As a CEO, how can we “delegate and elevate"? One way is to ensure we have only A-players on our leadership team.
A great leadership team enables the CEO to entrust the team and its members with getting results consistently and leading change in the company. This frees up the CEO to spend more time leading and less time doing, which is essential for a company to grow and thrive. And so, CEOs need to be skilled at hiring leadership team members. While HR can support the process, the CEO needs to stay highly involved. Who: The A Method for Hiring captures the best method we Gravitas Impact coaches have seen for consistently hiring A players. Unfortunately, most managers use what author Geoff Smart calls “voodoo hiring techniques.” While common, they get poor results. Smart and his firm meticulously developed and tested the A Method over 23 years, simplifying it for mid-size companies from Geoff’s father Brad’s TopGrading system, which is more geared for larger corporate companies. The A Method includes four parts: Scorecard – describes exactly what the person will need to accomplish. While job descriptions tend to capture mere accountabilities and responsibilities, or worse yet, a list of duties, a job scorecard captures the specific results to be delivered. Source – systematically sourcing before you have slots to fill so you have a large pool of high quality candidates when you need them. A small pool generated on short notice is one of the main reasons managers hire less-than-ideal candidates. Short-notice sourcing is often done through advertising or job postings, which will access job-seekers. And job-seekers are often not A players. Select – a series of structured interviews that allow you to gather accurate facts about the person. It’s considered normal for candidates to hide their faults and flaws in a job interview. Getting a complete picture of the person is essential to determining if their weaknesses will be manageable. Sell – ways to persuade the perfect candidate to join. A players are usually already employed or are being sought out by other employers. Selling the candidate increases the odds they’ll go Most companies jump straight into sourcing and selecting without clarity on the results they want the person to accomplish. Or they’re starting from scratch with sourcing, leading to few great candidates. Book: 189 pages. Audio book: 4h47m. Soundview summary: 8 pages, 20m audio. getAbstract summary: 5 pages, 10m audio. How can you hire more A-players in your company? To find out how to have stronger talent and leaders to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete section 2 to check your A-player processes. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. As a CEO, there are many things we can do to get out of the weeds. One of the most freeing actions we can take is to let our people do their jobs, solve their own problems and lead big projects to improve things. In this Gravitas Impact podcast, Hazel Jackson, CEO of the Biz Group in Dubai, shares how. Based on the Biz Group’s work teaching Liz Wiseman’s Multipliers framework, as well as based on Hazel’s own experience as a CEO, she tells some insightful stories about leadership habits that helped her succeed in the early years of her company but that became liabilities that held back her company’s growth. In this 30 minute podcast, Hazel speaks to 1) the CEO’s primary role of fully tapping into (and stretching) their peoples’ smarts, 2) common accidental Diminisher behaviours for entrepreneurs and 3) some practical actions we can take to become more of a Multiplier and get 50% more from our people. Subscribe to Gravitas Impact Podcast: Android
How can you strengthen empowerment in your entrepreneurial company? To find out how to improve empowerment in your business to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete sections 1, 2 and 4 to check your empowerment practices. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. Over the last five 5 Minute Growth Tip articles, I’ve described the critical leadership team best practices to implement the structures, systems and processes to enable profitable growth.
However, you might be thinking, “I can see how it all works, but I’m really busy! I don’t have time for these things. I don’t even have time for family, friends or even myself.” But might there be a way to make time? How might you successfully do less of what you’re doing right now so you have the time to put these best practices in place, to enable the profitable growth you want to see, and lead the life you want to live? How can you get out of the weeds? The simple solutions One could maybe end this article right here with the trite saying “delegate and elevate”. This simple tactic may do the job for you. Start by listing out all the things you do on a week to week or month to month basis. Take a hard look at everything that could be handed off to others. You may find there are a number of quick wins that will create time in your calendar to put some serious effort into your leadership team and the company. Sit down with each person you’ll delegate to. Be clear on your expectations and standards. Show them how you want things done, praise their progress and good work. Redirect them if they slip backwards. But sometimes handing things off to others doesn’t seem feasible. Your team may be really busy too. Maybe they feel tapped out. Another option is to hire another leader to take over some of your accountabilities. For example, you may still be leading sales, marketing, operations, R&D or administration. What would it be like to have someone else doing a great job fully leading one or more of those areas for you? Identify what you want to delegate, hire another leader with a great track record in those areas and get on with making the changes and improvements to the business to get your return on that investment. This solution assumes your company is in a financial position to invest in making that hire. But sometimes, that might not be feasible. The last simpler option is to find quick ways to improve profitability so you can afford to invest in another leader who will take on some of your accountabilities. The good news is that this can often be done with some small tweaks to the business. A one percent increase in pricing to customers, a one percent decrease in cost of goods sold and a one percent decrease in overhead costs can make a big difference to the bottom line: anywhere from 10 to 80% depending on your business model and cost structure. That can often be enough to invest in another leader. If these kinds of profit enhancing quick wins aren’t feasible