The Heart & Science Of High Performance
STEPS TO SUCCESS EDITOR’S VIEWPOINT UPCOMING WORKSHOPS February 2004

From The Heart

I have dedicated this newsletter to firms and executives that want to step up their business growth and success.

If growth is your focus, the first step is to connect and balance the practical, the quantitative and the intangible aspects of your business. This ensures your firm is seen as a “great place to work”, a “great place to do business” and delivers “great products at a reasonable value”.

The second step is to connect the business’ “current” situation with its “future” by integrating the Operations & Business Plan (the current) with your Vision & Strategy (the future).

Although this sounds pretty simplistic, many firms focus on one or two of these — instead of creating the balance needed for sustainable growth.

When a firm grows materially and in the spirit of performance there are certain “truths” that are always apparent:

  • Grow from strength — don't wait for trouble. Great firms are always seeking to improve, not passively hoping for continued success.
  • Great firms promote quality and high performance for results and do so with balance and integration
  • Great leadership teams demonstrate the way in simple, clear consistent words and behaviors.
  • Great teams live out their purpose and develop leverage and drive based on solid, explicit, measurable and interdependent accountabilities.
  • Great businesses have a compelling purpose and engage their top performers.

I hope you find the material in this newsletter practical and useful and I look forward to any comments.

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Every Business Is In the Growth Business — A success model for business building

3 Steps to Building Your Business

Business success is something most of us are striving for. You recognize a high performance business when you see it — the enterprise is pulsing. Its vitality and energy draw you to it and create enthusiasm and commitment.

How can you replicate that kind of energy and drive in the enterprise you lead — regardless of size?

By working with high impact business builders over the last 20 years, we have refined 3 steps to building a business that prove highly effective time and again.

Use this approach to:

  1. Drive balance in critical areas of your business
  2. Focus on the heart of the business — where profit and pride connect
  3. Prioritize the fewest things that will make the most difference
  4. Simplify the all too complex world we have made business into
  5. Build strength from the heart of the business — helping leaders engage and attract commitment of staff, professionals and key external relationships such as clients and suppliers.

While you are digesting the 3 Steps to Business Building, keep the following in mind:

A leading global strategy firm surveyed a sample of CEO's as to why they failed to grow:

  • 70% of them cited lack of clarity and commitment to the heart of their business
  • Bad decision-making
  • Failure to focus is the culprit, not factors such as technology, competition or opportunity

Here’s to follow-through and making it work.

Scroll down to see our 3-step approach.

Please email me if you’d like the “dos and don’ts” of this approach at steve@walmsleyandco.com.


~ Steve Walmsley




Upcoming Workshops:

Business Builders:

Success Councils

  • Ongoing series for founders and executives
  • Peer and expert advisors

Entrepreneurial Professionals:

Mastery Implementation Series

Corporate Clients:

(Private Events):
  • Advancing Results through Quality Relationships
    April & May 2004
  • Developing Leader-Coaches To Build Capability
    May 2004
  • High Impact Client Consultation Practices
    May through August 2004

If you have a subject you are interested in, or an article you would like to suggest for our newsletter, please email Sherri
@walmsleyandco.com

STEP 1 — Clarify the HEART OF THE BUSINESS — Keep focused on the profitable core of your business — where most profitable, most valued by clients and promotes success (define it, target it, ensure balance).

The Heart or the core of your business is where it is most profitable and sustainable. It is a highly profitable combination of business assets, skills, products and relationships that distinguishes you from your competitors and allows you to provide a unique benefit statement to a portion of your customers.

The “heart” of your business may be buried beneath layers of under-performing offerings. It may be overlooked while you get excited about new “hot” ideas.

Ask yourself where most clients value your services and where the bulk of your company's profits are generated. This is where to maximize leverage and outperform the competition.


STEP 2 — STRENGTHEN THE HEART — Engage staff and clients for commitment and alignment (communicating, creating enthusiasm, commitment for performance).

Many growth strategies distract businesses from focusing on the heart and leave it diffused in many areas. Drive the heart of your business and stay away from diversification that takes you off center.

Many growth strategies get hung up in implementation. Is the strategy written and bound on a shelf or is there an active process for Strategy Management?

To make sure your people “get” the stratey Step 1 should be communicated to staff in a meaningful way while ensuring the following steps are incorporated:

  1. Make it clear.
  2. Demonstrate it — any executive can “communicate” direction — not all can illustrate it in their personal behavior.
  3. There is nothing wrong with discipline, it’s how sports teams are built. Strong, repeatable work processes and team processes bring the tangible and intangible assets together.
  4. Seek and receive feedback. Listen and integrate it.
  5. Celebrate achievement and success.


STEP 3 — PERFORMING WITH HEART — Strengthening continuously (putting it together, encouraging broad commitment and high performance for profit and quality).

Step 3 is where the hard work really starts.

Implementation is what makes a difference in every exceptional business. The “stick-to-it” required in implementation differentiates great leaders from great visionaries. All the tough issues come out in implementation — all the simple answers go out the window.

A few “truths”:

  • Leaders set the tone and set the bar for performance
  • Profitable growth requires focus and leadership in your core business
  • The mechanics of the business as well as the spirit are equally important
  • Effort and results are both important
  • Accountability is for executive and for staff
  • Be persistent and uncompromising
  • Actively seek and stimulate a constant curiosity about how to enhance success.

Keep steady and learning … patient leadership with commitment to stretch.


Summary Thoughts

Business builders who create sustainable, profitable growth:

  1. Ensure excellence in the heart of the business
  2. Focus on the current and stretch to the strategic
  3. Identify if, and how to grow from the heart into complementary services and products
  4. Grow to add more value — to clients, to your staff and to the bottom-line.

Remember, the success (or failure) of your growth strategy is in the heart.

Steve@walmsleyandco.com
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©2004 Walmsley & Co.

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The Heart & Science
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