4 Steps to a Growth Driven Company

A time tested change management methodology for companies is Assess, Design, Align and Execute. These steps allow any company to understand where they are now, where they want to be in the future and how to get there. In short, this strategy provides a foundation to build a completely growth driven company with a singular focus that all members of the team believe in.

ASSESS

There are specific areas of importance for every company that never change. In order to achieve consistent growth and build a company where employees are truly committed, companies need to assess six focus areas. Those areas of importance include leadership effectiveness, sales effectiveness, productive capacity, competitive advantage, employee inspiration and customer enthusiasm.

Examining the elements of each one of these areas will lead to a deeper understanding of how a company is operating at its core. It takes honesty and a willingness to listen to what the actual truth is in each one of these areas.

When assessing the current state of the company, there also has to be a focus on specific areas including performance, process, project, knowledge, resource and change management. When you can benchmark your organization in all of these areas, it will help you answer important questions. Where are we now? What is limiting our growth? What strategy will give us a competitive advantage? What specific areas of management do we really need to focus on in order to ensure successful execution?

DESIGN

Organizations work perfectly, exactly the way they are designed. One of the first steps is to map out the actual design of the organization’s underlying structure. Without understanding the structural design of the organization, there is no way to see the cause of reactive behavior or discover and work with the leverage points that will remove the source of it. No attempts at improvement will yield maximum (or even minimum) potential benefits when laid on top of reactive behavior, or out of balance conditions.

When the underlying structure of the organization is mapped out, you can see how the company is operating very clearly. Since all organizations are complex structures, being able to see how things work and why things happen the way they do goes beyond linear thinking. It takes looking at your company from a “systems” perspective. This requires some real thought in terms of how things “loop” around and have a domino effect in every area of the company. If there are negative “feedback loops” that continue to run in the company, there is no way the organization can unleash its potential, creativity or growth.

When you map out all the “feedback loops” in the company, it becomes very clear what the root causes are of all that reactive behavior. Only then can you actually see the “leverage points” inside of the company – those specific things that if you focus on for the right amount of time with the right amount of pressure that will eliminate the root cause of reactivity and release the energy of your company.

ALIGN

In order to be aligned, all team members must have clarity of focus which unleashes creativity and provides a conduit for real innovation. When everyone in the company has a common purpose and works hard to achieve organizational goals, excuses and the “blame game” start to disappear.  

Alignment around organizational goals is easier to accomplish once everyone can see the negative feedback loops and understand the specific leverage points needed to remove that reactivity. It creates purpose and passion and allows everyone in the company to really be a part of something larger than themselves.

This leads people to being passionate about serving their customers, both internal or external.   It can also even lead to working with suppliers to do things like improving time to the marketplace and product or service quality. This results in removing reactive and self-serving behavior. People are no longer focused only on what is good for themselves and their specific department or location. They actually start to think of the company as an entire entity and make decisions based on what is best for the whole organization.

This not only removes limits to growth, it allows imagination to grow. This leads to more creative ideas which fosters more innovation than many people in the company might have even thought possible. It engages everyone to develop their personal competencies to make greater and more significant contributions, not because they have to but because they want to do it.  

EXECUTE

Once alignment has been achieved, then its time to move forward with execution which may involve course correction along the way. In order to make sure there is consistent focus on implementation, a Design Team has to be in place.

The Design Team forms Cause Teams who work within the six focus areas already described. Each Cause Team is charged with the responsibility to Align (remove all barriers and obstacles to execution) and Execute. They make sure complete accountability is in place and utilize the data that comes from personal scorekeeping that rolls up to an organizational dashboard. The idea here is that nobody likes to be managed. So personal scorekeeping metrics are designed so that each person in every department can manage their own input and results.

This guidance system acts like an early warning system that sends out signals and tells the CEO and executive team what is coming at them or will likely be in the future if they don’t change. It tells what corrective actions need to be taken in order to address future difficulties before they occur or developmental strategies required to achieve competitive advantage.

Consistently utilizing this methodology for creating a growth driven organization will improve innovation and foster commitment in every area of the business – even divisions or departments where there have been losses or complete dysfunction.

-       Michael L. Stahl

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