Since the start of my work in the area of operations and management for small business, I focused on the title of General Manager, Integrator, Director of Operations, or Chief Operating Officer as the 2nd in Command...the number two. We recently fine-tuned our ideal client down to business owners with 1-10 employees. During our assessment of businesses in that size, We determined that the 2nd in command in these small businesses is referred to most of the time as the "Office Manager".

As we thought more about it, we determined that the Office Manager role is way under appreciated. They are often required to do frontline work as well as managerial work and then on certain days, strategic work. They need to understand all aspects of the businesses operations. One day completing payroll the next day dealing wit a client issue. They are typically the ones that would be executing our 6-practices of Structured Operations: Process Development, SOP Documentation, Role Descriptions, Analytics, Training Plans, and Continuous Improvement.

I promise going forward that we'll give proper care and recognition to the brave, hard working Office Managers.

Since I decided to better understand how to successfully run a business, I've been confused with how "Leadership" and "Operations" relate. My intention in conversation is to make sure that I use words correctly.

At Aligned Operations, we define operations as "the coordination and execution of work". The best definition of leadership that I've found is "Leadership is the ability of an individual or a group of individuals to influence and guide followers or other members of an organization". By definition, I believe that leadership is part of sound operations. 

•To learn more about Point North Networks, click here

•To learn more about Aligned Applications, click here

In my last article I illustrated the connection between Structured Operations and culture. I’d like to further focus on the effects of culture on the member experience. I use the term member to include employees, team members, or other individuals within any organization.

As we seek to develop a culture of clarity, confidence and trust, we should understand the impact it has on people within our organization. If we’re considering employees, how might their experiences differ between a culture of clarity, confidence and trust vs. that of confusion, doubt and drama?

I personally have had the experience of starting jobs in a couple of companies where the managers were not sure about what I should be doing on the first day or what my role in the organization really was.  This is a culture of “we’ll figure it out as we go.” This certainly didn’t instill trust in me. Without proper direction and reinforcement, I didn’t have confidence in my performance. Luckily, I like a challenge and was able to get things figured out.  I wonder though how elevated my success there could have been if I had been provided with a clear schedule, instructions for the work I was responsible for, and clear expectations of the anticipated results.

The primary role of the manager in any organization is to be focused on the experiences of each of the members of their team. Do they each understand the purpose and vision of the organization, do they have clarity in their work assignments, and can they count on their manager to be there when they need to get involved in a new and difficult situation?

At the end of the day, when a team member in your organization gets home, sits down for dinner and is asked by her husband “How was your day?” is the response most often going to be, “Great! I love my job.” Or will she dive into the details of the drama and uncertainty she faced that day. I wonder how excited their kids will be to get into the workforce after hearing tales of a manager that doesn’t seem to know what’s going on, doesn’t listen to repeated complaints or always seems disappointed in her work.

For a couple of quick videos on how you can build trust in your organization, click below:

How to handle a toxic culture - Simon Sinek

How Does Culture And Climate Fit With Your Work? - Simon Sinek

In a previous article I made the case for making recordings of remote and live meetings. But this is only part of my entire solution for getting the most out of meetings. The second part of my solution is Microsoft’s OneNote app.

In his book “Getting Things Done”, David Allen stresses the importance of having a place to store informative and effective records. This isn’t a to-do list, but a place to keep information that you’ll need to reference later. I took his advice and tried a few different solutions and OneNote has been working the best for me, by far. I recommend installing the most recent version, as the navigation is much better, and it allows for better page sorting.

I use OneNote in both my professional and personal life. I set up two different notebooks with two different Microsoft accounts. One is my 365 account for work and the other is a personal OneNote account. Once both Notebooks are setup it’s easy to jump back and forth.

For this article, I’ll focus on how I organize my work Notebook. The cool thing about OneNote is that it functions… well… like a notebook. It has pages that get organized into sections and there is also an option to further organize sections into groups. A few samples of my sections are “Personal Development,” “Roundtable Notes,” and “To Process.” Samples of Section Groups are “Client Meetings” and “Non-Client Meetings.” I then have a section in “Client Meetings” for each of my clients. Each meeting for each client has its own page. Before a meeting I add the following text fields to a new page:

Agenda – A list of objectives for the meeting.

Notes – Notes and action Items which arise from discussions.

Sidebar – These are notes which may not be relevant to the meeting; they are often brainstorm ideas I would like to record which are not strictly related to the agenda.

As you may remember from the “Record Your Meetings” article, I’ll often go back and listen to meeting recordings to fill in some blanks or verify my notes. The two solutions work wonderfully together

A good record keeping solution wouldn’t be worth using if you couldn’t easily find the information recorded in it. The organization I created in OneNote makes it easy to look up notes. Additionally, the search capability is well optimized and allows you to search within sections, or across your entire notebook.

I regularly access the information on my desktop computer, my tablet, and my phone. Most recently I took the plunge to try out the pen functions with my tablet, a Microsoft Surface. The writing experience is much better than I anticipated—the engineers really nailed the feel of a pen on the screen. For most of my work I type with the keyboard, but I could see the appeal and utility of using the drawing tools for virtual “white-boarding.”

If you’d like to know more about David Allen’s time management philosophies and methodologies, click here.

If you’d like to know more about how I use OneNote to keep my notes organized, drop me an email and I’ll set up a remote session with you: kelly@alignedoperations.com

In just about any stage of life, “what do you do?” is a persistent and relevant question.

Since I sold my IT firm and started my new business nine years ago, I’ve sometimes lacked the clarity to succinctly answer this question. However, this changed for me a couple of months ago. Now I answer confidently “I develop Structured Operations solutions that align leaders, managers and their teams.”

