Opening Scaling Tension
Somewhere between fifty and two hundred people, the founder’s calendar stops being the constraint and awareness takes its place. Decisions still route through you, but you can no longer see enough of the business to make them well, so every handoff feels like exposure. The standard advice is to “let go.” Most founders hear that as an instruction to stop watching the one thing they are accountable for, and they refuse. The result is operational drag: a leader who stays in micro decisions because the alternative looks like losing control.
Sarah Papoff spent more than a decade at Bain, then led operations at startups from pre-revenue to $200 million in ARR. Her view is that the framing itself is the problem.
The Hidden Constraint
The constraint is not unwillingness to delegate. It is the black box. Papoff says “let go” is exactly what founders are scared of: scared of the black box, scared of things happening, and scared of their own lack of awareness. A founder who cannot see what happens after a handoff will rationally pull the decision back.
That reaction has a cost that compounds. Every decision a founder retains competes with the work only the founder can do, which turns leadership bandwidth into the scarcest resource in the company. Fixing it with more effort does not work. It requires a different structure for how information and authority move.
The Operating Shift
Papoff’s core operating principle is to build trust and transparency instead of letting go. The founder is not absent. The founder is far enough from the work that things can happen without them, and close enough to see when something is drifting and to step in.
At the 50 to 200 person stage, she describes what that looks like in practice. The weekly executive meeting becomes the primary place the founder gets information. The founder is no longer meeting with the executives’ direct reports on a regular basis, only with the executive team, and gets updates weekly. One-on-ones, product reviews, and other recurring forums sit alongside it on a set cadence, with ad hoc reviews for specific items. If the system is working, that is enough.
The shift is from personal involvement to designed visibility, which is scaling discipline in practice. Control comes from the quality of the information the founder receives, not from the number of decisions the founder touches.
Execution in Practice
Three insights from the conversation turn the principle into decision-making frameworks and execution systems.
Sort decisions by reversibility. Papoff uses the one-way door and two-way door test. If a decision cannot be undone, the founder trusts that they will be consulted. If it is reversible, even a fairly major decision, the founder does not need to be in the loop. Her example is a website banner test: if you can change red back to blue with a button, it does not need to go to the CEO. This is risk management applied to delegation. Founders who hold on to reversible decisions block experimentation, and experimentation is where the company learns. Even when a test succeeds and the CEO still vetoes the red banner, the data was worth having.
Expect onboarding to break first. Asked what fails when a company grows from 10 to 50 customers, Papoff points to onboarding, for customers and employees alike, and recommends solving both together. In a recent client engagement, a customer listening exercise showed the company did not have a feature problem. It had an onboarding and service problem. A centralized customer service system followed, and email response times dropped to under 90 minutes. New hires reported they did not understand the product either, so the team built employee onboarding alongside the customer journey. Documentation can be lightweight, such as a Notion document or a checklist, with one rule: the last step is that whoever finds a gap updates the SOP. She also suggests giving new employees a test customer instance so they go through the full customer onboarding themselves.
Audit decisions before you add meetings or tools. To get time back, Papoff suggests a decision review. List the decisions made weekly, monthly, and quarterly, and the forum where each one is made. Then check whether the right people and the right information are in the room, and whether the meeting cadence serves those decisions. Many recurring meetings, she observes, exist to meet rather than to decide. On tools, her answer is “it depends.” A shared customer success platform solved a real systems problem for her client, but it did not replace the need to hire, and no tool fixes weak decision-making.
Leverage Outcome
Operational leverage here means expanded capacity, not longer hours. When a founder trusts a structure that provides visibility, the company can run more tests, absorb more learning, and make more decisions without routing them through one person.
Papoff also names a smaller, practical drag: high-frequency scheduling takes far more time than most leaders expect. When no administrative support is in place, she notes that operations leaders fill the gap, because getting the right people in the room is critical to good decisions. An effective executive assistant takes the mental load of meeting conflicts and logistics off the founder’s plate, so their active attention can go to founder-led sales, product, and the other places only they are needed.
