5 Hard Questions to Ask Yourself Before Selling Your Business

Selling a company can be the most exciting event of your career, or it can be the scariest. Ask yourself these questions to decide.

For many founders, selling a company is the ultimate accomplishment. The dream of starting something from scratch, growing and scaling the business, finding a buyer, and exiting is the stuff movies are made of. While it can be quite thrilling and satisfying, it can also be a dramatic and, at times, a traumatic process.

As a strategic growth coach, I've worked with dozens of companies on how to create and implement successful scaling strategies, and many of them have found successful exits. I've also been a founder and CEO myself and successfully sold my business. While they were all big wins, they came with a lot of complexity and anguish that could have been avoided.

Today, when I speak with founders about selling, I have a series of core questions that I ask them before we engage in any growth or exit planning process. These will uncover key issues that must be addressed and create a solid roadmap for the process.

1. Why did you start your business?

I always like to start by having founders reflect on why they started the business. For some, it was a random series of events that got things going. For others, it was a carefully thought-out plan with clear goals and ambitions. Regardless, it's helpful to uncover any motivations or dreams that inspired the company's start that need to be considered when planning an exit.

2. What are you going to do after you sell?

Too often, I see founders get into the heat of the sale process only to have an existential crisis when selling becomes a reality. They put their sweat, blood, and tears into this business, and the idea of letting it go can become overwhelming and unnerving. Without a clear plan for what you'll do after you sell, you'll subconsciously sabotage the deal.

Drinking pina coladas on the beach doesn't cut it. Founders need a new passion and project to work on. It could be a new business, or it could be a personal or social pursuit, but they need something. You need to know what that is before you begin to think about selling.

3. What's your minimum number?

One of the first exercises I do is to ask founders how much money they want in their pockets at the end of the sale. Many have no idea, in which case we have work to do. For those who have a number, we look into what it will take to get to that number based on the current company finances. For some, this might be a simple private equity play. For others, we might need to spend a few years growing and improving the business and finding a strategic exit before we have a hope of hitting it.

4. What are your acceptable deal terms?

Sales agreements cover a lot more than cash on the barrel. There are often ongoing earnouts, bonuses, reps and warranties, non-competes, employment agreements, and many other terms that can impact a deal's attractiveness. Knowing which ones are acceptable and which are not will greatly change the types of possible deals.

5. How can you increase valuation?

Generally, most businesses are not ready to be sold, certainly not at an optimal price. They need to be adjusted and optimized for valuation and handover. This includes simple things like having your books in order or complicated issues like client concentration and key person risks that will hurt valuation. Ideally, you want to have 12 to 24 months to address these items before beginning the sale process.

Selling a company is a major event and a huge accomplishment for any business owner. It can also be a nightmare and horribly stressful. While it's always a bit of a rollercoaster, getting these questions right will determine if you'll be enjoying the thrill with your hands waving in the air or if you'll be clutching the safety bars wishing you never got on the ride.

Creating KPIs Is Usually Complicated, but It Doesn't Need to Be. Here's How

Strategy is hard, but not as hard as execution. KPIs solve this problem, but you need to get them right.

Growing and scaling a business requires a solid strategy and disciplined execution. As a business growth coach who's worked with dozens of high-growth companies, my job is to help leadership teams solve these challenges. Getting both of these right is key to helping a company reach the next level.

While strategy is hard, with a good process and a smart team that knows their core customer and the competitive landscape, it's generally not that hard to find a differentiated position that can help drive sales and profits. Most markets have white space that can be found and leveraged to create a niche.

Execution, however, is harder. Most teams get overwhelmed with day-to-day operations and putting out fires. They struggle to implement strategic moves and fail to improve processes to support growth and expansion. While strategy takes a lot of hard thinking, execution takes a lot of elbow grease.

One key tool I use to help teams execute is key performance indicators (KPIs). These are specific metrics that help us measure and manage key business processes. While it's easy to come up with lots of KPIs, it's hard to select the right ones that will really drive performance and growth.

The key here is to think of your business as a series of systems that work together to produce critical outputs. These include work products, loyal customers, intellectual property/assets, reputation, and, of course, cash. By thinking in systems, you can begin to identify what needs to be measured and managed for effective scaling.

Here are the key steps that I use to help teams identify the areas of the business that need KPIs, implement them, and use them to scale the business.

1. Identify your core processes

Every business is a series of systems and subsystems. Marketing, sales, delivery, customer services, etc., all have core steps and activities that feed into each other. Map these out and identify how they interconnect to create value for your customers and put cash in the bank.

2. Map the main steps

For each core process, map the core activities and how they work together. For marketing, this might be targeting prospects, developing offers, creating content, delivering content, capturing interest, qualifying leads, and handing off to sales. Each activity should have an input and output and some measure of success.

3. Brainstorm input, performance, and output metrics

For each core process, brainstorm three types of metrics. Input metrics are the activities that feed the process, such as cold calling for a sales team. Performance metrics show how the internal parts of a system are working, such as parts inventory for an assembly process. Output metrics measure outputs, such as quality for a manufacturing system.

4. Select two or three KPIs for each

Choose two or three of each metric type for each core business process. These will become your complete KPI framework for the business. While they might adjust and change as your business shifts and grows, they should remain reasonably stable over time.

5. Measure and baseline

Before you can start improving, you need to measure and stabilize each one. You can't improve a system that's not defined and stable. Take the time to standardize the steps and measure performance over a set period of time.

6. Establish growth and improvement targets

Given your strategy and future vision, set your key targets for outputs and then work backward. If you're producing 230 widgets a day currently and you need to be at 1,000 widgets a day in two years, figure out what other metrics need to change. While you might just need to include input metrics, you can also look at process metrics. Doubling your conversation rates on sales meetings will have the same effect as having twice as many meetings.

7. Set review rhythms

Set a clear schedule for reviewing and revising your metrics. As the business strategy evolves, the outputs, customers, and competitive landscape will change, and this will change your systems. Successful companies use this process to drive process improvement and innovation.

Understanding your business as a system gives you the perspective and tools you need to plan your growth. Getting the right KPIs in place will help you manage and accelerate your growth. Getting these right can make the process easier and faster. Getting them wrong can lead you down rabbit holes and frustrate the process.

I Teach Leaders to Solve Problems. Here's My 6-Step Framework

If you want to get good at growth, get good at fixing problems. Here's how to do it predictably and repeatedly.

As a strategic coach, I work with high-performance leadership teams to build growth roadmaps. Oftentimes, the companies double in just six to 12 months. These growth rates expose issues and cracks in the business that must be addressed quickly. Identifying these issues quickly and systematically solving them is key to successful and sustained growth. Having both a framework and experience using it will improve any business's prospects.

Here's mine:

1. Review and reflect

I start by carefully reviewing what happened. Collect as much data as possible on what led up to the situation and how things played out. It's key here to get perspectives and opinions from as many sources as possible. I like organizing things in timelines and swimlanes for different people, teams, and departments. Here, we stick to the facts and try to weed out inferences and assumptions.

2. Find critical issues

Once the situation is mapped out, we look for where issues occur. These could be errors, delays, rework, wasted resources, or unnecessary operational complexity. I have the team dig into these and find the most important issues. I like having them plot what they find using a matrix of likelihood and impact so we can focus on a few issues that are causing the most problems.

3. Define the problem

Once we have a handful of things to investigate, I have the team clearly define the problem, why it exists, and how it's causing it. Once everyone is clear and in agreement on this, I have them articulate three to five success criteria that, once met, would mean that we've solved the problem or improved the situation significantly and sufficiently.

4. Look for systemic causes

Once the problem is defined, we can start looking for underlying causes. I like using a fishbone or tree diagram to visually map these out. Each cause needs to be independent and clearly contribute to the problems. Avoid generalizations and edge cases. For example, don't just say increased shipping costs. Say 22 percent of shipments go out as partial orders, which has increased average costs by $1.24 per order.

5. Pull multiple threads

Once we have several options, we can start finding causes of those causes using the same logic. I call this iterative triangulation as we start broad and narrow down the factors as we go. Sometimes we might hit a dead end, and we need to crawl back up the process to investigate another path. Eventually, we'll find a few core issues that are really driving the problem.

6. Listen to your gut

Sometimes this can be a difficult process, and you'll find several factors. First, I suggest focusing on the factors you can actually do something about. Second, focus on those that can be addressed with clear changes to business systems and processes. Finally, I have people check in with their guts; when they get that sinking feeling when they hit an issue, it probably means it's the one to focus on.

Root cause analysis can be more of an art than a science at times, but being systematic and developing a repeatable process will help it not feel like witchcraft. Teams that do this again and again and get good at it can dramatically improve their learning cycle time and can out-deliver and innovate against competitors.

