Project planning: Nailing your project timeline

Project planning: Nailing your project timeline

by | 8 Mar 2024 | The Audacious OBM Podcast

Today we are talking all things how to project plan and set up your project timeline. So we’re going to cover six steps to nailing the project timeline with ease.

And how we get from that piece to mapping all of our activities out in a timeline and a time frame. We can face the same issues we previously faced, which is when we’re looking at it and go, Oh, I’m staring at a blank screen.

Can be difficult to know where to start and in what order there are too many pieces.

“We can get overwhelmed and then our brains don’t work properly.”

I’m going to give you a really simple way to navigate through that.

 

This episode shares:  

  • Chunk it out: Identify what the main components to execute your project.
  • Task it up: Brainstorm and list out all the tasks that will be involved inside each chunk.
  • Map the dependencies: After we find our main tasks, we start to mark dependencies between the tasks and link them.
  • Prioritise: Help you stay true to that goal and achieve that outcome.
  • Timeline: Take the priorities and put them on your timeline
  • Review and repeat: Consider the horizontal view, but also the vertical view. 

1. Chunk it out

Once you’ve had your project goal established and you’ve identified what the main components are to be able to execute this project, they become your chunks.

For each of those chunks, we need to make sure that we have what’s included within them, and we know that there’s nothing missing.

Looking at your project goal, we wanna check it across. Have I got everything? Have I got the main components here? So if you’ve split your project goal out by, let’s say the roles, and the different people involved, have you got all the people? Are they all there? If you’ve split it by, the business departments involved. Have you got all of the departments? Have you missed marketing? Have you missed customer service? Have you missed finance? However you’ve mapped it out, take a step back and just make sure, okay, I’ve covered my bases. So that’s step one.

Make sure you’ve got all your chunks right.

Tip💡: Split your project goal out with all the business departments involved to cover the bases.

2. Task it up

For each chunk, you need to spend some time brainstorming and listing out all the tasks that will be involved inside that chunk to get this project completed. Can be big or little and in the first instance, you just want to brainstorm.

You just want to put everything out and get it on the page. It doesn’t have to be orderly. You do not have to worry about if you have doubled up on something. It is more about getting the ideas out of your brain and onto that paper because then you have tangible things you can work with, which removes the overwhelm.

Once you’ve done that brain dump of all those tasks, then you’re going to tidy those tasks. This is where we start looking for things that are duplication. This is where we start going, Oh, but do we really need to do that thing in this instance? So we start to think about the situation we’re in right now, and see if things are still relevant because in many projects, you’ll have lots of things that are consistent across them.

These are the things we always do. But! When you’re working on a specific project, not everything is going to be the same. And so we need to do the sense check. So when we’re mapping out all the tasks, that’s when we do the sense check and if we’ve removed something, why have we removed it? Is there something that needs to be put in place instead?

Just because we don’t need to do this bit in this scenario, is that because we need to do something else for a different reason. So we want to go through, remove all our duplications, we want to sense check what’s left, we want to put our tasks under our chunks so that then we can go, okay, this is chunk A, here are the tasks for chunk A, are they all there? Have I missed any? And then we do that for all of our chunks.

Now you’ve got all your tasks, which is exactly what you want. Now we get to do the fun bit. At this point, it’s where I tend to do things a little bit differently to other people. A lot of project managers will tell you go take that task, that list of tasks, and go put a time frame on them so that you can get them done. I am going to tell you not to do that yet.

Tip💡: Getting the ideas out of your brain and onto that paper, because then you have tangible things you can work with.

 

3. Map the dependencies

Before starting with the timeline, I want you to look at the dependencies. I will always focus on the dependencies first before the time dependencies frame because I think that there is nothing worse than working through a project and then having to stop at a certain point because you realise you can’t keep progressing because something else hasn’t been done and you hadn’t thought about that yet.

Then you have to change your project plan, you have to change your project timeline, and things aren’t running as smoothly anymore.

Now we’re flustered, we’re a little bit stressed, we’re frustrated, and our progress has paused, which is not what we want. If we consider dependencies before we plot things on a timeline, we’re going to eliminate the majority of the times that happens.

How do we do this? We go back to our task list, we find our main tasks and we start to mark dependencies. We find tasks where it’s okay, I know I need to do this task. Is there anything that has to happen before that for me to actually be able to do that? If I am building out team roles and responsibilities, let’s say.

Before I do the report for that, do I have to go and have the interviews with different team members? Because if I go to write a report, but I haven’t done the interviews guess what? There ain’t no report. When we’re looking at each of our things, we’re just going to start to put them in a little bit of an order, so that we know, okay, this definitely has to happen first and it’s going to give us a smoother runway, so that then when we move to timelines, it’s far more accurate. We’re going to be able to plot timeframes that make sense to the level of things that need to happen in the order they need to happen.

So we go through all our tasks and we put the dependencies there. Now you can draw little connecting lines between them. You can colour code them if you want to. You can put, number 1 next to all the things that have to happen first, and then number 2 next to the next ones. Or you can just put them in a list, top to bottom, in the right order.

Tip💡:  Go back to your task list, find the main tasks and then start to mark dependencies, drawing connecting lines between them.

 

4. Prioritise

We want to look at all of our tasks now that have been linked with their dependencies and go, in all of these, what are the priorities? What are the things that 100% have to be done to make this project successful versus some things that we might be able to do a different way, that we might be able to drop off because they’re a nice add-on?

They’re not an essential piece to getting this thing live and we want to start looking at what those priorities are. We also might start to see that there are these few tasks, and there are lots of dependent tasks for those. This whole project is going to get massively held up if those few tasks aren’t done as a priority.

We need those to be the focus point so that we can unblock everything that follows. So that becomes a high priority. You might look at it and go, I know when we get to this point, it will be a critical piece. If this fails, we are going to have to troubleshoot and troubleshoot fast and have options and solutions to keep moving or the whole project will fall over.

Those become priorities.

Now, what have we done so far? Step 1, we’ve broken things into chunks. Step 2, we’ve mapped out all the tasks to those chunks. Step 3, we’ve mapped all the dependencies with those tasks. Step 4, now we’re starting to prioritise them. What are the super important ones? Now, and only now, do you get to go and play with your timeline.

Tip💡:  Identify the tasks that have lots of dependencies.

 

5. Timeline

Take those priorities and put them on your timeline. Look at however long you have for this project, three months, four months, one month, it depends on the size, and start plotting out where those priorities sit and the order.

What I want you to remember is the likelihood that this is going to be correct the first time is really low.

Take all of our data, and put it on the board so we have pieces we can move. It will reduce the overwhelm of thinking 15 steps ahead. Put them all on there and then move them around. So we put our priorities down in the right order, in around about the right timeframe that we think it’ll take to achieve them.

Then we’re going to map out our tasks and dependencies based on that. So you’ll end up with a timeline that has your key tasks and then your dependent tasks snd then you start looking at the timeframe and the time allocation you’ve given for each of those things. So once you have the correct flow, we know that this is the order in which this needs to happen.

Then you start playing with the amount of time each thing will take and you push and pull. So if we have mapped everything out, we look at the first bit and we say, okay, I’ve given this, a week to turn around this big task. But then when I look at it and I look at the different things that are dependent on it and the time that’s involved in those dependent tasks, I haven’t allowed enough time because I know to get the big chunky task done, it’s going to take about five days, but then to get all of the dependent tasks done, that needs a week because there’s so many of them. So I need more time to achieve this chunk. Now I have to expand it out. It can’t be one week but it has to be at least 12 days. So I start to spread those out and you do that exact same pattern over and over.

Tip💡: Put the priorities on the board as pieces that you can move. It will reduce the overwhelm of thinking

 

6. Review and repeat

Review and repeat the map of the dependencies, priorities and timelines. So go back through the dependencies, go back through the priorities, and push and pull on that timeline. Until, when you go through each piece, you feel like, yep, we’ve got enough time, we’ve got the right order. Look for the overlaps. There are some things where we know the project can’t keep moving until our priorities are complete. So what do we have happening? What could we have happening at the same time while we’re waiting in that kind of delayed bit?

If we have, assets that are with a graphic designer. Can we start working on the copy without the design assets? Which usually you can, those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. They can be happening at the same time without it being a conflict later or going to cause any issues as the project continues, because we need them both and they both might be reliant on one other thing, but they’re actually separate pieces.

So when we’re looking at our timeline, we want to consider the horizontal view. Left to right, all the things are in the order they happen, but also we want to consider the vertical. What are the things that can be happening at the same time, where there won’t be any conflict, without it getting too crowded or too messy.

Tip💡:  Go back through the dependencies, go back through the priorities, and push and pull on that timeline.

And… that’s a wrap!

This is how we can speed up our project. We’re being clever about our pieces and we’re putting things in the right way, with the right resources, in the right timing. So that then we can pull it off and still pull it off just as easily. It’s not going to make it harder if you’re saying to Ben, Hey Ben, I need you to go and do this task while we’re waiting for the other task to finish and then you go and talk to Sue and you say, Hey Sue, I need you to do this other task while we’re waiting for that other task to finish – All you’ve done is set two things going at the same time to give them a head start and to get them turned around and completed so that when we have everything we need, we move to the next phase.

It means then we’re not starting and stopping as we get each bit. So, that’s it! That is as hard as it gets. Like when you are looking at mapping out a timeline that is accurate, easy, and that has a high level of completion, this is how you do it. Six steps. Simple. It’s when we start to overthink and complicate it too much that then it gets unruly and mistakes get made and we feel stressed and things don’t go to plan.

But if we can just move through each step and keep things quite calm, you’ll end up with a really solid plan. So I hope that you found this helpful.

If you are enjoying this, please leave me a five-star review and tell me what you loved most about it.

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Follow along with the transcript

E37 Project planning: Nailing your project timeline

Leanne Woff: Hey, hey, hey lovely. Welcome to this week’s episode of the Audacious OBM. [00:01:00] Today we are talking all things how to project plan and set up your project timeline. So we’re going to cover six steps to nailing the project timeline with ease.

In our last episode, we talked about the different pieces involved in project management and how we can start to break down a project goal into actionable pieces. Today, we’re going to cover how we get from that piece to mapping all of our activities out in a timeline and a time frame. Which we can face the same issues that we faced previously, which is when we’re looking at it and go, Oh, I’m staring at a blank screen.

I don’t quite know where to start. I don’t know what order there’s too many pieces. We can get overwhelmed and then our brains don’t work properly. I’m going to give you a [00:02:00] really simple way to navigate through that. All right. So step one is you focus on your chunks. So once you’ve had your project goal established and you’ve identified what the main components are to be able to execute this project, they become your chunks. For each of those chunks we need to make sure that we have what’s included within them, and we know that there’s nothing missing. Looking at your project goal, we wanna check it across. Okay. These are all the things involved. Have I got everything? Have I got the main components here? So if you’ve split your project goal out by, let’s say the roles, the different people involved, have you got all the people?

Are they all there? If you’ve split it by, the business departments involved. Have you got all of the departments? Have you missed marketing? Have you missed customer service? Have [00:03:00] you missed finance? However you’ve mapped it out, take a step back and just make sure, okay, I’ve covered my bases. So that’s step one.

Make sure you’ve got all your chunks right. Then step two. Is, we focus on the tasks. So for each chunk, however, you’ve done it, you need to spend some time brainstorming and listing out all the tasks that will be involved inside that chunk to get this project completed. Can be big or little. And in the first instance, you just want to brainstorm.

You just want to put everything out and get it on the page. It doesn’t have to be orderly. You do not have to worry about if you have doubled up on something. It is more about getting the ideas out of your brain and onto that paper, because then you have tangible things you can work with, which removes the overwhelm.

