Lead the team 15 of 17 in this group
SOP 271
Score your management system and fix its weakest practices
What this page is for. Use it when a business has great culture, leadership, structure and people, and can still fall apart under its own growth; put another way, it has all the good pieces and still feels that something is wrong. The answer here is that it is missing an operating system: the everyday rhythms that make the rest work. The page carries the point at which working scrappily stops paying; why a team keeps to its founder's rhythm and no tighter one; the five practices of management and what each means; how to rate yourself on each from 1 to 10, with a description of a 10 and of a 3; how to read the sum, which tops out at 50; and why you fix the lowest scores first. The leadership half of the same operating system has its own page, SOP 272 — Score your leadership system, and use rest to test it.
SOP-271-Score-your-management-system-and-fix-its-weakest-practices.md
1. When scrappy stops working
What changes. What gets a business its first few million is moving fast, winging it and trusting the founder's gut. What gets it further is moving with intention, systems that repeat, and execution driven by the team. Another reading makes the first stage whatever size you have reached, whether that is a few hundred thousand or a few million; the habits that got you there do not carry you into the next stage.
When it happens. At first, chaos works for you: you are quick, nimble and able to seize chances. But in the range from $3M to $30M, depending on how skilled you are, the chaos turns into the liability. Another reading puts the range at like a couple of million to 30 million, again depending on skill, with the chaos growing into a huge liability for the company.
The signs. Nobody knows who owns what. Decisions drag on. The same fires break out month after month, because nothing has been written down. That is the moment to professionalize.
Who misses it. Most founders miss that moment, and most push back against it, because it feels like giving up what made them special. (Another reading softens this: a lot of people miss it, and, it is thought, a lot of people resist it for that reason.) One answer is that what you are picking up is what lets you scale. A blunter one: you are not special, just small, which is fine; you still have to take on the habits that let the business grow into a large, grown-up company.
What it is not. Professionalizing does not mean bureaucracy; it means clarity and rhythm, and systems that leave you free to think (and to grow).
How common. A lot of companies reach this point, and one would say every company does at some stage.
2. Your team keeps your rhythm
The founder sets the pace. A founder without a cadence runs a company without momentum, and a team is never going to be more disciplined than its founder. Put another way, it is the cadence you keep for yourself and show the team: they will not go past it. So set a cadence for the whole company.
A common complaint. It comes up constantly. A founder says the team has no accountability, and meanwhile cancels one-on-ones, lets promised follow-ups lapse, and changes priorities partway through the week (in another reading, every week), with constantly canceling things, adding things and changing direction. The problem is the founder, not the team. The team copies your rhythm, good or bad; or, in another reading, your rhythm or your chaos.
What copies over. If you keep no meeting cadence, they will keep none. If you leave decisions undocumented, so will they. Skip your own follow-through and they will skip theirs. Each of these can also be put as a question: why would they?
Where to start. Systems begin with you, and the first system you need is cadence.
Reading your team's worst habit as a copy of one of your own, as a two-step exercise, is section 10 of SOP 263 — Find where you are the ceiling, then fix what your team mirrors.
3. The five practices of management
Management, as defined here, is the running of the business, day in and day out; or, in another reading, essentially that. The five practices below are its daily operating system. They are also how one owner thinks about what a manager, or that owner's own company, lacks.
- Expectations: outcomes rather than tasks. Spell out clearly what success means, in terms that are specific and can be measured, so that everyone can tell precisely which results are theirs to deliver. As questions: are the expectations clear, measurable and specific? Does the person know what they are accountable for, and what is expected of them?
- Accountability: facts rather than feelings. Check back on what people committed to, using facts and clarity. That builds a culture in which people own their results and talk plainly when an outcome falls short of what was expected. In short: when expectations are not being met, you have a conversation, and that conversation is accountability.
- Communication: feedback in both directions, and often. Set up regular loops of feedback that run both ways, so that information, expectations and support flow both ways between you and the people you manage, rather than only from you downward. This is one that a lot of people get, and it can be meetings, Slack and so on.
- Cadence: a rhythm people can predict, which compounds. A pattern of meetings and check-ins that repeats and gives the team structure, alignment and momentum: one-on-ones, team meetings and reviews. With it, everyone knows what comes next: the next thing, and the next point of contact in the company or the department.
- Recognition: reinforce what you value, in public. Celebrate, in front of others, the behaviors and outcomes that fit your values and standards, and keep reinforcing them, so the culture becomes one where people repeat whatever is rewarded.
The recognition rhythm is set out in full in SOP 261 — Build a recognition rhythm that rewards values, not results.
Outcomes, or behaviors only. Item 5 counts outcomes that fit your values among what is celebrated in front of others. SOP 261, section 4, praises only process and behavior before the whole company; results are rewarded there through pay, targets and peers. Celebrating outcomes lets public praise reach results that fit the values; leaving them out keeps the team from reading results as what earns praise. This page does not settle which reading is right.
