 We can all benefit from making self-care a higher priority as we start off the new year.
This will benefit us certainly, and also our leadership teams, companies and communities. One excellent resource is a book I use with CEOs that represents, what I believe, is the missing link for CEOs of mid-sized growth companies. Written by my colleague, senior Gravitas Impact coach, Kevin Lawrence in Vancouver BC, Your Oxygen Mask First is a breakthrough in the art of leadership, self-management AND self-care. We can find dozens of fantastic books and tools to learn the nuts and bolts of growing a successful company. And there are a few methodologies, like our Scaling Up method and 7 Attributes of Agile Growth, that bring many of those essential tools together to make them more accessible for mid-size companies. However, the missing link is the CEO factor: the leader themselves and their skills for taking care of themselves first, so they can take better care of their people and their business. Your Oxygen Mask First makes clear that it’s a myth that CEOs can build successful companies sustainably by putting everyone else first. In truth, this leads to burn-out and tragedy. It’s a dirty secret we need to talk about. Kevin wrote Your Oxygen Mask First based on the experiences and tools he gained over 20 years as a coach and advisor. The book covers the 17 habits Kevin has tried and tested for leaders to lead well AND take care of themselves, so they have a great company AND a great life. I highly recommend it to any CEO, president or executive leader. Book: 231 pgs, 3h46m audio. Find the book, ebook and audible book here. Are you ready to grow a great top team, company and life? Try our complimentary Growth Fitness Self-Assessment to find out where you, your leadership team and company shine and where you could improve in order to grow, improve profitability, consistency and your quality of life.  Build a stronger organisation with this great onboarding proces In partnership with Growth Faculty, we are pleased to offer you a 10% discount for Onboarded: Fast Track New Hires To Success - Live Virtual Masterclass with Brad Giles. Onboarding is a critical engagement and retention tool. 69% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they experience great onboarding. ** In this 60-minute masterclass, leadership coach and author of Onboarded, Brad Giles will share a simple step-by-step process to accelerate the effectiveness of new and existing team members. “The new hire traverses three stages of understanding, learning and applying, which should be embedded, whereby at the end they are a successful fit into the role,” says Brad. Founder of Evolution Partners, Brad works with CEOs and leadership teams to build enduring, great companies. He is the author of Made to Thrive and Onboarded. “By implementing Brad's onboarding strategies outlined in this book our team retention for new starters within the first 12 months doubled which had a huge impact on the culture of Aventus and ultimately our financial results.” Darren Holland, CEO, Aventus Tuesday, February 21, 2023 - 7pm in MB, 7pm in SK NON-MEMBER: $130* | OUR NETWORK: $115*  *Prices quoted in USD. **Arlene Hirsh, ‘Don’t Underestimate the Importance of Good Onboarding’, 2017, SHRM, from Click Boarding data
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.  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:
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. 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. How To Break The Profitable Growth Ceiling
How to Increase Momentum to Grow How to Strengthen Your Competitive Strategy How to Build an A-Player Leadership Team How to Get Your Team Executing Efficiently How To Find Time To Work On The Business How to Change Your Mindset to Grow and Thrive Why a DIY Mindset Slows Growth 8 Types of External Guidance Why Leadership Training Doesn’t Work Do You Have What It Takes? The 5 Criteria to Pick an Executive Team Coach  In our experience, CEOs often don’t pay a lot of attention to the financial optimization of their company, unless their accounting is broken, they have a financial background themselves, or they have a strong CFO at the table. In this Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches webinar, Dominick Becivenga, former VP with Citibank and current President of A Team Consulting in New York, discusses how small to Mid-Market CEO’s could create financial predictability and a competitive advantage by investing in their financial and accounting technology and strategic talent. Subscribe to Gravitas Impact podcast: Android
What can you do to optimize your finances? To find out what you and your leadership team can do to improve your financial position to 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 5 to check your financial 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.  When it comes to developing a revolutionary product, or responding to one developed by a competitor, why do so many established companies fail?
