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Author: Robert Fish

Owning Errors Makes You Faster

A lot of things can happen in a two-hour mountain bike race. Sometimes it feels like the competition AND the trail are both conspiring against you to keep you off the front. These are the days when you don’t get the result you want, you were not there to help a teammate pull through a tough section, or possibly you disappointed a sponsor.

It’s so easy to blame someone else for your own non-performance. “The person next to me slipped a pedal at the start and hit me.” “I was cut off going into the woods.” “My water bottle was not where it was supposed to be.” And the list goes on…

This happens in business, too, of course. And the REAL problem with this thinking is that nothing is learned when you blame others for your own poor result. This fundamental truth needs to be firmly integrated into everyday life of the business. It’s OK to mess up a call, make an accounting error once in a while. It’s not OK not to own it.

Creating an atmosphere in our business that is focused on learning, really out-learning the competition, is a BreakAway Move – a strategy that enables you to separate from the competition.

How to out-learn the competition

Here are some ways to create more learning opportunities in your business:

  1. Make an award out of it. Give out an award weekly to the person who make the biggest mistake and learned from it. Make sure to share that learning with the full team so they can avoid the same mistake.
  1. Make sure the leadership sets the example of how to acknowledge a mistake and what they learned. Employees need to feel safe in sharing information.
  1. Create an environment where one can share a mistake without being publicly reprimanded.
  1. Practice on yourself! Are you quick to blame others first?
  1. Become hyper-aware of people who have a pattern of blaming others for things not working right. Offer to help them discover the root cause and create a solution.

There is a saying in the mountain bike racing world and other competitive sports as well. You learn more in races where you lose vs. the races where you win. Over time, the racer who learns the most begins to win the most consistently.

(Image: Grace / Flickr)

Let Routines Set You Free

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Life is crazy and it conspires to make us and our teams as inefficient as possible. Constantly chasing people, chasing information, chasing prospects, etc., gets tiring and old pretty quick.

But that is the whirlwind most companies have created for themselves. Most entrepreneurs hate structure – or at least the feeling of being locked into one. After all, part of the entrepreneurial dream is to have the freedom to do what you want and when you want. But the lack of structured routines is a problem.

Leveraging the proven Scaling Up framework of meeting routines is one of the most effective processes you can implement to stop the constant-chase mode and turn your company into a prediction machine – one that does not chase, but controls.

Routines To Calm the Whirlwind

Establish the following regular meeting schedule and you’ll find yourself back in control.

  • The routine of the Daily Huddle. This is the number one way to synchronize your team every day and get ahead of the things that might otherwise cause problems. No chasing people through the day. You’ll be able to have a quick connection each day without interruptions.
  • The routine of the Weekly Meeting. The primary benefit of this meeting is to leverage collective intelligence to discuss an opportunity, issues that keep coming up in the Daily Huddles, get the Quarterly Plan back on track, work on Winning and BreakAway strategy moves, etc.
  • The routine of the Monthly Meeting. This meeting looks at metrics, KPIs and financial performance and integrates learning into the company. Struggling to find a day and time to teach the team the new CRM system? Need to get everyone up to speed on the new sales and marketing plan? The monthly meeting is the perfect place for this.
  • The routine of the Quarterly Planning Session. Each quarter, review the last quarter, create goals for the next quarter and the Rocks/Priorities/Action Items to get you there. Keep in mind as you do Quarterly Planning that you need to give thought to the Annual Plan and the Winning/BreakAway Moves.
  • The routine of Annual Planning. This should be one to three days, offsite if possible, to re-evaluate the company’s foundational principals and long-term strategy, backing down into a solid one-year plan.

Companies with a serious focus on Scaling Up should create a routine of Strategy Development and Execution meetings. This should be with a small handful of senior leadership and should meet twice a month. Digging deep into strategy gets difficult with four or more people. Having solid strategy ideas going into Quarterly and Annual Planning makes the sessions much more effective. You’ll spend less time brainstorming ideas and place more focus on vetting and prioritizing solid ideas.

