Alex PooleSystems

One Lens

How smoothly does your business really run?

Are there systems in place that hold?

Or does it only run on a few people who know where everything is and enforce the standards?

When they are out, it probably stalls, and things start slipping.

Score your operation

Three questions we ask of any system.

  1. 01 What kind of system is it?1
    • Clear The answer is obvious. Follow the rule. A checklist. A price list.
    • Complicated There is a right answer. An expert can find it. A tax return. A legal question.
    • Complex No one right answer. Try, watch, adjust. A team. A habit. A person.
    • Chaotic Act first. Make sense of it after. A crisis.
    A business is usually a mix of the first three. The biggest mistake is thinking it is a complicated system with some clear parts inside. The fact is, it is usually a complex system running complicated processes, with clear steps inside those.
  2. 02 Where does a small push move the most?2 Most businesses change the tools. Spreadsheet out, new app in. That has the least effect of anything you can do. From the most effect down:
    • How the owner thinks. New goals for the business.
    • How the work is organised. So the team can run it without one person holding it.
    • The rules. What everyone works to.
    • Who sees what. Which information reaches whom, and when.
    • The feedback loops. How fast you find out something went wrong.
    The rules, the information and the feedback are where someone from outside can move the most.
    the business The tools moves a little Rules + information where we push How you think moves the most the business How you think moves the most Rules + information where we push The tools moves a little
  3. 03 Who does what, and where does it drop?
    • Start to finish. Where the process starts, where it stops, and the steps in between.
    • Who is involved. Who does the work, who owns the result, who needs a say, and who just needs to know.
    • What happens next. When one thing happens, what should happen after it.
    Things rarely break inside a job. They break in the hand-off between two people.
    You Your team Your client Win the job Do the work Hear back ! it drops here You Your team Your client Win the job Do the work Hear back ! it drops here

Who we work with.

Owner-led businesses with a team, where the work runs through many hands and too much of it lives in a few heads.

This is for you if…

  • Your team is busy, but the same questions still land on the same few desks.
  • The bottleneck is you, or one of your key people. Nothing important moves without them.
  • Nobody key can take a clean week off. The laptop comes too.

This is not for you if…

  • You are still finding out what sells. Build the system once the business has found its feet.
  • You want a chatbot bolted on. Not a system built around how your team works.
  • Every decision goes to a committee. This work needs one person who can say yes.

Business Systems

Most businesses run with the information in silos and people's heads.

They do not have a system. They have people who remember.

  • What people know lives in their heads, and leaves when they do.
  • Every team keeps its own files, in its own place.
  • Files nobody updates, or remembers are there.
  • Three versions of the same document. Nobody knows which is live.
  • Decisions made in a meeting, then never written down or followed.

“The business stopped because I didn't have a clue as to what was going on.”

An owner, on the week one person was in hospital.

Sales old? Ops old? Finance old? Now Heads and silos. Nothing joins up. Rules Projects Clients Admin Content Brand one source of truth After One place. Everything plugs in.

What we build.

One source of truth in the middle. Six systems plug into it.

  • One source of truth What the business runs on, in one place. The same answer everywhere.
  • Rules that hold Standards and decisions on the record, kept by the system, not by memory.
  • Projects Every job has a status. Every next step has the right person on it, even when three things are holding it up.
  • Clients Contact details, addresses, renewals and key information, kept up to date.
  • Admin Billing, invoicing, cash flow and customer service. The routine work, off your desk.
  • Content and collateral Decks, SOPs, training and marketing, made by an engine, not rebuilt by hand.
  • Brand One voice and one look, in everything the business puts out.

It all runs on one framework. Read Rules Run

What is a business operating system?

The six above are an example. Your business has its own shape. A land buyer runs on sites. A broker runs on policies. The systems are built around how you already work.

Industries we have built for

  • Land and house builder
  • Planning consultancy
  • Insurance brokerage
  • B2B software
  • Sourcing and logistics

How an engagement runs.

  1. 01

    Diagnose

    The three questions, asked of your business. Where it leaks, and in what order to fix it.

    You get A map of what works, what does not, and a roadmap. Yours to keep, whether or not we build it.

  2. 02

    Architect

    Design the system. One source of truth, the rules, and where AI does the work.

    You get The design on one page, before anything is built.

  3. 03

    Build and embed

    Build it, write down what people know, and get your team using it.

    You get The system, working, with your team on it.

  4. 04

    Run and govern

    Feedback loops tell us fast when something slips. That is why it does not end at handover.

    You get It stays current without you chasing it.

Take one stage or take the whole arc.

Human Systems

A business is people, in rooms, under pressure.

People are the complex part. Write the process, train it once and expect it to run, and it dies quietly. Then the people get the blame.

You can hand people every productivity tool, method and framework there is.

In the end, using it is their decision.

You might run your own work on Getting Things Done3, or PARA4. That does not mean your team will. If they cannot see what it does for them, they will not take it up.

Everyone has their own way of working. Their own human system. Fitting that inside the business system is the hard part. So the human element has to be designed in from the start.

We do not start with psychology or work ethic. We start with the role. What does this person actually do, step by step? Then we split the work. People keep the work only people can do. The system and AI take the parts they do better than any person can.

