The Right Startup Operations

Many people ask me how a scientist ended up as an operations specialist. I tell them what drew me to biochemistry, as it turns out, was a fundamental interest in how tiny details had a tremendous influence on system success or failure. Just as a human is a collection of tiny components that somehow all work together to form a fully functional system; human built organizations are really just living systems made or broken by the tiniest details.

A lot of fractional operators talk about their “method”.

Working with me doesn’t follow a formula, but it does follow a defined pathway that I feel every startup must follow for success.

To understand my method, I’ll give you a metaphor from chemistry.

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Fusion reactions are sometimes termed “the energy source of the Universe”. Their most common presentation is as the core energy powering the Sun and other stars. These reactions follow 3 phases that parallel organizational growth.

Form is the act of formation. In chemistry this is the attraction and assembly of elements into compounds, atoms into molecules, and the beginning of chemical integrity. The organizational parallel is the assembly of the core elements of a successful company: your early team, your cultural essence, your ways of working.

Fuse is the act of fusion. This is the combining of atomic nuclei into a larger, heavier nucleus, and has the potential to release enormous energy but is a tricky process with considerable risk. Sound familiar? This phase parallels the “high-stakes” energy that permeates a company in the messy middle. We’re squeezing a business idea into reality.

Fuel represents the final stage of a fusion reaction. Once started, fusion reactions, remarkably, sustain themselves. So to, do organizations, where the right business model is implemented and generating momentum and the team has the tools and supports needed to be viable in the long-term. If we maintain this level of organizational chemistry, in theory the business could run forever.

Along the way we designed your organization around value delivery and we’ve optimized your human and organizational chemistry (otherwise known in my world as your “Value Chemistry Ops”).

Interested to build or strengthen the value chemistry in your organization?

Consider a Value Chemistry Ops Assessment.