Beyond improving our own performance, we need to create a strong business so it can keep delivering the results most important to us. Leverage and long term sustainability are crucial. Here is Stephen Covey’s definition of leadership again:
“Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves”
As the business owner you need to personally live this principle every day to then spread it throughout your business. Creating a sustained leveraged business involves duplicating your energy and methods through your team, and setting up systems to allow that all to work as effectively and smoothly as possible. How do you do this? Here are a few tips:
Find great people with character. Look for people who may or may not have all the particular skills required but who definitely have the character needed to help move the business forward. People of great character will always learn quickly, use initiative and enthusiasm and follow solid systems to help deliver the result. With an existing team, help them to be the best they can be. If some do not possess the necessary character or are not willing to develop it, think seriously about finding others who do. People with character will always find a way to deliver when challenges come along. For business owners, this is perfect!
Build strong and trusting relationships with the team. See Covey’s definition. People will give their best when they know the leader backs them to be the best they can be and allows them to get on and do it. Trust is a no-brainer when dealing with a great team and everything must be done to help it grow. Other considerations such as a culture of discipline (focus), positive expectation, high standards and the sharing of credit are very important here. This is all just as crucial with wider team members such as bankers, accountants, stock agents etc.
Set up simple duplicable systems that get the job done to the required quality. Systems must be easy to run and changeable (if necessary) by the people who run them. This is because if others are running a system, they may know more about that particular part of the business than you do. Great systems are successful processes that can be repeated easily without having to make the system up every time. Resulting quality will be high. The owner then needs to let those people do their job by getting out of their way. Masterminding on issues and better methods will always need to take place of course.
Lead people, manage things. People are not “things” so make sure they are given due respect and expectation. Great team members will respond to a broad framework with a lot of room to move within that framework. So, they will happily follow great leaders who allow them run the systems. Systems are things, as are machines (such as tractors and computers) and they need managing. Learn the distinction between these two and your business has a huge chance of delivering results.
This all takes discipline and focus on your part but that is just part of the price of leadership. Live it first and then incorporate these principles into the culture second. Leveraging your own energies effectively means the business relies less on you and more on the system and culture. Sustainability will then come into play to deliver over the long term. And this is what it is all about – ongoing residual success!