The 3 Pillars of Running a Business That Operates Smoothly Don't over-complicate what really needs to happen to cultivate a successful enterprise.

A lot has been written about how to build and sustain a successful business, but so much of that research and writing over-complicates what needs to happen to cultivate a successful enterprise. It comes down to three main components: Business foundations, strategy and culture.

Business foundations

As you begin to form a company and start to hire your first employees, you will need to provide them with the story of why you're in business. So many times, this is stuck in the founders' brains and not shared widely with the employees. If you're not sure how to share this story, think about it in the context of why you exist and what you hope to achieve as an organization.

Said another way, these are your mission, your purpose and your vision. You don't have to have this engraved on a wall at your office (or on the company portal for remote organizations), but there needs to be a shared understanding of what the team is trying to accomplish and how everyone plays a critical role in that mission and vision.

It's also important to articulate your values. Values are the guiding principles that will help your employees understand the behaviors that are expected of them when it comes to customer service, team collaboration and other daily activities of the business.

Related: How to Hire Your First Head of Business Operations

Strategy

In simple terms, business strategy can be defined as a clear set of plans, actions and goals that outlines how an organization will stay in business. This is the piece that often gets overlooked or put on the back burner until there's a crisis. That's a mistake. In many startups and small or newer businesses, the founders and leaders are rushing to bring their product or service to market. Many of the early wins are left to chance or luck, but that's not a sustainable methodology for the long term.

Instead, companies need to focus on planning that looks beyond the next month or the next quarter. Serious consideration should be given to strategic planning and succession planning initiatives. Strategic planning is simply the process of setting goals and creating a blueprint for an organization's future. It sometimes gets a bad reputation for being tedious and overly time-intensive, but it doesn't have to be. There are several short and even one-page strategic plan models you can tailor to your internal needs. Strategic plans should include measurements or metrics and action plans to ensure goal completion.

Succession planning is the process of identifying the key positions within your organization and creating developmental plans for employees to assume those roles when the incumbent either leaves the company or is promoted into a different role. It's also a way to do long-term planning for key positions that are mission-critical. We like to use the nine-box model for succession planning.

Both strategic planning and succession planning should include all key internal stakeholders and be done on an annual basis with quarterly updates for nearer-term goals.

Related: Streamline Your Business Operations with This Entrepreneurial Tools Suite

Culture

The third and final piece of operational success is workplace culture. This one is a little fuzzier because it's an experience rather than something tangible. The key areas of workplace culture are your people, your systems and your operational processes and procedures. All three of these things come together to create the working environment your employees experience every day.

Workplace cultures will build themselves if you don't take intentional actions to create the culture you want. Cultures left to chance are often not what the company's leadership wants, so efforts need to be taken every day to foster the ideal working environment. This requires you to take a look at how you're working and ask yourself if you have the right people in the right jobs and whether or not they have the tools and guidance they need in order to be successful.

As a starting point, leaders can conduct a culture assessment to identify what's going well and what needs improvement. A traditional SWOT analysis is one option, as are employee climate surveys and listening sessions by leaders.

Another option is the SOAR model. In a SOAR analysis, participants identify and discuss Strengths (what's working well), Opportunities (how you can add value to your stakeholders' needs), Aspirations (your hopes and dreams for the future of the organization) and Results (what you would like to achieve). The results of conducting these analyses should be incorporated into future strategic planning efforts.

You also want to look at your culture through the lens of the employee lifecycle or employee journey. Think about every single touch point you have with a person from the time they apply for a position through their employment and when they ultimately leave the company. Review the various places where the company and its leaders can improve upon what's already happening internally. In the current job market, employers who place additional emphasis on the employee experience are seeing lower turnover rates and higher retention of current employees.

To apply this to your organization, it makes sense to start with the business foundations, but the strategy and culture pieces can be done interchangeably or in tandem. All three need constant monitoring and updating as business conditions continue to evolve and change.