Common Obstacles on the Road to Building a Resilient, Profitable Business

While no two businesses are exactly alike, they tend to face common challenges. Our extensive research has shown that, regardless of industry or revenue, small and mid-size business owners often encounter similar obstacles based on the number of employees in the company.

These are some of the common challenges that can hinder their growth or lead to stagnation:

1. Cash Flow Management: Poor cash flow can lead to an inability to cover operational costs, pay suppliers, or invest in opportunities.

2. Operational Inefficiencies:

• Process Management: Inefficient business processes can lead to higher costs, lower productivity, and poor customer service.

• Scalability Issues: Systems and procedures that work for small operations might not scale effectively, leading to bottlenecks as the business grows.

3. Human Resources:

• Recruitment and Retention: Finding and keeping talented employees can be difficult, especially when larger firms offer more competitive salaries or benefits.

• Skill Gaps: Owners might need to wear too many hats, stretching their capabilities thin or lacking in key areas like finance or IT.

4. Customer Retention:

• Quality and Service: Maintaining consistent quality or customer service can be challenging with limited resources.

• Customer Expectations: Small businesses must meet or exceed customer expectations, which can be high due to the personalized service they're known for.

5. Strategic Planning:

• Vision and Direction: Without a clear business strategy, small businesses might lack direction, leading to missed opportunities or growth paralysis.

6. Market Competition: Keeping up with industry trends, technology, and consumer preferences can be challenging.

7. Brand Visibility: Without significant marketing budgets, small businesses might struggle to increase their brand recognition or reach new customers.

The ReWild Group offers a comprehensive framework known as Organizational ReWilding to assist business owners in diagnosing, addressing, and anticipating challenges. This methodology is grounded in decades of research involving over 1,500 small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) and provides a structured approach to business growth and development.

Our comprehensive system provides insight and guidance—not only into how to address these common challenges, but also in how to proactively prepare for future ones.

The life of a business owner will never be stress-free, but it can be considerably less difficult. At The ReWild Group, we help identify and remove roadblocks so you can reach your destination faster. When you have a proven roadmap, you can confidently chart your course.

Contact us today to get started.

8 Reasons to Work on Your Business

At The ReWild Group, we believe in the importance of working on your business. Spending time working on the business, rather than solely in the business, is crucial for long-term success. Here's why:

1. Strategic Growth and Vision

• Working on the business involves planning, setting goals, and strategizing for the future. This ensures that the business grows in a deliberate, sustainable way rather than stagnating or reacting only to immediate demands.

2. Building Systems and Processes

• Effective systems and processes streamline operations, improve efficiency, and reduce reliance on the owner for day-to-day tasks. This scalability is critical for growth and allows the business to function smoothly without micromanagement.

3. Innovation and Staying Competitive

• Focusing on the business allows owners to identify market trends, customer needs, and new opportunities. Staying innovative helps maintain a competitive edge and adapt to changing environments.

4. Team Development

• By working on the business, owners can invest in hiring, training, and empowering employees. Building a strong team allows delegation, fosters a positive work culture, and creates a more resilient organization.

5. Financial Oversight

• Spending time reviewing and optimizing the financial health of the business—such as budgeting, forecasting, and profitability analysis—ensures sustainability and maximizes returns.

6. Risk Management

• Proactively assessing risks (market changes, compliance, competition) and implementing mitigation strategies is essential for long-term stability.

7. Personal Freedom

• By creating a business that doesn’t solely depend on the owner's daily presence, entrepreneurs can achieve more personal freedom, focus on strategic endeavors, and potentially explore other interests or ventures.

8. Increased Value and Exit Opportunities

• A business with strong systems, processes, and strategic direction is more attractive to investors or buyers. It increases the business's overall valuation and makes it easier to transition ownership if desired.

Think of the difference between a baker who spends all their time making bread (working in the business) versus one who creates recipes, trains staff, designs the customer experience, and expands to new markets (working on the business). The latter builds a sustainable and scalable enterprise.

We’ve listed eight reasons why it’s important to work on your business, but different people are motivated by different things. Which of these is the most motivating to you?

Next week, we’ll look at some of the specific ways that The ReWild Group can help you work on your business in a consistent, effective manner. Structure is the key to reaching your business goals—and the good news is, you don’t have to figure it out on your own.

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For a simple, practical guide on how to effectively work on your business, check out our Business Growth Framework Guidebook. It covers the most important dimensions of a business across all Seven Stages of Growth. Get your copy on Amazon in kindle or paperback.

A Quick Comparison Between Growth Groups and Peer Groups

Many business owners are familiar with the concept of peer groups—regularly scheduled meetings with other CEOs or business leaders to share perspectives, get new insights, and learn tips and strategies that will help their business thrive.

While there are a lot of positives to this type of experience, we’ve also found there to be some negatives. The most common criticisms include things like:

• The topic changes too often and there’s no cohesion; we never get past the surface level.

• Only one person is allowed to present their problems or issues at a time, which means it can be months before my concerns are addressed.

• Attendance is spotty, making it difficult to get a solid group dynamic.

The benefits of learning alongside other business owners and leaders in a small group setting are worth pursuing. We strongly believe in the power of collaboration and community, especially when it comes to learning from other’s experiences.

That’s why we created Organizational ReWilding Growth Groups. Growth Groups are similar to peer groups but distinct in several important ways.

• The program lasts for 18 months and then ends (it is not indefinite like many peer groups).

• A Certified ReWilder leads the group, providing consistency and direction.

• The content is structured, based on the Organizational ReWilding framework and parsed into bit-size pieces that are easy to digest.

• Each participant puts the material to work in his or her business between sessions and reports back to the group, enabling accountability.

• Includes video content, activities, discussion, and practical application.

Visit our website to learn more about Growth Groups. Now is the perfect time to sign up! A special Pilot group is forming and all participants will get 50% off retail price.

The Three Faces of a Leader - Stage 7

In Stage 7, the leader ideally spends 75 percent of their time and energy wearing the Visionary Face, 20 percent wearing the Manager Face, and 5 percent wearing the Specialist Face.

Stage 7 features the greatest concentration on a single face in all the Stages of Growth, with 75% of a leader's time spent wearing the Visionary Face.

The Stage 7 leader is tasked with reigniting the entrepreneurial spirit that characterized the organization in earlier Stages. They achieve this through creating a compelling vision, one that is shared amongst the Leadership Team and clearly communicated to the entire organization. In contrast to the previous Stage, where the leader guided the Leadership Team in creating the vision for the future, the leader is now collaborating with the Leadership Team to create that vision. This marks an important transition, where the Leadership Team is running the day-to-day of the business and begins to set the company’s strategic direction. Connecting daily tasks to the big picture becomes critical to maintain an engaged staff, now that the company is much larger.

The leader wears the Manager Face by managing, mentoring, and growing the Leadership Team, with a special emphasis on the two to three leaders in the succession line for the CEO position.

The Specialist Face should only occupy five percent of the leader’s time and energy. While this is the face least worn by the leader, it is no less important. The leader still has experience that can benefit the organization. Furthermore, a leader who is too far removed from the day-to-day reality risks losing touch with the organization. This creates blind spots that can lead to poor strategic decisions and cause the organization to lose trust in its leader. 

Stage 7 marks a significant change in the Three Faces of a Leader. The leader is no longer engaged in active management of the day-to-day operations. Such change can be incredibly difficult, especially for a leader who is also the founder of the organization. In fact, a founder’s inability to align themselves to the Three Faces of a Leader is one of the reasons it is common to bring in a professional CEO in Stage 7.

The common misalignment in this Stage comes from a leader who wants to maintain a higher allocation to the Manager Face, not wanting to give up operational oversight. This can result in a frustrated Leadership Team who wants to take on more responsibility. 

If the leader insists upon staying active in operational management, that also means not enough energy is being spent on the Visionary Face. More than ever, the business needs its leader to be working on the business regularly, spending time in critical thinking, and painting a clear vision for the organization. In these cases, it’s common for the organization to experience excessive turnover in the Leadership Team. 

