The biz of Biz Ops - eyeing scale
The biz of Biz Ops - eyeing scale
In this article I discuss what a Biz Ops leader should pay attention to when preparing for scale
Diamonds form under high pressure and temperature.
Natural diamonds were carbon 1-3.5 billion years ago; mostly formed 150-200km in the Earth’s mantle; in temperatures of above 4000 C degrees. Doesn’t sound even remotely comfortable. I am glad I am not carbon.
Something similar happens to a growing early stage company. Thankfully not over billions of years, and not underground, but definitely in what sometimes might feel like 4000 C degrees!
External and internal forces can put tremendous pressure on a business. You add people, grow your operations, develop organisational sophistication in multiple areas - from eng to product, to legal. If you are at least mentally prepared, you can turn your carbon into a diamond. 💎
While growing, here are a number of things that change:
Biz Ops gets involved (over time, not all at once) into all of these, depending on the severity and business impact. For this article, I wanted to focus on the broken processes as these can be tricky to know if they are nasty things that stop your growth, or if countered, if they would become over engineered processes no-one follows.
Here are three rules for setting your processes to be juuuust right:
Time horizon: think about what volume, speed, and accuracy you need from a process 1-1.5 years from now. Especially post 100 people / $10m ARR things can change too fast. Your financial plans should be a good indicator what to expect. Then check your systems for bottle necks and what would break and when. If you can handle increased demand with the same systems for a year, maybe don’t change.
Cost: adding a new piece of shiny software might look and feel slick, but if it is too expensive, it might be better to leave it as a manual piece of work for now. The benefit of hiring someone junior and bringing them up through the org would pay for itself when they help with some of the manual stuff now, and 6-12 months when you implement that shiny tool they can move up, and there wouldn’t be any need to onboard them.
Interdependencies: processes are as good as the people who use them. If your invoicing software can’t sync properly with your accounting system and takes more work for your accountant to complete their rev rec, well that’s not particularly useful. Start with the requirements of parts of the system you can’t (or should not) change and design the rest from there.
You can download the full list of changes framework with one liners - here.
At the end of day, fewer tools are better than more tools - it is simpler, and cheaper. And if no-one is using your process, it’s not them. Either, it’s the process; or it’s the communication about the process; or the process is not needed in the first place.
When you pay attention to that list of changes, pressure becomes an opportunity to grow stronger. Don’t jump the gun and over engineer and add costs. But don’t wait so long that the pressure breaks you. Use the pressure and learn to shine!
To continue the conversation, connect with me here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ignatova/