If You're a CEO Who Struggles to Manage People, Read These 6 Books

If you're a CEO who struggles with managing people, here are six must-read books that will help you up your game.

Being a CEO doesn't come with an instructional manual. And for most founders who end up in the top job of their business, they usually have little to no management and executive experience. Most early-stage, high-growth business leaders find that they have created a successful, thriving business but have no idea on how to manage people.

As a business coach, I work with many first-time CEOs who have big ambitions but also know they need help to grow themselves and their companies. One of the things I do is help them be better leaders and better managers by leveling up their skills and perspectives. Learning to better manage their teams is usually on top of the list.

While there are many ways to learn, here are six of the best books I've found on how to better manage people that I recommend to all my CEO clients. If you're a new CEO struggling to manage your team, this is a great starting point to develop your people skills.

Drive by Daniel Pink

Pink does a great job in breaking down the complex issues of what motivates people into three basic areas. With my CEOs, we speak about AMP: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Any time we discuss how to motivate a team or an individual, we check in on these three elements and how they can use them to drive engagement and performance. It's a simple concept that can lead to big results, when applied well.

Crucial Conversations, by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler

Business is full of tough conversations. Unfortunately, many people deal with this by either avoiding conflict or picking a fight. These authors explain how to get clear with your own needs and wants first, create an environment that will foster deep connection and sharing, and honestly listen and consider other people's needs and wants. Only then can you find true solutions and put in place a plan of action that will create real change. This is a book on life, but it's great for the office, too.

Radical Candor, by Kim Scott

While many people avoid giving feedback to direct reports and colleagues, Scott does a great job of explaining why the truly professional and caring thing to do is to provide radical candor. Only through open, honest, direct, and timely feedback can someone grow and learn. Saying nothing is not being nice--it's being apathetic.

Now, Discover Your Strengths, by Marcus Buckingham

I'm a big fan of personal and professional development and I recommend to all of my executive clients that they create a culture of continuous improvement. And while everyone has weaknesses that need to be managed, you're far better off focusing on your strengths. Buckingham does a great job of helping people find the things they are good at and passionate about, to fuel their growth.

Mindset, by Carol Dweck

This book is a game changer for most managers. Dweck shows us why regardless of our skills, experience, genetics, or aptitude, the most influential factor on our ability to learn is whether we think we can do something or not. Those people with a growth mindset will be far more likely to change, and those with a fixed mindset will be far less likely. So before you put together the training plan, coach the mindset first.

Power of a Positive No, by William Ury

I still remember the first time I read this book and how it changed both my professional and personal life. One of my core values is to be of service to people and help them. But I found myself saying yes to everything and trying to help everyone and as a result spreading myself too thin and not being very effective. Ury taught me to develop a clearer picture of my bigger goals and purpose and to use that to say "no" to many requests so that I could say "yes" powerfully to the ones that truly mattered to me.

The six above are just a start. There are countless other books on managing people and how to create a great culture in your company. And you should strive to read all of them if you want to be an exceptional leader. People management is not just a good skill to have, it's what will drive your professional success and the success of your company.

The Transition From Founder To Ceo Is Not An Easy One. Here’s What To Focus On

Over time, you will need to become your company's CEO or bring one in. Here's how your focus will change.

What it takes to start a company is not what it takes to scale a company. In fact, the mindset and skills that made you successful as a founder can work against you as you step into the role of CEO. Your strategies and your focus need to change, and if you fail to make those changes, you'll hinder the development of both you and your business.

As a strategic coach, here is what I zero in on when working with Founders versus working with CEOs. Each role has a unique and different area of focus and skill set that makes it successful. Through coaching, I help my clients identify the role they need to be in, based on the stage of the company's development.

What makes a great founder...

1. Finding unmet needs in the market

To start a business, you need to find that unmet need--the one that causes a lot of problems. Great founders can hone in on problems that haven't been solved well, and when solved will generate value.

2. Developing early solutions

Once you find a problem, you need to develop a solution. This could be either a product or service, but it needs to directly address the problem in a way that is truly a solution in your customer's eyes. The best way to know you're onto something is if people are willing to part with their hard-earned money.

3. Defining a clear vision

You must see into the future and paint a vivid picture of a better version of the world that you see. Not only will this drive your own passion and motivation, but it will also help people get on board and drive engagement within the company. 

4. Selling to customers right away

Good founders might not know the latest sales tools and techniques, they are natural storytellers and highly persuasive. As a founder, one of your core jobs is to meet with the right prospects and convince them to buy what you have to offer.

5. Securing early-stage investors

Startup capital is key to a healthy launch. Getting money from friends and family, angel investors, and venture capitalists is one of your top tasks. Knowing how much you need, what you're going to do with it, and who to get it from is key.

6. Recruiting founding team members

Finally, you must build the initial founding team with the right people and put them in the right seats. And while skills and experience are critical factors, so is getting the right culture and core values. At this stage, one bad apple can be disastrous. 

What makes a great CEO...

1. Developing market segments and channels

Once you have traction and your business is growing, one of your key tasks is to identify the best segments to sell to and what channels to sell through. By slicing and dicing data and looking at who buys at a good price, who is easy to serve, and who promotes you in the market, you ensure that your company continues to make progress.

2. Refining and optimizing products/services

With a product or service successfully in the market, your job is to ensure it is continuously improved and optimized. As CEO, when you improve the value you deliver to customers, while also looking for ways to remove waste that doesn't add value, you will drive growth.

3. Setting strategy and key milestones

Once you have a foothold in the market, the CEO's job is to plot the course for growth and success through strategy and focused execution. Defining your strategic position and articulating the key operational milestones for getting there is your responsibility.

4. Developing marketing and a scalable sales process

While early sales are opportunistic and ad hoc, developing a defined and repeatable sales process will be key to scaling the business. As CEO, you need to put these in place and ensure they are being followed.

5. Managing investors and the board of directors

Investors need to be informed and managed. They also need to be leveraged for insights, contacts, expertise, and resources. A good CEO leverages their board for the success of their company.

6. Organizing your team and developing your culture

Rather than directly recruiting individuals, a CEO needs to create a people system that will serve the future vision of the company and a culture that attracts and retains the right people.

While these are not all of the differences between a founder and a CEO, they are some of the most important ones. While nobody goes to sleep a founder and wakes up a CEO, making the transition quickly and efficiently can help fuel your company's growth and evolution.

5 Common Cash Flow Mistakes That Can Slow Fast-Growth Companies

If you want to grow quickly and predictably, make sure you avoid these five cash flow challenges.

As a strategy and leadership coach, my job is to help businesses scale quickly. Most of my clients are doubling every one to two years, and some as quickly as six months. While this growth is fun and exciting, it can also be complicated and painful.

One of the more difficult and hard-to-see challenges of growth is managing cash flow. Just because sales are skyrocketing doesn't mean the bank account is. Knowing how to calculate profit, forecast sales and expenses, and identify areas of profitability versus areas of limited growth is crucial in making key business decisions.

Scale puts a lot of pressure on systems and people; sometimes to a breaking point. I've seen companies take a $10 million business that's running at 22 percent profit and grow it to a $25 million business running at a 5 percent profit and lose money when they factor in expansion and capital costs. As any private equity analyst would tell you, growth that doesn't also increase the net margin isn't worth the investment.

Here are five factors that will impact your margin and growth calculations that will impact your profitability and cash flow.

1. Costs of marketing and sales

When you're growing rapidly, things change quickly. How you market and sell your product or service when you're making just a few million in revenue could be quite different from when you're making $100 million. Developing new channels, competing in different markets, and running up against different competitors will all change your strategies and tactics, and these will likely change your investments and spending.

What might have been a high-margin line of business can quickly become unprofitable in later stages of growth. Being able to track and monitor these numbers is critical. Know how to associate marketing and sales costs with your different lines of business, track them as you grow, and ensure you're making good investments.

2. Getting paid on time

Customers can't pay you if you don't send them accurate invoices on a timely basis. I've seen companies get so caught up in selling in a hot market that they drop the ball on accounting and build up huge accounts receivables. This will tie up a lot of working capital, but it also significantly increases risk to the business. When the music stops, it doesn't matter who owes who what; only those with cash survive.

3. Understanding your cash cycle

For most businesses, you have to invest in marketing and sales, raw materials, inventory, production, and delivery before you can invoice and get paid. These amounts and timing create a conversion cycle that consumes cash. If you don't understand this and forecast it well, you can quickly grow yourself broke. Sometimes even out of business.

