Your Business Thrives When Everything Flows

WHERE IT STARTED

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I joined an established international media company as the Executive Assistant to the Senior Vice President responsible for a large, globally distributed operations function. The department included directors, programmers, producers, on-air talent, production staff and other teams working across multiple international markets.

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The department was lively, creative and fast-moving. Music was almost always coming from somewhere, people moved constantly between offices and production spaces and the teams worked well together. The energy wasn't a sign that the operation was dysfunctional. It reflected the nature of the work. The department was cohesive, the people were capable and they were comfortable operating in an environment where priorities and production needs could change quickly.

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The executive I supported worked at much the same pace. He thought quickly, made decisions quickly and moved continuously from one responsibility to another. His physical workspace and administrative systems had not kept pace with the way he worked. Papers, publications, messages and other information accumulated throughout his office. He frequently misplaced information, lost track of commitments and relied heavily on memory while managing a constant stream of meetings, questions, approvals and decisions.

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He understood that his working style created friction and wanted better structure around it. He also needed that structure to support the way he worked rather than force him into a completely different way of operating. We developed a strong working relationship built on direct communication, trust and a shared understanding that the details needed to keep moving without requiring his constant involvement.

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My initial responsibility was to organize his office and the administrative environment surrounding him. The need quickly extended beyond physical organization. He sat at the point where a significant amount of information and decision-making converged. Directors needed his input. Programming and production teams needed approvals. Meetings competed for his attention. People throughout the department needed decisions while he needed enough uninterrupted time to focus on the responsibilities that required his level of authority.

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The work became a matter of creating structure around that flow of information, communication and decision-making. The operating structure needed to keep pace with the way he worked while giving the people around him a reliable way to get the information, decisions and access they needed.

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CREATING STRUCTURE AROUND THE WORK

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There was no initial plan to redesign how the executive or the department operated. The structure developed incrementally as individual points of friction became apparent. Each solution made the next need easier to see, and over time those individual changes began working together as a larger operating structure.

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The physical environment came first. I organized the executive's office and my workspace and created a filing system that gave the information accumulating around him a consistent place to go. A shared electronic calendar gave both of us access to the same schedule and provided a reliable way to manage meetings, commitments and frequent changes.

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Calendar management soon became management of executive attention. Not every meeting or interruption required his involvement, so I began determining which meetings needed his participation and which could be handled another way. Administrative staff supporting other departments also began working directly through me rather than contacting the executive each time they needed something.

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The directors needed a similarly reliable path for questions and decisions. A communication loop allowed them to bring issues to me throughout the day. I consolidated those requiring executive input, reviewed them with him toward the end of the day and returned his answers to the directors immediately afterward. They had a dependable way to get the decisions they needed while the executive had fewer interruptions pulling his attention from other responsibilities.

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Programming and production created another layer of coordination. New shows and content required executive approval. The people developing the programming could explain their proposals to me, I could summarize the relevant information for executive consideration and the resulting decisions could move back to the appropriate teams without requiring the executive to participate in every conversation behind them.

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Shared production resources needed structure as well. On-air talent sometimes required studio space for guests and other programming needs, so I created a centralized studio schedule that gave everyone involved visibility into when the space was committed and when it was available.

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None of these changes began as a formal operations project. They developed in response to everyday needs: information that needed a consistent home, communication that needed a clearer path, executive attention that needed protection and shared resources that needed coordination. As those processes became established, people increasingly worked through me on questions, requests and issues they previously would have taken directly to the executive.

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My responsibility expanded along with that trust. More of the daily management decisions that didn't require executive involvement became part of my role, while issues requiring his authority or judgment continued moving to him. The arrangement allowed routine work to continue without requiring his involvement in every decision.

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THE ROLE BEGAN TO CHANGE

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The role gradually expanded beyond the responsibilities I had originally been hired to handle. The systems now gave people throughout the department clearer paths for information, coordination and decisions, and my involvement in the daily operation increased with them.

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That change happened through the work rather than through a formal decision to expand my position. Directors had a consistent route for questions and concerns. Administrative staff in other departments knew where to go when they needed something from our area. Programming and production staff had processes for approvals and shared resources. The executive could delegate routine decisions while remaining involved in matters requiring his authority.

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Greater familiarity with the department also made those distinctions easier to manage. I understood the people involved, how information moved through the operation and where individual decisions fit within the larger structure. More issues could be resolved without unnecessary escalation while executive involvement remained available where it mattered.

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The shift eventually became visible beyond my immediate working relationship with the executive. The Operations Director approached me about moving into an Operations Manager position. The department had begun exploring how to create a system for generating and tracking revenue connected with its programming, advertising and promotional activity, but the role and the system itself had not yet been defined.

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The opportunity represented a significant change in responsibility. The work would move from creating structure around an existing executive function to helping determine how a new operational capability could work. My experience within the department had given me a working understanding of how its people, information and processes connected and how practical systems could support the way they already worked.

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I accepted the promotion in the summer of 2001 and began learning the existing production environment and developing the foundation for connecting on-air activity with revenue.

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BUILDING THE REVENUE FOUNDATION​

The Operations Manager position did not come with an established job description or a finished plan for the system I would be managing. The department had identified a need to begin generating and tracking revenue connected with its on-air programming, advertising and promotional activity. My responsibility was to help determine how that capability could be built into the existing production environment.

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The production system was already large and complex. Understanding how it worked had to come before determining how revenue information could connect to it. Much of my time went into learning the production side of the system, understanding the information it contained and identifying where the new revenue data would eventually need to connect.

