The E-Myth: How Ordinary Becomes Extraordinary

Twitter Summary:  A 19-yr old kid from Hawaii learned to speak Spanish thanks to a system that changes something ordinary into something extraordinary.

Principle

In the previous post I wrote about Michael Gerber’s crazy idea that the success of small businesses is founded on creating systems that produce consistent results.  Today I want to write about how a system can take ordinary people and help them do extraordinary things.

Gerber writes in his book The E-Myth that a business which is dependent on highly talented people can feel shackled to those talented individuals.  What is worse, the high quality results of these highly talented individuals are hard to replicate consistently.  In the end, the success of a small business is NOT dependent upon the people it hires, but the consistency with which it delivers a product.  No matter how amazing your product may be, if you are not consistent in your delivery or deliver it the exact same way every single time, your customers will go somewhere else.

So the answer is: develop a system that ensures the consistent release of a high quality product regardless of the skill set of the person creating the product.  McDonald’s is amazing with this.  No matter the skill level of who they put behind the counter, you can have someone with Down Syndrome, they’ll give you the same product with the same range of quality no matter where you are in the world.  Believe me, I’ve had McD’s in Hawaii, Utah, New Mexico, Argentina, and Egypt.  They’re doing a pretty good job at being consistent.

The amazing point Gerber makes is if you build the right kind of system for your small business, you can take an ordinary person who doesn’t possess the inherent necessary skills and that person can create something extraordinary.  Not only can your business deliver a great product, it can deliver great people.

Here are some direct quotes from the book to emphasize Gerber’s point.

It “has less to do with what’s done in a business and more to do with how it’s done.  The commodity isn’t what’s important – the way it’s delivered is.”

“…the true product of a business is not what it sells but how it sells it.  The true product of a business is the business itself.”

“It delivers exactly what we have come to expect of it every single time.”

“…if your model depends on highly skilled people, it’s going to be impossible to replicate.”

“How can I give my customer the results he wants systematically rather than personally?  Put another way: How can I create a business whose results are systems-dependent rather than people dependent?  Systems-dependent rather than expert dependent.”

“It is literally impossible to produce a consistent result in a business that depends on extraordinary people.”

“You will be forced to find a system that leverages your ordinary people to the point where they can produce extraordinary results over and over again.”

Ordinary Becomes Extraordinary and Making Connections

When I was 19 I was called to be a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS).  I was asked to serve in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  But there was a problem, I had grown up in Hawaii speaking something similar to English.  So how is a kid who grew up speaking English in Hawaii going to talk to people in Argentina who speak Castellano Spanish?

The answer: I became part of one of the most amazing language training systems ever created.  Before I went to Argentina I attended a two-month missionary training program that included language training.  I sat in a classroom for 10 hours a day studying scriptures, teaching methodologies, and language.  We’d have breaks for meals and gym time, but the majority of those two months were spent sitting in a classroom cramming my brain and spirit with ideas and experiences.

I remember writing home to my mom, worried that I had gotten too fat because my pants had grown too tight from all the eating and sitting.  I quickly lost that weight once I arrived in Argentina from all the walking we had to do.

While I was at the training center, federal agencies like the FBI had come to see how the LDS church taught and helped people retain difficult foreign languages in such short periods of time.  They wanted to know how the LDS church took ordinary people and achieved extraordinary results with such consistency.

I will never forget my experiences learning Spanish in the training center, struggling to grasp concepts and going through the routines.  But the most memorable part of it all was the breakthrough I had after a few months in Argentina.

I remember clearly the day I  sat with a family and suddenly Spanish no longer felt like a second language.  Ideas and emotions flowed through me and anything I thought of was easily communicated.  Vocabulary and comprehension were no longer obstacles.  Spanish words came to my mind before English.  At that moment, the system had completed its purpose.  It took an ordinary 19-year-old boy from Hawaii and made him extraordinary, teaching me to be fluent in Castellano Spanish.  Some of my roommates even said I would speak in Spanish in my sleep!

So What?

In order to be extraordinary, we ourselves must focus on developing routines and systems.  One of the most important tasks we can focus on is creating daily systems, routines, and habits for ourselves. What daily routines do you have in place to help you achieve extraordinary goals on a regular basis?  What routines or systems do you feel you are missing in your life?

And if you have a small business, I encourage you to do as Gerber says and focus on developing the systems that will allow you to achieve the goals you have in mind.  It’s so easy to get sucked into the daily demands of the job, the work that needs to get done, but setting aside time to develop systems of doing business, how you do the work, will improve the likelihood of a consistent product and success.

Next Weeks Post: The degree to which people follow your system depends on how well you’ve communicated your vision and how much they buy into it.