Do the Unscalable Thing First

Throwing money and resources at a messy process won’t make it any better, and it usually serves to create a more expensive and intractable process.

Instead, use the Build ⇒ Optimize ⇒ Scale framework to guide process improvement.

🧱 Build

Take the messy thing and clean it up, add some structure, document simple SOPs and best practices. This is the foundation. This doesn’t have to scale, its fleshing out a process where there was none.

🪛 Optimize

The Optimize phase is all about squeezing every last bit of efficiency out of the existing process framework.

Leverage tools like Zapier to automate pieces of the workflow, get clever with Airtable or google sheets for process and data efficiency, drive transparency and robust, ai-enabled documentation with Notion.

A successful Optimize phase builds upon and refines the framework put in place during the Build phase into something that can get you through the next few stages of growth.

📈 Scale

This is where higher-level, enterprise and/or internally built solutions come in to replace the highly optimized process devised in the previous phase.

The goal here is to find a solution or set of solutions that supports the output you expect and can scale in lock-step with company growth and complexity. Applying built or bought solutions to scale the process is dramatically more informed now that at least one of the two previous phases have been worked through.