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Today’s episode shares some key concepts in the third step of the 12 step Growability model, The 5 Key Areas of Business Management.
Podcast Transcript
Joshua MacLeod:
More often than not, it’s the leader that says, “I’m going to go change the world, but I don’t want to put in the necessary work to actually know how to balance my checkbook. I’m going to go change the world, but somebody else is going to have to set up my books and run that piece.” And I would say, “No, that’s not a good idea.”
Podcast Announcer:
Welcome to the Growability podcast, your home for leadership, management, and marketing education, where we teach business and nonprofit leaders the necessary habits to make your organization thrive. Today’s episode shares some key concepts in the third step of the 12 Step Growability model, how to understand your business season. Here are your hosts, Joshua MacLeod, and Bernie Anderson.
Bernie Anderson:
There are a lot of organizations that help teach businesses, business owners, business principles. We do that as well at Growability.
Joshua MacLeod:
Yeah.
Bernie Anderson:
What makes Growability different from a Chamber of Commerce or an entrepreneur center or a startup incubator? What makes us different from those kinds of organizations?
Joshua MacLeod:
That’s a really great question. When I started a business, I was looking at all of these options to help me grow my business. Like, “Okay, I’m going to go to the community college, get an MBA program, or I’m going to join an incubator, or I’m going to join an entrepreneur center, or I’m going to go down to my local Chamber of Commerce.” When I started just looking at sort of the function of all of these different things, it really hit me that most of these organizations are not structured to help an organization over the long haul of the organization. That most of these organizations are structured for helping to provide a little bit of help depending on where you’re at as an organization.
Joshua MacLeod:
So I’ll give you an example. Who pays for the entrepreneur center? Entrepreneur centers are great and they’re mostly funded by charitable donations. Well, where do the charitable donations come from? Well, the charitable donations come from organizations that acquire startups. So now think about that for a second. So here you got an entrepreneur center that’s funded by all of these organizations that acquire startups. What’s the primary thing that you learn at an entrepreneur center is how to pitch your organization to venture capital companies.
Bernie Anderson:
Right. Right.
Joshua MacLeod:
So what happens is if I go to the entrepreneur center, I get really, really well trained in the startup mode. So I get really well trained how to define my market, the mission of the organization, how to look at all of the resources that I have and get more resources by getting venture capital. But what they’re not really great at is they’re not really great at helping you transition from startup to growth, from growth to maturity, from maturity to decline and renewal. So with Growability, one of the things that we want to help businesses through is not just launching up into the air so that you can sell your business to somebody else. We want to help you launch your business so that you can reach it’s full potential, and if you’re going to sell it, sell it at the top of the curve, not at the very bottom of the curve.
Joshua MacLeod:
Chambers of Commerces are really great in communities. But I started thinking like, who pays for Chambers of Commerces? The businesses that already exist in the community pay for Chambers of Commerces. There’s a sense in which if you don’t invest in your Chamber of Commerce, you’re not being a good citizen, but then I’m like, “This feels like a tax.” Like if I go to the Chamber of Commerce events, a lot of times it’s like, “Hey, here’s a bunch of bankers and here’s a bunch of realtors and here’s a bunch of banks and here’s some marketing companies,” and things like that, and so what ends up happening is, is that the business connections are only super helpful to a select group of people.
Joshua MacLeod:
When I want to go to a place, I want to go to a place where the people are just like me. And so sometimes at a Chamber of Commerce, that’s what you’re going to get. You’re going to get people that are just like you, but more often than not, there are a bunch of people that it’s kind of more like a networking event and I’m trying to just get you to buy my product instead of I’m going there to just learn. So when I started Growability, I was like, “Hey, we’ve got to do everything that we can to connect people who are in similar situations, but they’re not there to get customers. They’re there to learn.” So it’s not so much about the connections, but it’s really more focused on the education.
Joshua MacLeod:
The MBA programs are really helpful if you have an extra 80 grand laying around.
Bernie Anderson:
As we all do.
Joshua MacLeod:
And several thousand hours just, “Hey, I’m going to go get my MBA.”