Innovation thought-leader Clayton Christensen shares his research and guidance in The Innovator’s Dilemma. There are “two principles of good management” commonly taught in business higher education: 1) always listen to and respond to the needs of your best customers, and 2) focus investments on those innovations that promise the highest returns. In practice, however, these principles are often the root causes for a company’s demise. The central idea is that companies become successful by developing their organizational capabilities to do the work needed to sell, produce and deliver products or services to their target market. However, when a related disruptive technology or opportunity emerges, the customer market is somewhat different, at least initially. And the organizational capabilities needed to be successful also differ. Established companies often try to respond to, or develop, a disruptive technology from within their company, using their legacy organizational capabilities. This tends to fail. Alternatively, they change their existing capabilities to support success with the new technology, which usually erodes their core business. The solution, for truly revolutionary technologies, is to spin out a separate team that can develop the new organizational capabilities. Internal teams, by contrast, work best for evolutionary technologies. Note that Clayton Christensen’s research, outlined in this book, aligns well with the findings of Chris Zook summarized in Profit from the Core (which we introduced last month). In that book, Zook outlines how companies are most successful when they innovate with extensions of their existing products and services, extensions that leverage their existing capabilities, rather than entirely new offerings that require different capabilities. The added nugget in Christensen’s research is that entirely revolutionary offerings CAN be successful, but not WITHIN the company. A separate organization, with unique capabilities, needs to be created to focus on that disruptive opportunity. Book: 288 pages. Book summary on Soundview: 8 pages, 18 minutes audio. How can you improve your innovativeness? To find out how to improve your innovativeness 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.  Learn how adaptability, resilience and optimism can help you manage change In partnership with Growth Faculty, we are delighted to offer you a 10% to a Live Virtual Masterclass – Adaptability: Your New Competitive Advantage – with John Spence. Constant disruption creates anxiety and stress. To survive and even thrive in this pressure-filled environment, individuals and organizations must increase their Adaptability Quotient (AQ). From a business standpoint, AQ is the ability of your organisation to be agile and adjust its course in response to unexpected shifts in the marketplace. On a personal level, AQ measures your ability to react quickly and effectively to change. In a new 90-minute masterclass with highly rated speaker and coach John Spence, learn what it takes to become more adaptable, agile and adjustable. In this session, you will:
A very popular Growth Faculty speaker, John’s last masterclass was rated 9.5/10 by attendees. “Three keys to success in business are focus, discipline and action.” - John Spence Tuesday, February 7, 2023 - 6pm in MB, 6pm in SK NON-MEMBER: $130* | OUR NETWORK: $115* *Prices quoted in USD. 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.  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 senior 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 leadership training participants 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 the business 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, causing others to 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 about prioritizing. As a result, performance doesn’t improve. 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 senior 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, our experience has been that these systems fall into five areas:
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:
This approach will ensure the right systems are in place and working to support the leadership learning that takes place as a part of this. At this point in the article, a CEO or business owner might be considering simply attending leadership training with their senior 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:
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 mindset slows growth. So, how can a CEO and their senior 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 & Executive Team Coach. If Executive Team Coaching seems like it might be the right option for you, the next question is are you the right fit for an Executive 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.  As a CEO and owner of a mid-size company works to build and strengthen their organization, several barriers often get in the way. In this Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches webinar, Sara Castiglioni from Buenos Aires, Ph.D in Leadership & Systemic Innovation, takes us through those barriers to change and innovation, and explains the things CEOs and owners can do to break through. Note that all the barriers and solutions have to do with people and behaviour, starting with the CEO. This podcast is not for the faint of heart. Subscribe to Gravitas Impact podcast: Android
What can you do to evolve your mid-size company? To find out what you and your leadership team could do to innovate and change 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.  Have you had good success and are now considering diversifying your business to protect it? You might want to think again.
Profit from the Core, by Chris Zook with James Allen, quickly became an international best seller when it was published in 2001 just after the dot-com bust. Profit from the Core: A Return to Growth in Turbulent Times, is the latest version, released in 2010. It provides guidance for managers to improve growth by focusing on their core business, rather than weakening their business by branching out into new unrelated areas. The book is based on more than ten years of Bain & Company research and analysis and is still relevant and useful today. It argues that most companies diversify well before tapping into the full growth and profitability potential of their core business – that mix of target market, product offering, distribution channels, unique capabilities and other critical strategic assets that can establish a market leader position. Investing in that core business offers the most growth and profit potential. Paradoxically, our core business is often already our most profitable business line. When growth in the core is fully maximized, carefully adding “adjacencies” that reinforce it can further its growth. Otherwise, diversifying usually distracts from and weakens the core business, and the company’s growth and profitability. While the research seems strong, expect a bit of a technical read. Book: 192 pages. Ebook with Read-Aloud available on Google Play Books. Book summary on Soundview: 8 pages, 22 minutes audio. How can you improve your profitability? To find out how to improve your profitability 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 5 to check your profitability management 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.  Techniques to Reduce Stress, Burnout and Negative Thinking In partnership with Growth Faculty, we are delighted to offer you 10% discount to a Virtual Book Club Interview – The Mindful High Performer – with Chelsea Pottenger. Reflecting on the last two years, you’ve probably worked harder than ever… but are you happier? According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), one in five people is going through a mental health crisis at any given time. In The Mindful High Performer, author Chelsea Pottenger guides you through simple, science-based tools to achieve optimal mental health, enabling you to operate at a high-performance level without feeling overwhelmed, overworked or simply over it. During a live, virtual 45-minute, book club interview, Chelsea will share her personal mental health journey and:
“Chelsea is a special soul whose practical tips can help you change your life. Her simple strategies have helped me to calm my busy mind!” - Jessica Rowe BOOK YOUR SPOT TODAY AND GET A COPY OF THE BOOK INCLUDED! Tuesday, December 6, 2022 - 6pm in MB, 6pm in SK NON-MEMBER: $75* | OUR NETWORK: $69* *Prices quoted in USD. 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.  In the previous 5 Minute Growth Tips article, I wrote about how CEOs can speed up the process of implementing best practices in their leadership team and company by getting outside, help rather than using a Do-It-Yourself approach.
