Why traditional solutions don't work ...
We've all tried the traditional strategies, tactics, and solutions to move to the next level of performance, including ...
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Hiring "just the right" manager or executive ...
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Performing market and customer research ...
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Holding "off-sites" to get our leaders motivated ...
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Implementing a few select best practices we think make sense ...
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Getting the latest, greatest technology in place ...
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Researching the competitors and doing what they do ...
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Creating a new strategy ...
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Dust off, fine tune, or write a new business plan ...
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Raising additional capital ...
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Hiring a coach, consultant, or "the" guru ...
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Hiring a consultant ...
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Getting a fresh perspective ...
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The final resort ... hoping somehow it will get better ...
And so forth ...
Some of these are good things, right? Absolutely.
The problem? Individually - without a comprehensive integrated framework of consistent high-performance thinking and execution based upon proven high-performance practices - point solutions just don't work to achieve or sustain high-performance.
Point solutions are simply band-aids that lead to inconsistent spikes in performance and hit-or-miss results.
What may seem like good ideas, and many are necessary and useful, fall woefully short of achieving and sustaining high performance by themselves. Alone they will not help you to continually move to the next level and ensure you get what you want - a sustained high-peformance company. And it doesn't matter if it is a start-up or established business.
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So, if high-peformance is such a challenge,
why pursue
it at all, much less attempt to sustain it?
You may feel that unless you have the obvious ability to become a market leader, sales leader, biggest in your region, are in a high growth industry and can be #1, 2 or 3, or a bigger company than you are, that it really doesn't make sense to pursue "high performance" as a company.
You may be fine with "okay", "good", or "above average" performance. You may not feel that you or your company will really benefit from pursuing sustainable high-performance. You may even say that it doesn't make sense to pursue high performance when there are diminishing returns.
After all, maybe you'll see no real gains? Maybe you are just better off being happy with where your company is now. The "status quo".
And, you might be thinking, if it is so challenging and it may not pay off anyway, why push to become a high performance business, much less try to sustain it? You may think, "We're just a small company, we don't need to go there just yet." Or, "We're not in a position since we don't lead our niche', region, market, or industry, to even talk about high performance!"
On the surface, these reactions are logical. However, they don't align with the latest research on high-performance organizations which has shown that ...
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Companies small and large, and their owners and CEOs, benefit from the pursuit of sustained high performance now to exit (sale, merger, etc.)
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Relatively new companies (start-up or less than 5 year old company) or older companies (5+ years old plus), striving for sustained high-performance, benefit equally - as the market and customer reward the pursuit of excellence
bottom line: when you pursue high performance you ...
get what you want. move to the next level. faster.
The bottom line? You should never stop pursuing sustainable high performance. If you are a start-up company, small company, a fast growing small-to-medium size company, an older company, or a large growing company, the benefits of the pursuit of sustained high performance far outweigh the "being good is good enough" or "we don't need to be the best" thinking.
Clearly, it's not even about being #1 in revenues in your geography, market, industry. Companies that pursue and achieve sustained high performance can outperform revenue leaders.
So, in our opinion, it is a very viable and worthwhile goal to set your company's vision to become the best it can be, and to strive to become a sustained high performance company.
Okay, so if it's worth the pursuit, what's an alternative?
What's a real sustainable high performance solution?
Now that we've talked a little about why it makes sense to pursue high peformance even as a small company (in fact that is a much better time to start thinking about it to create a sustinable high performance culture), let me share the story about the origination of our sustainable high performance solution ... 7 Common Denominators and our Business and CEO Power Practices™ ...
The Beginning: Golf ... and Business ... Frustration
Yes, that's right, it all started with frustration with my golf swing. I know it would be so much more impressive to say that it happened while researching Fortune 500 strategic models at Stanford. Well, it didn't. I guess alot of creative thinking results from frustration with our golf swings!
In any case, I was working on my golf swing in my late 20's (still a work in progress, by the way!). A CFO in one of my early companies, who also happened to be a golf partner, gave me a book by Jimmy Ballard. (Jimmy Ballard was Golf Magazine's "Teacher of the Decade" in the 80's and was also selected as one of the top 4 teachers in the world in December of 1996.)
At the same time I read Ballard, besides being frustrated with my golf swing, I was also very frustrated with the "hit-or-miss" aspects of business in general, and marketing and sales, in particular.
In my early 20's I had owned or started several companies, owning my first business at age 19. Any success I had there I attributed to my collegiate competitive track experience - my competitiveness - and sheer willpower.
