete example I can think of how this whole unconscious behavior sabotages success. Can you think of others, or do you want to maybe expand upon that one?

That’s a great example, and so let’s just expand upon it. When we hold all of the cards, when we are the solopreneur, truly the solopreneur, we get to do everything our way, absolutely 100% everything our way. If the fact that I’m left-handed means that you have to do everything left-handed, that could become a real problem because I can only hire left-handed people. Where are the things that we actually can do some give on? Where is there space for some give in there? Entrepreneurs, particularly solopreneurs, as they start, really like the flexibility. Often you say, why did you start doing business? I wanted flexibility. That part of it.

Freedom and flexibility.

Freedom and flexibility. That’s the general answer, but the problem is too much freedom and flexibility for anyone, including the owner, means other people can’t start making decisions for themselves because there’s no way to predict what the owner answer would be. If we start standardizing, often the owner-creative is like, that means I can’t change. No, you always can change, but you can’t change without dealing with the consequences. Here’s the reality that most people don’t understand, they’re dealing with those consequences whether they know they are or not. Every time that they’re making that change, that shift, whatever, where before they were doing it, they didn’t realize all the consequences that they were causing because they were just causing them to themselves.

Too much freedom and flexibility for anyone means other people cannot start making decisions for themselves because there's no way to predict what the owner answer would be. Share on X

It was just a thing, and that’s the way it went. This is the way I work. You can justify pretty much anything if you want, if you try hard enough. But now that there’s other people in the equation, that same cost is now showing up in a different way. There’s this reflection of what’s happening with this system. That flexibility is probably still important, but the question is, how important is the thing that we’re trying to remain flexible on? Do you really not know? Do you really need time to process, or are you just wanting another two weeks to be absolutely sure that the answer you thought of four weeks ago is still the answer that you have? I see that a lot with entrepreneurs.

Systems start putting these pieces in place, and you start finding, where am I gumming up the works with me wanting to have all the flexibility? Because we often think that all of this intuition is what’s actually driving our processes, our systems, our success. Usually, it’s not. There’s usually a little bit at the beginning and a little bit at the end, but most of the middle is actually fairly consistent. The more consistent it is, you actually end up with better results. But everyone thinks they need all sorts of flexibility in all of these spaces. It’s not actually helpful because it’s allowing you to use up way too many cycles trying to process a decision that really you already made.

Creating Intentional Systems

That actually leads into my next question. It sounds like you answered it.

I love it when I do that.

I like it when you do that too. That makes my life a lot easier, less set up on the question. Which is, how do you create intentional systems that support your goals and values? It sounds like what you just said is you figure out how much you can standardize and still feel the freedom that’s so important to you, that you’re leaving the flexibility for the things that truly need to be flexible. Do you have an example of that, like something concrete?

Yeah. I’ll use us and the way that we work.

I like the us example because I have some inside knowledge.

Exactly. A couple of things that are really important to us is context matters, which means we do not have a predefined process that we’re going to take you through step-by-step-by-step-by-step-by-step because your outcome and the next client’s outcome, even if you have very similar businesses, may be very different. There are all sorts of pieces that play into that. That doesn’t mean we don’t have any systems around that. We have some places that we start very consistently because we know that we need to get this set of questions answered. We know that we have an onboarding process that we want you to go through because we’ve seen over time it works.

Instead of being flexible about all of those things, we’re not. There are some places where we do this. We have some areas that we are very consistent about, but there are other areas that we are very open about. When we first start working together, we have three different programs. Depending on which one, you’re going to fall into one of those programs. I’m really not very flexible for the first three to six months. After you’ve worked with us for a while, this is the place where the choices become possible because I know enough about you and your business to know, is this choice a reasonable choice or not?

I don’t let you have too much flexibility because then you’re not going to make a decision. You’re not going to know what to do. You’re not going to have direction. We will make adjustments as time goes forward, but we don’t just let all options be available right out of the chute. There is some flexibility in there, but there’s also some systems in there. We’re going to do this thing for a certain period of time.

Got it. That is really the structure that goes in there, that we know that there is this thing that we will do for a significant period of time. At the end of that time, then we go to the next thing, then the next thing. That in and of itself is the system. There are systems within that larger system. I think that’s also where we get tripped up, sometimes we don’t realize that there’s three file folders in place here. We want to look at it all as one big parent folder, and oftentimes that’s just not how it works.

