4 GROWTH AREAS TO LEARN FROM A GOOD BUSINESS LEADERSHIP TRAINING

Good business leadership training will radically alter the growth of your business in four key areas, four key ways. Hey folks, Doctor Kevin here. Today I will reveal what those four areas of growth are that good business leadership training can help you attain in your business to truly attain a business of significance that has a lasting impact over time. 

I tend to think of high-performing teams as star organizations. Star businesses have really dialed in in those four key areas:

• Strategy
• Tactics
• analytics, and 
• relations 

By focusing on those four through a business leadership training process, you set yourself up to truly be an industry leader. So let’s jump in and discover what those four areas are and how they apply to your business. 

First of all, good business leadership training will help an organization have a clear strategy. Now strategy means more than just a point on the horizon. It’s more than just a strategic plan because it also includes having systems and processes that are automated. Not having those systems and processes automated is devastating in an organization. I bet you’ve seen it in your organization when things aren’t dialed in, when there aren’t clear expectations. 

So really, what business leadership training is designed to do is to first and foremost, have clarity of what that point on the horizon you’re trying to go towards, right? First of all, you have to understand your vision and then be able to break it down. So to go from an abstract vision, and this is really where innovation happens. An alternative thinking, big picture thinking. So you’re thinking big in your organization. That’s real key to business leadership training is to be able to practice those skills of thinking abstractly and thinking with innovation and creativity. That’s really what strategic thinking and strategy organization are all about. 

Organizations that fail to do that or don’t do it effectively, I’ve got so many examples of one of the organizations that have done it that way. Yeah, one organization I work with is a very intelligent individual running a large financial institute. And while they did sometimes spend some time on strategic planning, because of the cultural makeup of individuals on the teams and the people who ran the entire organization. Once the strategic plan was done, they probably put it away and forgot about it, and they put their heads down and delved into the tactics and became very reactionary and focused on the urgency of the day instead of moving towards their grand vision of what they wanted to create. In this way you know they ended up working in their business and not on their business.

That’s when we talk about being strategic. That’s really what we’re talking about, it’s making sure you’re spending time working on your business while creating clarity of the plan and having systems and processes that are developed so things are automated. 

Other businesses I’ve seen where I’m working in a manufacturing facility that didn’t have systems and processes right ’cause the old school a lot of manufacturing was really seen as more of an art, and so folks would go in and they had this expertise and they would go in and they would build the dive the way they knew how to built it or they would have a certain process where all the knowledge was in the heads of the individuals and nothing was automated, and those systems and processes weren’t built. And so what happens is people start to retire, and their wisdom and knowledge are lost. 

The strategic thinking in an organization and what business leadership training will help you do is make sure you’re gathering that wisdom and automating it so you can build that bench strength so the organization will continue to exist and go beyond just the individuals in the organization. 

Now, conversely, I’ve seen organizations that when the makeup of the individuals is so strategic that they fail to see the details and their mind is so far up in the clouds, which is a beautiful thing. But because of that, they always have the next idea and their eyes are always on the horizon and execution falls short. They make decisions that don’t have all the data and then they fail to execute because they are always on to the next thing. This happens in a lot of organizations that are really good with innovation. I think about Apple, when Apple came out with a new plug for their iPhone, a beautiful, innovative idea but then it shot them in the foot because they ended up with this little cord that you have to use a little adapter and it became the bane of their existence.  In fact, you know Samsung was using that as an example of a poor design. In my mind, it’s over innovation. It’s too much strategic thinking without enough groundedness. 

Business leadership training will help an organization find that balance between execution and tactics and high-level thinking and strategy to be able to innovate in a way that’s pragmatic and practical and moves the business forward. 

So the first thing business leadership training is going to do in your organization is to help you stay and keep that strategic mindset in a balanced way so it doesn’t tip one way or the other, because too much strategy or not enough strategic thinking will cripple your organization. But being able to be strategic with intention, that’s gold. 