4. Rate yourself on each practice
Give yourself a score from 1 to 10 on each of the five, and be brutally honest, again for the last two. The reason for rating: so you can see what your company is missing. For every practice, the table describes a top score of 10 and a low score of 3. Where a second reading differs, it follows in parentheses after "or".
| Practice | What a 10 looks like | What a 3 looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Expectations | Every role has measurable outcomes defined, and the success metrics are specific | Goals are vague, and the team frequently asks what they should be working on (or: usually) |
| Accountability | Check-ins on commitments every week, and conversations that rest on facts (or: always on facts and on where things stand) | Hard conversations are avoided and deadlines are let slide (or: hard conversations avoided when things slide) |
| Communication | One-on-ones every week with specific feedback in both directions; input is asked for regularly | Feedback comes only once a year; feedback is rarely asked for (or: people rarely ask for it); issues fester (or: as if a wall stood between you and the person) |
| Cadence | One-on-ones and team syncs held consistently each week; planning each month and each quarter that people can predict (or: a rhythm each month and quarter) | Meetings are set at random; one-on-ones are canceled often; there is no rhythm of planning (or: no rhythm for the company or the team) |
| Recognition | Public recognition every day or every week, tied to specific values and behaviors | Only negative feedback is given; recognition is rare and generic (or: rare) |
Add the five scores together for a total out of 50.
5. Read the total
- Below 30. Your management system is broken (or, in another reading, semi-broken rather than a great system, which is fine: without knowing where you stand, you cannot improve). Take the two lowest scores and put the systems for them in place within this quarter (the quarter appears in one reading only; the other says those two are the systems to focus on).
- 30 to 40. You have gaps. The two lowest scores mark where execution breaks down; that is probably the place where things fail, which is why you focus on those two.
- Above 40. You have a solid foundation; now turn to consistency. Do not stop doing what works; just improve it bit by bit.
6. Fix the lowest first
Mark the two lowest scores with a circle. Those two explain why execution hurts so much. There is no need to repair every one of the five: fix the weakest one or two, and the rest becomes easier.
Knowing your score matters: working out how to improve is really hard when you do not know where you stand.
Grading a team's communication on its own, part by part, is SOP 136 — Grade a team's communication and raise its weakest part. A planning hour at the start of each week, after which a manager can open anyone's calendar and see the workload of the whole team, is SOP 137 — Run the weekly time-blocking ritual. A daily and weekly training rhythm for a sales team, with a weekly one-on-one, is SOP 256 — Run ongoing daily and weekly training for sales reps.
7. What this page does not decide for you
- Where in the range scrappy stops working. It depends on your skill. This page gives no figure for it beyond the range itself.
- The scores in between. Each practice has a description at 10 and at 3, and nowhere else. What a middle score looks like: Not established on this page.
- When to score yourself again. Not established on this page.
- Whether managers rate themselves too. Not established on this page.
- Building each system. How to build the system behind a weak practice, and how to run the meetings themselves, are not covered on this page.
8. The checklist
| Step | What to do |
|---|---|
| 1 | Watch for the signs that chaos has become the liability: nobody sure who owns what, slow decisions, the same fires every month |
| 2 | Set a cadence for the whole company and keep it yourself: do not cancel one-on-ones, leave commitments without follow-up, or change priorities partway through the week |
| 3 | Rate yourself from 1 to 10 on expectations, accountability, communication, cadence and recognition, honestly |
| 4 | Add up the scores (the most you can reach is 50) and see which band in section 5 the sum falls in |
| 5 | Circle the two lowest scores; below 30, put their systems in place within the quarter |
| 6 | Fix the weakest one or two rather than all five |
| 7 | Above 40, turn to consistency: keep what works and improve it bit by bit |
9. What this page does not cover
The leadership practices, rated the same way, and the audit that scores both sets side by side, are SOP 272. Recognition is covered in full on SOP 261.
Terms defined on this page
- Accountability (management practice)
- One of the five management practices: following up on commitments with facts, not feelings, and having the conversation when someone falls short of what was expected.
- Cadence (management practice)
- One of the five management practices: a steady, repeating rhythm of one-on-ones, team meetings and reviews. A team is never more disciplined than the rhythm its founder keeps.
- Communication (management practice)
- One of the five management practices: regular feedback that flows up as well as down between you and your reports.
- Expectations (management practice)
- One of the five management practices: defining success as specific, measurable outcomes rather than tasks, so each person knows what they answer for.
- Management (five practices)
- Running the business day to day through five practices: expectations, accountability, communication, cadence and recognition.
- Management score
- Rating each of the five management practices from 1 to 10 for a total out of 50: under 30 the system is broken (semi-broken, in a second reading), 30 to 40 has gaps, above 40 is a solid base. Fix the two lowest first.
- Operating system (management)
- The everyday rhythms that make culture, leadership, structure and people work. Without it a business can come apart under its own growth.
- Professionalize
- Moving from speed, improvising and gut calls to deliberate moves, repeatable systems and team execution. Between $3M and $30M (on another reading, a couple of million to $30M), depending on skill, chaos becomes the liability; it means clarity and rhythm, not red tape.
- Recognition (management practice)
- One of the five management practices: celebrating in public, again and again, what fits your values, so people repeat what gets rewarded. Whether that public praise takes in results that fit the values, or only behaviors (SOP 261), is not settled.