'The Problem with Operating Systems' with Hannah and Dave

In our first episode of Season 4 Hannah and Dave discuss the strife and woes of implementing operating systems.

The world runs on systems, business's run on systems. The problem can often be, that certain ones don't work for you or your team. That's totally fine. 

The solution doesn't have to be complex and can often be refined by simple tweaks. Half the battle is understanding you can't have simple solutions to complex issues.

Follow along as Dave and Hannah lay out a system that works for them and how you can apply it to your business.

To watch the entire episode check out our Youtube channel here.

To find more information on The Five Facets and Evolve Leadership Consulting visit the link here or email us at info@theevolvedifference.com

Hosts: Dave Newell & Hannah Pniewski

Produced by: Dave Newell, Hannah Pniewski and Christopher Paul Smith

Edited by: Christopher Paul Smith

Coordination:  Loli Basualdo

Transcript

Dave Newell 0:00

The framework can always be applied to your specific situation. Every business to a degree thinks they're unique and thinks, oh no, not our business, we're totally unique. You're not. Your business model is most likely like some other business model that's already been created. What makes you unique is who you are as a culture, who you are as a collective group of people and individuals. And if we ignore that uniqueness, if we ignore that part, then whatever system we put in place isn't gonna work.

Speaker 0:34

Oh my gosh. It's season four.

Dave Newell 0:39

It's season four. Here we are. It feels like only a short time ago that we had this thought of, you know, we should start a podcast.

Hannah Pniewski 0:47

Yeah, it feels like only a short time ago we said, you know, we love talking. People should listen to us talk.

Dave Newell 0:53

Yeah. Well, and it's fun. I mean, honestly, it is. It's been a little bit of a roller coaster, right? It takes a little bit to build some competency and get things structured and organized and make it work. And then as it evolves over time, I feel like, you know, we're really, we're really finding our stride. We just uh had a milestone today of a thousand downloads.

unknown 1:13

Woo!

Dave Newell 1:14

Uh, which is, you know, uh a milestone number one on the way to milestones number two, three, four, five, and six, right? Like we keep gaining momentum with this, we keep finding more ways to add value and get more listeners and get more great guests. And season four will be no exception.

Hannah Pniewski 1:30

Yeah, absolutely. We we going into this, listeners, we see how many things our clients have to deal with on a regular basis. And of course, we adore helping them and you know, thrive in helping our clients. We also are not gatekeepers and we want to be able to share this knowledge with as many people as possible if it will help anyone, you know, topics about leadership, about business operating systems, about uh finance, strategy, all these different things. So bringing this all together has been very rewarding for us because we hope that it is helping you. And so thank you very much for uh sticking around and listening. And if you're here for the first time, welcome. We're very excited to have you. And um, yeah, this is gonna be fun. This season, we are going to do something a little bit different than last season. Um, last season we had a couple of kind of teachings that we focused on, as well as interviews with some amazing folks. This season, we're still gonna have interviews with some amazing folks. And we are also going to elevate and highlight some specific business use cases of people either struggling with their business or struggling with implementing a business operating framework. So we want to really kind of, without talking about our specific clients, we've designed some business instances that have struggles and have issues with either an operating system or just the way things are going at their company. And then we're gonna kind of address those and pretend like we're consulting with this fake but based in reality company.

Dave Newell 2:58

Well, and as you said, Hannah, you know, there's really something that we've been noticing over the last few months, if not years, is there's a lot of people that are implementing business operating systems. We've known this for you know 10, 15 years at this point in time, but it's really become much more, I think, of a forefront conversation, especially as the advent of AI and all sorts of different technologies come into place. You start asking the question of like, well, what is the operating system of our business? Do we have one? What are we doing? A lot of people have implemented like EOS or scaling up or pinnacle group or all these different, all these different pieces or the five facets of business. And it really is uh thinking through kind of what works for us, what's the best tool, what's the best way to do it, and are we adopting and are we taking it on fully? And so we really do want to spend this season supporting you all in applying an operating system that works for you. And how does it work? And what do you need to be thinking about? What are the problems, what are the challenges, etc.? Because we know both on our own experience, but also just the 250 plus clients we've worked with in the last decade that operating systems are essential to a functional, thriving, scaling business. You know, we're not here to say one is better than the other, we're here to say that an operating system is absolutely important, and here's how to do it well, and here's how to put it in place. So we're really kicking off this season with that and focus, uh, and I'm excited to dive into that conversation.

