Colin (00:01.578)
Hello and welcome to a new series of The Growth System, the podcast that looks at the world of B2B growth through a systems thinking lens. I'm Colin Shakespeare.
Chris (00:13.058)
And I'm Chris Baylis. And today we are going to be talking about a topic that is very close to our hearts. We're going to be talking about business operating systems. And specifically, we're going to talk about the operating system that you should be using within your growth team. Now, this is a model that we've actually developed within the rev space business. And it's something that we deploy on client accounts. And we thought it would be good to do a really deep dive into this as a topic.
So over the next 13 episodes, I think it's most likely to be, we're to be going through the growth team operating system dimension by dimension, talking about some of the things that comprise the operating system, why they're important and how to deploy them. Because as we'll reveal today, there's as much depth as there is breadth. But let's start by talking about what an operating
system is. So
Colin (01:12.766)
or specifically a business operating system here. I mean, we're not talking about MS-DOS, right?
Chris (01:15.946)
Indeed. Well, yes, I mean, maybe MS-DOS is a good place to start, actually, in a funny sort of a way, because I think that what we observe is that the operating system at work within most organisations is probably akin to MS-DOS. But, you know, let's talk about what we mean by that. an operating system or a business operating system
is really a set of processes, of methods, mechanisms, whatever you want to call them that enable the organization to kind of operate in a predictable and intentional way. And crucially, to have a mechanism for delivering on its objectives and achieving its strategy. So when we talk about kind of system engineering, we talk about kind of strategy formation. When we talk about an operating system, what we're really talking about is how we deliver on that.
This is the framework that you install, much like MS-DOS, into your business to make sure that the way that you approach challenges, the way that you approach the objectives, the way that you set objectives, definitely.
is consistent, know, is predictable and ensures that you can move towards achieving your strategic goals in a way that is actually engineered for success rather than slightly haphazard, which is perhaps the way that a great many businesses unfortunately go about things.
Colin (02:47.07)
Isn't it the case that
In just about any organization with a reasonable level of complexity, there's a sort of an operating system is a kind of an emerging property of that system. It's just that it's perhaps not deliberate and planned and targeted in the way that a business operating system like we mean is.
Chris (03:14.008)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it's such a good point, because as we'll go on to talk about, as we've talked about many times on the part before,
know, systems are all about emergence. They're all about the emergent properties, the emergent behaviors that you get from all the elements that sit within that system. Just because you haven't defined a business operating system, you don't have a pretty chart that has dimensions in like the one that we're going to talk about. Doesn't mean you haven't got one. I think it's a really, really good point. That operating system can be
implicit, you know, it can absolutely have just has to.
emerge from the set of tools and processes and technologies and meeting cadences and collaboration systems that exist within the organization. Because whether you work in a business that's got a defined operating system or undefined operating system, we've all got strategy, we've all got objectives, and we've all got somewhere to get the business to. So an operating system has to emerge. It's a really, really good point.
Colin (04:21.93)
guess there's a difference between an operation or operating system that's been designed and one that just sort of de facto exists and perhaps isn't mapped out and therefore it's impossible to perhaps control or to change and adapt to get the results you need.
Chris (04:40.898)
Yeah, exactly that. And ultimately at revspace...
we work on a proprietary methodology that we call growth system design. And it's for exactly that reason. Everybody has a system, know, everybody has a growth system, just like everyone has a business operating system. They're not quite the same thing, but that's a topic for a different episode. you know, they are emergent. But as soon as you document that operating system, as soon as you define it, as soon as you start putting specific processes
in place, then ultimately you've got something that can be engineered, that can be optimized, that can be improved in a measured and methodical way. And that's really the point of what we're going to be talking about over the next 13 weeks. We're going to be talking about how you define your operating system, how you build it, and ultimately how you optimize it to ensure that it delivers more and more for your organization.