While there are financing strategies for this, they are expensive and volatile. It's better to optimize your pricing, payment schedule, and delivery turnaround times to reduce the cash demands. In extreme cases, you can invert this cycle by requiring large upfront payments and pushing off expense payments. In these cases, growth creates cash and can become a virtuous cycle.

4. Calculating costs of capital

If you're a heavy manufacturing business that needs equipment and raw materials, you'll need cash to invest to fuel your growth. And relying on outside funding sources can quickly become expensive. Make sure you're calculating the real cost of capital and factor that into profitability both at a product line and overall business level. Otherwise, debt servicing payments can quickly gobble up any additional profit you make.

5. Expansion costs

With growth comes expansion, and for many companies, this requires non-trivial investments in facilities, equipment, inventory, staffing, and training. You need to factor in these costs and allocate them to your products and services appropriately. Often, lines of business will oscillate wildly as you grow into and out of big fixed costs like machinery and office space. Know what they are and how they impact growth costs and profitability.

Every company needs to grow. If you're not growing, you're shrinking. Understanding how your business engine works and knowing what it will consume resources as you grow is critical. If you're growing fast, you need to be a master at it. Getting these right can drive significant success. Getting them wrong can be painful, and if you're not careful, terminal.

The Best Leaders Focus on More Than Just Their Professional Success

To create a balanced life, you need a framework and a plan. Here are six areas to reflect on to create more balance.

Everyone talks about the importance of balance in life. But what does that really mean? Too often, we pay lip service to the idea without a plan or a framework for how to create it. Without a plan, things won't change, and without a framework, we can't make a plan.

When working with my executive clients, we focus on the following areas. We assess each and evaluate how it's currently going and where we need to make changes to create a healthier balance. While we don't always need to focus on the lowest scores, we want to understand where we need to make changes to address critical risks and priorities.

1. Personal development

First and foremost, healthy and balanced executives prioritize their personal development and self-care. This includes practical matters like regular health checkups and investing time and energy into personal interests and hobbies. While I don't expect the leaders I work with to be competing in Ironman triathlons, though several do, I do want to make sure they have some regular routines that keep them physically and mentally fit.

2. Immediate and extended family

I've seen too many executives, both men and women, get so wrapped up in advancing their business that they neglect their families. Not just partners and children but also siblings and extended family. While all families have drama and can be difficult, families are key to our support network and social connections. Making time for family will keep you balanced, reduce stress, and increase overall life satisfaction. Being busy with work is not an excuse for neglecting these important connections.

3. Friends and other relationships

I often challenge executives to name five close friends whom they could share anything with and who are not family members or connected to their business. Most fail. Some can't even name one or two. This is a problem, because family and business connections are too intertwined in your decisions and success, which means you're less likely to share significant challenges for fear of upsetting them, and they are less likely to give you honest, and sometimes difficult, feedback. True friends are a key resource for working through big issues because they only have your best interests at heart. They can give you some tough love if needed.

4. Professional development

This is more than just making more money. It's about charting your career beyond your current business or job and setting big goals that are meaningful and impactful for you. Knowing your larger ambitions allows you to make better short-term decisions that will nudge you toward the bigger picture. This also involves setting your professional development goals and determining what you need to add to your executive toolbox. Without a long-term plan, you'll, at best, wander around aimlessly, at worst, paint yourself into a corner.

5. Financial matters

Most executives I work with are highly motivated by money and building wealth. Assuming they are also striving to improve their relational connections and mental and physical wellness and positively impact their communities, then I'm all for it. The challenge is that being in a solid financial situation is more than making a lot of personal income. It's about protecting yourself and your family with insurance, building a reasonable savings and retirement account, and investing in assets that will provide you with future resources and opportunities. Unfortunately, many executives focus solely on making more income and not on building wealth and security.

6. Community and legacy

At some point, making more money and building an even bigger business becomes unfulfilling. Once you've taken care of your needs and provided for your family, you need to start thinking bigger about the impact you want to make on your community. Getting involved in social matters that you care about and can have an impact on becomes your next playing field. Take a stand and use your leadership and resources to create a better world for the next generations, both yours and everyone else's.

A multifaceted and balanced life not only makes you a more capable and successful executive but also makes living it more fun and engaging. The best executives I work with find strategies for leveling up multiple areas with the same initiatives. For me, it's been getting outdoors and going on adventures with my kids. It checks the mental health box, the family box, and the personal development box.

You won't always have a perfect balance, and that's not the goal. Things will flow and change. The goal is to monitor, create intentions, and take actions to keep things from getting too out of whack. The best executives make this a regular habit rather than trying to save things when they are in crisis.

If You Want to Scale Faster, Choose a Niche and Excel in It

Forget competition, embrace differentiation: a proven strategy for growth.

When I founded my tech company, I spent the first several years solely focused on acquiring clients and generating revenue. It was a hustle that I enjoyed and excelled at. Finding prospects, conducting sales meetings, developing proposals, and closing deals. I enjoyed the challenge and the thrill.

Over time, I had to bring on other people to help market and sell our services. It forced us to become more focused and systemized. I had to figure out what we were selling, to whom, and what the real benefits of our solutions were. This compelled us to rethink our strategy. I realized that until that point, I was just chasing money and trying to nip at the heels of our bigger competitors.

What I quickly realized was that I was never going to really compete with the big dogs by trying to go head-to-head. It was easy to find a few scraps here and there, but it would be a brutal and bloody process. Instead, I realized that we needed to offer something different, something that couldn't be reduced to a price war.

After reading dozens of books, taking several courses, and even hiring several consultants, we crafted a unique position in the market tailored to specific core customers. This allowed us to refine our operations and services and to create a unique selling position. We no longer had to compete on price, and we dramatically reduced the sales lead time and increased our success rate.

Now, as a strategic coach, I've worked with dozens of companies on positioning, operations, and sales. Here are some key aspects I focus on to help teams craft a unique market position and accelerate growth.

1. Clarify your purpose.

I always start by clarifying why we're even in business. This helps remind us of the reason we do the work and sets a north star for guiding the rest of the work we need to do. I like a simple formula that clarifies who we serve, what we provide them, and the benefits they get from our products/services.

The trick here is to define this in such a way that it's narrow and focused, yet expansive enough to be pursued over decades. A good long-term purpose will help you make decisions on every other part of the business. If it's too broad, it lacks direction; if it's too narrow or short-term, it fails to inspire innovation.

2. Understand your core customer.

Too many companies I speak to say they can do anything for anyone. While they might have a broad range of skills and capabilities beneficial to many businesses or customers, trying to be everything to everyone just doesn't work. You need to clarify who you serve and why to create an effective strategy.

When defining your core customer, I like to focus on four key things: demographics, which provide insights into their profile and whereabouts; psychographics, which tells you their core values and what topics and content will resonate with them; needs and fears, which clarify why they are buying and what your solution will do for them; and buying triggers, which tell you when they are likely in the mood to start a sales conversation.

3. Identify all competitors.

Once the core customer is defined, it's essential to identify competitors. Once we have this list, we can look at each competitor's unique attributes and how they are approaching the market. The trick here is to look deeper than price. Some competitors may excel in quality, others in service, and some in ease of implementation.

Be sure to consider direct and indirect competitors. Direct competitors are other solutions similar to yours that a prospect would consider in comparison to you. Indirect competitors are solutions that solve the problem but in very different ways. This might include building a solution in-house or even just coping better and living with the problem. Knowing all of the options a prospect has is crucial.

4. Find your white space.

Once you have the competitive landscape mapped out, you can plot everyone on the various criteria that your customers use to make a purchase decision. I like visualizing this in a chart so you can see the areas that have a lot of competition and, hopefully, a few areas where nobody seems to be excelling.

The goal here is to find some white space where you can craft a differentiated position and stand out in the market. This might be by selecting one or two areas that are completely open or combining a few attributes in a valuable way that's unique in the market.

5. Innovate key activities.

After you've found a new market position, you can start looking at your operations and delivery. While there are many things you need to do well as a business to be successful, find eight to 12 key activities that will directly drive your success in your new niche. Focus your efforts and innovation on these areas. Everything else should just be "good enough." The goal here is to put more wood behind fewer arrows.

The key to strategy is to focus your efforts and energy. Without a clear strategy, spreading too thin and pursuing too many targets is inevitable. Strategy is about choices and aligning everyone in the organization around a core set of key decisions about who you are and what you do. Getting these questions right and making real commitments will accelerate your growth and success. Continuing to chase everything with a dollar sign will quickly leave you exhausted and likely going in circles.

Strategy Is More Than a Pretty Plan

Many companies face the challenge of creating a strategy but struggle to implement it effectively. Here are eight ways to focus your operations to drive impact.