Three Faces of a Leader Misalignment

A regional airline that is headed by its founder has been struggling lately. While they continue to offer quality, reliable service, a competitor has begun attracting some of its core customers. The CEO, who is himself a pilot, brings contagious enthusiasm to the company. Lately, though, the Leadership Team is frustrated by his frequent absences. Whereas they are interested in offering the same new features that the competition has adopted, the CEO is focused on his love of the craft. He still flies a few routes and spends a lot of time with his on-the-ground team, talking shop and building loyalty.

The pivotal moment comes when the airline is forced to quit servicing some of its destinations due to a lack of demand. As the Leadership Team faces the urgent need for solutions, the CEO doubles down on his stance. He insists that the to key to maintaining a healthy organization is the time he spends on the job, talking to employees and making adjustments to routes and procedures based on his extensive knowledge. He doesn’t want to “waste his time” trying to predict what the next trend will be.

This organization needs a clear vision to unify its efforts and enable it to plan ahead rather than react to the present circumstances. The CEO is well-intentioned in his desire to stay in touch with the day-to-day operations, but his personal enjoyment comes at the company’s expense. If he finds that he is unable to wear the Visionary Face the majority of the time, the best thing for the company could be for him to find someone who can. In such a competitive industry, stagnation can quickly lead to collapse. A strong vision backed by a robust strategic plan are the most effective means of staying relevant.  

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The concepts from this article were taken from The Visionary Stage: Organizational ReWilding Rules for Business Growth. Available through The ReWild Group and Amazon, the book explores this and other concepts in-depth while providing illustrations to help business leaders incorporate the ideas into their organizations. Get your copy today to learn the rules for growth for companies with 161-350 employees.

The Three Faces of a Leader - Stage 6

In Stage 6, the leader is ideally spending 45 percent of their time and energy wearing the Visionary Face, 50 percent wearing the Manager Face, and five percent wearing the Specialist Face.

Stage 6 is essentially equal parts providing the vision for the company and managing leaders in executing on that vision. 

The leader is still spending half of their time and energy wearing the Manager Face; yet Stage 6 marks a distinct change from prior Stages in how the Manager Face is worn. The leader shifts from managing managers to managing leaders who are managing managers. Those managers in turn are overseeing the staff and the work. In the same way that the leader developed, trained, and hired strong managers in prior stages, they must now focus on developing, training, and hiring a strong Leadership Team.

The Stage 6 leader is spending almost an equal portion of time and energy wearing the Visionary Face. For the first time in the Stages of Growth, the leader must guide the Leadership Team to create the vision for the organization. A clear vision can then be communicated by the Leadership Team to the managers, who then communicate it with the staff. The sheer size of the organization makes it critical for the Leadership Team to tie the big-picture vision back to the daily work being performed by the organization to maintain staff buy-in.

The Specialist Face should only occupy 5% of the leader’s time and energy. While this is the face least worn by the leader, it is no less important. The leader still has experience that can benefit the organization. Furthermore, a leader who is too far removed from the organization’s business risks losing touch with the on-the-ground reality. This creates a blind spot that can lead to poor strategic decisions and a loss of trust from the staff. 

The change from Stage 5 to Stage 6 can be especially difficult for a leader who is also the founder of the company. By this point, the founder is long removed from the daily operations of the organization and may not enjoy the role of leading so many people. In fact, a founder’s inability to align themselves to the Three Faces of a Leader is one of the reasons it is common to bring in a professional CEO in Stage 6.

The common misalignment in this Stage comes from a leader who wants to maintain a higher allocation to the Manager or Specialist Faces, not wanting to give up operational oversight, which can result in a frustrated Leadership Team that wants to take on more responsibility. 

The leader’s insistence in staying active in management means there is not enough energy being spent on the Visionary Face. More than ever, the business needs its leader to be working on the business regularly, spending time in critical thinking, and painting a clear vision for the future. If the leader insists on staying active in operations and fails to generate a compelling vision that unifies the Leadership Team, the organization may experience retention issues in this key layer of the organization. 

Three Faces of a Leader Misalignment

The CEO of a third-party food manufacturing company has successfully led his company to Stage 6. As the original founder, he has always been a strong manager—good at keeping costs low, people happy, and the machines working smoothly. Lately, though, business has begun to stagnate. A large conglomerate has acquired from their customers some of the products they manufacture, including a flagship BBQ sauce that the company has produced for decades. As the company looks to him for direction as to what to do next, he finds that he’s unable to come up with a solution. His impulse is to double down on what he’s good at—overseeing operations—but that no longer seems sufficient.

In talking to his business coach, the CEO can understand that the company needs a compelling vision and more strategic planning to adapt to the changing marketplace and the new demands of the day. Recognizing that he can’t be the person to provide that vision, the CEO decides to hire an outside CEO who has demonstrated strong visionary abilities and to take on the role of President.

This CEO recognizes that despite the success he’s been able to achieve, his inability to create a strong vision for the future is impacting the organization’s health. By hiring a CEO with a track record of being able to provide a vision for a mature organization, he is meeting the company’s needs and giving it an opportunity to keep growing. While other leaders in his position may choose to develop the necessary visionary skills or augment their abilities with a consultant or roach, the key is that the CEO is finding a way for this misalignment not to become a barrier to growth. 

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The concepts from this article were taken from The Strategic Stage: Organizational ReWilding Rules for Business Growth. Available through The ReWild Group and Amazon, the book explores this and other concepts in-depth while providing illustrations to help business leaders incorporate the ideas into their organizations. Get your copy today to learn the rules for growth for companies with 96-160 employees.

How to be an effective problem solver

We recently posted about a manager’s role as both Coach and Supervisor. Today, we’re going to delve into the topic of problem solving, a task consistently required of every manager.

Regardless of the industry or area of focus, managers are responsible for the output of their team and serve as a resource when obstacles arise. Although not every manager is naturally a good problem solver, there are techniques that can be learned to improve anyone’s problem-solving skills.

Effective Problem Solving

The framework for effective problem solving introduced in this chapter involves three simple components:

1. Define the problem

2. Explore options

3. Select the best option

Define the Problem

Most problems that a manager encounters pertain to ideas, people, and things, as well as the relationships between them. These relationships are often complex and can be difficult to see clearly in a fast-paced work environment with many moving parts.

That’s why the first step to effective problem solving is to properly define the problem. Effective problem solvers see the structure of the issue and don’t just focus on the problem statement. Similar to a story problem in math class, the hardest part is setting up the equation that needs to be solved. The extraneous information in the story problem can get in the way of clearly seeing the problem’s structure.

Managers must be able to look past the noise to get to the heart of the matter. The better you become at seeing the structure of the problem, the more clearly you will understand the issue and identify a proper solution.

Here are questions and methods you can use to help clearly define the problem.

• Is it actually a problem? Could it simply be a misunderstanding or miscommunication? Is it due to a lack of training? Or is it something that needs to be solved?

• How significant is the problem? Is the impact large or small? Is it urgent? Does it occur rarely? Is it a precursor to something that could be more serious?

• Question the assumptions being made by you and your team. Have you jumped to an assumption that is not based on the facts? Ask other parties involved for their perspectives as appropriate.

• State out loud the problem as currently defined by the team. Oftentimes, hearing the problem stated audibly helps determine if it is properly defined. If you can’t clearly verbalize the problem, then it is not yet properly defined.

• Do your best to visualize the problem. Use whiteboards, paper, computer diagrams, post-it notes, or other tools to create a visual of the problem. This employs more parts of the mind and connects verbal concepts to visual representations. 

• Try reframing the problem you are trying to solve as a goal. Instead of stating the problem as “We keep missing project deadlines,” restate it as “We have a goal of meeting 95% of project deadlines.” This type of rephrasing often results in a more tangible outcome that is easier for the mind to grasp.

Do not proceed to the second step of the framework until you can clearly state out loud and pictorially represent the problem that needs to be solved.

