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Does Growth Have to be so Hard for Midsize Companies
The 2 Keys to More Progress for Midsize Companies The 3 Basic Elements of a Successful Strategy How to Build an A-Player Leadership Team The 3 Disciplines to Drama-Free Execution The 3 Ingredients to Get Out of the Weeds The Key Mindset to Grow and Thrive Why a DIY Approach Slows Growth 8 Types of External Guidance Why Doesn’t Leadership Training Stick Do You Have What It Takes? The 5 Criteria to Pick an Executive Team Coach  Most CEOs, presidents and owners I talk to know they need a strategy to guide the business forward. Yet most find it challenging to develop a solid strategy and in a way that gets their whole leadership team aligned around it. In my 19 years experience working with leaders and their senior teams, the biggest mistake is treating strategy development as a one-time event rather than an ongoing process. In this Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches webinar, Mark Bishop, director and general manager of Active Healthcare in Auckland, New Zealand, discusses how the Bishops' family business enjoyed significant improvements in growth, profitability and fun through the process of Radical Alignment to a Core Strategy. Mark is joined by his Gravitas Impact Premium Coach, Leigh Paulden, also in Auckland, to share his perspective on Active Healthcare’s strategy development process. How can you develop a great strategy for your company?
To find out how to build a great strategy to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete section 3 to check your strategy processes. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation.  In the previous 5 Minute Growth 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.  A ROAD MAP TO WHAT MAKES GREAT COMPANIES TICK For the first time ever, Jim Collins presents a full-day workshop LIVE in Chicago. Bring your team, join an exclusive group of executive leaders, highly motivated to implement the time-tested, research based, practical framework of Good to Great® and Jim’s full body of work. (Only 500 places available!) One of the 100 Greatest Living Business Minds (Forbes), Jim Collins knows what it takes to make a company not only survive but thrive. In this highly interactive, full day seminar Jim distils three decades of research into one single road map for building a great company. Your team will be equipped to critically assess your business, face the brutal facts and align your business strategy for success in an ever-changing market. Elevate your leadership, increase company-wide discipline, drive transformational business growth. “Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.” Jim Collins Why do some companies triumph and achieve long-term success while others fail? How can mediocre companies achieve greatness? Join Jim Collins and a group of passionate leaders to forge a road map to greatness. Designed for CEOs, executive teams and lifelong students of Jim’s work, don’t miss this rare opportunity to learn directly from powerhouse, Jim Collins, in a space designed for deep learning, strategising, and team discussions on application and implementation. “Will you settle for being a good leader, or will you grow to become a great leader?” Jim Collins  How can you develop your leaders?
To find out how to develop your leaders to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete 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.  With the CEOs we work with, we often have them take a hard look at what roles they need to delegate to focus less on the day-to-day and more on growing their company. These can include functions like marketing, sales, finance, accounting, operations, human resource, information technology. However, they are then faced with the question of what their role should be instead. In this Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches podcast, my colleague and author Brad Giles, in Perth, Australia, uncovers the five roles a CEO must play for their mid-size company to consistently achieve great results. Subscribe to Gravitas Impact podcast: Android
How can you grow a thriving company? To find out what to focus on 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.  Having read many books on competitive strategy, I’ve often seen references to Michael’s Porter’s seminal book, Competitive Advantage, written in 1998.
I’ve always thought it would be a helpful read. And although I expected it to be dry and academic, I decided to give it a chance. Michael Porter is a highly respected Harvard Business School researcher, advisor, speaker, author and teacher. Competitive Advantage outlines the three categories of competitive strategy that Porter and his team discovered among successful companies. They include: Cost Advantage, Differentiation, and either of these applied to a Focused Market rather than the whole market. The book covers how to identify and strengthen the inter-related activities in a company that allow for each type of competitive advantage, as well as how to leverage technology in that effort. It goes into detail on segmenting markets, evaluating competitors, introducing complimentary products and using offensive and defensive strategies. It’s a massive read: over five hundred pages of rather technical writing with only the occasional real-world example. I was right. While brilliant and insightful, it’s not for the faint of heart. Book: 535 pages, 21 hour and 23 minute audio book. How can you improve your competitive advantage? To find out what you can improve in your competitive strategy to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete sections 3 and 6 to check your competitive strategy. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation.  Why is it that you work wonderfully with some people, but keep clashing with others? In his 25 years of executive coaching, executive coach and bestselling author Patrick Lencioni has distilled three characteristics that make a successful team player. In today's article I will show you which qualities make an ideal team player, what happens if just one of these qualities is missing and how you can develop your team into ideal team players. The three characteristics of an ideal team player
 Trait 1: Be humble
Modesty is probably the most important quality that makes ideal team players. Specifically, “being humble” means :
On the contrary: Ideal team players consciously use their skills to advance their team. Only they do it with the necessary understatement, without calling for attention and applause. If people lack this form of modesty, it can make working in a team considerably more difficult. Trait 2: Be hungry Ideal team players are passionate about what they do and hungry for more.
Trait 3: Be smart Ideal team players are smart, namely "people-smart". This does not mean their IQ, their cognitive abilities or their professional competence.
