The Challenges of Implementing a New System in Your Business
It’s important to ensure the platform you use to capture your systems and processes is fit for purpose.
Let's talk about the things you might encounter when implementing a new system in your business. This time of year is often a period of reflection—thinking about what hasn’t been working well in your business and considering changes you might want to make. This process can sometimes lead to moments of frustration or doubt, wondering if it’s worth changing. Or perhaps you’re busy and want to get on with the work. It’s often challenging to find time to work on your business rather than in it.
Let me share a story about my journey over the past 12 months in finding a system for my social media. Like many of you, I have a love-hate relationship with social media. By the end of last year, I had dropped the ball on it. I’d done fantastic training with The Digital Picnic and was eager in October to get organised with my social media posts. I’d have a good week where I scheduled all my posts, but something would come up, and I’d fall behind. The result was a few weeks of scrambling to post, and the quality wasn’t great.
I’ve been using Later to schedule my social media posts, but my biggest issue was lacking strong systems and processes for generating and creating content. I tried various tools—Notion, Google Spreadsheets, Google Docs, even old-fashioned pen and paper—but none of them were sustainable, and I wasn’t getting the results I wanted. My content was suboptimal, and I was often scrambling.
Then, over the Christmas break, my family got COVID, I completely let go of social media for the rest of 2023. I decided to deal with it in 2024. I realised that I was feeling like a slave to social media because I didn’t have good systems in place. I took the break to reflect on what I needed to change. After a few weeks of thought, I set up folders and lists on Trello and Canva, and so far, it’s working well.
What became clear to me is that having systems and processes in place is crucial for success—whether it’s consistently posting on social media or efficiently managing your interior design studio.
However, it’s equally important that the platform you use to capture these systems is fit for purpose. It took a lot of trial and error to find the right system for me, especially with social media. I realised that the system needed to be easy to use, functional, consistent, and flexible.
Sometimes, learning a new system isn’t straightforward. But if you’re clear on your purpose and goals, it becomes easier to choose the right platform and stick with it. For social media, I was clear on what I needed the platform to achieve, and that clarity helped me make better decisions.
One of my goals was to set up a system that didn’t require constant tweaking. I learned this lesson the hard way when I used to build client schedules in Excel. I’d tweak every project’s schedule, thinking I was making improvements, but in reality, I was wasting valuable time. Time is money, and I was losing both by constantly redesigning.
Now, with More Time to Design, building client schedules is almost plug-and-play, which has made my workflow so much more efficient. The key is that the platform aligns with my studio’s goals. As I’m implementing my new social media system, I’m a bit slower than I’d like to be since I’m still learning, but I’m already seeing the benefits, which makes it easier to stay committed.
To recap, here are some things to consider when implementing a new system in your business:
Make sure the platform aligns with your purpose and goals.
Before choosing a platform, clearly define what you want from it.
Be kind to yourself and allocate time to learn the new system—it’s just like learning any new skill.
Here is how MTTD can help with your systems and processes.
Listen to our podcast The Design Dialogues Podcast where we talk each week about how to run a successful interior design business
Learn with our The Process courses which take you set by step through what to do to run a successful interior design project.
Book a Health Check to have Beth personally look over your business systems and processes.
Use MTTD, the tool designed by Beth Bieske (interior designer + general manager) to run your interior design studio