Systems are kind of like chocolate cake?

Systems are kinda like chocolate cake.

I was having an interesting discussion today with my son.

And we were looking at how do people end up in certain places in life? Why do some people succeed? Why do some people fail?

And this was triggered by walking through Canberra, a city in Australia's capital city, actually.

And there was just a large number of homeless people.

And this is a bit This is shocking.

This is a bit shocking for my kids.

And so we're talking about, well, what went on for them, what made them end up homeless, but other people successful, and we ended up discussing, doing work, that knowing what to do and then doing, it actually leads to a result, and that this result was valuable in the marketplace to an owner of a business or to themselves.

And perhaps they didn't know, they didn't realize the consequences of choosing to not do the work, which could have been the actual work of the business, but also have we got on the topic of investing in themselves and investing in their relationships with other people.

And then these lead to success in the world.

And from this, a question arose? Well, how do you systematically do this? That wasn't the question that can be pretty impressive for 11-year-olds go, how do you systematically create results, we were talking about this because I was discussing how you can get consistent results every time you do the same things.

And I gave him the analogy of baking a chocolate cake.

So this essentially this recipe, you may call it a recipe, but really, if you look at it in a certain way, it is extremely similar to a system.

Hey, buddy, hey, going? Are we done just a bit? Okay, just talking about chocolate cakes.

I know you want to, it's cool.

So let's talk about chocolate cakes.

So baking a chocolate cake, I've got some ingredients.

Yes, it's just over there, we've got the ingredients, we've got some instructions, also known as the recipe.

And then when we follow those instructions accurately, there will be a chocolate cake at the end of it.

And then we discussed the situation where perhaps there was no chocolate available, and that you followed the instructions.

But instead of getting a chocolate cake, you would get something different.

And that set of instructions was not the same as the original chocolate cake because there was no chocolate.

And so you get a plain cake.

And then we talked about well, if you wanted a strawberry cake, then you could replace the chocolate with strawberries.

And you would have a strawberry cake.

But we didn't get on to an idea that I wanted to discuss which was some ingredients cannot be removed, that if you take out the eggs in the flour, you will not have a chocolate cake at all, you won't have any cake you'll have a probably a giant mess.

So some elements of a system can be replaced, some can be omitted, and some cannot.

And knowing this is important.

And for you as a business owner, your ability to control this is very important.

Particularly if you are running compliance-based work like where you have to prove that things got done, then it becomes critical that you can actually take off and say yes, this work got done.

Now, to do that, you're going to need SOP software, you're going to need some version of moving beyond Google Docs.

Perhaps you can get away with some level of control with project management.

But you will end up with a very large number of items that need to be checked off.

If you try and use your project management software to do this, it's far better to use dedicated SOP software that is designed to do this very specific instruction.

So coming back to our chocolate cakes.

So we've got the ingredients.

We've got the recipe, which is your process, and then we've got the result which is the final chocolate cake.

If you change the instructions, if you change the recipe, you'll get something different.

It may be a cake, it may not be a cake.

If you don't follow the instructions and don't measure your ingredients correctly, then you are may or may not get what you're expecting.

You are certainly at reading, increased risk of not getting a chocolate cake if you don't follow the instructions.

Now, some people will have memorized the instructions and that's totally fine.

They're still following the system, even though they're not checking it off.

The work that they are doing is still leading to a chocolate cake now One final thing that I want to bring to your attention is that if you're working in a physical business where you're producing physical goods, then this analogy is extremely apt.

You have raw materials that you process and outcomes, the finished goods.

But if you are not in a physical goods business, then you might be wondering, well, what are the ingredients? Well, the cool thing is that often your instructions your recipe will be requiring you to create.

And this is how a fascinating experience can happen that the same instructions, when they require something to be created can lead to vastly different results, or good.

The overall result is the same.

But the actual creative is different.

Let me give you an example.

If you're trying to create an ad, let's say you're going to create a text and text an image ad, then the processes to do that are the same every time.

But as you go through, you're going to create different ads over and over.

So this is an example where you are creating a type of chocolate cake.

But you are not you are actually getting different versions because of the creativity.

That's all I got for you tonight.

I'm getting some attention from my daughter.

I need to go help her out.

I hope you enjoyed tonight's episode.

And thank you for tuning in as we continue this journey into the power of systems to create results.

I look forward to seeing you on the next episode.

I'll see you then.