Blog
Thinking out loud.
Longer-form thoughts on AI, automation, and building better businesses.
Why Your Team Can't Make Decisions Without You
If you find yourself constantly pulled into decisions your team should be making, struggling to hand over work even when you know you should, or wondering why hiring more people hasn't made your life any easier, you're not alone
Read more →Why You're Always Putting Out Fires (And What to Do About It)
The businesses that get out of firefighting mode share one thing in common: they've made the decision to define how the business operates, rather than letting the business happen to them. That means documenting processes, delegating outcomes rather than tasks, being deliberate about the kinds of work and customers they take on, and using automation to create the underlying structure that guides the team.
Read more →Why Your Business Falls Apart When You're Not There (And What to Actually Do About It)
Every week I come across questions from business owners that reveal the same underlying problems showing up in different forms. This week I want to work through five of them, as they are a in some ways variations on a theme.
Read more →Why You're Still the Busiest Person in Your Business (And What to Do About It)
Most businesses that struggle with these issues don't need artificial intelligence. They need basic systems and automation working properly first. AI is genuinely powerful, but if there's no solid operational foundation underneath it, you're not going to get real value from it, you'll just create new flavours of chaos more efficiently. Get the fundamentals right first.
Read more →Amazon Didn't Build Customer Loyalty With Charm. It Built It With Process.
Amazon didn't build the world's most loyal customer base by being the most charming company in the room. It built it by making sure the experience was the same every single time, fast, reliable, frictionless, and utterly unsurprising
Read more →You're Doing Heroic Work to Keep Things Moving. That's the Problem.
Right now, most owner-managed businesses aren't that. They're talented founders doing heroic work to compensate for gaps that have never been properly identified, let alone closed
Read more →The Five-Tool Problem: Why Having More Software Is Making Your Business Slower
The problem isn't that you have too many tools. The problem is that you bought tools before you designed the system. The tools are a symptom. The lack of clarity is the cause
Read more →The Real Reason Your Leads Are Going Cold (And It's Not Your Marketing)
Your lead didn't go cold because the interest wasn't real. It went cold because you weren't there when the interest was hot. The leads aren't the problem. The gap after the lead, that's where your revenue is disappearing. Fix the gap, and the marketing you've already paid for starts working a lot harder.
Read more →Your Business Is Growing. So Why Does It Feel Like It's Getting Harder?
Growth should make your business easier to run. More profitable. More resilient. Less dependent on you personally being involved in everything. If it is not doing that, the business is not growing. It is just getting bigger. And there is a significant difference between the two.
Read more →Before You Automate Anything, Do This One Thing
So before you buy the software, before you book the demo, before you ask what AI can do for your business, sit down and draw out what your business actually does. Start with one process. One workflow. The one that causes the most friction or eats the most time. Map it, document it, and fix what you find. Then, and only then, think about what to hand to a machine
Read more →The Patchwork Business: What to Do When Your Systems Don't Talk to Each Other
The businesses that are winning aren't the ones with the most tools. They're the ones who figured out which tools they actually need, made those tools work together properly, and eliminated everything else. That's not a technology problem. It's a thinking problem. And it's one worth sitting down to solve properly, before another year passes and you're still paying the patchwork tax.
Read more →You Don't Have a Technology Problem. You Have a Journey Problem
The tools don't come first. The map comes first. Get that right, and the technology becomes straightforward. Skip it, and you're just buying the same problem in a different box.
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