Hannah Pniewski 4:24

So I'm gonna just fire off our main question uh for you to respond to is just what is the problem with operating systems? You know, there are there are several out there, they all kind of offer various things to prioritize or to approach, but what's the issue that comes up when it comes to operating systems?

Dave Newell 4:45

Yeah, there are there are several. And honestly, I'm gonna I'm gonna back up a bit on this question and you know, talk about kind of once upon a time. You know, early in the my consulting career, I've been doing this since 2012, essentially, where I've been working with organizations. Uh, but in 2014, I got introduced to uh EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system, and I learned the framework and I was working with it, and I started applying it to businesses, and I've learned scaling up and I've learned you know other systems as we've gone along. And what I kept seeing was kind of multiple elements that showed up for clients, and where it really became real for me is I got a call from a former client, her name was Lori, and she reached out to me. I'd been implementing systems, and I've been realizing, like, hey, these there's just certain parts of this that aren't landing or aren't working. And what I often found is I would get called or I would get brought into a particular engagement when uh operating system implementation failed. It wasn't working, it wasn't sticking, there wasn't adoption, there wasn't this kind of uh transformational experience that the business was hoping for. And it really this really landed for me as Lori called me and she said, Hey, you know, we implemented, you know, we implemented an operating system in our organization and it's just not working. It's not sticking. I feel like this should be doing more than it is, but truthfully, we're really only using 25% of this. And the 25% we're using isn't creating the results that we're creating. And then she said this, I I heard you fix these things. Uh it was both you know humbling in many ways, but also uh got me thinking about, yeah, well, what are we doing differently? Like what am I doing differently, or what are we doing differently as a as a group that really actually helps these systems land, that actually helps an operating system land. And it really came down to three things. Uh number one is implementing the system fully. Uh most businesses, especially if they self-implement an operating system, or even if you implement software, most of the time use 10 to 25% of whatever that system is. You might do a meeting cadence and you might do an accountability chart, org chart kind of a piece, and you might do, you know, process documentation in a certain way, and then you stop there and you assume that you know this operating system, the way we truly function, is enough. And that's not really implementing an operating system, that's implementing the pieces of it that you like or the pieces of it that work for you at the time. And you're not necessarily doing the hard work of putting in an entire system. Number two is a lot of implementers, a lot of people that put operating systems in place from a consulting perspective, uh, are often very hands-off. They say, Here are the tools, here are the things, here are here's the systems that you need to do. All right, good luck. Hope it works. Uh you know, see you in a month. Hopefully, you you know were able to do some things. And so it really puts a lot of the onus on the implementation and the discovery and figuring it out back on the business. And what that does is it actually reduces adoption. It reduces the organization's ability to apply it in real time. And the third piece is really about uh aligning leadership behaviors with the system. And so often what we see is we're putting tools in place and we think about an operating system as tools. We think about a we think about it as, well, if I just add this one thing, or if I just put this process in place, or I document it this way, now it's done forever and always. But what we saw is that systems and behavior both need to advance, and that there's an operating component to both of those things. So in the work that we do and the way that we think about operating systems, we really truly address those three challenges. It's designing an operating system that permeates many aspects of your business. That's why we talk about the five facets of business culture, strategy, operations, story, and finance. And that all five of those pillars have a certain set of operations and operating principles that when aligned create a very scalable, drivable, leadable business. The second piece is in implementation, you want a partner, not necessarily somebody who's showing you the tools and then you have to go implement it yourself. The variation that we call it is implementation coaching. It's about, hey, we're here to support you, partner with you, increase your capacity to deliver this operating system into your organization. And thirdly, uh really focusing on aligning systems and behavior. So we not just implement an operating system, but we also very much partner and work with and coach leaders to lead systems. And often when you do that, you see a system sustain over time, not just work for three months, six months, or a year, but it also then evolves as the business evolves over time. Because the truth is, if you're a three million dollar business and you go to a five million dollar business, you're fundamentally a different business and that operating system needs to evolve with you. The leadership behaviors need to evolve with it. So when Lori called and asked me, you know, hey, I heard you fix these things, those are really truly the three things that that came up as, oh, this is what we're doing differently, and this is why it works. And so I share that not necessarily to say anything other than as you think about implementing operating systems, as you think about how do we run our business over time? Those are three really strong considerations to hold as you explore options and you explore what you're looking at or how you want to apply it in your organization. Really truly consider, you know, are we implementing the entire system? Because the truth is the system is made up of multiple pieces, and does that system match what we're doing? Number two, do we have a partner that is going to help us do this, a true partner? And number three, what does it require for us as leaders? And are we capable? Do we see ourselves evolving with it as we implement this?