And there's massive value in this. We had an episode, I don't know, fairly recently, where we talked about the sort of the trillion dollar question. We talked about how alignment between sales and marketing can drive massive amounts of additional revenue. Well, actually a really strong operating system.
drive through revenue in almost the same way. There's a few case studies out there for kind of implementing, it must be said, probably non systems thinking based bosses by business operating systems. But they talk about, you know, double the revenue growth, just by having a strong operating model. And that is hugely believable, right? If you start measured, you you start
Chris (06:40.894)
operating the business in a way that is really measured, then you are going to deliver on more of your objectives more quickly, you are going to move faster towards your goals because you're doing say more efficiently. And that's really the point. That's what this is all about is being more efficient and giving yourself a platform to keep making yourself more and more efficient over time.
Colin (07:03.348)
Yeah, we don't necessarily mean the efficiency in the sense of doing more with less, more about sort of, I guess, preventing some of the missed opportunities, I guess, that come around from a sort of, let's say, an ad hoc business operating system. Or, for example, if we have a business, sort of an ad hoc business operating system, we are
leaders are defining success in terms of like quarterly profits as we've talked about before, then there's going to be a business operating system will emerge around that that's really focused on sort of short term behaviors and incentivizing short term behaviors. And obviously if the goals are sort of more healthy, organizational health and sort of long term sustainable growth, then
Arguably that is inefficient and therefore that's essentially what you need to sort of design a business operating system around to change that,
Chris (08:11.566)
Absolutely, absolutely that. So why don't before we dive into all of the fun stuff, I love to talk about like socio-technical fabrics and cybernetics and fun stuff like that, that underpins all of this. Let's start with the basics, shall we? Because that's what this first episode in the series is all about. So let's talk about what's in an operating system. And I think you've just hit on one of the
it's all important, but I think definitely one of the most important things and that's kind of goals in inverted commas. Now in our operating system canvas, we split goals out into two distinct areas, purpose and measurables. And the reason we split those into two areas is because as we've talked about before on the podcast,
purpose exists at a higher level, but it also exists at many levels. So you have this kind of big organisational purpose of where we want to be maybe in 10 years. lots of people would call that the vision.
But you would also have purpose down at a departmental level. You'd arguably even have purpose at an individual level. But purpose is the thing that propels us forward. Whereas measurables are the things that allow us to track how efficiently we're getting there. So those are two different things. So purpose and measurables are two dimensions within the 12 dimensions of our growth team OS.
And what else we've got on there? Well, actually, you'll recognise, in many ways, all of the themes that we talk about on the pod, and indeed, that all of us probably encounter and talk about and experience every day within, within business. This is, you know, no less a way of doing business, this is the way that the business runs. So, purpose and measurables are two. And as we kind of go through that purpose from
Chris (10:16.02)
from purpose, actually the next dimension that we really talk about is strategy. Now strategy is one of those funny nebulous words that mean lots of different things. So, you know, just to be, I guess, really clear in terms of what we think about it, in our definition of it, it's our plan for working towards purpose.
So it's how we prioritize and identify critical factors and challenges within that process of working towards our kind of higher purpose as an organization. So we've got purpose.
Colin (10:48.82)
Really a sort of a macro level as well. Sorry, I'm quite pedantic about the meaning of strategy because it's often mixed up with with things like tactics, for example, it's more of that sort of macro level like describing a few sentences at most how you are going to, you know, to fulfill your purpose, right?
Chris (10:56.17)
it's so amazing.
Chris (11:08.502)
Absolutely that.
Yeah, you know, purposes at the top level strategy is all about the fulfillment is the big strategic maneuvers, but the really the defined mechanisms that we're going to be following year in year out to go and achieve on that purpose. And the third dimension within the operating system is values. Now, this is something that I rarely see mentioned within any of the writing around business operating systems. And it's something that I personally think is really, really important.
because the values that we share as a team, as an organization, directly shape the way in which we get work done and the way in which we approach the process of getting work done. So, as you know Colin, it's something that we're really passionate about within RevSpace and we spend quite a lot of time thinking about and reviewing and looking at every year.
And, if I share a couple of values, maybe from our own organization, you know, we have values like natural systems thinkers, which is fairly obvious and fairly important, but, you know, perhaps fairly predictable for our organization. Another value, which is perhaps less in
sort of predictable is what we call passion for the mission. You know, we want people that are evangelical about systems engineering. want people that really get that there is this different way of doing things that is not adopted by enough people and that they have a passion for kind of getting the word out there, getting our view of the world shared with as many people as possible so they can make their own decisions about whether that's a good thing to be doing or not.
