
All of the aforementioned prompts dance around (like sugar plum fairies?) in their heads all of the time, as they trust them to memory, rather than systemizing and delegating these details to SOMEBODY, using the TOOL of written procedures that could help take care of details automatically and in a timely manner.
These owner/managers are slaves to being onsite for long hours, so their employees can plug into them for the information needed to do their jobs. These same owners keep training and retraining employees, over and over, wasting thousands of hours when they might rather be at home on a long winter’s night.
Systemizing just that one simple procedure—how to print out Christmas labels—has saved me, personally, a couple hours each year. We have had that procedure in our System100 for over 10 years—that’s 20 hours of savings. At first glance, that doesn’t sound like much, until you add up all the hours of savings from literally thousands of prompts and processes in the other documents referred to above.
And how about the money saved?
You know on second thought, maybe this IS an idea for Mr. Scrooge!
Did I mention? Great systems work!

Philip Beyer, founder/president of Ebiz Products LLC and founder of Beyer Printing Inc. in Nashville Tenn., is a chronic entrepreneur, business systems analyst and consultant. Author of "System Busters: How to Stop Them in Your Business" and recipient of an InterTech Technology Award for the design and development of System100 business process management software. Beyer speaks to business owners across the country on how to bring lean, sustainable order to their businesses. Contact him at (615) 425-2652.