Have you had good success and are now considering diversifying your business to protect it? You might want to think again.
Profit from the Core, by Chris Zook with James Allen, quickly became an international best seller when it was published in 2001 just after the dot-com bust. Profit from the Core: A Return to Growth in Turbulent Times, is the latest version, released in 2010. It provides guidance for managers to improve growth by focusing on their core business, rather than weakening their business by branching out into new unrelated areas. The book is based on more than ten years of Bain & Company research and analysis and is still relevant and useful today. It argues that most companies diversify well before tapping into the full growth and profitability potential of their core business – that mix of target market, product offering, distribution channels, unique capabilities and other critical strategic assets that can establish a market leader position. Investing in that core business offers the most growth and profit potential. Paradoxically, our core business is often already our most profitable business line. When growth in the core is fully maximized, carefully adding “adjacencies” that reinforce it can further its growth. Otherwise, diversifying usually distracts from and weakens the core business, and the company’s growth and profitability. While the research seems strong, expect a bit of a technical read. Book: 192 pages. Ebook with Read-Aloud available on Google Play Books. Book summary on Soundview: 8 pages, 22 minutes audio. How can you improve your profitability? To find out how to improve your profitability to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete section 5 to check your profitability management practices. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. Techniques to Reduce Stress, Burnout and Negative Thinking In partnership with Growth Faculty, we are delighted to offer you 10% discount to a Virtual Book Club Interview – The Mindful High Performer – with Chelsea Pottenger. Reflecting on the last two years, you’ve probably worked harder than ever… but are you happier? According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), one in five people is going through a mental health crisis at any given time. In The Mindful High Performer, author Chelsea Pottenger guides you through simple, science-based tools to achieve optimal mental health, enabling you to operate at a high-performance level without feeling overwhelmed, overworked or simply over it. During a live, virtual 45-minute, book club interview, Chelsea will share her personal mental health journey and:
“Chelsea is a special soul whose practical tips can help you change your life. Her simple strategies have helped me to calm my busy mind!” - Jessica Rowe BOOK YOUR SPOT TODAY AND GET A COPY OF THE BOOK INCLUDED! Tuesday, December 6, 2022 - 6pm in MB, 6pm in SK NON-MEMBER: $75* | OUR NETWORK: $69* *Prices quoted in USD. What can you do to grow your mid-size company?
To find out what you and your leadership team could do to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. In the previous 5 Minute Growth Tips article, I wrote about how CEOs can speed up the process of implementing best practices in their leadership team and company by getting outside, help rather than using a Do-It-Yourself approach.
So what kind of services are available and how do they all compare? When evaluating the options, we want to keep in mind the key underlying challenges we want help with to implement the structures, systems and processes needed to grow profitably, and enjoy the ride. These challenges include:
Note that all these challenges involve not just technical changes (eg. how we set goals, run a more effective interview, or put together an effective meeting agenda), but also changes to how we and our leadership team members behave (eg. learning to say no to goals that are important but not top priority, developing the discipline to drill into a job applicant’s past, or practicing the restraint to let all team members speak first). So we’ll want to look for help with both technical and behavioural improvements when we consider the options. Here, we’ll explore the eight most common types of outside support I’ve seen CEOs and business owners consider over my 17 years working with them:
Below, I’ve described each type of service as if it were pure. But they rarely are. There are business consultants who also offer strategic planning facilitation, and HR consultants who also do executive coaching. By reviewing the summaries below you should have a feel for who offers what even if they offer more than one type of service. CEO Peer Forums CEO peer forums are peer groups of CEOs and owners from non-competing companies. They usually meet once a month for a half day to a day. This includes sharing wins and obstacles, hearing other members’ experiences, and sharing goals and commitments to apply what they discovered. In most peer forum meetings, there will also be a presentation from a guest speaker, or from the moderator, on a topic of interest to the group. The Pros: CEOs and owners develop relationships with peers who understand where they are coming from. Being a CEO or business owner can be a lonely job because no one inside the company understands what they’re going through. A CEO forum solves this problem. It can also be a great place for networking. Keep in mind that most CEO forum groups frown upon any kind of sales activities in the group, including asking for referrals and introductions to other business owners. The Cons: While CEOs will hear others’ experiences of how they handled certain situations, they’ll need to keep in mind that the tactics shared may or may not be proven best practices. While an approach may have worked for their CEO peer, it may not work in their own unique environment. Similarly, the tactics shared may have gotten the peer CEO through the situation, but may not have produced excellent results. Members will also want to keep in mind that their own description of the problem will be the basis of the solutions others share. If we don’t fully see our problem, or we’re biased in how we see it, the solutions other members share could be misguided. Without others seeing our situation first hand, there is no way for our CEO peers to be truly objective with the solutions they offer. As well, when a CEO peer forum member is implementing solutions they hear, they then have to convince their leadership team that the problem exists and that the solution they heard will work, because their team members were not part of the discussion. This can lead to hesitation, if not resistance, from their leadership team. Business Consultants Business consultants aim to provide analysis and insights to a CEO or other leader on what needs to change. Business consultants vary from “pair-of-hands consultants”, who are hired to carry out work the company directs them to do, through to “expert consultants”, who review information, meet with team members and provide recommendations for what to change or improve. In between these two types are “collaborative consultants.” They do the same work as expert consultants but work hand-in-hand with the client to gather information and develop recommendations, so the client builds some capability in-house. The Pros: Experienced and effective business consultants can provide insight on a focused problem that is technical in nature, whether it is about business processes, financial management, accounting, marketing activities, or sales processes, in short, within the various functional areas of a business. They can also provide validation for a high stakes decision by gathering more rigorous data and doing a more thorough analysis than the client has the ability or resources to do themselves. The Cons: Business consultants are not often experts at supporting the implementation of their recommendations. I’ve met many business owners who have hired consultants only to have the report still sitting on a shelf, collecting dust. In my experience, there are many more consultants who only make recommendations than those who will stand behind those recommendations to see them through. That said, some consultants will work as contractors to implement new processes or systems, manage and maintain them for a while and then train others in the company to take them over. However, this only works for trainable technical skills as opposed to behavioural skills, which take much more than training. Changes in behavior require the CEO and leadership team to realize that they are part of the problem and that they need to change how they do things. The challenges we’ve been discussing in this 5 Minute Growth Tips article series involve alot of behaviour change. So doing analysis and making a recommendation usually does not work. Instead, we need to get leaders to think about their part in the situation and consider what they personally need to do differently, so that they will take ownership of the solution and change their behavior. While some consultants have this capability, it’s