Once you’ve done that brain dump of all those tasks, then you’re going to tidy those tasks. This is where we start looking for things that are duplication. This is where we start going, Oh, but do we really need to do that thing in this instance? So we start to think about the situation we’re in right now, and seeing if things are still relevant, because in many projects, you’ll have lots of things that are consistent across them.

These are the things we always do. But! When you’re working on a specific project, not everything is going to be the same. And so we need to do the sense check. So when we’re mapping out all the tasks, that’s when we do the sense check. And if we’ve removed something, why have we removed it?

And is there something that needs to be put in place instead? Just because we don’t need to do this bit in this scenario, is that because we need to do something else for a different reason. So we want to go through, remove all our duplications, we want to sense check what’s left, [00:05:00] we want to put our tasks under our chunks so that then we can go, okay, this is chunk A, here are the tasks for chunk A, are they all there?

Have I missed any? And then we do that for all of our chunks. Now you’ve got all your tasks,

which is exactly what you want. Now we get to do the fun bit. At this point, it’s where I tend to do things a little bit differently to other people. A lot of project managers will tell you go take that task, that list of tasks, and go put a time frame on them so that you can get them done. I am going to tell you not to do that yet.

I don’t want you to start with the timeline. I want you to look at the dependencies. I will always focus on the dependencies first before the time dependenciesframe because I think that there is nothing worse than working through a project and then having to stop at a certain point because you [00:06:00] realise you can’t keep progressing because something else hasn’t been done and you hadn’t thought about that yet.

And so then you have to change your project plan, you have to change your project timeline, and things aren’t running as smoothly anymore. Now we’re flustered, we’re a little bit stressed, we’re frustrated, and our progress has paused, which is not what we want. If we consider dependencies before we plot things on a timeline, we’re going to eliminate majority of the times that that happens.

How do we do this? We go back to our task list, we find our main tasks and we start to mark dependencies. We find tasks where it’s okay, I know I need to do this task. Is there anything that has to happen before that for me to actually be able to do that? If I am building out team roles and responsibilities, let’s say.

Before I do the [00:07:00] report for that, do I have to go and have the interviews with different team members? Because if I go to write a report, but I haven’t done the interviews guess what? There ain’t no report. When we’re looking at each of our things, we’re just going to start to put them in a little bit of an order, so that we know, okay, this definitely has to happen first. And it’s going to give us a smoother runway, so that then when we move to timelines, it’s far more accurate. We’re going to be able to plot timeframes that make sense to the level of things that need to happen in the order they need to happen.

So we go through all our tasks. And we put the dependencies there. Now you can draw little connecting lines between them. You can colour code them if you want to. You can put, number 1 next to all the things that have to happen first, and then number 2 next to the next ones. Or you can just put them in a list, top to bottom, in the right order.

[00:08:00] Then we move to step 4. And step 4 is priorities. So no, we’re still not moving to the timeline people. Priorities are important because we have a project goal. We are not doing this for no reason and there is always an outcome we’re wanting. Priorities help you stay true to that goal and achieve that outcome.

So we want to look at all of our tasks now that have been linked with their dependencies and go, okay, in all of these, what are the priorities? What are the things that 100 percent have to be done to make this project successful versus some things that we might be able to do a different way, that we might be able to drop off because they’re a nice add on.

They’re not an essential piece to getting this thing live. And we want to start looking at what [00:09:00] those priorities are. We also might start to see, okay. There are these few tasks, and there are lots of dependent tasks for those. This whole project is going to get massively held up if those few tasks aren’t done as a priority.

We need those to be the focus point so that we can unblock everything that follows. So that becomes high priority. You might look at it and go, I know when we get to this point, it will be a critical piece. If this fails, we are going to have to troubleshoot and troubleshoot fast and have options and solutions to keep moving or the whole project will fall over.

Those become priorities.

Now, what have we done so far? Step 1, we’ve broken things into chunks. Step 2, we’ve mapped out all [00:10:00] the tasks to those chunks. Step 3, we’ve mapped all the dependencies with those tasks. Step 4, now we’re starting to prioritise them. What are the ones that are super important? Now, and only now, do you get to go and play with your timeline.

Step 5 is take those priorities and put them on your timeline. So looking at, however long you have for this project, three months, four months, one month, it depends the size. And start plotting out where those priorities sit and the order. Now what I want you to remember is the likelihood that this is going to be correct the first time is really low.

Right now we just, again, want to take all of our data, put it on the board so we have pieces we can move. It will reduce the overwhelm of thinking 15 steps ahead. Put them all on there and then move them around. So we [00:11:00] put our priorities down in the right order, in around about the right timeframe that we think it’ll take to achieve them.

Then we’re going to map out our tasks and dependencies based on that. So you’ll end up with a timeline that has your key tasks and then your dependent tasks. And then you start looking at the timeframe and the time allocation you’ve given for each of those things. So once you have the flow, correct, we know that this is the order that this needs to happen with.

Then you start playing with the amount of time each thing will take and you push and pull. So if we have mapped everything out, we look at the first bit and we say, okay, I’ve given this, a week to turn around this big task. But then when I look at it and I look at the different things that are dependent on it and the time that’s involved in those dependent tasks, I haven’t allowed enough time [00:12:00] because I know to get the big chunky task done, it’s going to take about five days, but then to get all of the dependent tasks done, that needs a week because there’s so many of them.

So I need more time to achieve this chunk. Now I have to expand it out. And it can’t be one week. It has to be at least 12 days. So I start to spread those out. And you do that exact same pattern over and over. So step 6 is to review and repeat steps 3 to 5. So go back through the dependencies, go back through the priorities, and push and pull on that timeline.

Until, when you go through each piece, You feel like, yep, we’ve got enough time, we’ve got the right order. Look for the overlaps. There’s some things where we know the project [00:13:00] can’t keep moving until our priorities are complete. So what do we have happening? And what could we have happening at the same time while we’re waiting in that kind of delayed bit?

If we have, assets that are with a graphic designer. Can we start working on the copy without the design assets? Which usually you can, those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. They can be happening at the same time without it being a conflict later or going to cause any issues as the project continues, because we need them both and they both might be reliant on one other thing, but they’re actually separate pieces.

So when we’re looking at our timeline, we want to consider the horizontal view. Left to right, all the things in the order they happen, but also we want to consider the vertical. What are the things that can be happening at the same time, where there won’t be any conflict, without it getting [00:14:00] too crowded or too messy.

And this is how we can speed up our project. We’re being clever about our pieces. And we’re putting things in the right way, with the right resources, in the right timing. So that then we can pull it off and still pull it off just as easily. It’s not going to make it harder if you’re saying to Ben, Hey Ben, I need you to go and do this task while we’re waiting for the other task to finish. And then you go and talk to Sue and you say, Hey Sue, I need you to do this other task while we’re waiting for that other task to finish. All you’ve done is set two things going at the same time to give them a head start and to get them turned around and completed so that when we have everything we need, we move to the next phase.

And it means that then we’re not starting and stopping as we get each bit. So, that’s it! That is as hard as it gets. Like when you are looking at mapping [00:15:00] out a timeline that is accurate, easy, and that has a high level of completion, this is how you do it. Six steps. Simple. It’s when we start to overthink and complicate it too much that then it gets unruly and mistakes get made and we feel stressed and things don’t go to plan.

But if we can just move through each step and keep things quite calm, you’ll end up with a really solid plan. So I hope that you found this helpful. If you are enjoying this episode, please leave me a five star review and tell me what you loved most about it. Otherwise, I will see you next week. Bye, guys!

 

Project planning: The Art of breaking things down

Project planning: The Art of breaking things down

by | 29 Feb 2024 | The Audacious OBM Podcast

I know having spoken to many OBMs, ops managers and project managers that one of the trickiest parts of managing projects and businesses successfully is getting started.

How do I get all my pieces on the board?

“I’m great at following a project plan. I can smash through making sure things are done and done on time. But when I’m staring at that blank canvas, somebody help me.”

Let me give you a really easy way to put the core components on your board to get started with a successful project plan.

 

This episode shares:  

  • End Goal: The clearer that vision is, the easier it will be for you to identify what’s needed to achieve it
  • Main components: What are the main components that are going to need to happen here?
  • People: What people are needed?
  • Timeline: Doing some rational thinking and some logical steps is going to make your project run smoother
  • Hurdles: Identify possible hurdles we might come across when we’re trying to deliver a project
  • Solutions: Have possible solutions upfront will help us make clear and consistent decisions
  • Essentials: What are they?
  • Nice to haves: The breaking point for something achievable 

End Goal

The first thing is to set your end goal.

When we are doing any project, we need to keep in mind what we want to achieve with this project. Why are we even doing this? What impact does it have on the business? What do we want it to look like at the very end? Why does this project even exist? What is our aim here?

Try and get as much detail around that as you can. Because the clearer that vision is, the easier it will be for you to identify what’s needed to achieve it. When there’s all these grey areas and all this fuzz, it gets really hard for you to know, are we looking at apples or oranges? Do I need seven people or four? Is this, a big beast, bigger than Ben Hur? Or is this just something small that we want to implement and do because it’s fun?

We need to know what the end goal is. We need to be able to think and feel and see what that looks like, if you don’t know, ask. Sit down with your client and say, all right, I’m going to map all of this out, but I have some questions for you and ask them specific questions.

Give them if else’s. Okay, so do you mean you want to create a whole new membership with its own brand, its messaging for a different audience or do you mean you want to create another option within your current membership that people can opt in for? Give them scenarios so that you can get the understanding you need to make sure this is successful.

Sometimes this can be a 15-minute conversation. It doesn’t have to be a massive one. Or sometimes it needs to be, an hour-long planning session. For you to flesh out with your client what we’re doing, you lead that, that’s what you’re there for. Once you’ve got your end goal, once you know what you’re trying to achieve, then we can chunk it.

If that’s what I’m trying to achieve, a new membership, what are the main things that become part of this? this is where you brain dump a little bit because a lot of the time we will get stuck trying to categorize things before they’re even in front of us. Well, hang on. Is that a person? Is that a financial consideration?

Tip💡: Take the time to sit down and clearly define your project’s end goal. Document your vision in as much detail as possible. If clarity is missing, arrange a concise meeting with stakeholders or clients to ask targeted questions that help refine this vision.

Main components

The next thing you can do is brainstorm all those main components. Okay, we’re gonna need a designer. These are the kinds of things we’re gonna need to design.

We’re going to need sales pages, gonna need a web dev. We’re gonna need the technology that the web dev will use.

Let your brain popcorn around a bit because that way you are going to cover all the bases. Once you’ve let your brain do that, stop, take a break, come back, and start to group things together.

What are the main components that are going to need to happen here? What is it can you do it in phases? 

Tip💡: Hold a freeform brainstorming session where you list everything you might need for the project, from people to technology.

 

People

Some people will list out all the tasks, some people will list out all the processes, some people will list out all the different pieces of impact, and some people will think about it in a start-to-finish order and put in random bits.

It’s more the phase that they can group into however you want to do it. It’s fine. The biggest thing is getting it out. All the things that need to happen, then let’s chunk them into little groups, whatever makes sense for what you’ve got. So whether that is phase one, phase two, phase three, whether that is the technical components, okay. Website, emails, social media, marketing. Whether it’s department, accounting, customer service, operations, or whatever it is, start to group them.

Then once you’ve got your main components, we can start to pull that out a little bit. For these components, what are the people that are needed?

Let’s start looking at some resources. What are the people that are going to be able to execute this stuff? Do we have the people? Do we need other people? What are the options we have? Map that out for each of your components. What are the finances? So is there a financial component or a budget we need to consider?

Looking at our components, our big chunky bits, Are we going to have to get a new person in? How much is that going to cost? Are we going to have to buy a new tool? How much is that going to cost? Let’s start putting some of these pieces in place. Making our project nice and full.

