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The #1 Reason Growth Stalls (and how to fix it)
Are you an Effective CEO? Is Your Executive Team Aligned? Is your executive team executing efficiently? Are your leaders high-performing? How to Strengthen Your Competitive Strategy How to Find Time to Work on Your Business How to Change Your Mindset to Grow and Thrive How a DIY Mindset Holds CEOs Back 8 Types of External Guidance Why Leadership Training Doesn't Work Are You Up For The Challenge? The 5 Criteria to Pick an Executive Team Coach 
Today, I want to share the story of Sandy Miller, General Manager of Arnason Industries in Winnipeg. Sandy’s journey is a masterclass in how to systematically move from being the Chief Firefighter to a Strategic Leader. The Challenge: The Expert in the Middle Arnason Industries does specialized, high-stakes work: building critical infrastructure like roads and water treatment plants in Indigenous communities in northern Manitoba and western Ontario. When Sandy took the helm, the company was heavily dependent on a few key technical people. Sandy was the ultimate hub. With years of experience, he was personally involved in everything from scoping and bidding to overseeing site supervisors and equipment logistics. He knew that if one key person left, projects could be really impacted. His vision was to build an organization that could thrive long beyond his tenure, an organized system that didn't depend on any one person. But he was buried in the sand. To get out, he had to build a leadership team from scratch while simultaneously getting projects and keeping them moving. The Four Pillars in Action Sandy didn't try to change everything overnight. Instead, we worked through a disciplined process to build a solid foundation:
The "Aha!" Moment: Choosing Not to Step In The true test of Sandy’s transformation came recently. When a key site supervisor couldn’t make the transition to live up to the company’s core values, Sandy made the tough call to remove him. In the past, Sandy would have jumped in to run those sites himself. He’s good at it, and it would have been the fastest fix. But Sandy realized that jumping back into the weeds would be a major setback. Instead, he stayed in the coaching seat. He empowered his project management leader to step up and handle the oversight, while Sandy supported him from the background. Sandy admitted it felt strange not to get involved. But it was also freeing. The Result: The Virtuous Cycle By staying out of the sand, Sandy created a virtuous cycle. He now has the bandwidth to:
If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company, team and life more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here.
If those pillars aren't solid, you also likely find yourself trapped in what Stephen Covey calls the "sand": the endless day-to-day operational tasks and firefighting. When you are buried in the sand, you aren't working on the "rocks": the big, strategic moves required to grow your company profitably, predictably, and sustainably. Staying in the weeds causes the company to stay tactically busy but strategically stagnant. It leads to slower progress, limited profitability, and a CEO who is overworked and stressed. It’s a catch-22: you feel you don't have time to develop your team because you’re too involved in their work. Instead, gradually break this cycle by putting in place the systems that ensure your team achieves great results on their own. To start working ON the business instead of IN it, you must master these four pillars: 1. Get Your Executive Team Aligned 2. Get Your Executive Team Executing Efficiently 3. Develop Your Executive Team Into High‑Performing Leaders 4. Get Your Executive Team Living the Core Values to Drive a Healthy Culture Let’s discuss each one. 1. Get Your Executive Team Aligned A CEO can’t be strategic if the leadership team isn’t aligned on where the company is going and what matters most. Using a One Page Strategic Plan, annual and quarterly planning, clear roles and expectations, and efficient buy‑in, the CEO and team create shared clarity on:
When leaders help create the plan, they own it. They can then direct their work toward the company’s goals without the CEO guiding every action or decision. This shifts the CEO from chief problem solver to chief clarifier of direction. Alignment is the foundation that makes the next three pillars possible. 2. Get Your Executive Team Executing Efficiently Once aligned, the team must execute with discipline and predictability. This is where most CEOs get dragged back into the weeds: unless they install the right systems. Using a Monthly Operating & Financial Forecast, Quarterly Targets & Priorities, a consistent Meeting Rhythm, and a Results Tracking System, the team gains:
These systems compress all the CEO’s monitoring, checking, and problem‑solving into efficient structured rhythms. Leaders can see what’s happening, solve issues early, and hold each other accountable, without relying on the CEO. Execution becomes a team sport, not a CEO burden. 3. Develop Your Executive Team Into High‑Performing Leaders Even with alignment and execution systems, the CEO stays in the weeds if leaders can’t perform at a high level. Quarterly Coaching Reviews, Personal Assessments, Quarterly Development Plans, and Weekly One‑on‑Ones create a structured approach to developing leaders who:
This is how CEOs stop carrying underperforming leaders or repeatedly coaching the same issues. As leaders grow, the CEO can step back because the leadership team is finally capable of running the business. 4. Get Your Executive Team Living the Core Values to Drive a Healthy Culture A healthy, values‑driven culture is not soft. It is one of the most practical tools for keeping the CEO out of the weeds. Defining core values with specific behaviours, sharing core value stories, coaching for cultural alignment, and using Topgrading to hire high culture‑fit leaders ensures:
This means more time for the CEO to focus on the big picture. And when leaders model the values, their teams follow. This reduces the operational noise that often pulls the CEO back into the business. A healthy culture is a self‑reinforcing system, one that frees the CEO to lead strategically. The Proactive Flywheel This transition won't happen overnight, but as you tackle each pillar, you create a virtuous cycle. By freeing up your time, you can focus on the higher-level work: refining strategy, gathering customer feedback, and succession planning. Even better, you can then have your leaders implement these same four pillars in their own teams. This increases your organization's overall capacity to achieve its long-term vision.
