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’ve recently been working with several businesses that are struggling with owner partnerships. In my last article, I described the Visionary/Integrator roles and relationships within an organization. In this article, we’ll examine how the concepts and methodologies of structured operations can minimize “partnership pitfalls.” In far too many organizations, partnerships which begin with optimism and good faith are strained by tension, conflict and mistrust, as the organization grows, evolves and changes. Wouldn’t it be great to work in a partnership that is built on clarity, confidence and trust?

One result of implementing structured operation is the establishment of defined, clear roles throughout the organization. These roles and expectations will include the partners. Roles are based on the inventory of work (tasks) which have been identified in each department of the organization, along with benchmarks—indicators that tasks are being executed in a way that serves the overall goals of the organization. As I mentioned in the last article, the Visionary/Integrator in the executive team are often partners in the business and they will most likely be playing additional roles throughout the organization. It is vital that all of these expectations are clear at the creation of the partnership.

In many cases, the heart of the conflict within partnerships is compensation. Often the value of the work a partner is doing is in question, unclear, or otherwise difficult to quantify. This uncertainty can be addressed from the beginning by using the framework of the role descriptions to value each of the partners’ contributions. Setting benchmarks at the task level can support the assignment of the value of each partner’s individual contributions.

To keep an eye on performance, we recommend that a partner’s performance is evaluated no differently than the other employees within the organization. This includes following the support hierarchy. So, what about the Visionary who sits at the top of the organization? Who will complete their evaluation? In a formal corporation, the board provides oversight of the CEO, so they would be tasked with the evaluation of the Visionary’s performance. If the organization is less formal, the advisory board could complete this oversight, or an outside, impartial third party can be hired. This is a service that Aligned Operations offers.

Do you have clarity, confidence and trust in your partnerships? If your answer is no, consider implementing structured operations as a framework to determine each of the roles, set fair, market-driven compensation structures and guide the oversight of each partners’ performance in the future.

Every organization has limited resources (some more so than others). These include: cash, staff, knowledge/skill, time, space, technology, etc. So, what is the best use of those limited resource to move your organization forward.

I believe the three primary elements of an operations are structure, iteration, and oversight. My simple explanation of iteration is “to do the best with what you have to expand what you… then repeat”.

So, what is “what you have”. I regularly suggest to business owners to “take an inventory” of your organization, so you know “what you have”…what are your assets.

Once you know “what you have “, you can then decide how to “do the best with them”…this is strategic planning. The process of deciding includes evaluating the inventory you just took and determine what’s the most limiting factor to expand the organization. This limiting factor is often referred to as a bottleneck or constraint.

This bottleneck or constraint could be a bad process, an untrained person, a poor policy, etc. We often use data analytics to assist us in determining the most limiting factors. When in doubt, I ask “what is the task that everyone hates to do”. Often, that’s the bottleneck.

At the end of the day decision making in an organization needs to maximize the impact of the limited resources at each stage (iteration) of growth. I’ve heard the analogy of knowing which levers to pull and when.

If you’d like to learn more about bottlenecks and The Theory of Constraints, I’d recommend you read The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. I also found a few good YouTube videos on the topic: https://youtu.be/5HStf-XbsSo

Most businesses find that the calendar year-end is a good time to complete Annual Strategic Planning (ASP), Why should an organization complete an ASP? 

I’d throw out 3 questions for you to consider:

1.  Does your business serve you? (Are you fulfilled by the work? Does your compensation support you?)

2.  Are your clients/customers served? (Are they satisfied with your product/service? Are they your best evangelists?)

3.  Is your business stable? (Are the people in the organization fulfilled? Can you scale without breaking?)

If you answer no to any of these questions, you have 3 options:

1.  Accept and tolerate the drama that goes with it.

2.  Quit because you recognize the current limitations.

3.  Evolve through strategic planning.

There is no right or wrong answer, You just need to align with what you want your future to be.