Systems development gets simpler when you see through fresh eyes—every new hire or delegated task can unlock your next big breakthrough.
When a new person joins your team.
(Or someone takes on a task for the first time)
It’s your golden window—
to see your systems through fresh eyes.
But most of us miss it.
We may assume confusion means carelessness.
When often, it’s our process that isn’t clear.
This week, a new hire joined my team.
Within a day, she’d done things differently than I expected.
Instead of correcting her, I got curious.
Why did she do it that way?
What didn’t make sense?
A short conversation and a few small tweaks later—
Our onboarding felt calmer, cleaner, faster.
This opportunity only happens when new people take on tasks.
Why?
- Because your experienced team relies on memory
- New people rely on your systems.
If you lean in instead of rushing past,
You don’t just fix a document.
You build clarity, trust, and a culture of continuous improvement.
Because when your people feel empowered to say, “I don’t get it!” – you get to make things better!
In this week’s episode, I share exactly how to turn those moments into your next systems breakthrough and build a culture of continuous improvement.
🎧 Listen to the full story.
KEY TAKEAWAYS: How Fresh Eyes Fuel Better Systems Development
- Onboarding is a Systems Improvement Goldmine: Every new employee sees your business from a fresh point of view. They easily spot the unclear instructions and process flaws your team has learned to work around and stopped noticing.
- Seek Immediate Feedback: Ask detailed questions in the moment, instead of weeks later. This uncovers the real causes of confusion, bottlenecks, or inefficiencies in your systems.
- Adopt a Non-Judgmental Mindset: Frame mistakes and misunderstandings as system flaws, not people problems. In doing so, this builds trust, encourages openness, and turns new hires into your co-designers. From the start, you are priming them for continual improvement and efficiency.
- Document and Simplify: As you get feedback, refine your instructions step by step. Remove ambiguity until every action is crystal clear for anyone who joins you or takes on new tasks, in the future.
BEST MOMENTS: Insights that Spark Systems Development Breakthroughs
01:30 – 💬 “ The impression people get of you as a business in their first few days and weeks can change the whole landscape about how they approach the work with you; how successful they are.”
05:27 – 💬 “ Take full responsibility for them not understanding exactly what you meant in the onboarding instructions.”
11:50 – 💬 “ If nothing else comes out of this, it means that I have now got this person into a mindset of systems improvement, of being part of the solution, not the problem.”
12:46 – 💬 “ Ask them the deep questions, ask them the feelings they had, figure out what went wrong, why they didn’t do it exactly the way you thought.”
TIMESTAMPED OVERVIEW
00:00 Why onboarding is your best opportunity to improve systems
01:23 How first impressions shape employee engagement and retention
02:11 Using a new hire’s feedback to uncover hidden flaws
04:05 Turning onboarding mistakes into systems improvements
05:29 The power of empathy and responsibility in system design
08:16 Creating a culture of open feedback and continuous refinement
10:19 How clarity drives confidence, productivity, and loyalty
Episode Transcript
Dr Steve Day: Hiring a new employee is one of the biggest opportunities for you to nail the systems improvement aspects of your business. Today I want to talk about the journey I\'m going on right now with a brand new member of staff that started this week. And about the things I\'ve been doing with this person to help me improve my systems from the inside. This is an opportunity that only comes along every time you hire somebody new.
So if you\'re about to hire somebody new, you\'ve just hired somebody new, or you\'re thinking about doing it sometime in the future. Well, whether you\'re a business owner, an operations manager, or an HR manager, then please listen to this episode. Because not doing this, you miss out on such an opportunity that you can\'t get from your existing team or from yourself.
So this week I\'ve been onboarding a new member of staff. And I want to share the experience of doing that and the opportunity that I have right now. And only now available to me to do some major systems improvement on my onboarding experience for my new staff. This is absolutely essential work in my eyes. Because the impression people get of you as a business in their first few days and weeks can change the whole landscape about how they approach the work with you. It can change how successful they are, how much energy and effort they put into actually becoming the best they can possibly be. And you getting the value you desperately want from them as an employee.
If you mess this up, you may at worst lose the person. They may just think, I\'m not interested in working for you. But if you get this right, it can be the absolute stepping stone to having some brilliant person stick with you for the long term. All of that effort you put in, that time, that energy, that money you\'ve invested into hiring what you hope is going to be the right person. Doing this right, doing this onboarding training orientation part right gives you the best opportunity of that person sticking around for the long term.
This is important stuff, but you only get the opportunity now and again. And if you\'re a micro business owner like me, this doesn\'t happen every week. It\'s not like we\'re hiring people continually, replacing people that are leaving, hiring new people, growing the team, or maybe you are, and that\'s great. Then you can do this more often than not.