Connect With the Guest
To learn more about Sarah Papoff and her work:
Website: https://signalpathadvisory.net/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahpapoff
The Immediate Move
Leadership bandwidth is the real constraint on a scaling company, and structure protects it better than effort does. The founders who scale do not abandon the business. They transfer ownership of reversible decisions, define the forums where the important ones get made, and replace personal involvement with visibility they can rely on.
Start with the decision review. Map the decisions your team makes and where they happen, separate the one-way doors from the two-way doors, and remove yourself from the second group. Each re-decision you eliminate reduces cognitive load and returns time to the work that only you can do.
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Full Podcast Transcript
Great.
Sarah, thank you for coming on the podcast. I’m excited to dive into your story.
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for having me.
Now I I understand you spent more than a decade at Bain and then you moved into startups from pre-revenue all the way to 200 million in ARR. What pulled you toward the operation side of these growth businesses?
That’s a great question. So when I first dove in, I was really eager to be involved in the strategy and growth. And that is where I started. And it is really exciting to be on the growth and strategy side of a business. But what I found out really quickly, and what I fundamentally knew from my years at Bain is at some level, even though the excitement can appear to be on the strategy and growth side of a business.
At the end of the day, if your customers aren’t happy, they leave you. And if the fundamentals of the business aren’t sound, if the company doesn’t really work, the rest of it doesn’t really matter. So, really, the core
Mm.
of the core of the business is in how it operates. Once a customer enters the ecosystem, how is the onboarding process? How are they taken care of?
Does the product really work for them? Does it solve their first use case? Does it continue to solve their problems day to day? When they hit a bump in the road, how is that handled? Is billing handled in a easy-to-use, easy to handle, really graceful, you know, easy, easy touch way? And, you know, just how frictionless is being a customer? And all of those things really just make the difference in.
customer experience and ultimately your NRR numbers. And when you start to compound growth at some point, your NRR is a really, really big part of that. And operations at some level can be the biggest compounding piece of of your growth. And I I wanted to be a part of that.
Right. I I’m resonating with all of this because I have seen that play out, right? Where you cannot just, let’s say, focus on strategy and get new clients. And if you don’t service them well, like the business still isn’t going to work. The numbers aren’t going to work. So there’s a one piece of everything you said with operations of, hey, that’s really gonna help your your bottom line, right? Help your numbers. And the other piece that I think about is also as entrepreneurs, as business owners, we
wanna feel good about the product or service we’re providing and our customer experience or our client experience, like you said. I don’t wanna be the kind of person who has a business that like maybe we do, you know, paid ads or something like that and we get all these new clients, but then we’re not satisfying them, right? We’re not providing that great client experience. Like I
as a as a human being, as someone with a soul and values, I feel like that would kind of be negative. And that’s what we dislike about, you know, these big faceless corporations that are only caring about their their stock numbers, right? That’s what Americans dislike about them and why Americans like, let’s say, family businesses, small businesses, entrepreneurs.
Exactly.
Exactly. And, you know, I think even some of the bigger businesses out there, you know, there are some that really are customer service oriented in operations and have have those values. And you just have to know where to go and and where to look for them. so it really is, you know, kind of
kind of keeping that in mind, but it does. It it comes out with the numbers, right? And and you can see it in NPS and you can see it in churn. And it really does, does come up with, with the numbers. I mean, you know, Zappos being the the ultimate famous example, right? You know, they take all the returns, they write personalized notes, and they grew for a reason, right? People loved it.
Exactly, exactly. and I think, you know, people will stick with people, or stick with companies, they’ll refer and they’ll spend more, especially as having that amazing client experience. Actually, it’s funny, I had one just yesterday. We’re in Myrtle Beach, and we have some rental properties here and they’ve opened a Trader Joe’s recently nearby. And shopping at Trader Joe’s is just such a pleasant experience versus other
stores. And I think it’s one of those places that does everything you’re talking about. They care about their customer experience to such a high level. And like that means you’re not caring if it’s the cheapest place or the best value or anything like that because you’re getting such a great experience and you can trust that they have quality ingredients and everything that goes into it.
