 In a previous article, I shared how companies need to implement the structures, processes and systems needed 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 a company grows to 50, 100 or 200 employees, the CEO may feel like the company is no longer making real progress with those kinds of improvements. Any changes and improvements they want to make for their company don’t seem to get done, or don’t get done right. So, how can CEOs increase the momentum? We know that, as a company grows, the CEO has to get results increasingly through the members of 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. And the two keys to making this happen are 1) efficient leadership team buyin, and 2) accountability for execution. A power shift When a company is small, less than 10 or 15 employees, it’s more straightforward to get improvement projects done for the company. Often, as CEOs, we just do these projects ourselves. As we begin to delegate these projects more, we simply ask a supervisor or front-line employee to get it 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 “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 very 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 incentive 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 links in 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 have more influence to resist ideas and direction, or to suggest different ones. 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 therefore feels less influence to be able to simply ask others to take on and carry out improvement projects. They know they need these high influence leaders to make things happen. And they don’t want to lose their commitment by simply bossing them around. Meanwhile, the leaders themselves also feel less influenced by the CEO. 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 just 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 has 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 New York, 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:
As the leader of the team, the CEO needs to lead by example, be honest with themselves to ensure they have the right people in the right seats on their leadership team, and raise 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 and reminding leaders of decisions about improvement projects 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 buyin and team-based accountability for execution are the two keys for CEOs to enable continual improvement in their growing 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 quite 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. Thankfully, there are executive team coaches, like myself and my colleagues, to support these CEOs and their top teams along the way. Are you ready to grow a great top team, company and life? Try our Growth Readiness Self-Assessment to find out where you, your top team and company shine and where you could improve in order to grow, improve profitability, consistency and your quality of life.  In my work with the CEOs and Executive Teams of mid-size companies, I’ve often met CEOs who think it’s HR’s job to build the culture. They say “Oh that’s people stuff – so that’s HR’s job.” And that’s a big mistake. It’s actually the CEO’s job. Why is that? As the first featured speaker on Innovation Place’s new Brain Bites mini-video series, I shared what my colleagues and I have seen and what we teach as executive team coaches on this topic. Watch the 4 minute video here, or read the article below. The fundamentals
Let’s start with what culture really is, why it’s important, and how we build it. When you strip it all down, a company’s culture is how people, in the company, behave. Culture is important because the more that people behave in similar ways in a company, the faster the company moves. The more peoples’ behaviours are different, the more unproductive conflict there is and the slower the company moves. This is what a strong culture means. it’s one where people behave in similar ways. How do we create a strong culture? With core values. What are core values, really? Core values are a handful of rules we define to help, guide, employees’ behaviour – our culture. To get people to behave in similar ways, according to the core values – meaning to build a strong culture – the leaders have to do 3 things: - define the core values - repeat them often - live by them themselves Culture comes from leaders’ beliefs One mistake companies often make is they come up with core values that are about who they want to be, what sounds impressive, or what would look nice on their website. But that doesn’t work. Because the leaders won’t behave according to those core values, because they don’t believe in them. If the leaders don’t believe in them and don’t live them, employees won’t either. Because employees don’t do what leaders say, they do what leaders do. So if you want your company’s core values to help guide your employees to do what you do, the core values need to reflect what you really believe, and you need to behave according to those core values. HR can support, but the CEO should lead Putting HR in charge of culture takes this process out of the hands of those who really need to own it and lead it – the senior leadership team. And who needs to own the core values the most and believe in them the most? the CEO. Because the CEO will need to be the top ambassador of the core values, live those values him or her self fanatically, and hold the executive team members accountable to live them too. HR can support the CEO and leadership team’s culture building activities. And certainly, HR’s processes and policies, like employee selection and performance evaluation, need to align with the core values to help build a strong culture. But every process and policy, in every function or department, needs to align with the core values, not just HR. And even more important than the processes and policies is how the leadership team members behave – starting with the CEO. If those behaviours match our core values, people in the company will behave in similar ways – that is, the culture will get stronger, and the company will move faster. What if the CEO is too busy? If you’re a CEO, you may be thinking “but i’m too busy to build the culture”. Maybe so. And why are you too busy? Are you firefighting? Are you dealing with unproductive conflict? Are you dealing with problem employees? Chances are, a part of the reason you’re too busy is because you’re dealing with the symptoms of a weak culture. Strengthen the culture, and your job gets easier, and everyone else’s does too. And that’s why it’s the CEO’s job to lead culture-building. Are you ready to grow a great top team, company and life? Try our Growth Readiness Self-Assessment to find out where you, your top team and company shine and where you could improve in order to grow, improve profitability, consistency and your quality of life.  I invite you (and your executive team or senior leadership team) to join me at the February 2021 Gravitas Impact Global Leadership Summit. This virtual summit is going to be a high-value event with concrete, actionable takeaways - particularly since many of us slowed our learning rhythms throughout 2020. IMPORTANT NOTE: I know you are exhausted from virtual meetings, so I want you to know that this is NOT a “typical" Zoom lecture series format! Building atop highly rated Spring and Fall 2020 Summits, the February 2021 Gravitas Impact Leadership Virtual Summit is an opportunity for you and all of my coaching clients to come together for a premium learning experience via a half-day series of keynotes and practical, interactive breakout sessions. You’ll learn in three key areas:
Join us for this half-day of learning on February 25, 2021 from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm CST for only $295 per seat. Featured keynotes are:
At the end of the Summit, I’ll be hosting an exclusive breakout session for my clients and contacts who attend. We’ll dive even deeper into the learning and share our takeaways.