generally not what consultants do. HR Consultants Given that working on our leadership team processes and systems involves changing behaviours, we might consider those we think of as experts on people: HR consultants. They typically take a similar approach to broader business consultants, but focus on the human resource management function. Again, those who use an expert consulting approach will review documents, hold interviews and provide recommendations. Those who use a collaborative approach will do the same, but with the client rather than for them. However, HR Consultants’ will typically limit themselves to HR processes and systems: job design, hiring, orientation, onboarding, training, performance planning and review, compensation, disciplining, dismissal and labor law. Some HR consultants will provide individual or organizational assessment services based on surveys or interviews. And some also provide basic strategic planning services (see below). The Pros: When a CEO or owner is absolutely certain that the main area for improvement in the leadership team is a technical one related to how individuals are found, managed, paid and removed, an HR consultant may be appropriate. However, keep in mind that the solutions again are technical ones, not behavioural. And the growth challenges we have been discussing in this 5 Minute Growth Tip article series are primarily behavioural. The Cons: HR consultants don’t typically support leadership team members to change and improve their behaviours as leaders or team members. Their organizational assessments can be helpful. However, HR consultants will not necessarily pick up on subtle leadership and interpersonal behaviours that could be as or more important factors. Their strategic planning facilitation services often cover the basics of mission, vision and values, with little or no attention paid to competitive market positioning or execution. Strategic Planning Consultants and Facilitators While business and HR consultants provide recommendations, strategic planning consultants and facilitators moderate leadership team discussions to come up with their own solutions, decisions and plans. The “consultant” in “strategic planning consultant” usually means they recommend the process for strategic planning the leadership team will use to make decisions. The strategic planning consultant doesn’t usually recommend what the leadership team should do in their business. Instead they facilitate those discussions and decision-making. The Pros: Experienced, trained, strategic planning facilitators can be great at moderating and guiding conversations to arrive at clear, well thought out decisions with a level of buy-in and commitment from the team. Having an outside, experienced facilitator also frees up the CEO to participate in the conversation rather than trying to lead the meeting effectively while also contributing. The Cons: Many strategic planning facilitators are well versed in the basic planning processes of SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats), Core Values, Mission, Vision and priorities. However, I have met very few who know how to facilitate competitive strategy decisions and execution planning and monitoring, let alone other key issues that often arise, like role clarity, talent assessments, profitability, cash flow and mindset, just to name a few of the dozens of practices that help with growing a mid-sized company. Team Building Facilitators and Trainers Team building facilitators generally come in three flavors. There are those who do personality assessment sessions, those who lead team building learning activities, and other event and activity businesses who have branched out into this space. Personality assessment sessions have leadership team members learn about each others’ personality types and how to work better together. Team building learning activities include fun, social events intended to bring awareness to basic collaboration skills like listening, communicating, planning, problem solving, etc. Some examples of these activities include team obstacle courses, activities to build objects with unusual materials, or trust falls. Other event and activity businesses, like wall climbing studios, escape rooms and axe throwing centres, also offer their activities for companies looking to do team building. The Pros: Personality assessments are a worthwhile team building activity. By understanding our own and each other’s strengths and weaknesses, preferences and frustrations, leadership team members learn to be open and vulnerable. This often results in a higher level of trust within the team and team members communicating more effectively with others. Team building learning activities and other event and activity companies can be fun for team members, create structured time together in a more relaxed environment, and can remind them of basic team skills. The Cons: The trust and communication skills developed in a personality assessment session can fizzle rather quickly afterwards. This is because these sessions rarely get into the other critical aspects of leadership team collaboration, like having productive conversations and conflict, making clear decisions that all team members are committed to, and holding each other accountable for execution and results. So while personality assessments are good as far as they go, they don’t go far enough. Similarly, the skills identified in team building activities rarely lead to meaningful application within real life decision-making and execution. These activities usually take place in a separate, fun environment or involve role plays. Without application and practice in the challenging realities of the business, the skills won’t stick. Leadership and Executive Coaches When CEOs and owners of mid-size businesses think of a coach, they generally think of an executive or leadership coach. This is someone they would talk to one-on-one on a regular basis who would support them in becoming a stronger leader, in curbing a habit they want to change or achieving an important goal. A leadership or executive coach doesn’t analyse the CEO’s business or recommend solutions. Instead, they guide the CEO in working through the problem themselves. In this way, the CEO reflects on their own part in the challenges they face, takes ownership for it, and works on changing those behaviours to achieve a better outcome. Leadership and executive coaches also hold the CEO or business owner accountable for change, progress and results, given CEOs often have no one to play that role for them. The Pros: Executive and leadership coaches can be a great support to help a leader really move the needle on how they show up, work through problems, interact with others and manage themselves. Leadership and executive coaches also help with execution by supporting the CEO or owner on an ongoing basis. In this way, they guide the CEO through the intricacies and hiccups of making new behaviours stick in the face of day-to-day real-life challenges. Cons: A key limitation of one-on-one executive and leadership coaching is that the CEOs of mid-size companies may often learn things that they want their leadership team members to learn as well. Yet they’ll often find it difficult to teach those concepts to their people themselves. They may then find they have to get the same one-on-one coaching for one or more of their team members. Another limitation is executive and leadership team coaching addresses the individual’s behaviour, but doesn’t fully address the relationships and interactions between the individual and someone else, because the other person’s perspectives and behaviours are not factored in. In a similar way, it doesn’t address the relationships and interactions across a leadership team. Beyond that, leadership and executive coaching tends to focus more on behaviours and less so on the technical business aspects a CEO and leadership team need to also pay attention to, areas like: strategy, execution, systems, customer, profitability and cash flow. Business Coaches Like leadership and executive coaches, business coaches work one-on-one with owners, serve more as problem-solving guides rather than do-it-for-you analysts, and hold them accountable for progress. In contrast to leadership and executive coaches, business coaches tend to focus more on business aspects and less so on leadership behaviours. They often work with owners of small to mid-size companies to guide them through key business decisions. The Pros: A seasoned, trained, certified business coach can be a great resource for owners of small businesses: those who don’t yet have a management team and don’t yet need one. In these businesses, the owner is the key decision maker for every function in the business - from marketing, sales and production, to HR, accounting and IT. Given the multiple areas a business owner needs to pay attention to, an experienced business coach can help them find their way and keep on top of everything. The Cons: Like leadership and executive coaches, business coaches work one-on-one with the business