Years ago I had lunch with a former colleague who told me a sad tale of a publishing company that neglected to send invoices and renewal notices for three straight months. They were in the midst of some other project and somehow it just didn’t get done.
It’s a bit of a miracle it wasn’t fatal for the business.
I was working in marketing operations at the time, and I was somewhat horrified that a group of seasoned professionals could simply forget to do something so basic.
How could that happen, and why wasn’t it noticed? Shouldn’t there have been some equivalent to a warning light on your car’s dashboard?
With that inspiration, I went back to my office and sketched out the first iteration of my “wheels on the bus” report.
As my friends at that other company demonstrated, it’s easy to get distracted by this and that and forget to do the basics — put gas in the car, bring the diaper bag, or pay the mortgage.
We’re in the middle of a huge distraction right now, and this distraction might keep people from noticing that their marketing automation is sending renewal notices with incorrect prices, their unsubscribe rate is going through the roof, their site is full of bad links, and the wrong demographic is dominating their website traffic and their sales funnel.
I hope none of these things are happening, of course, but everything left to its own trends towards chaos.
Here’s my prescription. Create a relatively short list of the things that have to happen to keep the wheels on the bus. What processes need to take place, and how do you know they’re getting done?
Fancy technology won’t save you if you’re not sending out bills, cashing checks, and otherwise minding the store.
In this article I’m inviting you to take a break from the shiny new object and spend a little time reviewing what makes your business tick. The nudges below are designed to help you create an operations regime where you can be sure the basics are getting done. (Or if you need help, give me a call.)
- I have not tried to be comprehensive with this list because everyone’s business is different.
- This is a high-level look to get you thinking, but you should also dig into the nooks and crannies just enough that you can make somebody accountable for those details. E.g., the CEO doesn’t need to know about 404 errors on the website, but somebody does.
- The “wheels on the bus” memo is an operations document, not a management or strategy document. However, going through the process can help you create those as well.
- The essence of the checklist is “how do I know that these key operations are functioning according to the demands of my business?”
The main idea of the “wheels on the bus” report is to track the fundamental drivers of your business and make sure they’re humming along. The essence of the checklist is to identify categories and ask three questions.
- What matters?
- How do you know what’s happening?
- What change should trigger attention?
The categories themselves could be …
- Cash
- Expenses
- Servicing Existing Clients
- Acquisition / Sales
- Audience
- Engagement
- Retention
- Marketing
- Technology
- Staff
Let’s take retention as an example.
What matters is keeping as many of your current customers as possible, so you need a report on how much churn you’re seeing, and how it compares with historical data.
How do we know? First, we have to make sure we’re all defining terms the same way, then we have to fashion a report that communicates the present reality.
What change should trigger attention? The report should give enough historical perspective to show when a number is out of whack.
The “wheels on the bus” concept is intended as a high-level analysis to alert you when things are blowing up. As you’re thinking through all this, you’ll be tempted to stray into management / maintenance issues and strategic opportunities. Good. Write those things down, but keep them separate.
Details like tracking your chargeback rate would be a maintenance / management item, and questions about expanding or changing your revenue sources would be a strategy question. There’s a lot to be done in each of those areas as well, but for now, stay focused on the basics.
Your Three Key Documents
Wheels on the Bus. A short operations report to the CEO every month that shows a high level view of key metrics. It’s a dashboard to indicate developing problems and pending (or existing) crises.
Maintenance / management checklists. These are owned by your managers as tools to monitor the progress of direct reports, but also reviewed quarterly or semi-annually with senior management.
The strategy list. This is a living document that’s updated by senior management as they ponder operations, management, the direction of the business, and the direction of the industry. It should be reviewed annually by executives and senior staff. Perhaps at a management retreat. (I’d be happy to moderate.)
A Word on Presentation
Don’t assume the format of the report is obvious. A red light / green light dashboard is easy to build, easy to fake (or copy from last month without thinking), and easy to ignore. On the other hand, a busy executive doesn’t need another page of raw numbers.
The correct presentation depends on the nature of the data.
- A trend that matters because of its direction wants a simple line graph, not a table.
- A number that matters because of a threshold (renewal notices sent on time, yes or no) wants a flag, not a chart.
- A comparison that matters because of proportion (which customer segment actually drives revenue) wants a bar or a percentage, not a raw count.
Somebody with math skills and a solid business sense needs to interrogate each item on the list to figure out the best way to communicate the information to the CEO. It’s also very important that it’s obvious the report is up-to-date.
Call if you Need Help
I’ve done this sort of analysis, and I have a penchant for translating the squishy to the concrete. An objective look by an independent party might be exactly what you need.
On the other hand, you learn a lot by going through the exercise yourself. Give it a try, and call me if you have questions, or want help.
