Operations Archives - Malloy Industries

Jace AI

Words I like: “If a shiny, new AI tool can’t give you an hour back at least 1 hour/week, it’s not worth your attention.” TL;DR I’ve used Jace AI since August 6, 2025, which is 111 days as of today It has saved me 111+ hours and a ton of energy by reducing my time in my email inbox Jace is trained on my unique communication style to draft high‑quality replies in my tone I can rapidly review, tweak, and send email replies in seconds In one recent inbox sprint, I sent 50+ sales follow‑up emails in 30 minutes between

Minimalist illustration of the components of business operations: control, profitability, planning, and process icons

The 6 Key Components of a Well-Run Business

Most growth problems trace back to the same handful of systems: a clear vision, the right people, useful numbers, a way to solve issues, disciplined planning, and documented processes. These are the six components of the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), the framework Gino Wickman lays out in his book Traction, and they're a useful map for any CEO whose business has outgrown the way it's run. We've seen the same pattern across the companies we work with: the bottleneck is rarely effort; it's one of these six systems missing or broken. 1. Vision: Does Everyone Know Where You're Going? A

How CEOs Should Use AI in 2026 (The 10/80/10 Way)

The CEOs getting real leverage from AI aren't the ones with the cleverest prompts. They treat AI like a capable team member and manage it with John Maxwell's 10/80/10 rule: you do the first 10% (set the outcome, the context, and what "good" looks like), let the tool do the 80% (the draft, the research, the first pass), then you own the last 10% (edit, verify, make it yours). The skill is the delegation, not the magic words, and in 2026 that delegation is changing fast. Want prompts that already follow this 10/80/10 approach? Grab the AI Prompt Library for

$A fractional COO reviewing operations plans with a growing team$

How a Fractional COO Can Help You Grow Your Business

A fractional COO is a seasoned operations executive who runs your operations part-time, for a fraction of a full-time hire, so a growing company can get senior operational leadership without a $250K+ salary on the books. They're usually brought in to fix a specific bottleneck or to build the systems a scaling business has outgrown. Here's what they do, when you need one, and what it costs. Trying to decide between fractional and full-time? Work through the Fractional vs. Full-Time Decision Worksheet. What a Fractional COO Does The role flexes to your needs, but the common areas are: Streamlining operations:

Do and Document: How to Build SOPs With Scribe and Loom

The fastest way to stop being the bottleneck is to write down how you do things, so someone else can. The problem is that documenting tasks after the fact never happens. The fix is a simple habit we call do and document: capture the process the moment you do it, not weeks later. Here's the habit and the two tools that make it nearly effortless. The Do-And-Document Principle Every time you do a task you'll eventually want to delegate, document it in real time. It costs about 10 percent more effort in the moment and saves you hours of trying

How to Automate Copy-and-Paste Work to Save Hours Every Week

Are you still re-typing the same Zoom link, calendar link, or boilerplate reply every day? We have a solution for you: a text expander to turn short abbreviations into full phrases, links, and blocks of text you'd otherwise retype all day. Watch the Walkthrough How It Works Here's how it works and where to start. Want to reclaim more of these hours? Our $10K Productivity Framework maps the highest-leverage tasks to automate first, and our guide to what a fractional executive does helps you decide what to keep doing yourself versus hand off. Why This Matters for a CEO Your

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs): A CEO’s Guide

OKRs are a simple goal-setting system that keeps a whole company pointed at the same outcomes. They pair an Objective (what you want to achieve) with the Key Results (how you'll measure progress toward it). Used by Intel, Google, and many of the best-run companies, OKRs are a vaccine against fuzzy thinking and scattered execution. Here's the formula, the best practices, and a deck you can use as you write your own. The Formula An OKR is one Objective with three to five supporting Key Results. As a sentence: "I will [Objective] as measured by [Key Results]." Objectives The Objective

Screenshot of the Project Kickoff Notion template with its four steps: define winning, set anti-goals, back-of-the-envelope math, and momentum

Project Kickoff: Get Vision Clarity in 4 Steps

Most projects fail at the start, not the finish, because the team never agreed on what winning looks like. Investing an hour in vision clarity before you kick off pays for itself many times over. Here's a simple four-step framework (with a free template) to align you and your team before the work begins. When the project needs senior operational judgment to set direction, that is what a fractional executive brings. Step 1: Define "Winning" Write down the outcome in plain terms, with two tiers and a timeframe. For a side project, that might be: a good outcome is $1,000