In this blog post, we’ll be taking a look at four steps you can take to operationalize your business.
Standardize
The first step to operationalizing is to Standardize.
Standardization helps to ensure everyone is on the same page in terms of understanding individual roles, projects, and meetings within the organization.
At Path for Growth, we leverage Success Statements. Success Statements are 3-to-5 statements that define what winning looks like for the essential functions of a business. This helps set expectations and ensures everyone knows what they should be doing and how they should be doing it.
Document
The second step is to Document.
Once standards are established, they need to be documented to be communicated and accessible for training.
At Path for Growth, our documentation platform of choice is Trainual—a simple yet powerful software solution designed specifically for documenting processes within an organization.
Evaluate
The third step is to Evaluate.
To evaluate is to make sure that performance measures up against the established standards.
Evaluation can occur in a variety of formats: self-evaluation, group evaluation, peer evaluation, and leader evaluation.
At Path for Growth, we tend to use a Red-Yellow-Green method to evaluate outcomes. Red means "not true." Yellow means "inconsistently true." And green means "consistently true."
Improve
The fourth step is to Improve.
Never-ending performance improvement by updating standards based on customer needs, increases in efficiencies, or new methods for increased effectiveness.
This ensures that operations remain relevant despite changing organizational or environmental conditions.
The key to successful operationalization lies in following these four steps: standardize, document, evaluate and improve.
By setting clear expectations around roles and responsibilities within an organization through success statements; documenting processes using a platform like Trainual; evaluating performance against those standards; and iterating on them as needed; you can ensure that your organization will grow while reducing your stress.