By my early 30's - having owned several businesses and also having been a senior executive and owner of strategy and marketing consulting companies, consulting to the biggest and best companies in the world such as Avnet, Agilent, Compaq Computers, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, and many others - I was thrilled with my successes. But, I was silently frustrated with the inefficiencies and "hit or miss" aspects of business.
I was looking for real, breakthrough solutions. Yes, for my golf swing and more importantly, business.
Jimmy Ballard's Discovery: Common Denominators
So, what did I learn from Ballard? Ballard, like me, had been searching for breakthrough solutions. Only he was looking for them for the best golfers in the world. While searching for the answer, Ballard did something different. He asked a unique question. Rather than looking for that big "secret", or what each great golfer did uniquely, Ballard looked at the best swings of the best players in the world - in golf, in baseball, in tennis and asked, "What do the best athletes have in common in their swings?"
 As a result of his years of research looking for this answer, and perfecting the swings of golfing greats like Hal Sutton, Seve Ballesteros, and many others, along the way, Jimmy defined the "7 Common Denominators" of every great swing in a book "How to Perfect Your Golf Swing".
He used this methodology to fine-tune the swings of the best golfers and created a true performance breakthrough in golf teaching for both the beginner and for the best.
Jimmy found that "great ball strikers" have not been singular to one sport or activity, and he became known as the "pioneer of connection".
Rather than focusing on the thousands of "secrets" peddled by golf magazines and thus focusing on an unmanagable number of inconsistent practices, Ballard tuned the best players swings by focusing their attention and work on the 7 most important practices.
He felt if they could get those practices "in" and keep them "in" and "connected", their swings would be in top form and consistent. In other words - sustained high performance - golf. Equally true, if one of these 7 common denominators were "out", their swing and their game, as a result, would go into a rut.
Ballard's Breakthrough: Focus on and connect the seven most important common denominators common to the best ball strikers to achieve consistent highest possible performance.
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Business Application - Ballard's Question Re-Applied
Okay, so that's an interesting story (especially if you're a golfer). But, how does this relate to you ... to creating and sustaining high-performance in your business?
Well, Ballard's approach and question gave me an idea. What if we asked a similar question about high-performance business practices, and specifically strategy and marketing (my area of focus at that time)?
What if we were able to indentify the 7 most important practices and focus our efforts, and that of our clients, on those practices first?
Based on this question, in the early 90's I started looking at each client I worked with from a different perspective. I looked at what were they doing - and not doing - in common that worked and didn't work. I analyzed this with the best companies, as well as the start-ups, the strugglers and the failures.
I also looked at how companies made decisions regarding change, strategic direction, and, in general, how they developed strategies to move to the next level and optimize performance. What did the top performers do in common? We looked at how they executed.
In the search for common denominator high performance practices, we also discovered a few interesting practices which often led to distraction from known high-performance practices and in many cases directly to inconsistent and declining performance. And, of course, there were practices we ended up calling "failure practices". We'll discuss that another time.
Top Distraction Practices: #1 - Gurus, tips, and tricks
One key distraction practice that comes to mind is when business owners and CEOs are constantly re-setting their direction and strategic agenda - small to large companies - based upon the latest, greatest thing from the so-called "gurus" ...
Of course, many CEOs and owners get fresh ideas ideas related to high-performance thinking from the "gurus". On the surface, this makes sense.
The challenge, however, is that just as there are thousands of stories and articles written by the golf gurus and taught in clinics about the "secrets" and "tips and tricks" of golf (sells a lot of golf magazines and golf resort clinics), there are equally thousands of books, seminars, and self-professed "gurus" claiming to have "the secret" to creating sustainable high-peformance businesses.
If every marketing, finance, operations, strategy, leadership, and other genre' of "guru" creates a unique "niche" idea to sell a book or a seminar and build their business, you end up with thousands of new ideas and practices every year!
Of course, there's nothing wrong with this for the "guru" (they have to make money too) except that it creates a market flooded with thousands of fragmented, disconnected ideas, that in many cases distract from focus on the most important, highest leverage practices.
And, although many of these ideas and concepts are great by themselves, they add to the "noise" that a CEO or business owner needs to filter through to determine relevance and applicabilty to their businesses.
Just as with golf tips, regardless of how brilliant the gurus and their ideas, the thousands of tips, tricks and practices won't help if the most important are not kept prioritized, "in" place, and "connected".
The bottom line: You can read hundreds of books, attend many seminars, workshops, and clinics. If you can't organize, prioritize, and connect what you learn, you end up spinning your wheels. I've seen this with start-ups to global organizations. It's the principle. Know what is most important, and keep that "in" at all times.