Trader Joe’s is actually one of my favorite examples. So one of the things I love about startups, and I’ve loved about being a leader at startups, and then also now in an advisory capacity, being an advisor and getting to wear multiple hats. You know, when you’re an operations leader at startups, even though operations and growth might be
What I came in with as my expertise, I ended up being a people leader multiple times. And where I’m circling back to on the Trader Joe’s example is what you may or may not know about Trader Joe’s is the reason the experience at Trader Joe’s is so good is Trader Joe’s treats their people right. So what Trader Joe’s does that many other companies don’t, is they give health insurance benefits at a lower number of full-time hours than many other companies do.
So lots
Okay.
of people go to work there because you can get health insurance benefits at a lower number of total weekly hours than other places. They also, in many cities, pay significantly above minimum wage and comparatively higher than other grocers. And people just feel appreciated. If you go and
Mm-hmm.
you are earning more comparatively than other grocery workers, you feel appreciated. And
You treat the people around you like someone that feels appreciated. And all of a sudden, in the store, everyone feels like an appreciated and valued person. So the way you treat your employees is the way your employees treat your customers. And it’s actually getting the opportunity to take over HR at one of the startups I led a few years ago. I was.
Extremely nervous. The CEO came came up to me. the person who was leading HR had too much going on. They needed to move it. We kind of looked around the executive table. It’s it made the most sense. I knew, I knew I needed to do it. And I reached out to a bunch of friends. It turns out a lot of people who’ve left Bain have ended up taking HR at at a number of startups and actually quite a bunch of larger companies. And I called a few of my former colleagues up.
Realized that Bain is actually an incredibly good training ground for people leaders. Bain has very, very, very strong people values. And the reason why is at Bain, people are the talent, right? Consultants are the talent and the product. And what Bain realized is how you treat your employees is how you treat your talent. They are your product. And it turns out this is true in
All businesses, the way you treat your employees is how they treat your customers. And that that turns into doubling the benefits. And when you have a bad company culture, those companies have poor customer service. Now, is this true every single time? No, I’m sure, I’m sure there’s an exception out there. But I would say by and large, companies with poor company culture on average.
Have poor customer service and often higher return. It is, it is a harder, harder road to to go down. When you have good company culture, you have happy customers because you’re paying people and sometimes it’s monetary, sometimes it’s benefits, sometimes it’s LD, right? You’re giving great training, you’re giving great opportunities. People are learning, they’re getting, you know, promotions or they’re getting learning opportunities, they’re getting
career advancement and and things like that, then they’re able to get themselves to the next level. They’re excited about their job. They’re excited to come to work every day. They’re working hard for your customers. Well, those customers are are feeling that. Then you have low employee turnover. Well then you have really good employees because they’re super knowledgeable. You also don’t have to constantly be paying to train new employees. So you’re actually saving yourself a bunch of money also, right? Retaining cus
Retaining employees is a cost savings technique, right? Frankly, that that people forget about. it’s so much cheaper to retain your current employees. It also keeps your customers happier. it’s it’s really the ultimate it’s the ultimate secret customer happiness initiative, cost savings
Mm-hmm.
initiative that you should be doing in in the good times, but it’s so easy to forget. It’s so easy
Mm-hmm.
to forget. And
So many companies wait way too long to hire a senior HR leader. And especially a senior strategic HR leader. So many startups, you get going, you get hiring, you hire your recruiter, right? And maybe you hire a VP of operations, but so many companies wait way too long to hire someone that’s really a CHRO or
A COO that’s a people-minded, someone that’s really keeping that strategic people view on and thinking about culture and LD and career paths. And this is how it it can really get out of, can get out of hand. And you end up being a 300-person company without career paths, with people that are kind of hanging out, not knowing where their career is going, wondering, really high talented people that
Don’t see any way they’re ever gonna get promoted. And then they’re floating around and and going other places instead of sticking around and and working hard for you.
Mm-hmm. And what size do you think a company should be when they look at hiring, you know, a dedicated VP of HR or someone else to help in that role?
