What's getting in the way of your success?
I recently hosted a full day workshop with mid-sized business CEOs. It was the third time in recent years that I’d been asked to run a day with this particular group, and it provided a great opportunity to look back at the ideas and actions they’d set themselves at the previous retreats.
Almost all the actions had progressed to a degree, but few had moved at quite the pace the owners had hoped, and some hadn’t moved very far at all. No matter how much desire had been evidenced at the time, most of the commitments they took away had hit big barriers over the ensuing months, and the hour we spent reviewing them in the morning was something of a wake-up call.
It wasn’t entirely unexpected. In my experience, probably seven out of ten strategic initiatives get bogged down at some point, and usually for the same basic reasons. As we started to unpick the barriers they’d encountered, those familiar themes began to emerge, most notably for this group, around talent and culture: retaining, developing and attracting great people in senior roles; and creating, in their words, a ‘performance culture’, where people throughout the organisation take ownership of the priorities, are passionate about delivering them, and set high expectations for themselves and their colleagues. There were others, but those were the big ones.
We spent the rest of the day working through solutions to each of the barriers and, learning from that experience, looking at what might stop those solutions being delivered so that the programmes themselves could get back on track. If you’d like to read about some of the things we covered, there are links to previous articles on those topics at the end of this one.
The real value for the CEOs who were at the session though, wasn’t those solutions. At least two thirds of what we went over was probably stuff they already knew. It was useful to have it drawn out and worked through, for sure, but it’s not something they couldn’t have done by themselves… if they’d put an unmoveable block of time in the diary; if they’d challenged themselves to look back at the plans they’d created, actions they’d set themselves, and commitments they’d made; and if, more importantly, they’d been pushed to think about what those delays were costing, the root causes of the delays, and how those root causes might be addressed.
The boards of some large PLCs do a good job of holding the CEO accountable for strategic progress, rather than just financial results, but it’s by no means universal. Mid-sized businesses, even ones with good, formal boards in place, are less likely to get behind the excuses and into the real barriers, and it’s a rare board indeed that gets into things like talent development and culture change at any meaningful level. So, who holds the CEO to account for those things when progress is slow, and when perfectly rational reasons and excuses are coming in thick and fast from the team?
Most of the time they’ve nobody to turn to but themselves.
The greatest value those CEOs got from the session, was the same as any leader gets from having a serious peer-group outside of their organisation, and from having a mentor or a trusted advisor. It’s the value of an accountability partner. Someone who will make you take a moment, to hold up the mirror to your own performance, to ask the critical questions, and to help you find solutions.
You’ve already spent a couple of minutes reading this, but if you really want to get value from it, take a couple more minutes now, and dig out your notes from the last time you set yourself some big actions or goals – not the urgent little every-day ones on a to-do list, but the ambitious, important ones from months ago. How far have you progressed? How much have you been delayed or diverted by happenstance and circumstance? What difference would it have made if you’d had an accountability partner or peer group to help you stay focused and accelerate your progress? Trust me, it's more than you'd think.
Now ask yourself: what barriers are stopping you from addressing that gap?
Further reading:
Building a pipeline of leaders
The four ways to motivate people
Improving performance: four questions to ask
Creating purpose: finding your why
Creating an entrepreneurial culture