Then it becomes difficult to work together Humble, hungry, smart: As simple as these three qualities sound. The key is that all three qualities must be combined in a person so that this person can become the ideal team player. If only one of the three characteristics is missing, working with this person becomes a challenge. Four examples from my practice Case study 1: When smartness is lacking Peter manages more tasks in the team than three other colleagues together. Status and recognition from outside are not important to him, because he is passionate about the cause and is hungry and passionate about it. What Peter lacks, however, is the sense of how his actions and his comments affect those around him. That's why it regularly happens that Peter unintentionally steps on his colleagues' ties, causing displeasure and confusion. Case study 2: When there is no hunger Paul is good with other people. He is people-smart and humble. Selfish motives are completely foreign to him. But he lacks the hunger to advance his team and try new things. Most of the time he only does what is absolutely necessary. This is frustrating for his teammates, who often work longer hours than he does and often have to ask him to contribute. Case study 3: When modesty is lacking Mary is hungry and smart. She says the right things at the right time, works hard and is a committed team player. However, she is mindful of her own advantage and influences her colleagues in her favour. She lacks the modesty that makes a good team player. Case study 4: When modesty and smartness are missing It is even more difficult to work with people who lack two of the three characteristics of an ideal team player. Ringo is hungry, but he lacks the humility and the sense of what his actions are doing to others. With his unbridled actionism, he often overruns his teammates like a bulldozer, regardless of the losses. This is how you develop your team into ideal team players Working in a team is easy for some people. Others find it harder to work collectively towards a common goal. No matter what spectrum you and your team are currently on: I am convinced that everyone can improve their ability to work in a team. What it takes is time, patience and good coaching. I would like to give you a simple 4-step plan that you can use to assess where you currently stand with your team and how you can continue to develop towards the ideal team player. In 4 steps to the ideal team player [Instructions] As with all management issues, the same applies here: If you want to improve cooperation in your team, then start with yourself. 1. Do a Self-assessment Assess yourself which of the three core characteristics of an ideal team player are the strongest, second strongest and weakest in you. You are welcome to use Patrick Lencioni's free self-assessment tool for this purpose. 2. Share Results Share the results of your self-assessment with your team and explain why you assessed yourself that way. What is your weakest trait, what is your strongest? Have each team member, in turn, present the results of their self-assessment and also explain why they assessed themselves that way. 3. Create a Development Plan Now go in twos, threes, fours…. with colleagues who had given the same quality as you in third place. Now consider together what each of you can do to become stronger in this area. Find one or two specific resolutions and record them briefly and concisely in your personal development plan. 4. Mutual Coaching Present this development plan to the rest of the team and ask them to point it out to you if you fall back into old patterns. With this openness and the trust that your teammates will support you in your resolutions, you will see the first development successes after a short time. Incidentally, I stick such intentions in a striking way on the monitor so that they are visible to me and the people around me. Conclusion You now know the three core qualities that make an ideal team player. What you can do with it is versatile:
Personally, I am convinced that everyone can become a better team player - with the necessary time, patience and the appropriate coaching. But not every manager and every employee fits into every team. It is all the more important that entrepreneurs and managers ask themselves the question: “Which culture is a conducive culture for my organization, in my market, in my environment and for our business model in order to achieve my corporate goals?” From this you derive what kind of team player you need in this context. From my point of view, two things should be non-negotiable:
https://justgrow.eu/blog/ If you're interested in reading more of Olaf articles please visit the website link above. (Please note that Olaf's site is in German but Google translate does an excellent job of instantly translating it to English.) How can you elevate your people to the next level? To find out what you can improve in your leadership team to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, 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. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. Complete section 1 and 4 to check your leadership team* and accountability 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.  Every CEO and entrepreneur I’ve met and worked with has faced the challenge of having to delegate some of their activities in order to grow their company. Often, they have to hand off things they do very well that allowed their company to get to where it is. And they can feel hesitant, and even reluctant, to do that. Yet, we find this to be a critical action for CEOs and owners of mid-size companies to create the time and space to focus more on leading their company and their people. In this Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches podcast, senior executive coach John Felkins, outside Nashville, Tennessee, shares a process we use to help CEOs and owners of mid-size companies identify activities they can and need to delegate and to transition those activities successfully, while growing others. Subscribe to Gravitas Impact podcast: Android
How can you develop others to take on more? To find out how to develop your people to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete section 2 to check your talent development 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 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.  There are many approaches to leading change to solve a problem.
