• 43:10
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Leadership development, business value, scaling business, leadership team, operational efficiency, succession planning, resilience, visionary leader, servant leadership, emotional well-being, financial impact, cultural alignment, emerging leaders, decision-making, communication.
SPEAKERS
Shawn Richards, Damon Pistulka, Speaker 1
Damon Pistulka 00:07
Alright, everyone, welcome once again, the face of the business I am your host, Damon Pistulka, and I’m so excited for our guest today, because we have none other, other than Sean Richards from Blue Sky business consulting, and we are going to be talking about strengthening your leadership team to scale business value. Sean, thanks for being here today.
Shawn Richards 00:33
Well, thank you, David. I’m excited to be here. So thanks so much for letting me come join your show. I’m excited.
Damon Pistulka 00:38
Yeah, it’s going to be a good time. It’s going to be a good time, because, you know, we always like to talk about building businesses, and it’s awesome talking with you, with your leadership, coaching background, and the other things you’ve done. So let’s start there. Sean, let’s start talking a little bit about your background and and how you got into what you’re doing today at Blue Sky business consulting, sure. Thank
Shawn Richards 01:01
you again. Yeah. I long history here. I spent more than 25 years working in or for or with small businesses and serial entrepreneurs, and really got a good flair for it. One thing I’ve learned well among many things, but one thing is that as you’re growing and scaling the business, it’s not always as easy as it may appear, and there’s some tips and tricks to that, but I’ve, I kind of have evolved over the last five to seven years especially, and really focused more on leadership development and trying to help the entrepreneur or the C suite and Even the emerging leaders as they’re kind of coming up through the ranks a little bit how to be more effective in their leadership. I’m one that argues, we spend a third of our lives at work. Let’s make it enjoyable, and the leader plays a big role in that. So that’s a very quick background into kind of how I how I came to be where I’m at, yeah.
Damon Pistulka 02:03
And one of the things that separates you and is interesting about your background is you’ve got the certified Exit Planning Association SEPA certification. So you really are when you talk about value, you understand business value. Let’s talk about your SEPA certification a little bit, and some of the things you learned there.
Shawn Richards 02:25
Well, I learned, and it sounds really obvious, but there is a science to where your business’s value is right now and where it could be, yeah. And so that gap there is really critical, because if we understand what our value is right now as a business, and we understand what the potential could be now. We have a target. We have a goal. We want to say, okay, business is worth 11 million right now, but really, we think it could be worth 16 million, the last $5 million that you’re potentially leaving on the table, and with a few adjustments, some proactive, intentional decision making. You can increase the value, and then when it’s time to exit, I like your company’s name, exit your way. Then, then that’s an opportunity for you to reclaim a little bit of that money and not leave it on the table. So that’s one of the big things that I learned. I also learned that it does take a team to do that. It’s not just the the business owner or owners and a single consultant, that there are a number of people that need to be involved to help make that grow to the value where you want it to be, and where you can exit the way you want to. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 03:36
that is one of the things, I think, that a lot of people don’t realize that if you if you really want to, especially in the size that you’re talking about, when you get into a 10 to a $50 million business, the difference that a specialist can make in the sale price of your business, in the chances of success in a transaction are huge, especially if you’re doing You know, if you’re a 20 or plus million dollar business, you need to have good people that understand. I mean, we’ve, we’ve been in situations before where we’ve had quality of earnings in an E commerce businesses before, those are very critical. And, you know, and that’s a $50,000 endeavor, but on the other side of that, it also makes it much, much easier to sell your business, because the buyers can come in and they can go, oh, somebody, a third party, has verified the revenue, verified that they bought the product, they said they did, they sold the product, and it’s and it can be trusted, and it can be reliable. And those are the kind of things that owners, as you operate a business, you don’t really realize until you get to that point and you go, wow, this is a lot of money. But when you look at the end and you go, that can mean millions of dollars difference in the value you get or getting a deal done or not, those are really. The kind of decisions at that point that they’re making. Oh, absolutely.