Chris (12:57.718)
If we take natural systems thinkers and passion for the mission as values, you can see that they're going to have a direct impact on our ability to deliver on strategy and they have a direct correlation with our purpose. you know, values and thinking about values and how you
manage your team members, both from a sort of firing, hiring, rewarding perspective and orientating those towards your values. That's really, really key in your ability to deliver on strategy. So, but we'll, we'll talk about that in an episode on its own, as we will with all of these, you know, next up on, the, on the top row is operations. And, and that's how we start going from the, you know, from the, the bigger picture into the day to day, perhaps.
And that's of talking about how we divide and do work and the processes we kind of follow to create value for customers. four of the 12 there, and you can see that we're starting to kind of narrow down through this canvas, but hopefully it's also pretty apparent at this stage that...
We have a lot of work to do in each one of these dimensions and that's why we thought they each deserved an episode. Now, as much fun as it is listening to me reading a list, what we will put down in the show notes is a link to our operating system canvas and actually specifically to a workshop exercise in Miro that you can use in your own business to start diagnosing
issues and enablers that you might have with your own operating system as Colin pointed out at the start, know everybody's got an operating system you probably just haven't necessarily written it down. So you know this is a workshop we like to do isn't it Colin that I think starts to get to the heart of what's going on.
Colin (14:45.84)
I think the penny drops, it's all very well listening to someone talking about their system or their theory or something like that or reading a book about it or looking at a list but actually going through the workshop episode, the workshop exercise, sorry yourself, is really when the penny drops I And bear in mind that this is not a...
Chris (14:59.799)
Thank
Chris (15:06.327)
Absolutely.
Colin (15:10.142)
something you can opt out of, you do already have a business operating system and you'll probably discover some interesting and perhaps horrifying things about it when you go through this exercise.
Chris (15:21.376)
Definitely. Yeah. So let me rattle off a few more and then we can get into perhaps talking about why all of this is important and why we why we make this a big part of our business and why we think this is a great thing to talk about for the next three months almost.
so we've got other stuff in there like authority, you know, who and how we make decisions. We've got resources, how we deploy the people and, you know, financial and other resources in the organization. We've got collaboration, you know, how we actually come together to make decisions, you know, how we, coordinate activity, how we share information. We've got structure, you know, how we actually organize teams, you know, a formal level, but also informally. So thinking of.
about things like cross-functional teams and mission-based teams and how we actually put people together and enable them to do work. that, spoiler alert for that episode, isn't talking about org charts. And then the final ones, we mentioned measurables, but the last three, again, I think are stuff that I very rarely see discussed in the context of business operating systems. The first of those three is innovation.
so, so important, you know, how we learn and optimize and evolve what we do, you know, both at a operational level, but also, you know, right down to at a sort of a human level, you know, how we think about
the way that things can get better every single day, how we can take those measurables and how we can keep pushing forward, how we can take our product and keep making it better, how we can keep focusing on delivering better, more and more value every day, every year. And that has a really strong relationship with the next dimension, the penultimate dimension, which is mastery. Now, I talked about our values earlier. Actually, mastery is one of our values as an organization.
Chris (17:25.494)
But mastery in the context of the operating system is how we develop as a team, both professionally and personally, and how we nurture natural talent and how we develop people towards the things that they want to achieve, but also keeping that in the context and the guardrails of what we need the business and want them to do in the context of the business. mastery and innovation definitely have a close link. In our particular case, mastery and values have a link.
funny enough, talking about systems here, everything's kind of linked. And then the final piece is incentives. Now, we say a lot, people do what they're measured on, they do things that they are compensated on, perhaps even more so. So and compensation doesn't always have to be financial, would, would, you know, double underline at this point. so in the sort of incentives dimension, we talked about how we compensate our team, both fixed and variably to really incentivize the right
outcomes. So together we've got 12 dimensions that go from the big picture of purpose right down to the nuts and bolts of, you know, how we meet and how we make decisions and how we develop our team members and how we reward them for doing the things that we need them to do. So it's a big piece, you know, it's a big thing to talk about, but it's something that if you get the operating system built right,
it will propel the success of your business at a rate that I think will perhaps even be surprising to those that know little bit about this.