If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company, team and life more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here.
The first of these practices, defining core values with specific behaviors, is the foundation. Without clear, observable standards, culture remains a Growth Tax that creates friction and drains energy. When you define exactly what is expected, you give you and your executive team the tools to hold each other and others accountable. This process is adapted from the "Mission to Mars" exercise popularized by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in their best-selling book Built to Last. Here are the four steps to defining core values with specific behaviors: 1. Identify the “Culture Ambassadors” The first step is for the leadership team (LT) to individually identify the top five people in the company (outside the LT) they would send to Mars to represent the best of the company's culture to a group of Martians who don’t speak English. You aren't looking for what these people say about your culture; you are looking for how they behave. Each LT member writes down the specific characteristics that make these individuals ambassadors. When the team shares these names and traits, you aren't looking for common people, but common themes of traits. These themes reveal the values that are already real and noble within your organization, rather than aspirational slogans. 2. Pass the Core Value Litmus Test Once you have identified potential values, they must pass a rigorous three-part test to be considered "Core." A value is only core if:
Crucially, the CEO must fully believe in each value. If the CEO isn't 100% committed to the hurt of upholding a value, they will never be motivated to hold their team accountable to it. And if their team isn’t living the values, the rest of the organization won’t either. 3. Create Unique and Memorable Phrases To prevent values from sounding trite or like a corporate fad, create a brief, 3-to-5-word memorable phrase for each one. This phrase should reflect the day-to-day speak of your company. For example, instead of just saying "Integrity," you might use "Do the right thing". Keeping the phrase short ensures it is memorable and can be used in hallways and meetings. Putting the original value word in brackets right after the phrase provides clarity, while the unique phrase provides the soul of the organization. 4. Define Tangible, Observable Behaviors The final step is to define three specific behaviors for each core value. To save time, use AI as a starting point. Provide the AI with your industry and company size, and ask it to generate tangible and observable behaviors for your specific values. The moment of truth happens in the editing. The LT and CEO must rigorously review and adjust every word of these drafts to ensure they reflect exactly how they expect people to behave. If you don't do the hard work of making these behaviors your own, you won't have the conviction to enforce them. And if you don’t enforce them, no one will take them seriously and your culture will erode, along with performance.
If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company, team and life more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here.
The following video refers to my previous 5 Minute Growth Tip video: "Is your leadership team driving a healthy culture?"
For the process I use with clients to identify their core values and behaviours, see my next 5 Minute Growth Tip.
If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company, team and life more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here.
1. Defining Core Values with Specific Behaviors
After the toxic leader was removed, the team revisited their core values. They paid special attention to the value of Learning. They realized they needed to move away from knowledge hoarding. They defined Learning not as formal training, but as a daily verb: being curious, self-reflection, being coachable, and, critically, educating those around them. This reset the expectations for everyone in the company. 2. Sharing Core Value Stories To make these values stick, we introduced a ritual. At every monthly and quarterly meeting I facilitated, I asked the leaders to share one great thing an employee had done that month and identify which core value it represented. While it felt awkward at first, it soon sparked a new energy. It made it crystal clear what right behaviour looked like and created a healthy peer pressure to lead by example. 3. Coaching for Cultural Alignment Even before the team fully implemented Job Scorecards, the defined values became the "North Star" for coaching. The CEO was finally able to move away from subjective "feelings" and clearly articulate: "This is the behavior we expect here, and your current actions are not aligned with that." Having a shared language for behavior allowed the CEO to address issues with objectivity and firmness.
If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company, team and life more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here.
1. Define Core Values with Specific Behaviors
A core value is only real if the executive team is willing to "hurt" for it. This means you would fire someone who repeatedly violates it, or walk away from a profitable client who doesn't align with it. But to make these values actionable, you must define the "verbs": the specific behaviors expected for each value. This makes the culture tangible and observable, allowing managers to monitor and take action when violations occur. 2. Share Core Value Stories in Leadership Meetings To keep values from gathering dust, your executive team must take ownership of them. Start your weekly or monthly meetings by identifying and sharing stories of employees living the core values. When leaders have to publicly praise these behaviors to their peers, it creates healthy pressure for them to model those same behaviors themselves. It keeps the culture top-of-mind and signals that it is the most important item on the agenda.
