It’s a Leveling Thing????

Something was just “off”. It had been nagging at us for a really long time. Frankly, I was feeling a little exhausted. You know when you just keep pushing and pushing and expect a different outcome but nothing changes? Yeah, you know what I mean. We had been frustrated for awhile as we couldn’t quite diagnose a particular type of client challenge. The scenario looked something like this:

Client engages Stride as their outsourced bookkeeper and accountant. Client gets frustrated because things aren’t running as smoothly as they expected. Stride gets frustrated that things aren’t running as smoothly as expected. We’re operating within the scope of the agreement, but we’re both not syncing. We’re not happy. What is going on?

This surfaced about 6 weeks ago when one of our favorite clients reached out to me to express just this very thought. It wasn’t in a confrontational way, but in a,?“Huh, I wonder what’s going on?”?kind of way.

Here is what we realized and the major lightbulb moment that has application to everyone who runs a business and has customers (meaning, everyone!!!).

The Problem is One of Leveling

The root cause of the problem was a concept called leveling. Leveling is the work done to make sure that the right role is able to focus on the right time horizon. If the CEO’s level is to look out 12-36 months and focus on strategy and vision, it’s important there is a role filled in the organization at a Director or VP level that is focused on the 6-12 month plan. And that there is a manager level focused on 3-6 months. And a supervisor level focused on 1-3 months and an individual contributor focused on 1 day to 1 month. If the CEO is coming down to the 1 day to 1 month level (which is typically where outsourced bookkeeping/accounting functions) and managing that because of a vacancy in other levels, they aren’t acting as the CEO. They are now acting as a poorly equipped and frustrated manager or supervisor. You get it?

So if a client wants to engage a partner who is going to?“Take over my headache of finance,”?that’s a head of finance or a CFO who sits at the leadership team table and is looking out longer term. It's not likely to be satisfied through an outsourced bookkeeper or will certainly be a point of friction and frustration. In other words, when you don’t define the level of the function that the CEO desires and map it to the right time horizon of focus, it is highly likely you’ll miss the mark.

So what did we do? We did an organizational design exercise with the client, got clear on levels and inserted expertise more senior in the finance stack to support the CEO so that he has a single person who owns the outcome (see my recent blog post on?outsourcing is not absolution).

Consider levels in your organization and with your clients. How can you introduce this in a way to get clear on helping ascertain your client’s goals and making sure that you’re inserting the right role to accomplish what it is they want to accomplish. Focus on the outcome that the client is seeking to achieve, not just on the “tasks” that you are hearing they want. Those may be two different things.

Make March your month of leveling curiosity. What conversations might you have with your client to open up a path of new opportunity?