Routine will set you free and give you and your team much desired control. Stop chasing!

(Image: PDPics / Pixabay)

How Will You Double Your Business?

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It’s getting cooler outside, leaves are falling, and it’s now Annual Planning season for your business. Interest rates have been low, unemployment rate is around 5%, and the economy has been growing slow and steady for the most part.

You have to ask, how long will this last? I can’t believe how much residential and commercial construction is going on around Charlotte, NC, these days. It looks like 2007-08 to me, and it almost feels like it too.

Every year I have a professional theme I like to deep-dive with my own business and with my coaching clients. This year it has been Core Customer and Buyer Personas. Last year it was getting Discretional Effort out of employees.

I’m going to get out front and announce it now: 2016 is going to be about creating a serious plan to double the business and get the Winning and BreakAway Moves in motion. The last thing I want to happen is to be stuck in the middle of the pack when the economy flatlines or slows down.

Take extra time this planning season to drill into the 3-5 year growth plans and ask your team these questions.

  • How long will it take to double revenue? Hint…. use the rule of 72. Take 72 and divide it by your estimated (or desired) annual growth rate. 33% is about 3 years (check the math).
  • How much revenue will come from your existing business lines and sales capacity?
  • What is the gap between how much you can grow without really changing anything and your target revenue number?
  • How will the operations side of the business need to change?
  • What are 3-5 Winning or BreakAway Moves that can generate that new revenue and profit?
  • What new capabilities will you need to acquire?
  • What new people, contacts, advisors, coaches, etc. will you need to leverage to accelerate, to get you there faster?
  • What components of the Winning and BreakAway Moves do you need to execute on in 2016 to get the proper momentum?

The purpose of the 3-5 year focus now is to get the momentum going strong in 2016 while you still have an economic tailwind. Get the plan moving, test your assumptions, engage the full team, name your plan to double. There are always a few companies in each sector that seem to defy gravity in slowing economies. Decide now this is going to be YOUR company.

(Image: skitterphoto.com)

Scale Your Sales

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One of the most amazing aspects of being a Business Coach working with growth companies is seeing patterns and issues that most companies face. For companies in the $5M to $15M revenue range, the major thing holding the company back is the inability to Scale Sales. As I have said before, the strength of the entrepreneur or founding team is generally the weakness of the organization. So are YOU the bottleneck?

Scaling Sales can be a complex topic for sure. And company leaders today are tasked with having to sort out all of the advice, sales channels, strategy, etc., on their own. There is not much coordination going on, and everything is a test to see what might stick.

Here are 9 questions to ask yourself and your leadership team to begin Scaling Your Sales:

  1. Is your strength in sales holding the company back in developing its own sales muscle?
  1. Do you have your Core Customer’s buyer persona clearly identified? (If you’re not sure, request our free Breakaway Move toolkit – Part 2 of the two-part series will help you with this critical task.)
  1. Is your company Referable? (This means you’re doing great work!)
  1. How does your Core Customer buy? How do they learn? How would they find you?
  1. Do you realize it takes more than just a website to Scale Sales?
  1. Does your company have clear differentiators? Are you easy to find in a crowded field?
  1. Do you have (or are you prepared to hire) more than one sales person? This reduces the risk of starting over if your sole sales person leaves.
  1. Can you outline the difference between Marketing and Sales? (Hint: marketing sets the stage for a sale.)
  1. Have you created a buyers journey? How are your prospects going to participate in the sales cycle?
(Image: Theplatypus / Pixabay)

Create A Personal Race Plan To Win

It’s hard to win a race without a plan. This is pretty much true whether you are lining up in a mountain bike race with a bunch of hammers or trying to grow your business.

A personal “Race Plan” drives each employee’s priorities within their job function AND drives the priorities of the overall business.