Shawn Richards 05:02
And there’s an element of transfer ability, as you were talking there, there’s kind of that idea that you know you as the business owner, the current owner, you have a pretty good handle about how everything is working and how it all runs, and all of those kinds of things, the relationships with your clients, whatever else that may be. But the perspective buyer needs to be able to see themselves sliding into that role fairly easily. There’s always going to be an adjustment curve there, but it’s really critical, and having an effective leadership team, I believe, is one of the most effective ways to help accomplish that. If you’ve got a good, strong leadership team, a prospective buyer is going to be very interested in something like that, a business that’s that’s already functioning well without necessarily having the direct involvement of the outgoing owner or owners. So yes,
Damon Pistulka 05:52
yes. And that did you? You brought up a very interesting point here, and we’re going to talk about your leadership team and scaling business here shortly. I want to make sure that people know we’re moving on to that. But when someone is buying a business, I thought someone brought this up to me. Might have been Mike finger brought it up on a post or something like that on LinkedIn, or I read it somewhere. They’re talking about sellers of a business that have had probably a decade or more getting comfortable with that business and how much money it makes in the cyclical nature of the business, but a buyer has about 90 days to decide if they want to spend millions of dollars, sometimes leveraging all their personal assets or the assets of their investors in that business. 90 days. You’ve had 10 years to do it, plus years, usually, and the easier you can make that transition, and the more transferable that is. It just that that compression, there’s incredible risk in 90 days. And I think when, when someone that’s selling a business puts herself in that position and goes, would I really do this if I was looking at it from the outside? It’s a, it’s a an eye opening experience for him,
Shawn Richards 07:02
right? I couldn’t agree more, yeah, so
Damon Pistulka 07:07
now we’re going to talk today about our topic, strengthening your leadership team to scale a business so one, you know, and and back to the SIPA certification. One of the things that can happen is I can have my business I can be a pretty smart business operator. I can grow that thing pretty large, and I don’t really need to grow that my leadership team that much. When we talk about strengthening the leadership team to scale your business value, talk a little bit about the leadership team and how that affects the business value, absolutely,
Shawn Richards 07:47
it’s a critical component to really understand about your business, because what happens is, and I kind of hit rewind just a little bit, yeah, when you have a business owner, entrepreneur that’s starting their own Business, in most cases, they’re growing that business. There’s, there’s no finite number to it, but I’m just going to choose a million dollars. A lot of times, they get to about a million dollars in revenue. They’ve got a small team that’s helping them. And they’re, they’re doing pretty well, you know, they’re making some decent money. Maybe they’re, they’re coming out with, I don’t know, 150 200,000 paid to themselves as the owner, and they’re enjoying a good work life balance. Things go on pretty well, and they’re thinking to themselves, let’s continue to grow or scale it. And the way that I define the difference between growth and scale growth is what you can do pretty much on your own, as either you’re as an owner or as a partnership, whatever the organization is organized as but you have a team, and that’s so much that you guys can do as your own leadership and as your own team. There’s a there’s a capacity limit there. When you want to get past that, that is when you’re going to move to a scaling type of model with your business. But the problem is a lot of folks don’t always think about what it’s going to take to do that. And I’ve identified four areas very quickly that a very cool owner or owners really need to think about when making that that leap from growth to scale so very quickly. Number one is the financial impact. What? What do they need to do? What are their financial resources? What is it going to take to actually start to scale the business? The second one is operational efficiencies. Are you organized? Do you have everything efficient enough that it can scale? And are you ready to do that? The third one is the people and the culture and the leadership within the business. And I’ll come back to that one in just a second. I’m sure we’ll talk more about that. The fourth one is kind of an interesting one. It’s one that I’ve added just in the last few years, because it’s such an important topic, and that’s the owner or owner’s emotional well being when making those decisions. Because what often happens is they start to scale the business, and all of a sudden it takes over their lives. No more do they have good work life balance. They’re not putting in 5067, Many hours a week, which is not what they wanted. Their home life suffers. Their stress levels go way up, and that’s not what any any business leader or owner wants to accomplish. And so those