Notes on running the back office.
Everything here comes out of the actual work. These are the things we run into with clients week to week: the process that quietly stopped working, the filing nobody owns, the contract nobody read, the software that was supposed to fix all of it. Short, practical writing on finance, HR, legal, compliance and IT for small and mid-size businesses, nonprofits and government departments, written from experience rather than theory.
A guest post from the founder of OMS. A business rarely loses its grip because people stopped trying. It loses it because everybody quietly built their own way of keeping track.
What to fix before JanuaryQ4 is short. Five things worth finishing before the year closes, one from each part of your operation.
What AI actually breaks in a small businessAI rarely creates new problems. It takes the ones you already had and makes them visible and expensive.
The work you only notice when it's missingContracts, insurance, and policies get treated as three separate chores. They are one job, and done properly you stop thinking about it.
Three signs you've outgrown ad hoc operationsThe systems that got you here are rarely the ones that get you to the next stage. Here's how to tell you've crossed that line.
Why we treat operations as one system, not six departmentsMost operating frameworks compress finance, HR, legal, compliance, and IT into unrelated buckets. Here's why that compression is where things start to break.