Framework Thinking simplifies complex structuresEntrepreneurs get started in business with a great idea and the energy to bring it to reality. Then they grow the business based on hard work. Hopefully that hard work translates into a growing team of exceptional team players around them.

But at some point the outcomes of raw desire and entrepreneurial energy start to peak. Then the outputs turn downward as the organization grows and coordination becomes more difficult.

What created success as a start-up organization was agility, organic collaboration, and energy-driven execution. Those wins start to falter as the number of clients, the scale of the opportunities, and the complexity of the organization rises.

Growing a Business is Hard

Some entrepreneurs still manage to continue to grow. They add more strong team players to manage the increasing complexity. They leverage their culture to draw top talent to a dynamic and exciting workplace. Which works… for a while longer.

At some point, if an organization is going to continue on its growth trajectory structure and process will need to happen.

Structure and process are sometimes seen as negatives in an entrepreneurial or start-up culture. They are perceived as the enemy of the culture or the agility that has brought success in the past. They are perceived to:

  • Slow things down
  • Create administrative overhead
  • Create politics
  • Complicate execution

In my experience all of those concerns are unfounded. If structure and process are implemented in a way that is oriented to the size and maturity of an organization they create the foundation for success.

The reality is that processes can be good or bad… and outcomes can be good or bad.

In the long term, good process and good outcomes are directly relatedWhile there isn’t a direct connection between good and bad outcomes with good and bad process in the short term, over the long term the connection is clear. That connection is even more visible in growing small and medium-sized businesses.

“Individual decisions can be badly thought through, and yet be successful, or exceedingly well thought through, but be unsuccessful, because the recognized possibility of failure in fact occurs. But over time, more thoughtful decision-making will lead to better overall results, and more thoughtful decision making can be encouraged by evaluating decisions on how well they were made rather than on outcome.”

Robert Rubin

The simplest answer to starting your journey toward scalability in your business is to leverage the simplifying power of Framework Thinking.

Framework Thinking

I define framework thinking as the act of visually simplifying a structure or process to create alignment around a common understanding.

When presented with a situation individuals often interpret things very differently. Those different interpretations result in different levels of understanding, different approaches, and different solutions to what is seemingly the same problem. By leveraging visual frameworks we can draw people out of the details of a situation to align them to the context. The simplification of a visual allows for a common foundation of understanding before you start to work through the details.

Simple visual frameworks very quickly add the basic structure needed to start the journey to maturity for a growing organization. Drawing the capabilities and components of an organization in a simple map or articulating a common process or approach through a visual map can quickly align people around a common understanding. That simple visual also highlights gaps and overlaps that might exist so you can address them.

There is no “magic framework” but I have found that almost any business organization, process, key capability, or approach can be boiled up to a simple common view. Whether it is an organizational capability map, a process approach, an account management or innovation framework, or a talent management approach a simple picture is often the best way to build a foundation for maturity.

Framework Leads, Process and Structure Follow

A framework doesn’t eliminate the need to document processes and structures in more detail. That detail needs to exist at a level that is aligned to the growth stage of the organization. But the framework does provide a foundation start the detailed work. Starting with the process and structure documentation you quickly find that lack of top level alignment creates churn. Ultimately misalignment creates the negative results that people often associate with process (speed, overhead, politics, complexity).

With a framework in place, you can avoid many of the pitfalls and create the understanding needed to scale.

Take some time to think about your own organization and consider the questions:

  • Do our meetings create clear action plans, owners, and real results, or do we simply have great discussions which don’t drive actions?
  • Are our initiatives and projects loosely organized to deliver acceptable results and outcomes, but lack documentation to create sustainability?
  • If I look at three people doing the same job in my organization are they approaching their work in a similar way or are they mostly just “winging it” to get the results we desire?
  • Do I have a clear understanding of the health and performance of my business or am I generally poking and prodding through ad hoc requests to solve the “fire of the day”?

If any of that sounds familiar it might be time to consider breaking things down to a framework foundation.

About Tim Empringham, MBA
Tim Empringham is a passionate advocate for Innovation in organizations of all sizes as a mechanism to drive growth, create uncontested market space, create new customer value, and drive efficiency into the internal organization. His focus is on disruption of thinking and markets through integrative thinking, structured Innovation frameworks, and leadership development of Innovation and Change leaders within the organization.

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