Your Systems Are Broken: Here’s How to Scale Faster by Fixing One Thing at a Time Insights From Ross Harkness

Have you spent countless hours creating SOPs, checklists, and automations, only to find yourself still working 10+ hours a day, wondering why your business isn’t growing? The problem is that those documents aren’t a real system. A true system is a machine for producing results, and most entrepreneurs are missing the one component that makes it work.

At TRIAD, we see this every day. Businesses get trapped in a cycle of creating documents that nobody looks at. Our approach is different. We don’t just provide services; we help you build and manage the interconnected systems—from your all-in-one digital marketing funnel to your back-end AI-driven automations—that create predictable growth and give you your time back.

Inspired by a masterclass on business systems, let’s explore why your current systems don’t work and the simple, powerful framework to fix them.

The 4 Components of a System That Actually Scales

First, stop thinking about systems as documents and start thinking of them as machines. A system has three basic components: inputs (the raw materials, like leads), processes (the assembly line, like your sales process), and outputs (the finished product, like a new customer).

But even if you have these three defined, you’re missing the most critical part, the fourth component that turns a stale process into a scalable machine: the feedback loop. Without a feedback loop, you’re stuck fixing problems based on feelings instead of facts. With it, you gain the data and insights needed to improve over time. Feedback can be quantitative (metrics and scorecards) or qualitative (asking your team “What’s not working?” and your clients “Where did you feel lost?”).

Your Business is a Pipe (and It’s Probably Blocked)

Imagine your entire business is a pipe. At the beginning of the pipe is a tap—this is your marketing. The tap controls how much water (leads) enters the system. As the water flows through, it turns into clients (sales) and comes out the other end as profit (operations and finance).

Right now, your pipe probably has several blockages. Maybe your sales process is leaky, your client onboarding is confusing, or your cash flow is inconsistent. The common mistake is trying to fix all these blockages at once. When you spread your time and effort so thin, nothing actually gets fixed.

Go Slow to Go Fast: The Power of the Constraint

The smart move is to identify and fix the one main blockage—the single constraint that is limiting the flow of water the most. This requires data, which is why tracking metrics via scorecards is so important.

It may feel like you’re moving slower by focusing on only one thing, but by going all-in on that one constraint, you make real, tangible progress. As the speaker wisely notes, “By going slow, you actually move fast.”

Once you’ve fixed the main blockage, more water flows through the entire pipe. Your profit increases. Only then do you move on to the next biggest blockage.

The Simple Cycle for Scaling Your Business

Scaling your business becomes a simple, repeatable cycle:

1. Map Your Systems: Identify the core functions (marketing, sales, ops, finance) and the tasks within them.
2. Track the Data: Use scorecards and feedback to find your single biggest bottleneck.
3. Fix the Bottleneck: Go all-in on fixing that one constraint until the water flows smoothly through it.
4. Turn Up Marketing: Once the pipe is clearer, you can safely open the marketing tap to drive more leads into the now-stronger system.
5. Repeat: Find the next bottleneck and start the cycle again.

There is zero point in turning up your marketing if your systems can’t handle the volume. All you’re doing is pouring water into a broken pipe, wasting leads, and potentially ruining your reputation. First, clear the pipe. Then, turn up the tap.

Let TRIAD Help Unblock Your Business

Building a business that can scale while you work less requires a disciplined, systems-first approach. It’s about making progress through iteration: build the system, run it, watch it break, fix it, and then scale it.

At TRIAD, we are experts at building and fixing these systems. Whether your blockage is in your marketing tap or your operational pipeline, we provide the strategic support and execution to clear the path. We build the systems that let you scale faster, by working smarter.

Ready to find and fix the one thing holding your business back? Let’s connect.

Disclaimer:
This was inspired by the insights shared in a guide to business systems by Ross Harkness Business is hard until you build systems like this. The original content and ideas belong to Ishan Sharma. You can watch the full video here.

We do not claim ownership of the original video or its content. This blog post is a derivative, educational commentary created for informational purposes only, in alignment with fair use guidelines. For complete and original insights, please refer directly to the original source.