Colin (19:02.912)
Yeah, I think it's important to remember something that you of hinted at there, but it's important to remember that all of these dimensions are connected and kind of interdependent on each other more or less in a sort of matrix like structure. Like there's no kind of hierarchy of dependency here. Maybe not none, but it's just one little bit I would add there.
Chris (19:19.938)
Yeah, little.
Chris (19:24.898)
Yeah, no, for sure. And I think that that interconnection is actually what I wanted to talk about really for the remainder of this episode, because... Yeah, lovely, lovely set up there. know, businesses are, as we've said many times before, complex adaptive systems and actually a business operating system in itself.
Colin (19:37.343)
good.
Chris (19:51.83)
clues in the name, it's a system, is also a complex adaptive system. There is a lot going on there. It took a long time even just to read out the titles, let alone get into the nitty gritty of what's going on in each one of those dimensions. And what we mean really by complex adaptive system is that there are multiple elements in each one of those dimensions comprising that total system.
people, departments, technologies, external partners, data sources, processes, there is so much going on there. And all of those things are acting and learning and based on kind of local information, local incentives, local constraints. And...
over time, they all start to create their own emergent behaviors. So it's a slightly kind of, I don't know, I'm about to use the word scary. It's not, it's not really scary. But I think it's just recognizing that that is how systems work. You can put all this stuff on a piece of paper and it will get away from you, it will evolve, will, it will emerge into new ways. And system engineering, the way that we view it, is not about
command and control. It's not about top-down, of hub-and-spoke management of all of these dimensions. It's about setting each one of them up right so that they can self-govern, that they can adapt, but they can do so in a way that is steered by the, you know, by the, the sort of the principles that the organization want you to follow.
And this is something that I mentioned, sort of cybernetics. Cybernetics is one of those things that sounds like, my God, cybernetics, what the hell? This is, I thought we were on a business and sort of Marcel the marketing podcast here. It's not as complicated as it sounds. In a nutshell, cybernetics is really just a posh word for talking about
Chris (22:07.608)
how systems communicate and regulate themselves and kind of stay on course in changing environments. It actually comes from a Greek word that means something like steering or steersmanship or something.
Colin (22:21.312)
Steersman like the person who steers the boat alone.
Chris (22:29.154)
got it. Yeah, well, that makes more sense than what I said.
Colin (22:33.12)
Because you're essentially not, you know, they're not controlling every aspect of how the boat moves.
Chris (22:43.15)
Yes, that it's a response to the environment and that is exactly the point. in management, is definitely a sort of, I don't think he's quite the father of cybernetics, but there's a piece of work by a guy called Stanford Beer.
And also for systems thinking fans, he also created something I believe called the beer game, but that's not what it sounds like. Probably not as much as it sounds either. Yes, I was very disappointed when I found out what that actually was years ago. But the point is that he created this body of work, this incredible body of work called the Viable System Model.
Colin (23:12.35)
It's not as much fun as it sounds unless you're really into serving it.
Chris (23:31.904)
It really talks about how you organize a business for success, organizing an organization. And it's really rooted in one of the most simple and fundamental concepts of systems thinking, which is the feedback loop. And it really says that, you know, if you put feedback at the heart of the system,
then it will enable itself to make adjustments in the right direction. If you read one of the founding texts, certainly one of the most prevalent texts on systems thinking, which is called Thinking in Systems by Antonella Meadows, at the start of the book,
there's sort of a description that kind of helps you understand systems, which talks about the thermostat in a room. It's actually talking about the concept of goal-seeking systems, as I recall. But the thermostat sort of senses the temperature.
in the room and it compares it with the desired setting and then it uses that to control the boiler to switch the heat on or off and kind of maintain balance. And the way that the cybernetics view of the world thinks about things is the feedback loop is kind of like the thermostat. is the thing that keeps the system on course because it is sort of feeling and sensing the environment in which the system is operating.
And the viable system model is really just a way of kind of pushing that into a management context. It's not directly related, I guess, to our operating system canvas. We don't have the same stuff in the operating system canvas, but the viable system model talks about the business being comprised into four different systems, operations, coordination, control and intelligence.
