WHAT IS THE B3 framework®?
The B3 framework® helps founders build brilliant businesses. It’s designed for technology and digital companies that are scaling.
Based on more than 25 years’ experience of working in technology and digital businesses, it’s a simple yet powerful tool for company building.
Learn more about the framework
“One of the toughest parts of scaling is making sure you are focussing on the right issues and asking the right questions – the B3 framework® has proven invaluable in helping guide our thinking and give structure to our actions.”
Ronald Ashri, Chief Product and Technology Officer,
Opendialog.ai – post-seed tech growth business
1. FUNDAMENTAL BASICS
This layer establishes the DNA of any business – why it exists and how it wants to develop as an organisation.
WHY
One of the first building blocks for a scaling business is to be able to express why the business exists. It underpins everything that follows in the growth of the business.
Often this will be closely aligned with the original passions and motivations of the founder/s, although it may also reflect how the business has grown and changed since it was founded.
USEFUL RESOURCES
- Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG)
- How to Define Your Vision, Values, Purpose and Mission Statement
- Lead Together – Purpose (chapter 6)
IF YOU READ ONE THING…
Do Purpose: Why brands with a purpose do better and matter more by David Hieatt
HOW
A scaling business needs to describe how it wants to exist in the future. There are lots of ways to do this such as describing a culture, values or behaviours.
The most effective ways are those that define the how in practical, accessible and usable ways – so that people across the business can assimilate the meaning and apply it to their work every day.
USEFUL RESOURCES
- Lead Together – Values, Principles & Aspirations (chapter 7)
- How to Define Your Vision, Values, Purpose and Mission Statement
- Do We Need Company Values in the Future of Work?
- Original Netflix culture deck
IF YOU READ ONE THING…
2. MAKING A BUSINESS
This layer takes the foundational aspirations and works out how they translate into a viable business.
STRATEGY
Scaling businesses need a way of setting goals that are in line with why. Strategy is how the business makes and follows through on deliberate choices and trade-offs to achieve its goals. It’s where the hardest decisions are made on what will and won’t be focussed on. If creating strategy feels easy, it’s probably because you’re not facing up to the trade-offs you need to think about.
USEFUL RESOURCES
- Blue Ocean Strategy
- Agile strategy
- Strategy that works – rethinking the strategic process
- Strategy in teal organizations
- Lead Together – Bold Strategy (chapter 23)
- How to Write a Strategy Statement Your Team Will Actually Remember
- Building the Agile Business Through Digital Transformation (chapter 9)
And some relevant articles from my email newsletter Build.
IF YOU READ ONE THING…
Good Strategy Bad Strategy:
The Difference and Why it Matters by Richard Rumelt
OPERATING MODEL
The operating model provides a blueprint for how value is created and delivered to different groups.
It brings the business strategy to life and informs decisions about how it is set up and operates. Without a clear operating model, the business can lack congruence as it scales.
USEFUL RESOURCES
- What is an operating model?
- Architecting an operating model
- How to design for agility
- Putting customer experience at the heart of next-generation operating models
And some relevant articles from my email newsletter Build.
IF YOU READ ONE THING…
3. BUILDING AN ORGANISATION
This layer puts in place the building blocks of a functioning organisation – enabling people to work together towards common goals.
ROLES
In any organisation there are accountabilities that need to be fulfilled. A role is a collection of accountabilities taken on by an individual person. By scoping and describing accountabilities and roles, we create a clear understanding of what’s expected of each person in the organisation. Accountabilities are preferred over activities as a way to describe a role – because accountabilities enable space for people to have autonomy over how to do their work.
USEFUL RESOURCES
- Designing High-Performance Jobs
- Job descriptions: dead or alive?
- Shall we give up on job design?
- Fluid Job Titles and Job Descriptions at Teal Organizations
And some relevant articles from my email newsletter Build.
IF YOU READ ONE THING…
STRUCTURE
This is not drawing a structure chart. Never start there. It’s about understanding how people and activities are best grouped within the operating model to get work done. Never assume it needs to look like the traditional pyramid with senior people at the top, a middle management layer and then the frontline work happening at the bottom. Think creatively and engage frontline teams in considering how to best organise for autonomy, engagement and productivity.
USEFUL RESOURCES
- 5 Steps To A Progressive Organizational Structure
- The Team Onion
- Seven Practices of Successful Organizations
- Cell Structure Design Patterns
- 10 Progressive Organizational Structures Developed By Real Companies
- Flat hierarchies – progressive organizational thinking or digital’s ‘flat earth’ theory?
- 5 Reasons Why A Flat Organizational Structure Fails & What You Can Do About It
And some relevant articles from my email newsletter Build.
IF YOU READ ONE THING…
Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization? by Aaron Dignan
DECISION MAKING
Be intentional about decision making by setting a clear process you expect everyone making meaningful decisions to follow. Be explicit about who can take what decisions and who needs to be involved. Strive for a bias towards devolving decision making to enable greater agility and pace.
USEFUL RESOURCES
- What is decision making?
- Deciding about deciding
- How to Make Decisions that are EPICS
- The Tactical Guide to Making Better Decisions When Starting and Scaling Companies
- Decision Making
- The Power of Collaborative Decision-Making
- Decision-Making Practice
And some relevant articles from my email newsletter Build.
IF YOU READ ONE THING…
GOVERNANCE
Often mis-characterised as restrictive and something that gets in the way of progress. But done well, it doesn’t need to be any of these things. I think of governance as the minimum set of rules, policies and risk management processes that are needed to ensure an organisation functions coherently, legally and with minimal friction (“minimal viable bureaucracy”). Even the most progressive teal organisational systems codify governance to help people understand how to manage power together.
