EP2 – The Growability Model Overview

This episode continues a conversation with the hosts of our show, Joshua MacLeod and Bernie Anderson. As they talk about the fundamentals of growing at a healthy organization.

Podcast Transcript

Joshua MacLeod:
The biggest challenge in business is people don’t know the right question to ask. Yeah. And without knowing the right question to ask, you could spend literally 10 years down the wrong road because you didn’t ask the right question at the beginning.

Podcast Announcer:
Welcome to the Growability podcast, teaching business owners and nonprofit leaders, a more excellent way to run their business. This episode continues a conversation with the host of our show, Joshua MacLeod and Bernie Anderson. As they talk about the fundamentals of growing at healthy organization,

Bernie Anderson:
What do you foresee Josh was being kind of the content, what we’re going to talk about here on the live stream. And we’ll talk about the podcast.

Joshua MacLeod:
The Growability model really started by thinking about an organization that’s organic and every business is organic. Things change and you have to adapt and you have to build health. And so using the analogy of growing a tree from start to finish has kind of become the guide for growability when we teach it in our collaboratives and when we teach even clients in consulting engagements. So the first thing about a tree is a seed. And we’ll ask the question, “What’s your acorn?” So if I take an acorn, that’s this big and plant that thing in the right soil, it will grow a tree that is 80 feet tall and 80 feet wide and produce 15 million new acorns so that the acorn is about establishing vision. So I think a lot of our episodes will be about vision. How do I get vision?

Joshua MacLeod:
You know, one of our topics that we were planning was, how to create goals in uncertain time and things like that. So we’ll have, we’ll have topics like that. The soil to follow in the analogy that if I’ve got this acorn, the soil is your customer. Where’s that vision going to grow healthy. I can have the best acorn in the world, but if it sits on a table, it’s never going to produce anything. I’ve got to have it in the soil. So it will produce a tree understanding my target audience, my stakeholders, my customers, that’s like the soil to any business or nonprofit. Then I’ve got ask this question about what season am I in? And I think one of the biggest mistakes that business owners may is they read a book and they think that it’s immediately appliable. When in fact it will be appliable in like 10 years, once you establish XYZ or an ABC, there’s things that startup organizations should do.

Joshua MacLeod:
There are things that growth organizations that should do. And so we use that analogy of the seasons. What’s your spring. This is your startup. What’s your summer. This is your growth. What’s your fall. This is your maturity season. And then what’s your winter. This is your decline or renewal. So I think we’ll have episodes about that. The water if I have the best seed and the best soil and it’s the right season, but it don’t rain. It’s not going to help. So water is like your team, and so I think a lot of our episodes will focus around how to build healthy teamwork, how to encourage your team, the fifth, I’m going down my list here. You know, I got plenty of rain. I need a trunk. So a trunk sort of adds stability to the entire organization and in a business or a nonprofit, your trunk is your budget. You know, having a, a good budget where you can set goals that you can actually accomplish is really important. I love to demystify financial and accounting and budget. And like everybody hates budget because basically financial people suck at sharing, uh, financial information in a way that’s not confusing. So I love to demystify financial things we make, we make finances fun again.

Joshua MacLeod:
It’s so fun. The next, if you think about this tree is as it’s growing and as it’s establishing, it’s your roots. So your roots kind of dig down deep and it’s really those deep roots that allow your tree to stay up in a storm. Roots is like your community. Who’s holding you up and your customers are a huge part of your community. You know, who’s buying what you’re selling, right? So I think we’re going to talk about developing community. The gardener has to come along and prune this thing, we just pruned the apple tree and the neighbor’s yard. That thing is so beautiful now. And it was such a hot mess, but it’s actually going to produce apples now because we trimmed it out. So I think a lot of times we’re going to talk about how you trim all of the schluff out of your organization.

Joshua MacLeod:
And schluff is the official word, by the way, for trimming, then we’re going to talk about branches. So this tree grows out. Some branches are healthy, some branches are unhealthy, some branches, a lot of times people want to start a branch to their business. That actually should be its own tree. So we’re going to talk about how to streamline systems and make sure that your branches are all connected to that trunk and to your customer and to the water. Then we’ve got leaves. Leaves are how you transfer energy into fruit. So leaves is how you manage time. What’s the best way to have a brainstorm meeting. What’s the best way to have a project tactical meeting. What’s the best way to, you know, have a weekly meeting or a morning meeting, you know, and, and we’ve got tools for all of those things. So that’s maximizing your time.