Most include common practices, such as creating a sense of urgency, communicating the vision, celebrating early wins, etc. However, these methods fall down with a certain kind of problem called “adaptive challenges”. One indicator of adaptive challenges is that they persist after attempts to solve them. The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, by Ronald Heifetz, Marty Linsky and Alexander Grashow, goes through how to distinguish adaptive challenges from conventional “technical problems”, and how to successfully lead adaptive change. Technical problems are problems an organization has already developed the know-how to solve. For technical problems, one or more experts in an organization can identify and solve the problem on their own, with others adjusting in minor, known and predictable ways. Adaptive challenges, on the other hand, require a response that is outside the organization’s current knowhow. There is no one expert in the organization who can solve an adaptive challenge. It requires people to do their part. You can’t take the problem off the people because the people are part of the problem. Their ownership and responsibility-taking for the problem becomes part of the solution. Adaptive challenges require people in the organization to change and often require multiple perspectives to identify and solve them. Most problems are bundled. There are some problems that are purely technical. But most problems include both a technical problem component and an adaptive challenge component. Indicators of adaptive challenges include recurring crisis and persistent conflict. This happens when an adaptive challenge hasn’t been addressed fully in the past, because a technical fix was insufficient, and so the challenge resurfaces again and becomes a crisis or persistent conflict. Changes in leaders’, managers’ or employees’ actions and behaviors are great examples, as well as changes in culture and relationships. The authors argue the biggest mistake leaders make is dealing with adaptive challenges as though they are technical problems. That’s one big reason change efforts fail. This happens because leaders often assume any problem is a technical problem. So the leader throws technical fixes at an adaptive challenge. And so the problem persists. People get disappointed because the problem doesn’t go away. Employees feel the leaders should give them a solution, as do the leaders. This creates a dependency loop where leaders over-promise what they can deliver and employees are continually disappointed. Leaders need to instead ask employees to realize that there are alot of problems for which there are no quick solutions, where their own responsibility-taking will be needed, where they’ll have to put in effort to figure out solutions together, and where they themselves will need to develop knowhow to act or behave in new ways. The leader’s job isn’t to provide the answers but instead to frame the questions for which the answers are discovered over time by the collective intelligence of the people. This book, building on the authors’ two previous ones, acts as a practical guide. This one is a must-read for leaders looking to make lasting change on the persistent problems that have eluded them. Book: 304 pages. GetAbstract book summary: 5 pages, 10 minute audio. What could be changed and improved in your company? To find out what changes and improvements you could make 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. This report is complementary and involves no obligation.  If you were a CEO or business owner coming out of a severe industry downturn, or facing an eventual surge in demand, how would you invigorate your midsize company to truly take advantage of the opportunity? Add to that, you’re in an industry where creating a sustainable competitive advantage is nearly impossible, because most anything you do can be copied. In this Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches webinar, Andy Warren, former President of award-winning Maracay Homes in Phoenix, Arizona, shares his decade-long tenure of working through these challenges and building a top-performing company, focusing on culture, people, and clarity. Andy is joined by his Gravitas Impact Premium Coach, Keith Cupp, to share parallel insights into Maracay’s “not so secret, secrets of success” How can you build a great culture in your company?
To find out how to build a great culture 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, 2 and 4 to check your culture 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 last week’s blog, I shared a podcast highlighting how CEOs can develop their leadership team members into A-Players by looking in the mirror at their own management style.
The book, 12: The Elements of Great Managing, by Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter, can help. It highlights twelve key management practices that have the greatest impact on employee engagement as shown by increases in several tangible business performance metrics. The book is based on two decades of Gallup surveys, interviews, focus groups and statistical analysis. 12 is a breath of fresh air for business owners, leaders and managers overwhelmed by the wide variety of management models and books they’ve come across. It helps by highlighting what makes the biggest difference. The 12 elements, written from the perspective of the employee, are:
Note that 12 does not hone in on what specific management behaviors or organizational systems to change at a deeper level to strengthen those twelve elements. The twelve elements are those seen and experienced by employees. Less visible dynamics such as leadership team functioning, culture, authenticity and trust underlie them. Yet, I have found 12 to be a helpful tool for leaders and managers I work with. Many management frameworks can either be too high level to be actionable or lose leaders in the weeds with rheams of behaviours and tactics while forgetting the impact leaders need to have on their people in the first place. 12, on the other hand, provides leaders with a relatively small set of clear, tangible practices enabling their people to develop and be more engaged. From there, leaders can clearly identify what they are doing that is helping or getting in the way. By strengthening these 12 practices in yourself, you can also inspire your leadership team members to strengthen how they manage their people, creating a positive impact on employee engagement, productivity and results throughout your company. Book: 280 pages. Audio book: 4 hours 15 minutes. Soundview book summary: 8 pages, 20 minute audio. How can you manage your leadership team members more effectively? To find out how to manage your team members to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete section 2 to check your people management processes. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation.  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.  Many CEOs will say they would love to get their time back...time to work ON the business rather than IN it. The starting point is to ensure that there are only A-players in the organization. A-players minimize drama and maximize productivity, freeing up time for the CEO, and leadership team, to work ON the business. In this Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches podcast, my colleague Jerry Fons in Wisconsin goes over 1) what an A player is, 2) how to identify A players and 3) the key best practices to develop leaders and employees into A-players and to maximize the number of A-players in the organization. Spoiler alert! It starts by looking in the mirror as a CEO and at the systems and structures the CEO and leadership team have in place that enable non-A-player performance to continue. Subscribe to Gravitas Impact Podcast: Android
How can you have more A-players in your company? To find out how to have more A-players to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete section 2 to check your talent processes. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation.  As a CEO, how can we “delegate and elevate"? One way is to ensure we have only A-players on our leadership team.