Your team are people. People make the decisions. They build the relationships. They do the thinking and the creative work. No business system or AI can do that for them.

The role, step by step People keep Decisions Relationships Thinking Creativity System and AI take Chasing Records Reminders Reports The role, step by step People keep Decisions Relationships Thinking Creativity System and AI take Chasing Records Reminders Reports

Splitting the work only works if you see the work as it really is.

It is your business. You might want things done your way. But the way you do things and the way your team does them can be wildly different.

If you are not in the seat, doing the role every day, you see the process as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. In our experience, when we sit with the people who actually do the work, their way often makes more sense. It works better. They just never told you they switched it to 1, 3, 4, 2, 5.

On paper what you wrote In the seat what works 1 2 3 4 5 1 3 4 2 5 Same work. A better order. Nobody wrote it down. On paper what you wrote In the seat what works 1 2 3 4 5 1 3 4 2 5 Same work. A better order. Nobody wrote it down.

Your team will not use the new system…

…if it is not built around the work they do every day.

Monday.com. Basecamp. Notion. Asana. ClickUp. Good tools. Most get bought, set up, and left.

They can do a hundred things. Your team needs five. People get lost in the options, and the tool does not fit how the business works. So you end up bending people to fit the tool. That is the wrong way round.

For a team to use it, three things have to be true.

  • Buy-in. You may set the tool. They take it up because it fits their role.
  • They can use it. Properly, from day one, not after a month of guessing.
  • Everyone uses it the same way. And it serves every job in the business, not just one.
Fits my role buy-in I can do it uses it well We do it the same way it sticks

Miss one and the new way quietly dies. Autonomy, competence and relatedness.5

Alex learned this one person at a time. First himself. Then his clients.

Proof · Daily Core 5

Alex built it for one of the hardest complex systems there is: changing your own habits.

  • SLEEP
  • EAT
  • DRINK
  • MOVE
  • RECOVER

Health is complex. So what you see each day is kept clear: five pillars, one small action in each. Underneath, a complicated engine does the adjusting.

It runs in 15-day cycles (short sprints). At the end of each one, the 3-Lane Pathway sets how much you take on. Then the R4 Reflection tunes each pillar: Remain, Regress, Reinforce or Replace. The feedback loops are built in, so your health keeps moving forward.

That is how it beats the Monday loop. Slip, give up, start again next Monday. Most people live there. A 15-day cycle adjusts instead of restarting.

A new habit fails the same way a new system fails at work. If it does not fit the system it lands in (the body, the week, the family), it does not get adopted. A team is no different.

See Daily Core 5
Daily Core 5

People still need people.

AI can do a lot of the work now. That is the trap. It is easy to hand it the work that should stay with people. So we build the AI around your team, not in place of it.

AI Systems

AI does not fail because of the AI.

It fails because there is nothing underneath it.

A business buys an AI tool. It demos brilliantly. Six weeks later it is a browser tab nobody opens.

The tool was never the problem. It was asked to work on the mess in the silos and the heads. It cannot read what was never written down. So it guesses. One wrong answer in a meeting and the trust is gone.

AI is leverage. Leverage needs something to push against.

IN SOMEONE'S HEAD V1, V2, FINAL(2) NEVER WRITTEN DOWN AI ?

AI on a pile Loose files and memory. Nothing solid to stand on, so it falls.

ONE SOURCE OF TRUTH BUILT AROUND YOUR PEOPLE RULES IT MUST KEEP AI

AI on a foundation Solid ground underneath. It holds.

What it stands on.

  1. The business foundation. Everything in the Business part, in one place the AI can read.
  2. The human system. The work split the right way, so your team takes it up.
  3. Rules it has to keep. Governance that binds the AI, so it works to your standards, not its own.

Skip the first two and AI does not solve the problem. It is the same problem. What was in people's heads is now in a machine's guess.

What the rules make it do.

  • Tell the truth, or say it does not know. No making things up.
  • Name its source, every time.
  • Check what has already been decided before it acts.
  • Write new decisions down, so the record stays current.
  • Stop when it is about to break one of your rules.

That is what makes it trustworthy. Read Rules Run

What AI does once that is there.

Not a chat window in the corner. Work.

  • Drafts from your own material, in your voice.
  • Watches the operation. Flags what is stale or overdue.
  • Answers any question about the business, from the source of truth.

We run our own business this way.

Our decisions are logged. Our own rules bind us too. It catches us being wrong every week. That is the point of it.

The honest limits.

AI will not fix a business that has not decided how it works. It will make an undecided business faster at being undecided.

And it is not the product. The system is the product. The people using it make it work. AI is what makes it fast.

See your business through the lens.

The Scorecard asks 10 questions of your operation. It takes a few minutes, and you see where it leaks.

Score your operation

References

  1. 1 Dave Snowden, the Cynefin framework. First published in Kurtz and Snowden, "The new dynamics of strategy", IBM Systems Journal (2003).
  2. 2 Donella Meadows, "Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System" (1999).
  3. 3 David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (2001).
  4. 4 Tiago Forte, the PARA method, from Building a Second Brain (2022).
  5. 5 Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, Self-Determination Theory: autonomy, competence and relatedness.