are the four areas that I’ll typically talk with people, even just kind of a, you know, over lunch or something, I’ll talk to somebody and say, Have you thought about these four areas? You can talk about wanting to scale it. But let’s think about it, because you may find that you want to just kind of stay where you’re at, just make more efficient, make it more profitable, grow it a little bit. That’s not a bad option. And you know, as you know, you can certainly increase the value of the company then go to sell if you’re going to scale it. Look at those things. One of the areas that I tend to get a little bit more excited about and more passionate about, is the leadership and the culture of the of the employees the company. And it tends to get overlooked a little bit. And when we talked earlier about, you know, the owners kind of, you know, again, they’re so involved that they sometimes don’t realize that are ordered to prepare to sell the business, they kind of have to pull themselves out of the business. And so that means hiring really, really effective leaders in the C suite, in your senior leadership group and the team there, as well as creating what I like to call a leadership development plan, where you’re looking at leadership development throughout the company, not just your C suite, folks, not just the senior leadership, but everybody you know. We when you’re getting ready, whether that’s three or five years down the road, or whether it’s six months down the road when you’re thinking about exiting at some point you gotta, you gotta face the reality, what’s going to happen to your position? Yeah, you’ve got, you got a couple of just, you’ve got a couple of options, really, and there’s really only two, and that is hire from without or promote from within. Those are your those are your two options. Yes, think of anything else. I don’t know if anybody else out there has thought of another way to do it. And so you have. And there’s pros and cons both ways. And there are some leaders that feel like, I’ll rephrase that. There are some business owners who feel like there’s not enough solid leadership in their company currently that they might need to go outside. That may be, if you haven’t really saw the leadership development plan in place, oftentimes, years ahead, you’ll start to identify, and there’s some some tips and some strategies to that to help you identify what kind of leaders need to be in your shoes after you exit, and how is that going to impact not just the other members of the C suite, but the entire company. So there’s some, there’s some different ways to kind of look at it, and depending on time and your interest there. We can certainly go into that if you’d like, but I’ll toss it back to you for just a second. Damon, yeah,
Damon Pistulka 12:45
no, I think that you know a couple things in that is the like I said, most people get into business because they’re good at something, and they think they can make money at it. And they get into business because what do they want? They want more money and more freedom. And you hit on the very thing that happens as they begin to scale their business. If they’re not building their leadership team right, they have they often make less money, and they are just tied to their business. And that’s one of the things that that you know an effective leadership strategy, knowing who’s going to be hired next, what their role is going to be is so critical in these things. And then you talked about one thing, and we’ll dive into this a bit more leadership development too, because they it has to be an intentional thing. It won’t just happen by itself. Let’s talk about some of the key aspects that an owner should focus on when they’re sitting there and they’re going, Wow, I’m, you know, I can’t work anymore hours. My home life is beginning to stink, and I’m not making the money that I really think this business could. What are some of the key aspects of their leadership team or things they should be considering at that point to make a difference. One
Shawn Richards 14:05
of the key elements that I like to look at, one of the very first things, is leadership style, and that is a different way of kind of looking at strengths. It’s similar, but a little bit different. And I feel that it is really important to look at the style of leadership, or more, better said, styles, plural of leadership within your C suite, most people are familiar with the concept of a visionary and that’s really important. Most entrepreneurs, most business owners and CEOs, kind of fit generally within that description. They are very visionary. They’re very motivating. They’re inspiring. They have great ideas. You also want to make sure that you have good implementers, people that can help execute and get things done. But you also need to remember to have servant leaders and that kind of a style somewhere in your C suite to make sure that you’re developed. Being all of the rank and file and future leaders and so on and so forth. And that usually comes from someone who has that kind of an approach to leadership, which is, how do I develop others? And that’s what servant leadership is. The fourth area that I feel is important to include in a C suite is simply good old fashioned expertise that could come in the form of someone who has been in the company, specifically for a number of