Now when creating a star organization, after strategies are defined, the thing that business leadership training is going to help you do is get tactical. Tactical is really about when the rubber meets the road. It’s about execution and accountability, follow through. Like what I see in so many organizations, they might have good ideas, they might understand the data but the follow-through often gets in the way. So what happens is they might have a plan, but they don’t have clear accountability. They don’t know who’s going to do what and when they’re going to do it. They end up than being in this Groundhog Day kind of scenario where they keep doing the same thing over and over and over really pulled into the urgency of the moment. You know the interesting thing is a lot of individuals that rise up in the leadership are really good at getting things done. They have that tactical mindset yet the further you get in the leadership, the more important it is not to be just ruled by that execution mindset, because the execution mindset, when it holds dominance in the organization will overrun an overlooked strategy. It’ll overrun the engagement, the people you are trying to create. It’s a singular focus on getting things done on the result. Now a focus on results is a good thing, but sometimes it can have a really negative impact on the organization. 

You know, I’ve seen an organization that decided it was going to make some organizational changes. So organizational changes and how the organization was structured. Large organization. They’re going to collapse the number of regions in their organization by 30%. That meant 30% fewer regional presidents and 30% less staff all the way around. Yet the executive team was made up of a bunch of tacticians, right? They saw it was going to be the best thing for the organization, so they pulled everybody together to announce this grand plan, this new design that they’re going to implement. Very tactical, very practical, very good for the bottom line. 

Can you imagine the result as they brought everybody into the central hub to tell him this great new design where they’re going to collapse the number of regions and it’s going to be so good for the bank? What do you suppose the outcome was? People were flipping out. They didn’t know they had a job, in fact, the executive team missed that, they didn’t have that dialed in yet. 

It’s still in its raw form and they really had the backpedal along with ways and they undermined morale hugely because they didn’t have clarity and they didn’t take time to move out of that tactical mindset to be able to see what the impacts might be, to understand how to fit into the larger strategic plan. That tactical drive undermined their ability ultimately to get things done. This is what business leadership training, when done right, will help your organization to be tactical in a similar way that it’s balanced – there’s a time to create accountability and a time to make sure follow through was there. It must be done with consistency, but when it’s done singularly without balancing the organization, it will become the organization’s Achilles heel. It’ll decrease morale, it’ll steamroll over strategy, and it’ll create biases in the organization that undermine the business’s success and sometimes put it at odds with its own value system. 

Business leadership training will help your organization to make sure that there are clear accountabilities and follow through and that everybody is on board with the larger direction of the organization. In a way that doesn’t steamroll over people or undermine the success of the organization. When done right, tactical thinking in the organization will absolutely help it grab the brass ring. 

So many organizations overdo it or underdo it in a way that really does become their Achilles heel. That’s what business leadership training will do, help you find that perfect balance where the rubber meets the road. 

Good business leadership training in your organization will help dial in that analytic thinking. Analytic thinking is really the detailed, factual-oriented part of your organization. Good leadership training/coaching is designed to help really dial that in. What’s that mean? Well, really it focuses on analytic thinking. It’s all around measure, It’s around data, details, it’s around understanding the numbers. 

For smaller businesses, I’ve seen a lot that becomes the bane of their existence. They don’t like it, it’s not their preference. Good coaching or good business leadership training will help organizations be able to not overly focus on it and not get lost in that kind of the details and the data, but also to not miss it altogether. 

Now, I’ve seen examples of organizations you think about that detail-oriented thinking. Where does that play out any more than in financial organizations working with a bunch of accountants in an accounting firm, it was fantastic how clean and clear where they were with all the data. They lived in the data.  I think, oh there’s little squirrels down in the weeds and then the wax right, they lived in the weeds but the cost of that extremely detailed orientation was they missed the big picture. Good business leaders of training will help you find the balance to help you understand what data you need to have and when enough is enough. 

I’ve seen organizations that will get so bogged down in the data that they fail to make a decision or their decision making is so slow and unable to pivot quickly enough to match the economy and to stay up to date with the economic environment. Good business leadership training is going to help an organization understand what core data they need to be looking at and how to look at that data consistently and to use it for the good of the organization. 

Now, a lot of organizations will undervalue analytic thinking and they don’t take time because they love to roll their sleeves and get things done, or they’re living in the world of innovation and they missed the reality. In fact, organizations will often make emotional decisions. I’ve seen executive teams where they come together, and they all convince themselves with impassioned pleas about the direction they need to go, but nobody’s really looking at the facts. And so they end up making decisions that aren’t really based on the facts but are really more based on emotions. 

Analytic thinking is designed to help you be grounded in your decision-making in reality as it is, but not get stuck there. In fact, there’s a larger process that good business leadership training and coaching will help you move through, giving full credence to the analytical thinking without falling out of balance. 