Tip💡: Assess the manpower required for each component of your project. Determine if your current team can cover all bases or if external hires are necessary. Consider both skill sets and the availability of your team members.

 

Timeline

Once we know what we have to work with, once we can see the things that have to get done, then, and only then, do we move toward the timeline.

We start to plot things out. Then, you can layer things over the top and you can move things easier because it becomes almost like a fill-in-the-blank.

Taking pieces from one bucket and putting them in another. Every time you take something from your main component list and you put it on that timeline, you have one thing less in your component bucket, one more thing on your timeline. What you’re doing here is making sure you’re not going to miss anything.

Checking that it makes sense as you’re doing it. If you’re putting something on your timeline and you’re going, hang on a second, this isn’t going to work because I know for this component, that’s going to take weeks. It’s not going to take a day. Maybe I need to wiggle the timeline and then you deal with that before you go and add another component to your timeline.

Doing some rational thinking and some logical steps as you’re building it, is going to make your project run smoother until you’ve got all those main components out of your bucket and onto your timeline. Now you’ve got a really solid timeline starting place. You’ve got all your milestones there.

Tip💡:  Only start mapping out your timeline after you’ve defined the components and resources you have. Plot each task or phase on the timeline, allowing for flexibility.

 

Hurdles

I want you to start thinking about the validity of this project. What can I do to achieve my end goal with the least friction? We want to think about what are the possible hurdles that we might come across when we’re trying to deliver that?

If we’ve got all our components, we know what our end goal is, where we’re trying to head, we’re looking at our timeline where we’ve put everything together, what are the things that might go wrong here?

It is going to mean tight turnarounds, and I need my team to work together so that it can have that quick hot potato impact. I need you to be on time so that the next person can and the next person can because that is going to be a critical point. Looking at the information you have, what are the hurdles? What if we can’t find a specific tool that’s going to do this thing we need it to do? Pre-plan as much of this as you can. Look at it and think, what would shift the ability for us to complete this project? List them all down.

Tip💡:  Identify potential challenges that could derail your project. Look at your timeline, resources, and project components to anticipate roadblocks. Discussing these with your team can provide additional insights and help you better prepare for unforeseen issues.

 

Solutions

Put your solutions cap on.

Look at that list and go, is this likely to occur? Is this something that will really derail this project if it does occur? And that’s how you weigh up whether it’s worth pre-planning a solution or not.

If it’s highly likely to occur, yes, we want a solution. If it’s, not likely that it’ll occur, and if it does occur, is it something that we’re going to be able to fix on the fly or do we need a solution now?

Like weighing all these things up. If it is something that is going to have a really big impact and stop the project in its tracks. You want a solution for that first so that then when we get there, we’re not panicking and we’re not making decisions that aren’t quite logical because we’re stressed and under pressure.

Having possible solutions upfront will help us make clear, consistent decisions, it will give us stability because we’ve already thought about it. We’ve got a backup plan. We just switch gears.

Tip💡: For each identified hurdle, brainstorm potential solutions or preventative measures. Prioritise solutions based on the likelihood and impact of each challenge. Having a plan in place for major risks allows you to navigate challenges more calmly and effectively.

Essentials

Think about that end goal again, then I want you to look at all of your components and think about what are the essentials here. Look at all your components and think about what are the essentials here.

If this is our end goal, what are the things that absolutely must happen that this project will be a failure without that? They become your priority. That is your baseline. That’s what you’re trying to achieve. If you complete this project and those things have all been ticked off and exist, well done.

Tip💡: Review your project components in light of your end goal. Identify the non-negotiables—elements that are critical for success.

Nice to haves

Are there things in this plan that are nice to have? Are there bonuses? It would be cool if we had this. But will the project objective not be met without it? Because when we’re planning things, especially if it’s new and we’re working with visionaries, we get excited and we have all these ideas.

We want it all now because it’s exciting and it will make it better. But sometimes things have to happen in iterations. As much as we will always try to include the nice-to-haves, we need to know, what is the breaking point here for something achievable to get created, versus something that is way too big and really will never exist because we’re trying to achieve too much.

This also gives the ability that when you are moving through your project, and see how it rolls out. And what in reality gets created, if you need to drop some stuff out of the project or move it to phase two, you’ve already got a list of nice-to-haves. You already know which of the bits to pull versus leaving everything in and then not completing this project at all.

Tip💡:  Distinguish between the must-haves and the nice-to-haves. While innovative ideas and additional features are exciting, they should not compromise the core project objectives. Be prepared to phase out or postpone these elements if necessary to ensure the success of the essentials.

 

And… that’s a wrap! 

Your success rate in project management and project completion will go way up because you’ve got a really solid idea of what you’re aiming for.

You’ve already set up phase two of your project. You already know the bits that are going to have to be done. You’ve already seen the kinds of hurdles that you’ve had to face and got solutions for them and it rolls on and it becomes easier and easier.

I hope that that gives you a really simple framework that you can follow so that next time you’re sitting in front of that blank screen and you’re thinking, there’s so many different ways I could do this. What’s the right way? What’s the best way?

How do I even get started? But now you can just move through these simple steps and you’ll have something you’re looking at quite quickly that you can play with and move around.

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Follow along with the transcript

E36 Project planning: The Art of breaking things down

Leanne Woff: Hello, hello, hello, lovely. How are you today? Okay, today we are [00:01:00] getting stuck into project planning, the art of breaking things down. I know having spoken to many in OBM, an ops manager, a project manager, that one of the trickiest parts of managing projects and businesses successfully is getting started.

How do I get all my pieces on the board? I’m great at following a project plan. I can smash through making sure things are done and done on time. But when I’m staring at that blank canvas, somebody help me. So today I am going to give you a really easy way to put the core components on your board to get started with a successful project plan.

 The first thing is set your end goal. So when we [00:02:00] are doing any project, we need to keep in mind what we want to achieve with this project. Why are we even doing this? What impact does it have on the business? What do we want it to look like at the very end? Why does this project even exist? What is our aim here?

Try and get as much detail around that as you can. Because the clearer that vision is, the easier it will be for you to identify what’s needed to achieve it. When there’s all these grey areas and all this fuzz, it gets really hard for you to know, are we looking at apples or oranges? Do I need seven people or four?

Is this, a big, big beast, bigger than Ben Hur? Or is this just something small that we want to implement and do because it’s fun? We need to know what the end goal is. We need to be able to think and feel [00:03:00] and see what that looks like. And if you don’t know, ask. Sit down with your client and say, all right, I’m going to map all of this out, but I have some questions for you and ask them specific questions.

Give them if else’s. Okay, so do you mean you want to create a whole new membership with its own brand, its own messaging for a different audience or do you mean you want to create another option within your current membership that people can opt in for? Give them scenarios so that you can get the understanding you need to make sure this is successful.

And sometimes this can be a 15 minute conversation. It doesn’t have to be a big, massive one. Or sometimes it needs to be, an hour long planning session. For you to really flesh out with your client what we’re doing, you lead that, that’s what you’re [00:04:00] there for. Once you’ve got your end goal, once you know what you’re trying to achieve, then we can chunk it.

And if that’s what I’m trying to achieve, a new membership, what are the main things that become part of this? And this is where you brain dump a little bit because a lot of the time we will get stuck trying to categorize things before they’re even in front of us. Well, hang on. Is that a person? Is that a financial consideration?

Is it a task that will need to get done? And we hold ourselves back. So the first thing that you can do is brainstorm all those main components. Okay, we’re gonna need designer. These are the kinds of things we’re gonna need to design. We’re going to need sales pages, gonna need a web dev. We’re gonna need the technology that the web dev will use.

Let your brain popcorn around a bit[00:05:00]  because that way you are going to cover all the bases. Once you’ve let your brain do that, stop, take a break, come back and start to group things together. So what are the main components that are going to need to happen here? What is it can you do it in phases?

All right. I’ve identified the processes. The way that everybody does this is different and that is okay. Some people will list out all the tasks, some people will list out all the processes, some people will list out all the different pieces of impact, some people will think about it in a start to finish order and put in random bits.

So it’s more the phase that they can group into however you want to do it. It’s fine. The biggest thing is getting it out. So all the things that need to happen, then let’s chunk them into little [00:06:00] groups, whatever makes sense for what you’ve got. So whether that is phase one, phase two, phase three, whether that is the technical components, okay. Website, emails, social media, marketing. Whether it’s department, accounting, customer service, operations, whatever it is, start to group them. Then once you’ve got your main components, we can start to pull that out a little bit. For these components, what are the people that are needed?

So let’s start looking at some resources, yeah. What are the people that are going to be able to execute this stuff? Do we have the people? Do we need other people? What are the options we have? Map that out for each of your components. What is the the finances? So is there a financial component or a budget we need to consider?

Looking at our components, our [00:07:00] big chunky bits, Are we going to have to get a new person in? How much is that going to cost? Are we going to have to buy a new tool? How much is that going to cost? Let’s start putting some of these pieces in place. Making our project nice and full. And then, we want to start looking at the timeline.

Once we know what we have to work with, once we can see the things that actually have to get done, then, and only then, do we move toward timeline. And we start to plot things out. Because then, you can layer things over the top and you can move things easier because it becomes almost like a fill in the blank.

 You’re taking pieces from one bucket and putting them in another. And so every time you take something from your main component list and you put it on that timeline, you have one thing less in your component bucket, one more thing on your timeline.[00:08:00] What you’re doing here is making sure you’re not going to miss anything.

And you’re checking that it makes sense as you’re doing it. If you’re putting something on your timeline and you’re going, hang on a second, this isn’t actually going to work because I know for this component, that’s going to take weeks. It’s not going to take a day. Maybe I need to wiggle the timeline and then you deal with that before you go and add another component onto your timeline.

And so you’re doing some rational thinking and some logical steps as you’re building it, which is going to make your project run smoother until you’ve got all those main components out of your bucket and onto your timeline. Now you’ve got a really solid timeline starting place. You’ve got all your milestones there.

The big blocks for this. Now, I want you to start thinking about the validity [00:09:00] of this project. So what can I do to achieve my end goal with the least friction? And the first thing is that we want to think about What are the possible hurdles that we might come across when we’re trying to deliver that? So if we’ve got all our components, we know what our end goal is, we know where we’re trying to head, we’re looking at our timeline where we’ve put everything together, what are the things that might go wrong here?

Okay, I know that in part C of my timeline, there’s a lot in there. It is going to mean really tight turnarounds, and I need my team working together so that it can have that quick hot potato impact. I need you to be on time so that the next person can so the next person can, because that is going to be a critical point. So, looking at the information you [00:10:00] have, what are the hurdles? What if we can’t find a specific tool that’s going to do this thing we need it to do? Pre-plan as much of this as you can. Look at it and think, what would actually shift the ability for us to complete this project? List them all down. And then, put your solutions cap on.

Look at that list and go, is this something that is likely to occur? Is this something that will really derail this project if it does occur? And that’s how you weigh up whether it’s worth pre-planning a solution or not. If it’s highly likely to occur, yes, we want a solution. If it’s, not really likely that it’ll occur and if it does occur, is it something that we’re going to be able to fix on the fly or do we need a solution now?

Like weighing all these things up. If it is something that is going to have a really big impact, and stop the [00:11:00] project in its tracks. You want a solution for that first so that then when we get there, we’re not panicking and we’re not making decisions that aren’t quite logical because we’re stressed and under pressure.

We want to make clear, consistent decisions. Having possible solutions up front will give us that, it will give us our stability because we’ve already thought about it. We’ve got a backup plan. We just switch gears. And then the last thing that I want you to do is to think about that end goal again. And then I want you to look at all of your components and think about what are the essentials here.

If this is our end goal. What are the things that absolutely must happen that this project will be a failure without that? They become your priority. That is your baseline. That’s what you’re trying to achieve. If you complete this project and those things have all been [00:12:00] ticked off and exist, well done.

