3 Ways Systems Can Help Drive Your Business to Greatness

There are many things that separate successful businesses from their ultimately unsuccessful counterparts. There’s an element of luck, sure, but there’s a lot to be said for the different mindsets and approaches behind different businesses.
Successful business will, typically, have a bias towards taking action now and improving down the line. Successful businesses will tend to treat failure as a temporary setback and a learning experience, and so on.
If you believe some productivity and success gurus, however, one major component in how likely your business is to be successful, is how effectively you apply systems to your business model.
What is a system? Ultimately a system is a habit, or routine, that gets acted out on a regular basis, and which become more or less automatic. A good system can have a tremendously positive impact on your professional life.
Here are a few ways that systems can drive your business to greatness.
Systems can help you to prevent disasters from developing
One of the key benefits of systems, is that they are recurring, and can be used to effectively ward off a potential disaster or error, instead of simply compensating for it and trying to resolve it once it has happened.
For example, leaving wet floor cones up after the floor has been mopped is a system. Trying to placate your injured employee with handouts and incentives to prevent him from suing you, is on-the-spot damage control.
In the realm of emergency-avoidance, a good WHS management system can help to address and defuse many of the potential causes of an on-the-job crisis. It’s worth keeping in mind that on-the-job disasters are usually the result of a range of cumulative factors coming together, not just a sudden, unpredictable incident. For that reason, systems can be effective in significantly reducing the odds of these disasters occurring.
Systems are resilient in a way that targets, alone, are not
The business world is driven, to a large extent, by KPIs and other targets. Industriously-minded workers are encouraged, even ordered, to come up with goals and waypoints to track their progress over the coming months and years.
In fact, the target-driven streak in professional life across the board has even come to impact scientists at Universities, who now routinely need to publish papers at a certain rate to keep their jobs.
Targets and goals have their place, certainly, but they’re fragile. Changing circumstances can thwart goals and render targets irrelevant. Systems, however, can be adapted easily, in light of changing circumstances.
Systems allow you to enjoy “small wins” on a daily basis
Goals and targets allow you to enjoy the satisfaction of victory, occasionally. Systems, on the other hand, allow you to appreciate “small wins” on a daily, or almost-daily basis.
These small victories — in the case of systems, acting out the routine reliably — have a positive psychological impact; they reinforce your sense of purpose, achievement, and capability, and enhance your confidence in the process.
The more of these “small wins” you enjoy, the more vital energetic you’re likely to be in your business dealings, generally.