Operations at a fast growing startup can be like walking into a messy closet. Lots of potential but in need of some organization. You’re not sure where to start and it can be overwhelming to a Type A closet neat freak (not that I would be one of those… ;) )

If your early stage startup feels like a messy closet right now, is that bad? No! It’s completely normal. In fact, I would say, it’s a great sign that you’re focused on the right things (customers and growth) early on. If you add detailed planning structure too early, you’ll kill creativity, speed, and focus.

At some point though, the paradigm flips and without more clarity and structure, creativity, speed, and focus will fall off.

Whether you’re an ops leader with a “messy closet” or a CEO ready to scale, here is a *real life* story of incremental improvements over time to create operational excellence.

Our first quarterly planning session at Rigor:

• Presentation from each department
• One page quarterly planning template
• Variety of presentation formats, goal types
• Informal coordination and review

8 quarters later:

• Annual planning process including budgeting
• Quarterly planning process aligned with annual planning
• Company vision and goals defined and communicated
• Department projects and metrics aligned to company goals
• SMART goal format with dates, numbers, specific targets
• One page quarterly planning template by department, approved by CEO
• Cross-departmental coordination and visibility on priorities and goal setting
• Coordinated presentations approved by CEO, shared at company offsite
• Uniform, branded powerpoint presentations
• Follow up feedback survey
• Departmental metrics consistency with goals and actuals
• Mid-quarter leadership review of goal progress
• Performance reviews align with company goals and values
• Company core values defined and used in hiring, performance, planning, decision making

Did we implement all of these changes in a single quarter? Nope. It would have been incredibly time intensive with little adoption and minimal long term value.

Instead, we picked 1-3 things to add or focus on each quarter.

First, it was consistency with metrics and setting SMART goals. Next quarter, we added a leadership review and alignment process. Then, it was viewer-friendly presentations instead of one page templates. After one quarter of presentations, we started doing dry runs and using beautiful, branded templates. By then, we had also redefined our company Core Values and incorporated those into planning, presentations, and performance.

How did we decide the “next thing” to add each quarter?

• Gather team feedback after each quarterly planning cycle
• Discuss with CEO
• Assess what didn’t go smoothly
• Analyze priorities and return-on-effort

Based on those inputs, we’d make a plan for what to improve next quarter. We’d also drop things that didn’t work and streamline areas that didn’t need hands-on management anymore.

Improvement Over Time

Like the famous British cycling team, we focused on consistent improvements over time which resulted in big gains in the long run. No single item was transformational but the operations snowball grew steadily.

Within a year, Rigor had developed strong operational muscle. Habits like using SMART goals started to happen automatically. Team members would remind each other about it and train new hires on it. We could focus on new habits like incorporating quarterly targets into daily and weekly cadences or project planning best practices. As familiarity with the process, expectations, and feedback loop grew, each subsequent improvement was easier to layer on.

This kind of operational rigor (see what I did there?) is always a team effort. It starts at the top with the CEO and depends on each team member adding their ideas, executing daily, and caring about improvement.

By building organically, incorporating feedback, and improving over time, a startup’s “messy closet” can become a highly-adopted, employee-driven system of operational excellence. It doesn’t happen overnight but, like most things at a startup, it will happen faster than you think!