As a growing organization, we have faced a number of growing pains along the way, including some fundamentals such as how we are managing the business. For ideas on how to implement a structured approach to management in an effort to improve our performance, we turned to Traction, a business book by Gino Wickman.
Our goals were to bring focus, eliminate noise, add simplicity, clearly define roles and responsibilities, assign accountabilities, and develop measurable action items. By shoring up six key components of our business as outlined by Wickman in his book, we have seen significant improvement.
Agreeing on and communicating a common vision for the business is critical to getting everyone rowing in the same direction. Questions we asked ourselves in defining our vision were:
Achieving the agreed-to vision requires having the right people in the right seats. Through a combination of core values and performance, we will strive to consistently hire, review, reward and recognize all people in the organization--and replace those who don't share our vision.
Identify and agree to 5-15 metrics that are most critical to running the business and that can be easily tracked on a weekly basis. This enables our leadership team to have a fact-base discussion around the business's progress (or lack of progress).
To more clearly define roles and responsibilities, define the core processes for the business and create a consistent, repeatable playbook that everyone in the organization can understand and follow. The key is to not go overboard.
We have completely revamped our regular leadership meetings to follow a structured approach to solving issues so that they do not linger or go unnoticed for extended periods. Using the Identify-Discuss-Solve (IDS) approach has worked well for us:
Identify
Discuss
Solve
The business should create accountability and discipline up front and then track the execution on a regular basis. In the leadership meetings, as goals and issues are identified, each is assigned an owner. The owner is responsible for timelines, calling meetings, pushing people and ensuring the goal is complete by the next meeting.
Implementing this structured approach at Avondale has had a tremendous impact on our leadership's productivity and has improved operations throughout the organization. By clearly setting expectations, it is easier to track progress, evaluate people, and address issues.
Please send us your thoughts at karlandbill@avondalestrategicpartners.com
Associate Lindsay Comstock contributed to this article.