
If you're NOT working ON your business, systematically, building a company that Ensures great quality products and services with on-time delivery—a company with minimal errors, great working conditions for employees; a company absent of clutter and miscommunication—then it doesn't really matter which way you go!
If working ON your business, systematically, is NOT the plan, the winds of chaos will carry you from one disaster to the next—from one error to the next—and you will have little or NO control.
What happens then is, those around you become disillusioned and they look for a way out of YOUR "rabbit hole"—a nightmare of little wonder!
This is where most businesses live, responding to the day-to-day problems, but NEVER eliminating them through written procedures, policies, and checklists, etc. These types of systems can be the roadmap to where you want to go—and what's more important, a roadmap for OTHERS to follow.
Back to Alice!
Alice said something very interesting, without hesitation or thinking it through.
"As long as I get SOMEWHERE!"
Again, this is where most business owners live, and where I lived for the first five years of owning my business. I just wanted to grow—I just wanted to get "somewhere."
The Cheshire Cat's response to Alice's "somewhere" remark was most remarkable, and sadly true—"Oh, you're sure to do that, if you only walk LONG enough!"
When a business owner doesn't have a road map to where they're going—i.e., an Operations Manual—they will surely get somewhere, but they'd better KEEP walking, keep working; no time for rest or enjoying things they've always wanted to do, because the dreams they had of how their life would be as a business owner—before JUMPING down that rabbit hole into the REAL WORLD (without quality control systems)—is that, IT'S ALL A DREAM!
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.