Systems that support, not hinder what people do, and allow them to do it better. Most of us don’t think of systems that way. Instead we feel they hinder the “real” us. But, as Seth Godin says here, “If process makes you nervous, it’s probably because it threatens your reliance on intuition. Get over it. The best processes leverage your intuition and give it room to thrive.”

I’ll take it a step further and say it takes creativity to define good systems. A good system is one that accomplishs what the company needs at the same time supporting each person in doing what she or he is uniquely qualified to do. A good system takes time and testing (as well as intuition) to develop. It needs to be tweaked and adjusted. And when the people change (a good system will make it easy for people to move up and move on and replace them) the system needs to change as well.

Takeaways:

• If you’re a manager, developing systems is your job.