This month, we mark a milestone anniversary of celebrating 25 years in business! What began with two ambitious entrepreneurs has grown into a well-respected firm with a skilled Team that has served hundreds of organizations and thousands of leaders over the years.
Along the way, we’ve learned a lot. Even though it’s our anniversary, we’re giving you the gift of 25 pieces of wisdom we’ve picked up – one for every year The Resultants has been supporting and guiding our clients – to help you as a business leader take your company further, faster.
1. Focus on Culture
Be intentional about creating and maintaining a healthy, core values-based culture. Culture is like a plant, it needs regular water and feeding. Take action to invest in and nurture your culture.
2. Share the Vision and Core Values with Everyone
This means your family, customers, prospects, employees, and community. The more you communicate it, the more you act on it. Rinse and repeat!
3. Invest in the Right Top Talent
Hands down, in our experience, this is the single biggest driver of growth for an organization. This investment is not just about recruitment but also about retention and development, creating a culture of continuous learning and improvement that benefits both your organization and your employees. The “cost” of retaining and developing a high-performing bookkeeper/accountant is much less than the clean-up (accounting software) and tax bill later.
4. Adopt a Business Operating System
And make it your own!
5. Know Your Financial Literacy / Money Matters
Take the time to look at your Financial Statements and ask questions. Every leader should know how to read a Balance Sheet and a P&L Statement. Unmanaged A/R can kill cash flow! Cash in the bank "earns money" while your line of credit spends real money at today's interest rates.
6. Create a Culture of Accountability
From the owner down to the shop floor, everyone should have a regular 1:1 with your direct reports to set shared expectations, eliminate obstacles to managing those expectations, and then give and get feedback on execution.
7. Capture Your Key Processes
Scaling, cross-training, and succession cannot happen without Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to transfer knowledge from the people who know it to the people who need to know it. Write it down or, even better for your future millennial workforce, capture it on video with VidGuide. This program allows you to record or upload short videos, arrange them into steps, integrate them with the programs you use, share, and track employee progress.
8. Cascade Communication Companywide
Have processes in place to cascade information throughout the organization, leveraging existing [or new] software and systems to their full potential. For example, some of our larger clients use Paylocity. Utilize features such as newsletters, birthday reminders, and event notifications, and consider translation capabilities to ensure universal understanding. When cascading messages, know your audience and frame any communication as WIIFT (What’s In It for Them).
9. Don’t Forget People Development
Are you a manager of work? Or a coach-teacher of people? Getting stuff done is short term; developing others is your legacy and goes beyond you and your organization.
10. Choose “Healthy Conflict” over "Midwestern Nice"
Embracing healthy conflict involves recognizing the value of different viewpoints and finding common ground for the betterment of the team or relationship. It's about disagreeing without being disagreeable, ensuring that everyone involved feels respected and valued throughout the process. Check out this podcast "The Upside of Conflict" | The Table Group.
11. Recognize the Importance of Leadership Development
To advance the organization’s interests, the best thing you can do is continuously work on improving yourself as a leader.
12. Use Strengths, Personality
and Skills Assessments
Assessments provide insights into an individual's leadership style, strengths, and abilities. You'll have stronger team dynamics, better conversations, and increased collaboration when your team shares assessment results with each other. We recommend CliftonStrengths, Working Genius, DiSC, and Kolbe.
13. Lead Productive & Effective Meetings
Make disciplined use of your "dedicated workspace" by using your regularly scheduled team meetings and 1:1's to limit ad hoc meetings. Set aside focused time to prep for full-day planning sessions (to work on the business and its strategies). Unless it’s urgent, don’t clutter up inboxes with unnecessary single questions that can be addressed in already scheduled meetings. Find a way to manage your updates, issues, and actions (see 17.)
14. Understand Change Management
When something is not working, sometimes you need a new plan or approach. It’s not always as easy as a new sign in the lunchroom, though. Navigating change is a process to identify and address shortcomings, engage the team around the solutions, execute the changes, measure the effect, get feedback, and manage the new process.