Bernie Anderson:
Right.
Joshua MacLeod:
The challenge with an MBA program is if you’re going to have your MBA, then you’re going to really go work for a company that would need an MBA educated person and most small businesses don’t. So if I am not going to be doing a ton of strategic finance, and if I’m not going to be working with McKenzie, or I’m not going to be on the C-suite of some major corporation, but I actually want to start my own business, run my business, be in a community, make a difference, it’s probably not a great idea to get an MBA. It would be a 10th of the cost and a 10th of the time investment to go through a Growability collaborative or hire a Growability coach and you’ll get the level of education that you need to run your business with a whole toolkit.
Joshua MacLeod:
So I think there’s a lot of differences between the way that Growability is structured and kind of how we’re structured, the way that we’re structured. Entrepreneurs need a comprehensive help.
Bernie Anderson:
That’s right.
Joshua MacLeod:
Throughout their startup phase, their growth phase, their maturity phase, and then their decline and renewal phase. And I think our tools are really designed for each of those stages. If you walk with us, we can walk with you all the way through all of them. If you don’t walk with us, you still need to know the fundamentals of startup growth, maturity, and decline and renewal, because you’re going to go through them anyway.
Bernie Anderson:
That’s right.
Joshua MacLeod:
So that’s where we’re trying to prepare people with that kind of holistic education that goes all the way through.
Bernie Anderson:
A lot of times, people who start businesses, kind of like we talked before, start with that passion thing. I’m really like, “I have this vision for this thing that I want to do.” Oftentimes I’ve found, especially because a lot of my work again is in the nonprofit space, I feel like that vision is sort of huge. “We’re going to change the world by starting this nonprofit that’s going to end world hunger or going to provide water for everybody in the world or whatever.” And so a lot of leaders end up talking about their vision, and what I find is they don’t know how to do the other things besides talk about their vision.
Joshua MacLeod:
Yeah.
Bernie Anderson:
So could you just walk us through maybe what are some of the other aspects that people who are running a business or who are leading a nonprofit, they need to do more than just think about the vision all the time.
Joshua MacLeod:
Absolutely.
Bernie Anderson:
What are the other things they need to know how to do or have a team that knows how to do?
Joshua MacLeod:
There are five key areas of organizational management. Those five key areas for running any organization are leadership, resource management, teamwork, operations, and marketing. If I want to start a business, or if I want to run a business or I’m going to take over a business, or I’m going to start managing a business, I’ve got to look at, “Okay, how healthy is our organization in leadership? How healthy is our organization in resource management? How healthy is our organization in teamwork? How healthy is our organization in operations? How healthy is our organization in marketing?” If I want to go change the world, that’s the leadership question. What’s the positive change that can be? What’s my acorn. What am I going to do? How am I going to go make a difference? But there’s a huge difference between, “I’m going to go change the world and I have a $100 or I’m going to go change the world and I have $100 million.”
Joshua MacLeod:
So the resource is the first filter that you have to go through as a leader. I’m going to go change the world and I’m incredibly talented, or I’m going to go change the world and I’m not talented. I’m going to go change the world and I have an extra five minutes a week, or I’m going to go change the world and I have an extra 50 hours a week. All of these things make a difference. The first thing I’ve got to filter through is my resource management. More often than not, it’s the leader that says, “I’m going to go change the world, but I don’t want to put in the necessary work to actually know how to balance my checkbook. I’m going to go change the world, but somebody else is going to have to set up my books and run that piece.” And I will say, “No, that’s not a good idea.”
Bernie Anderson:
Right. Right.
Joshua MacLeod:
If you’re going to go change the world, first learn how to balance your checkbook.
Bernie Anderson:
Right.
Joshua MacLeod:
Once I look at that, the most important resource in any organization is the team. How healthy is my team? What’s going on in our teamwork as an organization? Then I need to look at my systems. What is the way that we balance the checkbook? What’s the way that we post on social media? What’s the way that we do the creation, production, and distribution of our product or service? And then all of that creates stories that I then bring out to the market. So now I’m looking at marketing.