A great leadership team enables the CEO to entrust the team and its members with getting results consistently and leading change in the company. This frees up the CEO to spend more time leading and less time doing, which is essential for a company to grow and thrive. And so, CEOs need to be skilled at hiring leadership team members. While HR can support the process, the CEO needs to stay highly involved. Who: The A Method for Hiring captures the best method we Gravitas Impact coaches have seen for consistently hiring A players. Unfortunately, most managers use what author Geoff Smart calls “voodoo hiring techniques.” While common, they get poor results. Smart and his firm meticulously developed and tested the A Method over 23 years, simplifying it for mid-size companies from Geoff’s father Brad’s TopGrading system, which is more geared for larger corporate companies. The A Method includes four parts: Scorecard – describes exactly what the person will need to accomplish. While job descriptions tend to capture mere accountabilities and responsibilities, or worse yet, a list of duties, a job scorecard captures the specific results to be delivered. Source – systematically sourcing before you have slots to fill so you have a large pool of high quality candidates when you need them. A small pool generated on short notice is one of the main reasons managers hire less-than-ideal candidates. Short-notice sourcing is often done through advertising or job postings, which will access job-seekers. And job-seekers are often not A players. Select – a series of structured interviews that allow you to gather accurate facts about the person. It’s considered normal for candidates to hide their faults and flaws in a job interview. Getting a complete picture of the person is essential to determining if their weaknesses will be manageable. Sell – ways to persuade the perfect candidate to join. A players are usually already employed or are being sought out by other employers. Selling the candidate increases the odds they’ll go Most companies jump straight into sourcing and selecting without clarity on the results they want the person to accomplish. Or they’re starting from scratch with sourcing, leading to few great candidates. Book: 189 pages. Audio book: 4h47m. Soundview summary: 8 pages, 20m audio. getAbstract summary: 5 pages, 10m audio. How can you hire more A-players in your company? To find out how to have stronger talent and leaders to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete section 2 to check your A-player processes. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation.  As a CEO, there are many things we can do to get out of the weeds. One of the most freeing actions we can take is to let our people do their jobs, solve their own problems and lead big projects to improve things. In this Gravitas Impact podcast, Hazel Jackson, CEO of the Biz Group in Dubai, shares how. Based on the Biz Group’s work teaching Liz Wiseman’s Multipliers framework, as well as based on Hazel’s own experience as a CEO, she tells some insightful stories about leadership habits that helped her succeed in the early years of her company but that became liabilities that held back her company’s growth. In this 30 minute podcast, Hazel speaks to 1) the CEO’s primary role of fully tapping into (and stretching) their peoples’ smarts, 2) common accidental Diminisher behaviours for entrepreneurs and 3) some practical actions we can take to become more of a Multiplier and get 50% more from our people. Subscribe to Gravitas Impact Podcast: Android
How can you strengthen empowerment in your entrepreneurial company? To find out how to improve empowerment in your business to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete sections 1, 2 and 4 to check your empowerment practices. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation.  Over the last five 5 Minute Growth Tip articles, I’ve described the critical leadership team best practices to implement the structures, systems and processes to enable profitable growth.
However, you might be thinking, “I can see how it all works, but I’m really busy! I don’t have time for these things. I don’t even have time for family, friends or even myself.” But might there be a way to make time? How might you successfully do less of what you’re doing right now so you have the time to put these best practices in place, to enable the profitable growth you want to see, and lead the life you want to live? How can you get out of the weeds? The simple solutions One could maybe end this article right here with the trite saying “delegate and elevate”. This simple tactic may do the job for you. Start by listing out all the things you do on a week to week or month to month basis. Take a hard look at everything that could be handed off to others. You may find there are a number of quick wins that will create time in your calendar to put some serious effort into your leadership team and the company. Sit down with each person you’ll delegate to. Be clear on your expectations and standards. Show them how you want things done, praise their progress and good work. Redirect them if they slip backwards. But sometimes handing things off to others doesn’t seem feasible. Your team may be really busy too. Maybe they feel tapped out. Another option is to hire another leader to take over some of your accountabilities. For example, you may still be leading sales, marketing, operations, R&D or administration. What would it be like to have someone else doing a great job fully leading one or more of those areas for you? Identify what you want to delegate, hire another leader with a great track record in those areas and get on with making the changes and improvements to the business to get your return on that investment. This solution assumes your company is in a financial position to invest in making that hire. But sometimes, that might not be feasible. The last simpler option is to find quick ways to improve profitability so you can afford to invest in another leader who will take on some of your accountabilities. The good news is that this can often be done with some small tweaks to the business. A one percent increase in pricing to customers, a one percent decrease in cost of goods sold and a one percent decrease in overhead costs can make a big difference to the bottom line: anywhere from 10 to 80% depending on your business model and cost structure. That can often be enough to invest in another leader. If these kinds of profit enhancing quick wins aren’t feasible in your company, you may feel stuck, like you’re in a chicken or egg position: you need to delegate to make more significant changes to improve profitability and invest in growth, but you need more profit to invest in leaders so you can delegate. The alternative solution Simple delegation, hiring another leader or quickly increasing profits to do so aren’t always an option. Sometimes the only other way is to get more done with the people we have. This means increasing your leadership team’s efficiency so your team members have the capacity to take on some of your roles and/or lead some internal change projects on your behalf. How do you do that? By getting the right people in the right seats, improving their execution and strengthening leadership team buy-in and accountability. Right people in the right seats This starts with defining the right functions on the leadership team and making adjustments to ensure you have the right person leading each function. Over time, if not early on, other leaders will be able take on functions you’re currently leading. The goal is to make sure each leader is highly productive leading their function(s) and driving high productivity in their respective teams. We also want them to behave in constructive ways (aligned with your core values) that minimize drama