So what kind of services are available and how do they all compare? When evaluating the options, we want to keep in mind the key underlying challenges we want help with to implement the structures, systems and processes needed to grow profitably, and enjoy the ride. These challenges include:
Note that all these challenges involve not just technical changes (eg. how we set goals, run a more effective interview, or put together an effective meeting agenda), but also changes to how we and our leadership team members behave (eg. learning to say no to goals that are important but not top priority, developing the discipline to drill into a job applicant’s past, or practicing the restraint to let all team members speak first). So we’ll want to look for help with both technical and behavioural improvements when we consider the options. Here, we’ll explore the eight most common types of outside support I’ve seen CEOs and business owners consider over my 17 years working with them:
Below, I’ve described each type of service as if it were pure. But they rarely are. There are business consultants who also offer strategic planning facilitation, and HR consultants who also do executive coaching. By reviewing the summaries below you should have a feel for who offers what even if they offer more than one type of service. CEO Peer Forums CEO peer forums are peer groups of CEOs and owners from non-competing companies. They usually meet once a month for a half day to a day. This includes sharing wins and obstacles, hearing other members’ experiences, and sharing goals and commitments to apply what they discovered. In most peer forum meetings, there will also be a presentation from a guest speaker, or from the moderator, on a topic of interest to the group. The Pros: CEOs and owners develop relationships with peers who understand where they are coming from. Being a CEO or business owner can be a lonely job because no one inside the company understands what they’re going through. A CEO forum solves this problem. It can also be a great place for networking. Keep in mind that most CEO forum groups frown upon any kind of sales activities in the group, including asking for referrals and introductions to other business owners. The Cons: While CEOs will hear others’ experiences of how they handled certain situations, they’ll need to keep in mind that the tactics shared may or may not be proven best practices. While an approach may have worked for their CEO peer, it may not work in their own unique environment. Similarly, the tactics shared may have gotten the peer CEO through the situation, but may not have produced excellent results. Members will also want to keep in mind that their own description of the problem will be the basis of the solutions others share. If we don’t fully see our problem, or we’re biased in how we see it, the solutions other members share could be misguided. Without others seeing our situation first hand, there is no way for our CEO peers to be truly objective with the solutions they offer. As well, when a CEO peer forum member is implementing solutions they hear, they then have to convince their leadership team that the problem exists and that the solution they heard will work, because their team members were not part of the discussion. This can lead to hesitation, if not resistance, from their leadership team. Business Consultants Business consultants aim to provide analysis and insights to a CEO or other leader on what needs to change. Business consultants vary from “pair-of-hands consultants”, who are hired to carry out work the company directs them to do, through to “expert consultants”, who review information, meet with team members and provide recommendations for what to change or improve. In between these two types are “collaborative consultants.” They do the same work as expert consultants but work hand-in-hand with the client to gather information and develop recommendations, so the client builds some capability in-house. The Pros: Experienced and effective business consultants can provide insight on a focused problem that is technical in nature, whether it is about business processes, financial management, accounting, marketing activities, or sales processes, in short, within the various functional areas of a business. They can also provide validation for a high stakes decision by gathering more rigorous data and doing a more thorough analysis than the client has the ability or resources to do themselves. The Cons: Business consultants are not often experts at supporting the implementation of their recommendations. I’ve met many business owners who have hired consultants only to have the report still sitting on a shelf, collecting dust. In my experience, there are many more consultants who only make recommendations than those who will stand behind those recommendations to see them through. That said, some consultants will work as contractors to implement new processes or systems, manage and maintain them for a while and then train others in the company to take them over. However, this only works for trainable technical skills as opposed to behavioural skills, which take much more than training. Changes in behavior require the CEO and leadership team to realize that they are part of the problem and that they need to change how they do things. The challenges we’ve been discussing in this 5 Minute Growth Tips article series involve alot of behaviour change. So doing analysis and making a recommendation usually does not work. Instead, we need to get leaders to think about their part in the situation and consider what they personally need to do differently, so that they will take ownership of the solution and change their behavior. While some consultants have this capability, it’s generally not what consultants do. HR Consultants Given that working on our leadership team processes and systems involves changing behaviours, we might consider those we think of as experts on people: HR consultants. They typically take a similar approach to broader business consultants, but focus on the human resource management function. Again, those who use an expert consulting approach will review documents, hold interviews and provide recommendations. Those who use a collaborative approach will do the same, but with the client rather than for them. However, HR Consultants’ will typically limit themselves to HR processes and systems: job design, hiring, orientation, onboarding, training, performance planning and review, compensation, disciplining, dismissal and labor law. Some HR consultants will provide individual or organizational assessment services based on surveys or interviews. And some also provide basic strategic planning services (see below). The Pros: When a CEO or owner is absolutely certain that the main area for improvement in the leadership team is a technical one related to how individuals are found, managed, paid and removed, an HR consultant may be appropriate. However, keep in mind that the solutions again are technical ones, not behavioural. And the growth challenges we have been discussing in this 5 Minute Growth Tip article series are primarily behavioural. The Cons: HR consultants don’t typically support leadership team members to change and improve their behaviours as leaders or team members. Their organizational assessments can be helpful. However, HR consultants will not necessarily pick up on subtle leadership and interpersonal behaviours that could be as or more important factors. Their strategic planning facilitation services often cover the basics of mission, vision