Hey, hey, hey, welcome to Leveraging Operations and Leadership. I'm your host, Tanya D. Harrison, and today we are going to be pulling back the curtain on something that drains most small teams faster than anything else. And we're going to be talking about the hidden costs of working without systems. Small teams don't fail because they're not working hard. That's usually not the case. They fail because they're trying to scale chaos. And today I want to break down the operational pain points that quietly drain time, money, energy, and reputation and talk about how to fix them. This is something that I have you've probably heard me talk about before because I'm really passionate about it. I find that a lot of people talk about manual processes, and yes, we do want to automate manual processes, and we do want to incorporate AI whenever we can in order to increase efficiency and actually expedite certain things. So that's not what I'm I'm talking about, right? What I'm talking about just systems in general, structure in general. We're definitely going to talk about automation and AI because that's something that I think is really important. But the first thing is getting the chaos under control. That is step one. So when we're talking about the different costs, these operational pain points, the first one is the cost of rework. So I want to start here because this is the profit leak that most leaders massively underestimate. Rework shows up as fixing avoidable mistakes or clarifying unclear instructions and redoing tasks that weren't executed correctly the first time. Every time you go in and you touch something again, that is a rework, right? So if I have to do something over and over again to get it right, it's a rework. IDC, which is one of the major global research firms, they found that teams lose 20 to 30 percent of their productivity every week due to poor systems and inefficient processes. That's not an exaggeration. For small teams, it's the equivalent of losing an entire team member's workload week after week. And then on top of that, PMI or Project Management Institute reports that rework can swallow up to 40% of a team's labor cost when clarity and process are missing. So that is huge. And like I said, for small teams where every dollar counts and every hour matters, that is devastating. And it's something that we definitely want to make sure that we take a look at. As you're going through this process, as you're listening to this podcast, think about some of the things that you are reworking that's causing you to go over it and touch it over and over again. And then at the end, when I give you some quick tips to implement, you can start there. The second thing is miss deadlines and brand reputation. And this is more than just an internal thing. Because if you are missing deadlines, you say that you're gonna have something done by a certain date and you're not having it done, that is going to wreak havoc as well. Because this is where leaders often underestimate the damage. Your brand is way more than your logo, your brand is your consistency, your ability to deliver what you said you were going to going to deliver and to deliver it on time. So those service level agreements, meeting those deadlines, they are extremely important. PwC Customer Experience Study found that 73% of customers say reliability, not pricing, not speed, not features, but reliability is the number one factor in whether they continue working with the service provider or not. That's huge. So they're not talking about all the stuff, they're basically saying they want to be able to depend on you. If you say you're going to do ABC by December 31st, that's what they want. So when deadlines slip because work lives in email threads and random documents and Slack or someone's memory, the real consequence isn't the delay, it's the signal or the message that you're sending out that you can't fully count on us. In a small team, one missed deadline can cascade into three more because you don't have backup staff or layers of safety nets. You're operating with a lean crew. Every delay ripples. So this is where brand trust quietly erodes, and most leaders don't recognize the pattern until referrals dry up or repeat customers start to fade. You definitely want to make sure that you are paying attention to this area, and now the hardest cost is burnout. Is burnout. Gallup found that 76% of employees experience burnout, at least sometimes. And the top causes are not overworked, they're unclear expectations, unmanageable workloads, and constant pressure created by inconsistent systems. Let's be real, burnout isn't a personal issue at all, it's an operational issue. And for small teams, the consequences hit harder than for larger organizations. Another stat for you, according to guidance from the Small Business Administration and CHURN, losing one employee in a team of fewer than 10 can wipe out 17 to 25 percent of your team capacity overnight. That's huge. In reality, the operational impact is often even higher because the remaining team members absorb the stress. Burnout doesn't happen because people are unwilling to work. That's not the cause. Small teams are full of hard workers. Burnout happens because work is unclear, is unpredictable, and often duplicated. All things that are preventable. This is stuff that you could fix, but only when the systems are clear. Small teams feel the costs of poor systems faster than big companies because you don't have the redundancy. You don't have the extra staff, you don't have multiple layers of review. You are working with lean resources, high expectations, immediate client demands, and little room for error. So every operational inefficiency hits harder. You feel it more. But small teams don't need more people, they need better systems because better systems create capacity without payroll creep. So the first thing you want to do, you want to get rid of the chaos. So the good news is, right, small teams can fix operational chaos quickly because you're agile. See, that's the great thing about small teams. It's not all bad. And here's where you want to start. The first thing you want to do is create clarity before creating systems. Document your critical workflows that drive results. This may look like your onboarding process, fulfillment process, communication, that is huge. Um, billing, of course, and project delivery. How does that occur? Think about what your critical workflows are, and you want to make sure that you are documenting them first. No matter who's doing the onboarding, who's doing the fulfillment, whatever it is, it's consistent and it's the same. The second thing to do is to choose one source of truth. Your team shouldn't chase tasks all over the place. They shouldn't have to go to email and group chats and Google Docs. I recommend committing to a project management platform and make that the home base. Make that the place where you are assigning the task and following up with people, and they are putting their notes if it's done or not done, etc. Make that the home base. If you prefer not to have a project management platform, which I highly recommend that you have, you still need to identify one place so people are not confused and going all over the place. You're losing time. Number three, standardize recurring work. Anything you do more than twice deserves a checklist or a template, and next week we'll talk about automation, but for right now, I'm just talking about standardizing the recurring work. Checklists are extremely helpful. Having templates, you're doing the same type of proposals, you should have a template for proposals. There should be templates for onboarding. Everybody should get the same experience, and that is an experience of excellence. Every person that you service should get that. That should be your standard. The fourth thing is build a weekly operating rhythm. And this is a simple rhythm that will transform your team. Whether it's and you decide what it looks like: weekly planning, daily touch points, you could do an end-of-week wrap-up every Friday by 3 p.m., you do an end-of-week wrap-up or a monthly KPI review. I would do something at least weekly so that everyone is getting together, they're meeting, you're discussing, and then that way, if you have something that needs to change based on the plan, based off of some statistics or metrics that you've reviewed, you can implement that. But it should be something that is not random, something that occurs every single week. Everybody knows that this is happening, this is what we need to bring to the table. These are the things that we're going to discuss because you're going to have an agenda. The fifth thing is set expectations with real guardrails. Systems are not about micromanagement, they're about clarity, being able to provide clear instruction. Make sure every team member knows what success looks like before they start. If you want somebody to hit a target or hit a goal, you have to show them where it is. And this is what you're doing when you provide that level of clarity. They need to understand what success looked like. So if you were listening to this and you're thinking this is exactly what's happening inside my business, you are not alone. Most small businesses aren't broken. Their systems are missing, they're just lacking systems. And when you fix the structure, you fix the stress. And then you're also going to protect your team's bandwidth, your bandwidth, your brand's consistency, and your business's profitability. Because working without systems doesn't just slow you down, it costs you money. And I'm talking money in time, dollars, trust, and team morale. So that is where you want to get started. Do not, like I said, we're going to talk about you know systems and automations and things like that, but you do not want to automate chaos, you do not want to bring technology in when you haven't defined what things should look like. Get that level of clarity first, clear up some of the chaos, and that is it. Thank you for joining me for another episode of Leveraging Operations in Leadership. And if you found this helpful, please share it with another leader. If you have anything that you would like to hear, anything that you'd like us to discuss, you can send me an email and info at signalpartners.com. 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