Jim Collins, in his famous and recently-updated book ‘Beyond Entrepreneurship’, introduces a compelling model for what’s required to grow a business:

• A high-level, emotive Vision that will inspire the team.
• Clear Strategies, to map out a path to that Vision, and a competitive positioning to provide advantage in the marketplace.
• Tactics. Strong execution, focus, metrics, and processes to run a tight ship day-to-day. 

At Scale, we use this framework as a model to guide work on accelerating growth at companies looking to scale. We have added 3 key pillars required to make the model work effectively in organisations:

• Characteristics of leadership, especially from the key leader of the business
• A great team, particularly at the senior executive level, functioning well together.
• A business that is ultimately developed for shareholder value, in order to ensure a long-term legacy

This model guides most of the tools that we use with our Member companies to build businesses that grow fast, and develop company value.

So what’s this all got to do with management software?

The model above provides a framework for how a company needs to be run. It requires considerable effort in areas such as defining strategy, delivering projects to drive change, and instilling great habits and disciplines for execution day-to-day. It describes, in many ways, the job of a CEO.

CEO’s often express the desire for a system or platform to run and manage these aspects of the business. Take Lee Jackson, for example, General Manager of London-based The Furniture Practice (TFP). TFP have been in business for over 20 years, and have carved out a niche as the top furniture procurement specialist for office projects in the UK. They are in an exciting stage of growth, taking their solution global. As Lee describes it: “I need to have everything in one place, one platform to guide the core work of the company, and allow us to track progress.” 

We call this type of software ‘Work Operating System’ (WOS), which typically comprises several key functions:

• Strategic Plan. The repository for the strategies and plans of the business. ‘One source of the truth’ for anyone in the business wanting to understand the company’s strategy. 
• Priority Planning. Turning strategy into action requires the planning and execution of ‘change initiatives’ – key projects to deliver business objectives, (typically on a quarterly cycle basis). Requires project planning and management functionality.
• Task management. Day-to-day, setting and tracking tasks and key meeting agendas.
• Dashboards and KPI’s. The ability to record and track progress against key metrics in the business, and present them in a clear manner, to drive behaviours and decision-making.

At heart is the concept that business success depends upon developing great habits and disciplines, for example having agendas and clear ‘to do’s’ from all meetings, or planning projects effectively.

Such habits are massively augmented by the use of great software. There is no point in developing great habits and disciplines in a business unless you have a suitable tool to capture outcomes, organize processes & projects, and hold people to account. Similary, there is no point in investing in software like the ones listed below, unless you actually have the human processes (meeting rhythms and disciplines) to use and refer to the tool.

It is in the overlap of these two where the magic happens, and that the business really hums, and that sense of being aligned, organised, and ‘on one page’ comes from.

The Ranking

We have used many software platforms with teams over the years, and have found a clear ranking of their performance as a Work Operating System:

Having used many different platforms with the companies we work with, we’re very impressed with the impact that monday.com has had with the teams that have implemented it. Teams typically start by using it to manage key projects, then operating teams in the business pick it up to manage their day to day workflows, and it quickly becomes established as the default operating system for the business.

Take, for example, ThirdWay Group, one of the UK’s leading office design and fit out companies. Originally used to plan and execute priority projects at Quarterly Planning Days, the platform is now used to manage all the details of their complex fit out projects around the country. Says Sam Radcliffe, head of the Projects Dept “monday.com is key for us to manage the details of each project, save time through automations, and allow us to have a complete overview of performance at our sites.”

It’s mindblowing the uses that teams put platforms like monday.com to. We did a review of recent uses, listed below:

Once a great Work Operating System like monday.com takes root in an organisation, it quickly establishes itself as the tool of use for a huge range of tasks.

Next steps

What do you think? We’d love to hear your experiences with any of these platforms. 

We run regular events with monday.com about successfully implementing the platform into your business, especially during these hybrid working times – head to our event page to sign up to the next one.