years, maybe it’s 1520, years, and they just have a lot of longevity, a lot of experience in the company. But it also could be someone externally that has a lot of industry information and knowledge and experience, and so having that blend and making sure that you’ve got some really good coverage there. You know, you know this, of course, Damon, but no one person ever fits squarely into one of those categories. Maybe got a blend and a mixture of that, but by understanding and having some self awareness of yourself and others, you’re going to not only work better and more effectively together while you’re working together, but as you’re considering that that exit and you kind of stepping out, you’re going to see where those little gaps are, and that’s going to also help, you know, okay, so when we’re looking to hire or promote and fill this position that the owner is going to be exiting and kind of leaving vacant, that helps them to know a little bit better and get a head Start and what kind of leadership style needs to be in that position. It’s worth noting again, because we all have a blend of that that the former implementer, let’s call them a COO. That’s a lot of times what a COO is really good at is execution and getting things done and implementing ideas. They could slide over into a CEO type position that’s more visionary. But when you do that, of course, you’re leaving a hole where the CEO was. And so again, you’ve got to kind of know what kind of style so understanding that, and a lot of C suite folks, they get to know each other really, really well. It’s the folks, maybe in mid level management, or maybe it’s that emerging leadership that’s just, they’re only a couple of years in, that’s where that leadership development plan really comes into play, and it’s really important, because it helps them to understand all of the leaders throughout their company, and they can eyeball a little bit and say, you know, Jennifer has a lot of potential, and we See her as somebody that could really step into this role with the right training and the right development over the next two or three years, she might be one that fits into that role better than another member of the C suite. So different ways to look at it. But leadership, style is really important. I am a big proponent of strengths based leadership, which ties very closely to style, but it’s really how do you lead, and what kind of leadership do you like to lead in? What kind of energy do you have? What kind of impact do you want to have? All of those all play in. So a lot of self awareness is really important, not just for yourself as the business owner, but for the other members of the leadership, senior leadership team, the C suite, as well as the rank and file understanding that and that will help you to build that program, that leadership development plan on how you want to do that, what kind of training do they need? Sometimes we we take a one size fits all approach to any kind of development or skills training, but even to leadership, we just think, Oh, everybody fits into this, and that may work, you’re certainly going to learn some things, and that will help. It’s better than doing nothing. You can do a lot better job if you are focused on what kind of leadership or what direction to go. So those are some quick ideas, and what you can do to really kind of become more self aware in your business and in your leadership,
Damon Pistulka 18:42
yeah, yeah, that’s good stuff. So as you’re as you’re looking at this you mentioned earlier, the visionary leader that usually is the founders of the business. Do you often see that when they step back and take a look at their leadership team that this you mentioned the four roles that are pretty essential in having Do you often find that they’re missing one or more of the roles on their team? It’s
Shawn Richards 19:11
not uncommon, that’s for sure. Because what often happens, and it’s, I shouldn’t laugh as much, because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but, but what often happens is, as they’re starting to as the business owner, when you go back to, kind of that moving from growth to scale, that, that, that, that that step there, and you kind of imagine that in your mind, instinctively, for whatever reason, they’ll hire like minded people. And so they hire the person that thinks like they do. And so it does happen where you’ll have that visionary entrepreneur hire another visionary to come in and assign them the role of COO, which is not always a good fit. And so what happens is, now you got two visionaries, and they’re very excited about the future, but nothing’s getting done. And so that’s why. Understanding yourself and what you’re really good at is so important, and blending that out as best you can sometimes, you know, financially, it may not make sense to go higher, you know, six salary, six figure, salary type individual just to fill that gap, if you’ve got some coverage from another member of the C suite. And that’s what I love to come in and do with C suites, is help them identify all of that they may not have a gap, or at least it’s fillable with what they currently have. Because that’s another mistake that sometimes they make is, oh, we have to go higher. We have to go higher. May not if you just adjust things and have a little bit different focus on how you do things.