It’s not. For instance, we have onboarding processes, and there’s part of our onboarding process everybody goes through. Part of our onboarding process, only certain clients that have purchased certain packages and certain consulting advisory services go through. The system is the same, but there’s a point where this one diverges and goes this way, but you’re still doing this one too. We all start here, and then some people are still doing this and doing this, and others are just doing this, and that’s okay. But instead of asking, what do you want to do here? Do you want to do this? No. That allows my folks to then also be able to know what they have to do. I can’t even remember the last time I had to deal with any onboarding issue because we’re doing it in a consistent way.

Recap

What we have seen, just as an aside, is that as we have got consistent with how we onboard individuals, it has also streamlined the process of where people are as they start working with us. Everybody has a better experience because we have standardized the onboarding. To sum up here, when we’re talking about systems, we’re really talking about harnessing the power of consistent behavior because everybody has a system.

You have systems, even when you don’t think you do, because systems really are consistent behaviors. You have helped us to appreciate, really it’s been a mutual conversation, I would say, how you identify your behaviors, and it’s really paying attention to what you’re doing day to day, asking yourself questions: why did I do that? What led me to do it now versus later? As it is appropriate.

Should I be doing it? Should I not be doing it?

Am I the best person to be doing this? I think that was something you said too.

That’s a great question to be asking.

When you’re clear that the things you’re doing actually are the right things in the right order to get yourself to the goals you have set, then you come in and you start writing them down because those are the things you want to make sure you check every box, each and every time. As far as the best way to document them, that’s really between you and your own brain and how it’s wired. If you’re a pen-and-paper person, yay you. Checklist person, yay you. Project management system, yay you. For your purposes, Gwen, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you tell somebody to the granular level of Notion versus Trello versus Asana versus whatever. It’s like, you do you. Am I right? Am I talking out of school here?

Yeah. That’s a really important piece because often people think the tool will create the system. That’s never true.

I cannot tell you how often people have said, “If you would just use Notion, you wouldn’t have that problem.” No, because I’m still me. This is a me problem. It’s been a me problem since I could walk. It will continue to be a me problem, and they will never invent a tool that will outsmart me because I am committed to certain aspects of how I do things. It’s not Notion, it’s not ClickUp, it’s not whatever. It’s just how I operate.

One of the things that you pointed out is we have to identify and understand our behavior patterns because we need to be really aware of the things we don’t realize we’re doing that are secretly sabotaging our success. You pointed out that flexibility, that hunger for flexibility and freedom, oftentimes can be our worst enemy when it comes to growing our business. Because that’s what gets in the way of us being willing to commit to a written list of, this is how we do things here. Have I left anything out? The real key about that is when you are no longer using your brain power to make what I’m going to call everyday decisions.

They may not be everyday, but they’re recurring decisions. You’re actually freeing up your brain power and that choice possibility for really doing the creative work of the business. You can’t explain it until someone has experienced it. When all of a sudden they’re like, “I have so much more time to think about this,” or, “I came up with this great idea that I would have never.” That’s right, because you were spending way too much time trying to figure out, A or B? When you know it’s A 95% of the time, and when it’s B, it’s okay if it’s A. Just standardize on A, A is going to be fine.

I want to turn this over to our listeners. I am curious, am I the only person who has this perspective on systems? Am I the only person whose mind’s blown by this? Because honestly, I’ve never heard it discussed this way. I’m glad that we were able to have the conversation in public view. I’m curious, if you’re listening, what unconscious behaviors do you recognize are affecting your business? I want you to let me know. Email me at Tonya@everydayeffectiveness.com to tell me your story and help inform future episodes of the show. Because that’s really what makes this conversation about the business you really want so powerful, the ability to have those real-time, relevant conversations. Until next time, we will see you soon.

Mentioned in the Episode

• Explore our true accountability program in the Weekly Course of Action
• Find all resources mentioned in the episode at The Business You Really Want

About Your Hosts

Gwen Bortner has spent four decades advising executives and entrepreneurs in 45+ industries. She helps women succeed in business without sacrificing happiness by identifying their true desires and aligning their business functions. She spots overlooked bottlenecks and crafts efficient plans toward sustainable success that center your values and priorities. Known for her unique approach to problem-solving and accountability through the G.E.A.R.S. framework, Gwen empowers clients to achieve their definition of success without sacrificing what matters most.

Tonya Kubo is a marketing strategist and community builder who helps entrepreneurs build thriving online communities. As co-host of The Business You Really Want and Chief Marketing and Operations Officer (CMOO) at Everyday Effectiveness, she keeps conversations on track and ensures complex business concepts are accessible to everyone. A master facilitator with 18+ years of experience in online community building, Tonya takes a people-first approach to marketing and centers the human experience in all she does.