Creating a strategy is hard work. It requires reliable data, keen insights, a touch of innovation, and a lot of difficult decision-making. When executed effectively, it can create clarity and focus that can truly accelerate a business's growth and profitability. If done poorly, it can be a time and money pit that leaves you more confused than when you began.

However, the most challenging aspect of the strategy is implementation. A strategy that doesn't drive actions remains a dream. You need to drive strategy into the heart of a business operational system to see an impact. The key to achieving this is to identify and focus on a specific set of operational activities.

As a strategic coach who has collaborated with dozens of companies on strategy, I prefer using what Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter calls an "activity fit map." An AFM captures the unique and focused set of interconnected activities that drive a company's market positioning. While a company needs to excel in various aspects, the AFM identifies activities where exceptional performance, not just adequacy, is essential.

Creating an AFM can be challenging and somewhat of an art. While they evolve, it's crucial to refine them from the beginning. When guiding teams on strategy, I encourage considering the following factors when generating their map.

1. Capabilities and capacity

The initial focus should be on assessing raw capabilities and capacity. Can you do the things that you need at the volume/quantity that you need to do them? Building capabilities and capacity is a fundamental way to establish differentiation. Possessing the ability to do things that competitors can't do at a volume they can't support is a core value driver.

2. Processes and procedures

Some companies have capabilities similar to their competitors'. However, differentiation is still achievable by improving and excelling in variables such as speed of delivery or quality. In these cases, having well-structured processes and procedures becomes a differentiating advantage. You'll win in the market if you can deliver faster, more consistently, and with high quality.

3. Policies and business rules

In some cases, your ability to drive strategic value is based on the decisions you make, whom you make them with, and how quickly you can make them. A classic example of this is Southwest Airlines' decision to only use 737 airplanes. This choice simplified pilot training, reduced maintenance complexity, and standardized operational procedures. It was a simple rule that had a far-reaching positive impact on the company's ability to deliver on strategy.

4. Knowledge and data

Many companies have generated strategic value by accumulating a substantial volume of data and insights. These can be used to identify patterns and trends, as well as create insights for customers that other companies just can't provide. Evaluate what your business has or could capture that might be of value to your prospects.

5. Relationships and reputation

If you've been in business for a while and have a good reputation and deep relationships with key companies, you can turn that into a strategic advantage. These relationships will provide access to supplies, information, and talent, along with the ability to forge new relationships quickly based on your history. IBM, for example, was hired many times because of its reputation and weight in the industry.

6. Intellectual property and copyrights

While enforcing intellectual property and copyrights can be costly, it gives potential competitors pause before going head-to-head with you. If you have or can obtain legal protection for what you do or how you do it, it could create strategic value. Just be sure the cost is reasonable and that it's enforceable and difficult to circumvent.

7. Talent and expertise

Although people can come and go, having a team of highly skilled and capable staff is a real advantage in many businesses. For service companies like law, engineering, architecture, and design, significant experience in specific industries and deep experiences in domains can be key to driving strategic value.

8. Sourcing and supplies

For many companies, strong relationships and formal agreements with key suppliers are strategically important. If you have access to supplies and materials that others don't, or maybe at a price or volume that others can't get, you can create leverage. When possible, secure exclusive agreements to lock out competitors or negotiate a pricing agreement that gives you a clear advantage.

A great strategy without a set of operational activities to back it up isn't worth the paper it's written on. If you want to be successful, you need a clear and specific differentiated position and the operational plan to make it happen. The best strategies are ones that lead to operational focus and innovation, not just pretty slideshows.

Journaling Is a Core Practice for Leadership Development

Here are 5 strategies to help accelerate your growth.

There are many ways to develop as a leader, such as taking courses, reading books, attending seminars, or even hiring leadership coaches like me. Each method has its strengths and weaknesses, playing a unique role in your development. However, there is one practice that is fundamental in every leader's development toolset, and that is journaling.

Journaling allows you to observe and analyze your thinking in a way that no other feedback tool can match. By putting your thoughts on paper, you can see how you approach a situation, frame the context, process the information, and make decisions. This perspective provides us insights and allows us to make connections that are often elusive when thoughts remain in our heads. Furthermore, journaling is something anyone can do with the simplest of tools, which means it's cheap, accessible, and easy to start.

While just about any form of journaling can have benefits, there are a few techniques I use with executives who are looking to improve their leadership skills. While I like good old pen and paper, digital journaling apps can be just as effective and convenient. Learn and use these techniques to focus and structure your journaling for different situations.

1. Mind sweep

This technique is great for getting everything rattling around your head onto paper. Start by writing down all the thoughts, ideas, reminders, and anything else that pops into your mind. I find that after a few minutes, my thinking slows down. I'll take another few minutes to dig deeper to purge everything. Then, once I have a list in front of me, I can start processing things into action items, things to think about more later, and things I'm just going to forget about. Seeing the list allows my mind to let go of these and frees up space to concentrate and do focused work.

2. Decision making

One of the key skills I work on with leaders is decision making. In this journaling practice, we write to our future, more enlightened self. In our journal, we explain the situation as we see it, the information we have and how we analyze it, the options we can see, which option we're choosing and why, and what we expect our outcomes to be.

Later, we can review the entries and compare what we wrote with how things actually turned out. We look for things we missed and errors we made. Maybe we failed to gather some key information, missed an option that could have been better, or were blind to a risk that could have been avoided. Sometimes we find that there was nothing we could have done better. The goal here is to learn what we want to do differently in the future to avoid the same mistakes and to lock in good practices.

3. Envisioning

When striving toward a big goal or embarking on significant changes, the future can seem foggy and confusing. Taking some time and creating a clear and compelling vision of the future state we're working toward can provide motivation and clarity. I do this with individuals and teams to increase desire, uncover risks, and create alignment. The richer the descriptions you can use, the more impactful and valuable the process becomes.

4. Reflecting

Sometimes you need time to sit and recall what happened in a given situation and how you felt about it. Reflecting on an event and writing down specific details about what happened allows you to better see what actually happened. By recalling your emotional reactions, you can map how these things impacted and affected you. The key here is to separate what happened from the meaning you gave it. This practice allows you to see your subconscious at work so you can better prepare and handle these types of situations in the future.

5. Dumping

When you're overwhelmed and your mind is racing, or you just can't let something go and it's nagging you, dumping is a great technique. The focus here is to write anything and everything down that comes to mind as quickly as you can. Generally, I suggest 15-20 minutes to get the full effect. Set a time and just start writing, don't stop, and don't worry about spelling or grammar or even readability. The point here is to empty your mind. Don't overthink it. After the timer goes off, take a minute to relax. If you want, go back and see if there are any nuggets of ideas or action items, but you can just move on as well. The point here is to flush your mind of thoughts, not to process or analyze.

Many executives have made journaling a core personal practice and have written daily and created hundreds, even thousands, of entries, giving them a treasure trove of insights. If you're serious about your improvement and development as a leader, I highly recommend incorporating journaling into your daily routine.

5 Ways to Level Up Your Team Retreat and Create More Impact

There are lots of ways a retreat can go wrong. Here's how to do it right.

As a strategic leadership coach, I’ve conducted hundreds of team and leadership retreats for dozens of companies. I love the retreat format as it gets people out of their day-to-day environments, gets them thinking and interacting in new and different ways, and gives them the time and space to go deeper than they normally can. The best retreats are held in inspiring places, taking advantage of local activities and culture to fuel the team with increased motivation, new perspectives, and stimulating adventures.

However, I’ve often witnessed retreats falling flat. Sometimes, it was because the planning wasn’t done properly, other times because the team just couldn’t stay on topic and complete their agenda, and occasionally because teams didn’t go deep enough to truly resolve their issues.

Here are five key ways to avoid these pitfalls and to increase your likelihood of success and the impact of the time and energy you and your team invest in your next retreat.

1. Set clear objectives and success criteria

Before you start planning your retreat, ensure you establish clear objectives and success criteria. This includes the key issues, topics, and decisions that need to be made and a clear and specific set of outcomes that you want to achieve by the end of the program.

The best retreats maintain a clear focus. My suggestion is to address 3-5 significant issues deeply rather than skimming through a long list on a surface level. Choose high-impact and complex items that can benefit from in-depth discussions. Clearly define the scope of the discussion, along with the desired outcomes and decisions that need to come out of the meeting.

2. Get buy-in on the agenda

Too often, I see leaders come into a retreat with a meticulously crafted agenda, only to discover at the beginning of the meeting that everyone else in the room wants to talk about other issues. Leaders then face the dilemma of pushing their agenda forcefully or abandoning their plans and making it up on the spot. This can be avoided by engaging with your team beforehand and discussing open issues/topics they want to address.

