How to build a business operating system (B.O.S.)

If you’re a business owner, you’ve probably heard of a business operating system. It’s a framework and set of practices a business implements to make their operations more streamlined and consistent. There are many business operating systems out in the world, and a lot of information about which would benefit a business like yours. 

But the main question you’re probably asking about building a business operating system — is it really worth it?

Why you should implement a B.O.S.

You may be considering a B.O.S. implementation for a variety of reasons — to reclaim time in your day, to cut down on chaos at work, or to optimize your operations for better growth. We’ve seen that whatever your starting point, the business impact of implementing a B.O.S. framework is huge. 

Our founding partners give a lot of credit to the framework they implemented at BrightGauge, their previous company. After implementing a framework, BrightGauge operations got a lot smoother, and they were able to sell the company for a nice price when they were ready to exit.

And it’s not just the Strety team! Our customers have found that B.O.S. implementation has huge business impacts. Ian Groves at Start Tech had this to say about implementing a B.O.S.:

The impact has been enormous. We've tripled our revenue and doubled the size of our team in the past five years — astronomical growth compared to the first nineteen years of the business. And that’s mainly because of the framework we’ve implemented. 

If you’re thinking about implementing a business operating system, you probably already know it can help. We’re here to tell you that for us and for many other business operators like us, it has helped immeasurably!

How to implement a business operating system

Once you decide to implement, the biggest hurdle is getting started. It can feel overwhelming and like you’ll have to turn your whole business upside down at once. Not so! You can (and should) chip away at your implementation in a way that works for you and your team.  We recommend getting one piece or tool locked in, then moving on to the others.

A note: a lot of people really benefit from having a coach or guide help them implement their new framework. It can be invaluable to have an objective, outside perspective on how your business is really doing, and the things you should prioritize to move the needle.

Whether your business is investing in a coach or not, read on to get an overview of the steps involved in implementing a new business framework. The more information you have, the better decision you’ll make about what’s best for your team!

1. Start with meetings

Pretty much every business operating system out there, including EOS® and Pinnacle, have meetings as a front-and-center tool of their business operating system. If you’ve ever been a part of a company with a mediocre or bad meeting culture, it’s easy to see why. Bad meetings are time-consuming, demoralizing, and prone to confusion. Plus, they take you away from what you consider your “real work.”

We like to suggest starting with meetings as a jumping-in point for implementing a business operating system because it gives you a quick win (better meetings) and leads naturally to your other tools, setting you up for long-term success.

Every good business operating system has a meeting agenda that will help you keep on track and integrate your other B.O.S. tools into your workflow. Here’s an example of a meeting agenda in Strety:

Let’s break this down!

Segue: where we check in attendees and answer a quick question. Usually, we talk about how our week was personally and professionally. This helps everyone drop in to the meeting and connect with each other.

Scorecards: where each of us checks in about any metrics we’re tracking. If any metrics merit discussion, we create an Issue to discuss it in that section of the meeting.

Rocks: where we check in about our bigger goals. For our team, this is often either a large project or a numerical goal for the quarter, like signing X many new customers this quarter. Again, if any of the rocks need further discussion, we create an Issue of it.

Headlines: where we check in about company news. This is where we usually share things like upcoming time off, quick updates about how a conference went, or any other news that our team needs to share.

To Dos: where we check in about tasks that the team has on deck, making sure everything’s on track.

Issues: the “meat and potatoes” of our meetings! This is where we do our best problem-solving. We talk about what exactly the issue is, uncover the root cause of the issue, discuss how we can solve it, and create a resolution and next steps, usually in the form of To Dos to guide us exactly where to go next.

Conclusion: We wrap up the meeting, confirm our next steps and To Dos, and rate the meeting. We rate and leave feedback on our meetings so we can hold each other accountable and aim for ever-better meetings!

When you first start out and don’t have the whole suite of B.O.S. tools implemented, you could use the headlines section to share the news you’d normally share in a weekly meeting, and the issues section to discuss any blockers. Just getting into the rhythm of a consistent meeting with time limits and priorities on each section will help you move faster. Plus, once you start using a meeting agenda like this, it’ll naturally encourage the development of your other B.O.S. tools, starting with issues.

2. Issues

Issues, topics, blockers… whatever you want to call them — these are the heart of your business operating system’s problem-solving capabilities. Sometimes an issue is created from one of your other tools. For example, creating an issue out of a missed goal. Sometimes the issue has a different source, like a customer request.

Wherever the issue comes from (and whatever you call it), your business operating system will call for you to clarify the issue and its root cause, then solve it. 

It might take a little practice, but once you get into the swing of resolving issues, we’re sure you and your team will love it. Instead of problems festering in the dark, or getting pushed off to another time, they get faced head-on. It’s exhilarating! 

3. Then layer in other tools

Once you have your meetings and issues rolling, we recommend adding in two other tools — scorecards (aka metrics, KPIs, or scoreboards) and rocks (aka goals, OKRs, projects). These can be similar, so let’s break down the differences.

