Part V
Breakpoint — Get help
The last leverage plan is actually part of a wider theme of getting help, as Figure L shows. I've separated it from the other leverage plans because it's a big topic and worthy of its own chapter. Also I have widened the concept of getting help, which I think is a game of two halves — the team inside the business and the team outside it.
Figure L: the Business Breakpoints
These are all parts of the migration of the business away from being about you and instead being a genuine team effort. You can develop yourself as an owner and a businessperson as much as you like, but you are no longer enough. You need help.
I recently had a conversation with someone I hadn't seen for a few years. Despite working with various coaches and consultants, he hadn't really moved the dial on his business. When I met up with him, he felt that his business was fundamentally different from what it was 12 months before, and the difference was that his long-established management team had moved on. Their replacements were on another level, and they were reshaping the business. That represents the first step in the sequence of this breakpoint — finding the best people in the industry.
He had also started a governance structure with a three-person advisory board. It had its limitations, but it was a start. That's the third step in the sequence.
His issue was that he needed to work on how to take his group of high performers and turn them into a genuine leadership team — that's the second step, and it has to happen before the third step can have full impact. With our help, he was going to start on the work of team (as distinct from ‘teamwork'). And I mean work: he described how his loyal and competent former managers used to work for him. When he was away, they didn't meet for management meetings and generally didn't interact except at an operational level. Now he's got (somewhat by happy accident) a leadership team that wants to work with him, but he has to share the leadership with them. And that's the work.
Up next
Before this breakpoint, you've got people who run their departments or functions, which creates capacity. After this breakpoint, those people will contribute to the development of the business as a whole, because they represent capability. Capacity creates arithmetic progression, with units being added. Capability, on the other hand, creates geometric progression. It has a multiplier effect on your business.
As Figure M shows, before you get help, you've got a group of people doing management jobs. But that's not enough. They contribute to the development of the business when you get them working as a collaborative collective. I call this the ‘work of team', to distinguish it from teamwork. Teamwork is when the team operates well together; the work of team is the thought and effort involved (purposeful action) in getting the team to operate together at the highest level.
Figure M: before and after getting help
In chapter 11 we cover:
- finding, winning, keeping and growing the best people in the industry
- turning your job vacancy ad into a talent magnet
- selling the job
- growing your people so you and they get the most out of your time together
- evolving your role.
Chapter 12 is on the work of team. This involves:
- showing how much hard work and emotional energy is involved in building high-performance teams
- examining Patrick Lencioni's The Five Dysfunctions of a Team to demonstrate the value of constructive conflict and collaboration in a practical setting
- building a team of leaders
- discovering why you have to have the need to lead
- dealing with underperformance.
Chapter 13 is about the team outside the business; in other words, governance. Growing a business while you're running it is like building a plane while it's flying. Governance is about a network of advisers who provide scaffolding for your business. This section covers:
- getting wise
- how a good board operates, and how to set one up.
This part is a reflection on widening the leadership from yourself, as shown in figure N, from finding the best people you can, through transforming them into a leadership team, and out to external advisers.
Figure N: leadership circles
But before you get to working on the leadership team, you have to get your wider team working well, and that requires a plan.