From Overwhelmed to Organized: Streamline Your Operations for the Second Half of the Year - Lesley Braga

Website: https://www.azoraops.com/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesleybraga/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/streamlinewithlesley/

[00:00:01]: Hi, I'm Lesley, founder of Azora Ops Consulting. We help businesses build strong, sustainable operations by simplifying, simplifying and streamlining the way teams work. You started this year with big goals and now you're halfway through the year and your back end is still vibes and a prayer. You're not lazy, you're not unorganized and you're not behind. You're under supported by your systems. In this session, I'll show you how to simplify your operations and create clarity that carries you through the second half of the year without burning you out. So before we start, let's talk about what operations really is. A lot of people hear operations and they think about spreadsheets.  

[00:00:52]: Maybe they think about finance. When I say operations, I don't mean fancy dashboards. I don't mean endless SOPs. I mean the stuff that makes your business run. It means onboarding clients, delivering services, collecting payments, coordinating with your team. If any of that feels heavier than it should. Your operations need some love. And in this presentation, I'm going to give you a few tips to getting yourself back on track for the second half of the year.  

[00:01:24]: All right? Why does all this matter? There's so many things to think about. Why does this matter? Most of the folks that I work with aren't disorganized. They've grown fast or their business has changed and their back end didn't catch up. Or maybe they didn't take the time to really think about their back office and now it's not as smooth as it could be. I had a client spending a couple of hours onboarding each client. They were reinventing the wheel each time. They lacked standardization that could move the process along faster. And today they can onboard a client in minutes.  

[00:01:58]: And they really did that by taking an honest look at their onboarding system and figuring out what needed to change. All right, a little bit of a reality check. What's actually slowing you down? Too many steps live in your brain. This is the one I see all the time. A well meaning person does so much to ease the burden on others, but they can't take a day off without potentially causing chaos. You're reinventing the wheel every time. Having to remember how you did something or what wording you used in an email. It's not just exhausting, it slows down the entire process.  

[00:02:40]: Do you have messy handoffs? Having clean handoffs means no one has to ask, wait a minute, who owns this? No more wondering who should be doing. And let's talk about decision fatigue. It is so real, it slows things down. It's such a pain. Having standardization means you don't have to continuously remake the same decisions. Now, before we get started, let's get a little bit organized. Look, I get it. I'm such an operations person.  

[00:03:21]: I love, love color coded folders. I love a filing system that rivals the Dewey decimal one. But that's not the type of organization that your business needs to grow. You need clear, repeatable and scalable processes. You need clarity. Knowing what needs to happen, when and by whom. The key to making sure the ball doesn't get dropped. Clarity looks like a checklist for a client onboarding that anyone can follow.

[00:03:50]: It's repeatable. Processes don't change every time. Of course there are nuances, but that doesn't mean that the general process shouldn't be repeatable. Having repeatable processes looks like using the same email template every week and not having to rewrite something from scratch. It's scalable. If you can't hand it off, you don't have a system. You have a dependency problem. You can't be the only one that knows how to do something.

[00:04:21]: If you have a team or assistant, scalability looks like being able to hand off something to, say, your virtual assistant without panicking. Okay, so how do we create clear, repeatable and scalable processes? I have three real doable actions that you can take now to get started. This is the big one. You need to figure out what are your bottlenecks? Where do things pile up? What are the steps? Or even maybe you have one step that's always slowing you down. Those are the bottlenecks. This is something that's actually really hard to do because you have to be unbelievably honest with yourself and your processes. You can't really depend on, well, this is how we've always done it. This kind of works or it's working fine right now.

[00:05:21]: You need to really honestly reflect on all of your major processes to find the bottlenecks. Ask yourself, where are things stalling or bouncing back to you? Are you getting client complaints? Are you getting complaints from your team? Dig deep. Ask yourselves, how do we smooth out each bottleneck? Are there steps that can be eliminated? Can steps or approval moments be moved around? If you have a team, it's super beneficial to ask them about their pain points. They are going to be your greatest asset in doing your research here. Clearing bottlenecks is going to make your processes run way more efficiently. And this will take some time to do, but I promise you, you'll be so happy that you did it. Okay, guys, another big one document. And I think that this is a little bit scary because when you hear document, you're imagining something massive.