You know, it’s such a hard decision because you have to be really thoughtful, right? You know, as much as I want a, you know, senior operations leader and a senior people leader and in all of these roles, I have to be realistic, right? You need a revenue leader, you know, paramount. You need an engineering leader, assuming that you’re you know, some
AI or SaaS business, you know, you need a product leader. Those are, those are actual non-negotiables because I’m certainly not gonna engineer or design the product. I think you’re probably best off if you can find some sort of a hybrid people ops leader, someone that is either
people leader that can lean in on the op side with a you know a CHRO that can oversee a VP ops or the other way around, a COO that’s very people minded and can oversee like a director of of of people that’s you know, maybe they’re really a recruiter, but they’re strategically minded recruiter. Great step opportunity for a recruiter that wants to become more more strategically minded.
Lots of great options there. It’s great to help people get thinking, Sarah. I love that. Now let’s think about another piece of of of you know startup and the growth. When your customers go from maybe like let’s say 10 to 50, right? You’re starting to get some traction and do some rinse and repeat and the business is starting to work, things are gonna break. And what are you thinking or what do you think is usually one of the first things to break that people might want to plan ahead for?
with their own business.
what is the first thing to break? Gosh, there’s so many. I think the first thing to break is probably onboarding, both customer and employee. And they’re actually often solved in really similar ways. And I actually recommend solving them together. which sounds a little bit crazy. but I just did this with a client over the summer. I was working with a client over the summer.
And they originally hired me because they wanted to a customer listening exercise. They felt like they didn’t have a great sense of what was on the roadmap. They wanted to get a better sense from their customers about what their feature roadmap should have. So did a bunch of customer interviews, kind of a customer listening exercise. They were between product leaders. So they were hiring a product leader. So I kind of did this work, kind of strategic
Mm-hmm.
work in the interim. And what I actually found out through the listening exercise.
Was that they were having a service problem. They had an onboarding problem. The customers hadn’t felt well onboarded, and they were actually kind of having a customer service problem. They actually weren’t really having a feature problem. so we ended up we ended up scoping a new project to install a new customer, customer service system that
centralized the email and got got a better kind of tiered servicing system going on. So they they solved a lot of that. The customers are feeling much better serviced. The emails, they’re getting email responses in under 90 minutes now, which is a huge improvement from from where they were before. So that’s that’s a great great result for them. And glad we did the listening exercise. So often, right, the problem isn’t what you thought it was. So they knew they needed to listen, found, found new information, which is great.
But what we also found in that process was I was talking to a few of the new employees that kind of got hired in that time period, also, who were a week, two weeks into the job, and they were saying, we don’t really understand how the product works either. We’re we’re two weeks in and we don’t feel like we really understand it either. So, in the process of building a new customer onboarding system, we actually in parallel built
a employee onboarding system that helped them parallel understand the product in parallel with the customer journey. And then we layered on top what were the internal tools that that they needed as well. Because companies grow and move and change so quickly. But you need some documentation, even if it’s lightweight, right? It’s a notion document, it’s a checklist, this doesn’t need to be
Mm-hmm.
really heavy.
And do you want to know what the last step of the document is? What was missing? It’s now your job to add it. Right? That’s
Right.
okay. When you’re 50 people, that’s okay that that’s part of the SOP is updating the SOP.
I love that. And I think that’s a really good point, Sarah. and I think of when you mentioned like the employee onboarding and how they don’t really understand the product, it can be difficult for, you know, business owners, entrepreneurs, those of us who have like lived and breathed our our business for so long. We can’t always think about the connections we’re making in our head or the things that we know that would not be apparent to somebody who’s who’s new to it.
Right. But then leverage the systems you have. Set them up a customer instance, right? You know, we don’t
Mm-hmm.
have to, you know, they don’t need to live in not knowing what they don’t know. Let’s have a fake customer instance and let them do the full customer onboarding. Let them be a customer, right? but don’t just let them live in the unknown because they need to, they need to figure it out.
Yeah,
that would be stressing. Now, can you think of a time when growth started to outpace a team’s capacity? what did you see and what did you do first?