Damon Pistulka 20:38
Yeah, that’s a really good point. I want to first of all say, Usman, thanks for being here today. Said, Good evening, my friends and my family, great to see here. To say today. Usman, thank you. And I agree 100% in this, because one of the things that can happen is we get used to Damon does this in the business. Damon does this in the business, but my Damon skills may be highly transform transferable to another role, or part of what Damon could do could help to cover some of those roles. And that’s one of the things I did want to cover a little bit. And then I do want to cover the leadership development plan, because I think that’s something that you brought it up, I think we should spend some time on it. But before that is is really to understand that roles are changing. What the company needs, what they need to be doing in those roles is changing as the business grows or scales. How often do you think that, when you’re going into these businesses, that we get trapped in the fact that we’re not changing what the roles look like enough to compensate and move with the growth of a business? Yeah, it’s
Shawn Richards 21:57
an excellent question, and it’s a very important point, because that kind of stuff will sneak up on you. That’s what will happen. So it’s not like you suddenly have this realization that something’s off. It’s very slow moving. It’s like you’re here, almost like the, you know, consider like a train. Sometimes they miss that little, tiny change, and all of a sudden they’re they’re way off track. And it doesn’t take much. And so I recommend at least an annual kind of evaluation of where things are at, just to do a little check in. And a lot of businesses are good at doing this. They’ll have an annual retreat where they’ll reevaluate things and kind of make sure that they’re still aligned properly, and that everybody is filling the roles that they currently need, and that they’re approaching things looking for gaps. That’s where a really good consultant can come in and help you maybe see things, those blind spots that you’re not seeing. So yes, it’s definitely something. And like I said, I recommend at least annually, take a look at that and see what might be missing, and see if it makes sense for you to continue in your current roles as they’re currently defined for what you want to accomplish going forward, because again, there may be some, some new opportunities, and you might need to reevaluate, oh, you know what? We’re going to need a little bit more innovation coming in, little more creative thinking. Who do we have in the organization that can help us with that? Maybe time for a promotion, or who knows what? So that’s just a simple example, but always be looking for those, those little adjustments that you might either, either need to get back into alignment, or it’s time to move that direction.
Damon Pistulka 23:27
Yeah, yeah, right. More notes here, because this is good stuff, because it these things do change over time. And you make a great point, you should be having at least an annual review, and more often if you’re scaling hard, because those roles do change. And you will find gaps. You will find you. It’ll usually, it’ll sneak up in problems. You’ll see problems become, oh, this happened. Well, that happened three times now. And when it’s something that we missed, either a process wasn’t right, someone didn’t realize this is kind of in the gaps of the process, or something like that, and just gets worse and worse. That’s a great point on that. So as you’re coming in and you’re talking to someone about a leadership development plan, let’s spend a few minutes on that, because I think this might be a foreign concept to somebody that has not had to deal with it before, but let’s run through the highlights of a good leadership development plan, you bet.
Shawn Richards 24:24
So there’s a couple of ways to look at it, if you are expecting to make an exit some point, and most are, at least they’re somewhat thinking about it. A good leadership development plan includes a succession plan. In other words, what are we doing to promote and perhaps replace as people exit. So whether that’s you as the business owner, which is kind of you know that, but even your own C suite folks might be looking to make an advancement of their own in their career, and it’s ideal if you have some open communication about that, some early warning and some of those kinds of things. Yes, but include that, and that’s an important part, is the succession planning. And then I am a big proponent of, what are you doing as a C suite? So what’s your plan to develop yourselves as a suite, as a C suite, and senior leadership? And then the other element is, what are you doing? And depending on the size of your company, may have two parts to this. There may be some mid level management training that you want to have, as well as what I call emerging leaders. What are you doing for those folks that are maybe new to your company, or maybe they’re just out of college, depending again, on the size of your company, what are you doing to help them develop some leadership skills so that you can identify within your company, those future leaders now emerging leaders. Emerging Leaders, they might be 510, 15 years down the road before those opportunities maybe come within your company. If you’re in the process of scaling rather aggressively, those may only be one or two years down the road. Yes. So that’s why it’s important to be thinking, okay, what are we doing to help them develop? And what are we doing to help mid level and senior leadership all develop? Now you’re going to want to focus on different things. And again, I’m going to go back to those four styles that I like to focus on. And what I encourage my clients to focus on is to say, Okay, let’s start to identify, how does a seat a servant leader develop? How do they grow? And it’s different depending on the person and the leader and what you’re trying to do, what you’re trying to accomplish, and how might that be different than someone who has more of an expertise? Keep in mind, you’re going to have people that just like to learn new things, that like to acquire new skills, and that’s why it’s important not to overlook those who are of that mindset. They just, they like to learn, but they like to develop themselves. They don’t, necessarily, they’re not, they’re not looking to go lead the whole company. But that knowledge and that expertise could be really, really valuable, and almost certainly will be at a senior leadership level. So they could be some kind of a, you know, a knowledge expert that you would go to, and they just love to learn. And that’s how you can help them develop, is to say, Okay, let’s create a plan for this kind of person, or persons, if you have more than one, and how do we help them gain more training, more skills. How do we keep our company on the bleeding edge, the cutting edge of technology? Maybe we’ve got some people here that really love to do that. How can we empower them? Part also of a good leadership development plan, of course, is financial. How much are you willing to spend? How much can we budget to help everybody do that and to break that down. And that’s obviously a company by company, but those are a couple of key elements to kind of be thinking about. It doesn’t need to be very complicated either. I always encourage people to at least start with something, even if it’s small. Doesn’t need a big, huge plan. The other part that I always, always, always emphasizes to write everything down, even if it’s not related specifically to a leadership development plan. But write it down, you know, it can be a one page document that helps guide you, and revisit that every three to six months. And just say, How are we doing? Are we on track and check with your senior leadership? Are we moving this forward? Are we using our budget as we’ve allocated to help with leadership development. So include some accountability in your in your leadership development plan. How is it going to get executed, and who’s going to be responsible for it? Again? That’s usually a great place for perhaps a Human Resources individual. If you have one of those in your company, that’s a great thing for them. They’ll kind of geek out on that kind of stuff. So yeah, good servant leader will also do that. So yeah, there’s a couple of quick ideas on what a leadership development plan should include.
