Busy is why you have a system.

When it gets busy, the instinct is to drop the plan and do whatever seems right, right now. The line is out the door and the phone won't stop, so you skip a step and cut a corner. It feels like hustle, and nobody means any harm by it. But the rush is the day the system was built for, and the moment you ditch it, you stop selling what you sell.

Get fast inside the system

Going fast is fun. I get it. The goal is getting fast at doing it the right way, and that means drilling the system on a slow day until the right way is also the quick way. A shortcut is just a new process nobody trained for.

Now, you might be thinking: what if the system is the problem? Sometimes it is, and the people doing the work usually spot it first. So fix it together, after the rush. If everybody fixes it on their own mid-shift, you don't have a system anymore. You have a dozen of them.

Here's the strange part: you want it to be busy. It's why you market, hire and stay open. For a restaurant it's Saturday night. For a tax office it's April. Imagine if every day was your Saturday. Nobody would complain. Build the system for that day.

This week, ask your team: what gets skipped when we're slammed? Write down every answer. Pick the one the customer would notice most and drill it on a slow day, at rush speed, until it's automatic. Save changes to the system for your next team meeting, never in the middle of a rush.

When your business gets slammed, does your team work the system or work around it? Take the free Leadership Reputation Snapshot: twelve questions, a few minutes, and one thing to work on this week.

Steven Cochran is a leadership specialist and founder of Impression MGMT, working with business owners and companies across the Northshore and Greater New Orleans area of Louisiana through one-on-one coaching, custom workshops, and the twice-monthly Leadership In Business peer group.