Sorry, repeat the question when growth started to
to outpace a team’s capacity. Like they’re growing faster than they can handle it.
a good question. I’ll go back to the thinking about the customer success side, which is one I always like to to think about. I feel like that’s where that’s where this one always push push often comes to shove. it happens with services and and other operational groups as well. I think it’s where the tiered service model often becomes the the first answer where, you know,
10 to 50 customers, we’re servicing them all the same, right? We’re giving them all white glove service. Our first 50 customers, we were so happy that they’re there, right? But at some point, we can’t love every customer equally, right? We can’t service them all equally. And at some point, we have to say there are two or three tiers of customers, and some of them get lighter touch than others. And let’s start defining what that means.
You know, what does it mean to be a heavy, medium, and light touch customer? And how frequently can and do we meet with people? And what does that look like? And are some people grandfathered in because they’re our original 20? And that’s okay, right? You know, some people get that. but at least for new customers, what does what does light touch mean for the next smaller customer set that’s sold? And how do we kick that off? And how do we present that to them, right?
you know, okay, if someone is used to this level of service, weaning them off might be too hard. But when smaller customers are sold in the future, you know, maybe they never get monthly meetings. They only get quarterly meetings and they get monthly emails or they get whatever it is that that’s differentiated. and it’s a hypothesis, right? And it can be some test and learn. but but
Starting some experimentation like that, I think usually usually is a is a good way forward.
Yeah, no, I I think that’s a really good point. I love that. kind of along a similar a different question about growth. I understand, Sarah, that you took a marketplace from 1,000 to 10,000 supplier brands. And how did you turn messy work there into something that’s predictable enough to scale like that?
Yeah, that was a lot of crazy data and spreadsheets. And that was, we’ll start with a huge collaboration with the product team. it was, you know, it started, you know, it started as a growth problem, right? How many, how many brands can we get to want to join us per month, right? So it started with a demand problem and an email marketing problem and and all of those types of things.
And then all of a sudden it flipped to, you know, actually we have more brands that want to join us a month than spreadsheets that we can manually manually clean and upload. and then it’s turned into a collaboration with the product team to say, here’s what these spreadsheets look like that we’re cleaning and uploading to our website. My operations team.
could do, I think it was like 25 a month because we were we were manually cleaning them. This was before ChatGPT and Claude. So, you
Right.
know, now with the LLMs, I probably could have figured out how to how to build some agents and do it. But at the time I absolutely could not. We were, you know, using macros in Excel. I
hate to admit,
Yeah.
but that’s that’s where my capability is.
but the product team helped us figure out they built some kind of lightweight code and automation. There was some pattern recognition, and they built some automation so that we were able to go from uploading like 25, maybe 30 max a month to, I mean, honestly, a fairly unlimited amount. We were still doing quality checking that was manual because we we had certain criteria, right? We didn’t just want to let anyone onto onto the marketplace.
But we virtually could could get to an unlimited number where the quality check ended up being the barrier. but that was that was really fun to get to the point where it became a it went from an email marketing problem and a growth problem to a product problem.
Yeah, that’s awesome. I love that example. really again, great to have people think about things in a different way and as you keep growing and evolving, the problems you solve are going to grow and evolve. So
Yeah, exactly. And it’s it’s cross functional, right? You know, every every part of every part of the business is is there.
Right, yes. Now, I love how you’ve helped so many companies do this growing and scaling. And I am sure you’ve run into a lot of founders who like to hold onto everything tightly, right? This is their baby. and I’d love for you to share as you’ve seen them let go, right? For the ones who have been able to successfully let go so the business can grow and scale beyond their own cap capabilities.
How how does that how have you seen people do that successfully? And then what change is available in the business once the owner does let go?
Yeah, I think, you know, let go, I actually think is a tough word. I think a better framing of it is build trust. Because I
Mm-hmm.
think let go is exactly what founders are scared of. And they’re scared of the black box and they’re scared of things happening and their lack of awareness. And I think of what founders are usually able to do when things go right.
Is they’re able to build trust and transparency. So they’re not actually letting go. They’re building systems where they have enough trust and transparency that things aren’t getting away from them. They know enough of what’s happening. They see enough of what’s happening that they know if something is going too far the wrong direction.
That they are gonna see it and that they are still able to influence it, which is important, right? Because you don’t want them to get too far away from it, but you want them to be far enough away that things can happen in the meantime, right? You don’t want them involved in in micro decisions. So to to me, what that often looks like as we think about kind of the scaling from call it.
