​In the previous 5 Minute Growth Tip article, I shared how companies need to implement structures, processes and systems in order to grow. Without this, they either won’t grow beyond the limits of their current structures, or they will grow inefficiently and increasingly unprofitable.

But as an owner or CEO tries to grow their company to 50, 100 or 200 employees, they may feel like the company is no longer making real progress with those kinds of improvements. Any changes they want to make in their company don’t seem to get done, or don’t get done right.

So, how can CEOs increase their momentum?

We know that, as a company grows, the CEO increasingly has to get things done through their top team. I covered this also in this previous article. The members of their top team are the ones who need to lead improvement projects within each of their departments and between and across departments.

The two keys to making this happen are 1) efficient leadership team buyin, and 2) accountability for execution.


Why progress slows with growth

When a company is small, less than 10 or 15 employees, it’s more straightforward to get improvement projects done. 

Often, as CEOs, we just do these projects ourselves.

As we begin to delegate these improvement projects, we simply ask a supervisor or front-line employee to get them done. If they are a strong employee, they will usually make it happen.

When we have 25, 50 or 100 employees, it gets harder.

The reason is what’s called “the power differential”: the difference between the influence of the CEO and the influence of others.

In a smaller company, the owner is a strong voice that is heard more easily among the small group of employees. There are often no other voices that are similarly strong (unless of course there is one or more partners involved).

It’s also easy to see when someone in a small group is not following through on a project. So each employee has a strong motivation to follow through on the owner’s direction.

In a smaller company, there is a large power differential.

As the company gets larger, the power differential decreases.

As some departments get larger (eg. a production department), the leaders of those departments gain influence. They have now become critical people for the productivity and profitability of the company.

The owner no longer has that same strong singular voice. One or more other leaders have strong voices as well. They tend to have more influence about decisions made for the company, and certainly their own department.

As well, the owner becomes more detached from the front-line and may feel less confident about what is the right thing to do. The other influential leaders now often have a better perspective on what needs to be done in the operations. This also increases their influence.

The owner may therefore feel less influence to be able to simply ask others to take on and carry out improvement projects they dream up. They know they need these high-influence leaders to make things happen. And they may recognize that they lose their leaders' commitment and initiative when they just tell them what to do.

The result is that getting leaders to make changes and improvements in and across a mid-size company becomes more challenging than getting front-line employees and supervisors to do so in a smaller company.

The trick is in the two keys: 1) efficient leadership team buy-in, and 2) team-based accountability.


Efficient Leadership Team Buyin

Rather than a CEO figuring out on their own what needs improving and changing for the company, and simply delegating those projects to others, they need to shift to making decisions for the company in collaboration with the members of their top team. This will enable them and their top team members to make company decisions that they’re all committed to.

In short, as the saying goes, “people support what they help to create”.

This doesn’t mean the CEO doesn’t get the final say. It’s how they get to a final decision that needs to be adjusted.

Patrick Lencioni, in his best-selling book, The Five Dysfunctions of a team, called this approach “disagree and commit”. 

The top team discusses the problem or opportunity and gets all the information out on the table for consideration. Options are discussed and weighed. All members of the top team have the opportunity to share their perspectives and concerns. If an agreement is easily made, then great. If not, the CEO makes the final decision with everyone knowing their perspective has been heard and considered, and agreeing that now is the time to commit to the final decision.

This approach allows for effective leadership team participation, while keeping it efficient.

This can be a game-changer for CEOs who have already shifted to involving their top team in decision-making, but have gone too far.

Their decision-making may have slowed to a crawl, or decisions simply don’t get made, because they and their leadership team members don’t always agree on what’s best. And the CEO isn’t willing to make a final decision for fear that their leaders won’t buy in at all.

“Disagree and commit” solves this problem.


Accountability for Execution

Once there is top team buyin to a decision, how do we ensure accountability for its execution?

Buyin is certainly important for accountability. But it’s not enough.

Accountability ensures that leaders assigned with taking on certain improvement projects follow through as best as humanly possible. Accountability also means being open and transparent when a project or special effort doesn’t go as planned, so all possible action can be taken to get it back on track.

Accountability, also, is more difficult as a company grows. And it’s also due to the changing power differentials.

Simply following up one-on-one with individual leaders no longer works as well. Leaders of larger departments have more influence, and their performance is more hidden in a larger company. So there is less pressure to follow through.

The solution is again a team approach.

Mark Green, a colleague of mine in Virginia, and a peer member of Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches, captured the key ingredients for accountability in his recent monograph titled “Creating a Culture of Accountability”.

There are three ingredients for accountability:

• the CEO’s self-accountability
• role accountability, and
• process accountability.

Self-accountability is where the CEO, as the leader of the team, leads by example by acting accountably themselves, ensuring they have the right people in the right seats on their leadership team, and raising their expectations of their leaders.

Role accountability is about ensuring each leader is clear about their own and each others’ accountabilities. This includes defining the specific results expected for each role and the metrics that make those expectations clear.

Note that it’s just as important for leaders to be clear on each others’ roles as their own. This ensures only one person is accountable for each function and everyone is clear on what to expect from others.

Process accountability includes communicating about decisions they’ve made in a way that maintains leaders’ natural motivation to execute. This includes believing in their ability to succeed, reminding them why it matters and paying attention to their progress.

Process accountability also involves:
- ensuring planning happens before action, and on a consistent basis, 
- having a rhythm of effective and efficient meetings that ensures regular follow-up on progress and results,
- and regular one-on-one coaching between the CEO and each leadership team member to develop and support performance.


From leading individuals to leading the top team

Efficient leadership team buy-in and team-based accountability for execution are the two keys for CEOs to enable continual improvement to grow their mid-size companies.

And we can see a common thread for the CEO: shifting from directing individuals to leading and building the top team.

This shift can be challenging for CEOs who have become comfortable with a directive style. Yet shifting to leading the top team is critical to getting their leaders bought in, executing, and making more progress.

But is it really progress if you’re not going in the right direction? And how do you know if you are? More on that in my next 5 Minute Growth Tip article.

​
How can you increase your momentum?
​To find out how to make more progress 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 and 4 to check your company’s leadership team and execution 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.​​

If you think you’re a fit for business, growth and executive team coaching, you may be ready to look for a coach that’s a fit for you.

In my experience working with executive teams over the last 17 years, I’ve found there are five key criteria to consider in an executive team coach:

• Knowledge
• Experience
• Ability
• Results
• Chemistry

Let’s look at each of them in turn.

Knowledge
Whether you’re looking to more easily grow your company, get more profitable, or have more time or quality of life, you’ll want an executive team coach who knows the right best practices to help you and your top team get there.

The easiest and best way to figure this out is by looking at what methodologies they use and whether those align with what you want to achieve.

There are several reputable, holistic methodologies developed for senior leadership teams of midsize companies. These include: Scaling Up, the 7 Attributes of Agile Growth, EOS (the Entrepreneurial Operating System), the 7 Stages of Growth, among others.

A coach that uses a reputable methodology will help ensure your team learns and implements best practices that are tried, tested and true, not simply based on the latest business fad or one person’s opinion. The creators of these methodologies haven’t developed their own best practices. They’ve only curated and compiled best practices that have already been researched and developed by the world’s best thought leaders and applied in the most successful companies.

A holistic methodology will help ensure that all the critical aspects of a management team and company are addressed and supported. For example, not only is it important to develop a great competitive strategy, but also to develop an efficient plan to execute it. Great strategy and execution can only be enabled through great people. And great people will only contribute their best with great leadership and a highly cohesive team. And all of this leads to bottom line results only by aligning them with a focus on optimizing profit and cashflow. A holistic methodology addresses all the legs of the stool so the business is built sturdy and strong.

Note that some of the methodologies above are more holistic than others. Generally, the larger the company or the more you want to grow, the more holistic a methodology you will want your coach to know. While a simpler methodology like EOS is a great starting point for smaller companies (say 5 to 20 employees), a more holistic methodology like Scaling Up, and then the 7 Attributes of Agile Growth, will enable you and your executive team to learn and implement the same basic best practices and then learn the others needed to get to the next level.

Also, all of these methodologies have simplified the best practices to fit mid-sized companies. This is critical. A CEO and their senior team need to address a number of things, as discussed above. But your mid-size company likely only has so much capacity. You don’t have large departments to handle extra complexity. So, you and your team need to do just enough in each aspect to move the needle, while not doing so much in one of them that there’s no time to work on another. This means the best practices need to be simple and easy to implement.

One sign that a coach has the knowledge to help you and your leadership team achieve your goals is when they know and use more than one of these methodologies. This means they can pull in whatever best practice is needed for the situation. No methodology includes all the best practices needed for every type of decision a CEO and their top team will need to make. So, being able to pull in the right tool for the right situation is key.

While it’s important to pick an executive team coach who does use A reputable, holistic methodology of simplified best practices, which specific methodology (or methodologies) they use is less important. The coach themselves is more important: their experience, abilities, results and your chemistry with them.

You can pick a coach who uses a methodology that resonates with you. But this doesn’t guarantee they’ll be great at teaching and facilitating those tools, or at guiding the process to help your team get results. You could also pick a coach who uses a methodology that’s not your first choice. But they may be an exceptional coach, teaching and facilitating best practices in very effective ways that truly move your business forward.


Experience
The most important experience you’ll want to look for in a business, growth & executive team coach is how much they’ve worked with and supported both CEOs and executive teams. This will affect how much they understand the challenges CEOs and their teams face, the dynamics often at play on such teams, and how to address them successfully. Unfortunately, there are low barriers to entry in the coaching field, so you’re best to look for a coach who has lots of experience.

Broad business experience working with many different kinds of companies is also important. Having experience leading or working in different functions of a business, such as marketing, sales, operations, HR, IT and finance can also be a great asset. All this will allow your coach to share experiences from different sectors and relate them to all the members of your senior team.