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If you’re not sure whether your team members are operating with personal Race Plans, here are the questions you need to think about:

  • Do each of your employees, or at least your key employees, have a personal Race Plan?
  • Do they have a Race Plan for each quarter?
  • Has their plan been shared with the team?
  • Are they tracking their plan, publicly leveraging peer accountability?
  • Is your team helping each other when things fall behind?
  • Do you (the owner/leader) know when plans are going off track early so you can implement easy fixes vs big cleanups?

On Your Mark…

Here are some steps or ideas to create and implement strong Race Plans:

  1. Recognize Race Plans are usually the last thing to get done during a quarterly or annual planning session. Everyone is mentally tired. Create a nice break, have some snacks, get up and move around, and create extra time to get Race Plans completed. Creating personal priorities is one of the most difficult functions the brain does, and you are asking it to work full throttle during a low-fuel time.
  1. Have your employees think about their personal quarterly priorities BEFORE the planning session. They may change during the session based in new input, but having a head start will pay dividends.
  1. Have each person spend 15-20 minutes quietly and individually working on their plan. Next have them meet in groups of three to discuss their plan, challenge it, and make sure it looks right.
  1. Have each person tell the full team their #1 goal and #1 priority for the next year or quarter. Does what they shared drive their Role or Function AND the overall priorities of the company?
  1. Create a display and a meeting rhythm to keep the Race Plans alive. If you are using a Green-Yellow-Red methodology to identify task status, just discuss the Yellows and Reds (the things that are due or overdue).
  1. Use the Race Plans as a mechanism to create team building and collaboration. Someone offering to step in and help move a Red task to Green is a beautiful thing.
  1. Encourage people to code Red things early. Don’t be caught off guard if a priority is in trouble. And really brag on people who are willing to help move priorities out of the Red. Make them look like superstars!

Race Plans win races. Help your team drive performance at the personal level and up and out, all through the organization!

(Image: Skeeze / Pixabay)

Become a Lead-Generating Machine

The sales process starts with the ability to generate leads, aka people who have an interest in learning more about your business. It’s the inability to create sufficient lead flow that prevents most companies from substantial growth.

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If you can get lead flow right, hang on and enjoy the ride! Or, let this continue to be your sales constraint and get left behind – or “dropped,” as we call it in the mountain bike racing world. Getting dropped sucks!

One you have identified your Core Customer and have clarity on the Buyer Persona, create a multi-channel plan to connect and generate leads. Buyers are not one-dimensional – they take in information from multiple sources, so you need to think about where they regularly find information, then hit them with information there.

12 Places Your Leads Might Find You

Here is a list of lead-generation channels to explore. Pick what is right for you based on your Core Customer’s Buyer Persona.

  1. Content marketing
  2. SEO and AdWords
  3. Create events – you are the subject-matter expert
  4. Outside sales teams
  5. Inside sales teams
  6. Outsourced door openers
  7. Group affiliations or sponsorships
  8. Partnerships – Channel Sales
  9. Trade shows or industry events
  10. Social media
  11. Traditional PR
  12. Write a book or do speaking engagements
  13. What else makes sense for your industry or your Core Customer?

Look for the 3-5 channels you can focus on. You might ask, “Why not just focus on one channel and go deep?” The answer is that things can change that are out of your control. I see many companies going all-in with an inbound marketing strategy tied to the Web hoping to make the phone ring. Great idea, but what happens when Google changes the content-ranking algorithm? Your 1st page rank is now number 4, and it will take money and time to get it back on top.

Instead, start by working with your team to create a list of 3-5 channels to focus on, and create 3-year, 1-year and 90-day targets and goals. Then create a 90-day action plan to put your multi-channel strategy into motion.

(Image: TaxCredits.net / Flickr)

Stop Reviewing Your Employees

employees-936804_1280Performance reviews suck for so many reasons. Entrepreneurs avoid them, because there are way too many other things to do. Managers rarely do them right, and if they do, they don’t prepare properly. Employees hate them because they usually are tied to negative things and money. They usually happen only once a year … if they happen.