50 to 150 or 200 people, that goes to like the weekly executive meeting being the primary place where they’re getting information. They are no longer meeting with their direct reports, direct reports on a regular basis. They are only meeting with their executive team. That is the primary place they’re getting information. They’re doing it in a weekly meeting.
And they’re getting updates on a weekly basis. They’re also doing one-on-ones and they’re doing product reviews and they’re doing other meetings that are kind of on a regular, regular forum and cadence, but those are their primary places for information outside of other ad hoc, you know, review this feature, review this this specific item. And if things are going well, that should be enough.
They’re also building enough trust with their executives that they know, you know, the old, the good old one-way door, two-way door, right? If it is a one-way door, if we cannot come back from it, I fully trust I will be consulted. If it is a two-way door, if it is even a fairly major decision, but we could undecide it, yeah, you don’t always need to consult me. It’s an A-B test. You’re
Testing a red banner on the website, but you could press a button and change it back to blue, you don’t need to ask me, right? So
Right. Mm-hmm.
I think those are those are some of the things. I think it’s the founders that can’t let go of things that could be changed back with the press of a button that really have trouble getting out of it and letting the company move on. The founders that are able to give up that stuff.
And let the company do a lot of testing, a lot of experimentation. Because those companies can then bring learning, right? Then they can come and say, my God, we did all these tests, we got all this learning, here’s all this data. Maybe they do an experiment, it has extremely successful results. And the CEO says, I don’t care that that was really successful. I hate red banners. I’m never gonna use them.
Ha ha.
Okay, that’s still the CEO’s prerogative, right? But
It was still a test worth running, right? You know,
Mm-hmm.
they were still allowed to do it. That’s still data worth knowing. and they hate red and whatever, right? CEOs pick weird things sometimes.
I love it. That’s a perfect example. And you actually answered my next question, which was going to be, how do you help people figure out what to hand off first when they are stretched thin? But you answered that. It’s like the, you know, the one-way door versus the two-way door. So amazing. You answered two questions in one. Now
Yeah.
I’m sure you refin run into often, Sarah. Founders and CEOs can think the answer is more software or more tech, right? When a tool when is a tool the right fix and when are they just adding more noise?
that’s a big it depends. it’s a big, it’s a big it depends.
The the problem and the people and the people in place, right? and how many people there there are to like solve the problem and manage the system, right? like I mentioned this summer, one of the problems was emails weren’t getting responded to. And I talked to the team, and part of the problem was emails were going to personal email boxes.
And the answer was definitely that they needed a like actual customer success platform. So all of the emails were going to like a central customer success system so that emails were not in personal email boxes and they were in a shared place where like multiple customer success people could be working together on it. Right. That was that was absolutely a tech systems.
Problem. They also were short staffed and needed to hire someone as well. So that was a people and systems problem in that case. but you know, sometimes it’s it’s you know decision making, right? And and a tech tool isn’t gonna solve good or bad decision making, right? So I think I think it’s a very, very case-by-case basis.
right, I think that was helpful and the example gives some some depth to that to help people figure out for themselves. Now, as you know, Sarah, at Worker Genics we help people get full time executive assistance. which I think, you know, with tech and with other options that are out there now,
Often founders and executive teams can delay getting that executive assistant. When have you seen a full-time executive assistant make a big difference for a founder or an executive?
High frequency scheduling takes so much more time than anyone thinks that it does. and I actually find that as an operational advisor, or even when I’ve been a a COO or a VP of operations, that in my role, I end up taking on those admin duties frequently when an admin isn’t there because it needs to get done.
And as an operations leader, the the right people being in the room is critical for me, right? Stakeholder management is one of the most critical pieces of operations, making sure the only way the right decision is made is if the right people are in the room. and that’s critical for for operations. when there is an executive assistant.
It makes the life of the operations leader a thousand times easier. but I think the operations leader ends up filling the gap otherwise. So I would say my my dreams come true when there’s an effective executive assistant at play. I I I definitely know that my my life will be easier. and I find, you know, definitely executives that have them.