Now, you may be wondering if you should get someone who specializes in your industry. My guess is that industry experience is something that’s important to you when you’re hiring leaders and employees. So, you likely have a whole company full of industry experts. And yet, are you growing as fast, as profitably or as easily as you know you could? In my experience, having the right executive team coach is not so much about industry expertise. It’s about knowing how to consistently scale over time as a leadership team, and that’s where they bring their expertise.

They’re never going to know as much as you will in your domain, and you’re never going to know as much as they do about getting management teams to scale companies. So, if you’re looking for a like-minded industry expert who’ll reinforce what you already know, and echo everything you say, then look for someone with lots of experience in your industry. But if you’re looking for someone to push, challenge and hold you and your executive team accountable, help clarify your goals and priorities, help clarify your thinking, an executive team coach with a broad base of experience will be a good fit.

You may also be wondering if you should get a coach who has been a CEO. This is a valid question as it’s common to believe that someone who has done our job will be best able to coach us. But that’s not necessarily true. Consider Usain Boldt, widely considered to be the greatest sprinter of all time. He’s an eight-time Olympic gold medallist and eleven-time world champion. He’s the world-record holder of the 100 meter, 200 meter and four by 100 meter relay. His coach, Glen Mills, never ran in the Olympics. In fact, he dropped out of sprinting at the age of 14 because he wasn’t very fast. He then became an amazing coach to many olympians. Although Glen never ran the kind of races that Usain did, Usain would be the first to admit he wouldn’t run as fast if it weren’t for Glen’s great coaching. On the other hand, we’ve all heard stories of hockey or football greats who made poor coaches. While it’s possible for a great CEO to become a great coach. It’s not necessarily the case, nor is it a requirement.

Ability
Coaching and team facilitation are skills that take years to develop and hone. They are each combinations of technical, behavioural and relationship skills that are best developed alongside keen self-awareness and attention to self-improvement. This doesn’t happen overnight.

One way to get a sense of someone’s coaching and facilitation skills is to look for how many years they’ve been practicing each of them, and how much. Another way is to notice their coaching skills in your initial conversations with them, and to ask them to do a brief facilitated trial session with your team. 

Someone with good coaching skills will cause you to think more deeply about your team, your business and your life. They will inspire you to a new level of openness. They will challenge you by asking tough questions. They may share some principles, but they will avoid trying to tell you what you should do. They will facilitate your thinking so that you have the realizations, you come to the conclusions, and you make the decisions that are right for you in that moment… because you came to them yourself (albeit with some support and guidance) and therefore you believe in those decisions. Yet, they will also teach, share experiences, observations and opinions when needed. 

A coach’s team facilitation skills are related to, but different from, their coaching skills. Great coaching skills enhance a coach’s facilitation skills. But group facilitation is also a skill in itself. To get a sense of these, ask the coach if they’d be willing to do a brief session with you and your top team for you to see them in action. A coach with strong facilitation skills will help your team stay focused, explore the issues from all angles, and come to clear decisions with the strong support and commitment from the whole team.

Results
At the end of the day, what you want from engaging a business, growth & executive team coach are results. That said, the coach won’t create those results. You and your team will. But the coach will help you and your team 1) set goals that are important to you, 2) determine how to get there, 3) solve problems along the way, and 4) achieve those results over time. Their support and guidance needs to be focused and purposeful.

One good sign that a coach is results-focused is to notice what they ask you in your initial conversation. Do they try to understand what you want for your company, your work life and your personal life in the future? Do they get you thinking deeply about the biggest challenges to getting there? And do they demonstrate a clear understanding of the path to tackle those challenges and get to where you want to be. 

Another way to gain confidence that you’ll get results is by asking about the work they’ve done with other CEOs and executive teams. They should be able to share clear examples of challenges they’ve helped them overcome and results they’ve helped them produce.

In the end, the results a coach has helped produce with other companies won’t guarantee you’ll get great results with them yourself. But you’ll have some level of confidence that they can help you get there. The rest will depend on how well you work together.

Chemistry
Chemistry is important in an ongoing relationship like you will have with an executive team coach. You’ll work closely together and for some time, so you might as well also enjoy it.

This largely comes down to being aligned on what drives each of you. What’s their Why, as Simon Sinek says, and does that connect with yours? Do they want to make a difference in the world that’s compatible with the difference you want to make? If so, you’re more likely to work well together. 

You’ll also want to look for clues that you have compatible values… that similar things are important to you in life. Your coach will be more emotionally invested in your efforts when they believe in what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.

And lastly, you just get along. There will be ease in interacting with the coach. You’ll feel comfortable and accepted, but also kindly challenged to do better.
​
Picking a business, growth & executive team coach that fits you, your team and company takes a bit of thought… about their knowledge, experience, ability, results and chemistry. But the results will be well worth the effort, especially if you’re also a good fit for coaching.


How can a great business, growth & executive team coach help you grow a thriving company?
​To find out what areas a qualified executive team coach can help you improve in 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.

If you’ve been following this 5 Minute Growth Tips article series, you are now clearer on:

• The key reasons your company hasn’t grown or been as profitable or enjoyable as you’d like.
• That you need to take action rather than let things happen to you.
• That figuring out on your own how to implement the right best practices will only slow your growth.
• That leadership training, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t work on its own.
• And that, out of the eight options for outside support, a business growth advisor and leadership team coach sounds like the right fit for you.

​
But you may be thinking, I’ve never worked with a coach before, let alone a leadership team coach. It sounds helpful, but also intense. So you may be wondering, can I do it? What’s going to be involved? And am I willing to do the work?

These are all important questions to ask yourself before you engage a coach.

Over my 17 years working with CEOs and business owners, and their leadership, management and executive teams, I’ve seen CEOs make some common mistakes and I’ve also seen some of the attributes of CEOs who get the most return from leadership team coaching.

The CEOs who really crush it and get the highest and fastest return on investment of time, energy and effort, are the one who are:
-    Willing to invest
-    Curious and open learners
-    Team players
-    Courageous


Willing to invest

Certainly, there’s a significant financial investment to engaging a leadership team coach. Make no bones about it. The bad news is that the money is the least expensive part of it. 

Beyond the money, the bigger investment is going to be you and your leadership team’s commitment and follow through to do the hard work of making and acting on decisions.

So, the money is part of it. But equally, maybe even more important, is the commitment and effort you put into it to see things through. A good leadership team coach is going to push you, and you need to make sure you’re ready for that.

The good news is, if you decide to go down that path, and you decide to work with a leadership team coach, a good one will be with you every step of the way, leading you through the tough choices ahead to get clarity and focus to get your company on the path you want.

I’m emphasizing the time commitment because a good leadership team coach is going to pull your whole leadership team together for one or more days at a time through the course of the year. What our clients tell us is they get a great return on that time. Because everyone walks out of the room more focused, there’s more clarity and crisper execution, and you actually get that time back and more. But you and your team have to get through the initial process of getting some foundational best practices put in place. And you’re not going to realize that time gain immediately. And it would be a shame if you gave up early.

Also, through all the planning and execution you and your leadership team will do, the changes and improvements you make to the business, in order to grow, are going to take investments as well. Certainly there will be time investment. And you and your team will get that time through the efficiencies I mentioned above. But there will also be financial investments, as I’m sure you can appreciate: in systems, equipment, facilities, people, etc. And, as we know, sometimes they’ll be harder to swallow than others. Some will be “stepped investments”, where your profitability might take a short term hit to get to the profitability you want “tomorrow”. 


Curious and open learners

We’ve found that the CEOs and business owners who get the best results working with leadership team coaches are open to learning and following a proven process, which any good leadership coach will use. A good leadership team coach will also share observations and feedback with the CEO from time to time. And the CEOs and business owners that are open to that feedback, willing to look at themselves, and commit to personal development, are the ones who become better leaders and see their peoples’ performance improve, as well as the company’s.


Team players

Similar to the notion of openness, you’ll need to be comfortable collaborating with your leadership team coach and be willing to work collaboratively with your leadership team. 

A good leadership team coach will facilitate key leadership team meetings, namely annual and quarterly planning sessions and potentially monthly check-in meetings. Their facilitation role will allow you to be fully present as a participant in the discussion, and not have to also play the role of meeting facilitator, which rarely works very well. Having a dedicated facilitator, who also teaches and coaches the team, enables the team AND the CEO to bring their best ideas and greatest condor to the conversation to achieve more clarity, focus and alignment. 

This works the best when the CEO takes a truly collaborative stance, rather than a directive one, with their team. For you, this may feel like letting go of control. In a way, it’s like putting your CEO role on pause for the day as you participate in the conversations. 

Of course, a good leadership team coach shouldn’t leave you out of the loop about what they’re going to lead you and your team through in your meetings. They should be consulting with you on what to cover and what needs discussing. But you’ll need to be receptive to what they recommend. So, rather than giving them direction, you’ll need to work collaboratively, sharing with them what is happening, and being curious and open to their suggestions for what to work on next.


Courageous

We also find CEOs get great results if they are willing to do everything it takes to apply what they learn, make decisions, execute, and grow. This includes holding people accountable by insisting that their people learn from their mistakes, having tough conversations with team members when needed and removing people who ultimately aren’t a fit. It also includes CEOs having the courage to hold themselves accountable for their part and to be vulnerable with their team on the journey.


You need roughly 80% of all this for the relationship to work well and for you and your leadership team to make real progress and get real results.

So, one should ask themselves, out of these four attributes, what will be easiest for me? And, what will be most difficult and why? Knowing what area will be more of a struggle for you, a good leadership team coach will challenge you to grow in that area. 

This is what it takes to get great results assuming you’re working with a good leadership team coach. So, how do you choose a good one? What should you look for? And how do you choose one who’s right for you? I’ll cover that in my next 5 Minute Growth Tip article.


How can you be successful growing a thriving company?
​
​To find out how to get things right 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.

In my last 5 Minute Growth Tips article, I compared the eight options for getting outside support to implement the many structures, systems and processes needed to grow profitably and enjoy the ride.

These options might seem overwhelming. And a CEO or business owner might want to throw up their hands and say “I’ll just send my leadership team members on some leadership training. That’ll do the trick.”