Are there things in this plan that are nice-to-haves? That are bonuses? Hey, it would be really cool if we had this. But will the project objective not be met without it? Because when we’re planning things, especially if it’s new and we’re working with visionaries, we get excited and we have all these ideas.

And we want it all now because it’s exciting and it will make it better. But sometimes things have to happen in iterations. As much as we will always try to include the nice-to-haves, we need to know, what is actually the breaking point here for something that is achievable to get created, versus something that is way too big and really will never exist because we’re trying to achieve too much.

This also [00:13:00] gives the ability that when you are moving through your project, seeing how it rolls out. And what in reality gets created, if you need to drop some stuff out of the project or move it to phase two, you’ve already got a list of nice-to-haves. You already know which of the bits to pull versus leaving everything in and then not completing this project at all.

And so your success rate project management and project completion will go way up because you’ve got a really solid idea of what you’re aiming for. And then you’ve already set up phase two of your project. You already know the bits that are going to have to be done. You’ve already seen the kinds of hurdles that you’ve had to face and got solutions for them.

And it rolls on and it becomes easier and easier. So I hope that that gives you a really simple framework that you can follow so that next [00:14:00] time you’re sitting in front of that blank screen and you’re thinking, there’s so many different ways I could do this. What’s the right way? What’s the best way?

How do I even get started? But now you can just move through these simple steps and you’ll have something you’re looking at quite quickly that you can play with and move around. Let me know if this was helpful, please leave me a comment, send me a DM, say hello. And if you found this helpful, please leave me a five star review about what you loved most.

See you next week, guys. [00:15:00] 

How outsourcing your operations works

How outsourcing your operations works

by | 23 Feb 2024 | Podcast

How do I outsource my operations? What does it look like?

These are questions I get asked all the time and for me, it’s easy because I see the ins and outs every day.

But I can understand how it might seem confusing or a little bit vague if you’re not me. So let me give you a really clear picture of the process that we would go through and what it can look like when you outsource your operations.

This is a high-touch approach. This isn’t the type of outsourcing where you can just give a little bit over here and give a little bit over there. It’s all in. You are working really closely with an experienced team who are invested in your business. So it is high touch.

This episode shares:

 

  • Kick-off workshop: Identify goals and ideas
  • 90-day strategy: Understand what we want to achieve in this period
  • Supporting action plan: Break the strategy down into manageable and measurable pieces
  • Track and measure: How do we know if we’re achieving what we want to achieve?
  • Execution of action plan: How it all plays out

 

Kick-off workshop

So how does that all start? It starts with a kick-off workshop.

In this workshop, the aim is to get a really clear idea of the high level of your business and you. We want to brainstorm your goals and your ideas. We want to get an understanding of where things are at so far from your perspective. The things that are working really well, the things that are just causing roadblocks, the things that are halfway done.

We want to tap into what your desires are, because usually when people running seven-figure businesses come to us, there’s never just a status quo. It’s not everything is going fantastic and I’m doing everything that I want and I’m out of ideas and I’m bored. Usually It’s more about I have all of these things that I want to achieve and things I want to try, but I don’t have the time or the space or I’m tired because I keep getting dragged into the day-to-day.

So the purpose of this workshop is to pull out all those things you’ve been thinking about, because we want all the pieces on the board, we want to see what we’re working with. We also want to see the undesires. The undesires are the things where you know you’ve fallen into a pattern or you’re doing things. That you really don’t want to be doing. They’re not desires, they’re the opposite. We want to undo that and move you away from that. So it’s really important for us to get that understanding so that we can come up with a plan. 

90-day strategy

Once we’ve had this workshop, we then pull everything together.

We strategise within our team and come up with what we think is a really solid starting point for your business.

So the mission game plan, it’s a 90 day plan, sprint.

It lays out what those big goals are. So based on that brainstorming workshop, we categorise things and put things together to work out how we can achieve some of these things. And what is for now and what is for later. Then we share this plan with you.

Because going back to, we’re high touch remember, we want you involved. Every step of the way with the big decisions, and there is no point if we come up with a plan that we love and it doesn’t feel good for you. So, each time we’re going to discuss, we’re going to refine, we’re going to come back and review.

We work through, present our 90 day plan, explain what we want to achieve, explain how we think it can work specifically for you.

Supporting action plan

Then if you’re in, if you’re aligned with the things we’ve set out, we go and we break this plan down into manageable and measurable pieces. So this is the who, what, when, where, how.

It’s the next level down.

Track and measure

Then we track and measure.

To be able to track and measure the plan that we’ve created and then the implementation plans we’ve created off the back of that, we need to have some kind of measurement system in place.

How do we know if we’re achieving what we want to achieve?

How do we know if we’re achieving those goals that we set out for you?

We need to develop that system and that comes in at this point, once we know what we’re aiming for, we can then create measure points so that then there’s clarity for you, for your team, for everybody and then we get stuck in.

Execution of action plan

So there is a little bit of operations that is messy.

You’ve been in it every day for however long your team might have been in it for every day for however long, and we’re brand new. So there is a piece where we dive in and get to see what’s actually happening. So do you have documents and resources? If you do, we’re going to deep dive and review them and find out what assets that you have or what your processes are.

If you’ve got them, if you have a team, we’re going to meet with them. We’re going to talk to them. We’re going to become a familiar asset to them so that we can support them. We’re going to find out what their roles are and what they love about what they’re doing, because that is how you make a business thrive. If your people are happy. You are doing really well, then we’re going to look at your communications tools. Do you have them? If you do, then we’re going to be in them because we’re part of your team. So even though we sit outside, we operate as if we’re inside.

Then if you don’t have some of these crucial things, we’re going to set them up. It’s that simple. We will use our expertise and our knowledge and the things that we know work. Then we’re going to bring that and use it in a way that will work for your business. So something that is really important to understand is that this is not a wrecking ball approach.

This is a kind and understanding one underpinned by experience, expertise and wanting everybody working towards the same goals. We want to be part of that. We want to be a support resource for you, your team, your contractors. We want to be pulling all of your tools and your assets together to get the biggest impact. So we are not the kind of people that will come in and start bossing everybody around.

We want to work with people so that they have ownership and so that they see why we’re doing what we’re doing. What is this shift? What is this change? Why is it good? And get them on board! So that might be for something like if you have a project management tool and you’re using it but maybe not to the best of its ability or you don’t have one at all.

It would be our goal to set that up and to get your team using it effectively so that it becomes the source of truth. By doing this, you get immediate clarity and business continuity because you are. Giving everybody on your team the ability to see where everything fits, what they are responsible for, where things are up to, what the flow on effects of different things are, or if I am delayed here, it’s going to impact this person.

So what we’re doing is creating this solid foundation of how your business runs and where everything is up to, and it has accountability and with that comes freedom. Because then we can hand over the reins to your team members. Hey, you know, you’re responsible for this, have at it and then we support them to achieve the goals that they have.

So that’s a really important set in your business is to have that source of truth and if you don’t have one or you do and you’ve found reluctance around it, then we’re going to help you and your team transition into loving this source of truth. That’s Our job.

We’re going to track, measure, meet, and improve. So as I said earlier, we would set up some kind of measurement system. How do we know where we’re tracking in towards meeting our goals? We’re actually making an impact here because as I said, We’re invested, so we’re not here just to look pretty and just to make sure that things are just ticking along at a baseline.

We want things working really well and we want to be able to maximise everybody’s efforts so that you can get more out of the same resources. We can’t do that unless we have a baseline, unless we’re measuring where we want to go, and unless we’re reviewing that consistently. So that looks like, meet weekly meetings with you for an overview and regular communications via your communications tool.

So whether that’s Slack or WhatsApp or Voxer, this is high touch. It’s ad hoc meetings. It’s meeting with your team. It’s being in open communication. I’m looking at what the data is telling us. Looking at what’s working, looking at where there might be some gaps. Where things might be looking like they’re going to fall over.

So we have to course-correct. Looking at the position we’re at, we’re in right now, to meeting those goals. If those goals are still appropriate, maybe we can achieve more than we thought we could. What can we do if we do that? What gets tacked on? Because something that we don’t want to happen is everybody’s sitting around going, okay, yay, we did it.

Now I’ve got nothing. We wanna be using everyone’s capacity. We want to be achieving the impact you want to achieve. Then we will improve what we’ve got support and systemise. So once we’ve done this review of where everything is up to, and we’ve had those discussions with you, and this is something that we check in on a lot.

Progress is super important and making sure things are completed. We want completion and we want traction. We want to leverage our effort and get results. So once we’ve done that review, we’re then going to improve. So we’re going to go and look at the things that we can lift up to the next level.

How can we make sure we’re still on track? Are there systems, processes that need to be up-leveled to achieve what we want to achieve and how are we going to do that? And so we start to do this and we tweak and we measure and we tweak the whole way along and we give you our expertise in our experience on some quick wins that you can implement and some things where it might be a longer lead time.

It might be more of an investment of, hey, we need to overhaul this system because by this not being set up correctly or not working correctly, you’re missing these opportunities then we work with you to get that done, and then we’re there to support and to systemise. So the support piece is more so for you and your team where they’re a little bit confused or where they’re wondering what their responsibility is or if they’re stuck because they’re waiting on things from somebody else. We are in there and we are supporting them to get what they need to keep going. We want to remove the roadblocks and if that means meeting with other team members, then that’s what we’re going to do. If it means giving them the space to have an open conversation or brainstorm because they’re stuck with something and that’s what we’re going to do so that they can keep moving with what they need to, so you can achieve what you need to and then we’re going to systemise.

So things where we can see this would operate a lot better if we had a system that did it or a process that did it, we are going to then bring that to you and say, Hey, this is what we want to do. This is why, and give you the ins and outs of it, so that we can then, again, get the result, and the impact, and make the burden on your team a little bit lighter.

I really hope that’s given you an overview of what it would look like in that first 90 days and then after that, really, it’s rinse and repeat. Your goals never stop. Once we’ve reached the end of one period, we set goals for the next one and we keep going and we keep tweaking, improving, systemising, building and growing.

 

Wrapping It Up

I hope that’s giving you more clarity around what it can look like to outsource your operations to a bolt-on team and if this is something that you’ve been thinking about doing and you want to have the support to grow your business better and faster, smarter, then please check out our website. Let’s chat.

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Follow along with the transcript

Ep 3 How outsourcing your operations can help your business grow

 [00:00:00] Hello, hello, hello. [00:01:00] Thanks for joining me this week on the next episode of the Audacious Empires podcast. I am Leanne Woff and I am super excited to be talking to you about outsourcing. Today we are chatting all things how can outsourcing your operations help you grow your business. Let’s get stuck 

Firstly, We need to set some context around what we mean by outsourcing. So there’s lots of different ways that you can outsource and everything that I talk about in this episode can also be applied to an internal team, if you’ve got an internal team. But when we’re looking at outsourcing, I am not talking about outsourcing to a junior assistant.

I’m talking about outsourcing to an online business manager, a business integrator, an operations consultant, an ops manager, someone who is highly skilled and highly trained.[00:02:00] Because the things that I’m going to talk to you about, a junior will not be able to support you in. So I just wanted to give you that context first.

Alright, the second thing. Is. A question that I get asked a lot is can you really outsource your operations? It’s a day to day function. There are lots of moving parts. How can somebody who is external to a business be that involved in the business? The answer is yes. And I know that it’s possible because I’ve been in that role so many times and there’s not been an issue.

It just might seem a little bit unfamiliar if you’ve not done it before. So, I Want to tell you a little story. I was chatting with a new lead a few weeks ago, and they said to me, I know that I need help, but I just [00:03:00] can’t wrap my head around how you can outsource operations. And so we had a conversation about what it could look like, and what the term operations means.