Have more time to focus on what matters, right? if they’re able to offload the mental load of when is that meeting, when is that, you know, if a if a meeting conflict comes up, how is it going to be handled? If they just don’t need to actively be thinking about it, they know that someone else is whether they’re gonna solve it or that person’s just gonna be responsible for.
bringing it to light and and they want to solve it themselves, whatever that working relationship is, the mental loads off their plate, which is is helpful. That means their active brain can be used on founder-led sales or product solutioning or the other really vital places that that founder’s brain is needed.
Right, I love that. Great example, Sarah. Now, Sarah, if somebody listening wants to get some time back this week with their operations and their business, what’s one thing they can do and how will they know it’s working?
time back with their operations this week. that is a great question.
Okay, this is where we need to edit out the pause.
They will. Jo John yeah, John the editor will he’ll he’ll do that.
I’m back with our operations this week. What did I what was my planned answer for this one?
I don’t remember what my planned answer for this one was. If someone wants to get time
That’s it.
back for their for their operations this week, I think the best thing to do is actually to do a decision review. So I would think about all the decisions that are made on a weekly, monthly, and even quarterly basis, and what forums those are made in. And I know this seems like a lot.
To think about. The good news is if your Clotter ChatGPT is hooked up to your email and other places, it can probably be a good cheat and help you figure it out pretty quickly. But I would try to get a list together of the decisions that are made on a weekly, quarterly, monthly basis and what forums those are made in. And just try to get a better check on the drumbeat of those decisions and those meetings.
And a tally on how those are being made, if they’re being made with the right information, the right people in the room, and the right the right information flows. And then think about kind of the meeting cadence and drumbeat that you have set up overall and make sure that it’s serving those decisions.
Because I often find in many companies that there are a lot of regular meetings that don’t actually serve the business decisions that need to be made. And we spend a lot of time in meetings just to meet. And then the decisions are either being made other places or extra meetings need to be set up to make those. And actually redesigning a system where the meetings match the decisions that need to be made.
can help be really much more effective in that meeting time across the team. And that’s a system that can be designed and redesigned pretty, pretty quickly, pretty effectively.
I love that. I love that because one of my pet peeves is meeting just to meet, right? Or meeting when there’s a more time effective way that that situation could have been handled, right? ’cause so many people with from a corporate setup they just want to check the box. We had the meeting and like that’s what we do. but as somebody who’s entrepreneurial, it’s like, well, that doesn’t matter. It’s
how much revenue we’re making, how much are we actually taking home, netting, and and how are we making this a great business with great client service and meetings don’t always serve that. So you’re speaking to me on that one, Sarah. I love it. All right. Now this has been a great conversation, Sarah. If somebody would like to connect with you, learn more, what is the best way for them to do so?
Yes, absolutely. I would love if people want to check out my website. if they want to learn more, see some case studies. My website is signalpathvisory.net. They can check out my website there. they can also check out my founder time leverage quiz. So if you’re wondering how you’re spending your time, if it’s effective.
I have a few kind of self-assessment questions that that you can take and kind of check yourself on on how you’re spending your own time. My email address is posted on on the site as well. It’s Sarah Papoff at gmail.com. Certainly feel free to send me a note. I’m happy to continue the conversation with anyone as well.
That’s amazing. And so for our listeners, that’s where you can reach out and connect with Sarah and see her advisory services. And Sarah, thank you so much. This was such a good conversation. I hadn’t heard the the one-way versus two-way door thing before. And so now I’m like thinking of all the places I can implement that. So you got me very excited. I love the idea of getting the right structure in place as businesses grow. And for most leaders, you know, the plan is rarely the problem. It’s the follow-through.
Good ideas get talked about, everyone nods, the week gets busy though. And so if any of our listeners are looking for a full-time ultimate executive assistant, like Sarah mentioned a little bit, who can help with things like scheduling, getting the right people in the room, that’s where Workergenix comes in. And if it sounds like something you can use, head on over to workergenics.com and reach out there. Thanks for spending some time with Sarah and I this week, and join me again next week for another episode of Scale Smart Grow Fast.