15. Embrace Technology
It can pay for itself in time saved. Look for industry-specific, targeted technologies.
16. Develop an Asset Mindset
Owners, think of your business as a valuable asset to grow (vs. a company to manage). Focus on what drives the value of your largest asset, your company. A successful business starts with growing your Leadership Team and provides options to achieve your version of owner freedom (whether that’s the growth of the organization, transition to family or ESOP, a future sale, operation by the Leadership Team, etc.).
17. Adopt a Central Organizational Hub
A centralized communication and meeting management platform is pivotal for modern businesses to streamline operations and enhance collaboration. Such platforms serve as the digital nerve center of an organization, providing a unified point of access to information, tools, and communication channels. Adopting a centralized platform can transform the way a business operates, driving efficiency, accountability, and fostering a culture of transparency and collaboration. Some good options include Ninety.io, Bloom Growth, Monday, Leadr, Trello, and Microsoft Teams.
18. Find an HR Platform and Use its Resources
There are several good HR software options available to help manage everything from hiring and onboarding, to benefits and administration, to payroll and performance. We use BambooHR and it consistently gets good reviews from our clients who use it as well. Whether you are looking for a one-stop shop for all of your HR needs or want to add individual services to streamline compliance for Employee Handbook updates or offer employee benefit packages, consider JA Counter.
19. Master the Art of Delegation
Delegation allows leaders to manage their time more effectively, focusing on high-priority tasks that require their expertise while entrusting other responsibilities to their team members. By delegating tasks, leaders can provide their team with opportunities for growth and development, enhancing their skills and preparing them for future challenges.
Download full e-book here: The 4 Degrees of Delegation
20. Be in the Know | Leaders are Readers
Reading fosters continuous personal and professional growth, vital for adapting to the ever-changing demands of leadership roles. By engaging with a wide range of materials, leaders can stay informed about the latest trends, innovations, and best practices within their fields. Subscribe to e-newsletters from business thought-leaders like Harvard Business Review, McKinsey & Co, and Gallup, and follow their LinkedIn pages. Be in the know and apply it to your people, operations, and tech strategies.
21. Take Advantage of MS 365 Copilot AI
AI continues to evolve and change the world. Using AI in business writing allows you to streamline and become more efficient at work and communication. Note: This blog was NOT written by AI, but generated from the minds of our team here at The Resultants.
22. Share Those Calendars
This is helpful for scheduling purposes, communication, work/life balance, and visibility. It's a simple tool that is often overlooked. But when used correctly, it can bring value to an organization, especially in the meeting management area. Blocking off time on the calendar to work/focus on spreadsheets, processes, finance, etc. can allow individuals to get tasks and items done more efficiently without being interrupted. It provides visibility to an individual’s schedule to make scheduling meetings less hectic when you can see their availability.
23. Implement Peer Engagement and Learning
Listen and give/get feedback from others in your industry by getting involved with industry-specific groups and subscribing to industry blogs. Invite other business leaders/owners into your weekly Leadership Team Meeting to exchange best practices and YOUR team will be at its best. For owners and leaders, it can be lonely at the top. Learning alongside peers who empathize with your challenges, whether it is in a formal or informal setting, is a valuable resource.
24. Stay Connected
Many organizations have moved to remote or hybrid work environments, which has its benefits and challenges. To cultivate a strong culture, it is extremely important to get together in person as a team. It doesn't have to be an over-the-top event. A simple coffee, lunch meet up, or checking in on someone can go a long way. Just making the effort to connect face-to-face with someone can have a tremendous impact on culture and the individual(s).
25. Celebrate!
Celebrate small victories along the way and show appreciation. Often, we see clients focused on fixing the things that are not going right. While that’s certainly important, make sure you also “make the highs higher” by recognizing and capitalizing on the things that your team does well.
Let's Get Deeper
We hope you found this list of ways to make your company grow faster helpful. We sure had a lot of fun making it. If you would like to learn more about any point on our list or drill down further on several of them, please contact us to begin a conversation on how The Resultants and our 25 years of business expertise can help you.