This is absolutely an event you and your senior team should attend! Click here for more information and to register:  As we headed into the holiday season, I encouraged the CEOs, presidents and owners I work and interact with to make time to rest and recharge.
2020 was a strange and especially stressful year for many of us. And I think 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.  2020 will go down in the history books...the world’s history books, and our own business and personal history books. We navigated a pandemic, an early lockdown, a reopening, a summer season where we made the most of being outdoors, the anxiety of kids going back to school, a partial lockdown, and now a uniquely isolated holiday season...all while readjusting every few weeks to the evolving requirements of staying safe and keeping others safe. It’s been tough on your family, on your leaders and your staff. And, let’s face it, it’s been tough on us as owners and CEOs as well. Prolonged, intense, invisible stress All that stress flowing through our bodies for extended periods of time - hours, days, sometimes weeks on end - is hard on the body. We may not realize it. We may be numb to it. That’s by design. When we’re in a state of intense stress, our body fills us with the chemicals needed to keep going and fight the battle - adrenaline and cortisol. This can also numb our emotions and our body sensations. So we don’t even know what toll it’s taking until we slow down. For some of us, myself included, slowing down is hard. So we maybe haven’t yet actually felt how we’re doing. Here’s the rub. We can’t keep it up over the long haul. Our bodies only have a limited amount of adrenaline to draw from. As we use it up, it contributes to aging. We lose energy and our ability to respond in challenging situations. There’s a name for this: Adrenal Fatigue...also called exhaustion. And here’s the thing. The battle isn’t over. 2021 won’t be magically better Obviously, we all want to continue to move our businesses forward, improve, grow, and build something great. But this pandemic also isn’t over. Yes, a vaccine is starting to be distributed in Canada. Yet, the process and the uncertainties that go along with it means there’s still a long road ahead until we’re out of the woods. McKinsey & Company’s latest report of their ongoing meta-study forecasts that “the United States will most likely reach an epidemiological end to the pandemic (herd immunity) in Q3 or Q4 2021”. There’s no real reason Canada should expect it any sooner. There will be more challenges, more evolving restrictions to adjust to, and the continuing need to manage the risk of COVID-19 in our workplaces and homes. This means demand uncertainty, supply-chain variability and internal operational risks will continue for some time. So, while we may be happily turning the page on a tough year, the brutal facts are that 2021 is likely to be pretty challenging as well. We have to recharge! This holiday season is that time to slow down, feel how we’re actually doing, and give those adrenal glands a break to restore their proper function. We may be disappointed that we won’t get to see extended family or friends over the Christmas break. But there’s a silver lining. That gives us the space to get some time to ourselves. The best cure for fatigue...sleep! And lots of it. Naps. Quiet time. Long baths or dips in the hot tub. Leisurely walks. Or just sitting still. This is hard for us A types. But it’s essential. Our bodies, minds, resilience, effectiveness and strategic thinking depend on it… not to mention our families, businesses and communities. This means putting everything off that isn’t absolutely necessary, including odd jobs around the house, personal research or getting our finances in order. And what’s really necessary over the holidays? Certainly, we’ll have family time, give gifts and connect with loved ones via video calls. But the work at the office will still be there when we get back after New Year’s Day. It’s not going anywhere. We won’t misplace it or forget what there is to do. Let’s take this time between Christmas and New Year’s to put ourselves first, so we can be at our best for 2021. Happy holidays to all my clients, colleagues, friends and acquaintances. And above all, Merry Recharging! Are you ready to grow a great top team, company and life?