Yet, if performed correctly, they are one of the most powerful things a company can do. I speak from experience, having won “Best Places to Work” awards more than 20 times at companies I have founded or coached.

What you need to do instead of a review:

Rather than a typical review, what’s really needed is a formal Alignment Meeting. The overarching purpose is for the manager and employee to walk away with complete clarity and actions that drive the job role: the accountabilities, the goal numbers, etc. Reviewing all the company’s Core Values is a powerful method to make sure the employee is doing the work the right way from a behavioral perspective. For example, do you have a sales superstar who drives your customer service team to tears? This is a great way to address the issue in a collaborative and non-threatening way.

Also missing from most reviews is spending some time discussing the Core Processes and Activities that drive the job function – the ones that have the most impact. Ask what is the most important thing to do and is it on the calendar weekly as a priority item? What processes support the core activities? And what things create busyness but do not really drive results? Simple process with powerful outcomes.

Here are 8 tips to pull off a powerful Alignment Meeting:

  1. Be prepared. Treat this as the number one thing you’ll do as a manager. This is your A-Race. Set an example of preparedness. This is how your employees will do their Alignment Meetings with their employees down the line.
  1. Create a great experience with your employee. This is not a beat-down session. It’s about getting alignment around what is important and agreement on what can be worked on in the next 90 days.
  1. Use the word Together. Work on action plans Together. You’ll be surprised at how many times you’ll walk away from leading an Alignment Meeting with stuff to work on and improve on as well.
  1. Create a safe environment for candor. Not making this a review tied to money is the trick to this.
  1. Tell them why this is important. I’ll say something like, “I care about you and your health and happiness, I care about our relationship and our willingness to work Together, and I care about doing the right things to move our company forward. This conversation is about these three things.”
  1. Pick 2-3 things to work on each 90 days. Look for themes or “red threads” throughout the conversation. Don’t nitpick each line item. Ask what can we work on that would drive the most improvement … create the biggest impact?
  1. Be vulnerable as the manager. This will help you get to the real issues your employee is dealing with at work. You can’t help fix what you don’t know about. Put your ego aside.
  1. Have fun! You both should walk out totally energized! Don’t be surprised if you get an unexpected hug, handshake or even some happy tears.

Never do another review. Stop, please!!! Instead, start Alignment Meetings now!

(Image: Marlon Malabanan / Flickr)

Know Your Competition

Know Your Competition

As a professional mountain bike racer, I always know what my BreakAway Move™ is going to be before I start a race. This begins by knowing the course, things like: Where are the blind turns? How long and steep are the climbs? What are the technical sections like? Where are the good places to hydrate?
Next, I have to Know My Competition and think about what each racer’s strengths and weaknesses are. Who is in peak form? Who can really crush hill climbs? Who is wicked fast in the technical sections? Who is just really fast on this course?

Based on my data, I craft my BreakAway Move before the race and decide WHEN I’m going to drop the hammer and Crush the Competition! This is a HUGE mechanism for conserving energy andbike-race-446104_960_720 winning a race.

Your business works the exact same way. You need two to three BreakAway Moves you are always working on and it’s imperative that you Know Your Competition, whether you’re preparing for a race or a business deal. Here are 12.5 steps to start mapping out your competition to plan and execute your BreakAway Move.

How to map your competition

To get started, open a new spreadsheet on your computer and fill it out with the following 12.5 steps.

1. On the vertical axis (rows) write down all of your competitors and the companies that could be your competitors in the future.

Then fill in the horizontal axis (columns) for each competitor with the rest of these steps.

2. Write down as many attributes as you can think of that can describe your competition.

3. What core businesses are they in? Just your line of work, multiple lines of work? If multiple, what are they?

4. Who are their suppliers?

5. Who is their target market? Their Core Customer?

6. How are they funded?

7. What is their Brand Promise? Their differentiating activities in the market?

8. What space are they trying to own? Their geography?

9. Where are they stronger than you?

10. Where are they weaker than you?

11. Add links to their website(s) for quick reference.

12. What words or phrases are they trying to own?

12.5. What are THEIR BreakAway Moves??!!

Creating a great strategy to win begins by knowing your competition, and these 12.5 steps should get you started. You may think of other things to add to your spreadsheet — please let me know what you come up with.

