The Uncommon Business · Framework № 09 · Operations

SBSA

Spot the Bottleneck → Build the SOP → Store It → Automate. The operations loop that turns firefighting into systems.

Click anywhere or press Space to begin →

01 · Spot the Bottleneck

Spot.

Find what's slow, annoying, repetitive, or stuck.

"Imagine you are going away for two weeks... The question is, what breaks?"

The Two-Week Vacation Test

Whatever breaks while you're gone is the bottleneck. Then the escalation: "Create a business that runs without you, but can it run without everybody? That's the next level."

The Bottleneck Spotter

AI interviews you about a normal week, asks the vacation-test questions, and hands back a ranked shortlist of hidden bottlenecks. The quiet ones, not just what feels like the job.

02 · Build the SOP

Build.

Document the process before you touch automation.

Low-tech wins. Record a Loom, or grab your phone and talk the process out loud. AI turns the recording into a clean SOP.

"literally turn your iPhone on, click record, and talk out how this process works"

— The Camcorder Method

SOP

The human-readable process.

For humans

Skill

The same process in AI-executable form.

For AI

03 · Store It

Store.

One central place the whole company knows.

Notion or Drive. Pick one home and treat it as the single source of truth. An SOP nobody can find doesn't exist.

1

One central home.

The whole company knows where SOPs live.

2

An owner and access controls.

Someone is responsible. Everyone knows who can edit.

3

Version numbers.

v1, v2, v3. No guessing which one is current.

4

Archive, never overwrite.

Promote the new version. Archive the old one. Never silently overwrite.

04 · Automate — The Payoff

Automate.

The last, last step.

"automate would be... that is the last, last step."

— Only automate what is documented and stable

1

A Claude skill.

Runs the SOP on demand.

2

A scheduled task.

Runs it on a timer, no human trigger.

3

Zapier or n8n.

Connects the process across your tools.

"You cannot automate a process that doesn't exist."

SBSA · The Principle

"You cannot automate
a process that doesn't exist."

Most people start at step four and wonder why it breaks. Spot it. Build it. Store it. Then automate it.

Ops isn't about doing more. It's scale without sacrifice. Capacity and freedom, not just throughput. Repeat for every bottleneck.