owner. Once a business grows to the point of having or needing a management team (usually around 10 to 20 employees), the business owner will have one or more managers leading certain functions, whether that’s marketing and sales, production, or finance and administration. At this point, the business owner may want these other managers to receive professional guidance from their business coach as well. However, this can lead to problems where decisions made by the owner become disjointed from the decisions made by the other manager(s). This will cause different parts of the business to go in different directions and cause unnecessary conflict, inefficiencies, problems for employees and customers, and subpar performance overall. Business Growth & Executive Team Coaches In the last 10 to 15 years, a new type of coaching service has evolved to meet the needs of mid-sized company CEOs and their whole senior leadership teams. Some of these coaches call their service Leadership Team Coaching. Others call it Business Growth Advisory Services, Business and Leadership Growth Coaching or CEO and Executive Team Coaching. Regardless of the label, this hybrid service includes a combination of regular, ongoing, one-on-one CEO coaching and facilitated leadership team planning and coaching sessions, whether quarterly or monthly. This newer breed of coaching also uses some of the same group facilitation methods as strategic planning facilitators and team building trainers, but with a more holistic set of both leadership and business best practices, so they can support and guide the large majority of decisions and actions a CEO and leadership team need to take on their growth journey. The Pros: With an experienced, trained and certified Business Growth & Executive Team Coach, CEOs and owners of mid-sized companies get many of the benefits of the other options above, with few of the disadvantages. A seasoned Executive Team Coach provides a caring, empathetic, understanding ear because they’ve seen the CEO’s situation many times before. They share and teach proven best practices that have been shown to get results. The whole leadership team learns these best practices and buys into them more easily. Executive Team Coaches act as an outside, objective observer who can point things out that the CEO and team may not be aware of. They support both the technical and business improvements and the behavioural and leadership change needed for the leadership team to truly move forward. Working with the leadership team as a whole enables improved interactions and relationships across the team. They guide the leadership team through critical real-life, real-time decisions and planning, in ways that ensure the whole team is clear, focused and aligned. They enable the CEO to fully participate rather than worrying about running the meetings. They support high level strategic thinking decisions right down to detailed execution planning, accountability and course correction, so that real progress is made. The Cons: Business Growth & Executive Team Coaches are more expensive than leadership, executive or business coaches as well as strategic planning and team building facilitators. This is because of the much greater value they bring in terms of decision-making quality, execution follow-through and business results. It’s also because of the years of business, coaching and facilitation experience needed to be effective guiding a CEO and their whole leadership team. That said, the whole leadership team benefits from the service, not just the CEO. So the investment per person can still be lower than some of the other options above. This kind of service is also not for those who are looking for a quick fix. Recall that growing a company involves both technical and behavioural improvements at all levels of the company, within every department, and across a number of different areas: leadership, talent, strategy, execution, cashflow, customer, systems. It takes ongoing focus, commitment and discipline to implement the many best practices needed to grow and profitably. And so business growth advisors and leadership team coaches provide the ongoing support for CEOs and their leadership teams to lay the foundation and build from there over time. For CEOs and owners of mid-sized companies who’ve recognized a Do-It-Yourself approach is too slow and are looking for outside support and guidance, there are a number of options to choose from. However, in my experience, to see real improvement, progress and results within themselves, across their leadership team and down through their organization, Business Growth & Executive Team Coaches offer the best investment to grow profitably and enjoy the ride. While an Executive Team Coach may be best for you and your company. Will you be a good fit for them? In my next article, I’ll share what it takes to be successful with a Business Growth & Executive Team Coach. How can you grow a thriving company? To find out what to focus on to to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. Several years ago, I came across a gem of a book: Low-Hanging Fruit, 77 Eye-Opening Ways to Improve Productivity and Profits, by Jeremy Eden and Terri Long.
It’s based on years of actual application and it resonated with me based on work I’ve done with clients. The basic premise is that productivity and profits can be increased more easily and quickly by addressing many small sources of waste and ineffectiveness instead of trying a few big, risky transformational initiatives. The “77 eye-opening ways” require involving front-line employees. This helps ensure real problems are identified - ones that ultimately affect productivity and the customer experience. It also helps ensure realistic solutions are generated that will make a real difference and that employees can more easily buy into it. As well, employees become more engaged by being involved in and seeing change that produces results. The authors also suggest the approach is simpler, less costly and more flexible than a formal process improvement method, like Lean. This book is very practical, getting to specific methods rather than vague, theoretical strategies often described in many business books. And it’s as useful today as it was when I first read it. Book: 224 pages, 4 hour 40 minute audio book. Book summary on Soundview: 8 pages, 19 minute audio summary. How can you improve your profitability? To find out how to improve your profitability to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete section 5 to check your profitability management practices. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. Leadership advice for maximising productivity, wherever you or your team is working In partnership with the Growth Faculty, we are delighted to offer you a 25% discount to Hybrid Work. Maximum Productivity. with Bob Pozen. Getting more done and doing it well (rather than working a ton of hours) is the key to success in today’s knowledge economy. Yet many organisations are still counting hours rather than output. In this 90-minute masterclass, MIT Senior Lecturer, author and business leader, Bob Pozen will teach how to move your organisation to a high-performance system, based on each team’s priorities and implemented through success metrics. Learn how each team should design the optimal hybrid workplace for its own members – getting the most out of the common time in the office and the solitary work done at home. Take away practical skills and strategies for enhancing the productivity of any team by:
This highly practical and information-packed live, virtual masterclass is ideal for leaders of teams, business owners, heads of departments and anyone who wants to help their team get more done. Tuesday, November 1, 2022 - 7pm in MB, 6pm in SK NON-MEMBER: $130* | OUR NETWORK: $115* *Prices quoted in USD. How can you improve your hybrid workplace productivity?
To find out how to improve execution efficiency to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete section 4 to check your company’s talent processes. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. Many organizations spend 100% of their time talking to the 10-20% of customers who are unhappy. This type of fear-based reactive selling costs organizations millions. What is this REACTIVE selling costing YOUR organization in revenue, time and effectiveness? In this Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches webinar, Alex Goldfayn, author of The Wall Street Journal bestseller Selling Boldly, walks through his PROACTIVE selling approach to engaging clients and prospects in new, effective ways, from asking “Did You Know” questions to getting referrals. The Selling Boldly proactive approach will change how your sales team approaches business. Subscribe to Gravitas Impact podcast: Android
What can you do to grow your mid-size company? To find out what you and your leadership team could do to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. In this 5 Minute Growth Tips article series, I’ve shared overviews of the key best practices for growing a thriving company.