And how everybody has their own definition. There are a lot of things that happen within a business and majority of them fall into operations. If it is the process of getting something done, usually it’s an operational thing. And when you haven’t seen it as an isolated piece, It can be hard for you to picture what it really means.

And so I spoke to this lead and I explained, you know, when we work with businesses, we come in, we set up all of the systems because we are virtual. So although you might not know how it would work communication wise, we do. And so we do things like we use project management tools and we [00:04:00] have set meetings and we have.

 Different ways that we can chat for different things. So whether that’s WhatsApp or Slack or Voxer to remove roadblocks quickly, we set up the reporting and the job distribution in a certain way so that we can see when things are on track, off track, at risk, like really clearly, all based on what the business’s goals are.

So when you’re treating operations as its own thing, it then has a whole new goal. It’s not just something that happens by accident because it has to happen in your business. And after that When I was chatting to this lead, they were very much okay, got it. I think I’ve wrapped my head around it.

She believed me. It could actually be done. Total one. And then she said, I think it is just, I’m scared. I’ve not done it before and I just need to start somewhere. And so [00:05:00] if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, Oh yeah, that’s me. By the end of this episode, I hope that you have a little bit more understanding.

On why that risk is worth taking, because I know it’s not one that you can make lightly. It’s your business and you’re invested. I’m going to walk you through three main ways outsourcing your operations helps grow your business. The three ways are space, time and money. No matter how many conversations I have with people.

When they’re looking at outsourcing anything, it always comes down to, at the root of it all, they need more space, they need more time, or they need more money. Or maybe they don’t need it, but that’s what they want. It’s about growth in those areas. And outsourcing your operations will give you those.

 Let’s break each one down. So how can outsourcing your operations give you more space? When you are running operations [00:06:00] yourself, It can be very overwhelming. Now, like I said before, managing operations, there is a lot going on. It does not, it’s no small feat managing a, seven figure business.

There’s never just a handful of components and we’re good. Things tend to be complex. They might not be complicated, but complex. And that is okay. But it means it takes a lot of energy and Thought to keep operations going, let alone to improve them. And so when you’re in this space of running around and keeping things turning and just giving your team what they need so they can keep going so that you’re not the bottleneck, you lose your space.

You lose Your air and your freedom. And can I tell you, when you’re in a state of overwhelm or lots of things coming at you from all different directions, your [00:07:00] brain can’t process properly. I’ve seen that time and time again, when clients are overloaded and they actually can’t process what I’m saying.

And I will end a call and then I’ll talk to my team and say, we’re going to have this conversation again in a couple of days, because there’s no way. That they’re going to remember that we just had that conversation and that’s the decision that they make. And I’m right. Every time. Because that’s what overwhelm does.

If you’re stretched too thin, your brain just can’t keep up. That’s just being a human. And that’s okay. But the consequence of that is, you lose. All of the ooey gooey good stuff, the reasons that you started this business, the ideas that you have, the goals that now seem so far away because you just cannot reach them.

 You keep getting bogged down by everybody else and having to keep the day to day moving forward. How does outsourcing your operations give you more space? Outsourcing your operations removes that overwhelm.[00:08:00] There is somebody else now who becomes that pivotal person where everybody will come to that person and throw things at them.

They become, the first point of contact, the first person when there is a problem, the fixer, the gatekeeper. That’s what your ops person becomes. So it’s not you anymore. And it creates brain space. Now brain space breathes.  Creativity, which is where the magic happens. It’s that space that allows you to innovate.

It’s that space that allows you to do the deep thinking and build your business. To be able to differentiate from composition, to be able to reach those goals, to remember the impact that you want to make, and create plans to get there. That’s what space gives you. And so outsourcing your operations removes all the noise so that you can have that space.

Okay, so the next thing. Outsourcing your operations will give you back more [00:09:00] time. Time is a little bit different to space. And something that you may know is that operations are a massive time suck. And I say that because quite often we don’t see the direct outcome. From operations as a whole. We might spend X amount of time answering 5 customer enquiries.

You answer them because it’s part of the process and it has to be done. You don’t want to ignore people. But right then, when you’re doing it, all you’re thinking about is, I need to get this done. And you don’t then correlate that to the 3 sales that you make in a month because you sent those 5 emails.

So we don’t see that immediate response, or the benefit, we see it as admin and a cost. Which it is a cost, but it’s a cost with a benefit. And there is, like, there’s measurable benefit from that. Okay, 

if you have some time back let’s take away All of that coordination, tasking. So when you’re [00:10:00] looking at your business as a whole and you’re trying to make sure the machine is running in all of the right areas, there’s two components. One is you’re trying to make sure it’s humming along. So that means every area has what it’s, what it needs to do its job and is progressing along the right pathway.

So that’s the first thing. Let’s think about how much time that might take us. And then the second thing is the troubleshooting. I guarantee you all of those cogs are not going to spin with a zero issues, 100 percent of the time. The cogs will not spin with zero issues, 100 percent of the time. It’s not possible because you’re relying on technology.

You’re relying on people and neither of those things are 100 percent perfect.

When we’re looking at operations and the amount of time it takes, you’ve now got two massive jobs to [00:11:00] do. Let’s pull that away. What if there was somebody else who was monitoring your operations, all of those cogs, all of the tools, all of the people, all of the resources, and making sure They’re running as they should and tracking to their goals.

I think what you’d find is you get a whole lot more time back. And it might be time that you don’t even realise you’re spending right now. I know when we were working with one client, we started working with them and we calculated how much time they were spending in operations. And it was like five hours a day or something ridiculous.

Like it was so big and it was all of the haphazard, oh gotta do this, gotta do this, gotta do this, gotta do this. They had a big business and They just felt like they weren’t getting anywhere. Their business was successful, but they were working hard. And when we came in and we saw that, we reduced that down to [00:12:00] their admin time being half an hour a day.

From five hours a day to half an hour. Purely because that’s what we do every day. And there was somebody else who could deal with a lot of those things. It did not have to be them. What happened with that time? This is the beauty of getting time back, right? You get to focus on high value tasks. You get to be CEO.

You get to innovate. You get to go and speak more. You get to be on more podcasts. Or you get to create your own podcast. All of those things that you’ve been wanting to tick off that you never have enough time for, you get to have back. And it might not even be business related. It might be picking kids up from school or going on the excursion to the zoo.

Or it might be, I just want to sit on my own and read a book. Outsourcing your operations gives you back that time. 

And then the final thing that we’re going to look at Is [00:13:00] outsourcing your operations increases revenue. It gives you more money. Now it’s a little bit backwards because hang on, I have to pay somebody to run my operations.

So how is that making me more money? It sounds like it’s just costing me money, but it is about the kind of person that you bring in. So not only will you be saving time and you’ve got space, but what you do with that space and time generally is going to grow your business. Because even if you don’t make anything new, you’re going to be refreshed.

You’re going to have a whole new outlook on things. It’s not going to be a drag. You’ll start to remember why you did this. You’ll have more ideas. You’ll have more joy. That breeds revenue. 

But aside from that, you also have someone who is highly skilled, who can see the gaps. So when I was saying before, that if you’re running your own operations in a big business, it’s a [00:14:00] little bit haphazard.

There’s a lot going on and you’re just trying to get through it all so that you can get to do what you really want to do. You’re not looking at operations. As a strategically. Looking at operations strategically means looking at the system as a whole. Looking at what’s actually happening and the way that it happens and if it’s happening to the best of its ability.

And It’s identifying any gaps or any opportunities. So if you think about someone whose role is only operations, if they’re good at their job and they enjoy what they’re doing, they are going to start seeing ways to improve. They are going to start seeing things that you will have missed. Hey, we have customers that always ask this question.

Maybe we can send them a video once they buy this product and it explains it. And then maybe We can, instead of following people up when it’s time [00:15:00] to reorder, we can set up automations. Or, at this point in time, this is when people drop off and we stop hearing from them. Maybe we can put something in place.

To get them back to being engaged. Oh, I’ve noticed that when we do this kind of promotion, we get lots of inquiries. I’m getting lots of emails. so There’s all these things that can happen because somebody is in it. And when you’re in something every day and you can see it, you start, you notice when something changes.

If something is different, even if it’s little, you’ll see it because that Is your responsibility. That’s what you’re saying. It’s what you live and you breathe. That’s your role in that organisation. It is not just something where you tick the box and you move on. You tick the box and you move on. It becomes its own goal in a way.

And that’s what gets missed when you’re trying to do operations with everything else. And so you miss the opportunities. To increase client experience, [00:16:00] to make recurring sales, to see gaps in your market that are quite obvious if you’re doing it. To create new systems and build in better efficiency.

You can’t do all of that when operations is just a little bit of your job and the thing you need to get through. I also had a client and they said, no, no, we’ll just give, all the admin stuff to this person. And I was just dumbfounded. I was just like, but how? That person already has a full time role.

They are already stretched so thin. How are they going to take all of this stuff on? And from the client’s perspective, it was just admin stuff. It’s fine. Handed it all over to the person and I got a phone call saying, How am I meant to do all of this stuff? There’s heaps. And I said, I know. And I don’t know how you’re going to do it, because the expectation was unrealistic.

Because even though we can see something as just [00:17:00] admin, it doesn’t end up being that. And if you treat it as just admin, with no objectives around it, and you don’t fully see the role of it within the system. It does become just admin, and it gets done poorly, or not at all. But do it right, and have someone being the glue of everything that happens, and you’ll actually start to get benefit.

And you’ll start to see the revenue from it.

That is how outsourcing your operations. can help you grow your business. It will help you, it will help give you space, time and money. I really hope you’re enjoying this content. If you are, please hop over to whatever platform you are listening to this on and leave me a five star review. That is how other people find this podcast and how I know you’re actually enjoying it.

And if you’ve got questions, send them through. You will find us at [00:18:00] Audacious Empires pretty much everywhere. You can go to audaciousempires.com. And send your questions through, and I will answer it. Thanks so much, everybody. 

​ 

How outsourcing your operations can help your business grow

How outsourcing your operations can help your business grow

by | 20 Feb 2024 | Podcast

Have you ever felt like you’re constantly battling against the clock, trying to juggle numerous tasks at once, all while striving to grow your business? If so, you’re not alone. Many entrepreneurs find themselves in this exact predicament, unaware that the solution might just lie in outsourcing their operations.

This episode shares:

 

  • Outsourcing Context
  • Can you really outsource your operations?
  • How outsourcing your operations can grow your business
  • How outsourcing your operations can give you more space
  • How outsourcing your operations can give you more time
  • How outsourcing your operations can increase revenue

 

Outsourcing Context

 

We need to set some context around what we mean by outsourcing.

There’s lots of different ways that you can outsource and everything that I talk about can also be applied to an internal team, if you’ve got an internal team. But when we’re looking at outsourcing, I am not talking about outsourcing to a junior assistant. I’m talking about outsourcing to an online business manager, a business integrator, an operations consultant, an ops manager, someone who is highly skilled and highly trained. Because the things that I’m going to talk to you about, a junior will not be able to support you in. So I just wanted to give you that context first.

Can you really outsource your operations?

A question that I get asked a lot is, “can you really outsource your operations?”

It’s a day-to-day function. There are lots of moving parts.

Can somebody who is external to a business be that involved in the business? The answer is yes.

I know that it’s possible because I’ve been in that role so many times and there’s not been an issue.

It just might seem a little bit unfamiliar if you’ve not done it before. 