Chris (25:40.386)
There's a lot to be said, I think, for this as a method for starting to create structure within an org. And the viable system model definitely has a relationship with the structure dimension of our growth team operating system, but also touches, as anything in the world of systems does, on a great many of the other dimensions. But the interesting point really is that this sort of concept of cybernetics, this concept of
considering how an organization communicates and regulates and stays on course is the principle of the operating system. We are creating a structure for that to happen, but we are doing so in a way that enables kind of self-regulation. And that is the trick of it. And we did debate actually whether breaking the model up into 13 weeks was actually the right thing to do because
the emergence and the emergent behaviors you get from the model come from the way all of those dimensions interact. equally, it's really difficult in the concept, in sort of the context of a 45 to 60 minute podcast episode to talk about all of that in a way that makes sense. So keep in mind as we talk over the next few months on this topic that
everything is interrelated and that's one of the most you know important things to perhaps take out of this episode.
Colin (27:12.916)
Yeah, it's going to feel like at times like there's a little bit of repetition, I think, because of that sort of matrix like structure. just that's I think it is necessary to construct the series in that way so that we're looking at everything not just through a systems lens, but say through next week, it be through the lens of purpose. And then we're to be looking at everything through the lens of strategy. And I think that's the appropriate way to do it.
Chris (27:38.626)
Yeah, absolutely. you know, whilst we've got our own thoughts on what good looks like in terms of an operating system, I also hope that anyone kind of listening to this series will, you know, have the tools to say, okay, well, maybe that's not for us, or that doesn't suit an organisation of our size or our character, maybe I'll do something else. But, but ultimately, what we've got is
this sort of grounding principle that the sort of critical function of a business operating system, however you structure it, is that it kind of fosters or indeed hinders the emergent behaviors of the organization and what it's trying to achieve. And a lot of that is shaped by the people that operate within it, know, creating technical systems.
whilst it sounds complicated is actually far easier than constructing human systems because technology really changes, certainly really changes its mind perhaps in the world of AI we are working towards. That might not be the case anymore. We were talking about sentience and AI in the green room or whatever it's called before we started recording the episode. But when you stitch together
a CRM engineering project and integrate it into a tech stack that tends to then be not one and done, but it tends to then just work if you've done the job right. A lot of what happens in the human system, which of course values, incentives, mastery, authority, collaboration, the actual structure of individuals within the org, that's all human system stuff.
A lot of what goes on there is related to like mental models, you would probably call them.
Chris (29:42.168)
tacit assumptions, beliefs, and the habitual ways of thinking, because all of these things frame the way that we make decisions, the way that we think about things, the way that we interact with our peers within the organization. And that's the really tough thing about building an operating system. So something that we will definitely talk about as we go is this concept of of kind of framing, you know, how we put guardrails up.
inside the organization so that we sort of accept that everyone is an individual. You know, we have a complex adaptive system that's made of human beings and we can't control human beings in a way that the same way that we would control technology. We can't, you know, set the input parameters and expect to get a certain output. It's, know, sadly it's... Exactly.
Colin (30:32.192)
No, we're way too complex for that.
Chris (30:37.998)
You know, you can't even do that with AI now. You you put a prompt in once, you're going to get two different things back and human beings are in many ways kind of the same. So what we've got to do is within our operating system, we've got to kind of create these guardrails that frame the way that the human beings in our system make decisions. And as we talk about structuring the operating system, we've got to
except that one of the elements, the unspoken, unwritten elements, undocumented elements of our system is the principle of self-organization. Every element in that system will begin to self-organize.
if we build the system right, it will self-organize in a way that is productive for accelerating our goals. And if we put the guardrails in the wrong place or don't put the guardrails in at all, most likely it will go off in its own direction and will be unproductive. And that is probably in a nutshell, the reason that emergent operating systems, this all sounds a bit technical, doesn't it at this point, but you know,
operating systems that just exist that have come into being by, you know, what's the right word, know, magic.
Colin (32:01.952)
Essentially, that's what they are. They're emergent. The business is operating and therefore it's a self-organizing system. It's organized itself into a business operating system, albeit one that exists in this ephemeral way where it's not well documented or organized or controlled.
