My colleague, Baron Lukas and I are leading a webinar this week and it inspired us to share this article. Baron's expertise is in the areas of what he calls the "Foundations of Success"
- Who we are as an organization? This is typically found on your website.
- What is our "why"? Think Simon Sinek. This is bigger than your day-to-day and your Big Hairy Audacious Goals.
- What are our values and how do we demonstrate these values every day in our interactions and behaviors? If you don't have shared values, your partnership with your colleagues is never going to be successful over the long term. It'll work for a while but it's never going to be long-term because you value different things. For example one partner in a business may value profits over people. Another may value process over profits. Eventually, those differences become insurmountable.
- Our Vision - what do we want to be in the future ie 5-years?
- Our Mission - what we do operationally for our clients that brings them value and brings profits to our clients.
We have to get the right people right roles based on their strengths in the right roles and focused on the right priorities. The Gallup folks say that everyone's strengths are unique and enduring. More importantly, we believe you can take a "C" Player as an accountant and make them an "A" Player as a Business Development or salesperson. But without understanding their strengths (and potential growth opportunities) work will always be difficult, tedious, and unsatisfying for your "C" Players.
If you want to learn more about any of this please join us on Thursday, September 22 at 11 am Central for our complimentary webinar sponsored by ExecHQ. Registration is required to get the zoom link
Here are the 5 biggest mistakes Baron and I see often in companies that want to grow:
- Making decisions in a vacuum without enough different perspectives so every potential unintended consequence can be addressed. Another risk from a smaller decision-making team is the lack of data and facts. Often leaders don't know what they don't know.
- No agreed communication plan, even informally. It must be agreed on what is the message, who will be the champion of that message with all levels of stakeholders, and what is the timing to release these messages. Otherwise, you get mayhem.
- Delays from inaction because the few key leaders involved are tapped out between their day jobs, this big strategic planning process, and last year's strategic initiatives that are still in progress.
- Not having the right people in the right roles focused on the right priorities. If you have even one weak link in the top 2-3 levels of executives and managers the rest of your colleagues will not trust this top team. They will not have the confidence that you are willing and able to make tough decisions or at least engage the weak link more effectively and more consistently.
- Last and certainly not least is facilitating this process ineffectively. There is nothing worse than investing hours and hours and then rolling out a plan that no one has seen, cares about, or is interested in executing on.
If any of these resonate with your situation, please join us. See the link above to register.
