Think your “go with the flow” approach is what makes your business special? Think again. In this episode, Gwen Bortner and Tonya Kubo reveal why “winging it” is costing you more than you realize – in time, money, and team morale. Every business runs exactly as it was designed, even if you never consciously designed it. The good news? You don’t have to sacrifice creativity or spontaneity to build a more intentional business.
Learn:
- Why flexibility without structure leads to chaos
- How to identify high-impact areas for improvement
- Where to add structure without stifling creativity
- The surprising truth about what customers really want
- Simple steps to break free from operational chaos
Ready to transform your business from reactive to intentional? This episode shows you exactly where to start. Whether you’re a creative entrepreneur who fears structure or a seasoned CEO looking to scale, you’ll discover how to build the systems your business needs to thrive.
The Business You Really Want is the show for visionary women entrepreneurs who are ready to build sustainable, fulfilling businesses aligned with their values.
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Flexibility Isn’t Free: The Business Costs You Aren’t Seeing
Here we are back again with Episode 19, which has a tentative go live date of December 3rd, 2024. Our working title is Your Business By Design: Breaking Free From the Chaos of Winging It. Ever feel like your business is running you instead of the other way around? You’re not alone. I have been there. Gwen has been there like about every entrepreneur we know has been there. In this episode, Gwen and I are going to talk about why winging it in your business is costing you way more than you realize. It is costing you more time, money, and energy than you realize.
Being More Intentional About Business Operations
We are exploring a truth that might be hard to hear. If you’ve been with us for a while, that’s what we do around here. We talk about hard truths. We have hard conversations. Your business is running exactly as it was designed to run, even if you’re flying by the seat of your pants around there. Before we jump in, Gwen, I want you to give us one tip that our audience can use to start being more intentional about their business operations.
The first thing to be more intentional about the operations is to pay attention to what you’re doing. That sounds right and obvious but most of us don’t think about what we’re doing. We just do it. What I’m saying is to think about what you’re doing. Pay attention to all the steps and connection points, even only picking one aspect to say, “How many times do I have to talk to somebody else as we make this thing happen?” That would be a connection point. “I’m only going to pay attention to the connection points,” or how many steps does this take and say, “I do these three steps?”
Pay attention to how big the steps are. I used to challenge people, “How many steps does it take to tie your shoes?” People would start. I would come up with, “There are fifteen steps but I can’t remember what the number is.” They were like, “What?” You’re assuming a whole lot between here and here. If you’re teaching someone for the first time who doesn’t know anything, you have to start with, “Put on your shoes.” People don’t think about that part. “Pick up the laces.” There’s a whole lot more to most things than we think.
Paying attention and saying, “What are those steps, processes, and connection points,” is the first thing to being able to make improvements. This is where you can start seeing if they are consistent, random, or similar amounts of time each time or different amounts of time each time. All of these are things that you can start gathering data on once you start observing it and not just doing it.
Common Resistance To Structure
Here’s what I hear a lot. We both, individually and collectively, work with a lot of creative entrepreneurs. You have a huge depth of experience in the craft industry in addition to working in tech. I have experience in tech but also in author-speaker land. I’ve worked a lot with course creators and people who run large organizations in addition to working with schools. Remove all the big corporations but look at the more solopreneurs or creative entrepreneurs. Maybe it’s them and plus two. What I oftentimes hear is, “I don’t want to write down what I’m doing. I don’t want to pay attention to the steps I’m doing because I like to stay flexible.” I like to go where my gut tells me to go. What do you say to that?
Years ago, I was working with a fantastic coach, Mark Levy. One of the things is he helps you try to pull out what’s all your thought leadership. One of the things that I talked about with him is I don’t think we’ve maybe ever even said on this show at this point. Most creatives are using their intuition at the wrong step in the process. They think by intuiting at the beginning that they’re creating a logical outcome. That’s the way that they should work. The better result happens if the beginning pieces are very consistent and logical. We got into it at the end. It’s almost always reversed until people start paying attention.