Scorecards are the numbers you use for a weekly check-in. For example, an outbound salesperson could have a scorecard with the number of dials they made that week. This number should serve as a baseline for asking yourself (and each other) whether you accomplished what you needed to last week.

Rocks can be a couple different things. 

Numerical rocks are big quarterly numbers that tie into a team’s larger goals. For example, the same outbound sales rep may have a larger goal of booking 100 demos in a quarter. This is elevated to a rock versus being laid out as a weekly scorecard because it ties into other team or company goals and is part of a larger plan.

Project or status-based rocks are a way to track big projects that will take more than a few weeks, and involve multiple stakeholders. Maybe you want to grow your sales team, and you want your best outbound sales rep to help, so you assign them a rock of documenting their processes, which they then break up into milestones and To Dos to accomplish over the course of the quarter.

For getting started with scorecards and rocks, we recommend starting small! It’s going to be easier to add than subtract here. Think about the metrics you’re already tracking, and how to make them as simple as possible for a weekly check-in. Think about your big goals in progress, and add them as rocks. Be intentional about how you set better goals for your team.

Don’t try to add a comprehensive list on your first go; just get one or two of the most important scorecard metrics and rocks incorporated, and see how they add to your meeting and work flows once you have a more systematic way of being accountable for them. Once you get into the habit, add more. By the time you hit your next (or first) quarterly meeting, you’ll already have some experience which will help you set better goals for the next quarter.

4. Circle back to your business vision

Different business operating systems will have different nomenclature for business vision, but there are a few main components to a business vision in almost every B.O.S.

Mission: this can include how your business serves people, how you want to be positioned in the marketplace, and who you’ll help.

Goals: this is the place for your biggest and most audacious long term goals — where you see your company 3 and 5 years from now. Defining your long-term goals helps you work backward to build your yearly and quarterly goals.

People: your people are usually one of your biggest investments and your foundation. Your business vision helps you define core values for your company culture and the seats you need in an org chart. This will help you get organized and confident in your team.

While many people are tempted to start building their business operating system with their business vision, we caution against it. You’ll be surprised by how time-consuming (and sometimes confusing) defining your business vision can be. Even if you’ve been a mission-oriented company for a long time, defining your business vision within an operating framework requires that you organize it in a way that lends itself to the rest of your tools in your operating system. It’s harder than it looks, trust us!

If you start with your meetings and other B.O.S. tools first, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of how a B.O.S. works. This will help make sure your business vision is as specific and actionable as it needs to be to truly act as a helpful North star for your business.

The other thing to keep in mind — defining your business vision will take more than an hour, and probably more than a day. Rolling your business vision into a larger planning meeting, like a quarterly meeting, is a good way to get started. If you’re running 2-day quarterly meeting agendas, put some time on both days for your business vision. Brainstorm on the first day, give yourselves a break, and come back on the second day to agree on your vision moving forward. If you need more time, take it! The team at Heritage Advises gave us insight into building their business vision:

“Don't rush through anything. At the moment, it feels like you have 10,000 other things to work on, which we always do as small business owners. But it's going to set you up for success in the long term. We fire and hire today based on what we did two years ago, based on our core values. That one exercise of really focusing on the vision is still very much with us today. So don't breeze through anything, and take it all seriously.”

5. Be patient and make adjustments as needed.

Once you’ve got the basics of all your tools in place, remember that they should be a living part of your company’s daily work — emphasis on living! 

If you find that a scorecard metric is consistently unreachable, change it. If a rock is off-track this quarter, make a note as to whether you should pursue that goal next quarter. Whenever you notice the same issue coming up over and over again, find a way to solve it with your business operating system. 

Most of all, be patient with yourself and your team. Depending on how long you’ve been in business, implementing a business operating system could be a huge change and a shock to those of us who don’t adapt to change as quickly. However, when the dust settles, your business operating system will be able to guide you on whether you need to make adjustments to your team moving forward. Stay true to your core values, and the rest should fall into place.

6. Support your B.O.S. with a purpose-built platform

“If you're already investing in the operating system, my advice is to invest in a platform that will support it. Why try to build from scratch what Strety’s team has already built for you! It will make your job so much easier, especially when you’ve got hard work to get done.”

— Dana Wockenfuss, Director of Development & Advocacy at The Well

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves! As creators of a business operating system platform, we can’t tell you how many horror stories we’ve heard about people trying to implement business frameworks with spreadsheets and email chains. If you make your business operating system difficult to engage with, it will fail. Simple as that.

Of course, we hope you’d choose Strety as the platform of choice for implementing a business operating system. We’ve connected B.O.S. tools into an integrated platform that will make it easy for your team to engage with and benefit from your B.O.S. From our own experience running business operating systems at prior companies, to our current experience building the best B.O.S. platform available, guided by B.O.S. experts and enthusiasts, we know how important this stuff is — and how much it benefits the teams who get it right.

Learn more about Strety’s B.O.S. tools here.

If you’re ready to Strety, get your free trial started here, or book time with one of our experts here.