What is a System? Inputs, outputs, process, people and more?

Alright, so I thought I'd address a question that presumably is going to come up people.

What is a system? What is a system? And it might seem quite a simple thing.

It's like, oh, yes, system.

It's it's one of those things.

But exactly what is the system? Let's, let's talk about a couple of features of, of a system.

One is that, hey, there's some kind of input, there's some kind of material going in.

And that might be literal, physical materials.

And it could also be skillsets, or ideas that are going in, and then something's going to happen to those.

And at the end of it will be an outcome or result.

Basically, stuff goes in and stuff comes out.

And in the middle, there's a bunch of work that gets done to transform them from the first one to the second.

Seems simple enough, right? It's like, okay, cool, cool.

Cool.

Getting an idea here.

But there are a couple more features to consider, well, what is who's going to do the work? who's actually going to do it? And the cool thing about modern society, 21st-century world, guess what, you've also got a buddy.

So traditionally, we would just have human beings and they would have to do the work, perhaps we would have animals and be able to get them to pull things, or whatever their roles are, we could get animals to do things.

But now, of course, we have computers and computers, pretty cool.

We can actually get them to do things when certain things happen.

You can look at something like Zapier or if then I think it's cool if then that something like that, I didn't use that one.

I like Zapier.

Super cool.

It's cool.

It's like programming without knowing how to program lets me do things.

And I don't need to code.

It's super cool.

So alright, so so far, we've got input, we've got processes, we've got an output, and we have people like who's automation.

So these things all come together? And the big question, though, that I want you to take away from this is that outcome that results.

And when you think of that, I want you to know is that your desired results, because the system has a purpose, there's a reason for having this system.

And that is to create that desired outcome.

And at the end of executing this system, you've got to compare it you got to say, Hey, did I get what I wanted.

And if you did great that systems operational, it's working.

And it will continue to run until something changes, perhaps the inputs changed.

Or perhaps there was a mistake in the way things were done.

But if you did not get what you wanted, then there's a problem.

So So let's take this out of the realm of ideas and bring it down to something pretty concrete.

What about a dishwasher? Boring, perhaps, useful area? If you've got kids, I got three kids, you know, like a dishwasher for a while we had two dishwashers, and everyone thought it was crazy.

But I learned it from a friend of mine with four kids.

And he's like, Yeah, we redid our kitchen.

And everyone wanted to give us two ovens.

And I was like, banana, let's do two dishwashers.

And He said Tom get two dishwashers.

It's awesome.

So for a while, we had two dishwashers until one of them broke, and we haven't replaced it, we replaced it with a wine fridge.

You know, it's probably not as useful as a dishwasher.

But it's been fun to have a wine fridge in the kitchen.

Alright, so we've got this dishwasher.

And you might go okay, well, we're talking about a result.

What is the result of cool clean dishes, of course, is clean dishes.

So obvious, clean dishes, we've got dirty dishes as the input.

And then we put it in the dishwasher and outcomes, clean dishes.

Well, let's break it down a little bit more.

And I 100% agree that the input is the dirty dishes, but also realize that this system gets triggered by the dirty dishes.

So not only are the dirty dishes, the input, they're also the trigger.

And that's why the system gets executed at that time got dirty dishes, okay, let's load them up.

So I load in the dishes.

Now, notice that you could break that process of loading the dishes in, perhaps you're going to scrape them, perhaps you're going to rinse them, perhaps you're going to make sure that there's no shadowing so that they lay one of my favorite ideas don't shadow the plates, otherwise they don't get clean.

And you're like great.

Okay, now it's loaded up.

Let's run it.

It's like, okay, great.

We'll just run it in.

But is that really what happens? Perhaps you might consider cleaning up the track.

You know, that'd be where all the extra bits go in there.

If that's not cleaned up beforehand, then it tends not to wash so well.

Perhaps you also might just spin the arms.

I don't know if you've had this experience.

I certainly have myself where there was a force that went through the little cage thing and then jammed the arm and so none of the bottom layers got done.

So ideally, spin the arms.

Do I do it all the time? No, not every time.

Sometimes.

Usually after I've lost the load to like having them dirty.

I'm like, Alright, happened again.

should check that every time.

And then finally Putting the little like little tablet thing in and turning it on great.

It runs, it does its thing to come back in 90 minutes, open it up to clean dishes.

Great.

I got what I wanted.

What did I do? I thought the system was designed to do clean dishes, yeah, did clean dishes.

But think for a moment, where are those dishes? Are they still in the dishwasher?

So the desired result is not actually clean dishes, the desired result, presumably, if you're anything like me clean dishes back in the kitchen cupboards.

And so there's an extra process there.

And this is an example of thinking that the result was clean dishes.

But in fact, the result was clean dishes in the cupboard.

And this is a very simple system like this is super simple, you know, like loading the dishwasher, getting the clean dishes.

As you head into business, you're going to be dealing with far more complex systems.

And your capacity to have a working model of knowing how to think about systems, how to build systems, how to troubleshoot systems, is going to determine the results that you get in the business.

The cool thing is, once you get this mindset, it becomes easier and easier to build systems to run systems to make them work in your business to deploy them to others, and actually even benefit from the work of others who've actually done these systems before.

One of the coolest outcomes of having a systems mindset is being able to take a book, being able to take a workshop or seminar, even a marketing video, where they're like, yeah, we're just going to show you what to do.

But we're not going to show you how to do any like if you know how to think systems.

It's like okay, what's the result? I'm after? They've given me the white, okay, I cannot out the house.

Did you? Did it? Give me the result? Yes.

Okay, great.

You might choose to skip that and just go, You know what, I'm just going to invest in the money so that I can just have the detailed instructions off the bat.

But know that when you get this mindset, it transforms the way that you think in the world.

Suddenly, if you want a result, you know how to systematically approach that to get it.

And if you don't get it, then you're like, Okay, well, what went on to get the result that I didn't want what needs to change, going back through those processes and changing them.

Just like in that dishwasher example.

Like literally, I thought the result I wanted was clean dishes, but now the result, I really want clean dishes back in the cupboard.

So I've got to add that next step called to unload the dishes, I hope you're getting this I hope you're starting to open up to the idea that systems and processes create results that you've got input, you've got a bunch of work that gets done by someone by you by a computer, and outcomes a result.

If that's the result that you want, then that system is operational.

If it's not, you go back and change it.

If you want to help with this.

Then what I want you to do is go to System IO dot Dev, go put in your name and your email which the training that was put together for you there.

I hope to get some more value out of that just as you have from today.

Thanks so much for tuning in.

I look forward to seeing you on tomorrow's episodes.

We continue this journey into the power of systems to create results.

See you then.