Business Operating System: Create Routines in Your Business

When Should You Develop a Company Operating System

Is a business operating system the right choice for your company? Now may be the perfect time to implement it if you’re: 

🚩 Working too many hours for too little return
🚩 Feeling overwhelmed with tasks and becoming the bottleneck in your workflow 
🚩 Owning every area of your business (We talk about delegating ownership here!)
🚩 Always putting out fires and feeling behind 
🚩 Struggling to scale your business and become more profitable

If you raise your hand to one (or all!) of these points, you’re likely ready to step into the business operator role and create an efficient business operating system to guide the ship! 🚢

Mini Crash Course: How to Create a Business Operating System

It’s clear your small business may require a company operating system and someone to oversee everything.

But how do you do this from scratch? For starters, you can: 

• • Create processes that are simple and easy for employees to repeat. Initially, you may be the main person who documents your processes. But as you expand your team, you can delegate this responsibility to others! 👐
    
  • Implement business systems that help propel your company towards your long-term goals. It’s easy to confuse processes and systems, but here’s the main distinction: processes are a sequence of steps that lead to a result, whereas systems are a compilation of processes, stakeholders, technology, and other factors to achieve a desirable objective. 🏗️ 
  • Define roles and responsibilities in your business so everyone knows what to do and how to work together. Clarifying even the smallest detail can ensure your team executes with precision. 🎩
  • Maintain structure through your processes, systems, and work culture. The more structure you have in place, the more support your team will have as they navigate daily tasks. Implementing routine maintenance on SOPs, Wikis, and more is also helpful to ensure everything is up-to-date as your company evolves. 

Defining Doer Vs Business Operator (00:20)

Many small business owners are doers at heart and struggle with the business operating side of things. Wondering if you fall in this category? Here are 3 indicators that you may be a doer by default:

👉 Execute tasks: You’re task-oriented and primarily focus on checking work off your to-do list. 

👉 Make detailed decisions: You constantly make micro-decisions, like aligning documents to the left or determining the best time to order materials. 

👉 Not sure what others do every day: You’re aware that everyone plays a vital role, but your plans and to-do list are your main priority. 

Most of your team will likely be doers, which is great for completing projects. 

But if everyone (including you) is a doer, that’s like one hand not knowing what the other is doing. See how this can leave your business disjointed? 

One symptom of a broken business operating system is isolation. You can have a team of smart individuals, but if everyone does a process independently, there’s no room for sharing knowledge or improving your workflows. 

The isolation component can also lead to…

❌ Less delegation

➕ More uncertainty

⌛ More time reminding employees to complete tasks 

Compare this to business operators, who view the company from a wider scope, considering how all the pieces fit together. 🧩

Business operators typically:

✔ Consider a sequence of events and how they connect to technology, stakeholders, and processes.   
✔ Make large-scale decisions, like when to hire new candidates, what services to offer, and reasonable turnaround times.
✔ Extend their focus to the rest of the team. Business operators balance their priorities and the team’s work, finding new ways to make the workflows more efficient. 

In summary, these are the main differences between a business operator and a business owner (doer):

• • Doers own tasks, while business operators own systems. 
  • Doers meet deadlines, while operators meet targets.
  • Doers receive directives, while operators create directives.
  • Doers manage themselves, while business operators manage themselves and others.

Not having a business operator can feel like working at the highest difficulty level. 😫

That’s why it’s well worth stepping into the business operator role or delegating the job to someone on your team. 

Ready to roll up your sleeves and start thinking like a business operator? Begin by establishing routines! 

Create Routines in Your Business (06:52)

Routine-ifying defines what, when, who, how, and why for everything that occurs inside your company. ✏️ 

Here are some common examples of routine-ifying: 

• • Every April, you submit your taxes.
  • Every Monday, Charlie reviews the payroll.
  • Every Tuesday, Mariah checks the links on the website. 

If developing routines seem like a simple concept, that’s because system building should feel simple at its core. 

Capturing and sharing these details in a centralized space allows your team members to understand how the process works. Suddenly, you’re cultivating a work environment with a collective focus. 💡

🙋‍♀️ Isolation and disjointedness can see themselves out! 

Having a visual chart of your routines also allows you to make adjustments that benefit everyone. For instance, you can re-delegate tasks to a more suitable employee or reassess task frequency. 

We’ve applied this approach to over 2,000 small teams, and the results were transformative. But that’s not to say that issues don’t occur when routine-ifying. 

3 Common Pitfalls of Creating Routines in Your Business

🛑 Pitfall #1: Routine Hoarding

Don’t own every routine you create. Doing so can cause bottlenecks in the workflow and add more work to your plate. 

Instead, delegate ownership of routines and areas to your colleagues to share the responsibility. 

💡 Pro tip: Share this video with your team to ensure they learn the approach straight from the source. You can also make it a group effort to complete the routine charts. No more playing telephone! ☎️

🛑 Pitfall #2: Decentralize control = dip in quality

With any change in a business operating system, there’s a risk of lower standards. Apply this standardized approach to avoid quality issues: 

✅ Include a verb and measurable outcome in the task names. For example, film a YouTube video or edit a blog post. 

✅ Make routines doable in one sitting. A work sitting can range from 20-90 minutes. If your routine takes longer, break it into smaller, bite-sized increments. For example, script the video, film the video, and record the video. 

✅ Focus your routines on your business needs. It’s easy to get swept away by ideas, but your main goal should be capturing what’s currently happening in your company. 

Implement a Business Operating System as a Business Operator 

Congratulations! You finally decided to work ON your business. We hope this post inspires you to create routines and systemize from the inside out. 🗃️ 

One of the best ways to gain clarity with your system is by process mapping and filling out a Process Org Chart™, which you can find in our free training, The Blueprint. 

Then, you can record your step-by-step process via an SOP. Here’s a speedy guide for how to write standard operating procedures in as little as 15 minutes. We know your time is valuable! 🙏 

Business operators, if you want to start working on valuable yet painful processes in your business operating system, check out our Systemization Snapshot™ quiz! It will give you an insider peek into areas you can improve today.

Thanks for reading our guide, and enjoy the process!