I recently completed an annual session with a leadership team composed of individuals I’ve known for many years, mainly through our mutual experience in building another great company. Because of our prior collaboration, I’ve been able to see their growth over an extensive time period, and that gave me a unique perspective for what I witnessed in this session, profound, transformational growth!
At the start of the EOS journey, people issues are the single most common frustration that leaders express. This team was no different. Beyond their own challenges with each other, initially they were facing a constant battle to ensure they had sufficient, qualified staff across a large range of geography. Turnover was high, and their ability to grow revenue and profits was constrained by the staffing issues.
In this session it was clear that those issues were in the past, and bigger, more interesting issues were now on the table. What had once been a good company, making $10 million in revenue, was now a $30 million juggernaut, having exceeded in the past year the revenue target they had originally set to be achieved in 3 years. What had once been a team of individuals often at odds with each other, was now a confident, cohesive nucleus. When it came time to make financial predictions for their new 3-year picture and 1-year plan, they reached a unanimous decision after only a short discussion, committing to $100 million in 3 years, and $50 million this year.
As the decisions were made and Vision clarified, I became aware of two deep insights; one involving the transformation that had already occurred, and the other one about the transformation that was happening right there in the room at that moment.
What had already happened was cultural, and it was codified on their Vision/Traction Organizer (VTO), in the very first two questions, their core values and their core focus. I often speak of that combination as the soul of the company, because within the core values are the nucleus of unique and virtuous behaviors that everyone in the business naturally shares when they are being at their best, and within the core focus are their unique abilities or super-powers (also called their niche), combined with the greater purpose they are trying to achieve. These questions are the essence of organizational self-identity, the vessel containing the impregnable soul of the company.
The thing that makes the soul of the company impregnable is that it can’t be damaged from the outside. No external threat can do harm to it because it can only be defeated from the INSIDE. This team had learned that lesson well! They had taken their core values and harnessed them resolutely by always hiring, firing, recognizing, and rewarding based on those core values. And they had created alignment top to bottom around their core focus to the point that every associate reaffirmed and confirmed their commitment and delivery of it every day. Thus, what once was an organization straining to find and keep people, had become one with an abundance of great people, doing great things, with other people lining up at the door trying to get in and join.
The second insight was how making decisions transforms a team. Predicting the 3-year picture of $100 million and the 1-year plan of $50 million, were decisions that clarified who they were as leaders and how they were going to grow as individuals. By simply deciding a 3-year picture of $100 million, they instantly transformed themselves into the leadership team of a $100 million company. From that moment they brought into being that leadership identity and made a commitment to ensure that they were always closing the gap and moving another step closer to what the ideal state of that leadership team looks like. With that decision they acquired a powerful tool they could use whenever they met, the tool of perspective, and they could use it by constantly challenging themselves to ensure the issues they were spending their energies on were worthy of the leadership team they were becoming.
Business can be quite messy in entrepreneurial companies. What strikes me most about this team, is that during the journey they faced existential problems on multiple occasions, including the potential loss of most of their revenue, substance abuse, nearly the loss of one owner/leader due to illness, and the tragic loss of another due to suicide. With each challenge overcome they had become stronger and wiser.
Author Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote an incredible book called Antifragile. In it he lays out a characteristic of truly great teams. These teams are not fragile, they don’t break when they hit obstacles, but they are not resilient either, as in teams that endure obstacles and get by. Antifragile teams consume obstacles and use them as fuel to get better!
Or as Marcus Aurelius wrote in his Meditations (popularized by Ryan Holiday in his book “The Obstacle is the Way”), “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
Or to quote former Intel CEO Andy Grove “Bad companies are destroyed by crisis, Good companies survive them, Great companies are improved by them.”
Great companies are Antifragile! To be great, get really good at consuming your obstacles for breakfast. More on Antifragility in my next blog…
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