Driving Business Growth Through Strong Leadership (Part 2)

Last week I shared my one line response to a popular question I am often asked — “What’s your advice on achieving fast business growth?”

“Never try to do it alone” is always my response.

If you enjoyed reading about the 3 powerful leadership principles that helped operations manager Beth to bring out the best in her people, here are 3 more powerful leadership principles from my coaching work with Bob.

Case Study #2. CEO continues to get pulled into every problem that comes up.

One of my clients (we’ll call him Bob) is a CEO of a technology company focused on growing his $7 Million company into a $10 Million company. For several years he keeps plateauing at the same level. When asked what he attributed may be the primary cause he pointed to the pattern that he continues to be the primary problem solver instead of his people being able to make swift executive decisions in their day to day work.

Observation: In visiting Bob’s company I noticed his office (and everyone else’s offices) were in an open floor plan. Bob wanted to do the open floor plan to let his people know he was never too high up that he was perceived as far too removed or inaccessible. He also liked the ease and convenience of being able to monitor people on the floor. But, because of the open floor plan Bob was also bombarded with constant daily interruptions and thereby, pulled into every problem that occurred. His people can see him there, so the easiest thing for his managers to do is go straight to Bob to help them resolve their problems and/or help them make decisions quickly.

Bob’s 3 Leadership Principles Learned:

A. Effective leaders must create boundaries.
B. Their agendas do not mean they should be your agendas.
C. When you have a problem make it a process.

Corrective Actions: Bob implemented 4 key actions.

1. Creating boundaries:

A. I encouraged Bob to create both physical and behavioral boundaries. First, Bob had a contractor put up some drywalls so his office space had 4 walls and a door he could close. This alone reduced roughly 40% of all his interruptions.

B. The other 60% of his interruptions were reduced by communicating changes to his accessibility. He posted a few weekly time slots where he could still have his open door policy, but outside of those hours each of his key people were given scheduled meeting appointments instead of the old way of allowing them to approach Bob whenever they wanted.

C. In addition, Bob had CEO projects that were grossly neglected because of his constant interruptions. So, the third way he communicated his boundaries was by posting his schedule / agenda outside his door with “do not disturb” noted on his key CEO project time. This made quite a significant difference because now his people understood what important tasks required his attention which made them not want to interrupt him in the middle of such an important deadline.

2. Managing their agendas. Bob required all of his key people who he managed to give some thought prior to pulling him into their problem-of-the-day. They were required to capture the information on a provided template, so Bob could quickly read and assess not only what the problem was, but how his people proposed to solve it. The other piece his people had to provide on their paper was the level of urgency with a date when their issues must get discussed. This helped Bob not to have other people’s agendas to dictate the order of his agenda.

3. Turning problems into a process. By having a system where everyone prepared their problem solving proposal on paper Bob was also demonstrating the powerful leadership principle — when you have a problem, make it a process. Not only was Bob solving a problem that was burdening him, he was also helping each of his people to create a process for solving their own problems.

Result:

1. Bob’s interruptions decreased dramatically allowing him to be able to focus on CEO level tasks that was sorely needed to drive the company’s revenue growth.

2. Before Bob was merely focusing on what tasks his people should do. This spoon feeding approach did not cultivate their own critical thinking or leadership growth. Now, with the new PSP sheets (problem-solving proposal) Bob was able to focus instead on how they think.

3. The problem solving proposal Bob instituted developed his people’s critical thinking muscles. They were able to handle more higher level tasks and decisions on their own and needed Bob’s guidance less. As a bonus, his people now use the same process to train their direct reports on developing their own critical thinking skills.

Application Questions:

1.) Who are the people who interrupt you the most?

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2.) What kind of boundaries do you need to create?

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3.) What are the 5 most common questions or problems you address?

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4.) How can you turn those problems into a process?

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If you liked part two of this article please go ahead and share this content with other entrepreneurs you know. Just be sure to give full attribution.

Here’s to your success!