Explore Options

Once you have properly defined the problem you are ready for the next step, which is to explore options. The greater number of viable options generated, the more likely the best solution will become apparent. But to encourage the team to engage with all their diverse talent and experiences, you must be sure the environment is properly set.

First, the environment must encourage participation by everyone. It’s your role as the Manager to draw your team into this exercise. Introverts need to know that their input is critical. Extroverts need to not control the conversation and silence other team members. It’s okay to have strong opinions as long as it’s done in a respectful way. In fact, encouraging your team to voice their opinions and articulate/advocate the strengths of their ideas will help the team identify additional options and refine those already identified.

The second part of the environment is to ensure the team is focused on one thing—identifying the best solution. Without everyone focused on this goal, the interaction may become a competition to be the one whose answer is selected. Along these lines, it’s important that the team does not simply yield to groupthink and go with the manager’s answer. You set the tone in this area. Call on people to express their opinions. Every time you select someone else’s solution—as long as it is the best or one of the best options—you demonstrate that selecting the best answer is the top priority.

Another way to eliminate groupthink is by having people come up with ideas individually before sharing them with the group. Oftentimes, the first idea that is offered in a brainstorming session becomes the one people latch on to, regardless of whether it’s the strongest. By giving everyone a chance to think on their own—potentially before the group comes together to discuss the topic—you increase the odds of getting a greater diversity of options.

As ideas are being generated, find ways to visually capture and interact around those ideas. Try different techniques to see what works for your team. Use colorful post-it notes or have everyone get their own marker for the whiteboard.

Exploring creative options to solve a problem is a great coaching opportunity, so don’t forget that coaching requires you to ask questions and listen more than you speak. Your questions can help guide the team to an idea you believe is viable without always stating the idea. When the team’s dialog results in a clearly superior option, it will increase the confidence of the entire team.

Select the Best Option

Once the group has a series of creative options, the best alternative needs to be selected. In some cases, the best option is obvious, and a consensus is formed. It’s your responsibility to make sure that consensus was not simply reached through groupthink—like when a team agrees with the manager’s ideas just to make the manager happy. 

In other cases, the best option is not clear. At this point, we recommend using the rule of three, which means narrowing the options to the top three alternatives. This narrows the team’s focus and allows you to contrast each option’s strengths, weaknesses, complexities, and likelihood of success more effectively. Three is an optimal number as it provides enough points of reference and typically makes it easier to identify the best option.

As part of the evaluation of the options identified, determine how each solution aligns with the company’s values, goals, strategies, and initiatives. These structures serve as guardrails for your team as they work on solving problems. 

Once an option is selected, it’s important as a manager that you emphasize for the team to get behind the decision—that the team marches forward together. That’s the only way to give the selected option a real chance to succeed. If, over a period of time, it becomes clear the selection did not solve the problem, a new option can be chosen.

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The concepts from this article were taken from Strong Management Team: Leading with a shared vision and common language. Available through The ReWild Group and Amazon, the book explores this and other concepts in-depth while providing illustrations to help business leaders incorporate the ideas into their organizations. Get your copy today to start benefiting from a Strong Management Team in your company.

Ownership Thinking

Organizational ReWilding is based on the concept of rewilding in nature, a process that occurs when a missing element is reintroduced into an ecosystem. While there are many useful parallels between the two systems, there is a fundamental difference between them: biological ecosystems come about naturally without human intervention, whereas businesses are consciously created.

The process of starting a business requires someone with vision, imagination, and a high level of risk tolerance; businesses do not spontaneously appear. The owner is concerned about all aspects of the business, including profit, cash flow, competition, employees, and cost control (among others).

While the owner is primarily concerned about the business, employees are mostly concerned about themselves. Employees tend to think about their paycheck, benefits, job security, immediate tasks, recognition, work environment, and potential for advancement.

To be clear, it’s not wrong for employees to be concerned about themselves or motivated by rational self-interest. Owners and employees simply think differently; they focus on different concerns. There is a distinction, though, between having concerns about yourself and that being your only concern.

The business will function at a higher level when employees adopt a change in mindset to what we call Ownership Thinking. This is especially true for individuals in leadership and management positions. In his book Ownership Thinking: How to End Entitlement and Create a Culture of Accountability, Purpose, and Profit, author Brad Hams defines Ownership Thinking this way:

Ownership Thinking is about moving employees away from only the “me” way of thinking and towards the concerns of the business and its financial performance.

By adopting this new mentality, employees don’t stop thinking about their personal needs—it’s just that they also think about the business’s needs. When employees look out for the company and ensure its success, their personal needs are taken care of as well.

This is a huge mindset shift individually and organizationally. Think about the difference in mindset between renting and owning the place where you live. When there is a threat, such as the potential for pipes freezing due to an incoming winter storm, your response will be different depending on your status. As an owner, you will do everything you can to prevent it because you are responsible for any damage that occurs. As a renter, you probably aren’t even thinking about the potential for damage because it’s the landlord’s problem if something breaks. 

This example shows that when you own something, you naturally care more about it. It is human nature to take better care of the things you own because you are investing in them for the long term; the more you take care of them, the more you will benefit.

Ownership Thinking begins with the leadership and management team. The more the leadership and management teams think like an owner, the stronger the company will become. As managers grow in their understanding of the company and of business in general, they can be more effective, generate more value for the company, and position themselves to gain more responsibility.

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The concepts from this article were taken from Strong Management Team: Leading with a shared vision and common language. Available through The ReWild Group and Amazon, the book explores this and other concepts in-depth while providing illustrations to help business leaders incorporate the ideas into their organizations. Get your copy today to start benefiting from a Strong Management Team in your company.

The Three Faces of a Leader – Stage 4

In Stage 4, the leader ideally spends 10 percent of their time and energy wearing the Visionary Face, 70 percent wearing the Manager Face, and 20 percent wearing the Specialist Face.

Stage 4 is characterized by a leader who is actively developing a management team that leads strong departments.

In earlier Stages, the leader wore the Manager Face by managing the work and the staff. The difference in Stage 4 is that the leader is managing managers, who are then managing the work and the staff. The size of the company requires an organizational structure that formalizes a management team. While this management layer is critical, it also introduces a layer between the CEO and the staff. That’s why it’s so important that the leader is training, growing, and hiring strong managers. The managers should be encouraged to lead solid departments, developing an expertise about their functional area that may even supersede the leader’s.

Implementing and advancing the organization’s processes and systems is a major focus in Stage 4. Leveraging the leader’s knowledge and expertise to others in the organization comprises 20% of time spent wearing the Specialist Face. Additionally, continued involvement in business development activities is a common Specialist activity for a Stage 4 leader.

Wearing the Visionary Face, the leader must stay in touch with where the organization is headed. Mindful of a clear vision of the future, the leader must then ensure that the management team understands the vision so they can share it with their departments to maintain staff buy-in. 

Even though the ideal allocation of time and energy among the Three Faces in Stage 4 is similar to Stage 3, it’s still common for a leader to have grown the organization through Stage 3 into Stage 4 without having transitioned away from a Specialist focus. 

Leaders who fail to spend appropriate time in the Manager Face routinely face burn-out in Stage 4 with an organization that remains owner-centric. The organization is running them, rather than the other way around. Their management team is underdeveloped and docile, lacking the authority to fulfill their critical role in what should now be an enterprise-centric business. Without a strong management team, the organization’s growth potential is stunted—limited by the leader’s personal restraints of time and energy.

Three Faces of a Leader Misalignment

The CEO of a medical interpreting services company excels at bringing in new business. She is a natural networker who is consistently able to close deals. She’s also a talented interpreter, and even though her company has grown to 42 employees, she still loves that part of the work. She has made close connections with many of her clients and while she has managers responsible for certain hospitals, she tends to get contacted directly by the client when there is a problem. She also tends to make herself available to clients because it’s easier, in her mind, to simply take care of it herself.

