Stop Building Business Systems You'll Never Actually Use

I have this rack of bale twine in the sheep shed that non-farm friends might find deeply unimpressive, which, I do understand because at first glance, it's just a bunch of dirty, ugly orange string. But in reality, it’s damn near indestructible which comes in SO insanely handy on the farm when everything that’s going to break, is going to do it at a really annoying time. 

Grab some bale twine, handle it and either a) move along or b) make the plan to fix it adequately. Bale twine has fixed, held, hung, and secured more things on this farm than any other tool I own.

Simple, supremely unsexy, yet “udderly” irreplaceable. #dadjoke

Your business systems should work exactly the same way.

It’s become clear that somewhere along the way, we bought into this idea that simple equals lazy. That if your systems aren't colour-coded, automated, optimized, integrated, translated and running inside three different platforms, you're not doing it right. 

Ok, so that was a bit much but we scroll through other people's beautifully curated workflows and quietly assume the successful ones just have it more together than we do.

Nope, they don't. They just stopped overcomplicating it and found what worked for their business.

Two Clients I Cannot Name*

*To protect the identity of the self-victimized.

Client A came to me having spent the better part of a month building what I can only describe as a masterpiece of project management software. Every task was colour-coded, custom fields for every possible variable, automations triggering funnels and other automations. When she walked me through it I was amazed, it was beautiful. I was so excited to learn more about it, so I asked her how it was working for her.

She paused. Then came the slow exhale and the slightly pained laugh that I have come to recognize immediately in this work.

It wasn't working, like at all. Maintaining the system had become so complicated and time consuming that she'd quietly stopped opening it weeks ago while the actual work piled up around her. She groaned, rolled her eyes and we both started laughing because what else do you do.

Then, we scrapped the whole thing. We mapped her process on paper first, identified what she actually needed to track and where the real touchpoints were, and built something simple and streamlined around that. 

She has used it every single week since and is enjoying the slower beautification process.

Client B showed up with a content planning system that would have made a marketing agency proud. Multi-platform scheduling tool, a comprehensive repurposing workflow, colour-coded calendar, and one hell of an analytics tracking spreadsheet. Again, super impressive and presented so nicely. 

But when I asked what their current posting looked like in practice, they got very quiet.

They had posted twice… on one platform… several months ago.

The system wasn't the problem but it most certainly was the vehicle for avoidance. We ruthlessly stripped it back to one platform, one simple weekly plan, and a commitment they could actually keep. They followed it to a T last month without breaking a sweat.

Same root cause in both cases: a system built for a version of the business that didn't exist yet, and probably never needed to.

A System Has One Job

A system, at its core, is simply the way something happens in your business. Full stop, that's it. It doesn't need to be elegant or elaborate. It needs to be used.

Lucky for us, the researchers at Harvard Business Review looked into the relationship between complexity and how systems actually function and what they found won't surprise you one bit. 

As complexity increases, understandability decreases. So, what starts as a solution slowly becomes something nobody can navigate, including the person who built it.

The costs of this evolution don't hit you all at once either. They will accumulate slowly and quietly, until one day you realize you're spending far more energy maintaining your systems than actually running your business.

The goal when building any system is to start as simply as possible and only add complexity where your business actually requires it and not just where it looks impressive or where the software allows it. Where your actual, real-life business needs it.

That means the right system isn't the most advanced one. It's the one that fits how your brain works, how your business runs, and what you can realistically maintain on a regular old Tuesday when everything else is also happening.

When you believe it has to be complicated to count, a few things happen and, big surprise, none of them good. 

You over-build before you're ready and burn out on maintenance before you see results. You spend money on tools solving problems you don't actually have yet. And nothing gets systematized at all because nothing ever feels quite sophisticated enough to bother with.

The businesses that run smoothly aren't running the most complex systems. They're running the most consistent ones.

Ready to Build Something That Actually Sticks?

Simple is not the consolation prize. That's the whole point. And if you're not sure where to start, here's where to go next.

If you're not sure which systems actually need attention in your business, a free Systems Assessment is the place to find out. We look at what's working, what isn't, and where one simple fix would make the biggest difference.

And if quarterly planning is the thing that keeps getting pushed to next week, the Quarterly Planning Video Walkthrough will get you sorted in about an hour — no overhaul required.