A Recipe to Manage a growing business
Introduction
This article aims to provide you with an overview of the BAUtracker Framework.
If you’re new to BAUtracker Academy – this should be your starting point.
But before we begin, a short disclaimer. Don’t expect to find any breakthrough here. There is no secret sauce, no trademark or copyright behind the methodology. Ideas that are the cornerstone for BAUtracker are not new. Most of them you will find in books or articles about business management. The framework is just (yet another) synthesis.
Core Values
It all starts with values. We firmly believe that modern business can only thrive in an environment that embodies these values. So if your organization is ruled like an army or an autocratic kingdom, most likely BAUtracker Framework is not a fit for you.
What are these core values?
Transparency – the culture of honesty & transparency in our view is the only vehicle that can transform organisations.
Collaboration – we treat collaboration and teamwork where diverse perspectives are valued and encouraged as the key to success in today’s business.
People Empowerment – we believe that people are capable to deliver and have all the wisdom to take the best decisions. We believe that the role of leaders is not to tell people what to do, but to support individuals and align them on collective, organisational goals.
Simplicity – people tend to make things complex. And in the long run, it doesn’t lead to anything good. We strongly believe simplification is the ultimate sophistication, that’s why BAUtracker Framework is designed to fit on a single page.
Continuous Improvement – business change is a constant process that takes time and unfortunately, there are no shortcuts. We believe it’s better to take small, but continuous steps.
There is a saying: culture eats strategy for breakfast. If your organization’s culture is not aligned with these values, focus on the culture first.
Business-as-usual and Projects
Think about your life.
It goes on, day by day, week by week. You wake up, feed yourself, work, hang out with family and friends, spend money, save it. Everyday life is filled with activities and habits that repeat on and on again.
But from time to time – you come to realisation that you need to change something. You look at your job and decide it’s no longer challenging or fulfulling and you decide to search for something new. You look at you in the mirror and decide to take on some exercise or diet.
Running business is very much the same.
People have their daily duites and responsibilities within their organizations. They operate: manage or execute business processes which repeat on and on again. We call it business as usual – BAU.
And similarly as with your life, from time to time organizations decide to take an extra effort to change something. Optimise processes, improve ways of working, implement a new IT system. We call these Projects.
While concepts like BAU and Projects might sound trivial and threadbare, we’ve seen many leaders failing to introduce a clear distinction between them and mixing them, when both BAU and Projects require a different management approach.
Approach to managing BAU
In order to manage Business as Usual, it needs to be named.
We’ve seen many organizations where processes were alleged. People were doing things repeatedly and kept the organization’s wheels spinning, but there was no common understanding about what actually was or was supposed to be happening.
So first of all – in order to manage BAU – processes that make it up have to be named.
A well-defined process has a clear purpose in the overall organization’s big picture, a clearly defined owner, a defined input & output and most importantly – a set of metrics. Metrics are the control lights that tell us how the process is performing.
Managing BAU is all about reviewing key processes on a periodic basis and reacting to any red lights.
Approach to managing Projects
Flashing red light from BAU is a trigger warning for leaders. Sometimes flashing lights are easy to fix and it’s sufficient for the process owner to take small, corrective actions. But sometimes it’s not sufficient.
That’s when the organization need to collectively decide to take on some extra effort and run a Project.
A well-defined project starts with a clearly formulated problem statement. Then it should have a set of objectives (ideally formulated in the form of business goals – focusing on outcomes, not outputs) as well as expected deliverables. It also needs to have clearly assigned people – a project team that will be able to devote a percentage of their work time to the project and will be empowered to take decisions. Project team roles should also be well defined specifying the project manager – a person ultimately responsible for the project’s success and project contributors. Finally, projects are time-bound – they should have a clearly defined duration.
Managing Projects is completely different from managing BAU. It starts with planning, defining tasks and monitoring the progress against weekly or bi-weekly cadence.
Strategy planning simplified – BAUtracker Framework
The obvious realisation that BAU and Project aspects coexist and function in any business is a cornerstone for BAUtracker – a KISS [keep it simple, stupid] framework for business management and strategic planning. We really believe that strategic planning is frequently overcomplicated. Leaders hire management consulting firms to design strategies and attempt to push them top-down and they frequently fail. We believe that change needs to be created bottom-up. It needs to originate from people, or at least it needs to be co-created with them.
BAUtracker Management Framework can be summarized into the following steps:
1. Define your BAU – Business as Usual
2. Define BAU metrics – your control lights
3. Together with the team start reviewing BAU metrics on a regular (i.e. quarterly) basis
4. Observe, discuss, define actions and formulate initiatives (Projects) aiming to drive improvement
5. Repeat, repeat, repeat
We really believe business management is as simple as that.
But of course, it’s just a theory. Execution is a lot more difficult. BAUtracker Academy aims to provide some guidance and tips on how to deal with adoption.