and values, with little or no attention paid to competitive market positioning or execution. Strategic Planning Consultants and Facilitators While business and HR consultants provide recommendations, strategic planning consultants and facilitators moderate leadership team discussions to come up with their own solutions, decisions and plans. The “consultant” in “strategic planning consultant” usually means they recommend the process for strategic planning the leadership team will use to make decisions. The strategic planning consultant doesn’t usually recommend what the leadership team should do in their business. Instead they facilitate those discussions and decision-making. The Pros: Experienced, trained, strategic planning facilitators can be great at moderating and guiding conversations to arrive at clear, well thought out decisions with a level of buy-in and commitment from the team. Having an outside, experienced facilitator also frees up the CEO to participate in the conversation rather than trying to lead the meeting effectively while also contributing. The Cons: Many strategic planning facilitators are well versed in the basic planning processes of SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats), Core Values, Mission, Vision and priorities. However, I have met very few who know how to facilitate competitive strategy decisions and execution planning and monitoring, let alone other key issues that often arise, like role clarity, talent assessments, profitability, cash flow and mindset, just to name a few of the dozens of practices that help with growing a mid-sized company. Team Building Facilitators and Trainers Team building facilitators generally come in three flavors. There are those who do personality assessment sessions, those who lead team building learning activities, and other event and activity businesses who have branched out into this space. Personality assessment sessions have leadership team members learn about each others’ personality types and how to work better together. Team building learning activities include fun, social events intended to bring awareness to basic collaboration skills like listening, communicating, planning, problem solving, etc. Some examples of these activities include team obstacle courses, activities to build objects with unusual materials, or trust falls. Other event and activity businesses, like wall climbing studios, escape rooms and axe throwing centres, also offer their activities for companies looking to do team building. The Pros: Personality assessments are a worthwhile team building activity. By understanding our own and each other’s strengths and weaknesses, preferences and frustrations, leadership team members learn to be open and vulnerable. This often results in a higher level of trust within the team and team members communicating more effectively with others. Team building learning activities and other event and activity companies can be fun for team members, create structured time together in a more relaxed environment, and can remind them of basic team skills. The Cons: The trust and communication skills developed in a personality assessment session can fizzle rather quickly afterwards. This is because these sessions rarely get into the other critical aspects of leadership team collaboration, like having productive conversations and conflict, making clear decisions that all team members are committed to, and holding each other accountable for execution and results. So while personality assessments are good as far as they go, they don’t go far enough. Similarly, the skills identified in team building activities rarely lead to meaningful application within real life decision-making and execution. These activities usually take place in a separate, fun environment or involve role plays. Without application and practice in the challenging realities of the business, the skills won’t stick. Leadership and Executive Coaches When CEOs and owners of mid-size businesses think of a coach, they generally think of an executive or leadership coach. This is someone they would talk to one-on-one on a regular basis who would support them in becoming a stronger leader, in curbing a habit they want to change or achieving an important goal. A leadership or executive coach doesn’t analyse the CEO’s business or recommend solutions. Instead, they guide the CEO in working through the problem themselves. In this way, the CEO reflects on their own part in the challenges they face, takes ownership for it, and works on changing those behaviours to achieve a better outcome. Leadership and executive coaches also hold the CEO or business owner accountable for change, progress and results, given CEOs often have no one to play that role for them. The Pros: Executive and leadership coaches can be a great support to help a leader really move the needle on how they show up, work through problems, interact with others and manage themselves. Leadership and executive coaches also help with execution by supporting the CEO or owner on an ongoing basis. In this way, they guide the CEO through the intricacies and hiccups of making new behaviours stick in the face of day-to-day real-life challenges. Cons: A key limitation of one-on-one executive and leadership coaching is that the CEOs of mid-size companies may often learn things that they want their leadership team members to learn as well. Yet they’ll often find it difficult to teach those concepts to their people themselves. They may then find they have to get the same one-on-one coaching for one or more of their team members. Another limitation is executive and leadership team coaching addresses the individual’s behaviour, but doesn’t fully address the relationships and interactions between the individual and someone else, because the other person’s perspectives and behaviours are not factored in. In a similar way, it doesn’t address the relationships and interactions across a leadership team. Beyond that, leadership and executive coaching tends to focus more on behaviours and less so on the technical business aspects a CEO and leadership team need to also pay attention to, areas like: strategy, execution, systems, customer, profitability and cash flow. Business Coaches Like leadership and executive coaches, business coaches work one-on-one with owners, serve more as problem-solving guides rather than do-it-for-you analysts, and hold them accountable for progress. In contrast to leadership and executive coaches, business coaches tend to focus more on business aspects and less so on leadership behaviours. They often work with owners of small to mid-size companies to guide them through key business decisions. The Pros: A seasoned, trained, certified business coach can be a great resource for owners of small businesses: those who don’t yet have a management team and don’t yet need one. In these businesses, the owner is the key decision maker for every function in the business - from marketing, sales and production, to HR, accounting and IT. Given the multiple areas a business owner needs to pay attention to, an experienced business coach can help them find their way and keep on top of everything. The Cons: Like leadership and executive coaches, business coaches work one-on-one with the business owner. Once a business grows to the point of having or needing a management team (usually around 10 to 20 employees), the business owner will have one or more managers leading certain functions, whether that’s marketing and sales, production, or finance and administration. At this point, the business