Chris (32:22.294)
Yes, ephemeral, that's good word. And that principle of self-organisation I was just talking about will then start building an unstructured operating system without guardrails and it will just move in different directions. Different departments will do their own thing. Everyone will act in what they think is the best interest of the company and in the best interest of their department and those things won't necessarily be well stitched together. And that's how you get misalignment. That's how you get inefficient operating systems.
Colin (32:23.517)
integrated I guess.
Colin (32:50.335)
It will.
Chris (32:50.414)
We slotted the word alignment in already.
Colin (32:53.364)
Yeah, there we go. Everyone has to drink. Yeah, we talk a lot obviously about alignment and misalignment and also about something that's maybe almost a cliche in the BTB world now about breaking down silos. But we're actually going to get into the nub of how silos arise in the first place, are we not? When there's sort of different functions within the business that are very different from each other, like product design and finance, for example, where they're operating with, I guess, different
mental models which over time become more more divergent and without the robust feedback loops deliberately in place, then they will tend to diverge more as they fail to share critical knowledge and feedback. And I guess that's one of the features of a sort of healthy, robust business operating system is the ability to integrate those mental models and actually
Chris (33:40.738)
Bye.
Colin (33:51.026)
align on decisions and how things are done.
Chris (33:56.768)
Absolutely. I think actually you make such a good point there, which I should have made at the start, which is, you know, I said the reason that we kind of construct a well-considered operating system is because it drives efficiency. Actually, it probably, well, certainly the way in which it does that, but arguably an equally important property of the sort of manufactured operating system.
is that it also breaks down silos. It becomes a singular operating system for the organization for everyone to plug into. And if it didn't exist, everyone would create their own little operating systems, which probably are to some degree documented down a departmental or a team level. And the emergent operating system of the organization would be a composite of all of those kind of, you know, siloed, semi-defined processes and collections and kind of mini operating systems that exist within the
org. So it is actually in a way the mechanism for creating alignment across your org. And without wishing to stray too far out of our own little system boundary, you know, the reason that we developed our growth team operating system is to really drive efficient operation between sales and marketing, particularly within an organization and to unify them as a single growth team. This is the operating manual for your growth team, if you like, and you know,
Wish I'd said that at start.
Colin (35:27.072)
It's all coming out, it's all flowing out very succinctly now, isn't it? As we head, it turns out that you know what you're talking about. You should maybe write a book about this, Yeah, sorry, carry on.
Chris (35:30.294)
It's all there now, yes. I do want to know what I'm talking about. It's just not all in the right order. Maybe, maybe, maybe one day. Okay. So what else should we talk about today, do you think?
Colin (35:53.552)
I would quite like to dig into something that you spoke about innovation, right, as being one of the dimensions and how that's often missed out and you don't hear a lot of talk about innovation and how the business operating system empowers innovation within an organization. That's kind of almost sort of left to be an emergent property and actually one of the, I guess,
good things about our growth team operating system as the innovation is on there in that matrix-like structure with sort of equal placing with things like purpose and values and strategy that you're more likely to see. It'd be great to sort of dig in a little bit more. We don't have loads of time, but we get to dig in a little bit more as to how having something like growth team operating system really empowers that.
Chris (36:42.168)
Mm-hmm.
Chris (36:53.134)
Yeah, it's certainly it's a really great dimension to pick out because, know, we already called out the fact that operating systems continue to emerge and adapt and actually the way that we kind of innovate and evolve processes, particularly within even in operational delivery, is a big part of that. Now, you know, it's tempting to go into the granular at this point, which we will do in, I don't know what number is that one, something like nine weeks time, but
Colin (36:53.512)
Enables.
Chris (37:24.442)
I I sort of previewed in the intro that I might talk about kind of socio-technical fabric. And I think that maybe this is an interesting thing to talk about in the context of innovation, because innovation is really a method for transformation, I think in many ways. And the way that we transform an organization is by looking at particularly a growth team.
is often by looking at sort of workflow, redesign and, you know, culture and reward and all of these other good things in tandem with technology. So, you know, we talked about technology being fairly easy to stitch together and people being difficult. Well, actually the interaction of the two probably characterizes the day to day lives of most individuals at work. You know, certainly in the sales and marketing space.