Let me tell you a little story. I was chatting with a new lead a few weeks ago, and they said to me, “I know that I need help, but I just can’t wrap my head around how you can outsource operations.” So we had a conversation about what it could look like, and what the term operations means, how everybody has their own definition. There are a lot of things that happen within a business and majority of them fall into operations. If it is the process of getting something done, usually it’s an operational thing. When you haven’t seen it as an isolated piece, it can be hard for you to picture what it really means. So I spoke to this lead and I explained when we work with businesses, we come in, we set up all of the systems because we are virtual. So although you might not know how it would work communication wise, we do. We use project management tools, we have set meetings and we have different ways that we can chat for different things. So whether that’s WhatsApp or Slack or Voxer to remove roadblocks quickly, we set up the reporting and the job distribution in a certain way so that we can see when things are on track, off track, at risk, all based on what the business’s goals are.

So when you’re treating operations as its own thing, it then has a whole new goal. It’s not just something that happens by accident because it has to happen in your business. After chatting to this lead, they understood and believed it could actually be done.

Then she said, “I think I’m scared. I’ve not done it before and I just need to start somewhere.” So if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, Oh yeah, that’s me. By the end, I hope you have a little bit more understanding on why that risk is worth taking, because I know it’s not one that you can make lightly. It’s your business and you’re invested.

How outsourcing your operations can grow your business

Let me walk you through three main ways outsourcing your operations helps grow your business. The three ways are; space, time and money.

No matter how many conversations I have with people, when they’re looking at outsourcing anything, it always comes down to, at the root of it all, they need more space, they need more time, or they need more money.

Or maybe they don’t need it, but that’s what they want.

It’s about growth in those areas and outsourcing your operations will give you those.

Let’s break each one down.

How outsourcing your operations can give you more space

So how can outsourcing your operations give you more space?

When you’re running operations yourself, it can be very overwhelming.

Managing operations = a lot going on. 

There’s never just a handful of components and we’re good. Things tend to be complex. They might not be complicated, but complex. Which means it takes a lot of energy and thought to keep operations going, let alone to improve them.

So when you’re in this space of running around and keeping things turning and just giving your team what they need so they can keep going so that you’re not the bottleneck, you lose your space.

You lose your air and your freedom.

And can I tell you, when you’re in a state of overwhelm or lots of things coming at you from all different directions, your brain can’t process properly.

I’ve seen that time and time again, when clients are overloaded and they actually can’t process what I’m saying.

I will end a call and then I’ll talk to my team and say, “we’re going to have this conversation again in a couple of days, because there’s no way they’re going to remember that we just had that conversation and that’s the decision that they make.” And I’m right. Every time. Because that’s what overwhelm does.

If you’re stretched too thin, your brain just can’t keep up. That’s just being a human and that’s okay but the consequence of that is, you lose.

All of the ooey gooey good stuff, the reasons that you started this business, the ideas that you have, the goals that now seem so far away because you just cannot reach them.

You keep getting bogged down by everybody else and having to keep the day-to-day moving forward.

Outsourcing your operations removes that overwhelm.

There is somebody else now who becomes that pivotal person where everybody will come to that person and throw things at them. They become, the first point of contact, the first person when there is a problem, the fixer, the gatekeeper. That’s what your ops person becomes. So it’s not you anymore. That creates brain space for you.

Brain space breathes creativity, which is where the magic happens. It’s that space that allows you to innovate. It’s that space that allows you to do the deep thinking and build your business. To be able to differentiate from composition, to be able to reach those goals, to remember the impact that you want to make, and create plans to get there. That’s what space gives you. So outsourcing your operations removes all the noise so that you can have that space.

How outsourcing your operations can give you more time

Time is a little bit different to space.

Something you may know is that operations are a massive time suck. I say that because quite often we don’t see the direct outcome from operations as a whole. We might spend X amount of time answering 5 customer enquiries. You answer them because it’s part of the process and it has to be done. You don’t want to ignore people. But right then, when you’re doing it, all you’re thinking about is, I need to get this done and you don’t then correlate that to the 3 sales that you make in a month because you sent those 5 emails.

So we don’t see that immediate response, or the benefit, we see it as admin and a cost. Which it is a cost, but it’s a cost with a benefit. And there is measurable benefit from that. 

When you’re looking at your business as a whole and you’re trying to make sure the machine is running in all of the right areas, there’s two components. One is you’re trying to make sure it’s humming along. So that means every area has what it’s, what it needs to do its job and is progressing along the right pathway. Let’s think about how much time that might take us.

The second thing is the troubleshooting. I guarantee you all of those cogs are not going to spin with zero issues, 100% of the time. It’s not possible because you’re relying on technology. You’re relying on people and neither of those things are 100% perfect.

When we’re looking at operations and the amount of time it takes, you’ve now got two massive jobs to do. Let’s pull that away.

What if there was somebody else who was monitoring your operations, all of those cogs, all of the tools, all of the people, all of the resources, and making sure they’re running as they should and tracking to their goals?

I think what you’d find is you get a whole lot more time back. It might be time you don’t even realise you’re spending right now.

I know when we started working with one client, we calculated how much time they were spending in operations and it was like five hours a day or something ridiculous. It was so big and it was all of the haphazard, oh gotta do this, gotta do this, gotta do this, gotta do this. They had a big business and they just felt like they weren’t getting anywhere. Their business was successful, but they were working hard and when we came in and we saw that, we reduced that down to their admin time being half an hour a day.

From five hours a day to half an hour.

Purely because that’s what we do every day.

What happened with that time? This is the beauty of getting time back, right? You get to focus on high value tasks. You get to be CEO.

You get to innovate. You get to go and speak more. You get to be on more podcasts. Or you get to create your own podcast.

All of those things that you’ve been wanting to tick off that you never have enough time for, you get to have back.

It might not even be business related. It might be picking kids up from school or going on the excursion to the zoo. Or it might be, I just want to sit on my own and read a book.

Outsourcing your operations gives you back that time. 

How outsourcing your operations increases revenue

It gives you more money. Now it’s a little bit backwards because hang on, I have to pay somebody to run my operations. So how is that making me more money? It sounds like it’s just costing me money, but it is about the kind of person that you bring in.

Not only will you be saving time and you’ve got space, but what you do with that space and time generally is going to grow your business. Because even if you don’t make anything new, you’re going to be refreshed. You’re going to have a whole new outlook on things. It’s not going to be a drag. You’ll start to remember why you did this. You’ll have more ideas. You’ll have more joy. That breeds revenue. 

But aside from that, you also have someone who is highly skilled, who can see the gaps. So when I was saying before, that if you’re running your own operations in a big business, it’s a little bit haphazard, there’s a lot going on and you’re just trying to get through it all so that you can get to do what you really want to do. You’re not looking at operations strategically.

Looking at operations strategically means looking at the system as a whole. Looking at what’s actually happening and the way that it happens and if it’s happening to the best of its ability. It’s identifying any gaps or any opportunities. So if you think about someone whose role is only operations, if they’re good at their job and they enjoy what they’re doing, they are going to start seeing ways to improve. They are going to start seeing things that you will have missed. There’s all these things that can happen because somebody is in it and when you’re in something every day and you can see it, you start, you notice when something changes.

If something is different, even if it’s little, you’ll see it because that is your responsibility. That’s what you’re saying. It’s what you live and you breathe. That’s your role in that organisation. It is not just something where you tick the box and you move on. It becomes its own goal in a way. That’s what gets missed when you’re trying to do operations with everything else. You miss the opportunities to increase client experience, to make recurring sales, to see gaps in your market that are quite obvious if you’re doing it. To create new systems and build in better efficiency.

You can’t do all of that when operations is just a little bit of your job and the thing you need to get through. I also had a client and they said, no, no, we’ll just give, all the admin stuff to this person. I was just dumbfounded. I was just like, but how? That person already has a full time role. They are already stretched so thin. How are they going to take all of this stuff on? From the client’s perspective, it was just admin stuff. It’s fine. Handed it all over to the person and I got a phone call saying, “How am I meant to do all of this stuff? There’s heaps.” 

Even though we can see something as just admin, it doesn’t end up being that. If you treat it as just admin, with no objectives around it, and you don’t fully see the role of it within the system. It does become just admin, and it gets done poorly, or not at all. But do it right, and have someone being the glue of everything that happens, and you’ll actually start to get benefit.

You’ll start to see the revenue from it.

 

 

Wrapping It Up

That is how outsourcing your operations. can help you grow your business. It will help give you space, time and money. I really hope you’re enjoying this content. If you are, please hop over to whatever platform you are listening to this on and leave me a five star review. That is how other people find this podcast and how I know you’re actually enjoying it.

If you’ve got questions, send them through. You will find us at Audacious Empires pretty much everywhere. 

 

 

 

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Follow along with the transcript

Ep 3 How outsourcing your operations can help your business grow

 [00:00:00] Hello, hello, hello. [00:01:00] Thanks for joining me this week on the next episode of the Audacious Empires podcast. I am Leanne Woff and I am super excited to be talking to you about outsourcing. Today we are chatting all things how can outsourcing your operations help you grow your business. Let’s get stuck 

Firstly, We need to set some context around what we mean by outsourcing. So there’s lots of different ways that you can outsource and everything that I talk about in this episode can also be applied to an internal team, if you’ve got an internal team. But when we’re looking at outsourcing, I am not talking about outsourcing to a junior assistant.

I’m talking about outsourcing to an online business manager, a business integrator, an operations consultant, an ops manager, someone who is highly skilled and highly trained.[00:02:00] Because the things that I’m going to talk to you about, a junior will not be able to support you in. So I just wanted to give you that context first.

Alright, the second thing. Is. A question that I get asked a lot is can you really outsource your operations? It’s a day to day function. There are lots of moving parts. How can somebody who is external to a business be that involved in the business? The answer is yes. And I know that it’s possible because I’ve been in that role so many times and there’s not been an issue.

It just might seem a little bit unfamiliar if you’ve not done it before. So, I Want to tell you a little story. I was chatting with a new lead a few weeks ago, and they said to me, I know that I need help, but I just [00:03:00] can’t wrap my head around how you can outsource operations. And so we had a conversation about what it could look like, and what the term operations means.

And how everybody has their own definition. There are a lot of things that happen within a business and majority of them fall into operations. If it is the process of getting something done, usually it’s an operational thing. And when you haven’t seen it as an isolated piece, It can be hard for you to picture what it really means.

And so I spoke to this lead and I explained, you know, when we work with businesses, we come in, we set up all of the systems because we are virtual. So although you might not know how it would work communication wise, we do. And so we do things like we use project management tools and we [00:04:00] have set meetings and we have.

 Different ways that we can chat for different things. So whether that’s WhatsApp or Slack or Voxer to remove roadblocks quickly, we set up the reporting and the job distribution in a certain way so that we can see when things are on track, off track, at risk, like really clearly, all based on what the business’s goals are.

So when you’re treating operations as its own thing, it then has a whole new goal. It’s not just something that happens by accident because it has to happen in your business. And after that When I was chatting to this lead, they were very much okay, got it. I think I’ve wrapped my head around it.

She believed me. It could actually be done. Total one. And then she said, I think it is just, I’m scared. I’ve not done it before and I just need to start somewhere. And so [00:05:00] if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, Oh yeah, that’s me. By the end of this episode, I hope that you have a little bit more understanding.

On why that risk is worth taking, because I know it’s not one that you can make lightly. It’s your business and you’re invested. I’m going to walk you through three main ways outsourcing your operations helps grow your business. The three ways are space, time and money. No matter how many conversations I have with people.

When they’re looking at outsourcing anything, it always comes down to, at the root of it all, they need more space, they need more time, or they need more money. Or maybe they don’t need it, but that’s what they want. It’s about growth in those areas. And outsourcing your operations will give you those.

 Let’s break each one down. So how can outsourcing your operations give you more space? When you are running operations [00:06:00] yourself, It can be very overwhelming. Now, like I said before, managing operations, there is a lot going on. It does not, it’s no small feat managing a, seven figure business.

