RR#111 - How to systematize anything

Every role I've had in the past 15 years, in corporate, as a consultant, and a coach, has had one thing in common: I was creating systems to increase revenue.

That's included fixing sales teams, designing sales processes, automating the process of warming up cold leads, productizing fulfillment of services to increase capacity, and more.

While the specific systems have varied, the process of creating them has not. In this newsletter, I'll explain how you can systematize anything and apply this approach to build a system that reduces your time spent on content creation and social media.

Systems 101

All systems boil down to a few simple things: a combination of inputs that go through a series of processes to create an output.

That output serves as a feedback loop to let you know how the inputs and processes are performing.

To change the output, you need to change either the input or the processes.

So, if your sales team isn't generating the numbers you'd like, you can change inputs like lead sources, hire new salespeople, or increase activity. Or you can change processes like sales playbooks, scripts, or tools.

If sales go up, you're making the right adjustments. If not, look elsewhere.

That's the feedback loop.

But systems are everywhere.

For example, when our kids were never ready for school, we changed the inputs by setting their alarm earlier. We changed the process by having them prepare the night before and use a morning checklist.

Whether they made it out the door on time was our feedback.

Change the inputs and process, change the output. The feedback reveals if it's what you want.

Systematizing Content

If you’re building online, there’s a good chance you’re investing a fair amount of time on content creation and social media.

And if you’re anything like me, you don’t want to be glued to social media all day long. After all, we’ve got businesses to run.

So, how do you apply systems thinking to do that?

Treat it like a math problem: clarify known variables to solve for the unknowns.

Define Ouputs

Start by defining everything you need the system to produce to be successful.

For example, when we rebuilt our content system, the outputs included:

• 50 LinkedIn & Facebook posts

• 90 posts for X (Twitter)

• 4 threads for X (Twitter)

• 4 YouTube videos

• 4 YouTube thumbnails, titles, descriptions, tags

• 4 YouTube video edits and approvals

• 30 short videos to cross-post to various platforms

• 4 email newsletters

• 30-40 comments a day on other people’s LinkedIn content

• 15-20 comments a day on other people’s X (Twitter) content

• 20-30 replies per day on my own content

• 10-20 new messages per day to people who view my profile on LinkedIn

• 5-10 new messages per day to new connections on LinkedIn

• 30-40 messages per day keeping social media direct messages at “zero inbox”

I also needed this content to produce a certain level of demand and new opportunities for the business.

Your outputs will differ. Write down all the deliverables for your system.

Clarify Inputs

The next thing you want to do is clarify the known inputs for your system.

For example, when I aimed to reduce my time on content creation and social media from 12 hours a week to just 2, that was the non-negotiable input for our system. But I was open to adding inputs, like money, people, tools, and tech.

Consider your limitations, which may include:

• Time you’re willing to spend.

• Money you’re willing to invest.

• Activities you’re unwilling to delegate.

• Content you’re unwilling to outsource.

This should give you a clear understanding of what your system needs to produce and what you're willing to put in.

With these known variables, you're ready to start optimizing your system by solving for the unknown variables.

 

Solve For The Unknown Variables

Now the real fun begins.

Now you want to determine what other inputs and processes are needed to turn your inputs into the desired outputs.

This can be more of an art than a science, but using a 3-part filter helps:

• What can I eliminate?

• What can I automate?

• What can I delegate?

 

Eliminate

Revisit your outputs. Are they all truly necessary?

While revamping my content system, we eliminated quite a bit of Twitter activity without impacting the business at all.

I’d encourage you to challenge your assumptions about what’s really necessary because we often fall into a "sunk cost fallacy" mindset in situations like these.

We've been doing certain things for so long that we assume they're necessary.

But as Einstein said, "You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it."

Challenge your assumptions and be ruthless about eliminating anything non-essential.

 

Automate

For the remaining outputs, what can you automate with new inputs or processes?

Some things to consider for a content system:

• Can tech / tooling replace manual reviews?

• Can AI accelerate or replace manual work?

• Can a new hire, like a VA or ghostwriter?

• Can tools like Zapier automate repetitive tasks?

• Can work you’ve already done be repurposed?

Here are a few ways we automated processes in our content system rebuild:

• 50 LinkedIn posts became: 20 new LinkedIn posts & 30 recycled LinkedIn posts

• 4 YouTube thumbnails, titles, descriptions, tags could largely be done with VidIQ

• Communicating video edits and feedback in Frame.io replaced a lot of manual back-and-forth on Slack

• AI replaced a lot of manual ideation, reviews, proofreading, and editing.

This is where you can get really creative.

For example, one non-tech approach to “automating” content was recording YouTube videos immediately after coaching calls while questions from clients were fresh on my mind.

If you’re not sure what to automate, put the outputs you want into the AI tool of your choice and ask for some ideas.

 

Delegate

What can you delegate from the remaining outputs? This may require some additional inputs, like money or people. I’ve found 2-week time audits to be a great way to identify opportunities to get started with delegation.

Some considerations for a content system:

• Could a freelance video editor to take video content off your hands?

• Could a ghostwriter take some content production off your hands, partially or entirely?

• Could a VA execute your repetitive tasks with an SOP?

When it came to my content system, here are a few creative ways I was able to delegate my workload:

• Partnering with a ghostwriter to 10-80-10 my content: I wrote the first 10% of content, my ghostwriter wrote the middle 80%, and I edited the final 10%

• Equipping my team with AI-generated prompts to engage on my behalf

• Having my salesperson use our playbook to handle my inbox

This is where the constraints on your inputs at the beginning of this exercise are useful as boundaries.

Feedback Loop

The best thing about systems is that they’re dynamic. They’re always evolving, from hypothesis to execution to evaluation to iterations.

If you don’t like the output, you use that feedback to make changes.

Perhaps you need to adjust a process, change an input, try a different tool, or reevaluate your outputs entirely.

But you can iterate your way to success.

In systems thinking, there are no bad outputs, only feedback to inform changes to get the results you really want.

I hope this helps you harness systems thinking to streamline anything, including content creation and social media to achieve your goals.