Most creatives are using their intuition at the wrong step in the process. The better result happens when the beginning pieces are consistent and logical, and we are into it at the end. Share on XThey’re intuiting at the beginning, which means they have to make up everything that follows. They think that creates this very logical, explainable outcome. What happens is that it creates a whole lot of work every time. Where the real value is using that intuition, gut piece, and flexible piece at the very end if you need that there and you need it at all in whatever it is that you’re doing. Sometimes you do. We both work with big creative kinds of folks. They often do need that for it to still feel like a fun business and all of the things that go along with that but doing it at the beginning is not the place to be doing it. The place to be doing it is at the end. Most of them have it backward.
Flexibility Vs. Lack Of Structure
I’ve seen this with our clients and also with service providers I’ve worked with. I feel like there’s a confusion between flexibility and lack of structure. They think being flexible means that you don’t have a structure in place and that a structure in place automatically eliminates any flexibility. I’ve heard you talk about this and I believe it too. When there’s a structure, you know where to be flexible and how flexible you can be.
This is exactly that point. It’s a different verbiage, which I appreciate, of the same point. When you know the parts and how they’re going to work, you can make choices about when you’re going to make that exception but when everything is an exception and there is no structure, then you’re wasting a lot of energy, thought cycles, decision cycles, and people’s time. The list goes on and on.
What happens is you don’t look flexible. You look confused, disorganized, less than effective, and all of those things. I can assure you all of my clients would say that I’m pretty flexible in how I work with my clients but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have a whole lot of structure in there. I still have flexibility to the point that it makes sense to be flexible. That causes the least amount of chaos to the business.
High Costs Of “Winging It”
You brought up this maybe misidentified flexibility. Let’s call it winging it, for lack of a better term, at this point. You pointed out that it’s expensive. The operation side of us says that inefficiency is the high cost but you ran through it. It costs money, a bunch of time, people, and energy. I’m sure there’s a whole lot of communication breakdown that ends up happening. What else do you think are costs associated with winging it that the CEO or the entrepreneur may not realize?
I’m going to add to some that you already had but expand them a little bit. One of the costs is it creates frustration for your people, which means you’re often burning out people or creating high turnover, which has a whole set of costs in and of itself. For you as the person, it is taking decision cycles that you shouldn’t have to be using. This is way above my pay grade but there’s a lot of research that talks about how we only can make so many decisions. I’m not going to quote anything because it’ll be completely out of context and whatnot.
We’ve all been there where at the end of the day, the family says, “What are we having for dinner?” You’re like, “I do not want to decide one more thing.” That is your brain saying, “I have used up all of my decision cycles.” Deciding what to have for dinner, where to have dinner or any of those things is not a big decision. Let’s be honest. When it feels like a big decision, that means our brain says, “I have used up all my decision cycles.” When we’re winging it, we’re using decision cycles up that we don’t need to be using. Therefore, we can’t be using them in places where they can provide a much greater impact on the business.
You talked about the turnover. There’s such an energy drain associated with decision fatigue. I also find that when you’re constantly winging it, and this is something we see a lot when people come to us, there’s a great opportunity that presents itself. They can’t take advantage of it.
When you are constantly winging it in your business, you cannot take advantage of the great opportunities that will come your way. Share on XPart of it is they don’t know if they should or shouldn’t because they don’t have decision processes in place or they don’t know if they have the capacity to do it. They can’t look at these things in a systematic way and say, “Can I do this or can I not do this?” All of that is about having too much flexibility. Surprisingly, people think, “No, my customers want me to be flexible.” No, they don’t. They want to know what to expect. They want you to be adaptive to their needs but they don’t want you to be overly flexible. They don’t want you winging it. They want to know what to expect.
It’s not customer-centric to not tell somebody, “When you start working with me, you can do this and then this happens. This is the general timeline.” That is one of the kindest things that we can do for the people who pay us to serve them.
When you say that, it makes me think of the conversation that we had with Nic Peterson a while back where he talked about allegiance capital. Your customers want to know. When you’re able to tell them ahead of time what’s going to happen, that creates this allegiance capital saying, “I can trust them.” When you’re winging it, people can’t trust you.
It’s interesting that you brought up you don’t know what you have to know what to do next from this missed opportunity standpoint. I was talking to a business owner who wants to sell their business. They’re tired of it. They said, “I wouldn’t know where to go about it.” I was like, “The first thing is they’re going to want to know what the profitability is of your business.”
