We’ve hit a ceiling. We’re stuck. Bogged down. Stagnating.
These are some of the words I’ve heard business owners and leaders use to describe their situations.
This is good news, actually. If there was growth before, then hitting some sort of ceiling is simply a growing pain.
And the ability to bust through that ceiling is directly proportional to a leadership team’s ability to grasp and execute five important disciplines: Simplify, Delegate, Predict, Systemize, and Structure.
These come from Gino Wickman’s book, Traction, and here’s how you do it.
Simplify
As an organization grows, it naturally gets more complex: more information, more moving parts, more people, more departments.
In a former life I helped start up a new manufacturing facility where the entire leadership team was comprised of engineers (myself included). Some people overcomplicate things because somehow it makes them feel smart.
Author Dan Sullivan sums it up best: “No further progress and growth is possible for an organization until a new state of simplicity is created.”
Less is more. Simple is better.
Delegate
I love Marshall Goldsmith’s truism, from his 2007 book: “What got you here won’t get you there.”
By hanging on to all the tiny details, leaders actually hold their companies back. When leaders learn to let go of the details so that they can operate in their sweet spot, that personal growth translates into company growth.
Start with a fierce and honest inventory of all the tasks that you think you’re currently doing. For each one, ask yourself three questions:
- Am I the only one who can do this?
- Am I the only one who should do this?
- Why is that?
Review your answers and start getting those tasks that you’ve outgrown to someone else. You may think that you’re the “best” person for writing proposals, approving invoices, and handling customer complaint… truth is, you’re really not.
As a recovering perfectionist, I know first-hand that perfectionism can be a real barrier to happiness. Allow the 80% solutions to be just fine.
Predict
Leaders of successful companies are strong in both long- and short-term planning and predicting. “Long term” is 90 days and beyond, while “short term” is inside of 90 days.
To do this, you have to know where the organization is going and how you expect to get there. Long-term predicting starts with clear far-future pictures (10-year, three-year, one-year) and then working your way back to the present. This tells us what we have to accomplish in the next 90 days to stay on track with those pictures.
Short-term predicting is the ability to tackle and solve all the issues and challenges that come at us daily and weekly… and actually make them go away forever.
Not solving pesky issues and sweeping them under the rug with band-aids and workarounds actually hurts much more than it helps. Those little nagging things that aren’t dealt with today will often propagate themselves into bigger, hairier monster-problems that will be more difficult to fix in the long term.
Leadership teams that are best at Predicting are those who have a regular (a.k.a. sacred) cadence to their meetings, in which they follow a proven process for clearly identifying and effectively solving (forever!) their daily and weekly issues.
Systemize
Every organization has just a handful of core processes that make it function well – marketing, HR, accounting, sales, and so on.
By documenting and simplifying the six to ten core processes or procedures that make up your company’s “way” of doing business, you’ll begin to create consistency across the company.
Here’s that mantra again: Less is more. This mean focus on the 20% of your processes that make up 80% of your results.
The secret is to keep them high level and basic. Think bullets and checklists, not 100-page procedure manuals and SOPs.
The more you can clarify your key processes and hone them, the more you’ll be running your business instead of it running you.
Then train and manage everyone involved in a core process to its requirements, as they are documented, no exceptions.
Bonus: With solid processes in place and followed by all, it becomes super-easy for leaders to let go of things they’re hesitant to delegate.
Structure
Many businesses become stuck because of how they’re structured. Some businesses have simply outgrown the structure they started with, and now their org charts are either so loose or so complex that they’re now useless.
And sometimes they’re designed around people’s personalities, egos, and sometimes even fear.
So take a step back, view the organization from afar and above, and determine the structure that’s required for the organization to get to the next level. It’s essential to remove everyone’s names from every box and get the structure right first.
Focus on functions, their processes, and their expected outcomes. As a result you’ll be crystal clear about all the positions in the company and what each one is accountable for.
Your mantra here: Structure first, people second. Only with this clarity should you then start assigning people’s names to each position. If a person is no longer a fit for a position, don’t change the org chart!
This process helps you put the best person possible into each role. Usually it also highlights areas where you’ve been tolerating mediocrity, mediocrity that has likely been holding the company back.
The U.S. Small Business Administration notes that about 50% of small businesses fail in their first five years. Many organizations fail because they’re unable to get through their growing pains. This is the prescription to go from flatlining to growing, profitably and sustainably.
Every leadership team hits ceilings. Those that implement EOS® go on a journey to master these 5 leadership abilities.
Are you ready to break through your ceiling?
Let’s talk.