08.02.17
3 Deadly Distractions: Pulling It Together
Todd Schrock, Advisor with The CEO Advantage
How to Overcome the Unique Challenges of Emerging Businesses (20-100 Employees) Article #6 in the series
How do you, as the CEO of a 20-100 employee company, counteract the potentially disastrous distractions identified in the first three articles of the series?
The escalating complexity from growth is the third distraction identified earlier. However, this growth in complexity further complicates addressing the first two distractions—time to build the capabilities to winnow wrong customers from the right ones and to avoid potential cash crises.
The right (simple) processes are key to solving this escalating complexity. Therefore, each distraction begs for its own suitable process to coordinate your people and resources to successfully beat back this complexity.
1. Wrong Customers
Wrong customers are expensive and will not help you grow a loyal customer base who loves the value you create for them.
Your business needs a simple strategy execution process to sharpen (and continually refine) your unique value proposition.
Could (Some of) Your Customers Be Driving You to Distraction?
2. Cash Crises
Cash is king, especially at this stage. But this is also now true in a different way.
Your business needs a regular financial visibility process to avoid cash crises, to grow future creditworthiness, and to grow each of your leaders’ understanding of critical cash/profit dynamics.
Growing Broke? How Is That Even Possible?
Four Cold, Hard Truths You Need to Know About Cash
3. Unsustainable Growth
Complexity grows faster than sales, hurting profits or even producing losses.
Your business needs a straightforward problem-solving process that regularly engages the experiences and strengths of every person in the company.
Before Your Company’s Wheels Fall Off
The Last 3 Unique Challenges (Leadership Opportunities to Grab)
The next three articles (coming soon) will explore how you can capitalize on the three Leadership Opportunities of this emerging business stage (20-100 employees).
Creating a process for each of the deadly distractions is not enough. You must continually lead your people to maximize those processes. These articles explore how you can do that:
1. Vision without Execution Is Hallucination
(Execution must now be bigger than the Founder-CEO, and rooted in the entire organization.)
2. Edison: Entrepreneurial Success or CEO Failure?
(The strengths that can divide and annoy us must be understood and used well: entrepreneurial energy and managerial organizational skill.)
3. Founders: The One Decision Required
(What only the Founder/Owner can–and must—do for sustainable growth and success.)
© 2017 From the Top, LLC
CEO Rhythms Forum
If your company is in Northeast Indiana, consider expanding your circle of informal advisors by joining your CEO/Owner peers and me in a CEO Rhythms Forum, a new opportunity for those with the unique challenge of owning or running businesses of 20-100 employees.