Overwhelm And Lack Of Control
I laid out a couple of other things that I know are important if you’re looking to sell your business. They were like, “I don’t have anything.” I’m like, “Somebody is going to tell you that you don’t have a business to buy if you can’t package up what the actual offer is.” The same is true for any of us who have businesses with an offer. There’s an aspect of overwhelm here with the winging it. They’re not running their business. Their business is running them.
When you're winging it, you are not running your business. Your business is running you. Share on XThe other thing is some people are good at winging it. It’s their superpower. Honestly, winging it in a conversation is one of my superpowers. It is part of what I do but I limit that to the place that it provides real value. I don’t try to pre-script all my calls with my one-on-one clients. I’m able to wing it, respond, and do those things. We don’t pre-script much of this for the same reason. We know that I’m better in the moment on this but it doesn’t mean that we don’t have a process for this whole process of having a show and all of those things.
That’s fine until you add anybody else into the business. Nobody else can wing it like you wing it. That’s where the winging it becomes a problem. When you’re winging it, it’s only you. There is no way anyone, even if you have an identical twin, can wing it the same way that you’re winging it. That’s going to be a problem. As soon as you bring anyone in, even for 1 hour or 2 a week.
This is where people complain a lot, quite honestly. “I brought in someone to help but they can’t help me. It’s taking as much time or more to have them help me.” It’s probably because you’re winging it. They can’t wing it as you like them to. They need structure. Often if they try to put around structure, the first thing you do if you love winging it is break the structure. We’ve both seen it.
I have seen business owners who go through this intensive exercise of creating structure around the business and then they never assimilate into the structure that they spent time, money, and effort in getting implemented. It’s all because they want to be flexible. I don’t know if you’ve seen this but sometimes when you build your business intentionally and put those structures in place, things get calm. Let’s go back to our last episode on scaling versus growth. There are some business owners who get nervous when things are calm. It almost makes them feel like maybe they don’t have a business. Having a business equates to putting out fires and all of that sort of thing.
Dan Sullivan’s, who owns Strategic Coach, quote is, “Entrepreneurs are generally good at putting out fires. When there aren’t any, they’re good at setting them so that they have something to feel valuable for doing.” It is something I talked to a lot of our clients about as we start to calm things down. I like the word calm that you use. “You’ve got to be okay not doing anything. You need to get good at being bored.” We have lost the ability as a society with all of the technology to be bored.
Some business owners get nervous when things get calm. They assume that running a business should equate to putting out fires. Share on XBored is an important time because that’s when your brain can process other things. When you’re always putting out fires, doing all of the things, and having to solve problems, your brain doesn’t get a chance to do the bigger, deeper thinking and have the thing come forward that needs to come forward. Winging it means that we don’t ever have to take that time because there’s always something that we have to figure out no one else can figure out. You said something that I want to go back to, which is creative people will often say, “I need to be able to be creative,” but true creatives who get paid to be creative also know they have to have constraints.
The real trick of creativity comes out of having some amount of constraints. I’m not going to say a canvas because a canvas provides a bit of constraint but when it’s truly blank, it leads to complete decision fatigue. Even creatives or someone who’s an artist, there are certain things that are in their constraint that they may or may not be able to identify. If they are a professional artist, it may be canvas size or style. There are things that are in that constraint that then allow them to be creative. Without any constraint, it’s not creative. It is just chaos.
The constraint that reinforces the flexibility intuition aspect of an entrepreneur is time. At some point, you hit the deadline and at some point, run out of time. Regardless of how much you like to be intuitive, go with the flow, or fly by the seat of your pants, you’ll get to that eleventh hour. It’s like now or never. That’s when your creativity comes into play and you’re like, “How do I push this through,” which then reinforces this whole, “I’m better in chaos and being flexible.” That’s also how you burn out your people. That’s how you end up getting fired by your accountant because your accountant doesn’t want to receive all your materials at the eleventh hour.
Most of the people that you’re going to try and hire to work with you in your business, their strength is exactly the opposite of that. Their strength is figuring out, “This project should take 10 hours and I could work on it 2 hours every week for the next 5 weeks.” They have planned on working on it for 2 hours every week for the next 5 weeks.
When you don’t get them the thing 5 weeks out and you get it to them 1 day ahead, they have to work 10 hours to get it to the deadline. They had three other clients that they were planning on working two hours that day as well. You have taken what was going to be their 6-hour day and made it a 16-hour day. You wonder why they’re frustrated with you or they don’t deliver on time.