So, what are Structured Operations and why should anyone care about them? Every great visionary has clarity in the way that they see the future. They have an imagination that excites them and those who share their vision, purpose and beliefs. There is a definite psychology for visionaries which allows them to create these inspiring pictures of the future.

The Visionary excels at providing clarity in the realm of “why” and “what.” Vision in an organization is the picture of how the organization will execute its purpose in the future. Purpose can be thought of as the sum impact of the organization’s efforts to act on its guiding beliefs. A guiding belief is the “cause” or an expansion of the current state of a product, service or organization. The visionary believes that the future world will be better, grander and will operate more effectively. Visionaries are idealists who help to propel organizations toward an ultimate, unifying goal.

At Aligned Operations, we believe that every person deserves the opportunity to do fulfilling work in an organization the provides clarity confidence and trust (our guiding belief). We do this by creating Structured Operations solutions and training (our mission) that aligns leaders, managers and their teams (the impact).

The area where the Visionary often gets tripped up is formulating the “how.” The creative mentality of the Visionary isn’t tuned to focusing on the nuts and bolts of getting from now to the future state of their vision. In an organization, the path to the future is the daily execution of effort or work. At Aligned Operations, we define “operations” as the coordination and execution of work. “Structured Operations” is defined as the requisite coordination and execution of work to realize the vision of the organization.

The next several articles will show you how to implement Structured Operations to go from a vision based on a purpose, to the manifestation of that vision. For this article, we’ll start with culture.

Structured Operations and Culture

The term “culture” comes up often in the discussion of operations and management. I think most small business owners don’t really understand what it means to their organizations. I didn’t really put too much thought into it myself until I read this statement from Elliot Jacques:

The most far reaching, dramatic and rapid changes in behavior of individuals in an organization can be achieved by changes in the organization – both in structure and in managerial leadership practices.

I then realized that my control over the environment my employees work in was a priority in building a successful organization. I also realized that what was at stake was not just the success of my organization but the well-being of the people we invited to work in our organization. As business owners, we have a direct impact on the well-being of the people we employ.

I came across an article from Tom Foster that breaks down culture this way:

Company culture is that unwritten set of rules that governs our behavior in the work that we do together. It is unwritten in contrast to our written set of rules, policies, procedures. Culture is often more powerful than any policy we may write or attempt to officially enforce. Often, culture works against our stated policy in operations management.

What is the source of culture, how is it created? These are the four steps in the Culture Cycle:

1.  Develop our beliefs, bias, our experiences…our story. Culture is the story we carry into our experience that provides the lens, the frame, the tint, the brightness or darkness of that story.

2.  The culture drives team behavior. We can’t see each other’s stories, but we can see their behavior.

3.  Behavior, driven by culture, is constantly tested against the reality of consequences. For better or worse, behaviors driven by culture are proven valid, or not.

4.  Behaviors that survive, for better or worse, are institutionalized in our rituals and customs. This starts with the way a team member sees the organization.

I sum culture up this way:

“The people in our organizations will behave based on the tested beliefs formed through the rituals and customs that the leaders dictate or allow.”

So, it’s up to the leaders to dictate the rituals and customs or allow them to be created on their own through laissez-faire attention. Most often the rituals and customs which are “allowed” to be created don’t serve the organization’s Vision and Purpose.

Clarity Confidence and Trust

Clarity in an organization means that everyone is free of confusion. There are clear expectations of how work needs to be completed, to what quantity in a time period, and to what quality. Clarity assures those completing the work have reduced stress.

Confidence in an organization means that everyone is free of doubt. Doubt results in poor decision making because no decision is made. Organizational leaders in a requisite organization empower their teams to make confident decisions.

Trust is the magical ingredient in an organization. It is the two-way street where leaders trust the execution of their teams and teams trust their leaders to support them along the way in operations management.

For more information on Elliot Jacques click here.

For more information on Tom Foster click here.

 

I typically don’t get this granular in recommending tactical applications, but I feel this one is a game changer: record your meetings.

I recently started using the Meetings app in the ZoHo One suite of applications. It’s not the most feature-rich tool for managing and executing web meetings or seminars, but it has suited me well. I had been using the Meetings app for training clients in on a software system we use to align leaders, managers and their teams (Trellis Tools). One of the attendees couldn’t make it, so I offered to try the recording feature.

First of all, it is super easy to initiate a recording. Once you get going with the meeting you don’t even realize it’s recording (Which might be a good and bad thing, for those who are a bit too free with their words). I do get permission from anyone on the call to record our sessions--I also offer a link to the recording if they would like to review it afterward as well.

After recording our meetings a couple of times, I ran into a situation where one of the attendees had recommended a book and I forgot to make a note. I remembered that I had the recording, so I simply reviewed our conversation and was able to get the information I needed.

I then mentioned this to my college-aged son, and he responded with a story about a professor who recommends that students don’t take notes in his class. Instead, he implores them, just pay attention. Then he recommends that after class students should write down everything they remember. The professor also offers an outline of his lecture on the class portal to confirm the contents of their notes. The point being that we don’t pay close attention to the substance of the material while we’re taking notes. So now I record meetings and only take notes for action items or very important points. For in-person meetings, I start the app on my laptop and use the built-in mic to record--the audio quality has proven to be surprisingly good.

Most of the other remote session solutions (Zoom, Teams, WebEx) include a recording feature and I highly recommend you start the practice of recording your meetings and remote sessions. I recently discovered that Teams will even transcribe the audio into a searchable text.

This strategy did produce one unforeseen challenge; some of the requested attendees have been opting to skip meetings entirely, in favor of just listening to the recording later. I feel the lower level of “live” participation reduces the overall value of the session, so it is important to emphasize that while recordings are a good reference, they should not be a wholesale replacement for attending meetings.

For more information regarding ZoHo Meetings click here.

To learn more about Trellis Tools click here.