The Sacred Chain of Business Success

Leakage -> Attuning -> Codifying -> Performing -> Success

Last Christmas I found myself in the basement of my parent’s house in Boston. It was freezing over the Christmas period and everyone in the household was hibernating so there wasn’t much activity or conversation happening. And so I found myself in that basement doing a lot of thinking. The question on my mind was this: “What is the one thing that all businesses have in common?”

This is a big question for me as someone who specialises in business performance, and in particular retrieving business performance after it's been lost. My conclusion - after about 60 pages of journaling! - was this: Success.

Although the path to success differs, Success is what all businesses strive for. The definition of success can also differ, but the base intention never changes. Businesses fundamentally want to succeed.

So, how to achieve success is a consequential topic across the global landscape.

I started to work backwards from Success to identify the sequence that leads to business success. I reflected on the fact that for most businesses - and this is the fateful error - Effort = Success. This approach lacks nuance and is what makes business such a joyless route march for so many people. A never-ending list of tasks that are inelegant and which have little chance of working.

Applying a more sophisticated lens, I created the following sequence (which is illustrated graphically below).

• What precedes Success is Performance: arranging and shaping a business so that the interwoven parts all weave together in a synchronised way.
• What precedes Performance is the Codification of Performance: arriving at the unique formula that a given business follows. I call this the Elixir and it’s arrived at by way of a process I run inside companies called The Performance Delta.
• What precedes Codification is Attunement: tuning in deeply to what is happening inside a business that is preventing it from ‘Wholeness’, which is the benevolent state that all businesses are naturally wired for but which is kept at bay by a variety of performance leaks that businesspeople unwittingly create.
• What precedes Attunement is Leakage: the collateral damage that is caused by underperformance: human capital strain; value loss; conflict; confusion; loss; and resistance. This suffering is often the catalyst for change and the start of moving through the sequence.

To move through the above sequence requires a sophisticated, new skill set for many business leaders (in the coming Business Performance Playbook I will expand on each of them). The recognition of this need to evolve as a business leader in order to face the complex set of challenges the business faces in the current landscape is largely missing. The Effort = Success paradigm is still very much in place for most businesses.

‘Making the turn’ is a phrase I use to describe the moment when a business leader ‘sees the light’. It’s the moment that gives me the most pleasure as a practitioner. When this shift takes place, a new world of options and approaches is suddenly on the table. It’s analogous to wiping away the condensation on a mirror and for the first time, seeing a new reality. A new way to build, shape and drive businesses toward the outcome we all seek.

Success.

The Performance Delta: retrieving lost business value

The Performance Delta provides a simple approach to understanding how and where a business loses performance. The engagement suits underperforming or failing businesses which presents a risk for VC/PE funds.

The Performance Delta uses a proprietary framework that analyses a business through seven distinct performance lenses, providing a clear picture of the changes a business needs to make to reach full performance. The engagement reveals patterns that trap businesses in a low-performance environment - patterns that incumbent leaders often can’t identify themselves.

• Duration: Delivered over one month
• Cost: ￡45,000
• Format: In-person and online engagements

Yours in pursuit of optimal performance.