across the leadership team and within each of their departments. Leaders can become even more efficient by ensuring they have the right people in the right seats within their departments and that their people are also behaving constructively. See this article for more on getting the right people in the right seats. Efficient execution Having the right people in the right seats on your team provides a good foundation. But how much of their potential productivity you tap into will depend on how each leader and the team executes. Through improved execution practices, your leadership team members will deliver better results, need less attention from you, have capacity to take on one or more of your functions and lead improvement projects you might otherwise lead. Great execution involves: 1) each leader owning clear metrics and targets for the company and their respective functions for the year and the quarter, 2) each leader driving 2 to 3 clear priorities for change and improvement for the next year and quarter, with a 13 week sprint plan to make each one happen, and 3) a rhythm of efficient weekly, monthly and quarterly meetings to hold each other accountable to hit the numbers, move the priorities forward and set new priorities for the next quarter. Daily huddles also help speed things up by identifying obstacles to solve as soon as they come up. A note about choosing those few critical priorities: getting the right people in the right seats needs to be a top priority for the first quarter if you want to delegate and elevate yourself, and then have your leaders do the same. You will then be rewarded every quarter with a bit more capacity so you can work more on other priorities to move the company forward. See this article for more on efficient execution. Leadership team buy-in and accountability For any of this to work, the leadership team needs to be bought in and committed. The best way is to do this WITH your team, not TOO your team. Discuss and decide on leadership team functions and assignments, set metrics and targets, and decide on company priorities WITH your leadership team. This way, they’ll be bought into these changes and driven to make them happen. These practices will improve accountability and drive efficiency. You can strengthen accountability further by 1) leading by example in all these activities, 2) raising your expectations of your leaders, and 3) communicating in ways that maintain their natural motivation to execute. See this article for more on leadership team buy-in and accountability. Making it happen Getting the right people in the right seats, improving execution and getting leadership team buy-in and accountability will increase your team’s efficiency and enable you to delegate some of your functions and internal projects, so you can get out of the weeds. As you gain momentum, you’ll carve out more time for yourself and your team to work on strategy, implement other structures, systems, processes, and build capacity to grow and grow profitably. Ultimately, you’ll also start to be able to make more time for your family, rekindle old friendships and get back to some of the personal things you enjoy. You probably won’t delegate and elevate in one fell swoop. But bite off what you can and you’ll create capacity to bite off more as you go. For example, you might find that more than one leader needs to be replaced. Start with one in the first quarter. Replacing even just one unfit leader with an excellent one will help reduce your workload. This will give you some breathing room to make other changes. The same will hold true for the employee changes your leaders make in their departments. That said, at the foundation of all this is having a rhythm of efficient meetings to make decisions as a team, plan, execute and hold each other accountable. And that takes a commitment of time up front. Now you may be wondering, “I said I was too busy to implement the best practices for profitable growth, and now Jean-Guy is suggesting solving my busy-ness by implementing some of those same best practices…I said I’m too busy!” Here’s the thing… it’s like exercising. We can say, “I can’t run because I don’t have the stamina.” But the only way to build up the stamina is to start running. Not alot to start - maybe 500 meters. But start. After a few runs, you’ll be able to run more - maybe a kilometer. In not too long, you’ll have the stamina to run 5 kilometers, and then 10. It’s an investment that pays off. The nice thing is that it pays off as you go. You don’t have to wait until some magical point in the future. But the only way to start getting the payoff is to start. And sometimes that takes a shift in mindset. More on that in my next 5 Minute Growth Tip article. How can you strengthen delegation in your entrepreneurial company? To find out how to improve delegation in your business to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete sections 1, 2 and 4 to check your delegation practices. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation.  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To find out how to develop your talent to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete sections 2 to check your company’s talent processes. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation.  I was looking for a reference guide of common KPIs to make it easier for the leadership team of one of the companies I work with to identify appropriate metrics to drive execution.
I reached out to my network of colleagues in Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches. They suggested Key Performance Indicators: The 75+ Measures Every Manager Needs to Know, by Bernard Marr. The problem was there was no audio version and no text-to-speech feature. Listening to books while driving or walking my dog is my only option. So I found this “for Dummies” version by the same author. It did the trick. The gist of it In Key Performance Indicators for Dummies, Marr provides, not only a list of common KPIs across the essential areas of financial, customer, internal efficiency and people, but also a comprehensive guidebook to developing and implementing KPIs. While the book, in places, goes into more complexity than is needed for many mid-size companies, he does a nice job of explaining how KPIs connect with and support business strategy and execution disciplines. Marr, an expert in KPIs and big data, emphasizes how KPIs, effectively developed, can support a learning culture of fact-based decision-making where leaders test business assumptions and strategies through metrics. He also shares common pitfalls to avoid, such as tying compensation directly to KPIs, which unwittingly creates an incentive for employees at all levels to distort results. The alternative, in my experience, when incentives are implemented to support an already developed performance culture, is to tie them to numbers that are regimented, centrally controlled and therefore not easily manipulated, such as financial results. The irony of this book is that, while it’s designed as a go-to reference for picking KPIs, it recommends - and rightly so - to not just pick them from a list, but to do the harder thinking as a leadership team of what you’re aiming to achieve and what number you can track to tell you you’re making progress. Length of book: 320 pages. Bernard Marr is founder and CEO of the Advanced Performance Institute and author of 16 books on key performance indicators, metrics, big data, analytics and artificial intelligence. How can you execute on KPIs more effectively in your company? To find out how to have more efficient execution 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 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.  Incorrectly staffed leadership positions can paralyze your company growth. Here's what you can do about it.