The CEO has ambitions of growing her business to be the primary provider of medical interpreting services in the entire metro area. She’s frustrated, though, by the consistent need to work directly with her clients. She wants her managers to take the lead with customer service and quality issues so that she can focus on sales, writing proposals, and expanding the business, but they aren’t stepping up to do the job.

This CEO has overlooked the important role that she plays in developing her managers. After putting them in place, the next step she needs to take in this new stage of her business is to coach and mentor them. Rather than spending so much of her time selling, she should be developing a sales manager who can take the lead in that area. And rather than shortcutting her managers’ authority, she should equip her management team to handle issues with clients and enable them to find their own solutions.

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The concepts from this article were taken from The Professional Stage: Organizational ReWilding Rules for Business Growth. Available through The ReWild Group and Amazon, the book explores this and other concepts in-depth while providing illustrations to help business leaders incorporate the ideas into their organizations. Get your copy today to learn the rules for growth for companies with 34-57 employees.

Leadership Across the Stages of Growth

One of the key discoveries to come from our research is that there are seven stages of business growth. The most accurate determinant of the characteristics of a business ecosystem—the best way to offer growth guidance to companies—is not industry, the age of a company, or the revenue generated, but is rather the number of employees in a business. This is because the complexity of the organization is driven by the number of people in the company. 

The Stages of Growth clarifies the optimal number of managers and leaders for a business.

Stage 1 is the Start-up Stage, with 1 to 10 employees. In a Stage 1 business, the management team is typically just the CEO. Then, as the organization heads into Stage 2, with 11 to 19 employees, the CEO needs to be developing one to two managers to support the increased number of employees.

In Stage 3, the number of managers needs to double from Stage 2, with three to five. Stage 3 is all about delegation. This marks a critical turning point for the organization.

Stages 1 and 2 are owner-centric Stages. In these Stages, the organization revolved around the owner, but Stage 3 marks the beginning of an Enterprise-Centric organization—one that can stand apart from the owner—and that’s done through Delegation, which is the theme for Stage 3.

In Stage 4, with 35 to 57 employees, the focus is on professionalizing the Management Team that began to be established in Stage 3. At this point, the Management Team should include six to ten managers and two to three executives. One of the most important things this professionalized management team does in Stage 4 is invest in the systems and processes of their departments to establish the foundation the organization needs to support future growth.

The efforts in Stage 4 often create a siloed organization because the managers are stepping up and taking more formal ownership of their departments or functional areas of the business. Stage 5, with 58 to 95 employees, is all about Integration. Here, with 11 – 16 managers and four to five executives, the organization is tasked with a focus on Integrating these silos. In this integration, another important transition occurs.

Stages 3 and 4 are really the Enterprise-Centric Stages led by a Management Team. Stage 5 marks a transition. As the professionalized, siloed managers of Stage 4 come together to create an integrated team in Stage 5, a Leadership Team is formed with four to five executives.

The Leadership Team established in Stage 5 then sets up the organization for Stage 6, the Strategic Stage. In this Stage, the Leadership Team should include six to eight executives, supported by 17-26 managers.

By Stage 7, the Leadership Team should have grown to 9 to 15 executives—who are now running the business day-to-day—and be supported by 27 to 45 managers. The focus of this stage is recapturing the innovation the organization had in earlier stages to keep it from becoming stagnant.

Stages 1-2 are owner-centric; the CEO is leading the team. In Stage 3, the organization transitions to enterprise-centric, with the addition of a Management Team. In Stage 5, that Management Team expands into a formalized Leadership Team.

This framework serves as the ideal for businesses to follow, with the management and leadership teams growing in proportion to the needs of the organization. In reality, however, many leaders miss these transitions. The business grows, but the management team does not, resulting in businesses in Stages 3 and 4 routinely having a management team that is too small. These businesses are still owner-centric, the CEO is stretched way too thin, and is either burnt out or headed in that direction at a rapid pace.

Stage 6 and 7 businesses often do not have a leadership team. The CEO is still stretched too thin, occupied with managing managers, not doing what the business really needs them to—dedicating energy to the strategic vision and planning for the business.

In any of these instances where the organization is out of alignment with the ideal level of management and leadership teams, the business stagnates; the management team can’t handle the growth. Understanding these foundational concepts—owner-centric versus enterprise centric, and when a management team needs to birth a leadership team—is a first step in the right direction to ensure leadership is growing proportional to the business.

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The concepts from this article were taken from Strong Management Team: Leading with a shared vision and common language. Available through The ReWild Group and Amazon, the book explores in-depth this and other concepts while providing illustrations to help business leaders incorporate the ideas into their organizations. Get your copy today to start benefiting from a Strong Management Team in your company.

The Three Faces of a Leader - Stage 3

In Stage 3, the leader ideally spends 10 percent of their time and energy wearing the Visionary Face, 60 percent wearing the Manager Face, and 30 percent wearing the Specialist Face.

Stage 3 is dominated by managing work and people. Since the number of people in the organization has tripled from just two Stages ago, the Manager Face consumes the majority of the leader’s energy. For the first time in the Stages of Growth, the number of people in the organization exceeds the leader’s span of control. This new dynamic drives the need for the leader to delegate work they used to perform themselves.

Nevertheless, nearly a third of a leader’s time should be reserved for time wearing the Specialist Face. The leader likely still knows the company’s offerings better than anyone else, so their involvement in delivering services to customers and in generating revenue requires a significant time allocation. A leader also needs to advance the organization’s processes and systems to handle the new level of complexity, which rely on the leader’s personal knowledge and insights.

The ten percent of time allocated to the Visionary Face keeps the leader actively working on the organization’s vision, preventing it from becoming stale. Connecting that vision to the daily tasks being performed by the company helps maintain staff buy-in, which is crucial at this Stage. Even though Stage 3 requires leaders to focus on the people, they must continue to spend some time working on the business. Ideally, the heavy investment in the Visionary Face during Stages 1 and 2 has resulted in a clear vision, mission, and values that serve as a solid foundation for Stage 3.

The Stage 3 leader needs to wear the Three Faces very differently than they did as a Stage 2 leader. This dramatic shift often leaves Stage 3 leaders out of alignment from the ideal allocation of time in the Three Faces.

The most common misalignment is insufficient time spent wearing the Manager Face. The leader who has successfully grown their organization through Stages 1 and 2 by setting a vision for the future and putting in the work to achieve that vision, is now being asked to shift their focus to delegating and managing. For the leader who is used to being the one who makes things happen for the organization, this reprioritization of time and energy can be very challenging. One of the most important things that is accomplished during a leader’s time wearing the Manager Face is developing key team members into managers who can support growth beyond what leaders can do on their own. The establishment of an initial management team is a foundational step in solidifying the organization’s status as enterprise-centric, instead of owner-centric—an important transition that takes place in Stage 3.

Three Faces of a Leader Misalignment

The founder and owner of a non-profit is thrilled to see how far her organization has come. When she first began providing transportation services to senior citizens, she was the only driver—and she was very good at it. She enjoyed getting to know the people she helped and had a knack for being conversational and friendly, yet still efficient. Today she has 21 drivers plus a dispatch team and other office personnel.

Although she no longer drives, she’s still heavily involved with scheduling and billing. She knows the ins-and-outs of all the different routes and is adept at finding solutions to issues that arise. The problem is that as the organization has grown, she’s no longer able to personally bridge the gap between the different teams. It kills her to see mistakes being made, knowing the impact it will have on the seniors, so she works overtime to make sure that nothing goes awry.

This CEO is unwilling to wear the Manager Face. As more of a natural Specialist and Visionary, she doesn’t like feeling removed from the day-to-day work and isn’t willing to delegate the parts of the job she is most attached to. Since delegation involves letting people learn through failing, she reasons that it’s better for the company if she holds on to as much of the work as possible. The flaw with this approach is that her company will never be able to expand beyond its current size. If she wants to help more senior citizens, her best use of time at this Stage is to provide training, coaching, and mentorship to her Management Team. They need room to fail if they are going to fully own their positions and improve their skills.