If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company, team and life more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here.
 There are many challenges to growing a thriving mid-size company (as I’ve shared in this 5 Minute Growth Tip article series). And sometimes it can feel like we’re stuck, like there's nothing we can do. We may hide those thoughts and feelings from others, or even deny to ourselves that we have them. Yet, they still remain in the background of our thinking, gnawing away at our focus, energy and progress. This is an opportunity to check our thinking. Our thinking drives our actions. And our thinking can cause us to not take action. When we think there’s nothing we can do about a problem, we’ll naturally stand still on that issue. When we believe we can resolve it, we’ll find a solution and drive forward. Organizational psychologists have researched these two ways of thinking. They are part of what’s called our “locus of control”. The first way of thinking is that our situation is controlled by things that happen outside of us. We believe we are a victim of circumstances. This is an external locus of control. The second way of thinking is that our situation can be influenced by what we do. We believe we can always do something that will make a situation better. This is an internal locus of control. Think of the word “locus” as “location”. Is our thinking putting the “location” of control of the situation outside of ourselves (external) or within ourselves (internal)? As human beings, we tend to grow up with a tendency toward either an internal locus of control or an external one. We don’t think exclusively one way or the other, but rather predominantly. We also don’t necessarily think one way about everything. There can be areas of our lives and facets of our business that we treat with an internal locus of control mindset, and other areas that we tend to treat with an external locus of control. As entrepreneurs and business leaders, we often predominantly have an internal locus of control: we believe we can make things happen. However, we can also have an external locus of control in certain areas. For example, we might have an internal locus of control about getting more sales. We know that our actions directly influence our company’s sales volumes, and we look for and find ways to increase them. Yet, we might have an external locus of control about being able to hire A players. We may believe that there just aren’t any really strong employees out there, or none of them are looking for work, or they all want too much money, or they all hide their faults in interviews, etc. By switching our thinking to an internal locus of control in this area, we can find solutions. We can ask ourselves, “what is it that I’m doing that is getting in the way of hiring A players?” Or “what am I not doing, or not doing well?” And from there, we can ask “what can I do differently to find A players?” For example, do I have a clear description of what an A player will produce so I know exactly who I am looking for? What am I doing to network with A players I know in my industry who likely know other A players? Have I shopped around for an excellent recruiting company who can help me find the right people? Have I strengthened my interviewing skills to discover candidates’ true strengths, abilities and qualities? Have I learned to do effective reference checks to get the perspectives of those who’ve seen the candidates in action? Believing we have influence over the situation causes us to look for solutions we can act on. There’s also a way that an entrepreneur’s strong internal locus of control in one area can actually create an external locus of control mindset in another area. I often see this struggle with CEOs and owners I meet. They complain that they don’t have enough time. This complaint is coming from an external locus of control mindset: the belief that their lack of time is happening to them. (Note that all complaining and blaming is really a form of external locus of control). When I invite a CEO or owner to flip their mindset to an internal locus of control, and ask themself what they are doing that is causing them to not have enough time, they realize that they are causing the problem. They often are attempting to tackle every problem and opportunity that comes up, and they are not delegating tasks and roles enough. In this way, as entrepreneurs, our internal locus of control about solving problems can cause us to have an external locus of control about time. Our tendency to think we can take control of any situation, like solving every problem, actually causes us to be so busy that we think we don’t have control of our time. Yet we do. We just need to change how we tackle problems, for example, by equipping others to take care of them rather than solving them ourselves. This mindset is a key linchpin in growing a thriving mid-sized company. The only way to grow and grow profitably, is to implement the structures, systems and processes to enable that growth. This requires a leadership team that handles the day-to-day and can help with implementing many of those systems. These systems need to be guided by a solid strategy for competing in the market. That strategy needs to be executed efficiently. And efficient execution requires an A player leadership team. And all of these business practices take time. As a result, a CEO or owner will want to shift their mindset more fully to thinking about what they are doing, or not doing, that is causing them to be too busy to work on these practices. By doing so, they will get clear on what they need to do differently to free themselves up to shift increasingly from doing to leading. And, more generally, the practice of internal locus of control will help any leader, and their top team, look at how they’re contributing to a problem, and what they can do to influence it. Another way leaders contribute to problems in their company is by trying to figure things out all on their own. We’ll tackle that topic in my next 5 Minute Growth Tip article. What can you do to grow your mid-size company? To find out what you and your leadership team could do 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. 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. Want to listen to the tip? Use the play button below. What can you do to grow your mid-size company? To find out what you and your leadership team could do 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. 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. The following video refers to the previous 5 Minute Growth Tip video: “Are your leaders high-performing?”.
