Questions on Scaling-up Part 1

The first set of Questions by Leadership Team members of the Businesses we are coaching on reading Start to Scale by Verne Harnish as a warm-up to a deep-dive immersion with him as part of RYD Community EXPAND Event on 15-Jan-25:

Q1. How do you take the whole organisation together on this journey of scaling up? 
Scaling-up Implementation is top-down, one leadership level at a time. Once the CEO and the Leadership Team are 100% committed and aligned to implement scaling-up, then each level of leadership learns the methodology and become partners in implementation.

Q2. How do we Fast-track the Scaling up process for an organisation?
CEO and the Leadership Team's alignment and commitment to implement Scaling-up; and learning and understanding the framework fully is key to fast-tracking.

Q3. How do you assimilate functional scale-up efforts to that of the organisations?
Based on the organisational annual and quarterly Business Priorities, the functional areas decide their priorities that would contribute to fulfilling on the organisational priorities.

One Page Strategic Plan tool becomes the single source of truth that has the entire organisation row in the same direction.

Q4. When people and execution, both require attention, what do you prioritise?
Here's the order of implementation I have found to be most effective - Core Ideology (Core Values, Purpose, BHAG) (to scale People) ➡️ Meeting Rhythms  (to scale Execution) ➡️ One Page Strategic Plan (to strengthen strategy alignment and execution) ➡️ Process Accountability Chart (for scaling up processes and people) ➡️ SWT (for scaling Strategy) ➡️ 7-Strata (for scaling Strategy) ➡️ and the cycle continues endlessly across People, Strategy, Execution, Cash; one quarter at a time

Therefore, it's not about choosing Execution over People, or vice-versa. It's more about choosing your Top 5 quarterly business priorities in alignment with your annual business priorities in alignment with your 3 Years Goals in alignment with you 10 to 25 years Big Hairy Audacious Goal to transform the world through your Business.

You could implement one execution scaling-up tool and one people scaling-up tool based on what would most support you to fulfil on your organisational business priorities for the quarter.

Q5. How to determine the 5-9 processes that run the organisation?
A good question to ask is - How do we make money? - and trace what the business does to make money. 

Draw it visually and you will be able to extract 5 to 9 critical processes.

Q6. While working to shorten the cash conversion cycle, we face challenges due to clients being used to our previous processes. Our team finds it difficult to initiate these conversations of advance money etc, as we’ve not addressed such matters with clients before. Also, clients often push back, stating that this isn’t how we’ve operated in the past. How do we overcome this problem?
By nurturing deeper relationships with the clients.

​Q7. I do understand that this is a business structure approach. But one of our key functions is creativity. And, creativity truly thrives in chaos. It needs you to go taste everything, see everything, do nothing till it comes to you. It needs indiscipline. If you want ideas that will change the fortunes of the brand and make the world take a pause – you need it to flourish and thrive. You have to create a space of security for someone to bring their best idea fearlessly to you. With such a structured approach, how do you keep the spontaneity of creative process alive? How do you avoid stifling it?
Here's another perspective:
Creativity can be sourced in Chaos; yet Creativity and Spontaneity can flow from Mindfulness, Heartfulness and Soulfulness which can only be accessed through Discipline.

Based on what we understand from Psychology, 
Higher the Anxiety, lower the spontaneity. Lower the spontaneity, lower the creativity.
Lower the Anxiety, higher the spontaneity. Higher the spontaneity, higher the creativity.

Chaos inside or outside results in higher anxiety.

Q8. Adoption of processes is typically top down, in an organisation that fundamentally believes in the power of hustle. Often leadership becomes the first to abandon them when they need to choose between following a process vs anything else (typically more short term). How do we overcome this collectively? 
The culture needs to change from Hustle to a commitment to Greatness. It's a choice that the leadership team needs to collectively make and commit to. Once the Leadership Team is aligned and committed to Greatness, 90% of the job is done.

Q9. What can I do, in my role, to support this? How to create more belief or motivation? 
Learn and be the master of the Scaling-up methodology. More you learn, greater belief and motivation you will access.
Have you finished reading Start to Scale?

Q10. In a company with dominant mid and early talent being young millennials or GenZ, they see processes as rigid. How do we still embed these processes and Rockefeller habits?
The employees mirror the leadership team, the way children mirror their parent's behaviour. If you are seeing resistance to processes at lower levels of the organisation, it's a good idea to assess the resistance to processes in the Leadership Team.

Q11. What level of rigidity does one need to maintain for people to adhere to? Execution requires discipline, how do u set consequences for non adherence which are assertive yet empathetic?
When people play cricket, for example, the players don't question the rules. In fact, the rules makes the game more exciting. 

Gamification is the answer, not giving consequences for non-adherence.

Building a great business is a Team Sport and it's a fun game with rules like all games have.

Q12. How much time should we be spending outside of the day-to-day operations of the business on implementing the scaling-up processes?
The day to day operations of the business need to follow the Scaling-up process.

What is needed is time for learning, which is a fundamental skill to building a great organization.

Trust the above answers serve in some way to progress each one of you on your good to great journey 💜

Love and Light,
j.