[00:06:28]: You don't need a 15 page SOP. No one's carrying a three ring binder around anymore. With information, you just need enough to get going. A simple checklist, a table, a flowchart. You can even hand draw a flowchart or just a one pager to explain the basics is enough. I once had a client scan me her small notebook with just basic bullet points and that's what we use to evaluate her process. Don't start from scratch. You already know what your process is.

[00:07:03]: So just write down what you know, just make an outline and go from there. Okay. Once you've documented, go back through that document or checklist or table or flowchart or whatever and clarify who owns each step. One person has to be responsible for moving the step forward. It's not everyone, because when it's everyone's job, it's no one's job. This is especially true when you don't have a huge team. You can't really be like this department is responsible for it. Really pinpoint who is responsible for it.  

[00:07:49]: Attach job titles. If you need to attach a person's name to it, that's incredibly helpful. Highlight the handoff points and then add detail to make it crystal clear how the handoff will happen. Is it an email? Are you physically walking a piece of paper from one person's office to another one? Do you have an internal system? Are you using a project management system like HubSpot or Monday.com? does everybody know how to use all the systems? The way I like to do this documentation and ownership process is I create a table with three columns. The leftmost column I jot down all the steps. The middle column I show who owns the steps. And the last column will say if it's handoff, point who it goes to, how it's handed off, it will be crystal clear. Looking at this really plain, simple table, everything that needs to happen while you're documenting, you might find bottlenecks that you didn't think of in that first step.  

[00:09:02]: And that's okay. It's just going to give you chance to look back and ask yourself, how do we smooth this out? Are there steps that can be eliminated? Are there steps that can be moved around? Those are really the big things that I look for when I'm helping a client do something like this. Okay, I know I've mentioned it before. I'm A huge operations nerd. So, like, this stuff is actually really fun for me. But I understand that evaluating your process isn't what everyone considers a fun project. You didn't start your business to babysit bottlenecks, and you really deserve to focus on your best work. Completing the evaluation and documentation process can get your office back on track and help you focus on what you do best, which is probably serving your customers.  

[00:09:59]: And while we're talking about results, this is sort of what I'm talking about here. So you can go from having an inbox full of hey, I'm just checking in on this. Hey, I'm just checking in on this step. To really having projects that move through their life cycle without having nudges. You might be the only one who knows how to do a step. To having a system where anyone on your team can follow a simple checklist to get something done. And my personal favorite, eliminating the constant interruptions. Having clear ownership of each step means that you're going to have fewer taps on the shoulders and fewer pings and fewer messages, and you kind of get your day back that way.  

[00:10:51]: Okay, I have thrown so much information at you pretty quickly. What do you do with this? The best way to do this is to pick one process, just one process this week. It doesn't even have to be your most crucial one. Do something easy just to get your brain thinking about things and doing almost like a practice run of this audit, the one process. Ask yourself, can I simplify this? Could I hand this process off if I needed to step away for three days? That's your litmus test to ensure that you have clear, repeatable, and scalable processes. Can you go on vacation? I want to thank you so much for spending time with me today. I hope you're walking away with a little bit more clarity and we'll end up with a lot less chaos. And if you're not sure where to start, I started Companion.

[00:11:56]: I created a companion resource that walks you through a quick systems check to help you spot your biggest bottleneck and figure out what to fix next. It's called where's the Bottleneck? And it is available on my website. But if you look through your June Jumpstart swag bag, there's actually a coupon code in there so you can get it for free because you are part of this. And as always, if you want to and you want to talk more nerdy ops with anyone, you can find me on Instagram and on threads at Streamline with Lesley, or you can find me on my website. At azoraops. Com. Thanks again and happy organizing.