Some exciting news! A major milestone! And 10
insights!r />
I'm also excited to share a major personal milestone. This year,
I delivered my 1,000th full-day session. While I realize that, so far,
this message sounds like it's all about me, it's not. In truth, it's
about you.
In reflecting back on over 1,000 sessions and almost 10,000 hours of
working hands-on with entrepreneurial leadership teams, I've learned
some great lessons that will help you and your leadership team. I hope
these will serve as constants for you as you build a great company, and
that they'll give you insight, peace of mind, a kick in the ass, a
wake-up call, and a few a-has.
Enjoy.
It's all about healthy relationships. My
most effective clients are those with healthy leadership teams.
They have strong relationships and connections with each other.
While this sounds soft and maybe obvious, I'm now convinced of
it. "Healthy" equals "less effort" and "faster results." Stephen
Covey's book The Speed of
Trust is the best at technically describing this
phenomenon. Patrick Lencioni's book
The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team
is still the simplest. Are you proud to have each person sitting
across from you on your leadership team, and do you feel he or
she has your back?
People do a lot of things right on the way up.
But unfortunately, they do a lot of things wrong on the way
down, and they do them before noticing they're on the way down.
Jim Collins's new book How the
Mighty Fall is a great read on this subject. A lot of
times, as soon as you think you've got it figured out, you lose
your edge and start bad habits. Are you taking your success for
granted?
There is no easy business. Many think so. I
haven't seen one yet. The grass isn't any greener. Stop looking
over the fence-it's dangerous.
Most people would rather not solve their problems.
It's amazing how many issues get dusted over during issues
solving. People truly would rather ignore them and hope they go
away. The irony is that by going to the root and solving them,
you save unbelievable amounts of time, pain, and suffering.
Someone must be the force to call it out and go there. That
someone is you!
Build a culture, not a company. I heard
this statement about three years ago, and it's really apparent
now. Leaders who constantly focus on their core values and make
every decision with them in mind find that everything is a
little easier. If you hire, fire, review, reward, and recognize
every person, along with walking the talk, the rest takes care
of itself. You'll have more fun, get more done, and have a
culture, not a company.
It still always comes back to The Six Key
Components. Keep them strong, and you'll always be in
the upper tier. Our clients with strength in The Six Key
Components noticeably have fewer issues, are healthier, make
more money, have more balance, and gain much more traction, in
good times and bad. How strong are your Vision, People, Data,
Issues, Process, and Traction Components?
Slow down to go fast. The old proverb is as
true as ever. Leaders who take time off, work "on" the business
frequently, take clarity breaks, and plan with their teams
actually grow faster and get more done than ones who work
morning till night, seven days a week. I observe that they are
often more creative, solve problems better, and solve them
faster. When was the last time you took a clarity break?
Leaders obsessed with providing value to their
customers have fewer issues. The ones who obsess stay
ahead. Your company exists for the customer. The moment your
company stops providing value to customers, your problems will
multiply. Every process, person, system, and service in your
company needs to be aligned to solve a problem or fill a need
for your customers. If you don't clearly know what your
customers love about you-and what they don't-you're missing the
point.
Establishing and accomplishing quarterly Rocks and
weekly To-Dos will have the fastest impact on your organization.
This requires no additional explanation. Of everything we do for
clients, this gets the fastest results.
Staying on the same page is vital. You'll
save time, money, and stress if you make it a habit to stay on
the same page with everyone in your life. The sessions I do when
people aren't on the same page require almost 50 percent more
time to accomplish the same result as a team that's in sync. Are
you seeing eye-to-eye with all of your people?
Most leaders are terrible time and project managers.
It pains me to say this, but it's scary and true. Most people
have trouble laying out and executing a plan of attack for their
Rocks, special projects, and big goals. Investing in teaching
your people to manage projects and their time will bear plenty
of fruit. Incidentally, figuring out a simple solution to this
is going to be one of my focuses in 2010 now that I see what an
epidemic it is.
Doing the right thing gets you further in the long
run,although not always in the short run.
It would make your head spin to watch leadership teams decide on
the easiest or quickest solution to a problem in order to move
on and then watch them rehash it over and over, session after
session. Time and again, observation shows that if they had
chosen the right and best (though sometimes painful) solution,
they would have saved considerable time in the long run. Are you
choosing the right
solution or the easiest
solution?
The fear of doing something is always greater than
the actual doing of it. This applies to everything. Are
you letting fear slow you down? Enter the danger. Do it! It will
catapult you.
Okay, so there were 13 insights. I tried like heck to get them down to
10. I hope they help. Please let me know if you have any questions or
comments. I appreciate your support.
Stay focused,
Gino Wickman > Founder of Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS)
Smart State is a Certified Implementer of EOS, currently
serving 10 Business Leadership Teams in the Triangle.