But if you\'re a micro business owner like me, if you\'re a solopreneur and you\'re going to hire your first person now, this is the moment that you need to be thinking about how can I improve this experience. Let me talk you through exactly how I\'ve been doing this.
This is simple stuff, but stuff that missed you can\'t go back to later. People\'s memories are short and they\'ll forget the detail of what they did even the next day. My experience this week is asking somebody the next day what they did the day before with their onboarding, what their feelings were about it, how they approached it, and why they did the thing they did. Sometimes that\'s even becoming a bit gray.
So leaving this weeks or months and then going back and trying to say, hey, how was it when you were onboarding with me, was it good, can we improve anything? You\'re just not going to get the response you need. This needs to be done in the moment. It needs to be done in detail and in person. You need to be a person, not necessarily the business owner doing this. But the person who\'s leading the onboarding experience.
So whether you have an HR manager, an operations manager, or if you\'re the business owner doing the bulk of this stuff, then yeah, it\'s going to be you. You need to jump in and have these deep conversations with your new staff to make sure that you are actually learning the secrets that you can\'t get elsewhere.
Let me explain what this is all about. Really simply, my new staff member started and a part of this process is we send them an email. In their email it\'s an instruction to basically log into their new email account we\'ve set up for them. And then click on some links to set up various things like our task management app, Asana, our screen recording app, and our instant messaging app.
It gets them ready so they\'ve got access to all the accounts they\'ve got. So when they arrive on day one, they\'ve actually got access to the things we need them to so they can crack on. There are also instructions for them jumping into their task manager, going to their task matrix, which we set up for them. That\'s how we delegate work in our business and instruct them to crack on with the tasks that are assigned to them.
Then basically that\'s going to talk them through the whole onboarding experience. That\'s that sort of 10,000-foot view on what’s actually happening, or that’s what I intended to happen anyway. But going through this experience with this new member of staff and actually sitting down with them on day two and saying great, why did you do that? Because they\'d not done it exactly the way I thought they would.
They\'d actually clicked something wrong. They\'d moved it to the wrong column on the task matrix. They hadn\'t done what I expected. Instead of saying anything about chastising them or asking why have you not followed the instructions correctly, I take this responsibility entirely on me.
This is a brand new person. They have no experience in working with me. I have no expectations about how they\'re going to be able to interpret my instructions. I want to start this relationship off in a way that I hope will build trust from day one. That is for me, as the business owner or if you\'re the operations manager, whatever, to take full responsibility for them not understanding exactly what I meant in the onboarding instructions.
This needs to be so crystal clear that you are 100 percent sure that anyone can follow it. So I started and said, what was the reason you moved it to there? But I made it very clear that this was my opportunity to improve my onboarding systems and I need them to help me see what we can improve.
I need them to help me see what didn\'t make sense. I need them to help me see why was this confusing, why did you do it this way and not that way. The first answer I got from them was more apologetic. And like, oh, you know, I\'m sorry, I know I didn\'t, it was clear, nothing you need to do. I said no, actually, I don\'t think it is. I want to go back and let\'s look at that email. So we opened the email up that I sent to her or sent by the HR person. I opened the email up, we read it and I said, okay, this is the part we\'re talking about now. Yeah, it\'s a bit vague, isn\'t it? Because it just said crack on with some tasks.
I said how can we make that more specific to make it clear about exactly what I want you to do. Because the order that she\'d done stuff in was to her sort of just logical. But actually it wasn\'t the order that I needed her to do it in to understand the process properly.
So we just refined the wording. We said do this step one, step two, step three. I made it really clear this is exactly what I need you to do. We then literally pretended to be her again and go back into a task management app and said, right, now imagine you\'ve read that, what would you do next.
She said, I\'ll go here and do this. Oh, okay, wait, that\'s not what I intended you to do either. This process took about an hour to go through.
But in doing this, I suddenly started seeing how people were interpreting our onboarding instructions and our orientation training. Why were they doing it in the order they were doing it? Why was it not getting the result that I wanted to, and why were there any mistakes in this? Because this needs to be crystal clear.
I asked her as well, really importantly, what did you feel when you did this? Were you overwhelmed, confused, or stressed? Were you thinking, what the hell\'s going on? Those are what I want to know. I want to know what that person\'s feeling. In this case, she said, I was a little bit overwhelmed. I sort of started and then just took a moment out. Then I came back to it later because it was a bit too much. I could understand why when I actually went through it with her and saw all this stuff; it wasn\'t really explained very clearly.
But by spending an hour or so going through and systematically looking at each step in this process, we\'ve now created something far more robust. And just to be clear, this is an onboarding process that has been refined multiple times before. It\'s been something we\'ve used for about eight years. We’ve shared it with our clients and received feedback from them. But rarely do I take this opportunity. Or rarely have I personally sat down with the person who\'s going through it one on one. And actually asked them specifically why they did what they did in a very non-judgmental way.
