Welcome to Take Control with Nicole, as business owners, we experience firsthand the fine line between our personal and business lives. During our conversations, we will look at simple hints and tips to create time, reduce overwhelm, and help you to navigate through your journey to where you want to be. If you’re looking for smarter ways to work, and create space and time freedom in your day, then you’re in the right place. All right, let’s go.

Hello, and welcome back to Take Control with Nicole. This week, I would love to invite you inside to the members lounge to sit as a fly on the wall in one of our recent master classes, where we’re really looking at those three key words that float around business all the time, which is systems, process and procedures. Now this is a conversation that I have frequently with my community about what actually are they, what do those mean? What does the terminology actually transition into application in the way that we run our businesses. So grab a coffee, sit on in the lounge, find your beautiful velvet chair, and enjoy the session.

Today, we are going to be looking at systems, process and procedures. Now we’ve had this conversation in here a couple of weeks ago around the terminology of system, process and procedures and how sometimes they intertwine into each other. So I thought what we would do today is just have a look at the definitions of what they are, and then focus a little bit more on the procedure bit.

So what we were having a conversation about, I think it might have been in chats and cheers or one of our conversations was the difference between systems process and procedures. So if we start at the start systems, equal outcomes. So if we think about in a business sense, it’s that overall high level silos of our business. So we look at it like operations, marketing, finance, client activities and client action. So it’s those activities in your business that you are doing on a daily basis. That’s the overarching, I guess, hierarchy or structure of what your business is all about. So that’s where we sort of start with the system. So systems can also be intertwined with technological systems. So like Clickup, or Office 365, or Asana, whatever that you might be using. But in this terminology, when we’re talking about business systems, we’re actually talking about those higher level sort of silos of areas of your business versus the tech. So that’s something you may want to start to use in your business is business systems versus just actual systems. When we’re looking at those from a design point of view in Clickup, normally, these would be either your top level spaces or the underlying folders within there, depending on what your structure is, you know, from a smaller business, you may have things combined, as we’ve spoken about under business management, and then you’ll have operations, marketing as folders within. Whereas as you get to a bigger organisation, you may actually have those sectioned out as a space for operations, a space for marketing, a space for finance, for instance. So that’s why it could be either or.

Now we’re looking at what is a process. So a process is a combination of inter-relatable and interacting actions that transform inputs into outputs. So if we look at that, again, put a lens on a business perspective and we look at our marketing system. Underneath we have different processes in there. So a process would be social media, podcasting, newsletter, YouTube video content, other areas that combined together will reach that overall outcome of your marketing silo or your marketing system for your business. Now all of these actions, they’re all going to flow up as I said to the big outcomes of your business so you have goals or we now call them bigs as you’ll start to hear me talk about transition, the word goals too big just feels a bit better. So all of these actions here at this level, will all combine to meet that overall objective or the outcome.

Hello, there. I’m just interrupting this episode as I would love to invite you to come on in and join us inside the members lounge. My community have shared with me that they joined initially because they really wanted to discover the power of Clickup, they wanted to be able to design, build, and connect their Clickup’s within their own individual businesses. However, once they were inside, they really discovered how the power of looking at the foundations of your operational areas of your business, and designing those really to set you up for success is such a powerful element. And guess what else, we have a fabulous community inside. So once you’re in, you’re never gonna want to leave. So come on over, have a look, go to my website, theartisans.com.au and pop up to the members lounge button at the top. And we look forward to supporting you as you discover how fabulous it is when you’re confidently striding down easy street, see you inside the lounge.

Now, in Clickup, or in your project management tool, these would be a folder or a list. So it’s something that’s you know, got a little bit more in depth underneath it, which we’re about to go into, the doing, the tasks, but it’s in that structure that needs its own little space, or its own folder or lists to combine that information in that.

And then we come down to our procedures. So that’s the doing. That is the procedure is a combination of steps, specifically designed to carry out an activity or process. So as we mentioned before, we may have our marketing system, and then we might have podcasting as our process. Now, our procedure is how we actually do the doing to create the podcast from nothing to actually getting it out there and share it with the world. So we’ll have it completed by a certain delegation, certain person for each step, it will be completed for a specific purpose. So if we think about podcasting, that’s going to be part of our marketing strategy. So that could be for connection or for you know, getting your name or your business out there a little bit wider than just your immediate audience. We know that those actions, those tasks need to be completed in a specific timeframe. So we’ll have that as part of our procedure, and also where it’s going to be completed. So in a specific location, clearly I can’t say that word today specific maybe we’re going to be on a holiday island somewhere. But basically, it’s all the action. So smaller actions that we do daily, everything we do is a process or a procedure, we wake up in the morning, we get ready, I shared on the podcast last week, when I was talking to Kathy, she asked me what was an analogue thing that I do that saves my day, and I spoke about doing my makeup in the morning, there’s my brushes are over here and my makeups here and I get my brushes, I get my makeup bag, and I do the things in the order of from no makeup to then being ready to come and speak to you today. So everything we do in our lives and in our business is a procedure. And what we’re doing here, as we’re going through, we’re going to be talking about all the steps in a minute is we’re going to be able to design these in a way that really actually supports you to tick them off. So you can meet your process speed, which is here, which then flows back up into our overall marketing system, focus on everything for your business.

So as I said, here, this is the level where all the fun begins. So we really build it in alignment with whatever your journey is to building big as well. So thinking about that at the start of you know, if you are a solopreneur right now and you’re going to grow your business to a team, what can we do at this level now to actually design it so that it will be scalable for you as well as you go through that journey. In Clickup these would be your lists, your tasks, your automations, your delegations, your custom fields, all of those things, so many elements in Clickup can really come in and make these procedures really exciting. Templates as well should put that one there, templates, all of these things as we go through to the next element that we’ll be thinking about here to really design it in a way that’s repeatable and easy and automated, we love automations, makes it all really nice and fun.

How fabulous. What did you discover that you may not have known before listening in? There are so many ways we can look at these three words across business. If we just take system for instance, many connect the word system with technical applications and that is not wrong. But when we’re looking at it in a operational element for your business, the way that you do the doing from way to nay we’re really being able to now clearly connect those definitions and how we’re applying those into our business. So, I would love to know what you have discovered after this episode today, let me know pop on over to the DMS. And I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day creating time and freedom bye now.

Well, there we go. Thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been such a pleasure having you on board. Have we connected on social yet? If not, please come on over say hi, I’m on all the platforms @theartisanssolutions. So I’d really look forward to seeing you over there. And if you enjoy today’s episode, don’t forget to tag me and I’d love it if you could leave a review. And of course share this with others so others can come and join us next time. All right, then everyone have a fabulous rest of the week. And until next time, see you then.