owner may want these other managers to receive professional guidance from their business coach as well. However, this can lead to problems where decisions made by the owner become disjointed from the decisions made by the other manager(s). This will cause different parts of the business to go in different directions and cause unnecessary conflict, inefficiencies, problems for employees and customers, and subpar performance overall. Business Growth & Executive Team Coaches In the last 10 to 15 years, a new type of coaching service has evolved to meet the needs of mid-sized company CEOs and their whole senior leadership teams. Some of these coaches call their service Leadership Team Coaching. Others call it Business Growth Advisory Services, Business and Leadership Growth Coaching or CEO and Executive Team Coaching. Regardless of the label, this hybrid service includes a combination of regular, ongoing, one-on-one CEO coaching and facilitated leadership team planning and coaching sessions, whether quarterly or monthly. This newer breed of coaching also uses some of the same group facilitation methods as strategic planning facilitators and team building trainers, but with a more holistic set of both leadership and business best practices, so they can support and guide the large majority of decisions and actions a CEO and leadership team need to take on their growth journey. The Pros: With an experienced, trained and certified Business Growth & Executive Team Coach, CEOs and owners of mid-sized companies get many of the benefits of the other options above, with few of the disadvantages. A seasoned Executive Team Coach provides a caring, empathetic, understanding ear because they’ve seen the CEO’s situation many times before. They share and teach proven best practices that have been shown to get results. The whole leadership team learns these best practices and buys into them more easily. Executive Team Coaches act as an outside, objective observer who can point things out that the CEO and team may not be aware of. They support both the technical and business improvements and the behavioural and leadership change needed for the leadership team to truly move forward. Working with the leadership team as a whole enables improved interactions and relationships across the team. They guide the leadership team through critical real-life, real-time decisions and planning, in ways that ensure the whole team is clear, focused and aligned. They enable the CEO to fully participate rather than worrying about running the meetings. They support high level strategic thinking decisions right down to detailed execution planning, accountability and course correction, so that real progress is made. The Cons: Business Growth & Executive Team Coaches are more expensive than leadership, executive or business coaches as well as strategic planning and team building facilitators. This is because of the much greater value they bring in terms of decision-making quality, execution follow-through and business results. It’s also because of the years of business, coaching and facilitation experience needed to be effective guiding a CEO and their whole leadership team. That said, the whole leadership team benefits from the service, not just the CEO. So the investment per person can still be lower than some of the other options above. This kind of service is also not for those who are looking for a quick fix. Recall that growing a company involves both technical and behavioural improvements at all levels of the company, within every department, and across a number of different areas: leadership, talent, strategy, execution, cashflow, customer, systems. It takes ongoing focus, commitment and discipline to implement the many best practices needed to grow and profitably. And so business growth advisors and leadership team coaches provide the ongoing support for CEOs and their leadership teams to lay the foundation and build from there over time. For CEOs and owners of mid-sized companies who’ve recognized a Do-It-Yourself approach is too slow and are looking for outside support and guidance, there are a number of options to choose from. However, in my experience, to see real improvement, progress and results within themselves, across their leadership team and down through their organization, Business Growth & Executive Team Coaches offer the best investment to grow profitably and enjoy the ride. While an Executive Team Coach may be best for you and your company. Will you be a good fit for them? In my next article, I’ll share what it takes to be successful with a Business Growth & Executive Team Coach. How can you grow a thriving company? To find out what to focus on to 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.  Several years ago, I came across a gem of a book: Low-Hanging Fruit, 77 Eye-Opening Ways to Improve Productivity and Profits, by Jeremy Eden and Terri Long.
It’s based on years of actual application and it resonated with me based on work I’ve done with clients. The basic premise is that productivity and profits can be increased more easily and quickly by addressing many small sources of waste and ineffectiveness instead of trying a few big, risky transformational initiatives. The “77 eye-opening ways” require involving front-line employees. This helps ensure real problems are identified - ones that ultimately affect productivity and the customer experience. It also helps ensure realistic solutions are generated that will make a real difference and that employees can more easily buy into it. As well, employees become more engaged by being involved in and seeing change that produces results. The authors also suggest the approach is simpler, less costly and more flexible than a formal process improvement method, like Lean. This book is very practical, getting to specific methods rather than vague, theoretical strategies often described in many business books. And it’s as useful today as it was when I first read it. Book: 224 pages, 4 hour 40 minute audio book. Book summary on Soundview: 8 pages, 19 minute audio summary. How can you improve your profitability? To find out how to improve your profitability 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 5 to check your profitability management 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.  Leadership advice for maximising productivity, wherever you or your team is working In partnership with the Growth Faculty, we are delighted to offer you a 25% discount to Hybrid Work. Maximum Productivity. with Bob Pozen. Getting more done and doing it well (rather than working a ton of hours) is the key to success in today’s knowledge economy. Yet many organisations are still counting hours rather than output. In this 90-minute masterclass, MIT Senior Lecturer, author and business leader, Bob Pozen will teach how to move your organisation to a high-performance system, based on each team’s priorities and implemented through success metrics. Learn how each team should design the optimal hybrid workplace for its own members – getting the most out of the common time in the office and the solitary work done at home. Take away practical skills and strategies for enhancing the productivity of any team by:
This highly practical and information-packed live, virtual masterclass is ideal for leaders of teams, business owners, heads of departments and anyone who wants to help their team get more done. Tuesday, November 1, 2022 - 7pm in MB, 6pm in SK NON-MEMBER: $130* | OUR NETWORK: $115*  *Prices quoted in USD. How can you improve your hybrid workplace productivity?
