About a year ago, a CEO client sat in front of me. He was discontent. He was slouched in his chair whilst telling me about all parts of his business that were frustrating him. If a Transcendent business is what we seek, this was a Descendent business.
A year later, that same CEO is revitalised, in love with his business, imbued with a new zest for life, with a business that is starting to perform again.
Here’s the story.
His business – a professional services consultancy – had become out of shape, not through any intention or lack of effort, but through a creep of mediocrity that had been seeping into the business. Performance, as you can imagine, was adversely affected: sales had decreased, the speed of the business had slowed, talent was underperforming, and leadership was ineffective.
And so to the process of this business’s renewal. These were the big moves that were made:
- It started with the CEO recognising that his leadership had put the business in this place: a tough realisation that requires humility and a lack of ego. He started working hard on his CEOship, taking advice graciously and implementing recommended changes in a way that illustrated his taking full ownership.
- The Exco came next, putting a decent Exco process in place that ensured that the right conversations were taking place with the right audience in the room.
- This Exco produced a wise Strategy that not only made good decisions about the business model, but also infused this Strategy with an excellent, simple purpose statement and a restated set of cultural values that were simple, memorable and aspirational.
- A leadership development initiative was undertaken that gave the top 20 leaders of the business the skills and inspiration they needed to pick up the renewal process and cascade that into their teams, thus providing coverage of every employee in the business.
- The purpose of the business was spread through culturally-aligned engagement across the business (guest speakers, informal sessions with the CEO, etc.)
- Product development is now in the cross-hairs: specifically, revisiting the quality and suitability of the offering in the market, including conversations with customers to help better understand their needs.
- A Talent Strategy is being put in place to create the environment for human performance.
There’s more to this, but I want you to understand the nature and sequence of what revitalising a business looks like. The under-the-hood learnings are possibly more interesting:
- The business changed because the CEO changed.
- What needed to be learned was not complicated – it simply wasn’t known.
- Leaders didn’t know how to lead because they’d never been taught to lead.
- Latent energy was quickly and easily unlocked across the employee base: dormancy is not permanent.
- Tough learnings were accepted in an egoless way.
- We require many types of ‘slowification’ conversations: lots of time, debate, learning, connecting, planning, plotting.
- The 6-month ‘leadership lag’ is real: patience is required for impact to become evident.
- Organisational assets (artefacts that are real, visible, permanent and solid – like Strategy-on-a-page) have to be built and integrated for change to stick.
- No change can take place without customer closeness: without product/market fit, a business can’t truly perform.
Of the transitions Lockstep specialises in, Renewals are the most rewarding. There’s something incredibly gratifying about seeing something come back to life. The process is incremental and usually takes about 6 months to start bearing fruit. In these early months, something of a leap of faith is required, trusting that the changes being made are the right moves.
A few anecdotes from the renewal transition:
- Recently, the CEO was told by one of his leaders ‘I’ve fallen back in love with the business.
- Employees who chose to leave a year or so ago are asking to return.
- Customers, having been asked, are effusive in their praise of their culture and the way this business conducts itself, and are choosing this business over other, less personable competitors.
- Requests are coming in to involve spouses in the work that the leadership development program undertook, this being a sign of people becoming alive to themselves and to their journey through life.
What pleases me about this transition is that my own purpose is being fulfilled: building Transcendent businesses that shape good citizens of the world. People are now more conscious, more vital, more purposeful and are teed up to have a remarkable career.