Colin (38:20.352)
Mm.
Chris (38:23.586)
You know, we've talked often about those like chief martech maps and how many applications the average organization uses and context switching and all of that good stuff. But work is characterized by a relationship with technology. And when we look at kind of innovation, which is how we kind of learn and optimize and evolve what we do, there's very often a kind of socio technical alignment thing going on there if that doesn't sound too fluffy. Because
A lot of where we innovate is based on how we interact with the technology at work, the type of technology we use and how well that gets baked into processes.
because processes tend to be quite static by their nature. Technology tends to be non-static, particularly in the SAS space as things are pushed, new features roll out, new opportunities emerge. And I should maybe use an example of a conversation that you and I were having just this morning, Colin, actually in a very different context. And we were talking about building
data management workflows and playbooks, fascinating conversations that we have at work. But we were talking about a tool called Apollo, which is a sort of reasonably low cost.
I would, I don't even know what to call it anymore really. It's what would have been a sort of, you a data source.
Colin (39:49.856)
sort of data enrichment tool, you can also launch, know, it's just kind of, that's the thing, quite, they become more hard to describe as one of the trends is that all these technology platforms are kind of converging because we can do data enrichment, we can do the sort of Gen.AI features in the, there's running sort of sequences and things like the likes of Outreach and SalesLoft do.
Chris (40:13.022)
Exactly. And that's exactly the point, you know, around this kind of innovation is that you and I were looking at this for a project this morning, trying to set something up and we're like, wow, they've rolled out, you know, independent prompt engineering within this. So not only can you go find some data and make sure that it matches your ICP, or get some signals data, you know,
show me an account that's done this or that, you can now push it into an LLM and you can put a prompt out and you say, well, find me people that look like this or tell me what the pain points of people in this industry are. And it can spit that out into a database that you can then push somewhere else. And this sort of, this is the sort of socio-technical, you know,
sort of alignment piece that means that there's constant shifts in what becomes possible. So innovation, you how we optimize and learn is about how we have this feedback loop from things like technology and our applications. Okay, there's suddenly this gen AI thing in there, you know, just because it's there doesn't mean we should use it. But now we could use it. And it means that we could do something in this application that we couldn't do before. So how does that impact our processes? How does that impact our workflows? You know, in this case, what we were talking about, say, well, actually, we do a
lot of prompt engineering in other places. Could we move some of our IP in our prompt engineering? Could we put it in this tool? And could that streamline the workflow? Could that open up AI-enabled workflows to smaller organization sizes than the ones that we would typically do through a large-scale iPaaS tool like Wakato? So that's innovation at work, literally and figuratively.
you know, just by understanding that kind of socio-technical fabric of the organization, having those feedback loops in place, you know, going back to cybernetics, how that then stitches into the rest of the organization. And then we have something in innovation, which potentially transcends into the dimension of operations. That's how everything's connected. Does that answer the question?
Colin (42:15.616)
I might not give you an A for answering the question, but maybe a B plus for that. I think when we get into the innovation episode, I think we'll have a chance. Maybe it wasn't a very fair question to ask you right near the end of the episode to try and dig in. But yeah, it was a good example in partly for comedy value, being harsh on you there.
Chris (42:21.774)
Thank you.
Chris (42:41.612)
Thank
Colin (42:45.876)
But yeah, think maybe when we've got a full episode to dig into the sort of innovation side of things, because I think for those who are quite familiar with business operating systems, without naming any, they might be quite surprised to see that on there on that sort of matrix of dimensions for growth team operating system. And it'd be interesting actually if people go through the workshopping exercise, I'd really strongly encourage people to do that. And it'd be interesting to see what they do around that piece.
Chris (43:05.291)
up.
