Have you ever felt your Business is like parenting, forever passing through different phases? As soon as you think you’ve got it sorted, the next phase emerges with a different set of problems. The reprieve from dirty nappies can quickly give way to sibling rivalry, peer pressure challenges, career choices, relationship issues etc.
Like a child, a business is not immune to the growing pains of progressing through the lifecycle.
The more prepared you are for the growing pains, the quicker you move through them. Here is our take on the 3 most common form of growing pains:
- Leadership
A leader’s ability to transfer knowledge and energy into other parts of the business and build accountability.
- Structure
The organisational structure keeping pace with the growth of the business. This means a controlled spread of decision making and no bottlenecks.
- Culture
At a certain size the only way to scale and stay in control is through a culture that self-regulates without the need for significant levels of intervention.
Today’s focus is on Leadership…
A common growing pain for business is a failure to adjust the leadership approach as the business gets bigger.
The key enabler for scaleable growth is accountability, ensuring the right person is doing the right role, allowing Leadership roles to focus more on strategic functions.
The key blocker for scaleable growth is ‘Leadership rescuing’ behaviour which undermines the structure and results in the Leadership continuing to control all operational functions.
Here is a simple tool for Leaders to hold their people accountable, it’s called the 3 C’s….
- Call it
- Coach it
- Consequences
Call it – when a standard is not being met it’s really important to call it as soon as possible, always making sure the intervention is honest and respectful. This also involves acknowledging and celebrating the wins.
Coach it – if standards keep falling over, a coaching process is required to get underneath the ‘why’ and coaching the course-correction.
Consequences – unfortunately at times consequences are required to show that the expectations are real. The standards you walk past are the standards you create. This is a less enjoyable but important part of leadership responsibilities, often avoided to protect the person even if it comes at the expense of the Business.
The 3 Cs are the antidote to Leadership rescuing and an important way to ensure the structure is respected.
Businesses cannot grow quicker than the leadership capability and the culture of accountability it creates. Leadership will either scale or limit growth. Make leadership your growth enabler through the 3 Cs.