Mountain of Growth

I played golf last Sunday with Eye-Q Co-founder and CEO. I was delighted to learn that he is a Scaling-up believer. He has scaled his business to 1000 employees using Communication Rhythm - one of the 10 Rockefeller Habits. He shared that he runs a Daily Huddle without fail even now.

Rockefeller Habits is one-fourth of the Scaling-up methodology. He scaled his business by using one-tenth of the one-fourth - that is by using 2.5 % of the scaling-up framework in depth.

He asked me - Isn't Communication Rhythm the crux of Scaling-up? My response to Rajat was - By not leveraging the entire framework, you are leaving a lot of money on the table. 

Money, the revenue and profitability of the business, is a measure of the impact we are creating through our work. Essentially, he is leaving a lot of impact on the table.

If we only care about earning good money and having a comfortable life, do a little bit deeply. You don't even need to go beyond Gear 1 consciousness. With Gear 1 energy itself, you will build a good business. Mediocrity is another word for good. Greatness is playing the world-cup and playing to win. Playing IPL is fun and creates good money, but that is not greatness as yet.

But, if we really care about scaling our impact, we can use our business as a spiritual playground to do that by scaling our business to unimaginable, seemingly impossible, crazy big levels.

To care about creating an impact beyond the money that we will earn to have a comfortable lifestyle for ourselves and our family, we need to be in Gear 2 Consciousness (Being of Service). That is why creating a 25-Years Vision of our impact this lifetime through our Businesses needs us to be in Gear 2 consciousness, otherwise we are unable to create the Vision itself.

There is a lot of money to be made in the red ocean. We can work 18 hours a days and beat all the competition to earn more money and become market leaders.

It requires us to be in Gear 2 Being of Service Consciousness to be able to creatively arrive at a Blue Ocean where it is not about beating the competition and becoming a market leader, it is about making massive value to our core customer by addressing their unfulfilled, unaddressed, unconscious needs; fulfilling which makes a huge difference to them. We uncover those needs because we so deeply care about them. It is not about making more money, it is about love, passion and contribution that makes the blue oceans visible to us while the rest of the world can't see them. Blue oceans are not about what the competition is doing, blue oceans are about how can we serve more deeply the customer community we are inspired to contribute to. As a by product of that, we are the only one in the blue ocean because the competition is nibbling each other's toes in the red ocean.

Therefore, Mountain 2 (Mountain of Value) of the RYD Business Excellence journey requires us to be in Gear 2 Consciousness. The work on Mountain of Value is to solve for profitability by iterating business models.

It requires the CEO / Business Owner / Entrepreneur / Start-up Founder and their leaders to be in Gear 3 to be on Mountain 3 to even be able to implement Scaling-up framework. Why?

The work on Mountain 3 (Mountain of Growth) of the RYD Business Excellence Journey is to build repeatability and scalability into the Business Model. That's exactly what the Scaling-up framework does. But it requires leaders to evolve from being The Impact to being The Channel of Impact. Mountain 3 is no longer about what the founder likes to do but what the founder has to do for the sake of the business. Having solved for Profitability on Mountain 2, customers will line up outside your office and your organization won't have the maturity, capability and capacity to serve your growing customer base and growing customer needs unless Mountain 3 is scaled.

If the founder does not grow in leadership depth to embrace the boredom of building repeatability and scalability into the Business Model, the business will writhe in agony on account of indigestion because of too much customer demand and inability of the organization to digest it. 

Mountain 3 requires the founder and the leaders to grow in Gear 3 Consciousness to become an Empty Space - from Nobody (Gear 0) to Someone (Gear 1) to Somebody (Gear 2) to Nothing (Gear 3). You become the Impact in Gear 1 and strengthen yourself further to become a bigger Impact in Gear 2. What bought you here will not lead you forward, In Gear 3, our work is to raise our consciousness to let go of the intoxication of being the Impact to become the Channel of Impact so that Impact can flow through us. That is how limitless impact and transformation can flow through us.

It's a leap of faith from Gear 2 to Gear 3 (from Somebody to Nothing) and it is a leap of faith from Mountain 2 to Mountain 3 (from a Lean Start-up to an Agile Scale-up).

