You all know that engaging your employees can fuel your growth, right?
Imagine climbing one of the tallest mountains in the world, competing to win an Olympic medal, or trying to grow your company 2-10x in size. Now, ask yourself, “Could I do this alone?”
The answer is undoubtedly NO!
Business, like sports or life, is a team activity! Nobody gets there alone. We get there on the shoulders of others and with the helping hands of others. These include our employees, leaders and managers, our coaches or trainers, and the skills, tools, and techniques those around us introduce to us.
There are many barriers to growing a company. Engaging your employees is arguably one of the most significant barriers, which we’ll focus on in more detail below. And there are at least seven other barriers, which almost all entrepreneurs I meet recognize themselves in.
The 8 Barriers
- Business owners become the bottlenecks for information and decisions. (I coached the owner of a manufacturing business who had to know everything going on, which put a choke hold on growth because she had to make too many decisions, frustrating her and her employees.)
- Marketing and finding additional revenue streams are frequently a challenge.
- Unclear roles and responsibilities of people on your team can create disorganization. (Most of my clients find that maintaining an updated functional organization chart creates clarity around who is responsible and accountable for specific activities in the company).
- Finding, hiring and retaining A-level players is a challenge. (The most common complaint I’ve heard from business owners is that finding good people is difficult or impossible. But when I examined their recruitment and hiring activities, there were so many gaping holes in their processes, and they had no clear activities map to be successful.)
- The systems, structures and processes are insufficient to scale smoothly.
- Leaders’ interaction with customers decreases as they grow, and as a result, their understanding of their customers’ needs decreases.
- The leaders’ and managers’ courage, risk-taking, and confidence grow slower than the company’s growth.
- Building a company with a winning culture that attracts top talent to your team.
To grow 2-10x in size, you must work on removing all of the above barriers.
Which of these barriers do you feel is holding your business back the most?
If you’re struggling with any of these barriers, let’s schedule a consultation to discuss strategies for removing them in your business.
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Installing a Business Operating System Helps
I have found that the #1 activity that helps my clients overcome these barriers to growth is holding a unique set of weekly, monthly and quarterly meetings focusing on solving business issues, improving measured results and progressing towards growth milestones. This activity is typically part of the broader scope of implementing a business operating system using my playbook or one of the popular ones developed by other organizations I’ve been implementing for the past decade.
After implementing my meeting routines in their business and discussing the people issues in these meetings, my client eliminated all the ‘C’ quality employees in their organization by phasing out more than 20% of their employees with no loss in productivity.
Are your company’s meetings ineffective? Using my proprietary approach to business operating systems, we don’t just fix ineffective meetings; we transform them into growth-driving conversations.
Let me show you how a business operating system can transform your meetings from an inadequate to an effective business improvement activity.
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How to Build a Sticky Intentional Culture?
Let’s focus on the 8th barrier in my list – building a strong culture that attracts and keeps A-player candidates. Research supports my experience, suggesting that leaders who build intentional and sticky cultures attract and retain the best people. As a result, they have more profitable, growing companies.
For growing companies, you could:
- Measure the number of ‘C’ players each month and remove them from the team as fast as possible.
- Challenge your people with projects and assignments that leverage their strengths.
- Ensure they have a manager/ leader who is a good coach as their boss. (Nothing annoys ‘A’ players more than a poor boss and working with ‘C’ players).
- Provide regular coaching and one-on-ones.
- Ensure they have a clear path to move up the company ladder.
- Start having more conversations with your people asking them what they would do differently if they were you. Have Start-Stop-Keep conversations to generate traction and velocity in the business using some of their good ideas for them to run with.
- I am a fan of having people complete a love/ loathe list OR fun/skills matrix OR vital few/trivial many exercises and then start by removing the loathe, low fun, low skills, trivial many items from your and their work. Or, conduct a strengths finder exercise to ensure they are in a role that matches their strengths.
- Take the time to recognize their efforts and thank them for their contribution. Employee recognition is one of the key facets of employee engagement.
- Ask them about rewards they would appreciate and understand their motivators and drivers (possibly using values and attribute assessments) to choose assignments for them and reward them appropriately.
- Provide employees with ongoing learning opportunities and education.
- Make sure you remove all the barriers preventing them from doing their job.
- Ensure that you are rewarding them with the proper remuneration for the results that they are achieving.
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