3. Establish good ground rules

Even the best teams fall into bad meeting habits and have tendencies to get carried away and chase issues down rabbit holes. Retreats are a significant investment in time, energy, and money that should be used wisely. One of the best ways to keep things on track is to create and agree upon a clear set of ground rules for how you are going to conduct yourselves.

Effective ground rules should cover topics such as confidentiality, conflict resolution, ensuring everyone has a chance to speak, and maintaining focus on solutions (rather than blame). I also like to ensure that everyone has a clear role in the retreat so the workload is shared and people stay engaged.

4. Push out of your comfort zone

A successful retreat uses the unique space and extra time to delve deeper into issues. This often entails exploring potentially uncomfortable and contentious topics. But it’s in these difficult conversations where real change and breakthroughs can occur. Be willing to enter the danger and tackle issues that seem scary. A well-defined set of ground rules and an experienced facilitator can make this process much easier and more productive while reducing the risk that things spiral.

5. Commit to clear action items

All the discussions and ideas in the world are futile if they don’t translate into action. Ensure that you’re capturing actions and commitments as you go. For ideas or topics that are unresolved or need more discussion, put them in the parking lot for review at the end of the retreat. Close the retreat with a detailed recap of who is responsible for what and by when. I also suggest you have a follow-up call a week later to confirm that people are executing their commitments.

Retreats are a powerful tool for any team. They are a big investment, but they often lead to major insights and breakthroughs that can yield significant returns. Use these suggestions to maximize your chances of success and quality of outcomes. Great teams make retreats more than a boondoggle, they use them strategically to drive growth and change.

The Vegas Rule and 4 Other Proven Rules for Great Meetings

Successful teams have a high degree of psychological safety. Here are five ground rules to help you run more successful meetings.

I've been coaching for more than 20 years now, working with dozens of teams and facilitating hundreds of meetings, both large and small. Although each meeting varies with different people and different objectives, there are some core principles and practices I use in all of them.

One of the key meeting practices I use is establishing ground rules. Simply put, these are agreements that the team makes about how they will conduct themselves to ensure they stay focused, be productive, and achieve desired outcomes.

Here are five key ground rules focused on creating safety in the meeting, as safety is critical to addressing the real issues a team needs to discuss. Without these ground rules, a team is either likely to avoid the issues altogether, or if they do tackle them, they risk creating more issues than making progress.

1. The Vegas rule

The foundation of safety is knowing that what you say will be held in confidence. If you're worried that what you say could reach someone you don't expect or want, you'll quickly edit and limit what you say to protect yourself. Worse, if you assume confidentiality and it's broken, you'll likely never trust the person or situation again, killing open and honest communication.

Don't just assume confidentiality. At the start of every session I run with any team, we explicitly state the Vegas rule. We agree that what happens and is said in a meeting stays in the meeting. If anything comes up that someone needs to take outside of the meeting, they must get everyone's permission first.

2. Tackle issues, not people

While I want everyone to be nice and respectful, I also want them to address issues directly. I want them to lean into these topics and express what they think and feel. The challenge is if people make personal attacks or perceive things as personal attacks, then everyone will get defensive and likely counterattack and/or shut down.

The solution is to ensure people focus on the issue and don't make things personal. Comments and criticism should address the issues, behaviors, and dynamics, not the people. If something comes across as personal or someone takes something personally, we stop, reframe, and create safety until we can proceed productively.

3. Yes, and ...

Years ago, I took an improv workshop. While I didn't last long in doing comedy, I carried with me an idea that I've applied to the meetings I facilitate today. When doing an improv session with others, one of the foundational rules is not to contradict or negate the other partner's storyline. If someone says the sky is green, you don't correct them. You just build on it. This allows the scene to grow and evolve rather than fall flat.

In meetings, I have people remove "but," "however," "no," and "maybe" and have them use the phrase "yes, and ..." to start any response. Even if they are going to completely contradict the person, they just need to start with "yes, and ..." This keeps the conversation going and prevents things from shutting down and people clamming up. Give it a try.

4. Equal airtime

One key habit of the best teams is that everyone has a chance to speak, and everyone's voice is truly heard. Research shows that when everyone on the team speaks about the same amount of time during the meeting, team performance improves. Members regulated themselves from monopolizing the conversation and made a point of engaging and sharing their thoughts.

I encourage my teams to strive for an equal airtime policy. For some, this means they need to think about their point, be focused, and not ramble. For others, it's about speaking up, saying what they are thinking, and participating more in the discussion.

Generally, people know who is in which camp. If you want to get fancy, there are some fun apps and virtual meeting plugins that track talk time and will publish the data after the meeting. It's great feedback.

5. Enter the danger

Often, I find that teams want to avoid difficult and sensitive topics. Typically, they want to decrease friction or hard feelings. While keeping things pleasant is understandable, it usually leaves a team stuck and unable to improve. The issues that typically hold a team back are often complex and can come with some strong feelings. But avoiding them doesn't fix the problem.

By invoking "enter the danger," we agree not to shy away from difficult conversations or topics. I encourage members to check in with their gut. If something feels uncomfortable or gives someone a sinking feeling, it probably means we need to talk about it. By taking the risk and bringing it up, we create the opportunity for important issues to be discussed and resolved.

I have dozens of other ground rules I use in meetings to keep things focused and on topic, but these are the most important ones, and I always start with them. Without safety and ensuring we can really dig into the topics and issues that are holding a team back, we'll stay on the surface, and the team will remain stuck. If we want higher levels of performance, we need to dig deeper into the issues.

Budgeting Is a Critical but Rare Business Competency.

Planning projects and developing budgets are critical functions in all businesses. Don't wing it. Use this guide to help get the best outcome for you and your team.

Growing a business requires investment. To maximize the investment, good project planning and budgeting are essential. As a strategic business coach, I help companies formulate a clear strategy and identify the projects that need focus to drive growth. While many of the companies I work with have good project planning skills, budgeting often proves to be a challenge.

Here are seven steps to create a budget that is both accurate and useful.

1. Set clear success criteria.

The first thing is to establish a clear and objective set of success criteria for your project. Most teams miss this step and struggle to align themselves with a clear set of actions. This is because they all have a different vision for what they are trying to accomplish and different metrics that define success.

2. Determine an expected return on investment.

Every project should yield some form of return. This could be a direct financial return, but it could also be measured in other ways, such as increasing production capacity, expanding distribution reach, and developing intellectual property.

The point is to create a set of reasonably objective measures of return for the time, money, and energy you'll be putting into the project and to measure the results over time. This will allow you to monitor progress and make necessary adjustments.

3. Identify key risk factors.

Every project has risks involved. The only way to avoid risks is just to stay home and not try. The questions on each project are:

Have we uncovered all of the risks?

Can we manage and mitigate the risks?

How are we going to monitor risks to give us time to respond effectively?

Most projects fail not because they have a poor plan but because they fail to anticipate risks that could have been addressed and mitigated with some foresight.

4. Figure out major work efforts.

Once high-level goals, expected returns, and risks are identified, you can begin planning the work. Start with significant sections and phases. Find clear break points in the work streams and natural transition points in the process.

Begin to organize the work into smaller tasks and work plans using project management tools like Gantt charts and PERT--program evaluation and review technique--charts to figure out dependencies and the proper order of events.

5. Crowdsource work estimates.

Estimating may be the hardest part of a project; and often the part that is most poorly done. The only way to get a truly accurate estimate is to do the project a few times, collect data, and find averages and likely variations.

Given that this is impractical in most situations, you need to interpolate and extrapolate from other projects and experiences. One of the best ways to do this is to use real-time feedback from groups in a method called the wisdom of the crowds, an approach developed by James Surowiecki and described in his 2005 book by the same name. By independently collecting data from different people with different perspectives, you can analyze averages and spreads to gain a better understanding of the effort likely to be involved.

6. Calculate reasonable contingencies.

Rather than padding each task with extra time, estimate each task within an 80 percent confidence interval and then calculate your contingency at the overall project level. If you are highly confident in your estimates, you might only need a 10-20 percent contingency for the project.

If you're highly uncertain, you might need 100 percent or more in your budget. Dial it in based on complexity, risk, and familiarity with the tasks.

7. Set clear decision milestones.

Most project horror stories involved projects that have spiraled out of control and spent huge amounts of time and energy trying to save them. Eventually, they fail, necessitating a complete restart, often with a brand-new team. Instead, create clear decision points with progress requirements, and if you don't meet the milestone, stop the project and replan from the ground up.

Don't get caught in the sunk-cost fallacy and feel the pressure to keep going just because you've already spent time and energy. In complex, high-pressure situations, flip the process and assume you're canceling the project at each milestone and only continuing if all the milestone requirements are successfully met. It's better to lick your wounds and start over than bleed out on the field.

