What Are Your Monthly Habits?

It’s been interesting to see all the ways businesses around me use systems.

The airline has a specific structure to their flights, ‘put your seat back and tray table in the upright and locked position.’

Police officers in a traffic stop have procedures to follow for safety.

The restaurant you visit has a system for ordering, preparing, cooking and delivering food to your table.

Even television programs have predictability in news coverage, cliff hangers in drama, laugh tracks in comedy.

UPS has a complicated system of routing and tracking packages, filing claims, delivering before 8am.

The government has a (granted,  overcomplicated) system for processing paperwork for any number of departments.

Banks have processes for updating accounts and sending statements.

Even the smallest of family businesses has a routine that can be as simple as unlocking the door, turning on the Open sign and brewing the coffee.

It may seem tedious to track these tasks in the beginning but the effort quickly pays off

As soon as the receptionist is taught how to brew the coffee and open the door, the owner regains that time. As soon as a system is in place to review orders you’ll no longer need to sort through all of your online orders manually.

Remember these routine tasks are not so difficult when done on a regular basis, automated and tracked. If a bank stopped sending statements their systems should note there’s a problem before months pass and hundreds of complaints are registered.

Enabling tracking systems is critical for Just in Time planning – for some companies this means managing physical inventory but for the online business it can mean projecting the support needed for your team. In the same way that businesses providing a physical product must manage their deliverables, you must manage the team that delivers your webpages, membership sites, email delivery and customer service.

As the month of September ends I wonder, what are the monthly tasks and processes in your business that you may be neglecting?

There are financial statements of course, income, net revenue, expenses, debts and investments. Tracking sales, upsells, returns, bonuses, delivery of physical and digital products

There’s tracking for your list, followers and fans, to measure how the things you’ve done over the past month impacted your reach.

You can create a system for tracking clients, the number of sales at each level of your offer but also how on-going clients are doing, what they’re learning and the support they need in the coming month.

There can be calendar systems to review how you’ve spent your time, interviews you’ve done and partnerships you’ve pursued.

There are web domains to review and register, software updates to install and files to backup.

What are the things that come to mind every single month that never seem to get done? What are those things that nag on your mind and only need to be done on a monthly basis but that you have no system for getting done?

Let these things be entries into your Business Playbook, the way you do business will only be different if you make changes.  Take a look at my business playbook and sign up to learn how to create your own here.