Business Operations: Overview, Template & Examples

We understand that when you do the critical client flow, all you're really doing is identifying there's going to be a handful of systems in each of these departments to get the critical client flow. The critical client flow just answers the question, where do you start? What are the first 10 to 15 systems? Then we move to minimum viable systems, which is what's the minimum number of systems in each department to deliver the bulk of the results that department is required to deliver. Now, that's covered in the scale session we've got in a couple of weeks and we'll go into that in more detail and I'll give you this template and that'll make it a lot easier for you to move yourself forward. Once you get through that, then you build this culture of continually systemizing and adding to those systems. All you're looking at is something that's a little bit further down the line, and that's why it looks like it's overwhelming or there's lots there. It's just because we've been doing it longer. So once you get on the track though, you'll chip away at this. But I'll show you and we can zoom in and we can go through and have a look at each one. But the structure is really what I want you to get here because I'll show you how. I then use that structure throughout all of my tools. When I think of my G Suite, I use G Suite, you've got some sort of office suite somewhere where you have your emails and your calendars and your Drive and all those sorts of things. You'll have your own tool. So with this structure, when I'm using something like Google Drive, I set up all of my folders based on and here's a marketing folder, here's a sales folder, here's an operations folder, so that when my team members come on board, I start to train them to think in terms of departments and then roles. So that way if ever they're looking for something, they go, I'm in the marketing team and I'm trying to find this file. I've got a bit of a shot at trying to find it. If I was in Google Drive, I can go, I'm going to start off by looking in the marketing folder, or if I'm in Asana, our project management, and I say, ah, I'm in marketing, I probably should start off looking inside the marketing project. More than that, I dig in further and then I think in terms of this triggered daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually in the bsa, I call this to Da Woomka, which is a bit of a weird name because you go through Triggered T, D W M, K A so triggered daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually. Now underneath those. So triggered, Triggered just means when it happens daily means it usually happens once a day, weekly, obviously. And each of these cadences here tells you how frequently these tasks happen. The ones down at the bottom and the top one, I just have the purpose here that's just to explain. Well, the marketing department's purpose is to generate leads that helps me keep focused. And the AI is just something I've recently added where I'm when I find tools that can work inside that particular department to speed certain things up that we're already doing, I just list them in here so I can either use them or come back to them later. So again, I now use this structure and I move this over into my project management platform. So I have a section for marketing and then I have inside that project triggered daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual. And I'll jump in and I'll show you that. But now that kind of translates over to my project management. And then I have a very clear whose responsibility is it? When is it due? And a link to my how to document that shows exactly how it's done. These are just essential, recurring, repeatable tasks that happen in my business. There are tasks that fall outside of this and I'll show you how to handle that in Asana that are once off tasks. They're things where, oh, we just got to do that thing. It doesn't happen on a regular basis. Generally there's not heavy documentation or a great brief or a system developed because it's a once off thing. So you need a way to capture and then organize those and make sure that they don't disappear. That's the whole idea of project management. We move out of email because we want to make sure it's accountable and transparent and everybody's on the same page. And if ever I wanted to jump in, I could see where something was up to and I can nudge it in Asana to go, how are we going with this or that? And then we do use Slack, but the only reason we use Slack really is for instant communication if I want to follow something up that's more urgent. So I'll say, here's this Asana task. Can you just, I've just added a comment there. Can you jump over to Asana and respond to it? So it's. I use it for that instant messaging, checking in those things. But we don't really try to assign out much work inside slack. All of it really happens where we can in Asana. I'm probably the worst at it though. On our team I'll often go to a team member and I'll say, oh can you do this thing? And then hopefully they go oh, that should be an asana. Or here's the link to the Asana Tech. I've tried to train the team to do that because I sometimes am not the best at doing that, but I have a level of expectation that the team does it that way. So that way everybody works better that way. If Jill wants to know, hey, how's that thing going over in sales? She can start off by jumping over into the sales department looking for that task and getting the update rather than going to the team member and then wasting the team members time if she could have solved it herself. So this is one of the benefits of having everything transparent and open and people being able to logically try and find where things are. You want to train your staff to be able to help themselves first before they go off and start asking questions. At least have a crack at it. And then if they don't do it, then they can ask and escalate to a supervisor or team leader or whatever position you want to call it. But give them a shot to answer it themselves first. That saves everybody's time. Otherwise, if you got two or three people looking for something now you're wasting two or three people's time when you could have just had the one person first look.

Just a heads up, that clip was taken from a session in our Systems Champion Certification Program, which which is the world's first and only program for systems champions to help you build a systems culture and develop an AI first approach and roll it out inside your organization. To find out more, head over to systemology.com systemschamp and I'll see you in there.