The #1 factor that either enables your company’s scale or hurts your growth (and profitability) is your team design (esp. if you are a service based business)
Here’s the exact design I use to scale teams (regardless of size.) It’s worked with teams to hit their first $1M/yr to teams hitting over $4M/mo.
NOTE: This is not an org structure or a set of job descriptions. It’s a framework.
The Task Unit Framework
How you group, structure, and organize your team functions determines the design of your Task Unit.
And if you are an agency owner, a Task Unit is the foundation of your “product design.”
When I’m building a service fulfillment team or an in-house team within a company, I always begin with the 3 core people that comprise the 3 core functions of a Task Unit:
- A Driver
- An Operator
- A Specialist
Drivers: drive results and outcomes. For digital service businesses, they are client-facing, strategic, and guides for the clients and the team managing the client. Their primary role is to orient the team’s direction and maintain the client’s relationship. They drive Customer Lifetime Value by delivering continual service, results, and rapport building with the client.
Operators: help orchestrate the team, the communications, and actions together to ensure the team is heading toward its goal. They are the glue of the Task Unit.
Specialists: the dedicated people inside the Task Unit who execute specific functions on projects or client accounts. They can be your developers, your media buyers, your copywriters, etc.
This type of team design can:
• Make the foundation of any department in your company
• Manage their own suite of clients
• Can help you get out of the day-to-day of running the business
This structure will help you scale. But this structure alone won’t make you profitable.
Tomorrow we will dive into the numbers (maths) that enable you to design for profitability (some of which I’ve never shared before).