Yet, you may be asking, “how can I implement each of these best practices? how can I actually make them happen?” For example, how do I define the right functions on my leadership team? How can we set clear priorities for change and improvement? Or, how do I get my leadership team members to change their mindset? One way is to figure things out yourself. Another way is to use an outside expert, like a coach, consultant or advisor, to guide you step by step. Many leaders try to figure things out themselves. Some of these leaders don’t know there are experts who could help them in these areas. Others have had a bad experience with an outside expert and are nervous about trying that again. Other leaders are concerned about what the cost might be. But oftentimes, these leaders think it’s their job as a CEO to have all the answers. While figuring things out yourself is certainly an option, it’s the “long road option”. For sure, CEOs and owners can get there on their own, over time. They’re smart, passionate, energetic and fast learners. But they’ll get there a lot faster with the support of an experienced external advisor. As I mentioned in my previous article in this series, business owners and CEOs often have a high internal locus of control, meaning they believe they have control within themselves to make things happen and influence the world around them. Sometimes, this belief shows up in a counter-productive way, where they influence the world by doing too much themselves, rather than getting help from others. As a result, they become the bottleneck, slowing down the company’s development, growth and profitability. That said, let’s consider the option of figuring things out on your own. You could read a book that includes dozens of these best practices in one convenient, integrated package, tailored specifically for mid-size companies...like Scaling Up or the 7 Attributes of Agile Growth monographs. And then you could read a book or two on each of these best practices, find a book that includes how-to guidance for each one, and implement them with their team over time. You could even attend a workshop where you get a chance to practice a bit with a handful of best practices. With each of these approaches, it’s then up to the CEO alone to implement their learning in their team and company. So, what are the pros and cons of a DIY approach? Some of the pros are:
Some of the cons include:
In short, the devil is in the details. And there are alot of them. And why is that? One word: complexity. Some specific best practices are straightforward, like defining a goal. You can Google how to set a goal like you can Google how to change the oil in an engine. These narrow, individual problems have a straightforward, known solution that applies in most situations. However, improving how leaders lead and how companies operate isn’t so straightforward. These changes involve a variety of interconnected organizational and leadership best practices. For example, strengthening accountability takes much more than setting a goal. And how the goal is set depends on other things like clearly defined individual accountabilities. Improving how a company operates is more like tuning a whole modern day engine than just changing the oil. There are multiple parts involved and multiple interacting solutions needed. And only an expert mechanic can help diagnose the issues and determine the solutions. There are a few other disadvantages to a DIY approach:
For business owners and CEOs looking to grow a thriving mid-size company, the thinking sometimes goes that it’s their job to have all the answers. They were smart enough to get to this point, so they must be able to figure the rest out on their own. Yet, this DIY mindset often leads to failed attempts, cynicism, lack of team commitment, delays and missed opportunities. As the Gravitas Impact Voice of the CEO survey showed, the results are low productivity, market share, revenue growth, profit and/or cash flow. The survey also found that CEOs often feel unsure, stressed, frustrated, scattered and reactive. In contrast, the owners and CEOs that get the furthest fastest tend to take a different path. They don’t focus on how to make things happen, but on who they need to learn from and partner with to speed up the process. In fact, the Voice of the CEO survey showed that CEOs who engaged a qualified Gravitas Impact business growth and executive team coach saw significant improvements in employee engagement, overall productivity, revenue growth and profitability. They also felt more focused, clear, confident, balanced, calm and strategic. Did Mahama D’Ali, or Lennox Lewis, or any successful athlete, rise to the top of their sport by figuring everything out on their own? No. They each had a coach, an experienced advisor. Or Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, or Eric Schmidt? Did they build and grow thriving, enduring companies by taking a DIY approach? No, they also used coaches and advisors. In my next 5 Minute Growth Tip article, I’ll compare the pros and cons of some options for getting dedicated and tailored, external expert guidance, from strategic planning facilitators and business consultants to CEO forum groups, business coaches and executive team coaches. What can you do to grow your mid-size company? To find out what you and your leadership team could do to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. While profit is obviously critical to any business, it is often simplistically depicted as the result of maximizing revenues and minimizing expenses.
However, companies often wrestle with the challenge of determining what expenses are critical to making their revenues, and which ones can be spared without affecting the top line. One book on profitability demystifies profit creation. The Art of Profitability, by Adrian Slywotzky, demonstrates that profitability is achieved through the appropriate choice of business strategy, or business model, if you prefer. Through the engaging parable of a strategy veteran coaching an aspiring strategy professional, Slywotzky covers 23 common and not-so-common “profit models.” The Customer Solution Profit model, for example, is when a company invests significant up front time and energy to learn about a customer to develop tailored solutions just for them. These then generate ongoing profits for a long time after. Multi-Component Profit is where the same product is sold to the same customers through different channels at different prices to maximize profitability (eg. Coke). The key message is that profit creation is an experimental art rather than a certain science. But it can be learned and practiced. The story also vividly illustrates effective coaching of strategic thinking, or of any other skill. Book: 272 pages, full audio - 5 hours 36 minutes. Soundview Summary: 4 pages, 16 minute audio. How can you improve your profitability? To find out how to improve your profitability to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete section 5 to check your profitability management practices. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. Supporting, Developing and Retaining High Performers In partnership with Growth Faculty, we are delighted to offer you a $50 USD discount to Increase Your Influence, Leadership and Impact at Work, with Liz Wiseman. Every leader is navigating the effects of the global pandemic and learning what it takes to be adaptive and resilient to change when change is the only guarantee of the future. In a competitive market, the demand for Impact Players – those standout contributors who create extraordinary value everywhere they work – is higher than ever. In this 2.5 hour live virtual event, Liz Wiseman, bestselling author of Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter and Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger and Multiply Your Impact combines her brightest work to help leaders win the war on talent, build sustainable, high-performing teams and drive lasting results. “We don’t tend to drift into better behaviour.” – Liz Wiseman Impact Players are agile, easy to work with and get the job done even in times of uncertainty, like the one we’re in now. Once you’ve identified an Impact Player, how do you amplify their impact and keep them in your business? Leaders need to manage in a way that’s worthy of an Impact Player, providing the reward and recognition they deserve. Monday, October 17, 2022 - 5pm in MB, 4pm in SK NON-MEMBER: $295* | OUR NETWORK: $245* *Prices quoted in USD. How can you develop high performers?
To find out how to develop your talent to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete sections 2 to check your company’s talent processes. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. Simon Sinek has popularized the scientifically proven idea that a company’s purpose, and how much the leaders promote, act and live by that purpose, is one of many key ingredients for building a great culture and workplace. Yet many midsize company owners and CEOs find it difficult to bring their company’s purpose to life and help employees connect to that purpose. In this Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches webinar, Petr Ludwig, author of The End of Procrastination and founder of Procrastination.com and the GrowJob Institute, based in New York, Prague and Dubai, shares how CEOs need to be leaders of the purpose movement in their own lives to inspire others to find their purpose at work. Subscribe to Gravitas Impact podcast: Android
How can you strengthen your leadership? To find out how to become a better leader to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete section 1 and 2 to check your leadership and people processes. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. There are many challenges to growing a thriving mid-size company. (as I’ve shared in this 5 Minute Growth Tip article series). And sometimes it can feel like we’re stuck, like there's nothing we can do.