The foolish think they know everything but the wise know they know nothing. It is this consciousness of wisdom that is required in Gear 3 to scale Mountain 3. It is exciting to solve a problem and it is boring to replicate that solution at scale ensuring the same extraordinary customer delighting output across all processes with god-inspiring consistency, irrespective of the person delivering the process. That is Process Excellence and the magical stuff that Mountain 3 is made up of.

If we ran with speed to climb Mountain 1 and Mountain 2, it is now time to slow down to build a strong foundation to speed up for scale on Mountain 4.

Contrary to popular belief, Process Excellence requires extremely high levels of creativity because we have to change the engine and wheels of the car of our business while the car is moving. 

While we use Steve Blank's Lean Start-up Methodology, Alex Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas and Blue Ocean Strategy framework on Mountain 2, Verne Harnish's Scaling-up Framework is designed for Mountain 3 (Mountain of Growth) to help build repeatability and scalability into the Business Model.  

CEOs and Founders have a tendency to use their intelligence to pick and choose what to implement from Scaling-up framework, and customise because they feel their business situation is different.

It doesn't matter which part of the world a baby is born in, the child will go through the same developmental milestones and has the same needs to be met by their parents and other care-givers.

So, it is with business. It doesn't matter which part of the world the business is born in, it will go through the same developmental milestones and has the same needs to be met by it's founder and leaders. 

If Mountain 1 and Mountain 2 were about rolling up the sleeves, Mountain 3 is about rolling up the sleeves even further to see the whole picture from a distance and then zoom in on the 1% which needs maximum attention as a place to start building repeatability and scalability.

The intention in Mountain 3 (Mountain of Growth) is to implement 100% of Scaling-up framework, which would take about 3 years for full implementation. The intention of the implementation is to build a strong foundation for scaling-up with ease, grace and velocity at Mountain 4 (Mountain of Scale). 

In Mountain 3, the business still grows though in a disciplined fashion at a steady pace to allow for the foundation to be strengthened through learning, integration and institution of Process Excellence and Best Practises. Verne has done a great job of putting that together in the Scaling-up Framework.

In which order to implement Scaling-up?

It's important to understand that the Scaling-up implementation is an iterative, additive and a build-up process. As more Scaling-up Growth Tools are implemented every quarter, they are reviewed and updated regularly. Once  all tools are implemented, the review and updation is done quarterly as the business moves to full-throttle scale-up in Mountain 4. Every new tool implementation and subsequent quarterly reviews will make visible new blindspots in the organization, which become an opportunity for creative solutioning and growth.

There are multiple pathways for implementation. The below is one pathway. It's a good idea to make a list of all problems faced by your business and pick-up the top 10% solving which would resolve 90% of the challenges faced by the business. For those 10% problems, identify the right scaling-up growth tool for implementation.

1. Strategy Tool: Core Values, Purpose and 10 to 30-years BHAG is the glue for the organization. This is what holds the whole organization together, if implemented correctly. This is usually the place to begin the implementation from unless there is so much of fire-fighting going on elsewhere, and solving that becomes a life and death situation.

2. Strategy Tool: Once there is familiarity with the Vision Summary Tool, the leadership team works through the One-Page-Strategic-Plan and the rest of the organization works through the Vision Summary. The intention is to get at least two-thirds of the organization on the Vision Summary with a clear line of sight on how their priorities roll up to the organisational priorities. Each leader across levels having a clarity on their Number 1 Priority this quarter, this month, this week is a measure of the success of the Vision Summary.

3. Execution Tool: Individual 13-Week Race. At least two-thirds and 100% of leaders of the organization on Vision Summary and Individual 13-Week race will significantly cut-down drama, over-work and overwhelment. 

4. Execution Tool: Communication Rhythms. This is the heartbeat of the organization. Daily, Weekly, Monthly. Quarterly, Annual rhythms for all people in the organization ensure the CEO, the orchestra conductor, is effortlessly creating beautiful music with all musicians in the orchestra  playing their individual instrument in harmony with each other. If these meetings are not creating value, it just means they haven't been implemented correctly.