To get a running start on your Quarterly Coaching Reviews, contact me to get the guide we use with clients. Or complete the form on this page.
In my recent 5 Minute Growth Tip, "Are your leaders high-performing?", I discussed the five key elements for developing executive team members: Job Scorecards, Quarterly Coaching Reviews, Personal Assessments, Quarterly Development Plans, and Weekly One-On-Ones. While job scorecards are a critical starting point in order to set clear expectations, the Quarterly Coaching Review is the foundational habit that kick-starts the development process. The goal of the quarterly coaching review is to catch up, align, and connect with your leader to determine the important priorities they need to work on in the coming quarter, both for the business and for their own self-development. It is about ditching evaluations and focusing on "executing and developing the important". We call these coaching reviews rather than performance reviews because we now know, through recent research, that traditional performance appraisals are not motivating. What is motivating is clarity of expectations, having opportunities to use one’s strengths, being recognized for excellent performance and being challenged to grow. Assuming job scorecards are in place and the leader is in the right role for their strengths, this new understanding requires a shift in focus for reviews: from intermittent evaluation to regularly acknowledging progress and supporting development. And it puts reviews in their proper place, as mere preparation for coaching throughout the quarter. To make these reviews effective, follow a structured rhythm. There are four key steps to a successful Quarterly Coaching Review:
Let’s discuss each one. And feel free to contact me by email or on my website [link to contact me form page] to access the Quarterly Coaching Review guide I use with clients. 1. Preparation and Personal Connection A successful quarterly coaching review starts before the meeting begins. Both the CEO and the leader should independently use the leader’s job scorecard to rate performance for the quarter, referring to targets, actual results, and priorities in your results tracking system. Once the meeting starts, begin with a 10-minute personal catch-up. Ask about their personal and professional highs and lows over the last 90 days. This is also the time to check in on their well-being by asking how the team can support them or how communication is flowing between you. This connection strengthens the relationship and sets a supportive tone for the conversation. 2. Reviewing Business Priorities Next, spend about 20 minutes reviewing the specific quarterly priorities the leader is accountable for in the next quarter. These should be the quarterly non-negotiable priorities that contribute directly to resolving the company’s #1 Addressable Challenge for the year in the executive team’s one page strategic plan. Review the ultimate outcomes they want to achieve and have them come with any constraints or barriers that are in their way. By discussing these early, you can align on the resources they need, such as money, people, or time, to ensure they are set up for success before the quarter gets into full swing. 3. Reviewing Performance Ratings This is often the most insightful part of the review. Spend time comparing your respective ratings from the job scorecard across core values, metrics, responsibilities, and competencies. Rather than reviewing every item, focus on the differences. If you rated a leader a "2" on a core value and they rated themselves a "4," discuss what is behind those different perspectives. This conversation often exposes blind spots, helping the leader realize where they may be falling short of expectations despite their best efforts. These gaps highlight the most critical areas for their professional growth. 4. Setting Development Priorities The final step is to translate those insights into action. Devote the last part of the meeting to setting 1 or 2 top self-development priorities for the next quarter. These priorities should address the development opportunities identified in the job scorecard during your rating comparison. Just like business priorities, each development goal should be documented in your results tracking system, along with an action plan that outlines how the leader will go about developing in that area. Before wrapping up, ask the leader for feedback on your own performance as their manager. Asking "What is one area I could improve in?" demonstrates that growth is a shared value and further encourages a high-performance culture.
If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company, team and life more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here.
The following video refers to the previous 5 Minute Growth Tip videos: “Are your leaders high-performing?” and “The Strength of Talent by Mike Goldman”
For the Quarterly Coaching Review process I recommend to clients, see my next 5 Minute Growth Tip.
If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company, team and life more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here.