Now create your plan and go after your Epic Win™!!!

(Image: jp26jp/ Pixabay)

The Most Powerful Word: TOGETHER

“The Best Team Wins.” It’s a common mantra everyone believes — for good reasons. Whether in business or in sports, the organization with the best team, and not necessarily the best players, wins the most.4431896656_56d2908af7_z

But in business today, what does TEAM really mean? In our roles, how do we really work together? Side by side, virtually, not at all? The answer is … the traditional definition of team and how we work may not be what you think.

In “Managers Can Motivate Employees with One Word,” an article published by the Harvard Business Review, author Heidi Grant Halvorson explored the concepts of teams in the workplace. It’s really the FEELING of working together that has been shown to predict motivation — and the highly coveted employee engagement that brings high performance and results.

Research by Priyanka Carr and Greg Walton of Stanford University has proven that when people FEEL LIKE they are working together on a task, (even when in fact they may not be) they worked 48% longer, solved more problems correctly, and had better recall for what they had seen. They also had more energy after the task. … More fuel left over for other things.

Together It Is

Simply saying the word “TOGETHER” could be the new most powerful word a company leader or team leader can say to create a high-performance work environment. More than team, this one powerful word instantly reminds employees that they are connected, not alone and disconnected.

I’ve put this concept into action. As a coach, I have changed my vocabulary on this. I used to say, “Team, let’s work on the annual goals.” Now I say, “Let’s work on creating our annual goals TOGETHER.”

How can you use this powerful social cue to the brain? Take a moment and envision when and where you can integrate this into your daily habits.

(Image: YassIn Hasan / Flickr)

Be A Surgeon

I was in a planning session with an Insight CXO member and friend, Jonathan Ross, two years ago, and we were talking about organizational development and getting the mindset right around key roles in his business.

One of my favorite things about Jonathan is his ability to create great analogies. He said to be most effective in your business, you have to Be a Surgeon.

This is an especially important concept for entrepreneurs to get their heads around when thinking about in their own roles inside the business, especially if they are founders or co-founders of their firm.

Be a Surgeon means imagining yourself as a Brain Surgeon, and it’s surgery day. Think about the end-to-end process and all that happens in the Operating Room:surgery-590536_960_720

  • The O.R. is prepped with the right tools and implements.
  • The patient is wheeled in and is prepped by nurses.
  • The anesthesiologist administers the drugs and intubates the patient.
  • The surgeon washes her hands, and nurses put on her gloves and prep her for the surgery.
  • The surgeon performs the surgery (successfully!) and exits the room.
  • Staff cleans up the room and prepares for the next patient.

If you are an Entrepreneur and have an active role in the business, you must Be a Surgeon! Leverage your staff to handle the things that do not fit within your Unique Ability, or the things that are not High Impact and give you Energy. Create systems and processes and roles to handle the rest. This will also give you more time to work ON the business and not IN it, creating more opportunities for you to grow your business.

This concept can be applied across your staff, and especially among your leadership team. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and to run a business most effectively, you need to leverage each individual’s strengths and help them avoid their weaknesses. Just as you wouldn’t want a nurse doing your brain surgery (or vice versa, really), you don’t want your A-player CFO running warehouse logistics (or your A-player logistics guru handling the financials).

In a less-extreme example, maybe your marketing head is a creative genius, but isn’t so great at providing documentation to accounting; maybe there’s someone on her staff who can keep track of all those details so nothing slips through the cracks. Being a Surgeon means the whole team is playing to their strengths — and avoiding things that increase the risk of inefficiency, errors and dissatisfaction.

If you’re serious about growing your business, Be A Surgeon — and make sure everyone on your team is positioned to do the same.

(Image: Skeeze / Pixabay)