But, unfortunately, it won’t.

An October 2016 HBR article titled “Why Leadership Training Fails - and What to Do About It” reviews decades worth of studies that show leadership training - on its own - does not change leadership behaviours or improve companies’ performance. It also describes the other critical pieces needed first for leadership training to stick and make a difference.

Here, I’ll summarize the key points from the article and share some experience of my own.

Although companies pour enormous amounts of money into employee training and development - $160 billion in the US in 2015 alone - the learning largely doesn’t improve performance. This is because people soon revert to their old ways of doing things.

Why is that?

The more obvious reason is that training is a once and done event. There is no follow-up to reinforce the learning. We’ve all experienced this when we’ve taken training with the best of intentions, but then never revisit the material to implement what we learned.

The less obvious reason leadership training doesn’t stick is that, once the training is done, leaders go back to a workplace that still operates the way it used to. That workplace has processes, habits and ways of doing things that don’t encourage what the leaders have learned, and often even discourage it.

For example, a leader might learn about how to select and clearly define specific priorities to improve things and get better results within their department. But when the leader goes back to the office, their CEO may have a number of internal projects they want to see happen across the company or in certain departments, with little definition or specificity. New projects might also be added regularly, and others inadvertently fall by the wayside. Best case, the leader will have little incentive to select and clearly define priorities because their boss has yet to see the value of doing so. Worst case, the CEO may discourage choosing priorities and see the leader as uncommitted or lacking entrepreneurial grit. Neither scenario encourages the leader to implement what they learned in the training.

As a result, performance doesn’t improve. Also, employees below the leaders become cynical about the leadership training because nothing seems to truly change.

So, why do CEOs continue to invest in leadership training?

There are two reasons.

The first is that many CEOs, and leaders generally, tend to view companies as just groups of people. The thinking goes “if everyone in the company learns and grows, they’ll each get better at what they do, and the company will perform better.”

The same view is common for executive and leadership team performance. Develop the individual leaders, and the team and company will do better.

But this just isn’t true.

A number of studies have shown that company performance results from not just individual skills and abilities, but, more so, from the systems in which people work.

Building on the HBR article, my experience has been that these systems fall into five areas:

1. The company’s philosophy and direction and how well they’re understood and supported.
2. The organizational structure, including clarity of roles, accountabilities and reporting relationships for all functions.
3. The business processes, policies and practices to get work done (within and across functions).
4. The communication processes that ensure people know what’s happening so they can make good decisions.
5. And lastly, the resources employed within these systems - the financial and physical resources, and the people, including their skills, knowledge, abilities and behaviours.

From this view, leaders’ individual skills and abilities make up less than one fifth of the key ingredients needed to improve a company’s performance.

Also, we can imagine how the structures, processes and policies already happening in the company will enable or limit the leaders’ freedom to practice the skills they learn in training.

The second reason CEOs continue to invest in pure leadership training is that noone has ever had the courage to challenge them with the uncomfortable truth that the way they lead and manage their team and company, in terms of direction, structure, processes, communication and resources, is the larger reason their company hasn’t gotten to where they want it to be.

As the HBR article puts it “those are the things to fix before training can succeed longer-term.”

And so, how can CEOs and business owners get these systems working better?

I would share similar advice to that given in the HBR article, although slightly adjusted for growth-minded mid-size companies:

1. Work collaboratively with the leadership team to:
   1. adjust and clarify their roles, accountabilities and reporting relationships in order to eliminate gaps, confusion and bottlenecks, and to improve collaboration and coordination
   2. clearly define the company’s philosophy, including core values and core purpose to decision-making and behaviours at all levels
   3. set clear direction, metrics for the company and for individual performance, and priorities for improvement
   4. implement a consistent meeting and communication rhythm to execute effectively
   5. adjust systems to select, evaluate, develop and retain A-player talent, including the leadership team members themselves.
2. Provide just-in-time micro-training to the leadership team to inform and support the team in making these changes, and to support their own individual leadership development.
3. Use ongoing CEO and leadership team coaching to guide and support the decision-making, collaboration and learning above.

This approach will ensure the right systems are in place and working to support the leadership learning that takes place as a part of it all.

At this point in the article, a CEO or business owner might be considering simply attending leadership training with their leadership team members. That way, the CEO can learn the same best practices, implement them and create an environment that encourages the behaviours their leaders will have learned.

That’s certainly an option.

This takes CEOs back to the first problem mentioned with leadership training… there’s no follow up to ensure the best practices are implemented.

And that’s made more difficult by some of the features of most leadership training programs:

• They teach many best practices in a short amount of time, making it virtually impossible to implement everything the leaders have learned. By the time they’ve implemented the first best practice, they’ve forgotten about many of the others. Leadership training usually doesn’t include a way to slow-drip the learning and ensure each concept and best practice is fully implemented before moving on to the next.
• The learning doesn’t address the most important and pressing issues in the business. Publicly offered leadership training is never tailored to individual business’ current realities. And leadership training that is customized for a private workshop is usually based on a CEO or leadership team’s wishlist of topics rather than on a thorough analysis of needs and root causes.
• Leadership training programs usually have a relatively narrow focus. Most leadership training programs don’t cover the broad set of challenges discussed in the approach above. One can find programs on coaching, emotional intelligence, accountability or strategic thinking, just to name a few of the important topics. But few programs will cover all of these topics and the many more needed to successfully implement the right systems and behaviors. This results in the CEO having to piece together multiple leadership training programs that cover different pieces, without knowing whether they’ll work together, or what should be taken first, second or third.

At the end of the day, leadership training has the CEO back to taking a Do-It-Yourself approach. And we’ve already discussed how a DIY approach slows growth.

So, how can a CEO and their leadership team successfully learn and fully implement the systems and skills to grow profitably?

This takes us back to the 8 options we covered in my last 5 Minute Growth Tips article. And what we find is that the most effective option to make this happen is a Business Growth Advisor and Leadership Team Coach.
​
If Leadership Team Coaching seems like it might be the right option for you, the next question is are you the right fit for a Leadership Team Coach? We’ll cover that in my next 5 Minute Growth Tip article.


How can you implement the systems to grow a thriving company?

​To find out what systems to strengthen 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.

In this 5 Minute Growth Tips article series, I’ve shared overviews of the key best practices for growing a thriving company.

Yet, you may be asking, “how can I implement each of these best practices? how can I actually make them happen?”

For example, how do I define the right functions on my leadership team? How can we set clear priorities for change and improvement? Or, how do I get my leadership team members to change their mindset?

One way is to figure things out yourself. Another way is to use an outside expert, like a coach, consultant or advisor, to guide you step by step.

Many leaders try to figure things out themselves. 

Some of these leaders don’t know there are experts who could help them in these areas. Others have had a bad experience with an outside expert and are nervous about trying that again. Other leaders are concerned about what the cost might be. But oftentimes, these leaders think it’s their job as a CEO to have all the answers.

While figuring things out yourself is certainly an option, it’s the “long road option”. 

For sure, CEOs and owners can get there on their own, over time. They’re smart, passionate, energetic and fast learners. 

But they’ll get there a lot faster with the support of an experienced external advisor.

As I mentioned in my previous article in this series, business owners and CEOs often have a high internal locus of control, meaning they believe they have control within themselves to make things happen and influence the world around them.

Sometimes, this belief shows up in a counter-productive way, where they influence the world by doing too much themselves, rather than getting help from others. As a result, they become the bottleneck, slowing down the company’s development, growth and profitability.

That said, let’s consider the option of figuring things out on your own.

You could read a book that includes dozens of these best practices in one convenient, integrated package, tailored specifically for mid-size companies...like Scaling Up or the 7 Attributes of Agile Growth monographs. And then you could read a book or two on each of these best practices, find a book that includes how-to guidance for each one, and implement them with their team over time.

You could even attend a workshop where you get a chance to practice a bit with a handful of best practices.

With each of these approaches, it’s then up to the CEO alone to implement their learning in their team and company.

So, what are the pros and cons of a DIY approach?

Some of the pros are:

• The hard cost is minimal: only the cost of the books or training.
• There can be a sense of autonomy and control.
• It can feel flexible and like they can go at their own pace.

Some of the cons include:

• Given this will be the CEO’s first time implementing a particular best practice, they’ll likely have to make more than one attempt to achieve their desired result. Every additional attempt will take time and will have an opportunity cost such as seizing other opportunities or implementing other best practices.
• Every additional attempt will be faced with skepticism or even cynicism by their team and other managers and employees, leading to resistance and yet more difficulty implementing that best practice and other best practices in the future.
• Even if the CEO implements a best practice effectively, it may be out of sequence, meaning, it may require other best practices in place first in order for it to produce results. For example, implementing a best practice weekly leadership team meeting structure will have limited benefit without first defining clear accountabilities, metrics and targets for each leader and specific priorities to accomplish over a time period.

In short, the devil is in the details. And there are alot of them.

And why is that?

One word: complexity. 

Some specific best practices are straightforward, like defining a goal. You can Google how to set a goal like you can Google how to change the oil in an engine. These narrow, individual problems have a straightforward, known solution that applies in most situations.

However, improving how leaders lead and how companies operate isn’t so straightforward. These changes involve a variety of interconnected organizational and leadership best practices. 

For example, strengthening accountability takes much more than setting a goal. And how the goal is set depends on other things like clearly defined individual accountabilities.

Improving how a company operates is more like tuning a whole modern day engine than just changing the oil. There are multiple parts involved and multiple interacting solutions needed. And only an expert mechanic can help diagnose the issues and determine the solutions.

There are a few other disadvantages to a DIY approach:

• The CEO and their leadership team may have blindspots about some of their own actions or behaviors that are contributing to a particular challenge. For example, they may not be aware that their leadership team conversations bounce around from topic to topic. So the team solves few problems and makes few decisions. Only an experienced, outside set of eyes would be able to point that out.
• Getting leadership team buyin to something new and different is more difficult for a CEO when they are not perceived as being an expert. Busy team members will be hesitant to commit to the new ways of doing things if they don’t have enough confidence that it is needed, that it’s the right solution or that it will be implemented effectively, work and be worth the effort.
• The CEO has no one holding them accountable for successfully implementing what they’ve learned. There likely isn’t any one encouraging or challenging them to follow-through on the effort. This can result in further delays and team member cynicism and resistance.

