How to Scale Leadership in SMEs

I was running around like a headless chicken once. The atmosphere in the office was tense and I had to deal with multiple things all at the same time. What was most difficult was drafting the proposals for my GeBiz contracts. They were complex, tedious, and had specific administrative requirements that I could not ignore. You can imagine what it's like to put together over 110 pages of proposal material, and some documents are pending while you have 10 minutes left before it's 4pm, which is a usual submission deadline for a Tender.

Cycles.

I'm pretty sure that at some point in time, humans were wondering if winter was the end of the world. Then a few months later, srping came. Then, these cycles became somewhat predictable with the development of ancient calendars. If you can understand what it means to have a business cycle, then you won't be afraid of the uncertainty it presents, but rather keep track of whether you need plan B to be activated.

Cycles are predominant in almost everything you achieve. If you're fat, you probably are eating a combination of food in a manner that causes fat production by your system. If you incrementally lift heavier and heavier weights every day through a properly designed regime, your body will get stronger and stronger day by day. This is why it becomes imperative for you to keep a something on a regular basis.

In fact, if you're not good at it, you can build decent habits by first developing the knowledge, then applying it, then reflecting, then adjusting what you know in order to apply it again.

The Leadership Cycle of SMEs

So I'm going to predict what happens to leadership in SMEs.

First, you start off with the founder being the leader. Most of the time, though, founders have no clue about leadership. They do things based on their own personality and whims. They might think someone is not motivated and micromanage them. They might give unenlightened input, causing more problems that their solutions solve.

Second, when time gets stretched, it's time to hire people. However, they have no clue about the science of hiring. It's literally impossible to get good quality people if you don't know what to do to get star players on your team.

Third, with these random selections based on gut feel and resume browsing, founders try to delegate to people who are low on the actual competencies needed. I mean, I might look smart, but if you ask me to do research, can I really?

Fourth, you realize that the guy you hired can't get the job done, and you try to do it for them. As I've mentioned in other coaching sessions with my Super Scaling clients, we need to systemize the thinking, so that you don't spend more time than you really need to. Without procedural information, you can't execute with clarity. Here's another big hint: without procedural information, you'll keep seeing that item on your "to do" list without being able to execute on it, no matter how much you "Eisenhower Matrix" the thing.

Leadership is a force multiplier for your business. So, it's imperative to build out leadership and do your best to understand the value of leadership. If leadership weren't important, Starbucks would not have had such a climactic evolution with Schultz at the helm (and by the same token, nosedive when he wasn't there). I could cite other organizations, but you get my point.

Elements of Leadership Growth

What I've found in the patterns of leaders in various locations include some of the following,

• Early experiences with leadership. Many of the stronger and younger leaders who lead scalable organizations have had early, iterative experiences in leading other people. They might have been the eldest cousin in a group of 20 cousins. They may have had junior leadership exposure so that the idea of leading others was meaningful and purposeful at a young age.
• Creating exposure to leadership. If you hadn't have unconscious exposure in your younger days, it's not the end. You can deliberately create leadership exposure by crafting projects. I'm thinking of collating a series of projects that people can think of and use to guide the development of their next tier leadership. Will probably create a new edition for that!
• Leading in large-scale contexts. I've never had exposure to corporate work, but I do have decent exposure across the hierarchy in the armed forces as a national serviceman. Most people would agree that as a National Serviceman, nobody really cares much about your rank, as much as what you are willing to do for other people. As a result, I would strongly default to anyone (especially in the context of leading today) toward authentic/servant leadership.
• Networking. When you meet other people and build a strong leadership network, you get to hear how others lead as well. From cringe-worthy stories to moments of pride, you can most certainly learn leadership vicariously.
• Executive Coaching. I do executive coaching for leaders. One of the tools I use is the 16PF, and help leaders to grow based on their self-awareness about situations about them. It is imperative, however, that they start to get a handle on what they should apply and reflect upon. This will enable them to observe their current reactions and decide for themselves if this is something they need to change or accelerate. There are many coaches out there in the market, but I certainly would encourage you to find someone who suits your needs and plan a very specific scope around it.
• Leadership simulations. I enjoy these a lot because I run quite a fair number of simulations myself. It's really less about the simulation but the way you think about yourself as a leader, team player and communicator. The Leadership Simulation requires a strong facilitator to debrief actions and a team of well-trained observers to provide insight about the team's actions. If you're thinking about leadership simulations, do message to me for your next team building activity for your organization.