When entrepreneurs come to me with growth problems, the question inevitably arises: Why? Is there a lack of market for the product or service? Is it the wrong strategy? Is it a lack of execution, or perhaps the leadership team? My counter-question comes off the cuff because it is unexpectedly direct and at the same time a very crucial question. I ask them: Who? Who sits in the management and leadership positions in your company today? If you were to fill these positions again, would you put the same person in that position again? And: Would this person be able to bring out their best, to have the best effect? Albert Einstein is said to have quoted the following: Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid . It remains to be seen whether Einstein actually said this or not. But let's expand on this point for a moment: what if the fish is already up the tree? Is he still learning to fly? Who is sitting in your tree right now? The question I would like to ask you at this point: Who is sitting on your tree right now – in the key positions in your company? And why is this person sitting there? Because of their leadership skills, because of their potential, or perhaps for other reasons? Is this leader, who may have been the right choice for this key position then, still the best choice today? Especially for the growth path you want? This question “Who is in the key positions right now?” is asked far too rarely - and usually only when all other attempts to solve the growth problems have failed. Why is that? Because the question is uncomfortable. You may even have been involved when these positions were filled. Who likes to admit that he or she has a personnel problem in the management ranks ? Many do not recognize wrong appointments immediately. Others tolerate them - out of friendship, lack of time (there are always more pressing issues that still need to be resolved) or lack of alternatives (a bird in the hand). It is poison to your business growth for two reasons: Reason No. 1: If you, as an entrepreneur, do not recognize your personnel problem, you will only notice the damage that the wrong people in key positions are causing when it is too late. Reason No. 2: As an entrepreneur, if you tolerate your personnel problem and hesitate to fill key positions, you consciously forgo the potential that more suitable candidates could bring and thus deny your company significant growth opportunities. Find the right people for your key positions What can entrepreneurs do now to ensure that the right people are working in your key positions? I ask my clients the following questions to honestly evaluate their leaders: 1. Does the person share the same values? Value-oriented leadership creates a common set of values that increases the cohesion and willingness to cooperate of all managers and employees. Knowing that a leader holds similar beliefs often encourages employees to follow them and increases the odds of success at each goal. This increases engagement, performance and even loyalty to the company – which in turn has a positive impact on growth and profitability. 2. Is the person behind the company's purpose? What does your company exist for and what is your specific contribution to make the life of your customers, our society, the environment, the planet, etc. a little bit better? When the "why" of a company is clear, it is easier for your teams to pursue your common goal. It is all the more important that your management team is 100% behind the purpose of your company. Because the more credible it is, the easier it is for you to tell an inspiring, gripping story and to set bold goals. The purpose is like the inner compass for everyone in the company. It brings people together, inspires them, gives them courage and the energy to think big, to defy setbacks and to keep going. 3. Has the person already gained experience in growth environments and do they bring the necessary skills for the position? Putting a company on a desired growth path is not easy. It's no picnic - neither for the company nor for the managers and teams. So you need people who are up to the challenge. It helps if they already have experience in such extreme growth environments. This way they understand what is required and expected of them. In high growth companies, managers deal with problems they've never had before. It's about trial and error, accepting mistakes, reflecting and learning from them despite the enormous pressure and ultimately turning failure into success. Noor van Boven, Chief People Officer at N26, recommends: "You should surround yourself with people who move in a similarly dynamic environment. You can be a painful critic, but honest feedback is helpful and has kept me honest as a leader." Who among your leaders walked the growth path? Who on your team may have just managed something big? Who is brave and not afraid of failure? 4. Does the person share the vision of the leadership you want? If a leader is to drive growth, then they must also think in these growth categories. Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford University, coined the term "growth mindset" in the 1970s. Leaders with a growth mindset welcome any opportunity to learn new things. They are willing to unlearn their ingrained beliefs and proven strategies. You are resilient to failure. They embrace failure because they see it as a natural part of learning. Or as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella aptly put it: "We are moving from a group of people who know it all, to a group of people who want to learn it all." Who among your executives continues to demonstrate a high willingness to learn? Who shares the same growth mindset? Conclusion The most important thing for entrepreneurs and owners of fast-growing companies is to surround themselves with the right people - and put them in the right positions. If there are problems with growth, having the wrong people in key positions is often the cause. If you ignore such misappointments, you consciously accept the negative effects they have on the motivation, performance and commitment of your teams. At the same time, you prevent better-suited executives from being able to contribute their potential and thus deny your company significant growth opportunities. What can you specifically do? Look for individuals in your leadership team who share the same values as you do in your organization. Make sure your leadership team has internalized the "why" of your company (the what that gives us purpose) and carries it consistently and authentically to their teams. Surround yourself with leaders who have experience in dynamic growth environments and have already demonstrated the necessary leadership skills. Work with executives who bring the same growth mindset as you do. With best wishes, Olaf Sell https://justgrow.eu/blog/ If you're interested in reading more of Olaf articles please visit the website link above. (Please note that Olaf's site is in German but Google translate does an excellent job of instantly translating it to English.) How can you elevate your people to the next level? To find out what you can improve in your leadership team to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, 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. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. Complete section 1 and 4 to check your leadership team* and accountability 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.  In a previous 5 Minute Growth Tip article, I discussed how strategy is not a lengthy action plan but the evolution of a central idea about how a company can be unique and valuable to its customers.