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Excel provided a practical starting point because I knew it well and its field-linking capabilities could support the information structure I needed to build while learning the larger system. I began developing the revenue dataset there, creating the data foundation for a function that did not yet have an established structure.

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The work required movement between two very different responsibilities: learning an existing technical environment and thinking through the information a new business function would require. The production system had been built to support the work already happening. The revenue initiative introduced a different need: creating a reliable connection between what was happening on-air and the financial information associated with that activity.

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The larger integration was still in development during my tenure. I did not complete or implement a finished broadcast revenue system, and I would not describe the work as though I did. My contribution was the foundation: developing an understanding of the existing environment, beginning to define how the information needed to connect and building the dataset that could support that connection.

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The project represented a significant change from the work I had originally been hired to do. Less than a year earlier, my responsibilities centered on creating structure around the daily work of a senior executive. They had expanded into an undefined operational problem crossing production, information and revenue, with responsibility for helping determine what the system itself needed to become.

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WHERE THE WORK ENDED

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My tenure with the company ended in June 2002, before the larger revenue system was completed. The work described here reflects the systems and processes implemented during my time with the organization, along with the revenue-integration work that had progressed into development but had not yet reached full implementation.

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The unfinished portion of the project does not provide a final implementation result to measure, so I have intentionally limited this case study to the work and outcomes I can substantiate. The earlier operational changes were established and in use, while the revenue initiative represents system-development work that was still underway when my role with the company ended.

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THE FLOWS AT WORK

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This work began with what looked like a relatively straightforward need for better organization, but the underlying challenge crossed several parts of the operation. Information needed to move more reliably, people needed clearer paths to decisions and executive time and attention needed to remain available for the work that required that level of authority. As the role expanded, those same connections eventually reached into a new effort to connect programming activity with revenue.

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Information Flow sat at the center of the work from the beginning. The filing system and shared calendar created structure around information that had previously been difficult to manage and retrieve. The communication loop with department directors gave questions and decisions a predictable path. Programming proposals could be gathered, summarized and presented for approval without requiring executive participation in every conversation behind them. Later, Information Flow became central again as the data structure began developing to connect on-air activity with revenue.

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Operational Flow turned that information into repeatable ways of working. Calendar management became management of executive access and priorities. Directors had a consistent process for obtaining decisions. Programming teams had a clearer route for approvals. A centralized studio schedule coordinated access to a shared production resource. None of these systems needed to be complicated. They needed to make the everyday work easier to coordinate.

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Strategic Flow appeared most clearly in the management of executive attention. Every question, meeting or decision could not carry the same priority. Immediate executive matters needed to be distinguished from issues that could be consolidated for later review or resolved without escalation. That structure allowed routine operational needs to keep moving while preserving more executive attention for responsibilities that required it.

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Fulfillment Flow intersected with the work through programming and production. New content needed approval before it could move forward, and on-air teams needed access to shared production resources. The information and scheduling systems supporting those activities helped the people creating the programming get what they needed to continue their work.

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The promotion introduced a much stronger Financial Flow connection. The organization wanted to develop a way to generate and track revenue associated with on-air advertising and promotional activity. That required more than adding financial information somewhere in an existing system. The revenue data needed to connect meaningfully with the production activity behind it. Learning the production environment and building the underlying dataset began creating the foundation for that connection.

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The dominant Flow did not remain fixed as the work changed. Information Flow initially supported Operational and Strategic Flow by improving communication, coordination and decision-making around executive leadership. Later, Information Flow began connecting Operational and Financial Flow as the organization explored how to link what it produced with the revenue that activity could generate.

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That progression is what makes the work useful as a case study. A filing problem, an overloaded executive, a production schedule and a revenue initiative may appear to be separate business issues. They were connected by the movement of information through the organization. Improving that movement created better coordination in the existing operation and eventually provided the foundation for developing an entirely new business function.

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WHAT THIS WORK DEMONSTRATES

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Operational improvement doesn't always begin with a business in crisis. Sometimes the people are capable, the work is getting done and the organization is functioning well. The opportunity lies in recognizing where the structure supporting that work hasn't kept pace with its complexity.

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That was the situation here. The department was strong and cohesive, and the executive's speed and working style were well suited to a fast-moving international operation. Trying to change the way he worked would have solved the wrong problem. The structure around him needed to keep pace with the way he already operated.

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The individual changes were relatively simple: organized information, a shared calendar, clearer communication paths, coordinated access to shared resources and more efficient ways to move questions and decisions through the department. Together, they created something larger: an operating structure that reduced unnecessary demands on executive attention while giving everyone else a more dependable way to keep their work moving.

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That structure wasn't the result of a predetermined redesign. It developed by addressing one point of friction at a time. Each solution revealed more about how information, decisions, people and resources moved through the operation and where additional structure could make that movement easier.

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The progression also changed the trajectory of my role. I was hired to support an executive. Within approximately a year, the Operations Director approached me about moving into management and helping develop a new revenue function. The promotion didn't create my involvement in operations. It recognized how the role had already evolved.

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The revenue initiative presented a similar challenge at a different scale. The organization had identified a business need, but the operational structure to support it had not yet been defined. The existing production environment provided the starting point, and Excel provided a practical tool for beginning to build the data structure that could eventually connect on-air activity with advertising and promotional revenue.

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The two parts of the story may look very different: one centered on executive support and the other on production and revenue data. The connection between them is the approach behind the work: understand how the existing environment actually functions, identify where structure is missing and build around what is already there.

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That remains one of the principles behind how I approach operational work today. A business needs the right amount of structure in the right places so information can move, decisions can happen and people can do their work without the system getting in their way.