The board: Leo drafts, you say go

Understanding a business is the first half. The board is where the second half happens.

Goal, initiative, ticket

• The goal is what the business is working towards, in its own words.
• An initiative is a change worth making, with the number it will be judged by.
• A ticket is one step of that change.

Leo fills the board itself. When it finds something worth doing, it drafts the plan, breaks it into steps and puts them there.

Three at a time

You see your next three tickets, never the whole list. Nobody has more than three in progress. Start a fourth and Leo asks which one it replaces.

A long list feels like progress and produces none. Three things you can finish beats thirty you can't.

A name on every step

Each step is offered to the person best placed to do it, with the reason written on the ticket. They can pass it to somebody better placed and say why. Work that belongs to everybody gets done by nobody, so every step belongs to somebody.

In a business of one, every step is yours, and Leo's job is to make each one small.

You say go

Leo drafts. People decide.

When a ticket is something Leo can build, it writes the brief and waits. Nothing is built, and nothing in your business changes, until you say go. When the work comes back, it comes back to you to judge.