Clockwork: Design Your Business to Run Itself

by Mike Michalowicz

notepads. The “Don’t Break the Chain” method,

In other words, a business that runs like clockwork is about selective efficiency, not mass productivity.

The Survival Trap is what I call that never-ending cycle of reacting to whatever comes up in your business—be it a problem or an opportunity—in order to move on. It’s a trap because as we respond to what is urgent rather than what is important, we get the satisfaction of fixing a problem.

In fact, every business at every stage has all the systems it needs. Those systems simply need to be captured, trashed, transferred, and/or trimmed.

Make the Commitment—Devote your process to serve a specific consumer need in a specific way.

The biggest cause of business inefficiency is variability. The more services you provide to a wider mix of customers, the more variability you have, and the harder it becomes to provide extraordinary and consistent services.

Stop asking “How do I get more done?” and start asking, “What are the most important things to get done?” and “Who will get this work done?”

Mike@OperationVacation.me

while your business will always have a mix of all four Ds, our goal is to get you, the entrepreneur, Doing less and Designing more.

Navigating the terrain of growing an organization needs a designer who looks beyond the constant stream of challenges and opportunities immediately in front of them and instead charts a path to success.

According to Daniel S. Vacanti, author of Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability: An Introduction, more than 85 percent of a project’s life span is spent in queue, waiting for something or someone.

While waiting time is inefficient, it’s also exhausting. If we can reduce waiting time, we can improve growth—and gain sanity.

“First, you assign a task. Then you assign the responsibility. Then you ask them to own the results. Finally, you ask them to own the outcome, which is repeated results over time.”

What could you accomplish if your staff was not focused on completing tasks, but on delivering outcomes for your company?

You will delegate until you hire a delegator, whose Primary Job is to continually empower the team to make on-the-field decisions and protect you while you do the Design work.

The ideal mix for a company is 80 percent (Doing), 2 percent (Deciding), 8 percent (Delegating), and 10 percent (Designing).

TIME ANALYSIS WORKSHEET

Many solopreneurs fall into the trap of having 95 percent or more of their time allocated to Doing. They are living in a time-for-money trap—the Survival Trap—where the only way to grow is by Doing more, but you can’t, because there is no time.

The next time you dare to say “my business can’t be streamlined” or “I need to do all the work,” take a pause. You are lying to yourself.

that are special to them, but 90 percent of their business is the same as everyone else’s. So is mine. So is yours.

“If you had no money at all, what work would you want to do to support yourself?” When the answer to both questions is the same, you have found your direction.

If we know we’re going to be away for four weeks without access to our business, we’ll do whatever it takes to get it ready for our absence. If we don’t commit to the vacation, we’ll take our own sweet time getting through the streamlining steps, and since we’re humans, we’ll probably stop before it offers us any lasting relief.

their buzzness (I swear I will only do that once)

The Primary Job takes precedence over all other tasks . . . unless the company’s QBR is in trouble, in which case you will revert to protect and serve it.

You know the saying “Don’t busy the quarterback with passing out the Gatorade”? This is because the QBR is so important.

I have only one action step for you: Identify and declare your QBR and who is serving it.

Then you will know which tasks the person(s) serving the QBR needs to offload to someone else, which tasks need to be automated, and which tasks need to be dumped.

Now, starting with the tasks that are the furthest away from the QBR, determine for each whether you can trash it, transfer it to someone else (delegate), or trim it.

Whomever you transfer those necessary but distracting tasks to—another person on your staff or a freelancer—will be protecting the QBR by taking care of them and ensuring they don’t come back on your plate.

As you go through this exercise, what do you do if you encounter tasks that are transferable, but there isn’t anyone to transfer them to? That is often a signal to make a hire.

The goal is to have a few expensive skilled team members at your business, focused almost exclusively on doing the most skilled work, and transferring all the other necessary, but easy, repeating tasks down the skill chain.

First, evaluate a task and determine whether you can trash it. Does it support a necessary objective of the business? Does it add measurable value to your clients or to your team?

he is using an expensive resource (himself) to do inexpensive work. This is a big indicator that the QBR is not being protected.

She used a daily huddle to highlight how people were making both big and small improvements, and empowered employees to learn from one another. She had employees share best practices.

When you serve the QBR, you are the heart of the organization. When you choose to have others serve the QBR, you become the soul of the organization.

hara-kiri

Attract, Convert, Deliver, and Collect (ACDC),

So on a sharing platform that your team can access, like a cloud-based drive, create a directory called SYSTEMS. Under that directory, create four more: ATTRACT, CONVERT, DELIVER, COLLECT.

This is where you give them the answer, and now request that they make the next, new and improved, video. That is right. They start working on improving the system right away, and by recording they become the teacher.

The key is to always have one person accountable to the outcome.

You devise what your team needs to do and task it to them (that’s the first 10 percent). Then, they do 80 percent of the work, and the remaining 10 percent is still you making decisions and measuring results. Scott explained how this is just a trap. Either you have none of it or you have all of it.

The first stage is giving tasks (but you still make decisions). The second stage is giving responsibility to make decisions (but they don’t own the result they are trying to achieve). The third stage is allowing determination of the result of tasks (but they don’t own the outcome, which is the benefit it will deliver to the company). And the fourth stage is getting employees to own

the outcome.

Then, after the decisions and actions have been carried out, for anything with significant outcomes—either positive or negative—do a debrief and have the employee share what they have learned and what they will do differently the next time. Always do the debrief after they make and execute on a decision.

How do you empower someone to make decisions? Brace yourself—you must reward mistakes.

“Hey, the outcome was not what we expected, but I am proud of you for making a decision to move us forward. I want you to keep at it and move us forward. Tell me, what can I do to serve you?,”

“You need to know what people are inherently strong at, and then match them to the role in your business where they are applying that strength as much as possible.” In other words, if you measure a fish by how well it can climb a tree and a monkey by how long it can breathe underwater, you have set up both for failure.

“What are the three favorite things you

have ever done at work?” “If you were able to have any job on the planet, doing anything you want, what would you do?” “Ten years from now, what is the perfect job you see yourself doing?” “If you had all the money in the world, and simply wanted to work for the joy of working, what would you do?” Seek out their interests. Seek out their hobbies. Seek what gives them joy. Because if it gives them joy, it is usually their strength.

That is the goal of a Clockwork company—that the company runs itself without any dependency on you, all while serving you with the money it creates.