To find out how to improve execution efficiency 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 4 to check your company’s talent processes. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation.  Many organizations spend 100% of their time talking to the 10-20% of customers who are unhappy. This type of fear-based reactive selling costs organizations millions. What is this REACTIVE selling costing YOUR organization in revenue, time and effectiveness? In this Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches webinar, Alex Goldfayn, author of The Wall Street Journal bestseller Selling Boldly, walks through his PROACTIVE selling approach to engaging clients and prospects in new, effective ways, from asking “Did You Know” questions to getting referrals. The Selling Boldly proactive approach will change how your sales team approaches business. Subscribe to Gravitas Impact podcast: Android
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.  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:
Some of the cons include:
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:
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.  While profit is obviously critical to any business, it is often simplistically depicted as the result of maximizing revenues and minimizing expenses.
However, companies often wrestle with the challenge of determining what expenses are critical to making their revenues, and which ones can be spared without affecting the top line. One book on profitability demystifies profit creation. The Art of Profitability, by Adrian Slywotzky, demonstrates that profitability is achieved through the appropriate choice of business strategy, or business model, if you prefer. Through the engaging parable of a strategy veteran coaching an aspiring strategy professional, Slywotzky covers 23 common and not-so-common “profit models.” The Customer Solution Profit model, for example, is when a company invests significant up front time and energy to learn about a customer to develop tailored solutions just for them. These then generate ongoing profits for a long time after. Multi-Component Profit is where the same product is sold to the same customers through different channels at different prices to maximize profitability (eg. Coke). The key message is that profit creation is an experimental art rather than a certain science. But it can be learned and practiced. The story also vividly illustrates effective coaching of strategic thinking, or of any other skill. Book: 272 pages, full audio - 5 hours 36 minutes. Soundview Summary: 4 pages, 16 minute audio. How can you improve your profitability? To find out how to improve your profitability 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 5 to check your profitability management 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.  Supporting, Developing and Retaining High Performers In partnership with Growth Faculty, we are delighted to offer you a $50 USD discount to Increase Your Influence, Leadership and Impact at Work, with Liz Wiseman. Every leader is navigating the effects of the global pandemic and learning what it takes to be adaptive and resilient to change when change is the only guarantee of the future. In a competitive market, the demand for Impact Players – those standout contributors who create extraordinary value everywhere they work – is higher than ever. In this 2.5 hour live virtual event, Liz Wiseman, bestselling author of Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter and Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger and Multiply Your Impact combines her brightest work to help leaders win the war on talent, build sustainable, high-performing teams and drive lasting results. “We don’t tend to drift into better behaviour.” – Liz Wiseman Impact Players are agile, easy to work with and get the job done even in times of uncertainty, like the one we’re in now. Once you’ve identified an Impact Player, how do you amplify their impact and keep them in your business? Leaders need to manage in a way that’s worthy of an Impact Player, providing the reward and recognition they deserve. Monday, October 17, 2022 - 5pm in MB, 4pm in SK NON-MEMBER: $295* | OUR NETWORK: $245* *Prices quoted in USD. How can you develop high performers?
To find out how to develop your talent to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete sections 2 to check your company’s talent processes. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation.  Simon Sinek has popularized the scientifically proven idea that a company’s purpose, and how much the leaders promote, act and live by that purpose, is one of many key ingredients for building a great culture and workplace. Yet many midsize company owners and CEOs find it difficult to bring their company’s purpose to life and help employees connect to that purpose. In this Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches webinar, Petr Ludwig, author of The End of Procrastination and founder of Procrastination.com and the GrowJob Institute, based in New York, Prague and Dubai, shares how CEOs need to be leaders of the purpose movement in their own lives to inspire others to find their purpose at work. Subscribe to Gravitas Impact podcast: Android
How can you strengthen your leadership? To find out how to become a better leader 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 1 and 2 to check your leadership and people 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. That said, we 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 we captured on paper the advantages of working at our company, and do we sell great candidates on those virtues? 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 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 jump on 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 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 then 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 do these essential things. By doing so, they will get clear on what they need to do differently to free themselves up to shift increasingly from doing to leading. And, more generally, the practice of internal locus of control will help any leader, and their top team, look at how they’re contributing to a problem, and what they can do to influence it. Another way leaders contribute to problems in their company is by trying to figure things out all on their own. We’ll tackle that topic in my next 5 Minute Growth Tip article. What can you do to grow your mid-size company? To find out what you and your leadership team could do to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation.  Best practices for being competitive and impactful in a post-pandemic world In partnership with Growth Faculty, we are delighted to offer you a 10% discount to Competing In The New World of Work, a 1.5-hour live and interactive virtual event with Keith Ferrazzi. The pandemic forced leaders to shed outdated ways of doing business and make bold leaps into the future of work. In this live, virtual masterclass, New York Times bestselling author Keith Ferrazzi shares the emerging best practices of thousands of c-suite executives and teaches how to remain competitive and impactful in a post-pandemic world. Keith will offer a bold new vision for what the organisation of the future looks like —digital, distributed, inclusive, resilient, empathic— and the emerging best leadership practices that will redefine success in the ever-evolving world of work. “Success in any field, but especially in business is about working with people, not against them.” – Keith Ferrazzi You’ll leave inspired, ready to catapult your organisation forward, embrace new realities and discover new frontiers Based on an ambitious global research initiative involving thousands of executives, innovators, and change-makers who have redefined their strategies, business models, organisational systems, and even their cultures, this masterclass offers leaders the inspiration and the road map to:
Tuesday, September 13, 2022 - 8pm in MB, 7pm in SK NON-MEMBER: $130* | OUR NETWORK: $115* *Prices quoted in USD. How can you adapt your leadership?
