We’ve discussed before that overwhelm and fear are natural responses to transitioning from employee to entrepreneur. I shared that I’ve learned to focus on specific roles to help reduce fear and overwhelm. Specifically, how stepping into the Chief Customer Service Officer role when making customer related decisions will keep each of us more focused.
Chief Operations Officer
Today, I’d like us to focus on another role. The role of Chief Operations Officer.
The Chief Operations Officer, COO, is mainly concerned with the day to day operational activity of the company.
Similar to possibly having no paying customers yet, you probably don’t have operational procedures completely defined yet. This is totally normal if you are in the process of transitioning, starting your business. Actually it’s preferred.
But while your operational processes are in progress, thinking like the Chief Operations Officer where applicable will help you stay focused and make better decisions.
Thinking like a Chief Operations Officer
Take a look at your business. Where do you expect a lot of resources to be spent? Human resources and financial resources.
Also ask yourself what would be your productivity goals. And most importantly, are those productivity goals realistic.
Be honest.
This is an area that I’ve seen a lot of folks be overly optimistic. Actually unrealistic.
Here’s an example:
- A woman is planning to start a service based business around beauty care
- She expects to provide a makeup service to high school girls for prom and homecoming that requires average of 5 hours of time for each event, including travel
- To make her revenue goals she would need to work more than 200 hours, over 3 months (1 month for homecoming and 2 months for prom)
Do you see the issue?
How many local events can she realistically attend a year? Can she really work over 16 hours a week? Which is calculated by dividing 200 hours by the 12 weeks. These events typically only occur on Friday’s and Saturday so that would be 8 hours a day, which is close to 2 events a night. That’s not realistic.
Service Based Businesses
Service based business are extremely susceptible to unrealistic productivity goals and assumptions. The major constraint is usually human resources, or man hours.
As a service based or productive based business, when you are faced with productivity related decisions, put on your Chief Operation Officer hat on and question how reasonable your assumptions are.
And to take it a step further, start listing your productivity assumptions and goals. This will ensure your assumptions are consistent and you are mindful of your operational goals.
What are some of your operational goals? Please share in the comments.
Great article! My unanalyzed assumptions have gotten me in trouble many times (especially as I was first starting out), so I’ve gotten much better at checking them out carefully along the way and doing small scale testing of new ideas before going all out. Learning to do this sooner would have saved me a lot of money and effort!