Reflections of an Introverted Recluse

Yup, this is the personal stuff I often try to share with business owners because they think it's not relevant. When I pause and think about the manner of my thinking, I often find gaps. For instance, I tend to be more introverted. The introversion element causes me to spend more time thinking rather than acting. As a result, I tend to think too much when I ought to be acting on it. So with this clarity, I tend to put myself on a recurring cycle of action so that I can become better at expressing myself more regularly.

But leadership is more challenging. I needed to:

• Build a practice base. You need to have practice with some people, then with more people. It means that if you haven't learnt how to handle a team of say 2-3 people, it may be a mistake for you to try to handle a team of 27 people. You'll need to be clear about the goal and how to structure the practice based on your leadership competencies. For me, I went to craft mini-projects myself. To build a community. To participate more wholistically in my national service annual commitments. To work with others in mentorship programs. To serve as a volunteer in Toastmasters. And so on.
• Reflect on the leadership context. The environment you are in both physically and mentally is important. I know some people who are capable, but because they are not "ready", the opportunity slips past them. To deal with this, you can get yourself grounded in the identity as a "leader". What does it mean for you to be a leader? Where can you apply leadership in different contexts you are in? The more intentional you are about who you are, the more likely that identity activates. For me, it was clear that when I was in an environment where leadership 'suddenly' fell on my lap, I was more uncomfortable compared with times when I could 'ease in' to it. This awareness enabled me to utilize many psychological tools to get myself ready for a leadership transition in the event it was required.
• Have a clarity of trends. You need to study the environment, then you can determine trends you are going to ride on. Once you know what these are, you have to dictate the development of capabilities a couple of years out so that your business can stay afloat and thrive. For me, I'm pretty aware that the world is going to need more trustworthy coaches, as they attempt to shortcut the learning process, and they don't want long and extended programs that they deem irrelevant. This is why developing short bursts of micro learning are key to helping my clients as a coach. It's also going to be inevitable that artificial intelligence will function as a co-pilot in my work moving forward. So these are things I'm getting more and more used to and implementing for advancing productivity.

Systemizing Succession

Ultimately, you want the freedom to do things that keep you alive, not just sit around doing nothing all day long. Trust me - the world is really moving fast that if you lay off for a year or even six months, the world can really pass you by. To a point that you might feel useless if you can't contribute to the world anymore. But more on that in another newsletter edition.

Succession means you have your entire thinking framework around talent ranging from TCA analysis, to talent selection, onboarding and leadership development done right. Most people only promote based on seniority without having proper exposure to other processes (that may be non existent where SOPs are concerned too in your SME).

Don't just promote people into incompetence. Have a development plan for them and roll out projects that highlight gaps in their competencies and enable them to grow and develop. This is where your systems for understanding the business and industry will help you to know how to develop your capabilities.

If I had known all this during the time I was running around fighting fires, I would have had more time to think clearly about the business I really wanted to build instead of getting stagnant and sacrifice my productivity and profits. Without getting clear, the biggest impact was truly costing me my momentum in helping more people that I could have served and building a much more solid reputation.

Conclusion

I guess I started this article with the intention of thinking through the succession problem myself. I know it isn't really a thing that founders generally focus on. But when you look at core outcomes: building clout in an industry, establishing possibilities of being acquired, creating time so you can focus on more businesses... it becomes inevitable that you have to build world class teams (and leaders) to get you to a space where you can intentionally build more purpose-driven outcomes for yourself. Otherwise... why are you even in business, right?