Joshua MacLeod:
In an organization, there’s this continual circle of leadership filters through the resource, the most important resource is the team, the combination of leadership, resource, and team is the operations, this is how we do what we do, that creates stories that I then market that grows our resource. And then leadership filters through the resource, the most important resource is the team, a combination of that is the operation, that creates new stories that we then market, a now our leadership has a new consideration. So there’s this continual cycle.
Joshua MacLeod:
But as an organization, if I’m even going to think about running an organization, starting an organization, who’s going to lead it? How are we going to manage our resources? Who’s going to be on the team? How are we going to build our systems and processes? And how are we going to market this thing? Where are we going to get this out? That’s a lot of what you learn through going through a Growability collaborative, is to focus on those things.
Bernie Anderson:
Yeah, one of the most important tools that we have is the Growability score.
Joshua MacLeod:
Yes.
Bernie Anderson:
That helps leaders to understand where it is that they are not completing the circle.
Joshua MacLeod:
Yeah.
Bernie Anderson:
I mean you kind of demonstrated that circle. And I think a lot of times people, organizations, leaders, will get around are they’re getting stuck somewhere in that circle. Like our teamwork, that it may be resource management. It could be as early as that, it may be somewhere at the marketing stage of things or operations. But so many people are getting stuck somewhere. And the problem is, is they don’t know where they’re getting stuck and I’m like, “We’re not able to complete the thing.” And I think that’s one of the most powerful things that we provide to business owners and to nonprofit leaders and to anybody leading an organization is a tool to evaluate and assess, “Aha, this is where I’m getting stuck.”
Joshua MacLeod:
Yes.
Bernie Anderson:
And we do that through our Growability score process, which I think is a really incredibly value tool for those leaders.
Joshua MacLeod:
When you start a business, you have no concept of all of that.
Bernie Anderson:
That’s right.
Joshua MacLeod:
So that’s why I’m saying, if you’re not already fascinated with working on the business, building strategic health in the leadership and the resource management, the teamwork and the operations and the marketing, then it really is better to go join somebody that is super fascinated with that who wants to spend their life building those things, because otherwise you’re just going to be frustrated. Not everybody is cut out for kind of strategic and organizational management. There’s a ton of leadership that is really more about just accomplishing specific tasks and not balancing and managing all of the tasks. Entrepreneurs, leaders of organizations, really have to continually improve the processes, the systems, the teamwork, the resource management, the goal setting in the organization.
Bernie Anderson:
Right.
Joshua MacLeod:
And that’s what we do. We help those leaders to do that.
Bernie Anderson:
Yep. I am starting first thing tomorrow morning a brand new online collaborative and we’re going to begin talking about some of these very things. So I’m always excited to kind of see those light bulb moments with leaders who have spent maybe even years struggling with their vision outpacing their capacity to administrate and not really knowing how to define that.
Joshua MacLeod:
Yeah.
Bernie Anderson:
And so when those leaders all of a sudden realize that, one, I can actually do that. I don’t have to live this way.
Joshua MacLeod:
Right.
Bernie Anderson:
And two it’s, I can learn how to do this. I can learn how to defer things. I can learn how to delegate some of this to people who have capacities in this area. All of a sudden their organization begins to flourish. And we love it when that happens. Right?
Joshua MacLeod:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So on that, Bernie, for all of those leaders, what are you going to say to those people?
Bernie Anderson:
I’m going to say that you are doing better than you think, and you have more potential than you know, and that you will grow with us when you grow with Growability. Have a great one, Joshua, we’ll see you later.
Joshua MacLeod:
Thanks Bernie.
Bernie Anderson:
Bye.
Podcast Announcer:
Thank you for listening to the Growability podcast. The mission of Growability is to equip leaders to flourish in their life and work by developing vision, rhythm, and community. To discover the necessary habits to make your organization thrive, visit growability.com and speak with a certified Growability coach. Joshua and Bernie are also available for speaking engagements, workshops, and conferences. Subscribing to this podcast helps Growability equip leaders throughout the world and we appreciate your support. Please consider sponsoring an episode or sharing with a friend.