For business owners and CEOs looking to grow a thriving mid-size company, the thinking sometimes goes that it’s their job to have all the answers. They were smart enough to get to this point, so they must be able to figure the rest out on their own.

Yet, this DIY mindset often leads to failed attempts, cynicism, lack of team commitment, delays and missed opportunities.

As the Gravitas Impact Voice of the CEO survey showed, the results are low productivity, market share, revenue growth, profit and/or cash flow. The survey also found that CEOs often feel unsure, stressed, frustrated, scattered and reactive.

In contrast, the owners and CEOs that get the furthest fastest tend to take a different path. They don’t focus on how to make things happen, but on who they need to learn from and partner with to speed up the process.

In fact, the Voice of the CEO survey showed that CEOs who engaged a qualified Gravitas Impact business growth and executive team coach saw significant improvements in employee engagement, overall productivity, revenue growth and profitability. They also felt more focused, clear, confident, balanced, calm and strategic.

Did Mahama D’Ali, or Lennox Lewis, or any successful athlete, rise to the top of their sport by figuring everything out on their own? No. They each had a coach, an experienced advisor.

Or Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Eric Schmidt? Did they build and grow thriving, enduring companies by taking a DIY approach? No, they also used coaches and advisors.

In my next 5 Minute Growth Tip article, I’ll compare the pros and cons of some options for getting dedicated and tailored, external expert guidance, from strategic planning facilitators and business consultants to CEO forum groups, business coaches and executive team coaches.

​
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.

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.

​In the previous 5 Minute Growth Tip article, I shared some tips for developing a successful strategy to compete and thrive in your market. Yet, developing a great strategy (and executing it) takes more than a framework. It takes a high performing leadership team. That, in turn, takes high performing leaders.

The People Challenge

As a CEO, president, owner or entrepreneur, you’ve likely had department heads on your team that didn’t meet your expectations or were poor leaders. It can be frustrating to be repeatedly disappointed or to have to continuously push, cajole or just grin and bear it. 

Yet, it’s entirely feasible to resolve these headaches and prevent them from happening in the first place.

This is about ensuring that, on the leadership team, we have the right people in the right seats doing the right things in the right ways. 

The key to getting it right is not to start by looking at the people. The first thing to do is define the right seats, right things and right ways, and then ensure we have the right people that fit what we need.

Right Seats

First, we want to ensure we have the right seats - the right roles needed on our leadership team. These usually include some common functional roles like marketing, sales, operations, accounting, finance, human resources, technology & systems, etc. 

Keep in mind that, often, leadership team members in mid-size companies need to play more than one role. Certain functions don’t need a full time leader just yet. By thinking of it this way,  we can identify what functional roles are being played by each leader, and whether the right roles exist on the team.

It may be that certain roles don’t exist that need to, or a role has been left unfilled.

It’s also helpful to identify any roles that seem to have more than one person playing them, causing mixed messages and confusion. It may also be that certain leaders are in too many roles, therefore being stretched thin and dropping balls.

Having the right seats means having clarity about what roles are needed and where there are gaps and overlaps.

Right Things

We also want to get each leader, and the whole leadership team, on the same page about what each role means and what is expected in terms of results (eg. role: marketing => results: qualified leads). 

It’s best if these results expectations are quantified with metrics and specific targets (eg. 50 qualified leads per month). The results, metrics and targets are the productivity side of each role.

The “right things” will often also include the big changes and improvements that need to be made within each function over the course of the year and/or the quarter.

Right Ways

We also want to be clear about the behavioural side. This includes defining the behavioural expectations needed across the leadership team and across the company.

These behaviours are captured in our core values. These core values distill the essential behaviours expected of everyone in the company, including the leadership team members. This is what enables great teamwork, productive conversations and problem-solving, developing a strong strategy and execution plan, and coordinating to execute.

Clarity on core values is also critical because leaders living them is one of the main ways the company’s culture is brought to life among employees.

Right People

With productivity and behaviour expectations clear, we want to ensure we have the right person in each seat. 

We can ask ourselves: is each person on the leadership team meeting our expectations...in terms of both the results expected in their role AND the behaviours captured in our core values?

Furthermore, if we want to build a thriving company, we’ll need A-players. We define A-players as being among the top 10% performers for the specific role and for the pay we can afford, AND they live and breathe all of our core values.

Being a top 10% leader doesn’t just mean doing a great job at one’s function: marketing, accounting or human resources, etc. It means getting great productivity from their people - both quantity and quality of work. This takes strong planning, communication, delegation, monitoring and coaching skills.

Often leaders tend towards one of two extremes: micro-managing or laisser-faire management. Strong leaders will stay involved enough to monitor and be supportive while at the same time letting experienced employees use their skills, be self-sufficient and take initiative.

A-player leaders create an environment in their department that inspires employees to perform at their best.

The Challenge of Behaviour Change

When it comes to leaders who don’t live our core values, it’s often a dead end. Because a person’s values can’t really be changed.

People behave according to what they believe. If they grew up believing that learning and adapting is valuable in its own right, they’ll learn and adapt on the job. If they believe that tradition, duty and compliance are noble, they won’t behave in adaptable ways.

If they don’t believe in one of our core values, there’s often not much we can do about it. We can coach them on that core value, and they may start behaving more in alignment with it for a while. And if so, great. It’s worth giving it a try. But often, they’ll slip back into their habits.

This means that often, a leader that isn’t living one or more of our core values never truly will. And so they’ll never be an A player leader, at least not in our company.

Addressing the Gaps

As CEOs, presidents and owners, we can often be hesitant to let a leader go who doesn’t fit. Our underlying concern is often that maybe we weren’t clear on our expectations or maybe we didn’t coach the leader enough or very effectively.

So, it can be reassuring to start by establishing clear expectations and providing better coaching where needed. At the end of the day, the leader may still not meet our expectations. But at least we’ll know that we did what we could to support them.

A good practice is to, every quarter, ask ourselves how each of the members of our leadership team are performing both in terms of results AND core values. Then, for any team members that aren’t performing, ask, what will I do about it this quarter? Will I coach them or cut the chord? If we keep coaching the leader on the same issue quarter after quarter, we should not only question their leadership, we should question ours too.

A Caution

Sometimes a leader’s poor performance IS in fact our fault. It’s entirely possible for a CEO to create an environment where people can’t perform well. Maybe we’re the micro-manager, or the laisser-faire manager. Or we set a poor example by not being accountable or not living some of our core values. 

If we have just one or two leaders whose performance is in question and the majority of the leaders reporting to us are performing great, we may have a people issue. Yet, if most or all of our leaders are struggling, chances are our own leadership is what needs work.

Working Through Hesitation

Usually, the decision to let a leader go isn’t hard. Once we think it through, it’s often pretty clear. It’s just that we avoid thinking it through. We avoid it because of how it feels. It’s sad. It’s disappointing. It’s nerve-racking. We can feel guilty or like a failure. 

If we acknowledge, accept and process those feelings, we can then face the facts of the situation and come to a logical, firm conclusion. This can usually be tackled with some pros and cons thinking, considering all the impacts of the leader, on both the culture and performance of their department, the leadership team and the company as a whole. 

Replacing a Leader

It’s one thing to come to realize and accept that a leader has to go. It’s another to feel confident we can successfully replace them with an A-player. If you’re concerned about this, you probably have a recruiting and selection problem. And you’re not alone. The average hiring process picks an A-player 25% of the time.

Implement the Top Grading or A-Method hiring process and you’ll notch that up to an 80 or 90% success rate. Replacing a top level leader is a great reason to make that change. You’ll get two trees with one stone: an A player leader and a drastic improvement in your hiring process.

As Jim Collins found in his research for Good to Great, the foundation of a thriving company is “disciplined people”. This includes being a Level 5 leader (determined AND humble) and getting the right people on the bus in the right seats on our leadership team. Only then can we create a great strategy collaboratively with our leadership team, to achieve efficient team buyin. And with buyin and a great leadership team, we can implement the right structures, systems and processes to grow more rapidly, profitably and sustainably.

Right? Not quite.

This is where great execution comes in. In my next 5 Minute Growth Tip article, I’ll share the common challenges with executing a strategy and the three key execution disciplines to minimize drama and maximize profitability.
​
How can you have 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 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.

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, as well as efficient buy-in to support accountability. 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 [link to Why a DIY Approach Slows Growth]. We’ll tackle that topic in my next 5 Minute Growth Tip article [link to Why a DIY Approach Slows Growth].

​
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.

​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 three 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 also 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 own 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 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

Delegating work, assigning some of your functions to others and looking for quick wins to improve profitability to hire another leader are all simpler approaches to making more time to work on the business.

If those tactics aren’t feasible right now, 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.

In a previous 5 Minute Growth Tip article, I discussed how strategy is not a lengthy action plan but the evolution of a central idea about how a company can be unique and valuable to its customers.

So if a strategy is about how the company needs to compete, then how does a CEO and their A player leadership team make it happen? With a best practice execution plan and process.

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The Execution Challenge

In my experience over the last 20 years working with leadership teams, when CEOs and owners of mid-size companies decide to do formal planning with their leadership team, they often go through a traditional strategic planning process.

However, this often falls short of what they need to execute on their plan.

Many strategic plans include a mission or purpose, vision and values. These are all important. Yet there is often little about how the company will compete in the market or how the plan will be executed.

Often, these documents have vague plans for implementing whatever rough direction they’ve set out: some high level multi-year focus areas, or maybe some one year initiatives. In the best case, an annual budget is built with or without the strategic plan in mind.

From there, the leadership team members may review the company’s numbers quarterly, or maybe monthly. Although often, this doesn’t happen either.