We may hide those thoughts and feelings from others, or even deny to ourselves that we have them. Yet, they still remain in the background of our thinking, gnawing away at our focus, energy and progress. This is an opportunity to check our thinking. Our thinking drives our actions. And our thinking can cause us to not take action. When we think there’s nothing we can do about a problem, we’ll naturally stand still on that issue. When we believe we can resolve it, we’ll find a solution and drive forward. Organizational psychologists have researched these two ways of thinking. They are part of what’s called our “locus of control”. The first way of thinking is that our situation is controlled by things that happen outside of us. We believe we are a victim of circumstances. This is an external locus of control. The second way of thinking is that our situation can be influenced by what we do. We believe we can always do something that will make a situation better. This is an internal locus of control. Think of the word “locus” as “location”. Is our thinking putting the “location” of control of the situation outside of ourselves (external) or within ourselves (internal)? As human beings, we tend to grow up with a tendency toward either an internal locus of control or an external one. We don’t think exclusively one way or the other, but rather predominantly. That said, we don’t necessarily think one way about everything. There can be areas of our lives and facets of our business that we treat with an internal locus of control mindset, and other areas that we tend to treat with an external locus of control. As entrepreneurs and business leaders, we often predominantly have an internal locus of control: we believe we can make things happen. However, we can also have an external locus of control in certain areas. For example, we might have an internal locus of control about getting more sales. We know that our actions directly influence our company’s sales volumes, and we look for and find ways to increase them. Yet, we might have an external locus of control about being able to hire A players. We may believe that there just aren’t any really strong employees out there, or none of them are looking for work, or they all want too much money, or they all hide their faults in interviews, etc. By switching our thinking to an internal locus of control in this area, we can find solutions. We can ask ourselves, “what is it that I’m doing that is getting in the way of hiring A players?” Or “what am I not doing, or not doing well?” And from there, we can ask “what can I do differently to find A players?” For example, do I have a clear description of what an A player will produce so I know exactly who I am looking for? What am I doing to network with A players I know in my industry who likely know other A players? Have I shopped around for an excellent recruiting company who can help me find the right people? Have I strengthened my interviewing skills to discover candidates’ true strengths, abilities and qualities? Have we captured on paper the advantages of working at our company, and do we sell great candidates on those virtues? Believing we have influence over the situation causes us to look for solutions we can act on. There’s also a way that an entrepreneur’s strong internal locus of control can actually create an external locus of control mindset in another area. I often see this struggle with CEOs and owners I meet. They complain that they don’t have enough time. This complaint is coming from an external locus of control mindset: the belief that their lack of time is happening to them. (Note that all complaining and blaming is really a form of external locus of control). When I invite a CEO or owner to flip their mindset to an internal locus of control, and ask themself what they are doing that is causing them to not have enough time, they realize that they are causing the problem. They often are attempting to jump on every problem and opportunity that comes up, and they are not delegating tasks and roles enough. In this way, as entrepreneurs, our internal locus of control about solving problems can cause us to have an external locus of control about time. Our tendency to think we can take control of any situation actually causes us to be so busy that we think we don’t have control of our time. Yet we do. We just need to change how we tackle problems, for example, by equipping others to take care of them rather than solving them ourselves. This mindset is a key linchpin in growing a thriving mid-sized company. The only way to grow and grow profitably, is to implement the structures, systems and processes to enable that growth. This then requires a leadership team that handles the day-to-day and can help with implementing many of those systems. These systems need to be guided by a solid strategy for competing in the market. That strategy needs to be executed efficiently. And efficient execution requires an A player leadership team, as well as efficient buy-in to support accountability. And all of these business practices take time. As a result, a CEO or owner will want to shift their mindset more fully to thinking about what they are doing, or not doing, that is causing them to be too busy to do these essential things. By doing so, they will get clear on what they need to do differently to free themselves up to shift increasingly from doing to leading. And, more generally, the practice of internal locus of control will help any leader, and their top team, look at how they’re contributing to a problem, and what they can do to influence it. Another way leaders contribute to problems in their company is by trying to figure things out all on their own. We’ll tackle that topic in my next 5 Minute Growth Tip article. What can you do to grow your mid-size company? To find out what you and your leadership team could do to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. Best practices for being competitive and impactful in a post-pandemic world In partnership with Growth Faculty, we are delighted to offer you a 10% discount to Competing In The New World of Work, a 1.5-hour live and interactive virtual event with Keith Ferrazzi. The pandemic forced leaders to shed outdated ways of doing business and make bold leaps into the future of work. In this live, virtual masterclass, New York Times bestselling author Keith Ferrazzi shares the emerging best practices of thousands of c-suite executives and teaches how to remain competitive and impactful in a post-pandemic world. Keith will offer a bold new vision for what the organisation of the future looks like —digital, distributed, inclusive, resilient, empathic— and the emerging best leadership practices that will redefine success in the ever-evolving world of work. “Success in any field, but especially in business is about working with people, not against them.” – Keith Ferrazzi You’ll leave inspired, ready to catapult your organisation forward, embrace new realities and discover new frontiers Based on an ambitious global research initiative involving thousands of executives, innovators, and change-makers who have redefined their strategies, business models, organisational systems, and even their cultures, this masterclass offers leaders the inspiration and the road map to:
Tuesday, September 13, 2022 - 8pm in MB, 7pm in SK NON-MEMBER: $130* | OUR NETWORK: $115* *Prices quoted in USD. How can you adapt your leadership?
To find out how to adapt your leadership to the post-pandemic world to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete sections 1 and 2 to check your company’s leadership and people processes. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. In our webinar earlier this year with Greg Crabtree, speaker, entrepreneur, financial expert and author of Simple Numbers 2.0, he shared what returns entrepreneurs should expect from their business: 5% net profit is survival, 10% is a good business, and 15% is a great business. These numbers are true for about 70% of businesses. He and his firm have since discovered a financial metric and standard that works for any company, regardless of industry, and that helps CEOs find surefire ways to improve their return on investment. In this Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches podcast, Crabtree shares this better metric, the additional levers to improve your return and how, contrary to a lot of financial advice, a business owner’s best investment decision is often not to diversify into other businesses, but rather to reinvest in their current business. Greg also shares how his background growing up on a chicken farm to becoming an accountant has led to how strongly he feels about helping entrepreneurs create security for their families. Subscribe to Gravitas Impact podcast: Android
How can you improve your company’s return on investment? To find out how to increase your return to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete section 5 to check your profit processes. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. In my experience, one of the most overlooked disciplines in business is pricing. This is also reflected in the small number of books on the topic, compared to those on leadership, marketing, strategy, etc.
How often do you and your leadership team ask: Could our prices be increased? Are we discounting too much? How can we protect our pricing as competitors enter? How can we price to capture other segments of the market? This topic is all the more relevant in the current environment of high inflation. It’s critical right now for many companies to figure out how much they can pass on supplier price increases to their customers without losing them or drastically reducing volumes. These questions, and others, are covered in depth in Pricing With Confidence by Reed Holden and Mark Burton. As pricing consultants to large firms, they are well versed in the internal organizational dynamics that make pricing challenging. A key theme in their book is “build your selling backbone”. This requires thoroughly understanding the value of your product or service relative to alternatives in the market. That means analysing the added (or lesser) financial value of your offering based on the results it delivers or enables for your customers. The authors also share insights on how to shift pricing at different stages of a product’s life. Although clunky to read, and technical at times, this book is well worth the time investment. Book: 202 pages, full audio - 7 hours 23 minutes. How can you improve your pricing and profitability? To find out how to improve your profitability to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete section 5 to check your profitability management practices. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. Over the last five 5 Minute Growth Tip articles, I’ve described the critical leadership team best practices to implement the structures, systems and processes to enable profitable growth.