While there are all types of projects with their characteristics and challenges, these guidelines can ensure adherence to core best practices, increasing your chances of success. You'll run into issues and have setbacks, but great teams understand this part of the process and hit more base hits than strikeouts over time. You don't need to be perfect, you just need to be better than the competition.

5 Books on Sales Every Leader Should Read

If you want to grow and scale your business, you need to get sales working right. These five books will help.

When I founded my technology company, I thought I was brilliant at sales. I had closed several million-dollar deals at the company I worked at previously and was a rockstar. I figured it would be easy to find a few projects each month to feed the team we built and grow the business quickly.

I was wrong. I quickly began to struggle with finding good quality leads, and the leads I did find would stall and go dark or pull out at the last minute. The lack of sales quickly began to hinder the company’s growth, and I began to question my skills and value as a CEO.

I did what any effective business leader should do when they are stuck. I hired a coach. She helped me see that my problem was not my skills, my smarts, or my motivation; it was my strategy and process. To get effective and predictable sales, you need a system and a framework. Once I had these in place, there was no stopping us.

Here are five key books that I read early in that process that really changed the way I thought about sales and selling. If you’re looking to grow and scale your business and need more and better sales, I highly recommend these books.

1. To Sell is Human - by Dan Pink

I always start here. So many leaders say that they don’t like sales or that they don’t want to be perceived as a slimy salesperson. Boloney. Everyone sells to everyone every day of their lives. We just don’t always call it sales or think of it as selling. Get over it.

The sooner we realize and embrace that selling is a natural and fundamental process in our everyday lives, the sooner we can embrace the role and excel at it. Pink deconstructs our stereotypical notion of the pushy salesperson and shows selling is a natural and necessary skill for anyone, not just business people. He makes it approachable and palatable. Do I dare say, even honorable?

2. Challenger Sale - by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson

Matt and Brent break down what really works in sales organizations. Backed by real research and copious data, they looked at several different types of salespeople who drive performance in high-growth companies. What they find is a little surprising and counter-intuitive.

While individual performance will often go to the lone wolf salesperson who treks out into the world alone to stalk their prey and bring home the kill, the best sales organizations are made of challenger salespeople. These are the people who are consultative and help the client navigate the sales process.

The key is they are willing and able to challenge the prospect’s thinking and help consider new perspectives and criteria they may not have thought of initially. These challenger salespeople are not only highly effective, but they also work systematically using a process and tools that are repeatable and trainable. If you want to build a sales system and a sales team, this book is a must-read.

3. Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers - by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares

Not to be confused with the EOS book Traction, Weinberg and Mares outline the 19 key ways in which growth companies generate leads. This includes everything from SEO and SEM, tradeshows, affiliate programs, and gorilla marketing. It’s a useful and comprehensive list.

I have clients read through the strategies and evaluate them on three key criteria. First, what do you have content and materials for? Second, what do you like doing and are good at? And finally, which channels are your target customers likely to be using and open to a buying conversation? Find two or three that score well on all of these, and you’re off to the races with a few new lead-generation techniques.

4. New Sales. Simplified - by Mike Weinberg

Weinberg breaks down the complex and overwhelming process of selling into three basic steps. First, select the right targets. Second, create effective sales weapons. And third, plan an effective attack. While simple, most companies get these steps wrong. They fail to define their ideal targets. They create lackluster selling materials. And they go to market with a hope and a prayer, rather than a plan.

This book walks through all of these steps and gives tons of ideas and suggestions for how to make your sales process not only more effective but easier to build and manage. The goal here is to have a system you can use consistently and repeatedly to generate predictable revenues and scale your business. This book does it.

5. Spin Selling - by Neil Rackham

I read this book years ago when I first started my technology company. Until then, I sold based on rapport and luck. This book gave me a framework to think about the sales process and conversation and helped me understand the buying process and how I could structure it into a simple set of stages.

Rackham outlines the SPIN (Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff) approach and gives you clear and easy-to-remember queues for each stage. By making sure you’re working through the key questions, you will increase your chances of success and quickly kill leads that are not ready or not a fit for your solutions.

Sales is a natural and necessary skill for any business person. However, if your job is to find leads and close deals, you need to become an expert. These books are a great starting point and will give you the foundations for becoming a high-performance sales superstar.

3 Ways to Stop Procrastination and Be More Productive

The key to getting important tasks done is developing effective strategies for getting started.

My role as a strategic coach is to help organizations figure out how they're going to scale more effectively and more efficiently. One of my primary focuses is helping the senior executives in becoming more productive and enabling them to accomplish more strategic work on top of their day-to-day responsibilities.

As a company grows, the complexity and number of tasks increase exponentially. Without a strategy and a clear plan, most leaders get bogged down on the never-ending list of urgent items. If you don't make time for strategic work, it will never get done and the company will never scale.

One of the challenges of strategic work is that oftentimes, the tasks are big and complicated. In these cases, many executives find themselves in analysis paralysis and end up just deferring to the urgent tasks of day-to-day work.

The best way to overcome this roadblock is to have effective strategies for getting started on the work even if it seems daunting and overwhelming at first. Here are some of the ways that I find highly successful leaders make quick initial progress on strategic work.

1. Find simple first steps

One of the best things you can do when trying to get started on complicated work is to figure out a simple first task that will get you started. By breaking things down into small steps and figuring out one first step you can make that will give you traction, you will begin the process of building momentum.

Much like lean/agile product development, the goal is to figure out the smallest and simplest thing you can do to gain knowledge, information, and test out your assumptions. Once you begin the feedback flywheel, you'll quickly see new paths and be able to map out how you'll achieve success.

2. Create time boxes

As a writer, I know that writer's block is a real challenge and can be difficult to overcome. One of the most effective strategies is to commit to a fixed amount of time to just sit and write anything that comes to mind. By focusing on making a time commitment and not worrying about exactly what you're trying to accomplish, you can free up your mind and let your thoughts flow.

The same principleis true with complicated projects. By just setting aside 30 minutes and sitting down to think about the project tasks, they will start to reveal themselves and you can start working. The key to the strategy is setting up the right context and making sure your space is distraction-free so you can really sit down and think about what needs to get done.

3. Talk it through

One of my roles as a coach is to serve as a sounding board. In my work with executives, I often just let them talk through what they're thinking and the strategies they're considering. Often I don't even have to say anything; by just letting them talk they will begin to organize their thoughts and clarify their strategies.

If you're feeling stuck, find someone who's a good listener, and just talk them through what you're trying to do, what your goals are, and how you're thinking of approaching it. They don't need to be knowledgeable about the situation or the project, they just need to be good at asking clarifying questions and checking your rationale. In fact, you don't even need a real person, sometimes just talking to yourself or an inanimate object will give you the space you need to organize your thoughts.

Regardless of the strategy you use to get going once you get started on something, it's much easier to keep the momentum. Oftentimes, you just need to break through that first step to set everything into motion.

High-performance teams are built on trust. Here are 5 key techniques to increase yours

High-performance teams are built on trust. Here's how to earn more and increase production.

As a strategic coach, my job is to help senior teams develop a clear plan for creating a differentiated market position that will drive profitable growth and build leadership capacity for execution. And having worked with dozens of teams across multiple industries, I’ve discovered many common challenges that all companies face.

At the top of the list is a lack of trust in leadership. This can show up as apathy toward objectives, a lack of commitments or accountability, politics, and personal agenda, or even outright hostility and conflict. Left unaddressed, these will undermine team performance and create animosity.

Here are five things you can focus on to address the issues head-on and build trust. The sooner and more directly you tackle these issues, the sooner you’ll see better results and avoid bigger problems.

1. Get to know each other

The foundation of any high-performance team is the web of individual relationships. A team made up of individuals who know each other as people, appreciate their unique strengths and weaknesses, and know about each other's personal histories and lived experiences will have the connective tissue in place to weather any storm. Teams of people who see each other merely as co-workers, or worse: competitors, will never reach their full potential.

I start all of my strategy and planning meetings with team exercises. These are specifically designed to take members out of their normal day-to-day roles and force them to interact in new and different ways. The goal with all of these is to create common bonds and appreciation that can be taken into strategic exercises and day-to-day operating interactions.

2. Create psychological safety

Fear kills culture. If an individual on a team is worried that what they do or say will be dismissed, judged, or retaliated against, they will not only resist openly sharing their ideas and opinions, they will resort to engaging in these same destructive behaviors. This creates a vicious cycle that can be difficult to reverse.

A high-performance team will have a clear set of ground rules that set basic working agreements for creating a safe and open space for sharing ideas and opinions. Making sure that conversations are confidential, agreeing not to engage in personal attacks, and making sure everyone has a chance to be heard are core to any team’s list.