Step 1: Defining Excellence with Job Scorecards
The first step was removing the ambiguity. You can’t hold someone to a high bar if they don't know where the bar is. I guided Roger to create a comprehensive Job Scorecard for each of his leaders. We didn't just list tasks; we documented core values and behaviours, specific results and targets, areas of accountability, and behavioral competencies. Roger found determining the exact metrics and targets challenging at first. However, he leveraged MSP industry benchmarks to define what "average" vs. "outstanding" looked like. This gave him the confidence to hold his team to a rigorous, data-backed standard of excellence. Step 2: Uncovering Reality through Quarterly Coaching Reviews With the scorecards in hand, Roger implemented Quarterly Coaching Reviews. These weren't standard HR "performance reviews"; they were reality checks designed to surface blind spots. In one instance, a review revealed a significant gap: a leader believed they were performing well, but Roger’s rating on one of their responsibilities was lower because the leader was "winging it" rather than following documented processes. This lack of structure was creating friction and inefficiencies whenever their work touched other departments. Step 3: Identifying Potential with Personal Assessments To understand why certain leaders were struggling despite having clear scorecards, Roger turned to Personal Assessments. Specifically, he used the Working Genius tool to map out the natural strengths and frustrations of his team. One of his leaders, who managed a large team, discovered they had a "weakness" in Galvanizing, the ability to rally, inspire, and push a team toward a goal. In the fast-paced MSP world, Galvanizing is essential. This assessment was an "Aha!" moment for Roger; it explained why this leader struggled to get their team on board with changes. It moved the problem from a personality clash to a specific competency gap that could be managed or supported. Step 4: Building Skills via Quarterly Development Plans Once the gaps were identified (like "winging it" or a lack of "Galvanizing"), Roger used Quarterly Development Plans to bridge them. These weren't generic management courses; they were "live" and value-creating business projects. For the leader who was struggling with process, their development plan for the quarter was to document and refine their department’s main work process. By making this their primary learning objective, Roger ensured they were growing their skills while simultaneously solving a major pain point for the company. The growth was practical, measurable, and directly tied to the company's success. Step 5: Sustaining Growth through Weekly One-On-Ones The final, and perhaps most difficult, piece was the Weekly One-On-One. In a technical environment, it’s easy to let these meetings become "tactical status updates" or cancel them when things get busy. Roger's challenge was consistency.
If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company, team and life more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here.
If you’ve promoted certain team members, you may be keenly aware that they need to develop to be high-performing. If you’ve selected others from the outside or you were hired to lead the company with certain leaders already in place, you might think those leaders should be excellent because they earned their seat. But this is often not the case. New leaders are rarely fully prepared to meet the demands of such leadership roles, much less be high-performing. And leaders hired from elsewhere or who’ve been in such a role for some time have often never been adequately prepared either.
So how does one know what high performance should look like for each executive team leader? The job scorecard for a role captures high performance. It goes beyond a traditional job description to outline all the expectations of a role, including results, metrics and targets, areas of accountability and responsibilities, authority and behavioural competencies. We also encourage our clients to include their core values in each job scorecard, as well as the specific behaviours that show those core values are being lived. See our earlier 5 Minute Growth Tip for how to create a job scorecard. With the job scorecard for each leader as a definition for high performance, how does a CEO go about ensuring their leaders develop to that level? There are four key elements:
Quarterly Coaching Reviews The starting point for developing a leader is for them and the CEO to get in the habit of conducting a Quarterly Coaching Review. At the end of each quarter, usually after your executive team quarterly planning, have each leader assess themselves against their job scorecard in order to identify the areas where they are strong and the areas they need to develop in. This involves simply rating themselves using a five point scale on each core value, metric, responsibility and competency in their job scorecard. The CEO does the same. They then get together and review their ratings. They note where there are similar ratings, but focus more on where there are differences and why they each view those items differently. This often exposes a blindspot for the leader. They thought they were doing fine in a certain area, until the CEO shares their perspective. They quickly become aware that something is missing. This open conversation helps the leader buy into the need to develop in that area. Personal Assessments Sometimes, certain areas requiring development are stuck-points: areas the leader has been struggling with for some time. It can be helpful to have the leader complete one or more personal assessments to determine why they might be struggling. Such assessments can help pinpoint an underlying root cause a leader needs to work on or how they might be able to go about the work in a different way to be more successful. Or it might reveal that the leader simply won’t be able to, or enjoy, excelling in that area. In the later situation, moving them to another role or out of the organization may be needed. A qualified business growth executive team coach can help determine which personal assessment is best for the situation, provide access to the assessment, help interpret the results and help determine what actions could be taken. Quarterly Development Plans Once areas for development have been identified, it’s helpful for the leader, with the CEO’s support, to create a brief development plan for the quarter. This involves first narrowing down the areas for development to a manageable number, say the top one or two, as agreed to between the leader and the CEO. Then, the leader identifies what methods will work best for them to learn in those areas and successfully turn that learning into sustained skills. One leader may find that their learning needs are best served by taking a course. Another leader may find that they are best to lead a project that will stretch their skills. It’s important to document the development plan for the leader and CEO to be able to revisit throughout the quarter, as well as at the next Quarterly Coaching Review, when they’ll check in on completion. An individual development planning tool can be helpful for considering and evaluating the various types of learning and skill development options available for the leader, as well as documenting the plan. Weekly One-On-Ones The purpose of a CEO’s one-on-ones with their executive team members is to create a space where leaders can discuss their progress, receive relevant feedback (both appreciative and constructive feedback), discuss alternative approaches, ask for meaningful guidance, and access resources. They also create a space for the CEO to really get to know and appreciate the leader, both as a leader and as a person, which strengthens the relationship, contributing to the leader’s engagement, loyalty and retention.