So if a strategy is about how the company needs to compete, then how does a CEO and their A player leadership team make it happen? With a best practice execution plan and process. The Execution Challenge In my experience over the last 17 years working with leadership teams, when CEOs and owners of mid-size companies decide to do formal planning with their leadership team, they often go through a traditional strategic planning process. However, this often falls short of what they need to execute on their plan. Many strategic plans include a mission or purpose, vision and values. These are all important. Yet there is often little about how the company will compete in the market or how the plan will be executed. Often, these documents have vague plans for implementing whatever rough direction they’ve set out: some high level multi-year focus areas, or maybe some one year initiatives. In the best case, an annual budget is built with or without the strategic plan in mind. From there, the leadership team members may review the company’s numbers quarterly, or maybe monthly. Although often, this doesn’t happen either. In the meantime, the CEO assumes the leaders are working on making improvements and changes in their departments that align with the high level priorities set out in the plan. After a couple of quarters, a few things can happen:
Does this pattern sound familiar? Does it cause drama, tension and low morale? Usually so. Is it efficient? Not really. Does this hamper progress, growth and profitability? For sure it does. And is it any fun? No. So, what’s the solution? Not a traditional strategic plan. But a strategy (which I outlined here) and an execution plan and process. Our 3 key disciplines of low drama execution describe how it works: 1) Metrics and Targets, 2) Priorities and 3) an effective Meeting Rhythm. Metrics and Targets Watching the numbers may seem like the most obvious of the three disciplines. We all know that tracking financial results is an important part of monitoring whether we’re on track. However, there are other key numbers to monitor as well. While some metrics, like financial numbers, tell us how we’ve done, others give us an indication of how we’re going to do. This is the difference between lagging metrics and leading metrics. For a company as a whole, lagging metrics will be things like financial results, units delivered and market share. Some leading company metrics may be customer loyalty, on-time delivery, employee engagement or the percentage of employees that are A players. There are also different timeframes to set targets for with those metrics. We want to set mid-term targets for our key company metrics, say for 3 years out. These targets should align with our 10 to 30 year vision, or Big Hairy Audacious Goal, as well as our best-guess estimates of what’s possible with the core customer and sandbox we chose in our strategy. From there, we can set goals for those same metrics for the next year. For most of those metrics, we’ll also set goals for the first quarter. And finally, for many metrics, often leading metrics, we might be able to set monthly or even weekly milestones. Setting short-term goals that align with mid-term targets that align with a longer term vision allows the leadership team to commit to biting off a certain amount of progress each quarter. This way, we can check that we’re making enough progress over the weeks, months and quarters to achieve what we need to for the year, which will contribute to reaching our 3 year targets and our 10 year vision. The evolution of this is to work with each leadership team member to identify one or two metrics for each of the functions they lead, as well as goals for those metrics for the year and each quarter. Priorities Metrics measure the results and state of our day to day operations, and how they’re progressing towards our vision. Priorities, on the other hand, are the changes and improvements to those operations. These are what we want and need to implement to make it possible to achieve those mid to long term goals and targets. Going back to my first article in this series on how companies need to do things differently to continue to grow and profitably, these priorities represent, in part, those very structures, systems and processes. Priorities may also be about building or buying new facilities, equipment, or other significant capital assets, to expand or replace capacity. Priorities should also build the capabilities needed to bring to life or strengthen the unique differentiation we chose in our strategy. Like with metrics, we chunk these down from long term to mid term to short term. This again helps us make progress every quarter which supports the progress we want to make over time. We can start with planning out what’s needed over three years. These are all the changes and improvements that need to happen to achieve our 3 year targets. For example, “Developing our middle managers” or “Upgrading our manufacturing plant”. From our 3 year plan, we’ll choose our priorities for year 1 (we also call these Initiatives). They capture the handful of large multi-quarter change projects to bite off an important chunk of our 3 year plan. And from our 1 year priorities, we’ll choose quarterly priorities (we also call these Rocks). These are the multi-month change projects that will help us complete one or more of our annual priorities. The evolution here is for each leader to work with their own team to identify and choose the priorities they need to work on to change and improve their own departments. An Effective Meeting Rhythm It’s great to know what targets need to be achieved and what priorities have to be accomplished over the next quarter to make progress towards our mid-term and long-term goals. But we know that unforeseen things will happen during the quarter. Problems will come up. Things can get forgotten. People can lose focus. So, how do we make sure our leadership team executes on our quarterly plan in the midst of all that? Through regular communication. An effective and efficient meeting rhythm is the key. This meeting rhythm includes:
The purpose of weekly leadership team meetings are to check if our metrics and priorities are on track, take corrective action to keep them on track, and solve problems in the day to day operations or with the priorities. Daily leadership team huddles are to keep all team members in sync throughout the week and identify problems quickly so they can be resolved as they come up. Monthly leadership team meetings are to check that our metrics, priorities AND monthly financial results are on track, take corrective action, adjust the plan as needed and tackle larger tactical or strategic issues. Quarterly planning meetings are to check what we accomplished over the last quarter, adjust course for the year and set our goals and priorities for the next 90 days. The annual planning meeting is to assess overall progress, note market trends, adjust our strategy, long term vision and 3 year targets and priorities, and decide what we’ll bite off with our goals and priorities for the coming year and first quarter. With a clear purpose and a proven agenda for each type of meeting, and with the right people running the meetings and keeping things on track, these meetings can keep the leadership team and its members focused and executing efficiently throughout the year. Pulling it all together A clear, aligned execution plan and an effective execution process will minimize drama and maximize efficiency and goal achievement. However, this will work best if we create the execution plan with the leadership team, so there is efficient leadership team buy-in. And this goes for the strategy as well. Combine all this with strong accountability practices and having A players on our leadership team, and we have a powerful mixture to reliably implement the structures, systems and processes to implement our strategy, build capacity, and grow consistently and profitably...AND enjoy the ride. That said, this all may seem daunting if you and your leadership team are too busy working in the weeds. If that’s you - and most CEOs I meet have this challenge - read my next 5 Minute Growth Tip article on how to shift from working mostly “in the business” to working more “on the business”, and having more time for you and your family as well. How can your team execute with less drama? To find out how to speed up execution 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 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.  Boost team culture, effectiveness and moral In partnership with Growth Faculty, we are delighted to offer you a 15% to a Live Virtual Event – 6 Types of Genius in a Happy & Engaged Team – with Patrick Lencioni. Companies don’t need a broken culture right now. Unhappy staff and low levels of trust destroy teams.