Damon Pistulka 28:49
Yeah, that’s That’s great. So you talked a little bit about culture, and that was early as we were going through this, and we hear people talking about culture, culture, culture and in scaling a business, I think culture really kind of comes to the forefront just because of the nature of the things that scaling brings when you’re aggressively scaling a business. So what are some of the cultural things that you really like to address with the leadership team. We’re looking at a development plan. We’re looking we are scaling. We’re in this process. We’re moving, and we’re we’re actively doing this. What are some of the key cultural things that that you think that we need to keep at the forefront and intentionally be be aware of and working on absolutely
Shawn Richards 29:41
I’ll start with three simple words that I’m sure everybody has heard at some point, values, vision, mission, start there. Make sure that you as a business, as a corporation, have really clear values, clearly defined and clearly communicate. Hated. I’m amazed at how many times I’ve done this. Multiple times I’ll do a kind of an employee interview, and I’ll ask him, What are the values of the company? It’s amazing how many of them don’t know the values of the company. Or they’ll they’ll kind of get the general idea. But when you go back and check with the owner or owners or senior leadership, they have a clear understanding. They can clearly, you know, rattle off those things, but that tells me that there’s a breakdown of communication. So that’s the first thing is to make sure you have really clear values on it. This is how we make decisions. This is why we make decisions the way we do. And then, of course, have really clear direction on this is the vision. This is where we want to go. This is kind of the, the ultimate that we’re shooting for. And make sure everybody is aligned with that vision. And then, of course, your mission, why you’re doing it, what you’re trying to accomplish, if you have those elements in place and it’s clearly defined, clearly communicated, everybody will be moving in the same direction. You know, there’s always going to be some little tweaks and adjustments that you need to do to make sure everybody is continuing to kind of row at the same cadence and same direction. And so that’s a great place to start when you’re trying to develop culture. And then, yes, make it intentional. Depending on the size of the company, it’s also important that your department even has their own kind of little micro environment, or little team type of vision, values and mission to make sure that they’re united. Because the bigger the company gets and the more employees you know what’s happening over here in the you know, the programmers of the tech development is not going to be what’s happening over in customer support, and that’s not what we happen in the accounting department. You still need to have all that company wide alignment those people that you’re working most closely with every single day. You’ve really got to have good culture just within that small group, or or it will, it will flounder.
Damon Pistulka 32:03
Yeah, that’s a great point. That’s a great point. So as as you’re thinking about this, we’re scaling business value where, where are some of the key roles that you think owners often overlook? What are some of the key roles that that just don’t seem like they get addressed soon enough.