in your company, you may feel stuck, like you’re in a chicken or egg position: you need to delegate to make more significant changes to improve profitability and invest in growth, but you need more profit to invest in leaders so you can delegate. The alternative solution Simple delegation, hiring another leader or quickly increasing profits to do so aren’t always an option. Sometimes the only other way is to get more done with the people we have. This means increasing your leadership team’s efficiency so your team members have the capacity to take on some of your roles and/or lead some internal change projects on your behalf. How do you do that? By getting the right people in the right seats, improving their execution and strengthening leadership team buy-in and accountability. Right people in the right seats This starts with defining the right functions on the leadership team and making adjustments to ensure you have the right person leading each function. Over time, if not early on, other leaders will be able take on functions you’re currently leading. The goal is to make sure each leader is highly productive leading their function(s) and driving high productivity in their respective teams. We also want them to behave in constructive ways (aligned with your core values) that minimize drama across the leadership team and within each of their departments. Leaders can become even more efficient by ensuring they have the right people in the right seats within their departments and that their people are also behaving constructively. See this article for more on getting the right people in the right seats. Efficient execution Having the right people in the right seats on your team provides a good foundation. But how much of their potential productivity you tap into will depend on how each leader and the team executes. Through improved execution practices, your leadership team members will deliver better results, need less attention from you, have capacity to take on one or more of your functions and lead improvement projects you might otherwise lead. Great execution involves: 1) each leader owning clear metrics and targets for the company and their respective functions for the year and the quarter, 2) each leader driving 2 to 3 clear priorities for change and improvement for the next year and quarter, with a 13 week sprint plan to make each one happen, and 3) a rhythm of efficient weekly, monthly and quarterly meetings to hold each other accountable to hit the numbers, move the priorities forward and set new priorities for the next quarter. Daily huddles also help speed things up by identifying obstacles to solve as soon as they come up. A note about choosing those few critical priorities: getting the right people in the right seats needs to be a top priority for the first quarter if you want to delegate and elevate yourself, and then have your leaders do the same. You will then be rewarded every quarter with a bit more capacity so you can work more on other priorities to move the company forward. See this article for more on efficient execution. Leadership team buy-in and accountability For any of this to work, the leadership team needs to be bought in and committed. The best way is to do this WITH your team, not TOO your team. Discuss and decide on leadership team functions and assignments, set metrics and targets, and decide on company priorities WITH your leadership team. This way, they’ll be bought into these changes and driven to make them happen. These practices will improve accountability and drive efficiency. You can strengthen accountability further by 1) leading by example in all these activities, 2) raising your expectations of your leaders, and 3) communicating in ways that maintain their natural motivation to execute. See this article for more on leadership team buy-in and accountability. Making it happen Getting the right people in the right seats, improving execution and getting leadership team buy-in and accountability will increase your team’s efficiency and enable you to delegate some of your functions and internal projects, so you can get out of the weeds. As you gain momentum, you’ll carve out more time for yourself and your team to work on strategy, implement other structures, systems, processes, and build capacity to grow and grow profitably. Ultimately, you’ll also start to be able to make more time for your family, rekindle old friendships and get back to some of the personal things you enjoy. You probably won’t delegate and elevate in one fell swoop. But bite off what you can and you’ll create capacity to bite off more as you go. For example, you might find that more than one leader needs to be replaced. Start with one in the first quarter. Replacing even just one unfit leader with an excellent one will help reduce your workload. This will give you some breathing room to make other changes. The same will hold true for the employee changes your leaders make in their departments. That said, at the foundation of all this is having a rhythm of efficient meetings to make decisions as a team, plan, execute and hold each other accountable. And that takes a commitment of time up front. Now you may be wondering, “I said I was too busy to implement the best practices for profitable growth, and now Jean-Guy is suggesting solving my busy-ness by implementing some of those same best practices…I said I’m too busy!” Here’s the thing… it’s like exercising. We can say, “I can’t run because I don’t have the stamina.” But the only way to build up the stamina is to start running. Not alot to start - maybe 500 meters. But start. After a few runs, you’ll be able to run more - maybe a kilometer. In not too long, you’ll have the stamina to run 5 kilometers, and then 10. It’s an investment that pays off. The nice thing is that it pays off as you go. You don’t have to wait until some magical point in the future. But the only way to start getting the payoff is to start. And sometimes that takes a shift in mindset. More on that in my next 5 Minute Growth Tip article. How can you strengthen delegation in your entrepreneurial company? To find out how to improve delegation in your business to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete sections 1, 2 and 4 to check your delegation practices. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. 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To find out how to develop your talent to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete sections 2 to check your company’s talent processes. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. |
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