Chris (43:15.818)
Absolutely. so, you know, stay tuned. Over the next 12 weeks, we're going to talk to you about the dimensions of an operating system. We're going to tell you really about the levers that you can pull to kind of drive transformation in your own operating system in a systems context. Yeah, we're going to talk to you about how to cultivate a learning organization that prioritizes innovation and keeps moving forward by defining all of these different things within your org and
codifying them down into something that can then be followed. hopefully today was interesting. Hopefully it's kind of set the scene for what's going to happen. And yeah, we really hope you can join us while I will endeavor to give a better answer on what innovation is in that, when that episode, when it comes up.
Colin (44:03.73)
Yeah, yeah. Honestly, I was just being a bit harsh on you for just for fun, really, since, for those of you who don't know Chris is my boss and I don't often get a chance to do that. Just a final thought from me on this, I wouldn't kind of spam the audience with a big list of final thoughts, but really, I'm thinking about business operating systems and in particular, think growth team operating system is great for this. Is this enabling the
Chris (44:07.742)
you
Chris (44:15.278)
you
Colin (44:31.636)
distribution of authority and leadership and that enabling people at all levels to have some agency to drive that continuous improvement and not be waiting for directives from the command tower. And I think this is something that, I mean, the opposite of that is generally speaking the reality or maybe somewhere in between. And if you are someone at the co-face, that can be a frustrating experience. I mean, I've recommended improvements.
in an organization where the CEO, a very well-respected CEO over in Philadelphia said, if any of you guys have got any ideas about this stuff, just come directly to me. And I did. And he said, you know, that's great, actually. That's such a great idea. I'll just loop in the person that you need to speak to to make this a reality. And of course, then it all starts to fall away. And it takes 18 months until a watered down version of that comes out.
From the flip side of that, think for sort of CEOs and founders, I think particularly if you're a founder of a sort of startup scale up size organizations, a really big challenge is to let go of some of these areas and to let go of some authority and leadership. And I think that's something that Grow Team operating system and a well-designed business operating system in general, provide you a framework to enable you to do that.
because if everyone is following the framework, then you should have some psychological safety to start letting go a little bit. And if you need some real world examples of that, so I'm going to just dive right out of the business world for a minute. In life and death situations, this is why NATO armies, the NATO armed forces, as I've said before, are sort of
This is what they do, is they distribute authority to make decisions to the sort of battalion levels over non-military nerds, that's maybe about 500 people. So these very small units where the commanders are able to make decisions and drive improvements and don't have to wait for directives from, you know, a general sitting somewhere in London or wherever. And that really works in life and death situations. And that was specifically developed
Colin (46:59.444)
to be the key to defeating these enormously huge, centrally controlled, rigid formations that the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact armies worked according to during the Cold War. So actually in a life or death end of the world situation, this model of distributed authority and ability to innovate at the smaller unit level.
is proven to be the way to go. And there's no reason why we shouldn't be applying that to business. I think the reason that we maybe don't apply that to business is perhaps people haven't... A lot of people don't really look into the business operating system side of things. As you pointed out earlier, have these maybe each business unit, we have business unit operating systems more than
a system that allows you to operate the whole business as a system and that actually drives us towards silos rather than integration. That's quite lengthy and run on for a final thought.
Chris (48:00.846)
.
Chris (48:07.406)
Absolutely. That was, yeah, that was definitely a final thought. Well, there you go. Tune in for the next 13 weeks and you too can find out how to operate your organization like an efficient NATO battalion. That's a lead in, it?
Colin (48:20.096)
It's a life or death situation, Chris, averting the apocalypse. What more proof do you need?
Chris (48:25.89)
There we go, we've got everything. So yeah, join us next week. We'll look forward to diving into purpose.
Colin (48:28.01)
Hahaha
Colin (48:33.554)
Yes, indeed. Yeah, that's all we've really got time for this week. Looking forward to diving into purpose next week. All that's left to say is the growth system, as always, is brought to you by RevSpace. We're an applied growth consultancy that connects B2B organizations with the future of growth. So we offer consultancy, education and applied delivery services. Please don't forget to follow and rate the podcast. It really helps us to bring the content to wider audience.
and we'd really appreciate it if you take a moment of your time to tell us what you think. And in this case, take a look in the show notes for that workshop exercise. We'd love to know how you got on with that as well. Thanks very much. I'll see you next week.
Chris (49:13.902)
Thanks for listening.
Colin (49:15.488)
Bye bye.