Shawn Richards 32:26
I would say there’s kind of the two big ones are operational efficiency and making sure that you’re really efficient so that you can scale effectively. Now here’s, here’s the little catch to that that I it’s a careful balance. And it’s really, to be honest, I just be very blunt. It’s difficult to navigate this, but you don’t want to get into analysis paralysis. Some are trying so hard to figure out every little possibility that we don’t move forward. So there’s a careful balance between being completely reckless and just moving forward without any forethought or any planning, but also not over analyzing everything either. I am a big believer that with the right leadership, resilience is a really, really powerful skill to develop within people and within teams. A resilient team can overcome and bounce back from setbacks far better than the team that doesn’t know how to do that. And that starts with culture. It starts, or it continues, with the attitude that, hey, there isn’t a problem that you can present to us that we cannot solve together. And that is really powerful. Now again, you do the planning, you start to move forward when the setbacks come and Oh, whoops, we didn’t expect that kind of that law of unintended consequences, Yeah, but you’re together as a team, and you know, you have the confidence to Yes, we can Okay, let’s fix fix that. Let’s figure out a solution. Keep moving forward, but knowing how to do that effectively, that’s where, again, strong leadership will really come into play. But making sure that you can operate effectively and efficiently as you’re growing and scaling is really important. So that’s one area to really look at, and the other, of course, you know, and I’m probably biased, of course, because I’m a leadership development consultant, but that’s part of the reason. Why is that leadership and leaders, often they’re just they’re scaling so fast that they don’t take time to do some of these really critical things that will help them scale more effectively in the long run, because that’s that’s where it gets that’s where it catches them. Is later on. You know, they start with great success. Things seem to be going well, and then the problems start to creep up. And I sometimes joke a little bit, and I say, you know, when we’re looking at scaling a business, let’s scale the business, not the problems. Yeah, that’s what will happen. You’ll start all these problems start popping up. And it’s like, where those come from? We didn’t deal with these a year ago or two years ago. So there’s ways to it, there’s ways to attack it, prevent it, and then resolve them when you get to them. Yeah,
Damon Pistulka 34:51
that’s for sure. The The one thing I was thinking about you said, this is analysis paralysis. And I think that. A really good point in in when you’re building these leadership teams that are going to scale, they have to get comfortable making decisions with limited information, right? Not with no information, not without, you know, some forethought, but they really in a scaling situation. It’s not like it’s running, like it’s like you’re in a race. We all have to have coordinated motion in a race. We know there’s things that are going to go bad. The resilience is incredible, because we know we may have unexpected things, but to make a decision based on the fact that, hey, it’s wet on the track, because it just rained, we need to change the tires. Let’s go. We may have an error made a decision, because it might have turned to ice an hour later, but that decision was the best decision with the information at that point. And you know that that highest level leaders to really get that team to understand that’s what we do. We make the best decision with the information we have and not fall in play of we don’t want to make a mistake, we want to make the best decision and move forward. Because it’s not that we don’t want to make mistakes, it’s that we don’t want to stop our progress forward, and that’s what we really need to do in the scaling situation. It’s so much different. And this is one of the things that I’m glad you’re here talking about this, is the leadership team has to adopt a different mindset and a scaling business than than in I prevent to lose kind of defense or, you know, playing a football game or something. We’re trying to score here. We’re not trying to not get let the other team beat us. We’re trying to score. So we have to move forward, talk about that a little bit, and making the, you know, empowering that team to really feel comfortable doing that.
