You have big ideas, innovative products/services, and a pretty amazing business strategy — that’s great! That’s the first step.
But how are you, as a small business leader, executing your strategies and realizing your vision?
It’s one thing to have solid business plan in place but another thing entirely to operationalize the strategies required to achieve the plan. So how do you do that?
Bottom line, you need an intentional framework to develop and maintain strategic alignment across the organization.
Alignment across people, teams, and culture; between financial goals and strategic objectives; between current operational functions and ideal future state.
Once you’re aligned, you can develop a rhythm for executing, measuring, and reporting in order to track your progress and achieve your goals.
We call this leadership framework the Strategic Operations Leadership System (SOLS) and it encompasses Vision, Culture, Strategy, Structure, Operations and Cadence.
SOLS provides the foundation for systemizing and planning your small business by optimizing operations, practicing continuous improvement, and bettering your problem solving — to achieve sustainable growth and profitable scale.
Each component of a SOLS is deliberate and compartmentalized but also interconnected across the system; nothing is siloed.
This cross-functional and holistic approach produces boundless opportunities for continuous improvement and growth across your organization while enabling you to set and manage goals, stay on track, and hit strategic targets.
“Chad was a pleasure to work with from day one. He ultimately aims to understand the in’s & out’s of your business to be able to be an asset to the team. He listens and helps you navigate the process of working ON your business. He helped us create a 6-12 month plan for achieving our goals as an organization. What he offers is applicable to every single non profit or business! I’d highly recommend having a conversation with him. ”
What is SOLS
The Strategic Operations Leadership System, is a set of lean tools and agile methodologies that help small business leaders take their company from ‘Good to Great’.
SOLS enables a comprehensive approach to optimizing your business and operationalizing your strategies so you can achieve your desired future state via our Lean Business Planning Process.
It can help you clarify your vision, set agile goals and objectives, and provide a system for measuring, reporting, and optimizing the results.
Every leader needs to create alignment across the organization, develop a consistent rhythm, operationalize strategies, and achieve a desired future state.
This is a lot —we get it. No small business owner should attempt all of this on their own. That’s why we are here to lend a hand operationalizing your small business strategy.
Future State COO can custom design and implement a SOLS, so you can do what you do best: lead, work on your business, gain traction on your goals, develop a business rhythm, and achieve your desired future state.
“Chad started us with an assessment and then met with myself and our management team weekly to move many “ rocks “ up the hill. We accomplished great milestones and implemented operational strategies and structures with Chad’s help. I highly recommend his services. He is expert, flexible, a good communicator and easy to work with.”
The components of SOLS
Vision: Every small business owner should begin with a Vision that is focused, directive, and viable. This is the North Star that should guide every other aspect of your business and can involve leadership taking a step back to assess where the business is headed and where its priorities lie.
Focused
Directive
Viable
Culture: Connecting back to the Vision, your Culture must have a clear (& clearly communicated) set of Values that make sense for the business you’re in. Those tie into your company’s altruistic Purpose, which should affect the company’s overall Mindset - the mindset is the Culture.
Values
Purpose
Mindset
Strategy: When thinking about a company strategy, every element, beginning with Vision and Culture, must be in Alignment. Consider also the Advantages of Strategy and what Targets are important for your particular Strategy.
Alignment
Advantages
Targets
Structure: Every leader must ensure its People have Clarity of responsibility and understands exactly what each person’s role entails and how an Accountability system is embedded into the Structure - and what the ideal, future structure will look like with a plan to get there.
Clarity
Accountability
People
Operations: When it comes to Operations, clear Systems and Processes are essential and possible to put into place once Vision, Culture, Strategy, and Structure are in order. Then, crucially, a more well-defined and effective Execution comes next.
Systems
Processes
Execution
Cadence: Cadence is your rhythm in ensuring all of the above are in order via the important skills of Problem Solving, Communication, and ability to measure the Operations’ Metrics.
Metrics
Communication
Problem solving
Implementing SOLS will help you and your leadership team get better at:
Clarifying Vision & Focus
Operationalizing Strategies & Achieving Goals
Organizational Learning & Development
Continuous Improvement & Optimization
Managing Change & Implementation
“If you want to build systems and processes for scale, hiring Chad should be your next step. Chad helped our agency to simplify a complex process in revamping our org chart, providing clarity and measurement for each position, creating repeatable processes, and expanding into new markets. Highly recommended! ”
What is Systemization?
Systematization is the systematic organization of anything, the act of organizing something according to a system or a rationale.
In an enterprise context, it is organizing business operations, from long-term strategy to day-to-day, into a system that is efficient, pragmatic, and productive
Future State COOs can further facilitate organizational alignment through, balanced scorecard development, ideal structure design, and workflow assessment & optimization. .
We take a systems thinking approach, to include Vision, Structure, Strategy, Culture, Operations, and Cadence in order to create alignment across your organization.
We start by documenting your Vision clearly defining success & establishing your goals, strategies, and priorities.
Next we develop your ideal organizational Structure to align with your Vision.