In the meantime, the CEO assumes the leaders are working on making improvements and changes in their departments that align with the high level priorities set out in the plan. 

After a couple of quarters, a few things can happen:

• The CEO or team might notice that, at the current pace, the numbers aren’t looking good enough to achieve their budget. The owner or CEO might then ask the leaders to pick up the pace.

 

• The CEO will also ask where things are at with the priorities. They’ll often discover that not much has been done, other things have come up, and focus appears to be drifting. At this point, the CEO might insist on seeing more progress on all the original priorities, or ask that the new items be tackled as well. In some cases, they might work with the leadership team to decide what’s most important for the rest of the year. The reality is there’s only 6 months left to execute something meaningful.

 

• Then, for companies with a December year-end, summer arrives. People go to the lake for a couple of weeks here in the prairies. Holiday schedules make it hard to meet up with others to move things forward. So often, there’s another push in September to get things going again. Then leaders and their teams might work like mad through the fall to accomplish what they committed to in September.

Does this pattern sound familiar? 

Does it cause drama, tension and low morale? Usually so. Is it efficient? Not really. Does this hamper progress, growth and profitability? For sure it does. And is it any fun? No.

So, what’s the solution? Not a traditional strategic plan. But a strategy (which I outlined here) and an execution plan and process.

Our 3 key disciplines of low drama execution describe how it works: 1) Metrics and Targets, 2) Priorities and 3) an effective Meeting Rhythm.

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Metrics and Targets

Watching the numbers may seem like the most obvious of the three disciplines. 

We all know that tracking financial results is an important part of monitoring whether we’re on track. However, there are other key numbers to monitor as well. 

While some metrics, like financial numbers, tell us how we’ve done, others give us an indication of how we’re going to do. This is the difference between lagging metrics and leading metrics.

For a company as a whole, lagging metrics will be things like financial results, units delivered and market share. Some leading company metrics may be customer loyalty, on-time delivery, employee engagement or the percentage of employees that are A players.

There are also different timeframes to set targets for with those metrics.

We want to set mid-term targets for our key company metrics, say for 3 years out. These targets should align with our 10 year vision, or Big Hairy Audacious Goal, as well as our best-guess estimates of what’s possible with the core customer and sandbox we chose in our strategy.

From there, we can set goals for those same metrics for the next year. For most of those metrics, we’ll also set goals for the first quarter. And finally, for many metrics, often leading metrics, we might be able to set monthly or even weekly milestones.

Setting short-term goals that align with mid-term targets that align with a longer term vision allows the leadership team to commit to biting off a certain amount of progress each quarter.

This way, we can check that we’re making enough progress over the weeks, months and quarters to achieve what we need to for the year, which will contribute to reaching our 3 year targets and our 10 year vision.

The evolution of this is for the CEO to work with each leadership team member to also identify two or three metrics for each of the functions they lead, as well as targets for those metrics for the year and each quarter.


The 2nd component of a strong execution plan is Priorities

Metrics measure the results and state of our day to day operations, and how they’re progressing towards our vision.

Priorities, on the other hand, are the changes and improvements to those operations. These are what we want and need to implement to make it possible to achieve those mid to long term goals and targets.

Going back to my first article in this series on how companies need to do things differently to continue to grow and profitably, these priorities represent, in part, those very structures, systems and processes.

Priorities may also be about building or buying new facilities, equipment, or other significant capital assets, to expand or replace capacity.

Priorities should also build the capabilities needed to bring to life or strengthen the unique differentiation we chose in our strategy.

Like with metrics, we chunk priorities down from mid term to short term to very short term. This again helps us make progress every quarter which supports the progress we want to make over time.

We start with planning out what’s needed over three years.  We’re looking for the gap between where we are today and where we want to be with each of those brand promises.

From this view, we’ll choose our number one addressable challenge for the year…this is the most important company-wide internal problem or opportunity that the leadership team and the whole company will need to tackle to make meaningful progress realizing our strategy and achieving our 3 year targets.

From there, we’ll identify the top three company-wide root causes of that addressable challenge and the 3 or 4 1-year company-wide priorities to address them.

For each 1-year priority, we’ll lay out a sequence of possible quarterly priorities for the year (we also call these Rocks). These are the multi-month change projects that will help us complete one or more of our annual priorities. 

From there, we’ll clearly select the quarterly priorities for the first quarter, assign accountability and have each leader create a 13-week sprint plan (a simple project plan) to make it happen effectively, efficiently and accountably.

The evolution here is for each leader to also work with their own team to identify and choose the quarterly priorities they need to work on in their own departments to support the company in tackling the company’s number one addressable challenge.


The 3rd component of the execution process is An Effective Meeting Rhythm

It’s great to know what targets need to be achieved and what priorities have to be accomplished over the next quarter to make progress towards our mid-term and long-term goals.

But we know that unforeseen things will happen during the quarter. Problems will come up. Things can get forgotten. People can lose focus.

So, how do we make sure our leadership team executes on our quarterly plan in the midst of all that?

Through regular communication. An effective and efficient meeting rhythm is the key.

• This meeting rhythm includes:
• weekly leadership team meetings - 60 to 90 minutes
• daily leadership team huddles - 5 to 10 minutes
• monthly leadership team meetings – ½ day to a full day
• quarterly planning meetings - 1 to 2 days
• annual planning meeting - 2 to 3 days

The purpose of weekly leadership team meetings are to check if our metrics and priorities are on track, take corrective action to keep them on track, and solve problems in the day to day operations or with the priorities.

Daily leadership team huddles are to keep all team members in sync throughout the week and identify problems quickly so they can be resolved as they come up.

Monthly leadership team meetings are to check that our metrics, priorities AND monthly financial results are on track, take corrective action, adjust the plan as needed and tackle larger tactical or strategic issues.

Quarterly planning meetings are to check what we accomplished over the last quarter, adjust course for the year and set our goals and priorities for the next 90 days.

The annual planning meeting is to assess overall progress, note market trends, adjust our long term vision, 3 year targets and strategy, identify our 1 year addressable challenge and decide what we’ll bite off with our goals and priorities for the first quarter.

With a clear purpose and a proven agenda for each type of meeting, and with the right people running the meetings and keeping things on track, these meetings can keep the leadership team and its members focused and executing efficiently throughout the year.


So to summarize…

A clear, aligned execution plan and an effective execution process will minimize drama and maximize efficiency and goal achievement.

However, this will work best if we create the execution plan with the leadership team, so there is efficient leadership team buy-in. And this goes for the strategy as well. 

Combine all this with strong accountability practices and having A players on our leadership team, and we have a powerful mixture to reliably implement the structures, systems and processes to implement our strategy, build capacity, and grow consistently and profitably...AND enjoy the ride.

That said, this all may seem daunting if you and your leadership team are too busy working in the weeds. 

If that’s you - and most CEOs I meet have this challenge - read my next 5 Minute Growth Tip article on how to shift from working mostly “in the business” to working more “on the business”, and having more time for you and your family as well.
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How can your team execute with less drama?

Find out how to speed up execution to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, by trying 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 4 to check your execution 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.

In the previous 5 Minute Growth Tip article, I shared some tips for developing a successful strategy to compete and thrive in your market. Yet, developing a great strategy (and executing it) takes more than a framework. It takes a high performing leadership team. That, in turn, takes high performing leaders.

The People Challenge

As a CEO, president, owner or entrepreneur, you’ve likely had department heads on your team that didn’t meet your expectations or were poor leaders. It can be frustrating to be repeatedly disappointed or to have to continuously push, cajole or just grin and bear it. 

Yet, it’s entirely feasible to resolve these headaches and prevent them from happening in the first place.

This is about ensuring that, on the leadership team, we have the right people in the right seats doing the right things in the right ways. 

The key to getting it right is not to start by looking at the people. The first thing to do is define the right seats, right things and right ways, and then ensure we have the right people that fit what we need.

Right Seats

First, we want to ensure we have the right seats - the right roles needed on our leadership team. These usually include some common functional roles like marketing, sales, operations, accounting, finance, human resources, technology & systems, etc. 

Keep in mind that, often, leadership team members in mid-size companies need to play more than one role. Certain functions don’t need a full time leader just yet. By thinking of it this way,  we can identify what functional roles are being played by each leader, and whether the right roles exist on the team.

It may be that certain roles don’t exist that need to, or a role has been left unfilled.

It’s also helpful to identify any roles that seem to have more than one person playing them, causing mixed messages and confusion. It may also be that certain leaders are in too many roles, therefore being stretched thin and dropping balls.

Having the right seats means having clarity about what roles are needed and where there are gaps and overlaps.

Right Things

We also want to get each leader, and the whole leadership team, on the same page about what each role means and what is expected in terms of results (eg. role: marketing => results: qualified leads). 

It’s best if these results expectations are quantified with metrics and specific targets (eg. 50 qualified leads per month). The results, metrics and targets are the productivity side of each role.

The “right things” will often also include the big changes and improvements that need to be made within each function over the course of the year and/or the quarter.

Right Ways

We also want to be clear about the behavioural side. This includes defining the behavioural expectations needed across the leadership team and across the company.

These behaviours are captured in our core values. These core values distill the essential behaviours expected of everyone in the company, including the leadership team members. This is what enables great teamwork, productive conversations and problem-solving, developing a strong strategy and execution plan, and coordinating to execute.

Clarity on core values is also critical because leaders living them is one of the main ways the company’s culture is brought to life among employees.

Right People

With productivity and behaviour expectations clear, we want to ensure we have the right person in each seat. 

We can ask ourselves: is each person on the leadership team meeting our expectations...in terms of both the results expected in their role AND the behaviours captured in our core values?

Furthermore, if we want to build a thriving company, we’ll need A-players. We define A-players as being among the top 10% performers for the specific role and for the pay we can afford, AND they live and breathe all of our core values.

Being a top 10% leader doesn’t just mean doing a great job at one’s function: marketing, accounting or human resources, etc. It means getting great productivity from their people - both quantity and quality of work. This takes strong planning, communication, delegation, monitoring and coaching skills.