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The concepts from this article were taken from The Delegation Stage: Organizational ReWilding Rules for Business Growth. Available through The ReWild Group and Amazon, the book explores this and other concepts in-depth while providing illustrations to help business leaders incorporate the ideas into their organizations. Get your copy today to learn the rules for growth for companies with 20-34 employees.

Gates of Focus in a Stage 7 Business

Stage 7’s Gates of Focus are People, Process, then Profit.

The number of employees in a Stage 7 company is double or triple what the company had in the previous stage, an increase that demands for People to be the top priority. The primary way a leader can successfully show a focus on People is by investing in the growth of the Leadership Team. The company is too large for the CEO to have regular, personal interactions with all employees. He or she must rely on the Leadership Team (who in turn invests in the Management Team), as the primary driver of successful employee engagement. That said, it’s still important for the leader to regularly practice “management by walking around.” This ensures ongoing individual interaction with employees to communicate that they are valuable, contributing members of the company.

Process is now second priority. The sheer number of people cycling through the company requires effective processes to ensure that quality and scalability can be achieved. For the business to stay relevant to the market, it needs to have an ongoing plan for the investment and methods to encourage continuous innovation.

While Profit is important, it falls to third priority in Stage 7. A company of this size should have its profitability engine in place, with Marketing consistently generating leads, which Sales then turns into revenue and hands off to Customer Service to keep the revenue coming.

Business leaders embracing these Gates of Focus should be constantly thinking about how decisions will impact employees. Their energy should be focused on the development and well-being of the people in the organization. 

Gates of Focus Misalignment

A technology company that specializes in home security has found tremendous success due to its highly innovative products. The CEO and founder, who comes from a technology background, has been instrumental in pushing out cutting-edge products that can command higher margins than the competition. With plenty of demand for their products, the company is optimistic about the future and haphazardly adds people to its customer service department to support expected growth in new customers.

Initial sales are strong but there is more churn than expected within the customer base. The overwhelming reason customers give for leaving is dissatisfaction with the service they experience when interacting with company staff. The products themselves are rated highly, but support is far behind. Customers complain about a lack of knowledge, slow response times, and overall frustration with the disconnect between the product and the service.

This CEO has his focus firmly fixed on Profit. After investing large amounts of capital into research and development, he looked for other ways to cut corners to improve profitability. He failed to account for the significant value that trained, knowledgeable employees add to the product. Relying on the product alone to maintain market share isn’t working. He needs to invest in People in order to keep growing the company beyond what the product alone can achieve.

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The concepts from this article were taken from The Visionary Stage: Organizational ReWilding Rules for Business Growth. Available through The ReWild Group and Amazon, the book explores this and other concepts in-depth while providing illustrations to help business leaders incorporate the ideas into their organizations. Get your copy today to learn the rules for growth for companies with 161-350 employees.

The Three Faces of a Leader – Stage 2

In Stage 2, the leader is ideally spending 40 percent of their time and energy wearing the Visionary Face, 20 percent wearing the Manager Face, and 40 percent wearing the Specialist Face.

As in Stage 1, leaders are spending most of their time and energy between the Visionary and Specialist Faces. The addition of more employees means there are more resources to help with delivering services to customers, which frees up the leader’s Specialist time, allowing it to decrease from 50% in Stage 1 to 40% in Stage 2. More employees also means that time spent wearing the Management Face increases from Stage 1 (from 10% to 20%).

In Stage 2, the organization is still owner-centric, which means the leader is heavily involved in the work. As a Specialist, the leader is involved with things like creating the products for customers, delivering the services to clients, and applying their personal expertise to the company’s offerings.

Equally important at Stage 2, however, is for the owner to spend the same amount of time wearing the Visionary Face. This is time spent setting the vision for the company and tying that vision back to daily tasks. Without time spent thinking critically about where the organization is headed, it’s challenging to get buy-in from the team, and the team must maintain a high level of organizational confidence to keep the company advancing.

With more employees, and more specialization with the work that they are doing, the leader must invest time wearing the Manager Face. Instead of doing all the work themselves, leaders should spend more energy (compared to a Stage 1 leader) providing oversight and direction.

It’s common for a Stage 2 leader to spend too much time wearing the Specialist Face because their focus is on continuing to grow revenue. Oftentimes, they also feel most comfortable and accomplished as a Specialist—after all, there’s a good chance they have natural talent in the area in which they started a business (i.e., they’re a great electrician or a talented designer). But a Stage 2 business needs its leader to be more than a Specialist; it needs a Visionary as well.  

Being a Visionary can be a new responsibility for many business owners. It’s a necessary component of a Stage 2 leader because they are recruiting new employees and working to retain the staff they already have. They must be willing to spend the energy painting a vision of the future that inspires others to want to help achieve it, or they will be left to achieve it alone (an impossible task, no matter how much talent they possess).

Stage 2 leaders can also struggle to allocate the necessary time to wearing the Manager Face. It’s important, though, not only for the employees that are currently on the team, but also in preparation for Stage 3, when the leader will focus on delegating more work to the team (Stage 3 is the Delegation Stage). The leader must begin to empower and develop key members of the staff to position the organization for that critical transition.

Three Faces of a Leader Misalignment

A veterinary doctor opened her own clinic to achieve a simple mission: to provide the best care possible to animals. Gifted and hard-working, she attracts a loyal client base who appreciates her attention to detail and personal touch. It isn’t long before she starts to get more clients than she can handle, leading her to hire another vet and more technicians. As the workload increases, she keeps giving more of her time and energy to the day-to-day work. Her main concern is that the animals won’t receive the same high level of care, so she spends a lot of time not only with her own patients but also monitoring the work of the rest of the staff.

Despite all of her efforts, complaints are starting to come in. Customers say they no longer know what to expect—the quality of their interactions with the clinic vary greatly from one day to the next. The vet techs are feeling micro-managed, and there is a general sense of confusion and impotency. The worst part for the owner is that she is on the verge of burnout. She can’t work any harder but doesn’t know how else to help her team.

For this business owner, the Specialist Face is the only one she’s truly comfortable wearing. As long as she is with her patients, doing the work, she loves her job. Though she was enough of a Visionary to start a clinic, she must adjust to the needs of a growing business in order to better serve it. By spending more time wearing the Visionary Face, she could be cultivating enthusiasm and unity within her team. And even a few hours each week spent wearing the Manager Face would go a long way towards setting expectations, improving communication, and developing new leaders.

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The concepts from this article were taken from The Ramp-Up Stage: Organizational ReWilding Rules for Business Growth. Available through The ReWild Group and Amazon, the book explores this and other concepts in-depth while providing illustrations to help business leaders incorporate the ideas into their organizations. Get your copy today to learn the rules for growth for companies with 11-19 employees.

Meeting Models by Stage

As an organization grows in complexity, so too does its need for structure to keep the complexity from turning into chaos. One important way organizations add structure is through Meeting Models.

As we described in a recent blog post, Meeting Models are organization-specific templates that define a meeting’s purpose, outcomes, protocol, and positions/roles involved. This structure reduces variance between meetings of the same type within the company and provides clear expectations to those leading and participating in the meetings. This reduction of variance results in higher-quality, more effective meetings that can scale with an organization. 

This chart shows the minimum Meeting Models that an organization needs to have in place based on its Stage of Growth.

In general, smaller organizations are less complex than larger organizations, and necessitate fewer Meeting Models. As an organization grows, it should steadily add structure to more of its meetings.

In all organizations, beginning in Stage 1 (1-10 employees), it is important to have a Meeting Model for Daily Check-In Meetings. Daily Check-In Meetings are used to keep teams aligned towards a common goal, to keep everyone informed, and to ensure work momentum.

Beginning in Stage 2 (11-19 employees), the organization needs to incorporate structure for One-to-One meetings. One-to-One Meetings are used to offer support, develop relationships, and ensure mutual accountability between employees and supervisors. Focused time spent between employees and supervisors is invaluable to building a strong working relationship that is mutually beneficial.