Turns out, finding happiness and fulfilment depends not just on a healthy culture, but also from a deep understanding of your areas of working genius. The world’s foremost expert on organisational health and teamwork, Patrick Lencioni returns to Growth Faculty in 2023. He will share his fascinating research on the 6 types of working genius, and how organisations can create a culture that brings out the talent in their teams. Patrick is the pioneer of the organisational health movement. His 12 books, which include The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The 6 Types of Working Genius, have sold over 7 million copies and been translated into more than 30 languages. “[Patrick] challenges leaders to help their people unpack their innate talents and leverage them, not just for the benefit of the organisation, but for the direct benefits they can reap by living a more fulfilled life.” – Professor Kelly Goldsmith, Vanderbilt University “Patrick was a very compelling speaker. His examples were very relevant, and there were practical tips that I can start implementing from today.” Meagan Quinlivan, Senior Manager, Product Intelligence, News Corp Australia (attended Patrick’s 2022 masterclass.) Tuesday, May 23, 2023 - 6pm in MB, 5pm in SK NON-MEMBER: $295* | OUR NETWORK: $245* *Prices quoted in USD. In a 2 hour live virtual team event, Patrick brings his storytelling abilities to explain his 20 years of research on teamwork, leadership, culture and high performance.
Access from anywhere this exceptional live and interactive session for executives and leaders, and their teams. Patrick will share how business leaders and their teams can:
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.  Great execution is critical to implementing strategy. But a great execution plan falls flat if there isn’t accountability. This is frustrating and costly. But it can be solved. I’m proud to share a Gravitas Impact podcast on this topic featuring my colleague Mark Green in New Jersey. Based on his Gravitas Impact monograph, Creating a Culture of Accountability, he shares guidance born out of the patterns he and our coaching colleagues around the world have identified working with CEOs and leadership teams from a variety of industries. In this 30 minute podcast, Mark explains the 3 pillars of accountability: 1) leading by example (there’s more to it than you think), 2) role accountability (how it really works) and 3) process accountability (how to make it happen). Subscribe to Gravitas Impact Podcast: Android
How can you create a culture of accountability in your company? To find out how to strengthen accountability 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, 2, 4 and 7 to check your processes that support accountability. 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.  Patrick Lencioni is well-known for his business best-sellers: The Five Dysfuctions of a Team (which I introduced here last month), The Ideal Team Player, and Death by Meeting. His last best-seller, The Advantage - Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business, is the culmination and integration of his previous works. It’s one of the most comprehensive and accessible books I’ve read on the key elements of an effective organization. In fact, many of the tools and concepts in the Scaling Up system and 7 Attributes of Agile Growth framework we use with companies are found in The Advantage. In the book, Lencioni describes a healthy organization as one with minimal dysfunction, politics, and confusion. Instead, clarity and alignment reign, resulting in strong performance. He argues that organizational health is the greatest advantage any business can have. And yet, it is largely ignored by business leaders. Lencioni clearly and logically lays out the four disciplines to creating a healthy organization: 1) build a cohesive leadership team - essentially the five focus-areas described in the Five Dysfunctions of a team: trust, conflict, commitment, accountability and results; 2) create clarity - of purpose, behaviours (ie. core values), offerings, competitive strategy, priorities, performance metrics and leadership team member roles; 3) overcommunicate clarity - repeated, aligned cascading communication from leadership team members to their direct reports and down the line; 4) reinforce clarity - through human systems - every process that involves people, from hiring and people management to training, compensation and termination. Lencioni then slips in a 5th unofficial, yet critical, discipline titled “The Centrality of Meetings”, drawing from his Death by Meetings framework. In it, he underlines that no action, activity or process is more central to a healthy organization than effective meetings, from the daily check-in (huddle) through to the quarterly off-site. A key point in The Advantage, which may be missed or forgotten, is that the single biggest factor determining whether an organization is going to get healthier, is the genuine commitment and active involvement of the top leader - the owner-operator, CEO or president. Book length: 240 pages, 5 hour 25 minute audio. Soundview summary: 8 pages, 21 minute audio. GetAbstract summary: 5 pages, 10 minute audio. How can you strengthen your organization? To find out how you can make your organization healthier to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, 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. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. *Many of Patrick Lencioni’s best practices are included in our Agile Growth Checklist, as well as many others developed by world-renowned business leaders, researchers and professionals.
 Continuing with my article theme over the last few weeks of building a great leadership team, I’m excited to share a Gravitas Impact podcast on the topic from my colleague and mentor Mike Goldman in New Jersey. Based on his newly released book, Breakthrough Leadership Team, he shares his perspective, after thirty years consulting and coaching, that the biggest difference between a great company and mediocre company is the leadership team. It’s the growth “linchpin”, as I call it. In this 30 minute podcast, Mike shares more broadly how to build a great leadership team, and also dives deep into the one biggest challenge to that effort - ensuring the right leaders are on the team. Subscribe to Gravitas Impact podcast: Android
How can you strengthen your leadership team? To find out what you can improve in your leadership team to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, 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. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. Complete section 1, 2 and 4 to check your leadership team’s collaboration, talent and accountability 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. |
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