However, you might be thinking, “I can see how it all works, but I’m really busy! I don’t have time for these things. I don’t even have time for family, friends or even myself.” But might there be a way to make time? How might you successfully do less of what you’re doing right now so you have the time to put these best practices in place, to enable the profitable growth you want to see, and lead the life you want to live? How can you get out of the weeds? The simple solutions One could maybe end this article right here with the trite saying “delegate and elevate”. This simple tactic may do the job for you. Start by listing out all the things you do on a week to week or month to month basis. Take a hard look at everything that could be handed off to others. You may find there are a number of quick wins that will create time in your calendar to put some serious effort into your leadership team and the company. Sit down with each person you’ll delegate to. Be clear on your expectations and standards. Show them how you want things done, praise their progress and good work. Redirect them if they slip backwards. But sometimes handing things off to others doesn’t seem feasible. Your team may be really busy too. Maybe they feel tapped out. Another option is to hire another leader to take over some of your accountabilities. For example, you may still be leading sales, marketing, operations, R&D or administration. What would it be like to have someone else doing a great job fully leading one or more of those areas for you? Identify what you want to delegate, hire another leader with a great track record in those areas and get on with making the changes and improvements to the business to get your return on that investment. This solution assumes your company is in a financial position to invest in making that hire. But sometimes, that might not be feasible. The last simpler option is to find quick ways to improve profitability so you can afford to invest in another leader who will take on some of your accountabilities. The good news is that this can often be done with some small tweaks to the business. A one percent increase in pricing to customers, a one percent decrease in cost of goods sold and a one percent decrease in overhead costs can make a big difference to the bottom line: anywhere from 10 to 80% depending on your business model and cost structure. That can often be enough to invest in another leader. If these kinds of profit enhancing quick wins aren’t feasible in your company, you may feel stuck, like you’re in a chicken or egg position: you need to delegate to make more significant changes to improve profitability and invest in growth, but you need more profit to invest in leaders so you can delegate. The alternative solution Simple delegation, hiring another leader or quickly increasing profits to do so aren’t always an option. Sometimes the only other way is to get more done with the people we have. This means increasing your leadership team’s efficiency so your team members have the capacity to take on some of your roles and/or lead some internal change projects on your behalf. How do you do that? By getting the right people in the right seats, improving their execution and strengthening leadership team buy-in and accountability. Right people in the right seats This starts with defining the right functions on the leadership team and making adjustments to ensure you have the right person leading each function. Over time, if not early on, other leaders will be able take on functions you’re currently leading. The goal is to make sure each leader is highly productive leading their function(s) and driving high productivity in their respective teams. We also want them to behave in constructive ways (aligned with your core values) that minimize drama across the leadership team and within each of their departments. Leaders can become even more efficient by ensuring they have the right people in the right seats within their departments and that their people are also behaving constructively. See this article for more on getting the right people in the right seats. Efficient execution Having the right people in the right seats on your team provides a good foundation. But how much of their potential productivity you tap into will depend on how each leader and the team executes. Through improved execution practices, your leadership team members will deliver better results, need less attention from you, have capacity to take on one or more of your functions and lead improvement projects you might otherwise lead. Great execution involves: 1) each leader owning clear metrics and targets for the company and their respective functions for the year and the quarter, 2) each leader driving 2 to 3 clear priorities for change and improvement for the next year and quarter, with a 13 week sprint plan to make each one happen, and 3) a rhythm of efficient weekly, monthly and quarterly meetings to hold each other accountable to hit the numbers, move the priorities forward and set new priorities for the next quarter. Daily huddles also help speed things up by identifying obstacles to solve as soon as they come up. A note about choosing those few critical priorities: getting the right people in the right seats needs to be a top priority for the first quarter if you want to delegate and elevate yourself, and then have your leaders do the same. You will then be rewarded every quarter with a bit more capacity so you can work more on other priorities to move the company forward. See this article for more on efficient execution. Leadership team buy-in and accountability For any of this to work, the leadership team needs to be bought in and committed. The best way is to do this WITH your team, not TOO your team. Discuss and decide on leadership team functions and assignments, set metrics and targets, and decide on company priorities WITH your leadership team. This way, they’ll be bought into these changes and driven to make them happen. These practices will improve accountability and drive efficiency. You can strengthen accountability further by 1) leading by example in all these activities, 2) raising your expectations of your leaders, and 3) communicating in ways that maintain their natural motivation to execute. See this article for more on leadership team buy-in and accountability. Making it happen Getting the right people in the right seats, improving execution and getting leadership team buy-in and accountability will increase your team’s efficiency and enable you to delegate some of your functions and internal projects, so you can get out of the weeds. As you gain momentum, you’ll carve out more time for yourself and your team to work on strategy, implement other structures, systems, processes, and build capacity to grow and grow profitably. Ultimately, you’ll also start to be able to make more time for your family, rekindle old friendships and get back to some of the personal things you enjoy. You probably won’t delegate and elevate in one fell swoop. But bite off what you can and you’ll create capacity to bite off more as you go. For example, you might find that more than one leader needs to be replaced. Start with one in the first quarter. Replacing even just one unfit leader with an excellent one will help reduce your workload. This will give you some breathing room to make other changes. The same will hold true for the employee changes your leaders make in their departments. That said, at the foundation of all this is having a rhythm of efficient meetings to make decisions as a team, plan, execute and hold each other accountable. And that takes a commitment of time up front. Now you may be wondering, “I said I was too busy to implement the best practices for profitable growth, and now Jean-Guy is suggesting solving my busy-ness by implementing some of those same best practices…I said I’m too busy!” Here’s the thing… it’s like exercising. We can say, “I can’t run because I don’t have the stamina.” But the only way to build up the stamina is to start running. Not alot to start - maybe 500 meters. But start. After a few runs, you’ll be able to run more - maybe a kilometer. In not too long, you’ll have the stamina to run 5 kilometers, and then 10. It’s an investment that pays off. The nice thing is that it pays off as you go. You don’t have to wait until some magical point in the future. But the only way to start getting the payoff is to start. And sometimes that takes a shift in mindset. More on that in my next 5 Minute Growth Tip article. How can you strengthen delegation in your entrepreneurial company? To find out how to improve delegation in your business to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete sections 1, 2 and 4 to check your delegation practices. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. Many CEOs struggle with mastering their own productivity as they encourage a culture of accountability in their organization. They feel constantly busy, overwhelmed and inundated. In this Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches webinar, Hao Lam, author, coach and CEO of the Best in Class Education Center in Seattle, Washington, shares his own schedule to demonstrate the habits and tools he’s used to monitor and improve his time management skills in both his personal and professional life. Lam also shares his personal story of escaping Vietnam as a refugee, and finding his passion for providing education worldwide, as outlined in his book From Bad to Worse to Best in Class. Subscribe to Gravitas Impact podcast: Android
How can you and your team become more productive? To find out how to improve your productivity to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete section 4 to check your execution practices. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. The 4 Disciplines of Execution, first published in 2004 by Stephen R. Covey, was revised and rereleased in 2012 by his son Sean Covey and colleagues Chris McChesney and Jim Huling. It covers a comprehensive system for executing change across a company.