Stage 3 (20-34 employees) marks an important change in an organization, where it moves from Owner-Centric to Enterprise-Centric. At this Stage, it’s critical for an organization to effectively assimilate new people, which is why a Meeting Model for training—including an effective onboarding process—is required. Employee Training Meetings are used to transfer knowledge from one person or group to another.

The next Meeting Model addition comes in Stage 5 (58-95 employees) with Quarterly Leadership Team Meetings. Quarterly Leadership Team Meetings are used for strategic oversight for an organization. At this Stage in an organization’s growth, incorporating a structured rhythm for Interdepartmental Planning is key for continued growth.

Finally, in Stage 6 (96-160 employees) an organization needs to formalize a structure for its Company Town Hall Meetings. Town Hall Meetings are used to share information with a large group. Effectively gathering and communicating with all employees becomes a critical way to maintain organizational cohesion in Stages 6 and 7.

It’s important to clarify that the above graphic shows when an organization needs a Meeting Model for a specific meeting type. It indicates when an organization needs to create greater structure for a given meeting type due to reaching a threshold—due to the frequency of the meeting, the amount of organizational time spent in the meeting, or the significant impact of the meeting’s outcomes.

This chart does not show when the organization should start holding a given meeting type. Many of these meetings will be held by an organization in stages prior to when the need for a Meeting Model has been reached. For example, Town Hall Meetings in the form of an All-Employee Meeting could be held as early as Stage 1. However, by Stage 6 it becomes imperative to have a Meeting Model for Town Hall Meetings because the level of importance and number of people involved in these meetings has risen to a higher threshold.

Further, an organization may have more Meeting Models than those suggested by this graphic, depending on which meetings are important enough or held frequently enough in their organization that consistent structure is beneficial.

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The concepts from this article were taken from Meeting Structure: Achieving meeting effectiveness through structure. Available through The ReWild Group and Amazon, the book explores in-depth this and other concepts while providing illustrations to help business leaders incorporate the ideas into their organizations. Get your copy today to start benefiting from Meeting Structure in your company.

Gates of Focus in a Stage 6 Business

Stage 6’s gates of focus are People, Profit, and Process.

Maintaining a healthy company culture is important with the number of people between 96 to 160, making People the top priority. A big part of an organization’s success of this size is the ability to successfully assimilate new people so they are engaged and effective at their assigned roles. By this stage, the company must be growing a Leadership Team that can take over responsibility of the day-to-day activities of the business from the CEO. The gap between the CEO and incoming employees has never been wider, which is why it’s so important for the layers of leadership to be acting together as a cohesive unit.

Profit is second priority to ensure the company continues to produce the high levels of profitability required at this new level of complexity. The ability to generate profitable revenue should be less difficult than in prior Stages, since it is built upon a Business Development engine that is running like a well-oiled machine.

While Process cannot be ignored, it remains third priority for this Stage. Process was the primary Gate in Stage 4; if an organization neglected to invest in Process at that time, it can face severe scalability issues in Stage 6.

Business leaders embracing these Gates of Focus should be constantly thinking about how decisions will impact employees. Their energy should be focused on the development and well-being of their team.

Gates of Focus Misalignment

An engineering firm that is led by a very Process-focused CEO has grown to Stage 6. A civil engineer by trade, the CEO excels at his craft and has successfully built a business but tends not to focus much on his employees. Currently, his primary focus is on Profit. In order to meet the demand for the company’s services while keeping costs low, he decides to hire offshore engineers. By doing so, the company saves money on labor as well as overhead expenses such as office space.

Working remotely, the new team members are not introduced to the company culture in a systematic way. The engineers in the office notice a difference in the quality standards of the new team members. Work is not being completed in a way that supports their premium brand. An “us versus them” mentality begins to develop between the on-site employees and the offshore workers. Concerned that their jobs are at stake, the engineers in the home office start hoarding information, contributing to a further decline in overall quality.

The CEO has failed to calculate the true costs involved with hiring offshore engineers. The arrangement works well on paper and initially supports the company’s bottom line, but the toll taken in terms of employee morale, culture, and quality of work will undermine the company’s long-term success. In order for the company to continue to offer the same quality of work in support of a strong, cohesive brand, the new employees must be trained and incentivized in a consistent manner across the board.

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The concepts from this article were taken from The Strategic Stage: Organizational ReWilding Rules for Business Growth. Available through The ReWild Group and Amazon, the book explores this and other concepts in-depth while providing illustrations to help business leaders incorporate the ideas into their organizations. Get your copy today to learn the rules for growth for companies with 96-160 employees.

The Three Faces of a Leader – Stage 1

In Stage 1, leaders are ideally spending 40 percent of their time and energy wearing the Visionary Face, 10 percent wearing the Manager Face, and 50 percent wearing the Specialist Face. Stage 1 is almost equal parts providing the vision for the company and executing on that vision. 

Stage 1 leaders need to devote half of their time to being actively involved in the work of the company—creating the products for customers, delivering the services to clients, or applying their personal expertise to the company’s offerings. Often, the leader is contributing significantly to the overall output of the organization. Wearing the Specialist Face can also include time the leader spends in business development, whether it’s sales, marketing, or customer service.

Setting the vision for the company and tying that back to the organization’s activities should occupy 40% of the leader’s time and energy. Without this time spent in critical thinking about where the organization is headed, it is challenging to get buy-in from the team on that vision. The team must be confident in the company’s future so that they can create forward momentum in this early Stage.

With a focus on surviving the Start-Up Stage, it’s common that a Stage 1 leader spends too much time wearing the Specialist Face. They may have started the business because they are naturally talented in wearing the Specialist Face—they are a great electrician or talented designer. Wearing the Specialist Face is where they feel comfortable and accomplished. But a Stage 1 business needs its leader to be more than a Specialist. 

The over-emphasis on Specialist typically comes at the expense of wearing the Visionary Face. Being a Visionary is a new responsibility for many business owners. To build an organization takes more than being an excellent doer of the work; it takes a leader who is willing to spend the energy to paint a vision of the future that inspires others to want to help achieve it. 

If a leader doesn’t spend enough time in this early stage intentionally setting a vision for where the company is headed, they can’t share it with the staff. Without a clear vision, it is hard for the staff to buy into the company or see how their daily tasks contribute to the end-goal. The leader will struggle to build a strong, dedicated team that can help the organization grow through Stage 1 and beyond.

Three Faces of a Leader Misalignment

A medical doctor has an innovative idea for a device that will improve the administration of certain drugs. He decides to quit practicing medicine and invest his time and energy into developing the product and getting it to the market. He hires a small team of engineers and starts marketing and selling the device. His vision for the product and his company is crystal clear in his mind, and he has no trouble attracting investors.

After several months, however, the device is still far from ready. Several pieces of the project have stalled, and he is constantly frustrated by the inability of his team to execute on his vision. By this time, he has already begun planning for a second device to complement the first and has drummed up interest in the market. He finds replacements for his team in the hopes of speeding up production, but they too seem unable to finish development.

This CEO is very comfortable wearing the Visionary Face. He attracts talent and investors easily because he’s adept at sharing his vision and building excitement. What he fails to do, though, is wear the Specialist Face. He needs to roll up his sleeves and get involved with product development if he wants to see progress in that area, because he is the one with the clearest understanding of what is needed. Otherwise, the gap between the vision and getting things done is too great for even very talented employees to bridge.

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The concepts from this article were taken from The Start-Up Stage: Organizational ReWilding Rules for Business Growth. Available through The ReWild Group and Amazon, the book explores this and other concepts in-depth while providing illustrations to help business leaders incorporate the ideas into their organizations. Get your copy today to learn the rules for growth for companies with 1-10 employees.

The Six Components of a Meeting Model

Every organization holds different types of meetings; while structure isn’t always required for those meetings to be effective, some of them would benefit. Good candidates for greater structure include those that occur often, involve a significant amount of time, or have a high degree of impact.  

