Cambridge Business Association
Work the System
Book

Work the System

The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less

Sam Carpenter
Greenleaf Book Group, 2009
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Recommendation

Author and project engineer Sam Carpenter owns Centratel, a now-profitable telephone-answering company that spent 15 years barely surviving. When Carpenter was working 80-hour weeks struggling to make payroll, he was a basket case – nervous, tense and depressed. He got by on a lot of coffee and very little sleep. Then, he had a eureka moment. He suddenly grasped that many different systems directed his life and work. He saw that if he could control and perfect these systems, he could solve many complex issues. This realization changed his life. Now, Carpenter enjoys himself and works only a couple of hours weekly. He has time for everything he wants to do, and his business hums along. The refreshing thing about this book is Carpenter’s personal perspective as a business owner who figured things out for himself. It’s not just another volume reflecting the theoretical ideas of a management consultant or professor. Carpenter explains his systems-management approach so well that you can use his accessible methods to improve your operations and your personal life. getAbstract recommends this logical book to small-business owners and all those who want to improve the way they run their lives. The caveat: You have to get to work.

Summary

The Systems Approach

Do you put in long hours but feel you achieve nothing? When you leave the office for a day, does your firm fall apart? Do hundreds of messages demanding your attention await your return? If so, you have become a “slave” to your work, a clear sign that you are mismanaging your systems, the “threads of the fabric of your life.” It is time to learn that your life, at work and at home, is a “logical collection of linear systems that you can control.” You can immediately simplify and improve all that you do by uncovering, analyzing and optimizing the practices that you use to run your life and your business. Many gurus recommend taking a holistic approach to self-improvement, but the systems-analysis method is based on the opposite tactic. Break down your individual systems. Uncover their subsystems. Make every process as effective as you can.

To make these changes and achieve great results, adopt a fresh, new perspective based on a single fundamental concept: “Sequential” logical systems are at the heart of everything. One step leads to another, which leads to another. Complex, interdependent subsystems and sub-subsystems form your sequential systems...

About the Author

Sam Carpenter is the president and CEO of Centratel. He founded and oversees Kashmir Family Aid, a nonprofit organization that assists children who survived the 2005 Northern Pakistan and Azad Kashmir earthquake.

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