Often leaders tend towards one of two extremes: micro-managing or laisser-faire management. Strong leaders will stay involved enough to monitor and be supportive while at the same time letting experienced employees use their skills, be self-sufficient and take initiative.

A-player leaders create an environment in their department that inspires employees to perform at their best.

The Challenge of Behaviour Change

When it comes to leaders who don’t live our core values, it’s often a dead end. Because a person’s values can’t really be changed.

People behave according to what they believe. If they grew up believing that learning and adapting is valuable in its own right, they’ll learn and adapt on the job. If they believe that tradition, duty and compliance are noble, they won’t behave in adaptable ways.

If they don’t believe in one of our core values, there’s often not much we can do about it. We can coach them on that core value, and they may start behaving more in alignment with it for a while. And if so, great. It’s worth giving it a try. But often, they’ll slip back into their habits.

This means that often, a leader that isn’t living one or more of our core values never truly will. And so they’ll never be an A player leader, at least not in our company.

Addressing the Gaps

As CEOs, presidents and owners, we can often be hesitant to let a leader go who doesn’t fit. Our underlying concern is often that maybe we weren’t clear on our expectations or maybe we didn’t coach the leader enough or very effectively.

So, it can be reassuring to start by establishing clear expectations and providing better coaching where needed. At the end of the day, the leader may still not meet our expectations. But at least we’ll know that we did what we could to support them.

A good practice is to, every quarter, ask ourselves how each of the members of our leadership team are performing both in terms of results AND core values. Then, for any team members that aren’t performing, ask, what will I do about it this quarter? Will I coach them or cut the chord? If we keep coaching the leader on the same issue quarter after quarter, we should not only question their leadership, we should question ours too.

A Caution

Sometimes a leader’s poor performance IS in fact our fault. It’s entirely possible for a CEO to create an environment where people can’t perform well. Maybe we’re the micro-manager, or the laisser-faire manager. Or we set a poor example by not being accountable or not living some of our core values. 

If we have just one or two leaders whose performance is in question and the majority of the leaders reporting to us are performing great, we may have a people issue. Yet, if most or all of our leaders are struggling, chances are our own leadership is what needs work.

Working Through Hesitation

Usually, the decision to let a leader go isn’t hard. Once we think it through, it’s often pretty clear. It’s just that we avoid thinking it through. We avoid it because of how it feels. It’s sad. It’s disappointing. It’s nerve-racking. We can feel guilty or like a failure. 

If we acknowledge, accept and process those feelings, we can then face the facts of the situation and come to a logical, firm conclusion. This can usually be tackled with some pros and cons thinking, considering all the impacts of the leader, on both the culture and performance of their department, the leadership team and the company as a whole. 

Replacing a Leader

It’s one thing to come to realize and accept that a leader has to go. It’s another to feel confident we can successfully replace them with an A-player. If you’re concerned about this, you probably have a recruiting and selection problem. And you’re not alone. The average hiring process picks an A-player 25% of the time.

Implement the Top Grading or A-Method hiring process and you’ll notch that up to an 80 or 90% success rate. Replacing a top level leader is a great reason to make that change. You’ll get two trees with one stone: an A player leader and a drastic improvement in your hiring process.

As Jim Collins found in his research for Good to Great, the foundation of a thriving company is “disciplined people”. This includes being a Level 5 leader (determined AND humble) and getting the right people on the bus in the right seats on our leadership team. Only then can we create a great strategy collaboratively with our leadership team, to achieve efficient team buyin. And with buyin and a great leadership team, we can implement the right structures, systems and processes to grow more rapidly, profitably and sustainably.

Right? Not quite.

This is where great execution comes in. In my next 5 Minute Growth Tip article, I’ll share the common challenges with executing a strategy and the three key execution disciplines to minimize drama and maximize profitability.
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How can you have more A-players in your company?
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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 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.

In the previous 5 Minute Growth Tip article, I wrote about how midsize companies can make more progress at implementing the processes and systems that will enable them to grow and grow profitably. But is it really progress if you’re not going in the right direction? And how do you know if you are going in the right direction?

While various types of processes and systems are needed to grow beyond a company’s current level (see the first article in this series), some types of systems will need to be chosen (or tailored) specifically for that unique business AND to support and execute its strategy in the market.

Developing a clear strategy is not only important to making the right progress. It’s also important for ensuring a company is pursuing truly valuable growth opportunities.

This brief article will cover the basics of clarifying and strengthening your strategy. From there, other tools and practices can be used to refine the strategy and make it more robust over time.

The strategy misconception

First, let’s recognize what strategy is NOT. As Jack Welch once put it, “Strategy is NOT a lengthy action plan. It is the evolution of a CENTRAL IDEA through continually changing circumstances.” A list of projects, priorities or action items is not strategy. That’s an execution plan.

And what is this “central idea” Jack speaks of?

I’ve been facilitating strategy development for 17 years. In all that time, the simplest, most accurate description of strategy I have come across is from Michael Porter, the renowned Harvard Business School professor, researcher and consultant.

In his best selling book “Competitive Advantage”, Porter describes strategy succinctly as “a unique and valuable position in the market that involves a different set of activities from competitors”. 

Your “unique and valuable position in the market” is this “central idea”. And it needs to continually evolve to respond to changing circumstances. It describes the essence of the business you and your leadership team want to build. Your execution plan is how you’ll build it.

Thinking of strategy as what needs to be done, rather than a vision for the business you are building, results in directionless busyness. Imagine building a house with no clear blueprints. How confusing would that be? It’s the same in a company.

More Than Unique

Let’s look at what Porter calls a “position in the market.”

Put simply, this is about how your offering compares to competitors who offer the same or similar products or services. In the Scaling Up system and the 7 Attributes of Agile Growth, we use the term “Differentiation”.

For most business leaders, like myself, it’s been drilled into our heads that our business needs to be unique. Porter confirms that this is important for our positioning.

But why? To create customer loyalty. If our customers can only get our unique twist on a product or service from us, and they can’t get it from our competitors, they’ll keep coming back.

Hence the more traditional terms used for Differentiation, including Unique Value Proposition, Unique Selling Proposition, Unique Offer and Competitive Advantage. They all essentially mean the same thing - a brief statement that describes how our product or service is or will be unique from our competitors.

One example is SouthWest Airlines. While they provide air travel services like so many other airlines, they have clear differentiation, which is captured in their brand promise: “Low Fares, Lots of Flights, Lots of Fun”. This is unique in the american airline business.

Yet Porter’s definition means our differentiation needs to be more than unique. It also has to be valuable. Valuable to who? Customers.

Getting Focused

This can be tricky. Because what’s valuable to one type of customer is not necessarily valuable to another. To make our differentiation valuable to a customer, we need to know WHO that customer is. 

Once we’re clear on who that customer is, we can define our differentiation, and then design our “different set of activities”, as Porter puts it, to consistently deliver that unique positioning.

Note that, if we are to do things differently than competitors, to deliver on our differentiation for a specific type of customer, the number of different types of customers we serve has to be pretty small. Doing things in a number of unique ways that are each valuable to different types of customers becomes unprofitable, if not impossible, without sufficient scale. So for many companies, especially midsize companies, that often means focussing on one type of customer. We call them our Core Customer.

How do we identify our core customer? We examine our best customers! The ones who are the most profitable, the most loyal, the most likely to refer, the ones who pay on time.

In addition to knowing WHO are core customer IS, we have to know WHAT our core customer NEEDS. This enables us to then define differentiation that will be valuable to them. Without understanding our core customer’s needs, we’re just guessing.

With clarity about who our core customer is, what they need and what differentiation would be valuable to them, we also want to make sure we can deliver on that differentiation.

Maybe we aren’t fully set up right now to deliver on it. But we need to examine if we can get there.

Regardless of our differentiation, those unique activities needed to deliver it need to be doable. If not, when we market our offering based on that differentiation, we’ll be making a promise to customers that we just can’t keep. Customers will be disappointed and become less loyal, rather than more loyal, over time.

What Sandbox to Play In

The Sandbox defines what specific products or services we’re going to offer, where we’re going to sell them, and through who. Through direct sales? Online? Through distributors, affiliates or retail?

The Sandbox encourages us to proactively think through where our focus for growth needs to be over the next 3 to 5 years. It encourages focus also by proactively deciding to avoid products, geographies and distribution channels that will distract us. We may even choose to discontinue some we have right now.

Choosing our Sandbox involves making sure these “what?”, “where?” and “through who?” decisions align with 1) our core customer, 2) our differentiation, and 3) our understanding or estimates of what products, geographies and distribution channels will provide the greatest opportunities for growth and profitability.

SouthWest Airlines, for example, has determined that offering a first class service would not fit. It would take away from their “Lots of Fun” promise by treating some customers more lavishly than others. It would also increase complexity which would lengthen ground time, reduce the number of flights per day - “lots of flights”, and therefore increase costs and affect their “Low Fares” promise.

Making it Work

The three basic elements of a successful competitive strategy include:

• Identifying our Core Customer’s characteristics and true needs
• Defining Differentiation that is valuable to our core customer and checking that it’s feasible
• Setting our Sandbox to focus on the right products or services, geographies and distribution channels.

This basic strategy work will be most successful when aligned with four foundational pieces: 
1) our core purpose (or our Why, as Simon Sinek calls it - the difference we want to make in the world beyond creating jobs and profit), 
2) our vision (or Big Hairy Audacious Goal - BHAG - as Jim Collins puts it - a 10 to 30 year company goal that is bold but stimulates innovation and progress), 
3) our 3 year strategic targets - including financial, non-financial, - and 3 year highly achievable goal (or 3HAG as Shannon Byrne Susko calls it) that defines what we want the company to look like,
4) an awareness and understanding of the trends unfolding in our market and the world. 

And let’s remember, as CEOs, we’re best off developing our strategy collaboratively with our leadership team, in order to achieve “efficient leadership team buy-in” that supports “accountability for execution” (as discussed in my previous article).