In cases where structure is desired, Meeting Models are a useful tool. Meeting Models are organization-specific templates that define a meeting’s purpose, outcomes, protocol, and positions/roles involved. They apply to meetings of the same type, even if they are held in different departments or with different teams. For example, consistent department meetings would follow the same Model for their weekly meetings in both Accounting and Operations. The content would differ, but the structure would be the same.

To develop Meeting Models for an organization, there are six components that should be taken into consideration.

• Meeting Type

• Specific Meetings Where the Model is Applied

• Purpose

• Outcomes

• Protocol

• Positions & Roles

Meeting Type

First, select from the list of Meeting Types (described in Chapter Four of Meeting Structure) the one most relevant for the Model you are developing. Selecting the Meeting Type is the first step towards bringing structure to a meeting.

Specific Meetings

The second step is to identify which specific meetings within the organization fall within the Meeting Model being developed. This helps provide specific use cases for the Meeting Model. As the Meeting Model is being developed the organization can ask, “Which existing meetings do we want to conform to this Meeting Model?”

Purpose
The third component is Purpose. While the type of meeting has already been selected according to a general purpose, this section is a place to get more specific about why the company holds these types of meetings. The Purpose should answer the question, “For what purpose does the organization use meetings that follow this Model?”

Outcomes
In the fourth component, desired outcomes are defined. Outcomes refer to the expected results of a meeting. The question, “What do we expect to get out of the meeting?” can help to determine what those outcomes should be. Examples of possible outcomes include:

• Clarity of expectations

• Visibility into significant victories or setbacks

• Documented decisions and action items

• Shared information

• New ideas

• Connection to the group’s shared mission

• An appropriate sense of urgency to get work done

• Inspiration

• Making a decision

It’s not uncommon for a meeting to have multiple purposes. For example, the intention of a decision-making meeting is both making a decision and securing a commitment from the people in the room to support that decision. It is very easy to run a decision-making meeting that achieves the first outcome but fails to achieve the second, and therefore fails to deliver the expected result. Documenting both of these (making the decision and securing commitment) as the desired outcomes for a Decision-Making Meeting Model helps ensure these types of meetings achieve both on a consistent basis.

Protocol
Meeting Protocol includes any details that guide how a meeting is carried out. Is the meeting rigidly structured? If so, what is that structure? Or is it an open forum for conversation? How strict are those expectations?

A daily stand-up meeting, for example, is highly structured. A strict schedule is followed to keep it within a short period of time. There are clear guidelines as to what should be discussed within the meeting and what should be taken up as a separate meeting or conversation. Brainstorming sessions are more freeform, but still have some structure, such as an introduction to the topic and a prescribed way for people to share their ideas. Neither format is better than the other, but standards should be set as to how and when meetings are held so that everyone has the right expectations.

Positions & Roles
The final component of the Meeting Model is identifying the Positions & Roles involved. Answering the following three questions will help make it clear.

1. Who should be included? 

   This is not a list of specific individuals but rather the types of people or positions they hold. For example, it could be the members of a department or anyone who is a supervisor.

2. What are the expected levels of participation?

   There are three basic participation levels that could be expected. First, everyone can be expected to participate in a collaborative nature, with everyone included in the conversation. A second type of participation is where the communication is one-way, when some participants are communicating information and the others are primarily there to receive the information.  Thirdly, participation may be expected to be confrontational, like during negotiations or employee disciplinary meetings. 

3. What are the Meeting Roles?

   This part of the Meeting Model focuses on consistent roles that individuals will play during the meeting. Common types of roles in a meeting, though not required in every Meeting Model, can be Facilitator, Note Taker, Subject Matter Experts, and Time Tracker. 

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The concepts from this article were taken from Meeting Structure: Achieving meeting effectiveness through structure. Available through The ReWild Group and Amazon, the book explores in-depth this and other concepts while providing illustrations to help business leaders incorporate the ideas into their organizations. Get your copy today to start benefiting from Meeting Structure in your company.

Gates of Focus in a Stage 5 Business

Stage 5’s Gates of Focus are Profit, People, and Process.

In Stage 5, the attention must now return to Profit to ensure that enough capital is generated to sustain a larger organization. A leader can successfully focus on Profit in two key ways: 1) ensuring business development has a synergistic strategy across marketing, sales, and customer service to generate consistent and growing revenue; and 2) tasking departments to lower costs.

People increases to second priority in a Stage 5 business after being the third priority in Stage 4. The increase in priority ensures that leaders are spending sufficient energy to integrate key contributors of the management team into an interdependent, execution-focused leadership team. The added focus on People is also needed because a significant number of new employees are added throughout Stage 5.

The heavy investment in Process in Stage 4 allows this Gate to fall to third priority in Stage 5. It’s worth noting that if an organization didn’t take care of Process in Stage 4, they may be faced with playing catch-up in that area during Stage 5. If Process has been given sufficient attention, the company should be able to rely on the processes and systems infused during the prior Stage to handle the increase in volume and people.

With Profit as the top priority, business leaders embracing these Gates of Focus should be constantly thinking about how decisions will impact the company’s profitability. Their energy should be focused on activities that generate revenue and increase profits.

Gates of Focus Misalignment

The CEO of a company that designs and manufactures cell phone accessories has a natural tendency to focus on his employees. As someone who values his team, he has always made it a point to recognize and reward individual contributions. Part of his strategy to attract and retain top talent has been to offer great benefits and an exceptional work environment. As the company has grown, he wants to make sure that the new employees feel like they’re part of the family. He decides to invest in new office space as a way to celebrate a successful year, to reward the current employees, and to welcome the new ones. With the help of a professional designer, he creates a modern and vibrant workspace that thrills the entire team.

As he continues to grow the company and add new team members, he sees a dip in profitability. The total number of employees has reached 74 and he is concerned about being able to maintain the same level of benefits and salary structures for any additional hires. When an opportunity arises to start production on a new product, he seizes on it as a way to increase revenue. However, it requires the purchase of expensive new machinery. With so much money invested in the office space, he simply doesn’t have the capital to pursue it.

This CEO has put People as his first priority, and while his motives were good, he now finds himself in a position where he cannot afford any additional staff. He doesn’t have the funds needed to pursue new business opportunities that would ultimately lead to the expansion of the staff and benefit the entire team in the long run. If he had pushed through and maintained the old office space until profitability had improved, he would have more freedom to invest in the kinds of amenities that are popular with the team and raise morale.

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The concepts from this article were taken from The Integration Stage: Organizational ReWilding Rules for Business Growth. Available through The ReWild Group and Amazon, the book explores this and other concepts in-depth while providing illustrations to help business leaders incorporate the ideas into their organizations. Get your copy today to learn the rules for growth for companies with 58-95 employees.

Builder-Protector Ratio in a Stage 7 Company

In Stage 7, the ideal Builder-Protector Ratio is 2:1, which means there is twice the level of confidence as caution in the organization.

As shown in the graphic, the portion of Protectors in Stage 7 has returned to the same level as Stage 5, indicating a confident organization. This represents a slight decrease in Builder mentality from Stage 6, which positions the business for the long run. The 2:1 ratio reflects a relationship between Builders and Protectors that advances the company at a sustainable pace. The company will need to double its number of employees to grow completely through Stage 7, a process that can take a long time. 

This high level of confidence sustains an optimism in the future and fuels the willingness to take the necessary risks to keep the company from becoming complacent. New offerings and strategies will be required as the organization responds to market changes and emerging opportunities. 

Just as with the prior two Stages, the Leadership Team needs to be mindful of key individuals who are naturally Protectors. If they press too hard on the brakes, the entire organization will be stopped. 

In Stage 7, the Leadership Team is now guiding the strategic direction of the business. At this size, the organization must lean on shared language, values, and structures to sustain its unified culture. This will require significant and intentional energy exerted to communicate with the entire organization, as well as the introduction of a company-wide program that supports and rewards individuals who demonstrate the company’s values. 

With a sustainable level of confidence in place, the organization with a 2:1 Builder-Protector Ratio is positioned to mature proportionately across all functional areas and achieve sustainable, long-term growth.

