As a leader you will go through many different phases of growth personally and your organization, company or whatever your working will also morph into different animals if you are with a fast growing company. The ultimate goal of course is to develop that structure, that team that allows you to reach Rocket Mode!
Leadership Phase 1: I Do It Best
In the early stages its all about grit, hard work, 9million hours of work a week, etc.. You learn to do allot of things and you find out early what you are good at and what you are really not good at.
Me personally, I hate the finance aspects of business. I have always hated bank reconciliations, and spending too much time simply classing this and categorizing that to get to numbers that don’t look as good as you had hoped.
As you grow you learn early to high a “support team” but you still maintain the I Do It Best mentality and you take pride in fixing others issues.
Leadership Phase 2: I’ll Tell You To Do What is Best
If you get to Phase 2, business is cooking. Your growing, adding people and your able to pay for decent help that you expect to wear multiple hats and to help our where needed but of course, not as many hats as you wear.
You feel elevated, you chair most meetings with clear dictation, goals and tasks for everyone to do.
You enjoy feedback and find fulfillment in fixing all problems quickly and delegating the operational items to the team so you don’t have to get caught up in the admin work.
Your good leaders you most likely characterize as detail oriented, good communicators, understand instructions well and complete projects very closely to how you defined them.
Sound familiar?
You loose some of these middle managers occasionally but its okay you quickly step in and take over while you double up on hiring, interview, training to ensure this next one is able to follow instructions as well as the other person was before they quit.
Leadership Phase 3: You Tell Me How To Do It Best
Third phase is the most fun. This is when you really hit the massive scale phase. It is also the hardest phase in my opinion as a leader and one most small business owners never reach because it is a fundamental mentality change.
When PureWay was rounding the $10 million annual revenue mark it was very clear that the team that got us to this point was not the team that was going to get us to the net milestone. Our business at the time was growing at 40-50% year over year. We had a team of multiple hat wearers that followed orders well and communicated extremely well, just too much. However we didn’t have any leaders, I was leading the business at all levels. There was no division I was not managing day to day. I was spread so thin, my communication became delayed, short, sharp. The leader I had become was a micromanaging helicopter who didn’t trust anyone to see the picture and felt the need to measure every process to the nth degree and utmost scrutiny.
I was very successful of building a company that required me to be wired in 24/7. Yes we grew it was a rocket ship. But I fell into the same category my team fell in. The business was going to struggle to continue to grow with me managing this way. I needed to either get out of the way or rebuild from the ground up, including the way I ran the business.
I needed specialist at every level. Operations, finance, sales, customer support, etc.. I needed people that all they do is live and breath these specialties.
At this level you must take your hands off the reins and find specialist in all categories. Yes of course you can do it yourself but you need to realign your sights on the next galaxy, not the stars directly above your head. It’s time for Rocket Mode.
Take your weakest department and go find a real leader who doesn’t take orders. They need the mission, the targets management needs accomplished and a timeframe. They put the gameplan together, they ASK for your input to ensure their plan aligns with the companies targets and then they evaluate their team, processes, infrastructure and build the path to accomplishing the big goals. They thrive on the mission, they build self sustaining leaders that themselves empower other team members.
Communication is no longer accusatory it is now observation, supportive, productive, serious. This trend continues as you realize someone else “gets it” and you align your focus on the big projects that have major impact and in areas you actually add value to the business. You remove yourself from the day to day “status” communication and lift your view to the runway ahead identifying any major speed bumps or better yet, new levers of potential massive growth and scale.
Phase three isn’t liftoff, its Orbit!
The Dream team is simple, the right specialist in the right positions driving excellence and improving the client experience at all levels. As PureWay exceeded the $20 million mark only 17 months later this leadership and mentality rebuild proved the right move and I only wish we made the move sooner.