There’s never just a handful of components and we’re good. Things tend to be complex. They might not be complicated, but complex. And that is okay. But it means it takes a lot of energy and Thought to keep operations going, let alone to improve them. And so when you’re in this space of running around and keeping things turning and just giving your team what they need so they can keep going so that you’re not the bottleneck, you lose your space.

You lose Your air and your freedom. And can I tell you, when you’re in a state of overwhelm or lots of things coming at you from all different directions, your [00:07:00] brain can’t process properly. I’ve seen that time and time again, when clients are overloaded and they actually can’t process what I’m saying.

And I will end a call and then I’ll talk to my team and say, we’re going to have this conversation again in a couple of days, because there’s no way. That they’re going to remember that we just had that conversation and that’s the decision that they make. And I’m right. Every time. Because that’s what overwhelm does.

If you’re stretched too thin, your brain just can’t keep up. That’s just being a human. And that’s okay. But the consequence of that is, you lose. All of the ooey gooey good stuff, the reasons that you started this business, the ideas that you have, the goals that now seem so far away because you just cannot reach them.

 You keep getting bogged down by everybody else and having to keep the day to day moving forward. How does outsourcing your operations give you more space? Outsourcing your operations removes that overwhelm.[00:08:00] There is somebody else now who becomes that pivotal person where everybody will come to that person and throw things at them.

They become, the first point of contact, the first person when there is a problem, the fixer, the gatekeeper. That’s what your ops person becomes. So it’s not you anymore. And it creates brain space. Now brain space breathes.  Creativity, which is where the magic happens. It’s that space that allows you to innovate.

It’s that space that allows you to do the deep thinking and build your business. To be able to differentiate from composition, to be able to reach those goals, to remember the impact that you want to make, and create plans to get there. That’s what space gives you. And so outsourcing your operations removes all the noise so that you can have that space.

Okay, so the next thing. Outsourcing your operations will give you back more [00:09:00] time. Time is a little bit different to space. And something that you may know is that operations are a massive time suck. And I say that because quite often we don’t see the direct outcome. From operations as a whole. We might spend X amount of time answering 5 customer enquiries.

You answer them because it’s part of the process and it has to be done. You don’t want to ignore people. But right then, when you’re doing it, all you’re thinking about is, I need to get this done. And you don’t then correlate that to the 3 sales that you make in a month because you sent those 5 emails.

So we don’t see that immediate response, or the benefit, we see it as admin and a cost. Which it is a cost, but it’s a cost with a benefit. And there is, like, there’s measurable benefit from that. Okay, 

if you have some time back let’s take away All of that coordination, tasking. So when you’re [00:10:00] looking at your business as a whole and you’re trying to make sure the machine is running in all of the right areas, there’s two components. One is you’re trying to make sure it’s humming along. So that means every area has what it’s, what it needs to do its job and is progressing along the right pathway.

So that’s the first thing. Let’s think about how much time that might take us. And then the second thing is the troubleshooting. I guarantee you all of those cogs are not going to spin with a zero issues, 100 percent of the time. The cogs will not spin with zero issues, 100 percent of the time. It’s not possible because you’re relying on technology.

You’re relying on people and neither of those things are 100 percent perfect.

When we’re looking at operations and the amount of time it takes, you’ve now got two massive jobs to [00:11:00] do. Let’s pull that away. What if there was somebody else who was monitoring your operations, all of those cogs, all of the tools, all of the people, all of the resources, and making sure They’re running as they should and tracking to their goals.

I think what you’d find is you get a whole lot more time back. And it might be time that you don’t even realise you’re spending right now. I know when we were working with one client, we started working with them and we calculated how much time they were spending in operations. And it was like five hours a day or something ridiculous.

Like it was so big and it was all of the haphazard, oh gotta do this, gotta do this, gotta do this, gotta do this. They had a big business and They just felt like they weren’t getting anywhere. Their business was successful, but they were working hard. And when we came in and we saw that, we reduced that down to [00:12:00] their admin time being half an hour a day.

From five hours a day to half an hour. Purely because that’s what we do every day. And there was somebody else who could deal with a lot of those things. It did not have to be them. What happened with that time? This is the beauty of getting time back, right? You get to focus on high value tasks. You get to be CEO.

You get to innovate. You get to go and speak more. You get to be on more podcasts. Or you get to create your own podcast. All of those things that you’ve been wanting to tick off that you never have enough time for, you get to have back. And it might not even be business related. It might be picking kids up from school or going on the excursion to the zoo.

Or it might be, I just want to sit on my own and read a book. Outsourcing your operations gives you back that time. 

And then the final thing that we’re going to look at Is [00:13:00] outsourcing your operations increases revenue. It gives you more money. Now it’s a little bit backwards because hang on, I have to pay somebody to run my operations.

So how is that making me more money? It sounds like it’s just costing me money, but it is about the kind of person that you bring in. So not only will you be saving time and you’ve got space, but what you do with that space and time generally is going to grow your business. Because even if you don’t make anything new, you’re going to be refreshed.

You’re going to have a whole new outlook on things. It’s not going to be a drag. You’ll start to remember why you did this. You’ll have more ideas. You’ll have more joy. That breeds revenue. 

But aside from that, you also have someone who is highly skilled, who can see the gaps. So when I was saying before, that if you’re running your own operations in a big business, it’s a [00:14:00] little bit haphazard.

There’s a lot going on and you’re just trying to get through it all so that you can get to do what you really want to do. You’re not looking at operations. As a strategically. Looking at operations strategically means looking at the system as a whole. Looking at what’s actually happening and the way that it happens and if it’s happening to the best of its ability.

And It’s identifying any gaps or any opportunities. So if you think about someone whose role is only operations, if they’re good at their job and they enjoy what they’re doing, they are going to start seeing ways to improve. They are going to start seeing things that you will have missed. Hey, we have customers that always ask this question.

Maybe we can send them a video once they buy this product and it explains it. And then maybe We can, instead of following people up when it’s time [00:15:00] to reorder, we can set up automations. Or, at this point in time, this is when people drop off and we stop hearing from them. Maybe we can put something in place.

To get them back to being engaged. Oh, I’ve noticed that when we do this kind of promotion, we get lots of inquiries. I’m getting lots of emails. so There’s all these things that can happen because somebody is in it. And when you’re in something every day and you can see it, you start, you notice when something changes.

If something is different, even if it’s little, you’ll see it because that Is your responsibility. That’s what you’re saying. It’s what you live and you breathe. That’s your role in that organisation. It is not just something where you tick the box and you move on. You tick the box and you move on. It becomes its own goal in a way.

And that’s what gets missed when you’re trying to do operations with everything else. And so you miss the opportunities. To increase client experience, [00:16:00] to make recurring sales, to see gaps in your market that are quite obvious if you’re doing it. To create new systems and build in better efficiency.

You can’t do all of that when operations is just a little bit of your job and the thing you need to get through. I also had a client and they said, no, no, we’ll just give, all the admin stuff to this person. And I was just dumbfounded. I was just like, but how? That person already has a full time role.

They are already stretched so thin. How are they going to take all of this stuff on? And from the client’s perspective, it was just admin stuff. It’s fine. Handed it all over to the person and I got a phone call saying, How am I meant to do all of this stuff? There’s heaps. And I said, I know. And I don’t know how you’re going to do it, because the expectation was unrealistic.

Because even though we can see something as just [00:17:00] admin, it doesn’t end up being that. And if you treat it as just admin, with no objectives around it, and you don’t fully see the role of it within the system. It does become just admin, and it gets done poorly, or not at all. But do it right, and have someone being the glue of everything that happens, and you’ll actually start to get benefit.

And you’ll start to see the revenue from it.

That is how outsourcing your operations. can help you grow your business. It will help you, it will help give you space, time and money. I really hope you’re enjoying this content. If you are, please hop over to whatever platform you are listening to this on and leave me a five star review. That is how other people find this podcast and how I know you’re actually enjoying it.

And if you’ve got questions, send them through. You will find us at [00:18:00] Audacious Empires pretty much everywhere. You can go to audaciousempires.com. And send your questions through, and I will answer it. Thanks so much, everybody. 

​ 

Creating Outstanding SOPs for your clients

Creating Outstanding SOPs for your clients

by | 16 Feb 2024 | The Audacious OBM Podcast

An SOP stands for Standard Operating Procedure. Rarely will you hear people actually call it that, so let’s just stick to SOPs because it’s easier to say.

Now what does that really mean?

Put simply, it means the way that you do, what you do, how you do it and when. It’s the process of documenting a complete action, task, objective within a business.

You can understand why SOPs are needed if you want to scale. But there’s something I’ve been thinking about lately and that is that there’s scalable SOPs and there’s standard SOPs. A lot of people who will default to standard SOPs just detail how to do the functional aspects of a task, which is okay.

But that kind of SOP isn’t scalable as your business grows and grows. And the reason for that is it hasn’t been included in any systems thinking. It’s not a systems approach, it’s an isolated incident, so it doesn’t actually take into account what might happen when the business expands. How does it impact everything else?

This episode shares:  

  • The difference between “scalable” and “standard” SOPs.
  • The essential elements of an outstanding SOP.
  • How to avoid jargon nightmares and write in plain English. (Think: instructions, not IKEA manuals!)
  • The power of targeted, media-rich SOPs.
  • Accessibility matters! Don’t hide your SOPs in a dusty drawer – integrate them into your workflow.
  • Make it flexible and future-proof

Scalable SOPs vs Standard SOPs

What is a Scalable SOP, and what do they have?

Scalable SOPs are clear. With an SOP, we want to be clear in what it is it’s going to include, who it’s for, when are we going to use it, how is this thing done.

Having an unclear SOP means that the person picking up that SOP and trying to understand the context, let alone how to do the task, is going to be very confused. With confusion comes poor quality execution. This is why SOPs need to be clear and concise. We want them to be specific. We want them to be understandable.

Because they have a purpose. We’re not just doing it to have something in there so that potentially one day we can sell the business. We want these SOPs to work for us.

Tip💡:  Engage in frequent reviews of your existing SOPs with a diverse team to ensure they reflect current practices and incorporate systemic thinking. Always ask, “How does this SOP fit within our broader goals and operations?”

The Essential Elements of an Outstanding SOP

Great SOPs are structured.

If we go back to our systems thinking principle, we’re going to have more than one SOP in our business, aren’t we? We’re going to have an SOP for all the different things that have to happen. Something that I know about the human brain is that we are creatures of habit.

When we see things that feel the same, look the same, sound the same, we feel at ease. We consume information better. We want our SOPs all to have the same structure so that when somebody picks it up, it feels familiar. All of a sudden, their brain goes into, oh yeah, I know how to do this and what you’ll see is that the output is better.

Usually you will create a template, and that template will be used across all SOPs. I know when we’re working with clients, and if they ask us to update their SOPs or to implement SOPs because they’ve got none, we will always create the template first, or we’ll review theirs. Because consistency is important. Structure is important.

If you don’t have the right things included, well, all of them aren’t going to be very good, are they? Generally, SOPs will have the purpose, the scope, who the user is, so who is it that’s going to pick this up and use this SOP, when it was created, and a version number of some kind.

Plus, then it’ll have the actual process, just in case you missed that bit out.

Tip💡: Design your SOPs with future growth in mind. This means regularly revisiting and updating them as your business evolves. Consider scalability from the get-go to ensure SOPs can easily adapt to changes.

 

How to avoid Jargon Nightmares and write in Plain English

Scalable SOPs are written in plain English. We want to write SOPs in a way that anybody can understand, specifically the person who’s going to be using it.

They include minimal jargon.

There is nothing worse when you’re trying to learn something new or do something you don’t normally do and you can’t even understand the instructions. It’s like when you open up a new toy and you have to build it for your kid and it’s in another language. All of a sudden this task went from real easy to stressful.

