Creating Your Company’s Operating System
I realized early on that one of the best things I could do for the company, in terms of running it, was to create something I call the company’s operating system. It’s where the hardware meets the software, or where the people meet the business.
Suggested Readings
Founders School || Startup CEO || Creating Your Company’s Operating System || Impact Guide (PDF).
Blumberg, Matt and Hanny Hindi. “Chapter Seventeen: Creating a Company Operating System.” Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling up Your Business. Wiley, 2013. 145-148. Print.
King, Michael. “From Chaos to Order: Building a Business Architecture” Halfker and Associates. Slide Share, 2016.
Colan, Lee. “How to Successfully Build a Business Operating System for Your Company.” Inc. Blog Post Feld, Brad. “Building A Business Operating System” Feld Thoughts, 6 September 2013.
Mask, Clate. “How Strategic Planning Transforms Chaos Into Confidence” Entrepreneur, 26 August 2015.
Mauboussin, Michael. “The True Measures of Success.” Harvard Business Review, October 2012.
“Monitoring Your Metrics” – Scaling Your Company with Scale Venture Partners Rory O’Driscoll and Kate Mitchell.
Bossidy, Larry, Ram Charan, and Charles Burck. Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done. New York: Crown Business, 2002.
Blumberg, Matt and Hanny Hindi. “Chapter Eighteen: Creating Your Operating Plan and Setting Goals.” Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling up Your Business. Wiley, 2013. 149-158. Print.
Questions for You
How does my vision for the company translate into work steps that can be monitored for progress?
How do I structure my annual plan? Is this efficient, or are there still holes in this idea?
What is my theme (or themes) for the year? Are my employees aware of it?
What initiatives form the building blocks of my theme?
What are the milestones of each initiative?
How do I make sure everyone in the company knows how we are performing against these milestones (quarterly assessments, all associate meetings, etc.)?
Tools and exercises
Hadley, Jacquelyn and Laura Lanzerotti, and Adam Nathan “Living Into Your Strategic Plan: A Guide to Implementation That Gets Results” Bridgespan Report, June 2011.