LEADERSHIP STRATEGY: CONDUCT BUSINESS GROWTH TO AVOID FAILURE
CEOs can secure corporate viability during growth by picking up the baton.
Like jazz groups, successful small companies create a dedicated following because a limited number of players are in tune with the founder’s vision. They know their strengths and limitations, cover for each other, become experts at shooting from the hip, changing direction on the fly, and multi-tasking—in short, they are capable and prepared to do whatever it takes to win audience approval. But when jazz bands and small companies add people, the freewheeling style that propelled them to success, starts to cause performance problems.
by LSI managing partner Art McNeil
Transition failures typically show up once decision making requires the involvement of others—not just the leader. Growth demands a shift in CEO attention—away from maintaining personal control over jobs and people—towards managing through direct reports, focusing the company’s cultural values and vision of the preferred future, setting strategy, documenting process, and monitoring results. CEOs who can’t get out of their own way, to let managers, supervisors, and producers do the job, are the primary cause of transition failures.
Another growing pain is that developing companies seldom have an effective induction process. In many small companies, vision, values, and operating methods exist only in the head of the leader and his/her original team. Like jazz bands, smaller companies succeed by staying small. The decision to grow should never be taken lightly. Unlike their free-wheeling jazz counterparts, musicians in large groups follow a prearranged musical score. Orchestras must demand compliance to written music. Conductors can’t allow members to blow, bow, or drum out spontaneous licks whenever the spirit dictates.
Conductors and gr5owth oriented CEOs demand that each position play what has been written. In an orchestra, collaboration fosters passion and pride, even though individual assignments may not always be challenging or exciting. Everybody has a specific role—they trust colleagues to play assigned parts well. Many talented jazz musicians would never succeed in an orchestra because they are either unwilling to follow or incapable of reading music.
Growth seeking CEOs and their managers must learn to read and write the music of business—process. Employees must be taught to follow the score, play their assigned parts well, and alert management when the music isn’t working or when players are not in compliance. After a growth transition, theCEO’s primary responsibility is to ensure that audiences remain delighted with what is being played and that the needs of internal, external, and funding partners are met—both now and in the future.
Breaking the transition barrier requires:
- Learning to read and write process—the “music of business”
- Communicating through a common language
- Fostering audience delight—while meeting the needs of musicians, suppliers, and the orchestra’s funding partners
- Hiring sight readers—firing people who play by ear
- Correcting and/or eliminating musicians who play out of compliance with the written music
- Keeping love of the product/service—in spite of adopting process discipline
- Not changing the tune in mid performance
- Doing what it takes to prosper—within the behavioral boundaries of the company’s cultural values and ethics platform
The CEO’s job is to assess opportunities, decide what and where to perform, to assure that funding is available, adapt to change, develop process , select apt performers, and improve performance quality—the CEOs should not play with the “orchestra”.
This post sponsored by The Baton Management System