I did it in a very open and honest, reflective manner because I feel it\'s my system that\'s at fault. I made that super clear from day one. And explained how important this opportunity is for me to learn how we can improve this system.
This process has now dramatically improved, I believe, the overall onboarding experience that all my staff will get. Because this is what I teach my clients, they will also share in this updated, improved experience of onboarding. These are simple changes—this is not rocket science—but you can only get this when you have this opportunity.
That said, this isn\'t just about onboarding people. It\'s not just about when someone new comes into the business. This is about every time you delegate a new process or a new system for somebody else to take over. It\'s an amazing opportunity we get to actually dive into how this can be improved.
How can this system be made simpler, better, and clearer and how can it be more foolproof? How can it be made more efficient so the person becomes more productive by removing procrastination? Because it\'s much clearer about what they need to do, when they need to do it, and how to escalate issues. These barriers often get in people\'s way—just doing the work and being valuable members of your team.
If we can get rid of all that and improve as the business develops, then things just work more smoothly. We get more done as a business. The opportunity to do that is when we hand over tasks, systems, processes, or onboarding, for example, to a new person who\'s never seen it before. That\'s the opportunity, and it\'s missed if you don\'t do it at the moment you\'re doing it. So this is something you need to plan for.
I literally planned this week with very little booked in so I’d have the time to think about this onboarding process, knowing it needed improvement. I\'d seen a couple of hiccups in the past and wanted to look at how to nail this once and for all. So I took time out. This is something I want to get nailed because it\'s important. I want people to start in this business and stick around. I want them to feel like, yes, this is where I want to be. Because it\'s super systemized and organized.
I also want to know that if someone can’t follow this. Because I\'m so confident it\'s crystal clear—if they can\'t follow it, then I’ll just get rid of them straight away. I want that absolute certainty. At the moment, that wasn’t the case. It was very clear from looking at it and going through that lots of things were confusing.
This is because we\'ve adapted the way we do stuff. We\'ve adapted the platforms we use for our training and for how we onboard people. There are so many parts that have changed over time that things became disjointed. They weren\'t joined back up again properly as we adapted certain parts of the system or process.
This opportunity has allowed me to make sure everything now flows nicely together. Going forward, it will hopefully improve things. I hope that as a result of this, this person will now be more engaged. They can see that I\'m genuinely interested in improving systems, that I don\'t want to blame people for getting things wrong, and that I want to get feedback. I want them to be part of the process of improving what we\'re doing and fixing stuff.
If nothing else comes out of this, it means that I have now got this person into a mindset of systems improvement—of being part of the solution, not the problem. They now understand it\'s okay to say things don\'t work. You\'re not going to get shouted at for complaining that things are confusing. Quite the opposite. You\'re going to get thanked.
I\'m going to be the one saying thank you so much for taking the time to let me know this wasn’t super simple to follow because you’ve just solved a problem we weren’t even aware of, and that is priceless as business owners.
So my call-out to you today, if you like, in this episode, is to take the opportunity—whether you\'re hiring somebody or not—but the next time you onboard someone new or hand over a process to somebody new, take that opportunity. Put genuine blocks of time aside to sit down with that person, whether it’s yourself, an operations manager, or an HR manager, and actually listen to them.
Ask them the deep questions. Ask about the feelings they had. Figure out what went wrong and why they didn’t do it exactly the way you thought they would. Then figure out how you can make some subtle changes to make it clearer and easier for people to follow.
This is the simple stuff that people don’t do often enough, in my opinion, that makes the biggest difference to how people feel when they work with you. It affects how well things get done, reduces the amount of time spent on training, increases people’s productivity, and reduces procrastination. Because the clearer things are, the calmer people feel, the more they\'ll trust the process and just get on with it and be incredible.
That’s it for today. Please do hit subscribe to make sure you don’t miss out on future episodes where I talk about how to make your team, your business, and your life more efficient and fun, and to live with more presence, purpose, and freedom.
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ABOUT THE HOST
Steve moved to Sweden in 2015 and transformed how he ran his businesses—switching to a fully remote model. A former NHS doctor, with a background in computing and property investing, he now helps overwhelmed business owners systemise and outsource effectively. Through his courses and coaching, Steve teaches how to automate operations and work with affordable virtual assistants, freeing up time and increasing profits. He runs his UK-based businesses remotely with support from a team of UK and Filipino VAs. He is also passionate about helping others build scalable, stress-free companies using smart systems and virtual support.
For more articles related to systems improvement and our onboarding process, you may also like:
Advanced Staff Onboarding: How to Set Up New Hires for Success—Without Burning You Out