5. Strategy Tool: Strengths, Weaknesses, Trends (SWT) Worksheet

6. Strategy Tool: 7 Strata. If a Business Model Canvas is not built, it's a good idea to build one for each customer segment before working on the 7-Strata tool. Creating a Strategy Canvas to understand the industry landscape before working on the 7-Strata tool would provide greater clarity for developing 7-Strata.  

7.  People Tools: FACE and PACE

8. Other Strategy Tools  

9. Other People Tools

10. Other Execution Tools

11. Cash Tools

​If implemented fully and correctly, the scaling-up methodology would increase:
i. Cashflow by 2X
ii. Industry Average Profitability by 3X
iii. Valuation by 10X

Shifting the Organisational Consciousness

CEO's Weekly Newsletter is a powerful structure of success to strengthen the culture through the regular emphasis on core values, purpose and BHAG. It is continuous repetition of the shared Purposed, shared Values and shared BHAG that shifts the consciousness of the organization one bit at a time. The weekly note from the CEO is a very effective tool for raising the consciousness of the organization and strengthening the community feeling amongst the people, the feeling of being one, walking together towards a shared BHAG. 

The weekly note requires the CEO to be in Gear 3 Consciousness in their Leadership Depth journey - Communicating Powerfully in the world of others. Vulnerable authenticity, creativity, humility, childlike trust and faith in the Universe and in the process of life are the spiritual values on this Gear, practising which gives us access to step up to Gear 3 consciousness. It's on this Gear with deep belief that 'I am making a difference. I am a channel of impact' that we get full access to Generative Language. From Gear 1 onwards, we start practising generative language but in Gear 3, we become Generative Language and it becomes our secret super power to generate the organisational culture by generating people to be high-performing, nurturing and growth-oriented; inspiring them to travel their own good-to-great journey. 

For the organization to be on its Good to Great journey, requires each one in the organization to be on their Good to Great journey and the CEO is the Chief Inspiration Officer, Chief Energy Officer, Chief Believer in the process for such a transformation to take place because the Good to Great journey is a team sport.

People want to do great work and deliver excellence.

If they are failing to do so, it is because either the process is missing or the current process is ineffective. Mountain 3 mantra is - Fix the Process, not the People. Using every poor performance as a way to go 5 levels deeper through the 5-Whys Business Excellence framework to understand the root cause at the process level and to creatively redesign the process through the 5-Hows framework to make the process person-independent so that excellent results are delivered in alignment with the intention and measurable outcomes of the process; irrespective of the person responsible for delivering on the process.

Mountain 3 work is about designing the game for excellence and the founder, having done their inner work to raise their consciousness to Gear 3, becomes the Chief Business Designer.

Common Language

The bible for the CEO and their leadership team is Scaling-up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't by Verne Harnish

For all other people leaders, the bible is Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: The Keys to Successfully Scaling any size Organization (from start-up to Scale-up to Unicorn) by Verne Harnish.

And for all employees, the bible would be 12 Habits of Valuable Employees: Your Roadmap to an Amazing Career by Verne Harnish.

This ensures that the whole organization begins to speak the same language. 

A Gear 3 leader on Mountain 3 operates at 3 levels

1) Height: S/he can step up to a higher plane to see the big picture to discover opportunities for innovation, growth and strategic direction. This is what the Entrepreneur role in each one of us is capable of. The Entrepreneur role in us loves Leadership Depth, which is what gives him / her Height.

2) Width: S/he can step back to view the inter-connectedness of business and organisational elements enabling effective decisions to ensure process excellence. This is what the Manager role in each one of us is capable of. The Manager role in us loves Business Excellence, which is what gives him / her Width.

3) Depth: S/he can deep-dive into the details to identify the 20% that is at the source of the problem and the 20% that can be at the source of greater impact. This is what the Technician role in each one of us is capable of. The Technician role in us loves Craft Mastery, which is what gives him / her Depth.

A great leader has all the 3 roles in equal balance.

Be a great leader by consciously learning, integrating and growing across the 3 Growth Levers - Leadership Depth, Craft Mastery and Business Excellence - to joyously lead yourself and your business from good to great, realize your dreams and have it all with ease and grace; while having lots of fun and adventure along the way.

Loving you,
j.