I’ve heard it more times than I can count…

“Where (or how) do I get started organizing my business?”

And I’ve come to realize that a lot of entrepreneurs think there is a best practice or specific way to be set up and organized for success in your backend, operations, and project management. Well, let me tell you – there isn’t only one way.

BUT there ARE ways to help you get thinking and on your feet to kickstart the flow that you need to start organizing your business.

Let’s dive into the 5S approach to organizing & optimizing your business…

SORT – Get rid of what’s unnecessary. 

Give each task in your business a timeline tag of importance (physically or virtually). 

If something needs to be done in 90 days, 60 days, 30 days, etc., give it a rank on the scale of priority so that you can determine what can be tossed out according to what is most important for your business bottom line.

STRAIGHTEN – Organize the areas where your tasks will live. 

A great way to get started here is by starting with departments. Determine what department buckets are living in your business and then break those down individually. For example, for your Operations or Head Quarters bucket, you might throw in anything related to HR, daily one-off tasks, and team resource documents as a “hub” for the business. 

If something doesn’t belong, set it aside until you move onto the next bucket.

SHINE – Clean up where things are living. 

After you have your buckets created and tasks divided out by department, start cleaning up how you want things to visually look. 

It will probably start out as a chaotic pile of things but here is where you take into consideration where you want things to go.

STANDARDIZE – In order to maintain what you’ve created through the first three steps in the 5S approach, there should be a standard to uphold it. 

This is where your internal SOPs for organization come into play and are created. Decide routinely when something needs to be cleaned up, reviewed for improvements, or touched so that the living & breathing home of your operations stays caught up. 

This is your front line standard work. (AKA those tedious tasks)

SUSTAIN – Put what you’ve created into a routine. 

This is where the entire team comes together to discuss what standards are being done and what needs to be improved or removed from the process. 

This is your Monthly, Quarterly, or Annual checkin for all of your team to be on the same page with what is going in and coming out of the business at each level for success.

If you’re still not sure where to begin so that you can streamline your behind-the-scenes and make your business run smoother than you ever thought it could, take the FREE Systems Evaluation Quiz to get the action plan that will help you untangle & optimize your operations.

Brooke Scott, MBA

Ready to Take Action & Optimize Your Ops? 

Book An Implementation Day. Implementation Days are my newest VIP Day offer where, together, we focus on a project inside of your business and knock it out! From funnel behaviors & integrations or starting from the bottom up in building your project management platform, we can focus where you need it most. Head to the page here to learn more and fill out an inquiry form and I will get you on the books!