From there, we can develop our one year and quarterly execution plan to bring our strategy to life. With the right leadership team members and the right culture, we can execute with efficiency and predictability.  AND, with the right leadership team members and culture, we are much more likely to develop a great strategy with that team. More about that in my next 5 Minute Growth Tip article.
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How can you improve your strategy?
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To find out what you can improve in your competitive strategy 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 3 and 6 to check your competitive strategy. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation.

In the previous 5 Minute Growth Tip article, I shared how companies need to implement structures, processes and systems in order to grow. Without this, they either won’t grow beyond the limits of their current structures, or they will grow inefficiently and increasingly unprofitable.

But as an owner or CEO tries to grow their company to 50, 100 or 200 employees, they may feel like the company is no longer making real progress with those kinds of improvements. Any changes they want to make in their company don’t seem to get done, or don’t get done right.

So, how can CEOs increase their momentum?

We know that, as a company grows, the CEO increasingly has to get things done through their top team. I covered this also in this previous article. The members of their top team are the ones who need to lead improvement projects within each of their departments and between and across departments.

The two keys to making this happen are 1) efficient leadership team buyin, and 2) accountability for execution.


Why progress slows with growth

When a company is small, less than 10 or 15 employees, it’s more straightforward to get improvement projects done. 

Often, as CEOs, we just do these projects ourselves.

As we begin to delegate these improvement projects, we simply ask a supervisor or front-line employee to get them done. If they are a strong employee, they will usually make it happen.

When we have 25, 50 or 100 employees, it gets harder.

The reason is what’s called “the power differential”: the difference between the influence of the CEO and the influence of others.

In a smaller company, the owner is a strong voice that is heard more easily among the small group of employees. There are often no other voices that are similarly strong (unless of course there is one or more partners involved).

It’s also easy to see when someone in a small group is not following through on a project. So each employee has a strong motivation to follow through on the owner’s direction.

In a smaller company, there is a large power differential.

As the company gets larger, the power differential decreases.

As some departments get larger (eg. a production department), the leaders of those departments gain influence. They have now become critical people for the productivity and profitability of the company.

The owner no longer has that same strong singular voice. One or more other leaders have strong voices as well. They tend to have more influence about decisions made for the company, and certainly their own department.

As well, the owner becomes more detached from the front-line and may feel less confident about what is the right thing to do. The other influential leaders now often have a better perspective on what needs to be done in the operations. This also increases their influence.

The owner may therefore feel less influence to be able to simply ask others to take on and carry out improvement projects they dream up. They know they need these high-influence leaders to make things happen. And they may recognize that they lose their leaders' commitment and initiative when they just tell them what to do.

The result is that getting leaders to make changes and improvements in and across a mid-size company becomes more challenging than getting front-line employees and supervisors to do so in a smaller company.

The trick is in the two keys: 1) efficient leadership team buy-in, and 2) team-based accountability.


Efficient Leadership Team Buyin

Rather than a CEO figuring out on their own what needs improving and changing for the company, and simply delegating those projects to others, they need to shift to making decisions for the company in collaboration with the members of their top team. This will enable them and their top team members to make company decisions that they’re all committed to.

In short, as the saying goes, “people support what they help to create”.

This doesn’t mean the CEO doesn’t get the final say. It’s how they get to a final decision that needs to be adjusted.

Patrick Lencioni, in his best-selling book, The Five Dysfunctions of a team, called this approach “disagree and commit”. 

The top team discusses the problem or opportunity and gets all the information out on the table for consideration. Options are discussed and weighed. All members of the top team have the opportunity to share their perspectives and concerns. If an agreement is easily made, then great. If not, the CEO makes the final decision with everyone knowing their perspective has been heard and considered, and agreeing that now is the time to commit to the final decision.

This approach allows for effective leadership team participation, while keeping it efficient.

This can be a game-changer for CEOs who have already shifted to involving their top team in decision-making, but have gone too far.

Their decision-making may have slowed to a crawl, or decisions simply don’t get made, because they and their leadership team members don’t always agree on what’s best. And the CEO isn’t willing to make a final decision for fear that their leaders won’t buy in at all.

“Disagree and commit” solves this problem.


Accountability for Execution

Once there is top team buyin to a decision, how do we ensure accountability for its execution?

Buyin is certainly important for accountability. But it’s not enough.

Accountability ensures that leaders assigned with taking on certain improvement projects follow through as best as humanly possible. Accountability also means being open and transparent when a project or special effort doesn’t go as planned, so all possible action can be taken to get it back on track.

Accountability, also, is more difficult as a company grows. And it’s also due to the changing power differentials.

Simply following up one-on-one with individual leaders no longer works as well. Leaders of larger departments have more influence, and their performance is more hidden in a larger company. So there is less pressure to follow through.

The solution is again a team approach.

Mark Green, a colleague of mine in Virginia, and a peer member of Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches, captured the key ingredients for accountability in his recent monograph titled “Creating a Culture of Accountability”.

There are three ingredients for accountability:

• the CEO’s self-accountability
• role accountability, and
• process accountability.

Self-accountability is where the CEO, as the leader of the team, leads by example by acting accountably themselves, ensuring they have the right people in the right seats on their leadership team, and raising their expectations of their leaders.

Role accountability is about ensuring each leader is clear about their own and each others’ accountabilities. This includes defining the specific results expected for each role and the metrics that make those expectations clear.

Note that it’s just as important for leaders to be clear on each others’ roles as their own. This ensures only one person is accountable for each function and everyone is clear on what to expect from others.

Process accountability includes communicating about decisions they’ve made in a way that maintains leaders’ natural motivation to execute. This includes believing in their ability to succeed, reminding them why it matters and paying attention to their progress.

Process accountability also involves:
- ensuring planning happens before action, and on a consistent basis, 
- having a rhythm of effective and efficient meetings that ensures regular follow-up on progress and results,
- and regular one-on-one coaching between the CEO and each leadership team member to develop and support performance.


From leading individuals to leading the top team

Efficient leadership team buy-in and team-based accountability for execution are the two keys for CEOs to enable continual improvement to grow their mid-size companies.

And we can see a common thread for the CEO: shifting from directing individuals to leading and building the top team.

This shift can be challenging for CEOs who have become comfortable with a directive style. Yet shifting to leading the top team is critical to getting their leaders bought in, executing, and making more progress.

But is it really progress if you’re not going in the right direction? And how do you know if you are? More on that in my next 5 Minute Growth Tip article.


How can you increase your momentum?
​To find out how to make more progress 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 and 4 to check your company’s leadership team and execution 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.​

In the 11 years I’ve been an independent coach and advisor, I’ve seen many companies that grow to a certain point and, despite all their best efforts, can’t seem to grow beyond that.

I’ve also seen companies that do continue to grow but become less and less profitable, and more and more stressful for the owner or CEO.

Turns out this isn’t just my experience.  It’s a common pattern.

Growth isn’t common

Out of the roughly 28 million firms in the US, only about 1.1 million have surpassed a million in revenue.
Only 112,000 have gotten past $10 million. And only 17000 have grown beyond $50 million.

The reason is that companies need to operate differently as they grow. Companies that don’t adapt how they operate will tend to grow to the limits of that way of operating. 

Owners, presidents and CEOs who have had success getting to a certain point often tend to repeat what they know, thinking “well, it got us here.” But, as the title of a book by Marshall Goldsmith goes, “what got us here won’t get us there”. 

The systems to manage a growing team

The changes needed for a growing company are driven by the added complexity that comes with having more employees. 

Think simply of going from 2 to 4 employees. This makes the number of relationships between individuals increase from 1 to 10. This complexity continues exponentially as the company grows from 10 to 25 to 50, 100, 200 employees or more. 

To predictably achieve results within this growing complexity, a certain level of order is needed. Processes, systems and structures create that order in companies. And the systems needed to create order in the complexity of a 200 person organization are different than that of a 100, 50, 25 or 10 person organization.

For example:

• When a company has 1-10 people, the owner can manage everyone. When the company gets to 10 to 15 people, the owner needs to bring on supervisors and managers, as well as some basic people management systems.
• When the company gets to 25 people, it needs more than one leader and the beginnings of a middle management group. The CEO now has to get most of the company’s results through other managers. So effective leadership and management becomes more important. And keeping those leaders and managers all heading in the same direction becomes more challenging. Strategy, goals and priority setting become critical along with meeting rhythms to keep everything on track.
• When companies hit 60 employees, they’ve already had to implement project management processes to get new systems fully implemented. And now, they often have to revamp their competitive strategy as they are now more visible in the market, and therefore a deliberate target of competitors.
• At about 95 employees, another layer of middle management is usually needed, making new employees more disconnected from top level decisions. This then requires new systems to monitor and improve employee buy-in and engagement.
• At 160 employees, the size and complexity of the organization starts to make it more resistant to change and it often becomes less profitable as its costs go up and products start to lag the market. Other systems and processes are needed to speed up getting new and more profitable offerings to market.

Hitting the ceiling, valleys of death

Any company within one stage will usually hit a ceiling if they keep doing things the same way they always have.

Companies that don’t make the right changes, or aren’t successful in making those changes, will fall into what we call a “valley of death”. 

Valleys of death are where the leadership makes big investments, but they don’t work out. So the company doesn’t move beyond that stage. The company can also fall backward in terms of revenue and often profitability because of the failed investments. Worst case, it can lead to company failure.

Growing unprofitably

Some companies grow despite not making the changes needed for the next stage. With sheer grit or dramatic demand growth, they’ll grow. However, these companies often become increasingly inefficient with the increasing complexity and resulting chaos. And so the company’s profitability will decrease, sometimes significantly. 

Unless exceptionally well funded, with investors willing to accept short to mid term losses for a longer term windfall, the decreasing profitability and resulting cash flow challenges will eventually prevent the company from investing in the capacity to grow and the systems to grow profitability. And so growth will stall. One can also count on drama, stress and headaches being the overarching theme for the leaders.

So what stops a company from making the right changes and improvements to grow successfully and profitably?