The 4DX system is organized around four principles: 1) Focus on a small number of wildly important goals (WIGs). The more you try to do, the less you actually accomplish. So narrow your focus and make tough choices. 2) Act on lead measures contributing to those goals. The WIGs still need to be measured. But measuring the actions to achieve the WIGs will support accountability for what’s truly actionable. 3) Keep a compelling scorecard. It must be so simple that team members can track their own score and they determine instantly if they are winning or losing. 4) Create a weekly cadence of accountability to contribute to moving the score. Unless we consistently hold each other accountable, the goal naturally fizzles in the whirlwind of the day-to-day. 4DX is a detailed and highly specified system refined by the FranklinCovey organization over the last decade and a half. I’m usually wary of any book that claims its system will work well every time. However, I can say that 4DX does work for executive teams (alot of the time - more on that below). It’s very similar to the approach from Scaling Up and the 7 Attributes of Agile Growth that we use with leadership teams to help them execute their strategies. And that works. That said, how well these execution disciplines work depends on a number of things, such as:
While 4DX is a proven execution method, the results will be limited if these other more foundational aspects of the business aren’t also worked on. This is the benefit of a holistic,integrated approach to business growth like Scaling Up or the 7 Attributes of Agile Growth. They go beyond symptoms to address the root causes of top team challenges, stymied company growth and CEO frustration. Book: 352 pages, full audio - 8 hours 30 minutes, abridged audio – 3 hours 40 minutes. Summary on Soundview: 8 pages, 22 minute audio. On GetAbstract: 5 pages, 10 minute audio. How can you improve your team’s execution? To find out how to improve your 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 practices. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. In partnership with Growth Faculty, we are delighted to offer you a $50 discount to a Good to Great Event: How to Develop Level 5 Leaders, a 2.5-hour live and interactive virtual event with Jim Collins. Take a deep dive into two key concepts from Jim Collins #1 New York Times bestseller; Good to Great – Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t - Level 5 Leadership and First Who, Then What. According to the globally renowned teacher and thought-leader, Jim Collins, Level 5 Leaders display a powerful mixture of personal humility and indomitable will. They're incredibly ambitious, but their ambition is first and foremost for the cause, for the organisation and its purpose, not themselves. “People are not your most important asset. The right people are.” – Jim Collins Those who build great organisations make sure they have the right people on the bus and the right people in the key seats before they figure out where to drive the bus. They always think about first who and then what. When facing chaos and uncertainty, when you cannot possibly predict what's coming around the corner, your best "strategy" is to have a busload of people who can adapt and perform brilliantly no matter what comes next. Overcoming the war on talent is one of the biggest post-pandemic challenges for leaders and managers. The best candidates are hard to find, hard to lock in and even harder to keep. Companies winning the war on talent understand how the workforce has evolved, communicate an inspiring vision for the future and are led by teams who care not just about their people, but the communities they serve and their impact on the planet. Wednesday, August 17, 2022 - 6pm in MB, 5pm in SK NON-MEMBER: $295* | OUR NETWORK: $245* *Prices quoted in USD. 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. 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. What might have happened for so many companies around the world if they had been prepared, prior to the pandemic, to successfully face the inevitable: that some unforeseeable shift in the world would become a sudden and significant threat or opportunity for their business? In this Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches webinar, Patrick Ginn, Founder and CEO of the Ginn Group in Vancouver, Washington, shares his experience building a resilient, aligned and agile company that was able to more easily and successfully navigate the pandemic. “Nothing could prepare us,” Ginn shared, “But we had already identified through coaching and in our quarterly and annual planning process that at some point, given our industry, a change would happen.” Ginn worked with a business coach to create a versatile business model and share it with employees to foster a mindset of alignment throughout the company, enabling them to move quickly in response to change. Listen to hear how the culture of “embracing change” became a Core Value for Ginn Group and for Patrick himself! Listen to part 2 to hear how Ginn is using his business to connect to the community through Ginn Gives. Subscribe to Gravitas Impact podcast: Android
How can you build an agile company? To find out how to align your team and foster agility to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. In partnership with Growth Faculty, we are delighted to offer you a 10% discount to Create Independent, Empowered Employees with Mark Green. To create sustainable scale you must grow, challenge and engage your team by increasing autonomy, mastery and purpose. These easy-to-list, challenging-to-achieve attributes eliminate countless leadership headaches and benefit organisations in multiple ways. They’re also required if your aspirations include elevating your leadership to scale your firm. In this live virtual masterclass, Mark Green will unpack the five leadership behaviors that create autonomy, mastery and purpose. Learn them, internalize them and create an independent and empowered team. Join Business and Leadership Growth Coach Mark Green to tap into more than 20 years of success helping start-ups, as well as small and mid-market firms, beat the odds and scale to significance. Tuesday, August 2, 2022 - 8pm in MB, 7pm in SK NON-MEMBER: $130* | OUR NETWORK: $115* *Prices quoted in USD. How can you empower your people?
To find out how to empower your employees 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. Little did I know I was embarking on a tricky mental adventure when I started reading The Goal, by the late Eli Goldratt. I was glad to find out the book was written as a business fable, which made it easier to understand than a technical style.
The Goal walks us through the journey of a manager who is told he has only three months to turn his plant around, all while his marriage is on the brink, in part, due to overwork. The manager figures out, with his team, what the ultimate goal of his plant is, how to make that goal relevant to their people and how to optimize the plant to achieve the goal. The story walks the reader through a mind shift from seeing a plant as a collection of parts to be individually optimized, towards seeing it as a whole system that requires careful coordination of the parts. Based on the same underlying principles as Lean manufacturing, the approach addresses the root causes of inefficiency by identifying and resolving bottle-necks between these different parts of the plant to improve the productivity of the whole. The manager also applies this approach to a company-wide scenario to determine the most important things to improve. This is the same way we have our clients prioritize changes and improvements in their business. The story also weaves in other useful best practices, such as tackling company-wide issues as a united management team and using outside expertise, lessons learned discussions, transparency and vulnerability. Book: 408 pages; 11 hour 45 minute audio book. How can you improve your efficiency? To find out how to improve your systems and processes 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 7 to check your company’s systems and processes. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. When it comes to reaching new customers, most companies miss the mark by overcomplicating their messaging, making it either too generic or overly technical. And it’s a costly mistake. In this Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches podcast, David Mann, keynote speaker, trainer, professional actor/director/storyteller and founder of the Simple Message, describes how to tell the right story, communicate value and engage your ideal customer’s emotions. Too often, businesses lose opportunities and profits by leading with their product or service, who they are or what’s unique about them. Focusing instead on simple messaging that speaks to solving the customer's problem, and executing that message across marketing channels that engage your ideal customers, leads to increased brand engagement, trust and loyalty. And above all it will differentiate your brand in a way that truly resonates. Subscribe to Gravitas Impact podcast: Android
How can you resonate with your ideal customer? To find out how to connect with your best type of customer 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 6 to check your company’s customer processes. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. In the previous 5 Minute Growth Tip article, I shared some tips for developing a successful strategy to compete and thrive in your market. Yet, developing a great strategy (and executing it) takes more than a framework. It takes a high performing leadership team. That, in turn, takes high performing leaders.