Hannah Pniewski 10:58

Are you ready to accelerate your business's growth? Or are you just tired of putting out fires day in and day out and ready to see your business finally find its stride? After 10 years of working with clients, we designed the five facets of business framework to streamline your operations and enhance efficiency by aligning the culture, strategy, operations, story, and finances of your business. Discover how to transform your challenges into opportunities by taking our business velocity assessment available on our website at theEvolved Difference.com. Want to talk to someone instead? Visit our website to book a time with a member of our team. It's time to kick off your journey towards significant growth and sustained success. Because when your business is aligned, you can achieve business velocity. Now, back to the show. I'm um I'm just taking some notes because I have some I have some thoughts and I I agree with everything you just said, and I think that we've seen we've seen the product of you know this comprehensive approach benefit so many of our clients now. It's exciting to be telling this to just, yeah, I guess maybe like a wider audience. So I hope that everybody's following us along here with uh, yeah, how this approach is different, and then those three questions that you just mentioned as well. A couple things I wanted to add or maybe expand upon was also that um sometimes people, I've definitely seen this with anybody implementing like a new just project management system, even where it's like, well, I'm gonna just implement the stuff that's easy to understand and that I have time to wrap my head around. And I'm not gonna worry about all the complicated stuff because I just don't have time for that. Well, then you're cutting yourself at the knees because you're not actually going to probably leverage the most powerful piece. The good stuff's hard. Like the most complicated piece of this is probably going to be the thing that is actually impactful. And so having an implementation coach, having somebody with you on that ride is going to help you unlock that probably more complicated piece, which is probably going to have more impact. And from what we've seen, it always does. The leadership and behavior thing, it's so true that like we'll have a lot of leaders come to us and say, you know, there are issues, things are broken, people aren't doing the things they need to do. And generally the behaviors aren't there for your people because they're probably not there yet for you too. And that's okay. But like we have to align your behavior with also what you are asking of the team. And then people are swimming in the same direction. They know what they're holding you to, you know what they're holding them to. And it just elevates everyone in the organization to address both of those things. And then the last thing I was just going to add was just like the way we approach this always reminds me of like the, you know, teach Amanda fish kind of thing. It's like I could give you a fish, I can give you a book that tells you how to host your meetings, but why don't I tell you and teach you better leadership behaviors, better team and culture behaviors? And then when you have those established, you will build better systems. And and you'll do it with us for a while until you feel confident, and then you can do it on your own.

Dave Newell 14:13

And I think to your point, we're all imperfect humans.

Hannah Pniewski 14:16

Yeah.

Dave Newell 14:17

Right? It doesn't matter what your title is, if you're the CEO founder, you are still inherently human. You still inherently have flaws, you have doubts, imposter experiences. There's lots of different things that we have. That's why there's CEO books and there's CEO roundtables and there's groups for that, because it's lonely and it's frustrating, and we're human beings. And so, you know, even though I'm the CEO, it doesn't mean I make all the right decisions and do all the right stuff and live the perfect life. Quite the contrary, right? There's a lot of things I do incorrectly, or I think about things in an imperfect way, or my fear might lead to a certain decision, or my uncertainty might cause a problem for somebody else. And if I'm not honest about those things, it is highly unlikely that the operating system that I'm putting in place is going to function in the way that it can if it's perfectly implemented. So we recognize that every organization is led by imperfect human beings, and that's good, that's okay, that's what makes it interesting, that's what makes it fun, that's what makes it successful more often than not, is when we recognize that challenge and we don't hide from it, but we actually lean into it. Part of this framework and part of the way we think about implementing frameworks is we have to be evolving as a leader at the same time that we're evolving the organization. And if you do one or the other, you will get at most 50% of the results that you could get if you were focusing on both things. So if you have a leader or a leadership team, all of those things can evolve from a behavioral perspective, how they fit, how they work, how they drive, how they deal with fear, uncertainty, ambiguity. And the framework can always be applied to your specific situation. Every business to a degree thinks they're unique and thinks, oh no, not our business. We're totally unique. You're not. Your business model is most likely like some other business model that's already been created. What makes you unique is who you are as a culture, who you are as a collective group of people and individuals. And if we ignore that uniqueness, if we ignore that part, then whatever system we put in place isn't gonna work. So you really do have to lean in and leverage both sides.

