If You Want to Work on the Business, Your Backbone Matters

The American Bus Association recently published an article featuring Evan Anderson of Anderson Coach & Travel titled, “What It Means to Work on the Business, Not Just in It.”

It caught our attention for an obvious reason. ABA is a partner of The Bus Network, and Anderson Coach & Travel is a longtime TBN customer and industry partner. But more importantly, Evan put words to something we think about every day at TBN.

If you want to work on your business instead of constantly working in it, the backbone you choose matters.

Evan talks about getting “out of the weeds,” building a leadership team that owns decisions, and giving those leaders the information, training, and authority to make them.

Technology alone doesn’t create that kind of organization. But it’s very difficult to create one without the right technology underneath it.

That’s why we build TBN from the top down as well as the bottom up.

At the top, an owner needs to understand the business well enough to make high-level decisions: Where are we making money? Where are we losing it? How is sales performing? Are we using our fleet effectively? What is changing? Where should we focus next?

Tools like Mission Control are being built specifically for that level of the organization—turning the enormous amount of data created by an operation into information leadership can actually use.

Then comes the critical part:

The organization has to work the plan.

A pricing decision has to reach sales. A sales strategy has to become a repeatable workflow. Operational priorities have to reach dispatch. Driver and vehicle requirements have to influence assignments. What actually happens on the road has to flow through payroll and finance.

Then the results need to come back to leadership so they can measure, adjust, and make the next decision.

Decide. Execute. Measure. Adjust.

That’s what an operating backbone should enable.

Evan’s article is worth reading because it isn’t really about software. It’s about leadership, delegation, accountability, and intentionally building an organization that doesn’t require the owner to be involved in every decision.

We agree.

Our job at The Bus Network is to build the backbone that helps make that possible.

Because if your goal is to spend more time working on your business, you need systems capable of running through your business.