If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company, team and life more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here.
The following video builds on my earlier videos: “Is your executive team aligned”, "Is your executive team executing efficiently?" and “How to create your CEO job scorecard”
I'll discuss what the best selling business book The Strength of Talent says about these practices in the next 5 Minute Growth Tip.
If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company, team and life more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here.
A Monthly Operating and Financial Forecast is a critical execution tool that allows an executive team to regularly check if the company is on or off course for their annual plan. By breaking down and tracking actual results against the expected monthly changes in volumes, revenues, costs, and cash, your team is enabled to make frequent, necessary decisions to keep things on track. This forecast, based on your annual targets, also enables your team to validate that your initial one-year targets are financially feasible given the plan's assumptions. A feasible plan is an executable plan. The forecast should also reflect any major planned investments, linking them to the annual priorities for change, improvement, and growth based on the company’s Number One Addressable Challenge for the year. So, how do you go about building a Monthly Operating and Financial Forecast? There are four key elements of an effective forecast:
Let’s go through each one. And feel free to contact me to access the Monthly Operating and Financial Forecast template I use with clients. Or complete the form in this article. Widget-based We call this a Monthly Operating and Financial Forecast because it forecasts more than just the monthly financial results. The financial projections are based on the expected monthly volume of business, which we call widgets. This is whatever unit of measure your company uses to track business flow. It might be the number of orders, customers, items, subscriptions, users, hours, square feet, etc. Whatever unit consistently drives both revenues and costs. A common, but problematic, approach to forecasting is to adjust last year's financial statements by a rough percentage reflecting expected growth. This is problematic because:
By basing revenue and cost forecasts on the number of widgets sold, produced, delivered, and supported, and using both a price per unit and cost per unit, the forecast enables the team to easily review whether pricing and costs per unit can be improved. Effective structure A Monthly Operating and Financial Forecast should present the key monthly numbers that empower the CEO and executive team to make timely decisions to improve financial results. This requires a specific structure for the financial statements, as suggested by financial management expert Greg Crabtree, author of Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits. In the income statement, the structure includes: Gross Profit: Calculated from Revenue minus Cost of Good Sold, which are based on units sold, price per unit, and direct (outside) cost per unit. Gross Profit is a key number for assessing buying effectiveness. Gross Profit is more important than Revenue because, aside from telling you how effective your buying is, it tells you how much money the company has to work with internally to get to its Net Profit. Note that the number of units, price per unit and cost per unit are the real levers to improve gross profit. Contribution Margin: Calculated by subtracting Direct Labour (cost of employees who produce and/or deliver the good or service) from Gross Profit. This is a critical number that must cover all overhead and make a sufficient net profit. Direct Labour is a key lever for improving profitability through optimization and increased productivity. Operating Expenses (Overhead Costs): For clarity and ease of consumption, roll these up into big buckets, such as: Facilities, Marketing, Management and Administrative Labour, Payroll Taxes & Benefits, and Other Operating Expenses. Sales Labour may be another important big bucket for your company. The main levers here are those large cost categories, particularly management and admin labour. Net Operating Income (EBITDA): Subtracting total Overhead Costs from the Contribution Margin yields Net Operating Income, also called EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization). This is the ultimate barometer of day-to-day profitability, setting aside debt servicing, taxes, and asset depreciation, which can vary widely depending on how assets and liabilities are managed. If your company has multiple products or product lines, then revenue and gross profit may need to be broken out for each, as well as direct labour and contribution margin if these vary by product or line. This structure provides the executive team with clear visibility into the key numbers and levers for financial optimization, and allows for the calculation of standard ratios like Gross Margin, Labour Efficiency Ratios, and Expense Ratio for external comparison. Forecasting cash As Greg Crabtree famously said, “Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, but cash is king!” Cash is the oxygen that fuels a business. Maintaining a healthy cash balance is essential for survival and confidently making planned investments. And a clear monthly cash balance forecast verifies the true feasibility of your operating financial plan. Net Operating Profit is just a number on paper, but a company's actual cash situation is often very different, being heavily influenced by inventory, accounts receivable, accounts payable, and financing activities. Forecasting cash requires a keen eye on timing: the flow of sales, inventory purchases, production, delivery, and invoicing. For example, a sale might occur in month one, production in month two, delivery and invoicing in month three, and payment in month four. Understanding the timing of these outflows and inflows is crucial for maintaining a healthy cash position and finding ways to optimize cash flow by speeding up the cycle. A collaborative effort Many executive teams assume creating the Monthly Operating and Financial Forecast is Finance & Accounting’s job. While they lead the process, building a realistic and useful forecast requires collaboration across the entire executive team, guided by the annual company plan. Each leader must provide inputs on how expected volumes will drive revenues and costs, and the timing of those revenues and costs, on a month-by-month basis. Forecasted units impact various areas, from marketing spend to sales, production, delivery, and post-sale support, each with different timing. Only the respective leaders and their teams can provide these numbers, along with expected pricing improvements or efficiency gains aligned with the company’s annual priorities. Furthermore, each area needs to plan and estimate costs for their investments in various initiatives. When starting with a CEO and executive team and having them flesh out their One Page Strategic Plan and annual plan, we suggest beginning with a 12-month Monthly Operating and Financial Forecast prepared annually. After this is well-established (one or two years), we suggest progressing to a 36-month forecast prepared annually, and eventually to a 36-month rolling forecast (i.e., updated and extended monthly). This progression builds the team's ability to confidently predict results and optimize execution to hit their three-year targets.