And that’s really it with analytical thinking, it’s important to have that balance to spend time understanding reality as it is, understanding the data, understanding the facts, have key performance indicators, know on your measures but also not be blinded by them. That’s the role of business leadership training in helping your organization grow, finding that balance. 

The final and foundational element in growing your business to become a star business is relational quality. Now the relational quality in the organization is really simple, the human end. 

So many organizations get so focused on getting things done they forget the people. Or they live in a world of strategy and the next idea of innovation but they’re not bringing people along – the relational element. And what business leadership training will help your organization do is get everybody aligned and bring out the best of the individuals in your teams. 

The best executive team is going to create the best organization. When we see the best executive team, what am I even talking about? I’m talking about effective communication, effective collaboration, cohesion, commitment – all of those human elements that really are the foundation and the fabric of the organization. 

Now I love when I see organizations start to misunderstand what they are. I see, I work with banks and they’ll say, we’re a financial institution, manufacturers will say we’re a manufacturing organization. Well, there’s some truth in that, but the reality is, they’re human organizations. Everything they do is for people by people to a human end. And if you lose sight of that, organizations start to undermine their own success. I’ve seen it again and again and again, organizations making decisions that they believe are good for the bottom line, but failing to get the hearts and minds of the organization on board with it. 

The best solution to any problem is worthless if nobody buys into it. Even worse, the best solution to any problem is detrimental to the organization of individuals if they resist it, and that is so often what I see, people will resist change. That’s not really true. People don’t mind change. They like their change. They don’t want your change. What so many organizations failed to do is to understand the power in getting people on board aligned in a particular direction. 

Yes, it’s absolutely critical to measure your finances, to have a clear strategic plan, to have accountabilities through your organization. But if you don’t get people on board and create engagement across your organization, you’re going to have a lot of headaches. You probably do have a lot of headaches because it’s one of the toughest things there is. It’s easy to measure your finances. It’s easy to see your productivity and to create efficiencies in your processes. But how do you get people on board? ‘Cause, it’s the people who are really the lifeblood of your business. In fact, that relational quality is the foundation of all the others – the strategic quality, the tactical, and the analytic. None of that happens without the people, how you get people on board. 

That’s what business leadership training is designed to do, to help people have a deeper level of awareness and accountability, to bring their A-game, to be aligned so they can operate as a team and move that organization forward in a way that really brings that excitement.

In fact, the star organizations are the ones that when you walk into their organization, there’s a different feeling. You can feel there’s an energy in the air. People are excited to be there. They’re finding value in what they’re doing. They’re feeling recognized. They’re feeling rewarded, not financially, but rewarded in a human way. They feel connected with each other. 

Business leadership training will help your organization to be able to create that kind of environment – an environment where people thrive. I think of it as the Goldman Sachs of organizations. There are certain organizations that people are lining up to join. There are certain organizations that people are jumping ship as soon as they can. It all comes back to how those people feel engaged in the environment that you’ve created for them. Good business leadership coaching is going to help you create that engaged relational quality in your organization so that people thrive, moving together as an aligned force, creating a business for the future. A business of significance. 

So effective business leadership training and coaching will absolutely, radically alter the trajectory of your business. Remember that star model? By helping you become more strategic, more tactical, analytic, and relational. Not just more, but intentionally so. To dial back when you need to dial back and pick it up when you need to pick it up. In that way in an organization, your company could get over a lot of the headaches that I know you’re facing. I know you’re facing difficulty getting people on board with some of your strategic decisions or having accountability and follow through at a deeper level in the organization or having clarity around what the mission of a particular team or the organization is. 

Good business leadership training is going to help you be strategic, see the big picture and be able to break it down and build the systems and processes that automate. Good leadership training is going to help you to be able to be tactical, to have clear accountabilities, roles, and goals, and know who’s doing what and when in a way that assures follow through and consistency, so execution is happening. Good leadership training is going to make decisions that are analytic, that is based on the reality that the key performance indicators are measured and that data is surfaced and understood and considered when making decisions without being bogged down. Finally, good business leadership training is going to help you get the human element. Surface and expand the human element. Get people on board to develop that culture that thrives, to develop a culture of engagement, where people are excited to show up to work and they have that spring in their step. You know they bring the best they’ve got. 

Good business leadership training will help you create that star organization that will help you take your business to the future, to really go beyond just making money in your business but creating an impactful organization of business for the future.