Understanding Value When Autonomy Breaks Free From Automatic Systems

 I recently finished listening to an audio recording of Michael Gerber’s The E Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It. It is a beautiful story of Sarah who owns a pie bakery and learns how to grow her business with systems and automations. As the story progress, Sarah masters the art of working on her business not in it. As a new business owner I can relate to Sarah’s challenges and found many things I could relate to her story as I am in the journey of my entrepreneur infancy stage. I take strong caution to book’s claim that 80% of American small businesses fail within 5 years. That is why mandate myself reading business books.

A couple of words that have stuck in my mind after reading this book are automatic and autonomy. I see a lot of value in having both automatic and autonomy skillsets in helping small business owners succeed in business.

According to Merriam-Webster, automatic is defined as done spontaneously or unconsciously. I think it is important to have automatic email messaging for your customers that can provide value by delivering the right email with the right message at the right time. I also believe automatic backups for your bookkeeping provides you peace of mind for the tax seasons.

Merriam-Webster defines autonomy as the quality or state of being independent, free, and self-directing. I think it is important for business owners to make sound decisions that sometimes occur on the fly that need support and alignment with why you are in business. Simon Sinek has mastered the art of why. Haven’t seen him just google his famous Ted Talk.

A few summers ago my then 4th grade son completed a school sponsored reading challenge and was awarded with a free admission to Six Flags Fiesta Texas which is San Antonio’s premier amusement park. The cool part was that he did not know the prize when he tracked his reading log and he definitely scored points against his jealous younger brother who also had the same opportunity to participate but didn’t follow through. So there we were, my oldest son and I both passing through the gates in the hot June Texas sun when the park opened. I had to teach a class that afternoon so we went early to ride the rides with the least amount of people. Minutes after the park opened we found ourselves sitting down to our chosen bumper cars all alone without any strangers except the teenage worker. The teenager locked the gate behind us and proceeded to check both of our seatbelts to see if they were fastened. My son and I were anxiously anticipating being able to have the entire floor to ram into ourselves. This was boy heaven if you know what I mean. On a side note I have 4 boys and it seems like my wife and I are raising mountain goats. I will never forget what the worker did next. He proceeded to go back to his microphone and read his “automated script” unconsciously. My son and I giggled out loud thinking that it was ridiculous that he couldn’t have just said “Ok guys, be safe and have fun.” Nope he read his whole safety spiel in the high volume speakers and was still not ready for us to drive. After reading the script he walked around to each empty bumper car and put his hands on each seat belt and tugged it up to make sure every driverless car had their seatbelts buckled. If only I had the video of my son’s confused look to me asking me why is he doing this act?

Maybe the worker had done the seatbelt check 1 million times that summer and thought nothing of doing it one more time. I’m sure that the executives at the amusement park never came across a flow chart example that read “If there are only two people in the bumper cars and all the rest are empty on both sides then respond with xyz.” After we got the green light from the worker, my son and I proceeded to endless smiles as we tore it up on the spacious we had all to ourselves and enjoyed the pleasure of the ride.” It is a father-son experience I will hope I will never forget. The best two minutes any father son could have asked for.

It is certainly great to have automations and systems in place for structure and onboarding. But at what point do we need to have autonomy break free from being too automatic? Do you have automations in your business that work great for the large audiences but need to have different approaches when working with one on one situations?