3. Clarify business and team priorities

One of the key things I do as a strategic coach is to help teams clarify their purpose and their biggest goals. Often I find that teams are struggling to align and work well together because they lack a common vision for the future and a clear set of shared priorities. If people are pulling in different directions, it doesn’t matter how hard they try–they won’t get far.

Alignment starts with a clear articulation of the company, team purpose, and BHAG (big hairy audacious goal), followed by a well-defined set of cascading objectives and key results for getting there. These may be vague at first, but through an iterative process of exploration and refinement, the team will build a common vision and plan for execution.

4. Practice working through conflict

Oftentimes when I start working with teams, I actually focus on increasing the amount of conflict on the team rather than decreasing it. Teams often play too nicely. They avoid difficult questions and tough conversations. But until they get these critical topics on the table and start engaging with them, these teams will stay stuck.

Sometimes the topics are too big and complicated for the team’s current skill levels. In these cases, we can use exercises and tackle smaller topics while learning and practicing how to approach the bigger issues, framing them effectively for discussion, creating a safe and effective space, engaging in constructive debate, developing creative solutions, reaching compromises, and committing to actions.

5. Actively appreciate each other

Taking the time to give each other feedback is a core habit on all successful teams I’ve been part of and that I’ve coached. It not only feels good to hear what others appreciate about what you do and the value you create, it reinforces the behaviors and actions that drive impact.

At the end of each planning session I facilitate, I run an exercise where each person gives everybody else two key pieces of specific feedback. The key to both of these is to be specific with the behavior and the impact and to avoid pleasantries and niceties that are not actionable.

Through this exercise, everyone gets their feedback and basks in the glory of the wonderful things they are doing. They understand what they need to keep doing, and what they need to do differently. The point is for them to choose and commit to personal improvement.

Building trust is a function of understanding, respect, and safety. Without these, a team will struggle and deliver subpar results. And while these take time, the right focus and exercises can accelerate the trust-building process while minimizing the drama.

5 Things That Need to be on Every CEO’s Role Scorecard

Everyone in your company needs a role scorecard, even the CEO. Here are five things that every CEO needs to be measured on.

As a strategic leadership coach, I spend the majority of my days running strategy and planning sessions and coaching executives on performance and leadership skills. Every leadership team I work with has a focus on commitment and accountability. It’s the lifeblood of high-performing teams.

One of the key tools I use to create clarity around performance management is the role scorecard. I keep it simple and focus on the 8-12 key activities and results that each role in the company needs to execute well on to be successful. This applied to everyone. Even the CEO.

While there are many things that need to go on a CEO’s role scorecard, here are the five I generally make sure are on the scorecard of every CEO I coach.

1. Leadership team performance

The first thing I focus on with CEOs is the design and effectiveness of their leadership team. If they haven’t surrounded themselves with the right people doing the right things, the company won’t get very far. CEOs need to make sure they have crafted the proper set of roles with clear performance criteria. The right design and role details will be a function of the business strategy and the nature of the CEO and their strengths and weaknesses, so this will be unique for each situation.

The way that I put this on the CEO’s role scorecard is to average the role scorecard performance for their team. This requires them to make sure they have a clear role scorecard for each of their leadership team members with clear success criteria. The CEO is then scored on how well their team is doing. Generally, I give the CEO a green if 80% of their team is generally green on their scorecards and they have no reds on the team (individuals who are really struggling to perform).

2. Strategic planning effectiveness

One of the primary jobs of every CEO is to drive the strategic planning process and ensure that the company has defined an effective differentiated strategy and communicated across the company. A good strategy is key to business growth and success, and nobody is better positioned to do this than the CEO.

Generally, I focus on three things. One is making sure there is a strategic planning process in place that is being followed consistently. This includes the right set of meeting rhythms and planning documents and data sets.

Second is making sure that the strategy is implemented across the company. Here I’m looking for evidence that the strategic priorities are driving team and individual quarterly priorities and that operational decisions are considering and responding to strategic decisions.

Finally, I’m looking for market effectiveness. Basically, does the company have a well-differentiated position in the market that allows them to sell effectively and price their products/services at a premium level.

3. Talent development

Finding and retaining talent is crucial to every business, but doubly so for a company in growth mode. If you can’t identify talent needs quickly, find good candidates, hire quickly, onboard effectively, and develop and retain your people, you’ll struggle and likely not get very far.

As CEO, you should be on the lookout for senior talent that you need now or in the future. Develop relationships and connections that you can nurture over time. When you meet someone you think is a good cultural fit and has the skills/experience you’ll need in the future, make a note and maintain a relationship with that person.

4. Financial management

Managing cash and deploying capital effectively are the two key financial responsibilities of the CEO. Even if you have a strong financial lead on your leadership team, you need to know these two things intimately. Take your eye off this ball, and bad things will happen.

Managing cash is managing your business's oxygen. Without it, you’ll die a quick and painful death. Make sure you know what your operating cash requirements are and have a good handle on incoming revenues and any accounts receivable issues.

Deploying capital is your second key financial priority. Knowing where you’re spending your limited resources and making sure you’re investing in the right areas of the business can be the difference between making the Inc 500 list several years in a row and burning through your hard-earned profits with nothing to show for it.

5. Company culture

Finally, every CEO needs to be driving company culture. This doesn’t mean you need to get into the dunk tank at your next company retreat, but you do need to have systems in place for measuring culture and reinforcing core values and standards.

One of the best things to do is catch people doing the right thing and publicly acknowledge them. Be specific and clear. A strong culture will attract the right employees and clients while also repelling the wrong employees and clients.

While there are many other things I will put on role scorecards for CEOs, these go on just about every single one. Not having these on a scorecard means that those less skilled and more poorly positioned will have to focus on them instead, or worse: nobody is doing them, which will lead to problems quickly and with far-reaching consequences.

5 Ways To Increase the Value and Get a Premium Price for Your Company

Before you think about selling your company, make sure you implement these five key strategies.

The best time to start planning for your exit is before you start your company. The second best time to start planning is now. Every leader I’ve worked with who has been through the process of selling their business wishes they had started much sooner. Even in my own exit, I wish I had done several things months or even years prior.

And while it’s true that planning ahead can save a lot of time and headaches, it’s never too late to start working on things that will increase the value of your business and make the selling process easier and faster for you in the future. Here are five key areas to focus on that will make a real and significant impact on the terms of your sale.

1. Make yourself redundant

Nobody wants to buy a business that can’t run on its own. If you’re critical to multiple aspects of the business that couldn’t run without you, it’s not going to be attractive to a buyer. The best case is that you’ll be stuck with a long and highly restrictive earn-out period where you’ll still be working hard on a business you no longer own.

Start by looking at the key functions of the business and the activities that put cash in the bank. For each part that you play in these critical functions, start putting processes and systems in place to do that work. If need be, hire people that can take over these tasks and get you out of the critical path. Make it easy for a new owner to replace these roles if people leave.

2. Remove key customer risk

If 50% of your revenue comes from one customer and they happen to be your college roommate, you’re in trouble. A new owner is going to be at risk of losing that account after a sale and will likely discount your valuation significantly to offset that risk. Ideally, you want to have no one customer make up more than 10% of your total revenue, and lower is better. If you can’t lower the percentage, make sure you have bulletproof long-term contracts and a pristine relationship with them.

3. Have a differentiated strategy

Strategy is too often overlooked when it comes to valuation. If you’re just like everyone else and only really compete on price, there is no real advantage for a buyer to purchase you over your competitor. If you’re selling a commodity, then your business is a commodity, and your valuation will reflect it.

However, if you have a unique and differentiated position in your market, then you become much more valuable for a new buyer who wants to grow and scale the business. Having key capabilities that are difficult for competitors to copy will mean that people will pay you more for your business. Identify and invest in systems, tools, and technology prior to starting the sales process.

4. Systemize your processes

You might pride yourself on being customer-focused by finding new and innovative solutions for each and every new customer. However, this flexibility will hurt your valuation. A buyer wants to own a money-making machine. That means you need a straightforward way to develop leads, sell your products/services, deliver them consistently with high quality, and collect money quickly to put it in the bank.

Bespoke services and one-off solutions don’t scale, and they can’t be optimized for profits. Define precisely what you do for whom and focus on creating a defined and repeatable product or service. This will simplify everything: what you sell, how you sell, who to sell to, how you deliver, who you need to hire, etc. Don’t let “innovation” be an excuse for not being disciplined.