Misalignment can occur when organizations reach Stage 7 without an integrated, professional Management Team and a maturing Leadership Team who are both being challenged to reach a high level of confidence. Weaknesses at either of these levels of the organization may result in the company regressing to previous Stages.

Another contributor to misalignment from the ideal ratio can come from influential, key members of the organization who have not bought into the direction of the company and who serve as Protectors, undermining confidence.

Builder-Protector Ratio Misalignment

A call center company that offers 24/7 support for medium-size businesses has found a great deal of success, in large part due to the consistency of service it provides. The organization has refined its hiring process to the point where it can attract and retain the right kind of talent to provide quality customer service and tech support over the phone. With large new contracts coming in, Human Resources has ramped up hiring to prepare for the influx in the workload.

A shift is taking place in the marketplace, however. More and more companies are requesting chat services in addition to phone support. The company has exclusively provided phone support in the past, and that’s what their employees were hired to provide. When the new clients request chat support, employees are resistant. The recent hires are especially unwilling to shift because they interviewed specifically for phone support, which requires strong oral communication skills, whereas chat support requires strong written communication skills. Many of the Managers are reluctant to make the shift as well. They have comfortable careers with the company and are hesitant to try anything new that might rock the boat. 

This company has become stagnant due to an overabundance of Protectors, causing a reluctance to pursue change. It would benefit from a strong message from leadership reminding people that providing support is their number one goal, and while the technology might change, the goal hasn’t. They could also benefit from understanding that they can’t maintain the same size if they aren’t willing to adapt. Status quo is not a viable option, because the company is going to lose clients by refusing to take a chance on change.

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The concepts from this article were taken from The Visionary Stage: Organizational ReWilding Rules for Business Growth. Available through The ReWild Group and Amazon, the book explores this and other concepts in-depth while providing illustrations to help business leaders incorporate the ideas into their organizations. Get your copy today to learn the rules for growth for companies with 161-350 employees.

Levels of Meeting Structure

While an organization can have many types of meetings, not every type of meeting needs to have the same level of structure. Meetings improve when they adopt a suitable level of structure. While there’s no magic formula that reveals which meetings require more structure and which require less, we have identified three characteristics that can help determine the appropriate level of structure.

1. Frequency of meeting – The more frequent a type of meeting is held by the organization, the more likely the organization would benefit from having a higher level of structure used across the organization. Meetings held daily or weekly are good candidates for increased structure. 

2. Time spent in meeting – The total organizational time spent in a type of meeting is another factor that influences how much structure should be considered for a meeting. A quarterly Town Hall meeting that involves all employees represents a considerable investment of time for the organization, even though it only occurs quarterly. Meetings in which a significant amount of time is spent are candidates for greater levels of structure. 

3. Impact of the meeting – In addition to the frequency and time spent on a meeting, the meeting’s level of impact should also be considered when thinking about the appropriate level of structure. A sales meeting with large, important prospects may not occur frequently and may not involve a lot of time, but the impact of such a meeting may mean that it would benefit from a higher level of meeting structure.

Three Levels of Structure

After identifying which meetings would benefit from structure, the next thing to consider is how much structure is appropriate. A specific meeting within a company can have one of three levels of structure: Ad Hoc, Distinct, or Defined.

A meeting that uses the Ad Hoc level of structure is one that has no repeatable processes. Each time the meeting is held, the format may vary. The purpose is not formally identified. The leader and participants have little insight into what is expected of each other. As such, the success of a meeting with an ad hoc structure is dependent primarily on the meeting leader’s abilities. While meetings with this level of structure can still be effective, this level of structure (or lack thereof) leads to greater variability in their success.

The next level of structure is called Distinct. A meeting that uses the Distinct level of structure is one where the leader and participants understand that the meeting is of a certain type, even though there is not a formal structure for this meeting type. For example, everyone understands this is a brainstorming meeting, where everyone participates in the process of idea generation and weighing options. The recognition of it being a distinct type of meeting helps set expectations, provides some clarity on the purpose, and influences the format, even though there is no formal structure in place across the organization. Meetings with a Distinct level of structure have less variability than Ad Hoc, helping to provide improved structure and results.

The third level of structure is called Defined. A meeting that uses the Defined level of structure is one where the organization has created a Meeting Model for the meeting type. The Model provides a clear purpose, format, and expectations. The organization uses the Model to create consistency in the specific meeting type and train new participants. The Model is used by all leaders of these types of meeting, and reflects the best practices identified by the organization. Meetings that use the Defined level of structure will exhibit the most consistency and create an enduring structure for the organization.

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The concepts from this article were taken from Meeting Structure: Achieving meeting effectiveness through structure. Available through The ReWild Group and Amazon, the book explores in-depth this and other concepts while providing illustrations to help business leaders incorporate the ideas into their organizations. Get your copy today to start benefiting from Meeting Structure in your company.

Gates of Focus in a Stage 4 Business

Stage 4’s Gates of Focus are Process, Profit, and People.

In Stage 4, getting scalable processes and systems in place is critical to facilitate future growth. Businesses that progress past Stage 4 without adequate attention to processes and systems will pay the price in later Stages. One of the most significant ways that a leader can focus on Process is by putting in place well-trained, professional managers who are capable of building strong departments. These managers should have the experience and skills to implement the building blocks necessary for their department to deliver high levels of quality in the functional area the department serves. These building blocks include scalable, trainable, and repeatable processes and systems. 

Systems facilitate the consistent execution of Process. Leading effective interdepartmental planning sessions, identifying the organization’s master processes, and allocating revenue to implement new processes and systems are ways that a leader can successfully focus on Process.

Profit remains second priority in Stage 4 as the investment in process and systems require additional capital compared to previous Stages. Those processes and systems will support the growing volume of revenue and profit generation in the future. Profit is also important because the number of employees almost doubles from Stage 3 to Stage 4, which greatly increases expenses related to human resources.

People falls to third priority during this process-heavy Stage. Again, being third on the list does not make People unimportant for a Stage 4 business; it simply means that the other two gates require more energy and focus at this point in time. A failure to prioritize Process and Profit at this Stage will end up negatively impacting the company (including its employees) down the line. 

Business leaders embracing these Gates of Focus should be constantly thinking about how decisions will impact the scalability of their business. Their energy should be focused on the development, refinement, and testing of processes and systems.

Gates of Focus Misalignment

The owner of an HVAC business has been operating for eight years and is experiencing rapid growth thanks to a boom in the housing market. The company has expanded over the past 12 months from 38 to 53 employees. As someone who is a natural salesperson and good employer, the CEO has been able to successfully win new business and both recruit and keep quality employees. He assumes that his business will function in the same way it always has, just on a larger scale.

Within a few months of scaling up, though, the business seems to be falling apart. The chaos intensifies by the week—conflicts with scheduling increase, invoices are either unsent or unpaid, and the warehouse is filling up with a growing inventory of parts and equipment. The increase in the number of crews and an expanded service area has overwhelmed the manual scheduling system. A backlog has quickly developed as they struggle to optimize crew schedules, which has led to an increasing number of customer cancellations. The Accounting Department is desperately behind in invoicing clients, causing cash flow issues. With so many people in the field, and no real way to know what inventory is on hand, everyone keeps buying and then storing excess inventory. The profitability of the business is falling, even as revenue is rising.

This CEO has focused on People and Profit up to this point, resulting in a growing top line and employees who like working at the company. The business has been able to get away without well-developed processes since it was less complex. The recent growth spurt into Stage 4 has multiplied the complexities of the business to a point where the systems and processes that served the organization in the past are no longer sufficient. While the CEO wants to increase profit by expanding his customer base and service areas, he isn’t able to efficiently service them without updated processes.

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The concepts from this article were taken from The Professional Stage: Organizational ReWilding Rules for Business Growth. Available through The ReWild Group and Amazon, the book explores this and other concepts in-depth while providing illustrations to help business leaders incorporate the ideas into their organizations. Get your copy today to learn the rules for growth for companies with 35-57 employees.