If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company, team and life more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here.
The following video builds on my previous videos: "Is your executive team executing efficiently?", “A great book to fix execution drama: Metronomics,”, and “How a president and her team improved execution“.
To get a head-start on your Monthly Operating & Financial Forecast, contact me to get the template we use with clients. Or complete the form on this page. If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company, team and life more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here.
The senior executive team soon began using it monthly to track results, immediately see where assumptions were or weren't being met, and understand the variance drivers. This helped them make frequent, necessary decisions to consistently meet or exceed targets.
The key operational shift was realizing we needed to adjust their annual planning to precede the financial forecast submission to the owners. This ensured the annual plan guided the financial forecast, not the reverse. Quarterly Targets and Priorities With a monthly operating and financial forecast established, the team could easily pull numbers to set clear monthly and quarterly volume and financial targets, essential for checking that results were on track. We also initiated the practice of setting 90-day priorities for change, improvement, and growth each quarter, drawing from their annual priorities in their One Page Strategic Plan. Initially, these priorities were 'rough'—ambiguous goals, a mix of company-wide and department-level focus, and a general feeling of overload. This is a common starting point. To address this, the team got more rigorous: they got clearer on their ultimate aim for each priority, created detailed action plans to understand scope and contribution, and distinguished true senior executive Company Priorities from department priorities and day-to-day work. This newfound clarity supported the senior executive team and their own team members in executing company-wide changes and departmental improvements with greater confidence and accountability. An Executive Team Meeting Rhythm The Senior Executive Team fully embraced quarterly planning, making these sessions a standard part of their operating rhythm. In the second year, we adjusted the quarterly planning to get more rigorous with quarterly priorities. The team also adopted a full communication rhythm to solve problems and keep their quarterly plans on track:
Initially, both the Senior Executive Team and the broader Leadership Team members attended the quarterly planning and monthly check-ins. This was because the initial annual planning session included a broad group of leaders from which the senior executive team was then selected. The joint group continued to meet for quarterly planning and monthly checkins to keep the newly formed leadership team bought into the change and to help inform the senior executive team, who were mostly newer to the company. However, over time this structure proved sub-optimal: it clouded accountability, muddied the planning, and hindered true senior executive team cohesion by making the group too large for focused debate.
If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company, team and life more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here.
The following video builds on my previous videos: "Is your executive team executing efficiently?" and “A great book to fix execution drama: Metronomics”.
I’ll go over the Monthly Operating and Financial Forecast format I use with clients in the next 5 Minute Growth Tip.
If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company, team and life more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here.
 I hope you made time to rest, recharge and reset over the holiday season.
I believe self-care can also extend well beyond the holiday season to our day-to-day in the new year, if we make it a priority. In my work with CEOs and business owners, burn-out and lack of joy and fulfillment are common. One of the underlying causes is lack of self-care. Taking care of ourselves will not only benefit us, but also our leadership teams, companies and communities. One excellent resource is a book I use with CEOs that represents, what I believe, is a missing link for CEOs of mid-sized growth companies. Written by my colleague, senior Gravitas Impact coach, Kevin Lawrence in Vancouver BC, Your Oxygen Mask First is a breakthrough in the combined art of leadership, self-management AND self-care. We can find dozens of fantastic books and tools to learn the nuts and bolts of growing a thriving company. And there are a few methodologies, like the Scaling Up system and 7 Attributes of Agile Growth, that bring many of those essential tools together to make them more accessible for mid-size companies. However, the missing link is the CEO factor: the leader themselves and their skills for taking care of themselves first, so they can take better care of their people and their business. Your Oxygen Mask First makes clear that it’s a myth that CEOs can build successful companies sustainably by putting everyone else first. In truth, this leads to burn-out and tragedy. It’s a dirty secret we need to talk about. Kevin wrote Your Oxygen Mask First based on the experiences and tools he gained over 20 years as a coach and advisor. The book covers the 17 habits Kevin has tried and tested for leaders to lead well AND take care of themselves, so they have a great company AND a great life. I highly recommend it to any CEO, president or leader. How can you manage your leadership team members more effectively? To find out how to manage your team members 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 people management 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.
