You've launched, you've grown, you've added staff and a regular stable of customers. You have been growing quarter over quarter, and things are looking pretty good. Your plans for the business are big, and you are feeling pretty optimistic. Then suddenly the revenue chart trends down and the business stops chugging along. You've got growing pains. What's up? Moreover, what can you do about it?
In your business, leadership is cause and all else is effect, so we need to start with leadership to figure out what to do. In his classic book Good to Great, Jim Collins talks about three leadership jobs:
- Make sure the right people are on the bus
- Make sure the right people are in the right seats (in their highest value roles)
- Make sure the right people are doing the right things (aligned with business strategy)
Today is about Leadership Job #1.
"Right people? We need enough people!"
We come in contact with a lot of CEOs. Just in the past month, two have talked about how they should have hired faster, delegated more, and done so sooner. This is a common growing pain - it feels risky to add to the costs in the business, so owners delay adding to staff. They don't have enough people on the bus to do the work. Since owners accomplished their early growth by being generalists, they continue to be responsible for a lot of diverse jobs. They keep on doing some of these jobs despite the fact that they aren't particularly good at them or interested in them.
The right people aren't always identifiable because they have the right specialized skills. The business does benefit from buying skills and knowledge to support growth, but more important is a candidate's alignment with the company's vision and core values. You might have a philosophy that you want to buy skills that are already sharp, or you might want to grow them in-house. Either way, misalignment with your vision and values will undermine an individual's skills advantage. No toxic geniuses allowed.
Even though you think you need every person currently on your payroll to get the job done, you might have a couple that are not the right people (C players). They might be misaligned with vision and values. They might not achieving the results you want and need them to achieve. You might need to release a C player or two so you can make room for A and B+ players. A players are highly aligned with your vision and values AND they are highly productive. A level players are motivated and help you pull the company forward. And one more thing - A players don't like to hang out in places where C players are tolerated.
ProActive Leadership Group can help you do a talent assessment of your key team members. We can show you how to do the whole cycle of performance management that supports a growing business. Ask for our complimentary Organizational Health Assessment.
Comments
Post a Comment