To find out how to adapt your leadership to the post-pandemic world 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 2 to check your company’s leadership and people 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 our webinar earlier this year with Greg Crabtree, speaker, entrepreneur, financial expert and author of Simple Numbers 2.0, he shared what returns entrepreneurs should expect from their business: 5% net profit is survival, 10% is a good business, and 15% is a great business. These numbers are true for about 70% of businesses. He and his firm have since discovered a financial metric and standard that works for any company, regardless of industry, and that helps CEOs find surefire ways to improve their return on investment. In this Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches podcast, Crabtree shares this better metric, the additional levers to improve your return and how, contrary to a lot of financial advice, a business owner’s best investment decision is often not to diversify into other businesses, but rather to reinvest in their current business. Greg also shares how his background growing up on a chicken farm to becoming an accountant has led to how strongly he feels about helping entrepreneurs create security for their families. Subscribe to Gravitas Impact podcast: Android
How can you improve your company’s return on investment? To find out how to increase your return 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 5 to check your profit 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 my experience, one of the most overlooked disciplines in business is pricing. This is also reflected in the small number of books on the topic, compared to those on leadership, marketing, strategy, etc.
How often do you and your leadership team ask: Could our prices be increased? Are we discounting too much? How can we protect our pricing as competitors enter? How can we price to capture other segments of the market? This topic is all the more relevant in the current environment of high inflation. It’s critical right now for many companies to figure out how much they can pass on supplier price increases to their customers without losing them or drastically reducing volumes. These questions, and others, are covered in depth in Pricing With Confidence by Reed Holden and Mark Burton. As pricing consultants to large firms, they are well versed in the internal organizational dynamics that make pricing challenging. A key theme in their book is “build your selling backbone”. This requires thoroughly understanding the value of your product or service relative to alternatives in the market. That means analysing the added (or lesser) financial value of your offering based on the results it delivers or enables for your customers. The authors also share insights on how to shift pricing at different stages of a product’s life. Although clunky to read, and technical at times, this book is well worth the time investment. Book: 202 pages, full audio - 7 hours 23 minutes. How can you improve your pricing and profitability? To find out how to improve your profitability 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 5 to check your profitability management practices. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation.  Over the last five 5 Minute Growth Tip articles, I’ve described the critical leadership team best practices to implement the structures, systems and processes to enable profitable growth.
However, you might be thinking, “I can see how it all works, but I’m really busy! I don’t have time for these things. I don’t even have time for family, friends or even myself.” But might there be a way to make time? How might you successfully do less of what you’re doing right now so you have the time to put these best practices in place, to enable the profitable growth you want to see, and lead the life you want to live? How can you get out of the weeds? The simple solutions One could maybe end this article right here with the trite saying “delegate and elevate”. This simple tactic may do the job for you. Start by listing out all the things you do on a week to week or month to month basis. Take a hard look at everything that could be handed off to others. You may find there are a number of quick wins that will create time in your calendar to put some serious effort into your leadership team and the company. Sit down with each person you’ll delegate to. Be clear on your expectations and standards. Show them how you want things done, praise their progress and good work. Redirect them if they slip backwards. But sometimes handing things off to others doesn’t seem feasible. Your team may be really busy too. Maybe they feel tapped out. Another option is to hire another leader to take over some of your accountabilities. For example, you may still be leading sales, marketing, operations, R&D or administration. What would it be like to have someone else doing a great job fully leading one or more of those areas for you? Identify what you want to delegate, hire another leader with a great track record in those areas and get on with making the changes and improvements to the business to get your return on that investment. This solution assumes your company is in a financial position to invest in making that hire. But sometimes, that might not be feasible. The last simpler option is to find quick ways to improve profitability so you can afford to invest in another leader who will take on some of your accountabilities. The good news is that this can often be done with some small tweaks to the business. A one percent increase in pricing to customers, a one percent decrease in cost of goods sold and a one percent decrease in overhead costs can make a big difference to the bottom line: anywhere from 10 to 80% depending on your business model and cost structure. That can often be enough to invest in another leader. If these kinds of profit enhancing quick wins aren’t feasible in your company, you may feel stuck, like you’re in a chicken or egg position: you need to delegate to make more significant changes to improve profitability and invest in growth, but you need more profit to invest in leaders so you can delegate. The alternative solution Simple delegation, hiring another leader or quickly increasing profits to do so aren’t always an option. Sometimes the only other way is to get more done with the people we have. This means increasing your leadership team’s efficiency so your team members have the capacity to take on some of your roles and/or lead some internal change projects on your behalf. How do you do that? By getting the right people in the right seats, improving