I recently received a request to review the book, “Work the System:  The Simple Mechanics of Working Less and Making More” by Sam Carpenter.  He presented the strategies that he used when transitioning his company from a ‘job’ to a ‘business’–the job being one where he overworked by many hours a week to the business that runs itself with his input for a couple of hours per week.

While the ideas may be something that we know should happen in every organization, too often they are set aside because there is too much to do right now.  His formula is that every company should have written: 

1. Strategic Objective
2. General Operating Principles
3. Working Procedures

Again the emphasis is on written.  It can be fairly simple to get yourself through the first two, but the last one is time consuming at the beginning.  Yet it is worth the time to fine tune your daily procedures and  record those.  It helps all employees when there is a reference document, and it also helps staff who are developing these procedures to examine the status quo and see if there is something that would work better.

What I especially liked was his acknowledgment that no procedures are ever set in stone.  Be sure to tweak the processes whenever necessary and to update the recorded document.  This is what I remind my clients and audiences when we have set up basic daily processes for managing time, paper, email, and space.  Everything looks are flows well, but new information and new circumstances will arise.  Every system can and should be tweaked to keep it current. 

Your first step is to get organized.  Decide what time management strategies will work best for you and put those in place.  The next step is maintaining that organized system.  Keep tweaking the procedures and you will always be up-to-date and productive.