Hannah Pniewski 16:32

I want to talk a little bit about like the connectivity of all of it, because I think another issue that people have when they implement something is like they're like, okay, well, we're just gonna, you know, again, kind of to my easy example of like we're gonna implement this new meeting structure. Okay, great. Well, meeting structures, fine. But if you don't know why you're having a new meeting structure, if your team doesn't understand, well, what's the strategy behind this that affects everything else that I do outside of this meeting, well, then it's just a band-aid. And so I think I want to talk a little bit about like some of the connectivity, especially the conversations you and I had at the beginning about the five facets and like how it is this kind of big machine rather than just little cogs, and how we kind of came up with all that sort of connective tissue, uh, not only just the five facets themselves, but then the implementation flow and why we roll things out in the way that we do. So I want to talk about that a little bit.

Dave Newell 17:25

Yeah, and maybe I'll give a concrete example of a conversation I was in honestly earlier today uh with a client of ours, and we're focusing really on the revenue operations. And I'm using that term really explicitly around revenue operation, like how we operate from a revenue engine perspective. And there's really three pillars for this organization and pretty much any organization. There's the marketing function, which is external attraction, right? Like we're attracting leads, we're we're engaging an audience, and we are collecting information. Then it transfers into the sales function, right? Which is kind of discovery, what are their issues, what are their challenging? It becomes more personal. We design a solution, we put them into whatever our service or product is, and then it moves into kind of client success or whatever phrase you want to put on that client experience, account management, etc. That is also part of revenue operations. Because are we growing and sustaining and advancing our current accounts? Are we getting referrals? Are we getting testimonials? All those things. Those three functions really have to blend together. If you push, and that's just on the revenue operations side. If you lift and elevate one, another one's gonna get messed with. If you sorry, Lyra ran up.

Speaker 18:39

It's okay. I we can see one of Dave's kids is trying to wave him down. I can see her reflection in the TV.

Dave Newell 18:45

She doesn't have school today because it's uh a holiday for them, and they she ran in and is like waving at me and waving at me, waving at me, and just I'm trying to explain this. But thanks, Lyra. Hey Lyra. Uh, all three of those are functions of one movement in the organization. If you change the way you communicate externally about what your product is and you're setting expectations differently, that influences sales and how sales can close deals. And if sales changes their expectations or the way they talk, or a product or a service gets changed, it influences everything. And if we don't view the business as a living, breathing, connected system that evolves and shifts and changes with the environment and context, we're really truly missing alignment. And so when you view it as, oh, we have an operations problem, we need to get this thing out the door, we need to change the update, the product or the service. But if we aren't engaging and connecting with marketing and sales team, we're really missing the point. And we're going to see things break down, we're going to see things fall apart. So it's a simple, kind of clean example of the interconnectivity of even just one flow from a value driver perspective of the organization, right? And pretty much every organization has those three things.