Joshua MacLeod:
Uh, and then the fruit, when you look at this tree, what are you measuring? How do you measure fruit? How do you make sure that, you know, you’re actually accomplishing what you set out to do? And then finally, there’s marketing. So marketing is taking that fruit and bringing it out to the market. You put it in a basket. So we use the acronym, B A S K E T brand advertising sales funnels, keywords, elevator, speech, tribe, things like that. This is where the 15,000 hours of study has come into about a hundred useful tools. So on this podcast, we’ve really, can’t share obviously all of the different tools, but we can take them one at a time and just add some value. What we’ve just done is actually given an outline for the 12 month business collaborative course that we have. Now, this is some you have to pay for, but if you don’t want to expend two years of your life and $60,000 and a zillion hours on an MBA program, and you want to get the practical tools for actually running your business, you can spend $500 a month and get the, Growability® collaborative course.

Joshua MacLeod:
So that’s, there you go. There you go. Bernie, if I didn’t answer that question with enough,

Bernie Anderson:
Oh my gosh. Like you a content we’re going to have content. And I, you know, one of the things that I love about what we do with this is the fact that it’s all together. You know, like it’s all connected, it’s organic in the way. I mean, the trees, a great example, one thing, and I’ll just mention this to anyone who’s stuck around with us this long, the format that we’re going to do this with is I think going to be interesting and fun actually. So we’re going to do on 12 o’clock central standard time CST. Yeah. So at 12 o’clock noon, we’re going to do this lunch and learn. We’re going to have a topic we’re going to go through, but then for even more fun and value, we’re going to take the best of our time here and put it into a format that will be a podcast.

Joshua MacLeod:
Yeah. So the idea, and I think the idea is we’re going to have an hour long lunch and learn where we chat and get some content. And then we’ll take an, edit that down to one or two 12 minute spots that are going to be on the podcast. So that if you, you can kind of get a summary in that short version, hopefully within an hour, we’ll get 12 minutes of nuggets.

Bernie Anderson:
Yeah. You know, as you were talking Joshua, one of the things that I was thinking about as well, a lot of the people that I work with as clients and who are in the collaboratives that I teach are working. Cross-culturally just because that’s my background. And what I think is super interesting is the fact that this whole model that you described actually works in (so far) I haven’t been in every country yet, but every part of the world that I have I’ve worked in ed works cause a tree looks pretty much the same, like in principle in China or Sudan or Slovenia or, you know, Mexico or America or whatever, you know, like it looks the same. I think one of the things that really is, is a lot of values that the model that we’re talking about here, actually, I mean, it works and it works in every part of the world.

Joshua MacLeod:
Well, there’s that, there’s that quote that, uh, it’s, I can’t remember where I first heard it. It says knowledge lies in the accumulation of facts, but wisdom lies in its simplicity more is not better. Right? Most of the time more is worse. I don’t want all of this extra garbage, but the more that you can simplify complexity, the easier and the more appliable, knowledge becomes, you know, things like what we already shared that leadership is about opportunity and obstacles. So if you’re a leader and you simply write down, what are the obstacles on my plate? What are the opportunities on my plate? You take an entire book. And at the core of that book is really asking good questions. And so that’s what I hope. I hope that we can give people the right questions to ask about their business. You know, the answer to the questions you can basically just find on Google, you know, but, but the biggest challenge in business is people don’t know the right question to ask. Yeah. And without knowing the right question to ask you, you could spend literally 10 years down the wrong road because you didn’t ask the right question. At the beginning,

Podcast Announcer:
You have been listening to the growability podcast, teaching business owners and nonprofit leaders, a more excellent way to run their business. This podcast was edited from the growability weekly live lunch, and learn hosted on Facebook and YouTube at 12 central each week. Thanks for listening for help in growing your business, visit growability.com to discover a great coach course or consultation for your business. You can also find great content on our Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn pages.