The People Challenge As a CEO, president, owner or entrepreneur, you’ve likely had department heads on your team that didn’t meet your expectations or were poor leaders. It can be frustrating to be repeatedly disappointed or to have to continuously push, cajole or just grin and bear it. Yet, it’s entirely feasible to resolve these headaches and prevent them from happening in the first place. This is about ensuring that, on the leadership team, we have the right people in the right seats doing the right things in the right ways. The key to getting it right is not to start by looking at the people. The first thing to do is define the right seats, right things and right ways, and then ensure we have the right people that fit what we need. Right Seats First, we want to ensure we have the right seats - the right roles needed on our leadership team. These usually include some common functional roles like marketing, sales, operations, accounting, finance, human resources, technology & systems, etc. Keep in mind that, often, leadership team members in mid-size companies need to play more than one role. Certain functions don’t need a full time leader just yet. By thinking of it this way, we can identify what functional roles are being played by each leader, and whether the right roles exist on the team. It may be that certain roles don’t exist that need to, or a role has been left unfilled. It’s also helpful to identify any roles that seem to have more than one person playing them, causing mixed messages and confusion. It may also be that certain leaders are in too many roles, therefore being stretched thin and dropping balls. Having the right seats means having clarity about what roles are needed and where there are gaps and overlaps. Right Things We also want to get each leader, and the whole leadership team, on the same page about what each role means and what is expected in terms of results (eg. role: marketing => results: qualified leads). It’s best if these results expectations are quantified with metrics and specific targets (eg. 50 qualified leads per month). The results, metrics and targets are the productivity side of each role. The “right things” will often also include the big changes and improvements that need to be made within each function over the course of the year and/or the quarter. Right Ways We also want to be clear about the behavioural side. This includes defining the behavioural expectations needed across the leadership team and across the company. These behaviours are captured in our core values. These core values distill the essential behaviours expected of everyone in the company, including the leadership team members. This is what enables great teamwork, productive conversations and problem-solving, developing a strong strategy and execution plan, and coordinating to execute. Clarity on core values is also critical because leaders living them is one of the main ways the company’s culture is brought to life among employees. Right People With productivity and behaviour expectations clear, we want to ensure we have the right person in each seat. We can ask ourselves: is each person on the leadership team meeting our expectations...in terms of both the results expected in their role AND the behaviours captured in our core values? Furthermore, if we want to build a thriving company, we’ll need A-players. We define A-players as being among the top 10% performers for the specific role and for the pay we can afford, AND they live and breathe all of our core values. Being a top 10% leader doesn’t just mean doing a great job at one’s function: marketing, accounting or human resources, etc. It means getting great productivity from their people - both quantity and quality of work. This takes strong planning, communication, delegation, monitoring and coaching skills. Often leaders tend towards one of two extremes: micro-managing or laisser-faire management. Strong leaders will stay involved enough to monitor and be supportive while at the same time letting experienced employees use their skills, be self-sufficient and take initiative. A-player leaders create an environment in their department that inspires employees to perform at their best. The Challenge of Behaviour Change When it comes to leaders who don’t live our core values, it’s often a dead end. Because a person’s values can’t really be changed. People behave according to what they believe. If they grew up believing that learning and adapting is valuable in its own right, they’ll learn and adapt on the job. If they believe that tradition, duty and compliance are noble, they won’t behave in adaptable ways. If they don’t believe in one of our core values, there’s often not much we can do about it. We can coach them on that core value, and they may start behaving more in alignment with it for a while. And if so, great. It’s worth giving it a try. But often, they’ll slip back into their habits. This means that often, a leader that isn’t living one or more of our core values never truly will. And so they’ll never be an A player leader, at least not in our company. Addressing the Gaps As CEOs, presidents and owners, we can often be hesitant to let a leader go who doesn’t fit. Our underlying concern is often that maybe we weren’t clear on our expectations or maybe we didn’t coach the leader enough or very effectively. So, it can be reassuring to start by establishing clear expectations and providing better coaching where needed. At the end of the day, the leader may still not meet our expectations. But at least we’ll know that we did what we could to support them. A good practice is to, every quarter, ask ourselves how each of the members of our leadership team are performing both in terms of results AND core values. Then, for any team members that aren’t performing, ask, what will I do about it this quarter? Will I coach them or cut the chord? If we keep coaching the leader on the same issue quarter after quarter, we should not only question their leadership, we should question ours too. A Caution Sometimes a leader’s poor performance IS in fact our fault. It’s entirely possible for a CEO to create an environment where people can’t perform well. Maybe we’re the micro-manager, or the laisser-faire manager. Or we set a poor example by not being accountable or not living some of our core values. If we have just one or two leaders whose performance is in question and the majority of the leaders reporting to us are performing great, we may have a people issue. Yet, if most or all of our leaders are struggling, chances are our own leadership is what needs work. Working Through Hesitation Usually, the decision to let a leader go isn’t hard. Once we think it through, it’s often pretty clear. It’s just that we avoid thinking it through. We avoid it because of how it feels. It’s sad. It’s disappointing. It’s nerve-racking. We can feel guilty or like a failure. If we acknowledge, accept and process those feelings, we can then face the facts of the situation and come to a logical, firm conclusion. This can usually be tackled with some pros and cons thinking, considering all the impacts of the leader, on both the culture and performance of their department, the leadership team and the company as a whole. Replacing a Leader It’s one thing to come to realize and accept that a leader has to go. It’s another to feel confident we can successfully replace them with an A-player. If you’re concerned about this, you probably have a recruiting and selection problem. And you’re not alone. The average hiring process picks an A-player 25% of the time. Implement the Top Grading or A-Method hiring process and you’ll notch that up to an 80 or 90% success rate. Replacing a top level leader is a great reason to make that change. You’ll get two trees with one stone: an A player leader and a drastic improvement in your hiring process. As Jim Collins found in his research for Good to Great, the foundation of a thriving company is “disciplined people”. This includes being a Level 5 leader (determined AND humble) and getting the right people on the bus in the right seats on our leadership team. Only then can we create a great strategy collaboratively with our leadership team, to achieve efficient team buyin. And with buyin and a great leadership team, we can implement the right structures, systems and processes to grow more rapidly, profitably and sustainably. Right? Not quite. This is where great execution comes in. In my next 5 Minute Growth Tip article, I’ll share the common challenges with executing a strategy and the three key execution disciplines to minimize drama and maximize profitability. How can you have more A-players in your company? To find out how to have stronger talent and leaders to grow more easily, quickly and profitability, AND enjoy the ride, try our complimentary Agile Growth Checklist. This self-service questionnaire takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete. You'll receive the checklist with your responses immediately. Within 24 hours, you'll receive a compiled report highlighting areas to improve. Complete section 2 to check your talent processes. Or complete all 7 sections to find out how your company is doing in each of the 7 areas needed to produce more rapid, profitable and sustainable growth. This report is complementary and involves no obligation. Systemization around branding and operations is a big missing link in many organizations. The disconnect occurs when Marketing sets an expectation and there are no standard operating procedures systematized throughout the customer's journey, aligning the experience with the expectation. In this Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches webinar and podcast, Brandon Dempsey, Author of Shut Up and Go, and Co-founder of St. Louis marketing company, goBRANDgo!, describes how the systemization of a brand creates cohesion and connects customers with the company. The Systems Attribute within the 7 Attributes of Agile Growth® framework is a key differentiator for Gravitas Impact Premium Coaches. Many mid-market companies don’t focus on Systems, and yet Systems are critical to scaling efficiently and profitably. Subscribe to Gravitas Impact podcast: Android How can you build systems to deliver on your brand?
To find out how to strengthen your systems 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 7 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. |
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