Dear Leader,
If you were stranded on a desert island and only had 30 seconds of battery left on your cell phone – could your second in command at the office tell you how well your company was running?
If your entire company was focused on the key indicators you would know immediately.
As you add more and more employees, you move from one stage of growth to another. The transition that happens between Stage 1 (1 – 10 employees) and Stage 2 (11 – 19 employees) is called a Flood Zone. A Flood Zone indicates an increased level of activity – you have more clients, more work, more processes, more people.
Stage 2 is all about ramping up for growth – this stage of growth demands that you start releasing responsibility to capable people.
Stage 2 Leadership Rules of the Road – 1- 19 employees
Rule #1: Sell absolutely every day.
Do you organize your schedule to sell every day? Have you set up an effective sales process? Do you have a contact management system in place to effectively follow up with leads, prospects and clients?
Rule #2: Develop, without fail, three employee leaders to be responsible, accountable and proactive.
Have you defined clear roles of responsibility with three supervisor candidates? Do you meet weekly one-on-one with these supervisors to support their commitment to performance-based goals? Do you reward these key supervisors when they proactively demonstrate signs of leadership?
Rule #3: Create a daily, weekly and monthly key indicator instrument panel/flash sheet.
Have you determined key health indicators for each department in your company? Have you organized a system to engage the daily collection of key health indicator data from staff? Have you formulated a daily, weekly and monthly flash sheet system report you can review regularly?
Rule #4: Communicate any and all directions in writing.
Have you set up a simple CEO memo system template when communicating with staff that sets priority level of tasks, purpose, objectives and directions? Do you have a retrieval system for all written ‘memo directions’? Do you use the written memos during work performance reviews?
Rule #5: Drive small action teams to hit goals.
Do you set clear and agreed upon action team goals? Do you organize and facilitate crisp action team meetings? Do you organize/review regular team action lists and delegate tasks and due dates?
Spend time answering each question under each rule – don’t gloss over them thinking they don’t affect you. You don’t have to reinvent how to manage growth. By spending time every day on these rules of the road you’ll watch productivity increase and profits grow.
Need help with your company or just want to know more? Contact us, we’d be happy to help
The 7 Stages of Growth were developed by James Fischer, author of Navigating the Growth Curve. The Stages of Growth are based on a six year study of entrepreneurial companies in Colorado and California and interviews with over 650 successful CEOs to understand and decipher the patterns, the behavior and the characteristics of growth in entrepreneurial enterprises.