Scale Architects
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After enjoying the organic growth stage in your organization, you will come face to face with the reality that Ownership and Self-Accountability don't just happen at scale (that is, if you haven't already). Structuring an environment for Ownership and Self-Accountability to thrive may sound foreign and complicated. But it's not. Here's how to do it.
Before you can discover how to restore Ownership & Self-Accountability, you must first decide where you will restore it. There are two routes to Ownership & Self-Accountability, but they go in opposite directions. You need to make sure you pick the route that will get you where you want to go, but most of us try the opposite and fail.
What is the one thing you need to create, sustain, or return to the most successful period in your organization's history? Could it really be just one thing? It can, and it is. But it can be tricky, and it alludes even the best leaders.
Managing change is a people problem. It is exceptionally difficult in part because it is inherently subjective. In this article, you'll learn how to get past that subjectivity to objectively identify what needs to change, who will struggle with the change, and how to help them through it.
Every organization in (or around) Predictable Success has some form of strategic planning. It may be formal or informal, highly structured or free-form. While there are benefits and disadvantages to each of these issues, we need to be careful not to assume that the right strategic planning methodology will suddenly silence our limbic antagonist.
Your strategic planning process is essentially an old-western showdown between the limbic system (which is tasked with keeping you and your organization alive) and the prefrontal cortex (which allows you to thrive). And in this good ol' shootout, the limbic system is the reigning champ. The scary part is it's going to kill your organization without you ever knowing it.
The most tempting strategy for most leaders is to do more of what we're already doing and do it better. That same strategy will suffocate even the best innovators if we aren't careful. So how do we protect innovation from process and use process to scale up innovation?
Innovation will never be birthed from a process. It must start with people. To create an innovative organization, you must create an ethos of innovation throughout the entire organization.
We've all heard the story before. A nearly mythical leader (often the founder) creates a phenomenally innovative organization. Following a meteoric rise, they pass the baton on to the next generation of leaders. But then, one day, we wake up and realize the organization is barely a shadow of its former self. What happened?
The Founder's Evolution culminates in Stage 7: The Visionary Founder. At this stage, the Visionary Founder's legacy is truly established. But at the end of the day, it's not about how skilled you are, how amazing your organization is, or how much you are worth. Instead, it's about something far more meaningful, something far more powerful.
Most Founders never make it to Stage 6 of their Founder's Evolution, and they never experience the joy and freedom of becoming a True Owner. They also never discover the most valuable asset a True Owner has because it certainly isn't cash (even though they have a whole lot of it).
In stage 5 of your evolution as a founder, you finally take on a title you've been using incorrectly for a long time: Chief Executive. This stage is tremendously rewarding as you lead through others and build an organization whose success will outlast you. However, some soul-searching and a few essential strategies are needed to get there.
