The 10 rules for scaleup operations
As you take your company to new heights, your operations need to be designed for scalability.
But scaling is about efficient and effective growth. The secret to that? Having a well-oiled operational machine that can expand as your company does.
In this newsletter, we'll delve into the 10 rules to creating operations that support scalable growth.
Craft a Collaborative Culture
A culture of clarity, openness, and effectiveness sets the foundation for better collaboration. Virtual dinner parties are fun, but fixing these three aspects should be your first priority.
Culture is about how you work together.
Prioritize operations over activities.
The way you communicate (or not) makes or breaks your growth.
Default to Transparency
Cultivate trust by making operations transparent to your team. Everyone should have access to information, performance metrics, and decisions.
Share information with everyone through a company hub.
Collaborate on transparent projects visible to everyone.
Make decisions together so everyone will be on board from day 1.
Focus on Outcomes, Not Activities
Performance should be measured based on outcomes, not activities or hours. While time tracking can spot production bottlenecks, it shouldn't be used for performance measuring.
Reorganize the way you measure success by focusing on outcomes.
Track how you progress on projects but only for optimization purposes.
Ditch hourly metrics, everyone is better off without them.
Set Goals Before Tasks
Every project should start with a goal. From there, reverse engineer the tasks needed to achieve that goal. If a task doesn't contribute to your goal, it's not worth doing.
Ask every time during planning: what is our goal? What are we trying to achieve?
Plan tasks backward from the goals.
Milestones serve as breakthroughs toward goals.
Measure, Analyze, Optimize
You can't optimize what you don't measure. Keep track of how you work, communicate, collaborate, and allocate resources to better analyze and optimize your operations.
Know your numbers so you can grow your numbers.
If you measure how you use resources and how to progress, you don’t need to make decisions on resource allocations.
Include people analytics and team performance indicators in your measurement so you can track how you work together.
Create Structure for Speed
Structure your operations with processes, templates, automation, and policies to enhance efficiency and speed.
If you do something twice, it needs a template.
If you do something five times, it needs a policy.
If you do something all the time, it needs a framework.
Write First, Talk Later
Documentation is crucial to keeping meetings productive. Agendas, goals, and context should be planned before a meeting, while conclusions should be written down afterward.
Agenda, planning, and ideation documents should come naturally before any synched collaboration.
Notes, action plans, and to-do lists should come naturally after any synched collaboration.
All documents should be hosted on a company hub so you can revisit them as they make work seamless.
Keep Operations Modular and Minimalistic
Rigid structures inhibit scalability. Instead, aim for modularity, embrace external solutions, and keep your operations flexible and minimalistic.
Management should be fractional in almost all cases during a scale-up period.
Expert help is almost always better if it is external, as it contributes to speed, efficiency, and flexibility.
Simple and efficient is always better than robust and complex, even if the simple approach is not perfect.
Invest in Mentorship
Align your team and maintain focus through mentorship. By helping others find their sweet spots and supporting them, you'll naturally foster growth.
People want to grow. They just need support through mentorship to do so, so helping them is the no1 job for any leader.
Everyone is unique in something, but no one is amazing in everything. Help people find their unicorns.
1:1 mentorship is the best way to support during scale-up. Invest in team-level programs later.
Automate for Productivity
Flexibility and automation are key to seamless productivity. The more your operations can auto-run in the background, the better your team can choose when, where, and how they work.
If you need to think about how you work, efficiency drops. Make processes seamless.
Cut time & gain speed through automation and workflows. Find tools to support this type of collaboration.
Allow your team to stay flexible and pick their location, time, and preferences on how they want to work.
Scaling operations doesn't need to be a daunting task. By integrating these principles, your operations will become a powerful engine driving your company's growth.
Peter