Shawn Richards 36:48
Yeah, it is. It is not easy. It’s amazing. How many times I I’ve talked to people individuals, whether they’re leaders or whether they’re rank and file, and we start to talk about culture, and we start to talk about, yeah, we have really great culture. And I’ll dig a little bit deeper, and I’ll start asking, Okay, what are some of the setbacks that you’ve experienced in the last two years? And they have a hard time coming up with them, because the follow up question to that is okay, and how did you guys work together as a team to resolve that? Because what I’m trying to draw out of them is okay, you did that before you dealt with a problem. How are you going to resolve a future problem same way? So let’s find out what really worked well from that experience, then we can apply it going forward. We can bring it more to the surface. But if they can’t come up with something that tells me, well, you have good culture, because everything is just going great. What happens when there’s a setback? And I guarantee there will be a setback. No one goes through life, either individually or in a business, without setbacks. And they can be on a company level, they can be in an industry level, a national level. I mean, we just went through election here in the United States. There are going to be changes in their current presidency, the current legislation, laws change, all of that kind of happens. And of course, we’ve all just endured worldwide, a massive, huge, unexpected, unanticipated, unplanned for major shift in the pandemic. For the most part, we survived it, but that was one that nobody predicted, and we had to figure out how to resolve that. So things are going to come at you that you’re just not ready for, if you’re prepared culturally as a team. And there are ways to do this. There are ways to develop a resilient team and resilient leadership, so that when those unexpected times do come. You can innovate, you can problem solve, you can fix what needs to be fixed, and work a lot better together, but you cannot do it in that moment. You have to prepare ahead of time, and that’s where good leadership comes in. That
Damon Pistulka 38:55
is a great point, because that resilience is developed before the problems happen. That’s right, and the ability to solve those problems, because it’s tested when the challenges come, that’s developed when the challenges come, and that’s a great point. So as we’re we’re getting near the end of our time today talking about strengthening your leadership team to scale business value. If you had one thing that you wanted to tell a leader that said that in this position, that they really are looking at their leadership team today, what’s, what’s, you know, a couple pieces of advice that you would say. Here’s where you might want to start. First
Shawn Richards 39:38
of all, don’t make assumptions. That’s the first thing. It’s natural, because we sometimes think, when we’ve worked with somebody or a group of people for a while, that we know them, and you do, that’s good, but don’t make assumptions. Don’t assume that so and so would be a great fit for the new role, because they may not be, they may not even be interested in the new role. It’s not uncommon. To have individuals say, you know, I don’t need to step over into a CEO role. I like what I’m doing, and if they can have some future reward, as far as compensation or flexibility is in schedule or whatever it is, you know, don’t, you know, kind of let that sleeping dog lie. Let’s not It’s not poke the bear here and cause problems. So don’t make assumptions. Communicate clearly. That’s another one that I have always believed in for any situation, is to communicate, communicate, communicate. I don’t believe that you can ever over communicate. So when you’re looking at your leadership team, have a communication, especially if you’re looking to exit the company. And to some degree the timing, we kind of have to look at and talk about a little bit again, that sort of good coach or consultant can help you. Is to talk through when to talk about succession planning. About, okay, everyone knows that. You know Sean, he’s the owner of the company, and he’s getting ready to sell the company. What’s the leadership succession plan? That part? You don’t necessarily have to reveal too early, but you can start talking about it, yeah, start having some open communication. So those are a couple of things, all
Damon Pistulka 41:05
right. Well, Sean, it’s been awesome having you on today and talking about strengthening your leadership team to scale a business talking about leadership teams. And I just want to say, if someone got in here late, you want to go back to the beginning. You want to listen this thing from from the beginning, so you can hear some of the insights that Sean dropped here about really understanding your leadership team, figuring out if you got the right people on developing your leadership plan, talking about really openly and honestly, building that team that has the the can deliver efficiency and with the resilience to solve those problems. Thanks for being here today. Sean, thank
Speaker 1 41:47
you. Damon, all right. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, good
Damon Pistulka 41:51
stuff. So someone wants to reach you, Sean, what’s the best way for them to get a hold of you? There’s
Shawn Richards 41:56
a couple of ways. My Website, blue sky, biz, B, I, Z, consulting com. Can also find me on LinkedIn, Sean J Richards, so make sure you include the J or you’ll get a different Sean Richards out there somewhere. But Sean J Richards, Sean is spelled S, H, A, W, N, by the way, so Sean J Richards. So I’m very active on LinkedIn, and you’re welcome to come check out my podcast. I have a leadership podcast. It’s called the team engagement podcast. Yeah, Damon was kind enough for all of you probably are following Damon. You already know this, but he was on my podcast just a few weeks ago. So it’s been trying to exchange podcasts, but that’s another way that you can kind of keep track and stay in touch with me. I’d love to hear from you and offer any help that I can possibly give to you and your company.
Damon Pistulka 42:39
Awesome. Well, thanks for being here today. Once again, Sean, I want to thank everybody from listening, and thank to Usman for dropping the comments today and other people that were listening that didn’t drop the comments. We appreciate that you’re out there. I can see you’re out there. I can see how many people we’ve had online today. Thank you all for being here. Appreciate you. We’ll be back again with another awesome guest on the face of the business, Sean. Hang out with me for a minute offline, and we’ll finish up.