The following video builds on my last video on execution: "Is your executive team executing efficiently?"
I’ll share the story of one of my clients getting their executive team executing efficiently in the next 5 Minute Growth tip.
If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company, team and life more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here
This is a core pillar of Metronomics, which features 90-day objectives as a pulse-setting mechanism to ensure the business stays on course. This approach is part of the Execution System in Metronomics, which is all about setting annual and quarterly goals, establishing clear accountabilities, and maintaining communication rhythms.
3. An Executive Team Meeting Rhythm Execution is impossible without a consistent communication cadence. Our suggested rhythm includes:
This is essentially the Execution System at work within Metronomics. The book stresses this "metronome" of daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly rhythms, which ensures a consistent speed throughout the organization, preventing that draining cycle of going fast and slow. Metronomics provides the structure to turn chaotic operations into a predictable flow. 4. A Results Tracking System Finally, a Results Tracking System is where your quarterly plan—targets, priorities, accountabilities, and action plans—is captured in an accessible format. Metronomics champions the idea of a tracking system as an "open playing field." This means all the critical company and executive team results and progress - from quarterly priorities to key metrics - are visible and accessible to everyone on the executive team.
If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company, team and life more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here.
1. A Monthly Operating and Financial Forecast
For an executive team to execute their annual plan, a monthly operating and financial forecast is a critical execution tool to regularly check if the company is on or off course. Breaking down the expected monthly changes in volumes, revenues, costs and cash, and tracking your actual results against the forecast on a monthly basis enables you and your team to make decisions frequently to keep things on track. Creating a Monthly Operating and Financial Forecast based on your annual targets also enables you and your team to validate that your initial one year targets are actually feasible financially, given the assumptions your plan is based on. A feasible plan is an executable plan. A Monthly Operating and Financial Forecast should also reflect any major investments you and your team are planning to make. These should reflect the annual priorities for change, improvement and growth that you’ve planned based on the company’s Number One Addressable Challenge for the year. 2. Quarterly Targets & Priorities The most effective and efficient way for small to mid size companies to execute on an annual plan is to break it down into quarterly plans. Your quarterly company operating and financial targets are straightforward as they will come directly from your Monthly Operating and Financial Forecast. As for your quarterly company priorities, an executive team can roughly sketch them out quarter by quarter during annual planning. However, this is always an approximation and not an exact plan to hold yourselves to. Instead, at the end of your annual planning, work from that rough sequence of quarterly priorities and select which ones absolutely need to happen in the first quarter. Then after that first quarter, at the next quarterly planning meeting (usually a one to two day investment), determine what is most important to bite off for the next quarter based on what you learned and how things are evolving. And repeat every quarter. What’s critical is to identify who is accountable for each of those quarterly priorities and what needs to be achieved that quarter for each. Then the leader for each quarterly priority identifies who else needs to be involved and how, and prepares an action plan to make it happen. 3. An Executive Team Meeting Rhythm An effective execution process for an executive team includes quarterly planning meetings (as previously discussed), monthly check-ins, weekly meetings and daily huddles. It's great to have a plan for the quarter. But then the day-to-day challenges of running a business happen. And things can go off track. A consistent meeting rhythm ensures the executive team connect regularly to communicate, problem-solve and keep the plan on track. Five to ten minute daily huddles enable the executive team to stay synchronized, know who’s doing what and identify issues and blockers to quickly resolve them throughout the week before they snowball. 60 to 90 minute weekly meetings allow the executive team to proactively check whether quarterly results and priorities are on track and collaborate to resolve any larger issues or blockers. Half day to full day monthly meetings provide the opportunity for the executive team to, again, check whether quarterly results and priorities are on track, and also to resolve larger issues or discuss opportunities, proactively learn and apply new business practices, and make adjustments to the quarterly plan if needed. This ensures the executive team stays aligned on what’s most critical for the quarter.
If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company, team and life more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here.
The following video builds on my recent videos on exec team alignment: ”Is Your Executive Team Aligned?”, “The Alignment Playbook: Scaling Up”, ”How one CEO doubled business with aligned execs”, and “Your One Page Strategic Plan for Aligned Growth”.
I'll discuss what the best selling business book Metronomics says about these practices in the next 5 Minute Growth Tip.
If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company, team and life more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here.
We’ll discuss the CEOs role in our next 5 Minute Growth Video.
If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here.
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