Book Review: SYSTEMology: Create Time, Reduce Errors and Scale Your Profits With Proven Business Systems

About a month or so ago, David Jenyns reached out to me and asked me to review his new book, SYSTEMology: Create time, reduce errors and scale your profits with proven business systems. With the word system in the title, how could I refuse? I was eager to take a look at what Jenyns put on paper. I was very pleased. Not only did the book align with what I was learning in other books, but it also offered some new approaches.

SYSTEMology is 210 pages long. Jenyns introduced his system in the introduction and outlined it in detail across seven chapters or “stages.”

• Stage One – Define
• Stage Two – Assign
• Stage Three – Extract
• Stage Four – Organise
• Stage Five – Integrate
• Stage Six – Scale
• Stage Seven – Optimize

Using SYSTEMology, you can examine your business systems and break them down into repeatable processes. The overall goal is to identify efficiencies, which results in increased savings in time and effort. You can then get more time back in your life to pursue other initiatives. This is one of the reasons I am so interested in productivity, systems, and improved processes. This begins during the define stage according to Jenyns.

Define

Jenyns included different tools to work through the different stages. These tools proved to be quite beneficial to me and my team. During a recent department retreat, we examined some of the recommended strategies against some of our library processes. I am confident that all departments can use these lessons and tools to improve operations. This includes the classroom. While some aspects may not apply, many do.

Using the Critical Client Flow tool, we looked at a handful of our processes and were able to immediately see areas for improvement. While the Define stage focuses on documenting what is currently happening with your processes, one can see where there are gaps to be addressed. When using the Critical Client Flow tool, you are looking at a process at a high level through the perspective of the client.

Assign

In the Assign stage, you are identifying the key departments in your business and the representatives for those departments. You are also assigning key processes to those departments. Only one person should “own” a process. It is then their responsibility to document the process and make improvements. SYSTEMology contains a couple of worksheet examples that help to identify these departments and improvement assignments.

Extract

I especially liked the recommendations outlined in the Extract stage of the book. The focus is to create step-by-step documentation. Jenyns provided concrete strategies for developing this documentation. It is a process that I will be using with my team as I move forward.

Organize

In the Organize stage, Jenyns highlighted the importance of project management software and systems management software. He discussed recommendations as well as cautions when selecting systems.

Integrate

“Having the systems in place is one thing: getting your team to follow them is another.” Jenyns discussed integration in detail. He suggested an 8-step process to get buy-in from your team to function as a systems-based organization.

Scale

Until this point, Jenyns has coached readers to build out a small set of systems. Now, it is a matter of scaling this methodology until all the systems are identified and documented using the previous stages.

Optimize

As expected in the Optimize stage, you are making tweaks and enhancements to your processes and systems. The key to this is creating a dashboard to measure the effect of the changes. Jenyns ties this dashboard to the Critical Client Flow for your most critical systems. The dashboard should help you identify areas for improvement.

Other Thoughts

Jenyns wrote SYSTEMology in a very conversational tone and shared ample examples to make his point. He also included an appendix with a couple of examples of documented processes. I found this to be quite beneficial as I work to create documentation for our team.

All in all, I enjoyed reading SYSTEMology and took away a number of strategies that I will be weaving into our systems and processes. I have already recommended the book to my boss and a co-worker. I believe organizations at varying levels could benefit from what Jenyns has shared. If you are looking to raise the level of your department, company, or organization, you should read SYSTEMology.

Additional Reading

• Book Review: Free to Focus: A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less
• Book Review: The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
• Book Review: De-Mythify: Finding Freedom in Your Small Business
• Book Review: Clockwork: Design Your Business to Run Itself

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