Foundation Two: How You Will Operate

Once you know who you are, you need to decide how your business runs day to day. Owners often skip this step because it feels like paperwork, or like it will kill the energy that helped you get started. In reality, you are defining what “good” looks like before problems cost you money or talent.

An operating rhythm has two parts. You need recurring meetings that keep everyone aligned, and you need clear standards that define how work gets done. Without both, priorities shift based on whoever talks the loudest or whichever issue shows up first.

A Common Scenario

A small landscape design firm held a Monday meeting to report what everyone worked on last week. It took 90 minutes. No one left with clear priorities. Multiple designers worked on the same project with different plans. The client saw conflicting proposals and pulled a major contract. The core issue was not the meeting itself. The owner had never defined who made final decisions, how proposals were reviewed, or what authority each team member had. Every project became an argument instead of a process.

Start With Rhythm

Most businesses benefit from three recurring meetings.

1. A leadership huddle to make decisions and set priorities

2. A team standup to surface problems and remove roadblocks

3. A client or quality review to approve deliverables

Match the rhythm to your workflow. High touch project work may need a daily five minute standup and weekly client reviews. Transactional service work in Wichita or similar regional markets might function well with a weekly internal review and a monthly client check in. Remote teams usually need shorter and more frequent conversations to stay aligned.

Make each meeting answer one useful question: what decision must this meeting produce.

• A leadership huddle decides which projects move forward this week
• A standup decides who needs help and what is blocked
• A review session decides what work is ready to deliver and what needs revision

If a meeting does not produce a decision, remove it.

Define Decision Rights

Who has final say when two experienced people disagree. Who can approve a change order. Who decides if a client request is within scope. Write this down and make it visible. Include it in your scope template, post it in the project channel, or put it at the top of your team handbook. If decision rights live in someone’s head, you will still see delays, confusion, and escalations that waste time.

Set Standards

You do not need a long policy document. Choose three to five rules that show what quality means in your business. Pair each rule with a principle so your team knows how to make judgment calls when a situation does not match the rule exactly.

• Rule: Send a client recap email within 24 hours
• Principle: Clients should never have to ask for status