Clockwork: Design Your Business to Run Itself

by Mike Michalowicz

The optimal 4D Mix is when the business spends 80 percent of its time Doing, 2 percent of the time making Decisions for others, 8 percent of the time Delegating outcomes, and 10 percent of the time being Designed for greater efficiency, better results, and less cost in the process.

on. I call it the Queen Bee Role, or QBR. When this function is at full throttle, the business thrives, and when it is slowed or stopped, the entire business suffers. Every business has a QBR. You must identify and declare your company’s QBR, and as you improve its performance your entire business’s performance will elevate. The QBR is the “thrive factor” for your business, and you must decide what you want it to be. Protect and Serve

Your primary focus is to design the flow of work through your company so that other people and other things can get the work done. Commit to putting your company’s output first and your productivity second. How do you do this? Simple . . . you will find better answers when you ask better questions. Stop asking “How do I get more done?” and start asking, “What are the most important things to get done?” and “Who will get this work done?”

had—their

“First, you assign a task. Then you assign the responsibility. Then you ask them to own the results. Finally, you ask them to own the outcome, which is repeated results over time.”

In my own quest to develop a simple way to make my own business run on automatic, I’ve met several other people who took sabbaticals from their business only to come back to a more successful business than when they left it—including one person who left for two entire years! I’ll share more of those stories with you throughout the book. Hearing their stories made me realize that taking a long vacation was the best test for a streamlined business, and committing to taking that vacation is the best incentive to streamline your business in preparation for that vacation.

to protect

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Now you are mentoring them, not deciding for them.

Simply put: Do less and you achieve more.

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days.

“But then we created a system that we had managed by one person,” he continued. “We repeated it daily. Measured it. And slowly but surely improved it, but never deviated from it. Now we knew exactly what we were doing every day to get customers. We knew the one place to put our ads. We knew what copy to write, what headline to use, and what images to use. Then we would simply measure it. If my metrics showed that it wasn’t working well, we tweaked it—one element at a time—until it did work.”

Ryan’s story is not special. It’s not lightning in a bottle, something only a few people get to experience. It’s also not about luck, or karma, or how hard he worked when he started his company. It’s not about the dues he paid or the people he knows. It’s all down to the systems. Your business may be limping along or stuck in a rut. Maybe it’s drowning in work, or debt, or both. You may be just starting out or ready to give up. Whatever your circumstances, you can have your own version of Ryan’s story.