The 3P's of Operational Excellence

If your team can’t execute and create consistent results without you always needing to be involved.

Then your biggest bottleneck to growing your business is Operational Friction.

Until you solve this issue…

You will continue to feel like you’re drowning in work, constantly pushing a boulder up a hill, waiting for that moment your business picks up true momentum.

The solution to Operational Friction is building better business systems that create Operational Excellence.

In this newsletter, I want to share with you the systems and framework that has helped my clients achieve Operational Excellence.

Clients who no longer miss out on their precious family time because their teams can self-manage while still growing the business even in their absence.

This is possible for you too with the right systems in place.

I just created a training video where I shared the Operational Excellence Model and a quick tour of the Business OS designed to implement it. You can grab it for free here:

Back to the Operational Excellence framework.

Operational Excellence = Team Efficiency + Team Effectiveness

• Efficiency creates Momentum and reduces Costs = higher Profit margins

• Effectiveness creates consistent Results and increases team Motivation = more Revenue and Raving Customers

So you want both, efficiency and effectiveness.

To create both, you need to build systems for the 3P’s of Operational Excellence Model:

• People

• Planning

• Process

These 3 systems come together to create your Business OS (Business Operating System)

Here’s the thing: every business has a Business OS.

Doesn’t matter if you’re a new business, a growing one, or a scaled-up one, you have a Business OS.

The question is: does your Business OS create team efficiency and effectiveness or does it just create more noise, more pressure, and more overwhelm for you and your team?

So I want to share with you what’s needed to create a true Business OS.

Let’s dive into the first one.

People

Your People System has 3 components:

• Role Clarity

• Communication

• Accountability

Role Clarity

Role Clarity is about clearly defining everyone’s roles, responsibilities, and what key results they’re expected to achieve.

If it’s not clear to you and everyone on your team, who is responsible for what and who owns what, then you can’t hold your team accountable to excellence.

Role Clarity means having an Accountability Chart and Role Scorecards that clearly outline who is responsible for what and who’s holding who accountable.

If you are the one holding everyone accountable, then you’re going to end up being the bottleneck for your team.

Communication

Communication is as it sounds, how your team communicates, both internally and externally.

Internal communication is how they communicate with each other, like in meetings, assigning tasks, and solving problems.

External communication is how they communicate with your clients, partners, and vendors.

The more people you have on your team, the more communication points there are, which means the noisier things will get and the easier it is for:

• Poor handoffs

• Dropped balls

• Missed deadlines

• Uncommunicated expectations

• People working on low-priority tasks

• People thinking everything is urgent and important

Having an effective communication system includes how you do meetings, and how you keep everyone focused on the right priorities.

It’s also how you resolve issues and make decisions faster and better.

Accountability

Accountability is how your team holds each other accountable for getting results and supports each other when there are issues and blockers.

This looks like setting up a system for effective 1:1’s and performance check-ins. And I’m not talking about just any 1:1’s, I mean effectively holding people accountable to their Role Scorecards and achieving what’s expected of them.

And most importantly: Accountability creates transparency and visibility all the way up to you.

The more people you have on your team, the further you’re going to be from what’s going on in your business and team.

A Business OS allows you to have full visibility on everything without needing to be involved with everyone on your team, all the time.

If you want to see what a well-designed Business OS looks like, check out this free training and demo.

Plan

Your Planning System has 3 components:

• North Star

• OKRs

• Data

North Star

Your North Star is your Vision, Mission, Values, and Goals.

It also includes what your Offers are and your ICP’s (Ideal Client Profiles).

These all need to be clear and need to be communicated in a way everyone on your team knows what they are.

They also need to live somewhere that’s easy to access so that your team is always clear on what the business’s North Star is.

OKRs

OKRs are a framework used to clarify and manage your Quarterly Objectives.

This is your team’s strategy and game plan each quarter that’s designed to move you closer to hitting your yearly goals and achieving your vision.

OKRs are the top priorities of your team and need to be organized in a way that everyone is held accountable for accomplishing them each quarter.

They need to be systematized from company-level OKRs to team-level OKRs. And then it needs to be clear how each person is contributing to them.

Data

Your Data system is about managing your KPIs:

• What’s being tracked

• Where they’re being tracked

• How they’re being organized

Your Data needs to be organized in a way that allows your team to have visibility and to make data-driven decisions in their roles.

Process

Your Process System has 3 components:

• Value Process Maps

• Documentation

• Knowledge Base

Value Process Maps

Value Process Maps, or Business Process Maps, visually outline step-by-step, exactly how your business operates and creates value.

This includes how your business gets leads, converts them into customers and clients, gets clients results, and then retains or ascends them to keep working with your business.

Visually mapping everything out allows you to assign clear ownership to each key function of the processes. And it allows you to see what can be automated or systematized better.

Documentation

Once you’ve created your Value Process Maps, you then want to create SOPs, checklists, or documentation for each key function and decision point.

This doesn’t mean having hundreds of SOPs for everything in your business. Just for the critical steps in your Value Process Maps.

Knowledge Base

Then you want to organize all the SOPs into a Knowledge Base where it’s easy for your team to find.

This creates predictability in execution and it also eliminates risk.

If any member of your team gets injured or leaves today, you’ll be able to fill that gap quickly or someone else on your team is able to jump in and keep your business operating without interruption.

Conclusion

So there it is, the 3P’s of Operational Excellence at a very very high level.

• People

• Plan

• Process

When working with me, we’ll dive into each component more deeply and build systems for each, then train the team to adopt the systems.

If you want a quick tour of the Business OS I created to help you implement the 3P’s of Operational Excellence in your business…

So that you can supercharge your team and get you from “drowning in work” to an extra free day per week, check out my free training here.

That’s it for now, see you in the next letter!

Your Pal,

Colin