their execution and strengthening leadership team buy-in and accountability. Right people in the right seats This starts with defining the right functions on the leadership team and making adjustments to ensure you have the right person leading each function. Over time, if not early on, other leaders will be able take on functions you’re currently leading. The goal is to make sure each leader is highly productive leading their function(s) and driving high productivity in their respective teams. We also want them to behave in constructive ways (aligned with your core values) that minimize drama across the leadership team and within each of their departments. Leaders can become even more efficient by ensuring they have the right people in the right seats within their departments and that their people are also behaving constructively. See this article for more on getting the right people in the right seats. Efficient execution Having the right people in the right seats on your team provides a good foundation. But how much of their potential productivity you tap into will depend on how each leader and the team executes. Through improved execution practices, your leadership team members will deliver better results, need less attention from you, have capacity to take on one or more of your functions and lead improvement projects you might otherwise lead. Great execution involves: 1) each leader owning clear metrics and targets for the company and their respective functions for the year and the quarter, 2) each leader driving 2 to 3 clear priorities for change and improvement for the next year and quarter, with a 13 week sprint plan to make each one happen, and 3) a rhythm of efficient weekly, monthly and quarterly meetings to hold each other accountable to hit the numbers, move the priorities forward and set new priorities for the next quarter. Daily huddles also help speed things up by identifying obstacles to solve as soon as they come up. A note about choosing those few critical priorities: getting the right people in the right seats needs to be a top priority for the first quarter if you want to delegate and elevate yourself, and then have your leaders do the same. You will then be rewarded every quarter with a bit more capacity so you can work more on other priorities to move the company forward. See this article for more on efficient execution. Leadership team buy-in and accountability For any of this to work, the leadership team needs to be bought in and committed. The best way is to do this WITH your team, not TOO your team. Discuss and decide on leadership team functions and assignments, set metrics and targets, and decide on company priorities WITH your leadership team. This way, they’ll be bought into these changes and driven to make them happen. These practices will improve accountability and drive efficiency. You can strengthen accountability further by 1) leading by example in all these activities, 2) raising your expectations of your leaders, and 3) communicating in ways that maintain their natural motivation to execute. See this article for more on leadership team buy-in and accountability. Making it happen Getting the right people in the right seats, improving execution and getting leadership team buy-in and accountability will increase your team’s efficiency and enable you to delegate some of your functions and internal projects, so you can get out of the weeds. As you gain momentum, you’ll carve out more time for yourself and your team to work on strategy, implement other structures, systems, processes, and build capacity to grow and grow profitably. Ultimately, you’ll also start to be able to make more time for your family, rekindle old friendships and get back to some of the personal things you enjoy. You probably won’t delegate and elevate in one fell swoop. But bite off what you can and you’ll create capacity to bite off more as you go. For example, you might find that more than one leader needs to be replaced. Start with one in the first quarter. Replacing even just one unfit leader with an excellent one will help reduce your workload. This will give you some breathing room to make other changes. The same will hold true for the employee changes your leaders make in their departments. That said, at the foundation of all this is having a rhythm of efficient meetings to make decisions as a team, plan, execute and hold each other accountable. And that takes a commitment of time up front. Now you may be wondering, “I said I was too busy to implement the best practices for profitable growth, and now Jean-Guy is suggesting solving my busy-ness by implementing some of those same best practices…I said I’m too busy!” Here’s the thing… it’s like exercising. We can say, “I can’t run because I don’t have the stamina.” But the only way to build up the stamina is to start running. Not alot to start - maybe 500 meters. But start. After a few runs, you’ll be able to run more - maybe a kilometer. In not too long, you’ll have the stamina to run 5 kilometers, and then 10. It’s an investment that pays off. The nice thing is that it pays off as you go. You don’t have to wait until some magical point in the future. But the only way to start getting the payoff is to start. And sometimes that takes a shift in mindset. More on that in my next 5 Minute Growth Tip article. How can you strengthen delegation in your entrepreneurial company? To find out how to improve delegation in your business to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete sections 1, 2 and 4 to check your delegation practices. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation.  Many CEOs struggle with mastering their own productivity as they encourage a culture of accountability in their organization. They feel constantly busy, overwhelmed and inundated. In this Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches webinar, Hao Lam, author, coach and CEO of the Best in Class Education Center in Seattle, Washington, shares his own schedule to demonstrate the habits and tools he’s used to monitor and improve his time management skills in both his personal and professional life. Lam also shares his personal story of escaping Vietnam as a refugee, and finding his passion for providing education worldwide, as outlined in his book From Bad to Worse to Best in Class. Subscribe to Gravitas Impact podcast: Android
How can you and your team become more productive? To find out how to improve your productivity 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 4 to check your execution practices. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. |
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