Who sets your agenda in the organization? It is a question that uncovers a flaw in most businesses as they scale through the phases of their lifecycle.
At first, perhaps with 3 or 4 employees it doesn’t matter too much. You are trying to get stuff done and frankly the “To do” list is so long that the system you use doesn’t matter. Just get it done.
However, as you scale and develop your business beyond 10,20 or 200 employees the organizational structure you deploy to get the work done matters.
Let’s look at a few case studies from the last 20 years.
Marketing: A marketing manager has a range of campaigns to execute in alignment with the marketing strategy and is extremely busy every day meeting deadlines to get stuff done. The agenda setter is the CMO who has a clear vision for the brand and the lead generation machine she wants to create. The eight account managers driving sales across their accounts are under pressure to hit their quarterly quotas. The sales manager understands the sales skills required to expand each account. What starts to happen over time is an agenda setting nightmare for the marketing manager. Each account manager approaches the marketing manager for help. It could be a brochure, a cheat sheet, an ROI calculator, a piece of research on a market or a slide deck required for a presentation. The sales manager has some new ideas and approaches the marketing manager for help. Before long the marketing manager has 10 people setting his team’s agenda and disappointment and failure are coming soon!
Organizational structures need one person agenda setters. As you scale you need to be careful that resources are aligned to the core objectives. Of course people can do each other favors but when it becomes systemic, you have a problem. In the case study above, the solution involved regular meetings between the CMO, CRO, sales manager and the marketing manager to align priorities and create an environment that allowed the CMO to dictate the agenda. One agenda setter was created, which allowed the marketing manager to blossom and achieve exceptional results.
Finance: The financial controller was ambitious. She had been promoted three times in three years and had a reputation of getting stuff done. She was generous with her time and helped colleagues whenever she could. As the company scaled beyond $25m she reluctantly hired more staff but tended to hoard some of the more interesting work. Sales, marketing, production, and the IT teams all relied on finance to supply key metrics, often in a random fashion. Workloads increased dramatically as the company scaled. She eventually left the company – overworked and underpaid. This is quite a common theme in lower middle market companies. It goes to the very heart of multiple agenda setters. In this case the CFO had failed to protect the financial controller from multiple priorities, had not forced the development of junior staff and importantly had lost control of the agenda setting role. The CFO left the company, and the new CFO instigated a different approach. Each member of the finance team, including the new financial controller were now part of a one person agenda-setting structure with a rigorous playbook of how things were done. Mentoring and training became part of daily life. Automation became an important priority using the latest technology. Inhouse requests from other departments were managed in an efficient ticket system to ensure workload was evenly balanced. Finance became an integral part of the operational excellence of the company, adding huge value to the business. And it all started with a better agenda setting system.
Look around your organization and identify where people have multiple agenda setters. You could have a problem worth attacking today. Few businesses have employees who don’t work hard, but many have resources that are misaligned.
Our current focus at The Portfolio Partnership in collaboration with the award winning, The Grist, branding agency is to Build Exit-Ready Businesses using our proprietary tools (Saleability Test, Branding For Buyout, M&A playbook) and decades of operator experience including over 40 successful exits. We execute alongside management teams, building stronger, safer businesses ensuring owners have the option to exit one day if they so choose.
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Ian@TPPboston.com