From there we initiate a consistent business rhythm (Cadence) so you can operationalize your strategies and achieve your goals.
After that, we prioritize & customize to optimize & systemize…
How it Works
First, SOLS enables small business leaders to clarify & communicate their Vision- whether extracting from the founders headspace or building and documenting a shared vision with the team, we have a proven Lean Business Planning Process to help you provide a clear definition of success for your business and lead your teams with purpose.
Next, SOLS provides the structure and workflow Leadership Teams require to operationalize the SMART goals and strategies defined in the Lean Business Planning Process by leveraging Agile Project Management Methodologies, which keeps everyone focused on the same, prioritized targets, and operating at the same cadence to achieve iterative results on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis towards the ideal future state.
“Chad has helped us work through a lot of the obstacles that were in the way of us achieving our goals. We have learned to set realistic goals, set a cadence to meetings, include the team in goal setting and execution, and most importantly, be accountable to our commitments…. after the work we have done together we consider him an integral part of our team. ”
Implementation Timeline with Deliverables
VISION
Non-Negotiables, Your Why
Differentiators, Sweet Spot
Target Market, Value Proposition, Your Promise
Customer Journey
FUTURE STATE
Long-Term Scope
3 Year Targets
1 Year Targets, Annual Goals, 90 Day Objectives, Metrics (1st draft Scorecard)
AGILE FLOW
Focus & Prioritize, Measure & Report, Communicate, Solve Problems, Gain Momentum, Next 90 days
ALIGN & OPTIMIZE
Balanced Scorecard
Ideal Structure Design, People (transition) Planning
Workflow Mapping, Process Improvement Planning
Tying it all together & NEXT STEPS
Drishti
90 Day Objectives
Keys to the System (transition)
COO Engagement
Cost & COO Engagement
Implementation requires 9 weeks when conducting 2 hour virtual working sessions once per week.
Working ON the Business Sessions are to be scheduled for the same day and time each week. We start with two(2) hour working sessions (plus homework) until we are able to complete the vision, goals, and structure- approximately 3-6 weeks.
Then, we dial your weekly leadership meeting down to ninety (90) minutes, implementing your Agile Flow. We use the remaining thirty (30) minutes of blocked time as needed to work on priorities and complete implementation for the remaining 3-6 weeks.
Total implementation cost is $6,750 - three payments of $2,250 are to be made before the 1st, 3rd, and 6th weeks of your implementation timeline. Save $500 when you pay in full up front.
At the end of 9 weeks, your SOLS will be fully implemented on the executive leadership level. Although, there is still more Optimizing & Systemizing to do from here. You will have:
established your Annual, Quarterly, & Weekly Cadence- your business rhythm
built a custom system for Vision building, annual Goal setting, and 12 week Objective prioritization
ensured Cultural, Structural, & Strategic alignment across your organization and created a Transition/Lean People Plan
developed a first draft organizational Scorecard and established weekly measuring & reporting
begun to operationalize your strategies and make iterative progress towards your goals
implemented/sustained your Agile Flow and process for weekly leadership meetings
to include reporting on key metrics & objectives, problem solving, and prioritization as a team
At this point we will discuss next steps and agree on the best path forward - you have options.
Self-manage - run SOLS and 12 week objectives on your own.
Engage Fractional COO - who will facilitate executive leadership and SOLS management on a regular scheduled basis, further optimizing and systemizing your organization - see below.
Beyond Implementation
It is difficult to predict exactly what the next 90 days will look like, as the Vision, Structure, and Flow building sessions will reveal and dictate your priorities and pace moving forward.
In other words, we do not know what your top priorities will be until implementation. However, next steps typically involve optimizing operations on a more granular or departmental level.
We will remain Agile* - Everything beyond Implementation will be considered &/or evaluated upon completion of cadence building & objective setting to prioritize accordingly & determine next steps, including FCOO Engagement.
Meaning, we prioritize and plan objectives every 90 days guided by your Vision.
F-COO Engagement - Retainer Options:
FCOO Retainers are invoiced as a quarter, half, or full day per week per month.
SOLS Cadence: Quarterly (4x1/2 day ea) + Annual (1x1/2 day) = $4,000 annual cost
SOLS Weekly Pulse = $2,000 monthly cost (includes Cadence)
Objective/Project Manage (1/2 day) = $3,000 monthly cost (includes Cadence & Pulse)
1 Full Day Per Week Retainer = $6,000 monthly cost (includes everything above)
*Agile Project Management
Future State leverages an agile project management methodology to remain flexible and ensure we are always focused on what is most important at the time.
Agile project management is an iterative approach to delivering a project throughout its life cycle.
Iterative or agile life cycles are composed of several iterations or incremental steps towards the completion of a project.
Iterative approaches are used in projects to promote velocity and adaptability since the benefit of iteration is that you can adjust as you go along rather than following a linear path.
One of the aims of an agile or iterative approach is to release benefits throughout the process rather than only at the end.
At the core, agile projects should exhibit central values and behaviors of trust, flexibility, empowerment and collaboration.
