Operations and productivity
Running the business so it does not stop when you do.
A virtual assistant or an executive hire
Compare a virtual assistant against an in-house executive assistant on loaded cost, judgement required and confidentiality before you commit to either.
DecisionBuild an internal tool or buy one off the shelf
Weigh a custom internal tool against an off-the-shelf product on maintenance exposure, integration surface and who still owns it in two years.
DecisionBuy project software or fix your habits first
Test whether project management software will help your team or simply record the same missed deadlines in a more expensive place before you buy it.
DecisionHow to decide what to automate first in a small team
Rank candidates for automation by frequency, stability and the cost of an error so your first build saves real hours instead of the ones you notice most.
How toHow to document a process someone else can run
Write process documentation that a new person can follow unaided by capturing decision points and exceptions rather than a tidy list of happy-path steps.
TroubleshootingHow to hand over work when someone resigns suddenly
Run a short handover in priority order so live commitments and access are transferred first and the documentation you can afford gets written second.
How toHow to measure whether a process change actually worked
Learn how to baseline a process before you change it and set a revert rule so your team can settle whether the new way is genuinely better.
How toHow to plan leave cover around the festival season
A practical way to handle the festival leave crush: publish the window early, cover single points of failure, and decide what work simply pauses.
How toHow to prepare the business to run a month without you
Work out which decisions only you can make, hand over authority rather than tasks, and test the handover with a one week dry run first.
How toHow to run a team spread across several Indian cities
How to keep a multi-city Indian team working as one group: written defaults, one overlapping core block, and no headquarters to be left out of.
How toHow to run a weekly meeting that is worth the hour
Replace the Monday status round with a meeting built on numbers, blockers and decisions, and learn when the meeting should be cancelled instead.
How toHow to set a service level your team can actually meet
Set a response commitment from your own measured performance rather than your best week, and define the exclusions before a client finds them.
How toHow to set up a shared drive structure that survives
Build a shared drive that still works in three years: shallow folders by function, one naming rule, group based access and an archive you actually use.
TroubleshootingHow to stop a small team from drowning in tools
Audit your software from the bank statement, pick one system of record per category, and cut the overlap without losing the tool people rely on.
TroubleshootingHow to stop work living only in WhatsApp groups
Keep WhatsApp as the doorbell rather than the filing cabinet, so decisions and approvals end up somewhere you can still find them in a year.
How toHow to write a one page standard operating procedure
Write an SOP that someone will actually follow: one page, written while doing the task, tested by a colleague and owned by a named person.
DecisionKeep the office or go hybrid: how to decide
Decide on the office from counted attendance and cost per seat used, not from a staff survey, and know which businesses should stay put entirely.
DecisionWhat a ten person team should standardise and what not
Three tests for deciding which parts of a ten person business need one agreed way of working and which parts are better left to individual judgement.
What it costsWhat managing five suppliers really costs you in time
A method for pricing the coordination time five marketing suppliers take from you. Plus a plain test for when consolidating would cost you more.
What it costsWhat moving a small office to the cloud really costs
The full cost of moving a small office off its local server. Licences migration labour and the four items most quotes leave out entirely.