Try our 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.  In the 9 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 very 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 coaching master Marshall Goldsmith goes, “what got us here won’t get us there”. The systems to grow The changes needed for a growing company are driven by the added complexity that comes with having more employees. Think simply of how going from 1 to 4 employees 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. It 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. And one can 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 leadership team is 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 they make will depend on the managers working with the owner or CEO… the leadership team. 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 and 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. 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 therefore the capabilities of the leaders as well. The crucial underlying challenge to profitable growth is to build a great top team (management team, leadership team, executive team) that is highly capable, aligned, leading and executing effectively and efficiently. Essentially working as one unit to move the company forward because the owner CEO can’t do it alone. As leadership team growth coaches, we work with CEOs, presidents and owners and coach them and their leadership teams to grow great mid-size companies. We help build their capability in the key areas needed for scaling up and agile growth: Leadership, Talent, Strategy, Execution, Customer, Systems and Profit. 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.  ‘‘My goal was to distill my life’s work on great companies into a single ‘map'.’’ Jim Collins BE EQUIPPED WITH THE ROADMAP TO GREATNESS HEAR FROM GLOBAL THOUGHT LEADER, JIM COLLINS As a part of the Wellspring Growth Systems network, you can save $50 on tickets. Register here. See best-selling author of Good to Great, JIM COLLINS at his live global virtual event: Jim Collins - The Roadmap To Greatness on Wednesday 17 February 2021 All New Findings & World-Changing Insights Coinciding with the release of his new book, BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0). business leaders and their teams will be among the first to receive Jim Collins’ highly anticipated business-changing framework, “The Map”. A one-page framework, The Map distills 30 years of Jim’s revolutionary Good to Great® concepts into a single roadmap to build an extraordinary organisation; one that sustains high performance, leads and shapes its industry and remains great for generations. SECURE YOUR 'FRONT ROW' SEAT IN THIS IMMERSIVE EVENT One of only five business authors in history to sell more than 10 million copies worldwide, Jim has authored six best-selling books, but his appearances are rare. This live virtual event provides direct access to Jim for 2.5 hours of deep learning, allowing time for Q & A on how Jim’s extraordinary guide to business success can be implemented into your company in 2021. YOU WILL LEARN: Drawing on three decades of rigorous research, Jim will equip you with:
Align your leadership team with the most significant thought leader of our time. YOU'LL LOVE THE INNOVATIVE VIRTUAL VENUE Jim Collins will present live in real-time via The Growth Faculty's bespoke virtual venue. Developed for Jim’s Good to Great® event this year, over 4000 business leaders rated the virtual venue experience as 9.5/10. TAKE A SNEAK PEEK HERE PAST DELEGATES OF JIM COLLINS SAID...
TAKE YOUR BUSINESS FROM GOOD TO GREAT.  STANDARD RATE: $295 | OUR NETWORK: $245 Wednesday 17 February 2021, 10am to 1pm CST  As a CEO, have your culture building activities slowed to a crawl since March? Did you feel uncertain about their value and effectiveness even before the pandemic? Or does culture seem like something you should finally start working on?
I'm honored that Innovation Place has invited me to deliver this engaging webinar with other CEOs to address these questions. You will learn and apply: - The real value of a strong culture - Why culture building is the CEO's job - How to quickly define your culture so people will buy in - How to strengthen your culture, in person or at a distance Register here: https://bit.ly/innovationplace1 I will work LIVE in the webinar with CEO Greg Sutton on TinyEye Therapy Services' culture. You will leave with key culture building tools and guidance on how to use them with YOUR leadership team and company! All CEOs are encouraged to bring their curiosity, concerns and questions. I will also stay on immediately after the webinar to address any additional questions. Time: Wed, Nov 18 at 10am CST Via Zoom: a meeting link will be provided to registrants Register here: https://bit.ly/innovationplace1 I hope you join us!  I’m always delighted when I read Patrick Lencioni. I enjoy both his simple take on things and his user-friendly writing style. So picking up his classic book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, was a no-brainer.
In the business fable style that Lencioni is famous for, he tells the story of the leadership team of a technology company. In it, he shows how teams can improve results by using his simple model to deliberately working on their team’s effectiveness. Lencioni covers the five critical dysfunctions of a team, each building on the other. They include: 1) absence of trust, which leads to 2) fear of conflict, and therefore 3) lack of commitment, which results in 4) avoidance of accountability, and 5) inattention to (team) results. After the story, further details on the model follow with tips for working on each dysfunction. Out of all the team effectiveness frameworks I’ve studied and used, this one is the simplest. Yet, it’s still totally relevant and applicable. The five dysfunctions framework is also one of the tools in the Scaling Up system I’m now using. And Patrick Lencioni is a Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches faculty member, who has presented at some of our leadership summits. Book: 229 pgs, 3h45m audio. Soundview Summary: 8 pgs, 19m audio. Get-Abstract summary: 5 pgs, 10m audio.  Given we’re coming up to Christmas, I thought I’d share a little gift: for those new to Jim Collins’ Good to Great, an overview of one of the best books on organizational health; and, for those who’ve read it, a brief reminder of the insights from this in depth body of research.
Released in 2001, Good to Great studied what made 10 “great” companies great. Greatness was defined by a minimum 20 years of growth and sustained financial success that far outpaced the market or industry average. The book debunked a number of myths and identified 7 key factors to greatness: 1. Be a humble, determined leader. 2. Get the right people on your team before setting your strategy. 3. Confront the brutal internal and external facts (yet never lose faith). 4. Identify and focus on your simple, reliable competitive advantage. 5. Create a culture of disciplined (and empowered) thought and action. 6. Use technology not as a sole strategy in itself, but to strengthen your competitive advantage. 7. Build momentum over time with small consistent, aligned actions. Book: 320 pgs, 6h audio. GetAbstract summary: 5 pgs, 10m audio. |
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