Plain English people, and we want to have clear sentences. We don’t want fancy, we don’t want anything that isn’t necessary included in this process.

Tip💡:  Less is More. Aim for simplicity and specificity in your SOPs. Use bullet points, numbered steps, and clear, concise language to make them easy to follow. Complicated SOPs are more likely to be misunderstood or ignored.

 

Targeted, Media-Rich SOPs

Scalable SOPs are targeted.

They are written in a way that is for a specific purpose, a specific reason. They’re for a narrowed-down task.

You don’t write SOPs for big conceptual thinking or broad functions.

The SOP for, “how our business operates”, would just be like a thousand page document that still doesn’t cover everything. That’s it. So they need to be targeted. They don’t have to be so targeted that it’s ridiculous, and this is how you pick up the pen to write the note to send to the client. But we want them to be targeted to a specific task.

Scalable SOPs are presented with relevant media.

I get asked a lot what’s the right thing to use to create an SOP and there’s no answer to that. This takes a little bit of thinking on your part. Look at what the task is and think about the different resources that you have available to you. What makes the most sense to document this process?

It might be a combination of a written SOP and a video. It might be a written SOP, a video, and it might also have screen grabs. It really depends on what the task is. It might be diagrams and flowcharts. There’s all different ways and what we want to do is take into consideration all the different elements, all the different tools at our disposal.

The other thing that we want to do is when we’re creating SOPs, if we are using external media, if we are using videos, if we are using pictures, we want to make sure that we reference them properly within the written SOP so that people know what it applies to.

Go and look at this video, the diagram below, explaining the purpose of that different media.

Tip💡: Review a current process you have and identify who is needed for this process (think people), what type of media is needed to support the SOP and big picture, what happens before this task or action must take place and what happens after 

 

Accessibility Matters!

Scalable SOPs are also accessible. This one is hilarious because we spend all this time creating these SOPs and then sometimes we forget to share them with people.

SOPs are no good if they’re hidden in a cupboard that nobody can open or even knows that that cupboard exists.

We need to build SOPs into our day-to-day processes. It needs to be how we train people. It needs to be something we talk about. It needs to be, hey, there’s a new one available, go check it out.

For the people it’s relevant to, I understand that there might be some confidentiality issues. Maybe you don’t want anyone not in the finance team reviewing finance SOPs. Totally okay. But think about that and think about the permissions and think about how to give people access to what they need.

Tip💡: Standardise Your SOP Format. Create or adopt a template that will be used for all SOPs in your organization. Consistency in format helps users familiarize themselves quickly, reducing the learning curve and increasing compliance.

 

Make it Flexible and Future-Proof

Scalable SOPs are researched.

I don’t mean sitting on Google for hours and hours or going through journals or, doing extensive university scale research. No, I’m talking about contextually doing the research.

If you’re writing an SOP and there’s six different job roles within a business that this might impact, make sure you run that SOP by those people. Make sure you consider each of their perspectives as you’re creating this SOP. Otherwise, your SOP is not scalable. It’s from one perspective in a certain way that works in a certain circumstance and isn’t very flexible and that’s not what we want. We want one that’s going to consider all the parties involved and for them to be consulted so that the SOP meets all of the criteria and is then tested and reviewed. Because that SOP is going to last so much longer than one that is just done from one person’s perspective with a whole bunch of tasks

Tip💡: Collaborate for Coverage. Before finalising an SOP, consult with individuals across different roles that the SOP impacts. This collaborative approach ensures your SOP addresses all necessary perspectives and is as comprehensive and effective as possible.

And… that’s a wrap!

 

That’s all there is to creating outstanding SOPs. It is more about the way you go about putting together, rather than it needs to be, Times New Romans font size 11 with 1. 15 spacing and left aligned. No. It’s all about the things that go in it and how you pull that together. But the biggest thing that I want to talk to you about is context.

Scalable SOPs nail context. Who’s using it? Why are they using it? For what scenario? And for what scenario would this not be appropriate? And communicating that. That’s the bit that gets missed so much and it causes problems. Whereas if you can write and you can show what the context is, your SOP is gonna have longer legs.

It’ll have a longer life, lifespan. It’ll be easier to use. It’ll be higher quality. And that’s it. If this seems a little bit intimidating or you haven’t done it this way before, then just give it a go. It’s all about practice. Like any other skill in business, anything else that you’re learning, practice, practice, practice, and then it will make sense.

If you’re looking for a filler SOP template, hop on over here and grab out SOP template, including a tutorial video that you can purchase that will get you all over it so that you can be confident when creating outstanding SOPs.

Thanks everybody. Have a great day.

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Follow along with the transcript

E35 Creating Outstanding SOPs for your clients

Leanne Woff: Hey, welcome to this week’s episode of The Audacious OBM. Today I want to talk to you [00:01:00] about SOPs. How do we create SOPs? How do we get them right? What do they look like? What do we include? Good SOP versus bad SOP. Today’s episode is all about creating outstanding SOPs for your clients. Let’s get into the basics.

An SOP stands for Standard Operating Procedure. Rarely will you hear people actually call it that, so let’s just stick to SOPs because it’s easier to say. Now what does that really mean? Put simply, it means the way that you do, what you do, how you do it and when. It’s the process of documenting a complete action, task, objective within a business.

You can understand why SOPs are needed if you want to scale.[00:02:00] But there’s something I’ve been thinking about lately and that is that there’s scalable SOPs and there’s standard SOPs. A lot of people who will default to standard SOPs just detail how to do the functional aspects of a task, which is okay.

But that kind of SOP isn’t scalable as your business grows and grows. And the reason for that is it hasn’t been included in any systems thinking. It’s not a systems approach, it’s an isolated incident, so it doesn’t actually take into account what might happen when the business expands. How does it impact everything else?

It’s just, here’s the task, here’s how to do it. Off you go. In this episode, I’m gonna be talking about creating scalable SOPs.

What is a Scalable SOP, and. What do they have? Scalable [00:03:00] lalalable, jeez, I am going to Why did I include that word?

Scalable SOPs are clear. With an SOP, we want to be clear in what it is it’s going to include, who it’s for, when are we going to use it, how is this thing done.

Having an unclear SOP means that the person picking up that SOP and trying to understand the context, let alone how to do the task, Is going to be very confused. And with confusion comes poor quality execution. This is why SOPs need to be clear and concise. We want them to be specific. We want them to be understandable.

Because they have a purpose. We’re not just doing it to have something in there so that potentially one day we can sell the business. We want these SOPs to work for us.

Great SOPs also [00:04:00] are structured. If we go back to our systems thinking principle, we’re going to have more than one SOP in our business, aren’t we? We’re going to have an SOP for all the different things that have to happen. Something that I know about the human brain is that we are creatures of habit.

When we see things that feel the same, look the same, sound the same, we feel at ease. We consume information better. We want our SOPs all to have the same structure so that when somebody picks it up, it feels familiar. All of a sudden, their brain goes into, oh yeah, I know how to do this. And what you’ll see is that the output is better.

SOPs, usually you will create a template, and that template will be used across all SOPs. I know when we’re working with clients, and if they ask us to update their SOPs or to implement SOPs because they’ve got none, we will always create the template first, or we’ll review theirs. Because consistency is important.

[00:05:00] That structure is important. And if you don’t have the right things included, well, all of them aren’t going to be very good, are they? Generally, SOPs will have the purpose, the scope, who the user is, so who is it that’s going to pick this up and use this SOP, when it was created, and a version number of some kind.

Plus, then it’ll have the actual process, just in case you missed that bit out.

Scalable SOPs are written in plain English. We want to write SOPs in a way that anybody can understand, specifically the person who’s going to be using it. So that person that this is designed for.

They include minimal jargon. There is nothing worse when you’re trying to learn something new or do something you don’t normally do and you can’t even understand the instructions. It’s like when you open up a new toy and you have to build it for your kid and it’s in another language. And all of a sudden this task went from real easy [00:06:00] to stressful.

Plain English people, and we want to have clear sentences. We don’t want fancy, we don’t want anything that isn’t necessary included in this process. Scalable SOPs are targeted. So they are written in a way that is for a specific purpose, a specific reason. It’s for a, a narrowed down task. You don’t write SOPs for big conceptual thinking or broad functions.

The SOP for how our business operates. That would just be like a thousand page document that still doesn’t cover everything. That’s it. So they need to be targeted. They don’t have to be so target targeted that it’s ridiculous, and this is how you pick up the pen to write the note to send to the client.

But we want them to be targeted to a specific [00:07:00] task. Scalable SOPs are presented with relevant media. I get asked a lot what’s the right thing to use to create an SOP? And there’s no answer to that. This takes a little bit of thinking on your part. Look at what the task is and think about the different resources that you have available to you.

What makes the most sense to document this process? It might be a combination of a written SOP and a video. It might be a written SOP, a video, and it might also have screen grabs. It really depends on what the task is. It might be diagrams and flowcharts. There’s all different ways and what we want to do is take into consideration all the different elements, all the different tools at our disposal.

And make an SOP that is clear, concise, and [00:08:00] easy to pick up and use. The other thing that we want to do is when we’re creating SOPs, if we are using external media, if we are using videos, if we are using pictures, we want to make sure that we reference them properly within the written SOP so that people know what it applies to.

Go and look at this video, the diagram below, explaining the purpose of that different media. Scalable SOPs are also accessible. This one is hilarious because we spend all this time creating these SOPs and then sometimes we forget to share them with people. SOPs are no good if they’re hidden in a cupboard that nobody can open or even knows that that cupboard exists.

So we need to build SOPs into our day to day processes. It needs to be how we train people. It needs to be something we talk about. It needs to be, hey, there’s a new one available, go check it out.[00:09:00] For the people it’s relevant to, I understand that there might be some confidentiality issues. Maybe you don’t want anyone not in the finance team reviewing finance SOPs.

Totally okay. But think about that and think about the permissions and think about how to give people access to what they need. And the final thing is that scalable SOPs are researched. And I don’t mean sitting on Google for hours and hours or going through journals or, doing extensive university scale research. No, I’m talking about contextually doing the research. So if you’re writing an SOP and there’s, six different job roles within a business that this might impact, make sure you run that SOP by those people. Make sure that you consider each of their perspectives as you’re creating this SOP.

Otherwise, your SOP is not scalable. [00:10:00] It’s from one perspective in a certain way that works in a certain circumstance and isn’t very flexible and that’s not what we want. We want one that’s going to consider all the parties involved and for them to be consulted so that the SOP meets all of the criteria and is then tested and reviewed.

Because that SOP is going to last so much longer than one that is just done from one person’s perspective with a whole bunch of tasks.

So that’s it. That’s all there is to creating outstanding SOPs. It is more about the way you go about putting together, rather than it needs to be, Times New Romans font size 11 with 1. 15 spacing and left aligned. No. It’s all about the things that go in it and how you pull that together. But the biggest thing that I want to talk to you about Is [00:11:00] context.

Scalable SOPs nail context. Who’s using it? Why are they using it? For what scenario? And for what scenario would this not be appropriate? And communicating that. That’s the bit that gets missed so much and it causes problems. Whereas if you can write and you can show what the context is, your SOP is gonna have longer legs.

It’ll have a longer life, lifespan. It’ll be easier to use. It’ll be higher quality. And that’s it. If this seems a little bit intimidating or you haven’t done it this way before, then just give it a go. It’s all about practice. Like any other skill in business, anything else that you’re learning, practice, practice, practice, and then it will make sense.

And if you’re looking for a filler SOP template, Hop on over to [00:12:00] the Audacious Empires website audaciousempires. com or check out the show notes as I have an SOP template, including a tutorial video that you can purchase that will get you all over it so that you can be confident when creating outstanding SOPs.

Thanks everybody. Have a great day. [00:13:00]