🔦 The 3 documents of every BizOps Initiative
Hint: they are also the backbone of our operating model
Today we are zooming in on the three documents you should absolutely have for any BizOps-led initiative. I will define “initiative” (vs a “project” or a “hot fix”) as any cross-functional motion that starts as new or goes through a notable transformation. This could be launching a new market, adding another ICP, changing your business model and so on.
The three documents codify the three pillars of our operating model. Our model is a perpetual loop of:
Strategic Problem Solving: the analytical backbone of our work, thought-through the strategic argument lenses.
Journey Management: the customer, and internal customer journey, i.e. how our customers currently experience our company’s footprint (GTM, product, etc), and what our internal stakeholders go through servicing those customers.
Operational Excellence: the tools, processes, and data flows that make our work possible.
I. We start in the middle pillar: the Journey.
We start by understanding the customer journey and our internal stakeholders’ journeys. What is the status quo? For example, what are the ways a customer can find out about our company, and how do our SDRs qualify those leads? What is the SDRs day to day habit, what are the steps they follow, what are their blockers and how have they used their creativity to do more with less?
These are the steps we take to complete the journey:
Mapping the Journey: Begin by mapping out the entire process, detailing every step for every involved party.
Identifying Pain Points: Highlight areas of friction or inefficiency in the journey.
Validation of Assumptions: Validate assumptions about each step, confirming what works and what doesn't. I separate the assumptions in three types: feasibility, adoptability, and desirability.
This results in a new (or updated) Internal Customer Journey. Like this one I spoke about back in October:
Document No 1: the Journey
II. Then we turn to the pillar of: Ops Excellence.
During your work on the ICJ you might have noted assumptions on feasibility. In my experience, often this comes down to measurement and enablement:
do we have the data? if Yes, lovely. If No,
can we obtain the data?
can we obtain it historically? or only from date of measure implementation?
what capture tool will be source of truth?
how will it propagate through the organisation?
do we have the tools? if Yes, great. If No,
do need new tools now?
how will their function fit with the existing ones’?
how can we automate, and do we want to do so, their integration?
do we have the processes needed? if Yes, awesome. If No,
how much training should we plan for?
what format would this need to take?
do we need a new process or will people’s usage of tools be self-explanatory?
The result is a flow chart, with enough depth to answer questions your GTM, SBO, Product, and Eng departments would ask.
Document No 2: the Data Flowchart
III. Pulling together the narrative: the strategic argument
After we have looked at the full Journey and investigated the state of our data and how we measure things, we can go ahead and do some strategy work. The data analysis, coupled with your company goals will give you the most important part of the narrative: the Why. Why are you embarking on a new initiative in the first place? Why should the sales person who never thought about this get on this journey with you? Why would the engineer spending time QAing code care about this? The Why is your rallying cry. Then we go simple:
WHY — why the context and challenge call for something that needs doing / examining / changing?
WHAT — what is the action / change across the org we will undertake?
HOW — how are we going to do it for our organization? What tools and processes are changes?
The biggest value a Strategy/Biz Ops team provides is analysing, aligning cross functionally, and often carrying out the execution of the How.
The result is a strategy document with these sections, following a rigorous problem solving exercise. Here is an example:
Document No 3: the Strategic Argument
Every large initiative which requires our Strategy & Business Operations to get involved and drive the work results in these three Documents. Whether they are fully fleshed out in great detail, or serve as temporary MVP of sorts, we always have them. They are our brain, so that we can focus on the work.
As always, if you have questions or comments about this article, please connect with me here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vessclewley