Top Inconsistency Practices: #1 - Knowledge for Hire
Antother traditional practice that leads to inconsistent corporate performance is to "hire the knowlege". In other words, find the best executive or consulting firm, hire them, and let them execute. Now, these are clearly necessary practices. Of course every business must hire outside expertise to grow - as both employees or consultants.
However, as it relates to sustaining high performance there is a subtle problem.
In short, high-performance practices knowledge that resides only in the minds of key executives or consulting firms, if not codified and duplicable (via policy, Standard Operating Procedures, and training), are lost when the executive or consulting firm leaves!
The challenge, therefore, is that in many cases high-performance practices knowledge is more attached to the executive or the consulting firm, then it is to the company and its duplicable practices and processes model.
Of course, this leads to major shifts in strategic, tactical, and process direction, naturally resulting in inconsistent, up and down performance.
Without supporting practices in place that force capture of the most important high-performance practices, as well as, untapped strategic and intellectual capital, thus enabling duplication of these practices and application of other core knowledge apart from the exective or consulting firm, this knowledge can be lost forever. The worst part is when this knowledge is lost to your biggest competitors!
For the smallest to largest companies, losing a key executive, CEO, or manager who possesses this knowledge can lead to immediate disaster!
This is only one example of many practices we found which result in "hit or miss" and inconsistent performance of some of even the best companies. Although business process systems and practices models help to some degree with this challenge, they are only part of the solution.
Best Companies and CEOs: Keep Top Practices In
Okay, so what did we find that the best companies, CEOs, and owners do differently? Well that is the subject of our in-depth Business and CEO Power Practices™ Mastery Courses, however, here is the high level ...
At the highest level, the best companies, CEOs, and owners somehow find a way, a system, a model, to keep a majority of the most important practices "in" more often than their nearest competitors.
The most consistent high-performance businesses, CEOs, and owners realize that true long term sustainable value, therefore, results from codifying, retaining, duplicating, "connecting", and consistently executing the most important high-performance practices in each business function.
This is what created, and continues to create, their great success. And more importantly, kept their success going, through ups and downs, market shifts, competitive threats, and economic shifts.
Specifically, initially we focused on identifying the most important practices in the strategic marketing area.
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7 Common Denominators: High Performance Engine
Thanks to Ballard's thinking, and after several years and literally millions of dollars of Fortune 500 level marketing work, the answers become very clear. From this research, I was able to define the 7 Common Denominators of High-Performance Marketing and Sales™.
During the 90's, I used this knowledge to create multi-million dollar engagements for the best companies in the world - from IBM, Microsoft, Fujitsu, and Hewlett-Packard, to Cisco Systems, and many others.
I would launch major engagements that leveraged these high performance practices and enable the smallest start-up or the largest Fortune 500 companies to move to market faster, with higher precision, and with much greater ROI than ever before.
We were so good at doing this that we were able to guarantee the results of our powerful engagements.
We could consistently take companies who were at the start-up phase and launch them to be competitive with the biggest companies in their respective industries!
We would baffle competitors who would ask, "How did you get X company to spend THAT MUCH, on a strategic marketing program?"
Well, these practices were powerful and when combined in sequence, they were true competitive advantage, sustainable high performance engines.
But, like many consulting firms, we kept our knowledge a secret. We used it as a competitive advantage.
By the way, at that time, although our clients were very satisfied with our programs, I also noticed how frustrated many became after we left the engagement since they did not retain the practices knowledge to repeat the engagement without us. They knew they would have to "pay us again and again".
Fast forward to 2003: 7² Applied Across Business
We developed and leveraged the 7 Common Denominators of High-Performance Marketing and Sales™ model for several years to build a million dollar strategy and marketing practice.
In 2003 we had an opportunity to do what we had thought about, but were too busy to even think about really doing before: take the same 7 Common Denominators of High Performance Methodology (what we now all the 7² methodology), refine it, and ask that same question for each key business function and area, and then deliver it to our clients as a complete solution.
In other words, what if we could identify the most important, highest leverage, "business critical" common denominators of the best companies, CEOs, and executives across each major business function and area, codify them, and create a methodology whereby we could rapidly, efficiently, and cost effectively "transfer" that knowledge to companies who wanted to remain or become the best companies of the future?
What if we could do that?
Role1's Breakthrough: Sustainable High-Performance Solution
Well, that is exactly what we did and are continuing to do.
Today, Role1 provides the only complete business and CEO sustainable high-performance practices mastery, application, and leverage solution.
The net value to you? Role1's unique and powerful solution enables you to break through to the next level and get exactly what you want from your business or role by moving from where the company is now towards creating a sustainable high-performance company or department faster than other methods.
