Systems Start with a Strong Foundation
Building systems can feel super overwhelming if you don’t know where to start.
And while starting with a new, shiny AI automation or software tool might feel like it’s going to fix everything, it’s ultimately a magic-bullet “solution” that can create chaos if there isn’t a strong foundation underneath it.
When I talk about building a foundation, I actually mean identifying and intentionally designing the foundation you’ve already built. That means getting clear on:
1. What Direction You’re Heading In
To define what direction you’re heading in and set some guardrails around how you’ll get there, at minimum you need to have defined the following about your organization:
Mission statement
Vision statement
Core values
Ideal client
Business boundaries
Short-term goals
Long-term goals
Even if you’ve never taken the time to define or document them, they inherently exist in your organization and shape your culture every day.
2. The Primary Functions in Your Organization
These are also called departments in larger organizations. Think of them as “categories” for the types of work that take place (Sales, Marketing, Accounting, etc.). These also exist whether or not you’ve defined them, and they’re shaping your team’s roles and how they move through the day-to-day.
3. Your Core Processes
The core activities you execute daily, weekly, monthly, and annually to bring your business plan and vision to life. Your core processes include the way you conduct sales calls, onboard clients, deliver services, market your business, handle your bookkeeping and accounting, manage human resources, and more.
You guessed it–these also exist, even if you’ve never taken the time to define or document them. And if they’re being executed without intention, there’s a good chance your team and clients are experiencing inconsistencies.
4. The Core Software Tools That Manage Your Processes
These are all of the software tools utilized in your organization. This is everything from your company-wide tools to the project management tool that’s only used by a few team members–and everything in between. In a modern organization, a significant number of core processes are managed by these tools.
You may have a decent idea of which tools are floating around in your organization, but just about every time we do this exercise with clients, they end up forgetting to list at least a few. We even forgot about one ourselves when we initially did the exercise!
Why These Foundations Are So Important
Once you’re clear on these, you’ll be able to leverage this foundation to get your team rowing in the same direction and keep them there.
Now that we’ve defined what each foundation is, let’s talk a bit more about why identifying and intentionally designing each of them is important.
The Direction You’re Heading In
Ever tried driving around a new city without a map? Or even going to a new area of your existing city without one?
Running your business without directional foundations like your mission, vision, core values, ideal client, business boundaries, and goals is a recipe for misalignment.
While you may know them inherently, your team needs to be on the same page to make sure all of the decisions they make and actions they take are aligned.
Missing these in your operations may not create a ton of friction in the short-term, but it is guaranteed to send you off track in the long-term, just like driving around a new city without a map.
Your Primary Functions
When you have a small team, you often don’t need official “departments” that segment the functions of your organization. But when these functions haven’t been defined, it can lead to a specific operational problem that we see pretty often in small businesses–burnout.
This specific variety of burnout comes from the fact that team member responsibilities often end up spread across multiple functions when the functions haven’t been defined. Sometimes, this is necessary in a small business because there just aren’t enough team members to go around–and it especially happens with the owner’s role in the early days of the business.
But the context switching it creates can take a real toll on everyone’s mental loads. This phenomenon is the exact reason you can work a full workday and not remember anything you did. The lack of focus in any one area can be absolutely disorienting!
Your Core Processes
Getting clear on your core processes is what facilitates consistency and continuity in how you operate. This also allows you to effectively build systems to support your operations, which further supports consistency and continuity–not to mention that it facilitates delegation to team members, something you must do if you want to get off the hamster wheel as a business owner.
Having clarity about your core processes is also what allows you to incorporate AI into your operations–something that we all know is necessary, but can often be overwhelming when processes aren’t clear.
Your Core Software Tools
Software tools are what run the good majority of the core processes in a modern business, and many business owners surprisingly don’t have a good inventory of the tools they use.
Yes, you can find out many of them by checking bank or credit card statements, but those statements don’t list the free subscriptions you or your team have signed up for, nor do they tell the full picture of what you’re paying for without combing through an entire year’s worth of statements.
Getting clear on your core software tools allows you to easily look for overlapping features that cause software bloat, track which team members have access to each tool, and track things like which payment cards are used for each subscription so that you have clarity when your payment cards inevitably expire or are otherwise replaced.
Assemble Your Foundation
At the end of the day, these four foundations aren't separate checkboxes; they're layers that build on top of each other.
Your direction shapes what functions you actually need.
Your functions shape the processes that live inside them.
Your processes determine which software tools are worth keeping around (and which ones are just adding to the bloat).
Skip any one of these layers, and the ones built on top of it end up shaky. That new project management tool won't fix a process nobody's actually defined. And a beautifully defined process won't matter much if it's not pointed toward where you're actually trying to go.
And the good news is that you don't have to overhaul everything at once. Most of this foundation already exists in your business right now–you just haven't written it down yet. The work isn't creating something new from scratch; it's getting intentional about what's already there.
If you’d like to learn about how to organize your business foundations, join us at our next Last Friday virtual workshop on Friday, August 28th at 12 pm CT! We’ll share our Operations Canvas micro-tool, which was designed to help you track and analyze this critical information and ensure it’s AI-ready when you need an outside perspective from your favorite LLM.