The CEO and leadership team are the linchpin

From these stages and key changes, we can see early in a company’s life - by about 25 employees - that an owner or CEO has to learn to get results from people through other managers. That means the changes and improvements the company makes will depend on the CEO working WITH top level managers as a team…a leadership team (or management team, executive team, or whatever you want to call it) .

And, very often, leadership teams in mid-size companies are working in silos and at cross purposes. They often are too focused on the day-to-day, so the big projects to move the company forward often don’t get done or aren’t done right. 

The result is the company doesn’t identify or successfully implement the right processes, systems and structures to handle the increasing complexity of a growing company.

It’s the CEO’s job to pull their leadership team together, get them all going in the same direction, moving in lockstep, making the needed changes and improvements to enable their broader team to keep growing.

An always-evolving leadership team

The challenge of having an effective leadership team continues through the life of the company. New leaders come and go. Markets evolve. Systems need to change. And so the capabilities of the leaders and the team need to evolve as well.

The crucial underlying challenge to achieving profitable growth is to build, maintain and continuously improve a great top team that is highly capable, aligned, leading and executing effectively and efficiently, and therefore minimizing silos and strengthening execution between and across departments. Essentially, working as one unit to move the company forward because the owner CEO can’t do it alone…because it’s too much for the owner or CEO to do it alone, at least effectively and sanely. More about that in my next 5 Minute Growth Tip article.
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What systems can you improve to grow a thriving company?

To find out what systems you and can improve 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.

If you think you’re a fit for business, growth and executive team coaching, you may be ready to look for a coach that’s a fit for you.

In my experience working with executive teams over the last 17 years, I’ve found there are five key criteria to consider in an executive team coach:

• Knowledge
• Experience
• Ability
• Results
• Chemistry

Let’s look at each of them in turn.

Knowledge
Whether you’re looking to more easily grow your company, get more profitable, or have more time or quality of life, you’ll want an executive team coach who knows the right best practices to help you and your top team get there.

The easiest and best way to figure this out is by looking at what methodologies they use and whether those align with what you want to achieve.

There are several reputable, holistic methodologies developed for senior leadership teams of midsize companies. These include: Scaling Up, the 7 Attributes of Agile Growth, EOS (the Entrepreneurial Operating System), the 7 Stages of Growth, among others.

A coach that uses a reputable methodology will help ensure your team learns and implements best practices that are tried, tested and true, not simply based on the latest business fad or one person’s opinion. The creators of these methodologies haven’t developed their own best practices. They’ve only curated and compiled best practices that have already been researched and developed by the world’s best thought leaders and applied in the most successful companies.

A holistic methodology will help ensure that all the critical aspects of a management team and company are addressed and supported. For example, not only is it important to develop a great competitive strategy, but also to develop an efficient plan to execute it. Great strategy and execution can only be enabled through great people. And great people will only contribute their best with great leadership and a highly cohesive team. And all of this leads to bottom line results only by aligning them with a focus on optimizing profit and cashflow. A holistic methodology addresses all the legs of the stool so the business is built sturdy and strong.

Note that some of the methodologies above are more holistic than others. Generally, the larger the company or the more you want to grow, the more holistic a methodology you will want your coach to know. While a simpler methodology like EOS is a great starting point for smaller companies (say 5 to 20 employees), a more holistic methodology like Scaling Up, and then the 7 Attributes of Agile Growth, will enable you and your executive team to learn and implement the same basic best practices and then learn the others needed to get to the next level.

Also, all of these methodologies have simplified the best practices to fit mid-sized companies. This is critical. A CEO and their senior team need to address a number of things, as discussed above. But your mid-size company likely only has so much capacity. You don’t have large departments to handle extra complexity. So, you and your team need to do just enough in each aspect to move the needle, while not doing so much in one of them that there’s no time to work on another. This means the best practices need to be simple and easy to implement.

One sign that a coach has the knowledge to help you and your leadership team achieve your goals is when they know and use more than one of these methodologies. This means they can pull in whatever best practice is needed for the situation. No methodology includes all the best practices needed for every type of decision a CEO and their top team will need to make. So, being able to pull in the right tool for the right situation is key.

While it’s important to pick an executive team coach who does use A reputable, holistic methodology of simplified best practices, which specific methodology (or methodologies) they use is less important. The coach themselves is more important: their experience, abilities, results and your chemistry with them.

You can pick a coach who uses a methodology that resonates with you. But this doesn’t guarantee they’ll be great at teaching and facilitating those tools, or at guiding the process to help your team get results. You could also pick a coach who uses a methodology that’s not your first choice. But they may be an exceptional coach, teaching and facilitating best practices in very effective ways that truly move your business forward.


Experience
The most important experience you’ll want to look for in a business, growth & executive team coach is how much they’ve worked with and supported both CEOs and executive teams. This will affect how much they understand the challenges CEOs and their teams face, the dynamics often at play on such teams, and how to address them successfully. Unfortunately, there are low barriers to entry in the coaching field, so you’re best to look for a coach who has lots of experience.

Broad business experience working with many different kinds of companies is also important. Having experience leading or working in different functions of a business, such as marketing, sales, operations, HR, IT and finance can also be a great asset. All this will allow your coach to share experiences from different sectors and relate them to all the members of your senior team.

Now, you may be wondering if you should get someone who specializes in your industry. My guess is that industry experience is something that’s important to you when you’re hiring leaders and employees. So, you likely have a whole company full of industry experts. And yet, are you growing as fast, as profitably or as easily as you know you could? In my experience, having the right executive team coach is not so much about industry expertise. It’s about knowing how to consistently scale over time as a leadership team, and that’s where they bring their expertise.

They’re never going to know as much as you will in your domain, and you’re never going to know as much as they do about getting management teams to scale companies. So, if you’re looking for a like-minded industry expert who’ll reinforce what you already know, and echo everything you say, then look for someone with lots of experience in your industry. But if you’re looking for someone to push, challenge and hold you and your executive team accountable, help clarify your goals and priorities, help clarify your thinking, an executive team coach with a broad base of experience will be a good fit.

You may also be wondering if you should get a coach who has been a CEO. This is a valid question as it’s common to believe that someone who has done our job will be best able to coach us. But that’s not necessarily true. Consider Usain Boldt, widely considered to be the greatest sprinter of all time. He’s an eight-time Olympic gold medallist and eleven-time world champion. He’s the world-record holder of the 100 meter, 200 meter and four by 100 meter relay. His coach, Glen Mills, never ran in the Olympics. In fact, he dropped out of sprinting at the age of 14 because he wasn’t very fast. He then became an amazing coach to many olympians. Although Glen never ran the kind of races that Usain did, Usain would be the first to admit he wouldn’t run as fast if it weren’t for Glen’s great coaching. On the other hand, we’ve all heard stories of hockey or football greats who made poor coaches. While it’s possible for a great CEO to become a great coach. It’s not necessarily the case, nor is it a requirement.

Ability
Coaching and team facilitation are skills that take years to develop and hone. They are each combinations of technical, behavioural and relationship skills that are best developed alongside keen self-awareness and attention to self-improvement. This doesn’t happen overnight.

One way to get a sense of someone’s coaching and facilitation skills is to look for how many years they’ve been practicing each of them, and how much. Another way is to notice their coaching skills in your initial conversations with them, and to ask them to do a brief facilitated trial session with your team. 

Someone with good coaching skills will cause you to think more deeply about your team, your business and your life. They will inspire you to a new level of openness. They will challenge you by asking tough questions. They may share some principles, but they will avoid trying to tell you what you should do. They will facilitate your thinking so that you have the realizations, you come to the conclusions, and you make the decisions that are right for you in that moment… because you came to them yourself (albeit with some support and guidance) and therefore you believe in those decisions. Yet, they will also teach, share experiences, observations and opinions when needed. 

A coach’s team facilitation skills are related to, but different from, their coaching skills. Great coaching skills enhance a coach’s facilitation skills. But group facilitation is also a skill in itself. To get a sense of these, ask the coach if they’d be willing to do a brief session with you and your top team for you to see them in action. A coach with strong facilitation skills will help your team stay focused, explore the issues from all angles, and come to clear decisions with the strong support and commitment from the whole team.

Results
At the end of the day, what you want from engaging a business, growth & executive team coach are results. That said, the coach won’t create those results. You and your team will. But the coach will help you and your team 1) set goals that are important to you, 2) determine how to get there, 3) solve problems along the way, and 4) achieve those results over time. Their support and guidance needs to be focused and purposeful.

One good sign that a coach is results-focused is to notice what they ask you in your initial conversation. Do they try to understand what you want for your company, your work life and your personal life in the future? Do they get you thinking deeply about the biggest challenges to getting there? And do they demonstrate a clear understanding of the path to tackle those challenges and get to where you want to be. 

Another way to gain confidence that you’ll get results is by asking about the work they’ve done with other CEOs and executive teams. They should be able to share clear examples of challenges they’ve helped them overcome and results they’ve helped them produce.

In the end, the results a coach has helped produce with other companies won’t guarantee you’ll get great results with them yourself. But you’ll have some level of confidence that they can help you get there. The rest will depend on how well you work together.

Chemistry
Chemistry is important in an ongoing relationship like you will have with an executive team coach. You’ll work closely together and for some time, so you might as well also enjoy it.

This largely comes down to being aligned on what drives each of you. What’s their Why, as Simon Sinek says, and does that connect with yours? Do they want to make a difference in the world that’s compatible with the difference you want to make? If so, you’re more likely to work well together. 

You’ll also want to look for clues that you have compatible values… that similar things are important to you in life. Your coach will be more emotionally invested in your efforts when they believe in what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.

And lastly, you just get along. There will be ease in interacting with the coach. You’ll feel comfortable and accepted, but also kindly challenged to do better.

Picking a business, growth & executive team coach that fits you, your team and company takes a bit of thought… about their knowledge, experience, ability, results and chemistry. But the results will be well worth the effort, especially if you’re also a good fit for coaching.


How can a great business, growth & executive team coach help you grow a thriving company?
​To find out what areas a qualified executive team coach can help you improve in 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.