Hannah Pniewski 19:57

Well, and so revenue operations touches on for sure, three, if not all of our facets. So finance, operations, and story, i.e. marketing. Um, but then also you do, you have to have a strategy behind that approach and you have to have the culture to support uh the people who are making that thing happen. So the five facets we chose because we saw, like if we, like he said at the beginning, if we have these five pillars strong, then everything will rise with it. The company will succeed. And then the other piece of the connectivity that we kind of talked about or how we want to approach improving those different five facets is this implementation flow. And for those of you who are following along on YouTube, we do have uh some slides that we're showing and um you can see the flow over there. If you're just listening to us on um one of the streaming platforms, I'll try and describe this to you. But basically, we wanted to take our clients through a comprehensive but streamlined approach to elevating all these facets and not just one at a time. Because if we just work on culture, well, then we're treating culture like its own thing way over here. It's not. It is totally connected to story and marketing, and it is totally connected to uh the strategy. So we actually walk our clients through improving these five facets by doing a launch phase, which focuses on leadership, uh, elevation, and coaching, clarifying the strategy pieces. So clarity is the next step. Then we assess. So we look at all the different five facets, we look at everything that your business is experiencing right now. We have an assessment for it, but we do an assess phase where we analyze what's going on, and then we align things. So we align the leadership, we align the strategy, we align the people that we know are going to uh implement, maybe a new framework or a new project or a new product. And then we're going to enroll people. So we're going to actually get them bought in. We're going to create any trainings, any uh presentations, any kind of buy in pieces. To get people on board for whatever it is that we want to change or elevate about the company in either of those facets. And then we're going to execute. So then we're going to actually make the thing happen. And implementation coaches, we'd be right there alongside you. So launch, clarity, assess, align, enroll, and execute. And all six of those help to elevate the five facets of your business. And we do definitely focus, like our approach, we do find out that assess phase, which of the five facets maybe are struggling the most. So we don't feel like we have to necessarily change everything, improve everything. You might have a wonderful culture, but your finances are struggling, or vice versa. So we'd prioritize, you know, which one of those. But that would actually be the flow of elevating the entire business. And I mean, that is like those two things together, that is the operating system for us. It's elevating those five facets by launching, clarifying, assessing, aligning, enrolling, and executing.

Dave Newell 22:58

You know, I'm glad you shared that framework. And the truth is, you know, when you hear operating system, or part of the reason why people only implement 10 to 25% of an operating system is because it's complex. Yeah. Running a business is hard. For sure. There are lots of moving parts, there are lots of decisions, there are lots of choices, there's lots of ways to do it, there's lots of pathways. And I can't stress this part enough. And I think it's a really important thing to understand is that you do operate in a complex system when you're running a business. You hear us use the term system or operating systems. Systems are inherently complicated. They're complex, there's lots of moving parts. And when you deal with com if you if you bring simple solutions to complex problems, it leads to chaos every time. So when you think about well, if we just do this, if we can just do this one thing, if we can just hire this one person, if we can just close this deal, if we can just whatever, it's a simple solution to a complex operating system problem, and it is going to perpetuate the chaos that you feel. Simple solutions to complex problems leads to chaos. What we're asking for, what we're advocating for here is to understand and lean into the complexity of what operating systems can do for you is they are frameworks that are designed to show you what the complexity is, but they're designed to simplify the complexity as much as possible so you can get back to leading the business in the way that you want to do it. So operating systems make sense of the chaos and they make sense of the complexity. And when you apply one fully to your business, you will see the results that you're looking for.

Hannah Pniewski 24:39

I think that's probably everything I wanted to touch on. Was there anything else?

Dave Newell 24:42

I feel like that's a happy ending.

unknown 24:44

Yeah.

Hannah Pniewski 24:45

No, 100%. Uh, you had taught me that, I think, right when I first joined Evolve, that idea that simple solutions for complex problems create chaos. And boy, do I see that in the real world and business and friendships and dynamics. It's so true. So thank you all very much for tuning into episode one. That's all we have for you today.

Dave Newell 25:05

What a start for season four. Thanks for the good question, Santa.

Hannah Pniewski 25:08

Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited to jump into episode two. We're going to talk about uh a use case of a business that's uh growing, but everything feels harder, not easier, which sucks. And I know that a lot of people can kind of you know relate to that. So join us for episode two, and we'll see you next time.

Dave Newell 25:25

See you next time.

Hannah Pniewski 25:28

Thank you for joining us on Business Velocity. Today's insights are just the beginning of enhancing your business's momentum. Don't forget to subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also explore our framework at theEvolved Difference.com. And remember, the time is now to take these strategies and apply your learning and achieve velocity. See you next time.