Business Focus Area #3 - Structure

We recently posted "If You Want Business Success in 2021, Focus on These 4 Areas of Your Business" where we suggested that SMBs focus on People, Processes, Systems, and Structure to both organize and prioritize their respective workloads.

Here's where you can read our previous posts on Processes and Systems

So, now we're addressing the "Structure" focus area. By Structure, we're not talking about how your business is legally organized. Nor are we referring to the physical facilities or equipment you might need. No, by Structure, we're really asking and attempting to answer the questions of:

1. What needs to get done to make your business successful? (Processes)
2. How will you get these things done best? (Systems)
3. Who will do them? (People)

Here's how to go about defining your business Structure:

• Look at the Processes your SMB requires to be successful, then
• Considering what Systems you've decided to implement to support your Processes to make them most effective & efficient,
• THEN, define the skills/capabilities and time needed to actually execute the vital processes!

Write out each Process with it's respective Capabilities and required Time Commitment on a separate note card. Lay the cards out on a table in front of you. 

This is your starting point for defining the best Structure for your business. By understanding the Functional Requirements needed optimize your business (the cards you've created), you can start to visually construct the best structure:

• Which cards will you personally take responsibility for?
• Are there any cards that naturally fall together such that a single person could handle them collectively?
• Are there one or more groups of cards that must be handled by the same person?
• Are there some cards that would be better handled by an outsourced vendor?

Experiment (with the cards, not with real time, money, & people) with different card combinations. Each possible card combination defines your business Structure. 

If you're a one-person business, don't spend a lot of time on this. Your choices are limited to (a) you'll do it yourself, (b) you'll outsource it to someone else to do, or (c) you won't do it at all. In this case, it's much more important for you to spend your time back on our previous posts - (a) clearly define which Processes are essential to your business success, and (b) can I use Systems to make them as efficient and effective as possible?

YOU know your business. What looks right to YOU? Maybe there are several possibilities? Maybe there's only one that's best. 

Regardless of what you find, make sure you don't leave out any Processes that you've already agreed are fundamental to your business growth! If you follow this advice, you will have arrived at the preferred - along with possible alternate - business Structures best for you. This is the prelude to identifying the People you need to fill out the entire picture. That's the topic of our final post in this series. Stay tuned. After decades of sourcing, hiring, evaluating, and leading employees, we have a few things to share . . . . . . A special treat - we have our own take on that "darling" of corporate recruiters, the "behavioral based interview". It will be fun! Promise.

Congratulations! If you've followed us this far along this journey, you're in the top few percent of business owners who are destined for success! Can you succeed without our Process - Systems - Structure - People framework? Certainly; but we're just trying to help provide a road map to make business growth both easier, and more likely.

We want you to be successful.