That’s the other thing. You’re running up to the eleventh hour but you still expect them to deliver on time. I see that happen a lot.
I believe that has happened to you with some of your other clients. That doesn’t happen with me very often because that’s not my mode.
It’s part of how I got into this business. I was somebody who could make the deadline, even if nobody made the deadline for me. My circumstances have changed and I am no longer able to provide that type of service. Everything has to go according to the timeline because there are too many external factors that are unpredictable that I have to be able to fit within.
One of the phrases I use a lot is, “Don’t reinforce bad behavior.” It’s all self-fulfilling. One of the things that I say a lot so much is that we’ve got it etched on a mug around here somewhere because I believe it is, “Every business works exactly as it was designed.” Even if you don’t think you have designed anything and you think you’re winging it and you’re being flexible, your business is working exactly as it has been designed. The problem and why most people are stressing out burning out all of those things, not making as much money as they could, and the list goes on and on is because the business is not designed with intention. It is designed with reaction.
Steps Toward Intentional Design
That hurts. With that in mind, we have drilled into the pain of the overwhelmed entrepreneur deeply enough for a single episode. What would you recommend to the person reading who’s like, “I will operate with greater intention?” What is the first step toward the intentional design of a business?
Pick one thing. Do not say, “I’m going to document all of my systems.” That is not helpful. The first thing is to pick one thing. When I say pick one thing, I usually give three different possible qualifiers to start with. Usually, it’s not all three. Look for any one of these things and then say, “This is the one.” Sometimes it’s the thing that feels the hardest and most painful. The thing you hate doing sometimes is the one that you should focus on first.
Another can be looking for the thing that is happening often in your business. If you’re winging your newsletter, I’ll pick that as a simple example, you don’t have that process down, and you’re doing it every week, you’re going to get a lot of value by putting that because you’re going to start seeing that accumulate over time. If you’re able to even shave 15 minutes off every week, in 1 year, that’s 52 times 15 minutes. That’s a lot of time when we do that multiplication.
It’s either the thing that’s most painful or the thing that’s something that you’re doing a lot of. This one always surprises people but it’s also the thing you think will be the easiest to get consistent first. Sometimes, depending on who I’m working with, that is the one I focus on first. Let’s show you that having a structure doesn’t ruin your entire life and eliminate all your creativity. Let’s do the thing that you’re already pretty consistent on, get it super consistent, and see what that feels like. Get a feel for it and see where you’re starting to see some benefit. Potentially document it.
I don’t always say documenting is the first thing. Paying attention is the first thing. Once you’ve done that, then you can take the next easiest thing. A lot of folks are like, “Eat the frog.” What happens is you keep kicking the frog down the road. You’re not doing the hard thing. Sometimes it is, especially if you know that you’re pushing against this. Start with the easiest thing.
We first have to acknowledge reality and understand that what we think of as flexibility is an absence of structure. Some type of structure is the kindest possible gift you can give to yourself, your clients or customers, and the people who work for you and work with you. We’re talking about identifying the highest impact areas for improvement. You gave us three areas to look at.
Flexibility is an absence of structure. Share on XThe first is where you’re feeling the most pain by not having consistency. The second is you’re repeating a thing so often that even a little bit of improvement will have a massive impact over a reasonably short period. It’s high repeatability. The third one, especially if you’re super resistant to the concept, is the thing that you think will be easiest and is closest to already being in a structure. Only pick one. That’s the key thing about this. I don’t care what it is. Pick one thing first. Do not try to put structure around all your systems or things because that is setting yourself up for failure as well.
We acknowledge our operational reality and identify our highest impact areas for improvement. What you have been talking about throughout this episode is creating simple and sustainable systems. Can you give me an example of one?
Simple and sustainable systems can look like a lot of things. Sometimes it is as simple as having a checklist to say, “We do this.” We have everyone do the checklist every single solitary time. Even if they’re doing it every day and they have it memorized, we still do this. If heaven forbid, there are three steps in and they get a call that Johnny broke his leg on the playground and they have to run off to the hospital, we know that we’re three steps in and then we have to do steps 4, 5, and 6.
