It drives to the heart of dependency on the CEO/founder. It builds capacity and bandwidth into the C-Suite. It creates a positive engagement amongst all staff. It produces a better service for the customer. It drives innovation. It builds shareholder value. It attracts better prospective candidates to your organization. It de-risks the business. Here are ten smart ideas to make it happen:
10 Quick Tips
- No matter how small your organization, build a strategic plan and shape it with your senior talent.
- Create projects that execute your strategic plan, demand inter-departmental talent is used and spread the project management role around. Test the leadership qualities of your team early and often. People mostly rise to the occasion. My belief: 90% of staff are not stretched close to their capacity.
- Push a zero-based budgeting and zero-based role mantra to your team and invite better ways of doing stuff.
- Allow non-sales talent to spend time with customers whenever possible.
- Invite all managers to one on one fireside chats with the CEO in a location they would feel comfortable. Invite them to give feedback on the strategic plan, on the story you are telling the marketplace. Ask what we are not doing well enough.
- Invite managers to define new projects worth pursuing including: scope, resources needed, budget, timetable and ROI. Explain why you’re rejecting those that seem unattractive and explain why you’re backing those that work.
- Build a mini university set of courses and give your junior and senior managers responsibility for the content. Courses to include finance, marketing, history of the company, products, sales, software basics (if relevant), organizational structures, manufacturing process (if relevant), customer support etc.
- Offer public speaking and writing opportunities to your talent pool and give them constructive feedback.
- Wherever possible, break off business activities into separate accountable profit centers and allow your talent pool to manage them.
- Mentor and encourage these characteristics: curiosity, grit, effectiveness, humbleness, respect and honesty.
I’m sure you have your own favorites but the key is to embrace the challenge and build a mentoring and caring environment to allow people to reach their potential. It’s also helpful that this approach is supported by the social research, which suggests that autonomy, mastery and purpose are the key reasons people come to work, beyond base pay.
At The Portfolio Partnership we continue to scale businesses, working side by side with our clients. Scaling with know-how de-risks businesses and creates fun and energy that allows staff to to fulfill their potential.
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