5. Deliver consistently

Nothing gives a buyer confidence like consistent results over time. If you can show that you’ve defined your strategy, set reasonable targets, executed consistently, and delivered revenue and profits effectively month-over-month, you can almost name your price. On the other hand, missing targets and erratic results will make a buyer think twice and will undoubtedly reduce what they are willing to offer you.

While there are many factors that go into the terms of a business sale, these are some of the key ones. More importantly, these are some of the ones you can control as an operator that will increase your valuation. Every sale is different, but the fundamentals don’t change much. Focus on these to give yourself the best shot at a lucrative exit.

5 Execution Mistakes That Challenge Most Leadership Teams

If you want to grow and scale your business quickly, avoid these five execution mistakes that trip up many leadership teams.

Having been an Inc 500 CEO and now a strategy coach to dozens of growth companies, I’ve seen what it takes for successful companies to grow and scale a business quickly and effectively…and many of the ways companies can fail. And while every company is in a unique situation and requires a unique strategy, there are some common core principles.

At the heart of any business is a leadership team. They set strategy, make decisions, evaluate trade-offs, calculate risks, and place bets on how to win in their market. The best teams are critical strategic thinkers, but they are also masters of execution. Putting plans into action and successfully navigating the fog of the day-to-day business is where the hard work is done.

I’ve seen many teams create innovative and brilliant approaches to winning in their market, only to flop on putting their plans in place. Here are five key areas I see teams getting wrong, and how to avoid them in your business.

1. Lacking a clear strategy

Driving your car as fast as you can into a brick wall doesn’t make much sense. Yet I’ve seen many teams driving—spending vast amounts of time, energy, and resources—into a business model that doesn’t make sense and has no clear differentiated position in the market. Without a clear understanding of what customers really want, what the competitive landscape looks like, and where the unique position is that will drive profitable growth, you’re likely going to have to compete on price, which is a bloody and painful war to try and win.

Instead, take the time and effort to really understand your customers and the competitive landscape. Find a set of attributes that will set you apart from the crowd and allow you to charge a premium price. Then, focus your operational processes and talent strategies on becoming excellent in a handful of values that truly differentiate you in the market.

2. Poorly defined roles and responsibilities

I run an exercise with all new timers where I ask them: who owns what? I have them work individually or in small groups, and when we come back to the table, there are always vast differences on what the roles are and who is in charge of what area of the business. Different names, multiple names, no names, and wrong names all reveal the underlying lack of role definition and clarity on ownership. This leads to duplicated efforts, conflicts, and dropped balls.

By carefully designing the senior leadership roles and clearly mapping out areas of responsibility and handoff points between functions, we create an effective map for everyone to follow. Assigning responsibilities to one and only one owner makes accountability much easier to manage and resolve. Everyone knows what they need to focus on and where they can depend on a colleague to execute. And as the business evolves, so can the roles evolve in a clear and comprehensive manner.

3. Unclear metrics and targets

Every game needs a goal and a way of keeping score. Yet most companies haven’t defined their desired success in objective terms and measurements. Most of the time when I ask teams to define success, I get vague statements about being a great place to work, making an impact, or having happy customers. And while these are great things to strive for, without an objective measure of what “great” or “impact” or “happy” really mean, everyone is left guessing and will likely be working toward different goals.

By defining success in clear and specific terms and using key metrics to measure progress, we create a means of evaluating actions and results that anyone on the team can use to guide their efforts. Knowing that freemium conversion rates, on-time delivery percentage, and project gross margins are key areas of focus will make decisions easier and faster to make. A business that has defined and agreed on its key metrics will have few arguments on which strategies and actions are working, which are not, and where to invest in the future.

4. No meeting rhythms

It’s great to set goals and make plans, but if you put them on the shelf only to look at them at the end of the quarter, you’ll never make any progress. Many teams I’ve met with do a great job of setting objectives, but they fail to put in the weekly reps to do the actual work and measure progress.

Running a high-growth company means there are always a thousand things to do and never enough time to get everything done. But if you want to be strategic, you must set aside time to meet and do the actual work. The best teams have a set schedule for meetings and dedicated time to work on strategy. It’s in their calendars, they have a clear and effective agenda, and they show up on time and prepared. Execution is about discipline and being proactive, not reactive.

5. Lack of leadership accountability

Many times when I work with companies, I have to increase the level of conflict on the leadership team. In an effort to be nice and be a good team player, teams shy away from disagreements and different opinions. The problem is that they’ve created a situation that lacks true buy-in and commitment which will then make it impossible to create a culture of accountability. Trying to be nice leads to nobody being held to task.

High-performance teams are engaged in lots of constructive conflicts. This doesn’t mean they fight; rather, they are willing to express different opinions, are critical of strategies and plans, and are willing to challenge each other to get to better ideas that are highly resolved. By really voicing their minds, it means they can truly embrace the conclusion and plans. This drives commitment and accountability. Without this rigorous debate, you’ll never get to higher levels of performance.

While mastering these five areas will not guarantee flawless execution, failing to master them will make it very likely you won’t. In the end, teams need to have both a clear strategic plan AND the ability to put it into action effectively.

The Best Peer Groups Allow for Deep Sharing and Learning by Embracing These 5 Habits

The best peer groups allow leaders to share challenges and get unvarnished feedback.

As a strategic business coach who’s worked with dozens of companies and hundreds of CEOs and business executives, I’ve seen the power that peer groups can have on professional development and leadership effectiveness. I’ve also run dozens of mastermind and peer groups and know firsthand what it takes for a peer group to be effective and impactful.

While every group is different in its focus and format, the best groups share a common set of values and habits. These values and habits allow members of the group to share deeply, provide important and meaningful insight about themselves and their situations, and create a context that fosters support and learning.

Here are the top five that I’ve seen which drive the most worth. If you’re in a peer group or thinking of joining one, consider how well you and your fellow members embrace these practices.

1. Show up and do the work

The first thing you need to do is show up, both physically and mentally. This means arriving with energy and focus, not tired and bedraggled. Get a good night’s sleep, work out, eat well, etc. Doing so will ensure that you’re able to pay attention and contribute to your utmost ability.

You also need to show up mentally. Rushing into these types of meetings from the office or a meeting with clients doesn’t give you the time and space you need to decompress and clear your mind. Take some time before your peer group meeting to relax and make the mental shift.

If you’re still processing a difficult conversation or your mind is racing from all of the follow-up items from your previous meetings, you won’t have the mindset to engage properly with your peers and the discussion topics.

2. Be vulnerable

The point of a true peer group is to get open honest feedback on your most pressing challenges and most important decisions. If you aren’t able or willing to really put everything on the table, your peers won’t be able to give you the input you need.

Obviously, this isn’t easy. Oftentimes, our biggest challenges stem from personal weakness, fears, and previous poor decisions. Admitting that we’re flawed and have internal shortcomings is not easy, but it’s the key to growth and development.

One of my favorite quotes from Brené Brown, the Harvard Business School expert on vulnerability, is “vulnerability is [seen as] courage in other people, but weakness in ourselves”

3. Speak from experience

If you’ve been part of organizations like the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) or Young Presidents' Organization (YPO) you know they follow something called Gestalt Protocol. This ground rule says that you can’t give other members advice. Instead, you are encouraged to share the learning experience that you’d had that relates to the person’s situation. While this can be a little awkward, it’s a great way to keep the conversation open and safe for everyone involved. This approach is great for any peer-group program.

By sharing experiences rather than telling people what they should do, you avoid making people defensive and keep them from feeling judged by fellow members. You also keep the person in control of their decisions and outcomes since they get to decide what to take away from your story. For everyone else in the group, they get to hear your learning and wisdom and can apply it to their own situations and challenges.

4. Give before you take

Too often I see people join these types of groups expecting immediate benefits and value. And while you will often get new insights quickly, you need to appreciate that it takes time for the group to develop and for people to get to know each other. When I run mastermind and peer groups, I tell everyone that they need to expect to be giving to the group before they can expect anything in return.

In fact, the more you focus on giving early on and without expectations, the sooner you’ll inspire others to give in return. And while there are no guarantees, giving generously and early will speed up the process. f you don’t get anything in return after a reasonable effort, then it might not be the group for you. In which case, it’s better to know sooner rather than later.

5. Practice gratitude

I find that these types of groups tell you what you need to hear, but not always what you want to hear. It can be hard to realize that your challenges stem from your own flawed thinking, ineffective skills, and inexperience. And while you might not like the feedback you’re getting, you need to welcome it and appreciate it. Practicing gratitude for everything you’re getting from the group will keep the lines of communication open and insight flowing.

Masterminds and peer groups are a unique and highly effective way to develop your leadership skills and business strategy. However, they can vary and present different experiences for many. Keeping these five key habits in mind will help both you and the others in your group in adding to and gaining value from the experience.