We don’t have to figure everything out. We go look at whatever system we’re tracking this checklist. There are lots of systems. It doesn’t matter which system is. There’s Monday, Trello, Asana, and ClickUp. I don’t care what system but as they’re doing it, they’re checking it off every single solitary time. That creates that consistency. That’s one of the ways that you create structure. It can be in some other document form. That’s not always the best way.
Everyone thinks when we say SOPs that we have to have this giant manual. That’s not necessarily the best answer. Sometimes it’s having a video that is walking somebody through. There are multiple ways that we can create the structure. Part of it is saying, “This is the way we’re going to do it.” The other piece, which is harder, is making sure everyone, including you as the CEO, is held accountable for doing it that way.
That’s the hardest thing because we resist the structure we so desperately need.
That’s why I said, “Including you, CEO.” Most of the time when I’m working with CEOs and they’re having trouble with structure, it’s because they don’t want to have any structure for them. They want their people to have structure so they know what’s going on. Sorry, but this is one of those things that is led from the top. You’ve got to also be held accountable. That may be being held accountable by your people if you’ve got the right people.
Tonya, you do a great job of holding me accountable because I mean that I want it. That is part of what I expect from you for what I pay you to do. Push back and say, “Gwen, you are not following the process.” I probably don’t do it as much as most people because I like the process but I know I still do it from time to time. If you don’t have people who will do that and they’re low enough, no matter what you tell them, they will not be able to push back on it. You may need to have someone else holding you accountable for it. One of the things that we do for our clients is we hold the CEO accountable for the things that they need to do. I have no hesitation calling people on what they’re doing.
There’s a logical last step. We’ve created a simple and sustainable system. Once the system is built and everybody is following it and living within it, that’s where you can find opportunities for flexibility.
Keep in mind that you want to push that flexibility as much as possible to the end of the process as opposed to the beginning. If you put that flexibility in the beginning and think of a flowchart or anything like that, that means all of a sudden, there are way more branches that can happen, which adds to the complexity. We’re always looking to simplify. I’m just making this up. If there are 7 steps and the flexibility comes between 6 and 7, that is way less complicated than when the flexibility comes between steps 1 and 2. Can you move that flexibility further down the line? Often, that’s where it has the most impact on the result.
I agree 100%. Also, your result is more reliable.
It’s way more reliable. We can have a whole conversation about that and we probably have somewhere already but that’s the thing. Put the flexibility as close to the end of the process as you need it. Part of the time you’ll discover, “Adding flexibility is creating more confusion for my client.” We think people want more choices. They do not want more choices. They want maybe 1 option outside of the standard but they don’t want 5 options down there. Even if you think, you don’t either.
That’s where decision fatigue and overwhelm come in. Gwen, thank you for this. This was great. If nothing else, I hope that people recognize that flexibility and absence of structure are two very different things and they stop conflating that. I love you for leaving us with every business operating exactly as designed and the problems are few and have been designed with intention. Readers, it’s up to you to implement. We have uncovered the real cost of winging it in your business and why intentional design is so crucial for sustainable success.
You’ve got to remember, and maybe put it on a sticky note even, that your business will run exactly as you have designed it, even if you didn’t mean to do it and you weren’t intentional. If you want some support with designing your business with intention, that’s exactly what we do around here. We would love it if you would visit us at TheBusinessYouReallyWant.com. You can explore our free resources and our services as well. Until next time. Keep working on those incremental improvements that have a big impact over time.
Mentioned in the Episode
About Your Hosts
Gwen Bortner has spent four decades advising executives and entrepreneurs in 45+ industries. She helps women succeed in business without sacrificing happiness by identifying their true desires and aligning their business functions. She spots overlooked bottlenecks and crafts efficient plans toward sustainable success that center your values and priorities. Known for her unique approach to problem-solving and accountability through the G.E.A.R.S. framework, Gwen empowers clients to achieve their definition of success without sacrificing what matters most.
Tonya Kubo is a marketing strategist and community builder who helps entrepreneurs build thriving online communities. As co-host of The Business You Really Want and Chief Marketing and Operations Officer (CMOO) at Everyday Effectiveness, she keeps conversations on track and ensures complex business concepts are accessible to everyone. A master facilitator with 18+ years of experience in online community building, Tonya takes a people-first approach to marketing and centers the human experience in all she does.