Role1 delivers this solution for start-ups to global companies via high-performance "power practices" education, application coaching, implementation consulting, custom solutions and tools.
Okay, thats all great. But how does this differ from other solutions? There are several differentiators which are key to delivering true sustainable high performance support solution ...
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Complete High Performance Solution - Unlike other coaching, consulting, or educational firms, Role1 uniquely provides the complete high performance solution. Without each component "connected", as Jimmy Ballard would say, your company will literally hobble along. It will take 10 times longer to achieve your high performance goals.You are able to leverage our scalable (service levels match your company size/situation) full service high performance model, including ... Mastery Education, Application Coaching and Implementation Consulting.
- Most Important Practices Focus - Role1's research has defined the most important practices of the top companies, CEOs, owners and executives in each core high-performance function.
- Works for Your Business - Regardless of your business size, we are able to accelerate your growth from where it is now (X) to where you want to go (Y) 10 times faster than traditional education, coaching, consulting methodologies or support, or other methods by themselves.
- Expert Support Across Each Function - Role1's Business and CEO Power Practices™ expert resources are able to support you across each function and within each industry or product area in the application of 7² practices.
For companies that want an unfair competitive advantage ... now ... Role1 is literally the only company that can provide the complete solution.
Few alternatives exist that are able to to deliver education, coaching and consulting related to high performance business and CEO practices in each function. Yet, all three solutions are required to deliver true sustainable high performance transformation and results.
How does this relate if you are a very small business just getting started and you are "it"? If you are the only employee, or only have several employees, in your start-up or very small business, you then leverage these practices to move to the next step 10x faster than if you didn't have this knowlege. Once you hire employees we support you in their Power Practices Mastery education and coaching.
If you are the CEO and owner of a 50, 100, or 500 plus person company, we then work to duplicate the appropriate high performance Power Practices out to your leadership team - working with you - to enable your leadership team to work with you, in synch, to move 10x faster to your next level of performance and growth.
Regardless of size, the approach is the same: master, apply, implement, repeat.
Role1's Solution: Three Key Components, Three Steps
Okay, here again are the three pillars of Role1's powerful sustainable high performance solution and the three step process ...
1 - High-Performance Practices Mastery
Unlike large and small "performance" consultancies alike, Role1 starts with a concept painful to these consultancies - we "open the kimono" and provide the sustainable high-performance practices knowledge to you.
We also provide the support necessary to master these most important, highest leverage, "business critical" practices over time.
Therefore, our sustainable high performance transition process starts with Business and CEO Power Practices™ Mastery Courses. Each course provides the knowledge of the practices we've identified as the most important of the best companies, CEOs and owners, across each business function and area.
Key functions covered across education, coaching and consulting include:
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Leadership and Management
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Strategy and Planning
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Product Planning and Development (Including
Product Marketing, Management, Design, and Engineering)
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Marketing and Sales
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Finance
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Operations (Including Manufacturing, Production,
Service Delivery, Support, Customer Service, and Quality)
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Administration (Including Human Resources,
Legal, and other administrative functions)
Our experts constantly research and update this dynamic body of work. We create an on-going dialogue with you and many other CEOs, owners and experts around these practices.
2 - High-Performance Practices Application
From this powerful foundation, we are then able to provide the next key to connection: application coaching.
Application Coaching ensures these most important practices get properly applied to your business and with each key executive.
Role1 provides EduCoaching as well, which combines Mastery Education and Application Coaching in 1:1 private sessions to fit busy business owner and CEO schedules.
3 - Full Scale High-Performance Practices Implementation
Finally, we provide the other critical component to achieve truly full-scale (whole company engaged) sustained and connected high-performance: implementation consulting. Role1 assists you in executing key high-performance practices based projects to get your business to a sustainable and manageable model moving forward.
Role1 also provides a key second component of sustainable high performance. The ability to rapidly, efficiently, and cost effectively acquire, apply, master, manage, and fully leverage your untapped corporate high-performance power practices, strategic and intellectual capital. These are custom solutions which we cover in our Mastery Courses and support our clients in implementing.
Finally, we provide the experts in each functional area who understand our unique 7² methodology, to support you in filling the gaps to drive your business forward faster and more accurately towards sustainable high performance, moving your business to the next level, and ensuring you get what you want from business ownership or your CEO role.
The Full Solution: Education, Application, Implementation
Providing each of these three components: education, coaching, consulting, covers all the necessary bases to truly support you in moving to the next level and creating a sustainable high-performance company.
We look forward to working with you to ensure you get what you want from your business and move your business to the next level of performance, faster.
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