The 2024 Election’s Potential Impact on Tax Policy–Post-Election Version
With the election behind us, and Republican control in the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives ensured, the direction that anticipated...
5 min read
Redpath and Company : April 8, 2021
April 6, 2021 - Guest article by Mike Paton, Global Ambassador for EOS Worldwide
What do you look for when finding a company leader? Résumé? Revenue? References? If you're only looking at those, you're not getting the whole story – and you might not be getting the right leaders for your company.
There's more to a great leadership team than any one leader’s skills or experiences. Building a leadership team (and finding the right leaders) works best when you start by understanding the right structure for that team, and when you fill each “seat” on that team with leaders who will perpetuate the company’s culture. Any company that skips those steps is missing a vital piece of the puzzle.
In his book The Advantage, Patrick Lencioni defines a leadership team as “a small group of people who are collectively responsible for achieving a common objective.” If you own or run an entrepreneurial company, these are the (typically) three to eight people you rely on most to run the business day-to-day.
A company running on the Entrepreneurial Operating System® (EOS®) takes a “structure first, people second” approach to building a great leadership team. We ask the team to set people and history aside, and build the leadership team from scratch by focusing on the major functions of the business. What would the simplest and best structure be for this organization? This draws the team’s attention to what the business needs, rather than the people and structure it already has.
What results from this process is a leadership team with three distinct types of roles:
Owners of major functions like sales & marketing, operations, and finance, for example, also comprise the leadership team. They’re great builders, leaders and managers of teams, and as such accept full responsibility for their function being done well and achieving the desired result.
This structure first, people second helps you set standards and expectations for your leadership team based on what the company truly needs. Once those expectations are clear, it’s then easier for you (and for THEM) to determine whether or not they’ll be able to consistently meet the company’s needs.
This approach helps a rapidly growing company avoid the Peter principle, which holds that employees are often promoted until they reach (or exceed) the limit of their competence. They might be very good at what they do, but their ability to get you HERE doesn’t always mean they can get you and your organization to the next level.
By thinking first about what you truly need, you’ll be better able to have that honest conversation with your best people, make a fully informed decision about promoting them, and react more quickly if/when they begin to struggle. Failing to take that approach often leads to really good people leaving an organization and, worse yet, filling company leadership with people who just aren't up to the task.
This structure first approach clarifies the skills and experience you need from your leaders, but competency is only one qualifier for building a great leadership team. To ensure complete alignment, make sure there's a culture fit.
Poor “culture fit” is about 10 times more likely to be the reason a new leader fails than poor “job fit.” However very few employers have cracked the code on attracting and retaining people who fit their company’s culture. Here’s how a company running on EOS does it:
What kind of culture do you want in your organization?
Have you discovered the answer to that question, defined it clearly and shared it with everyone in the organization? Are you and your leaders living and breathing those cultural pillars every day – using them to attract people who fit and repel people who don’t?
Carefully considering these two attributes of a great leader helps you define what Jim Collins refers to as a “Right Person” (someone who shares your Core Values) in the “Right Seat” (someone who’s consistently good at the job). You can now set out to fill your leadership team, and ultimately every seat in your organization, with “right people in the right seats.”
With a clearly defined culture, and a process for finding and keeping great people that share your Core Values, you can accomplish anything. My passion is helping entrepreneurs do just that – run a better business, achieve your vision, and live your ideal life. If this article helps even one reader along on that journey, it was well worth the time.
Mike Paton is a speaker, author, Certified EOS Implementer® with Achieve Traction, and Global Ambassador for EOS Worldwide.
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