USEFUL RESOURCES
- Open Governance
- Where ignorance isn’t bliss – start-ups and corporate governance
- Why The Command-and-Control Mindset Is Killing Your Company
- How to manage compliance and governance efficiently for scaling businesses
- Power architecture
And some relevant articles from my email newsletter Build.
IF YOU READ ONE THING…
Power: Why Some People Have It―and Others Don’t by Jeffrey Pfeffer
4. OPERATING THE BUSINESS
This layer sets out the practical things you need to have and do to run a scaling business day-to-day.
LEADERSHIP
Seems obvious, but it’s important to think about what leadership really means as a business scales. It’s not about roles that “do” leadership. It’s about how the act of leadership is something that’s expected from everyone in the business. It’ll mean different things in different roles, but leadership isn’t a top down game. There are really strong links to culture, roles and structure to enable this to happen in practice.
USEFUL RESOURCES
- Distributed leadership
- What is Distributed Leadership?
- Leadership in organisation design
- Leadership Unravelled – The Faulty Thinking Behind Modern Management
- Leadership in Evolutionary Organisations: Who’s leading anyway?
And some relevant articles from my email newsletter Build.
IF YOU READ ONE THING…
Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Building Leaders by Breaking the Rules by David Marquet
CADENCE
Cadence is the heartbeat of any business. It’s the pattern of rituals and ceremonies that happen at a predictable frequency that helps bind the organisation together as it grows. The right mix and frequency will depend on the stage and rate of growth of the business. Cadence links together strategy, performance, governance and leadership into a predictable and shared rhythm.
USEFUL RESOURCES
- How To Create A Business Rhythm For Better Collaboration
- How to create an operating rhythm to increase productivity
- Example of an operating rhythm
And some relevant articles from my email newsletter Build.
IF YOU READ ONE THING…
Building the Agile Business Through Digital Transformation by Neil Perkin
PROCESSES
Processes is about getting repeatable activities codified so that they’re done consistently and efficiently. It’s about doing this in a way that trusts people to use their judgement in how best to do their work and not restricting their accountability. Don’t try to define a process or checklist for everything you do. Focus on the high value, high volume or high risk activities.
USEFUL RESOURCES
- It’s Never Too Early To Start Mapping Business Processes
- The Checklist Manifesto Summary: 8 Lessons by Atul Gawande
- Guide to understanding process maps
And some relevant articles from my email newsletter Build.
IF YOU READ ONE THING…
PERFORMANCE
Performance happens at individual, team and company levels. Knowing what good performance looks like and creating regular opportunities to talk about current performance is important. Identify a small number of key metrics and determine how to measure it consistently. How are these interpreted and shared appropriately? Beyond the quant, how are things like company stories, successes and learnings being communicated to drive performance improvement and nurture culture?
USEFUL RESOURCES
- Transparency in business: the next wave in company evolution
- Scorecards vs. Dashboards: Definitions, Benefits, and Differences
- Business dashboad examples for every use case
- Lead Together – Feedback (chapter 13) and Transparency (chapter 17)
- Create Stories That Change Your Company’s Culture
IF YOU READ ONE THING…
STANDARDS
Standards are documented specifications about how all or part of a business operates. They can be internally or externally set. They’re usually used as the basis for compliance auditing and then certifying to a recognised level. Some standards are compulsory (such as employment law, GDPR and accounting standards) while others are a strategic choice for a business (for example ISO, specialist accreditations and B Corps). The focus on managing compliance needs to be proportionate to the level of risk in the scaling business.
USEFUL RESOURCES
- Why compliance is important for smaller businesses
- ISO standards
- SOC 2
- Small business compliance UK – what you need to know
- B Corps standards
- Regulations can burden small businesses but our research shows they can also help them grow
IF YOU READ ONE THING…
SYSTEMS
Choosing the right technology systems for the scaling journey matters a lot. Buy/build decisions have outsized impacts on future growth. How systems are purchased, deployed and integrated can drive efficiency and team engagement, but if done badly can restrict growth, hurt margins and be an unwelcome distraction for leaders. Having a clear target systems architecture provides direction and focus for technology as a business grows.
USEFUL RESOURCES
- Technology strategy in digital scale-ups
- The Fundamentals to Enterprise Architecture
- Internal and back office systems
- Architecture awakens
IF YOU READ ONE THING…
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Who is the framework for?
Anyone that cares about how to take a considered approach to building a company. It’s particularly useful for founders and leaders in scale-up businesses as it helps them build coherent and high performing organisations.
How do you use the framework?
It can be used proactively to identify what should be planned for and prioritised as a business grows – use it to build out a company improvement roadmap. Many companies use it to help plan out where investment might be needed after a funding round.
It can also be used reactively to help diagnose the root causes of scaling issues and address them properly. It helps you spot the connections between issues and what’s behind them.
How do I learn more about each element of the framework?
Check out the implementation guide and resources for resources, reading and guidance about each element. If you’d like more help with implementing a part of the framework in your business, I work with start-ups and scale-ups as a consultant COO.
Can I share or republish the framework?
Yes please! The B3 framework is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. That means you can copy and redistribute it, remix, transform, and build upon it for any purpose. If you do this you must give credit by linking back to this page and distribute your contributions under the same license as the original framework.
Why is it called B3?
The framework is designed for founders who want to build brilliant businesses. I love a bit of alliteration so B3 became an early working title and has just stuck.
