If you want a beautiful 50-year-old sycamore tree in front of your house. When is the best time to plant it?
50 years ago.
What is the second best time?
Right now.
The best way to get out of Whitewater is to recognize you are in Whitewater, admit that those other strategies won’t actually solve the fundamental problem, and then set about the needed dirty fingernail work.
You probably feel like you’re behind.
You probably wonder how you could add anything else to your plate.
You probably think you have to do all these other things first.
But if you do, another 50 years will pass, and you still won’t have a sycamore.
If you are ready to get out of and stay out of Whitewater. There are three dirty fingernail actions you need to take.
By the way, this is Part 3 of our series on getting out of Whitewater. You can read Part 1 to discover the single biggest problem in Whitewater and Part 2 to avoid the false strategies most people think will help but only make matters worse (it might also explain why what you’re doing right now isn’t working the way you hoped).
Without further ado, here’s how to get out of Whitewater and stay out!
First, get your team on the same page
Everyone on your senior leadership team needs to know, understand, and agree that you are in Whitewater and that things have to change to get out. Then, you must fully commit to getting out in one of two ways: returning to Fun OR pushing forward to Predictable Success.
I cannot stress enough how important this step is.
- If your team is still trying to do more of what worked before, it won’t work.
- If just about everyone is bought in, but you have one or two influential leaders who aren’t, you will stall out.
- You can’t make this transformation alone. You can’t even keep it going alone. You need the whole team rowing together more than ever.
The number one reason founders fail to break out of Whitewater and achieve Predictable Success, even when they know how to do it, is because they have one or two key leaders on their team who either can’t or won’t get on board with the changes.
This leads to a crucial question I can’t address here, but you must ask yourself. “Do each of my team members have what it takes to make the leap?”
If you’d like to know how your team is wired, you can get a customized Team Leadership Styles Report.
Second, work on the right imperatives in the right order and in the right way
There are 13 imperatives for achieving Predictable Success. Fortunately, you do not have to (and should not) work on them all at once. Instead, you need to identify the 2-3 imperatives to create the momentum you need to get out of Whitewater.
If you want to know your 2-3 imperatives, you and your team can take the Team Scalability Assessment.
These imperatives also have to be worked in the right order. If you dial the right numbers into a combination lock in the wrong order, it will be just as locked as it was before. The key is not just the right numbers but also the right order. The same is true for achieving Predictable Success. You need to work on the right imperatives in the right order.
Finally, you need to do it right. No, there is not one ultra-specific “right way”, but there are many wrong ways. And it is here that bringing on a guide will dramatically speed up your progress by ensuring you do it right the first time instead of hitting the same “rapid” again and again.
Third, use what you’ve built.
You’d be surprised by how many founders and leadership teams do all the work in step two, then totally ignore it. They go right back to doing what they did before and unsurprisingly achieve the same results they had before with nothing to show for all their work but a few more forgotten documents in a drawer or in Google Drive.
Things like org charts, role definitions, team mandates, strategic alignment, and scaled empowerment don’t work because you wrote them down. They work because you use them repeatedly to make and execute high-quality decisions at scale.
Even better, they work when you use them to address your problems and solve them at the root.
And even better than that, they work when you use them to plan, think, act proactively, and solve problems before they even pop up.
From “Why are we doing this?” to “How did we work without this?”
I worked with a team that, at the beginning of our time together, couldn’t imagine spending a whole day on their organizational chart. They couldn’t really fathom how the six weeks of homework they had on their org chart would solve the growth and profitability problems they were experiencing. To their credit, they trusted the process. They went all in and did all the dirty fingernail work they had to do. They did an outstanding job, too.
About a year later, I sat down with them at their annual strategic planning meeting. We were reviewing the prior year, and it was nothing short of remarkable. They were deep into double-digit revenue growth after having been flat the two years prior. More importantly (and impressively), they had tripled their profits in a single year.
When I asked them how they achieved such great results, their COO looked up at me with a sly smile and said, “Scott, I’ll be honest. When we did all that org chart stuff with you, I didn’t see how it would help. But I can’t tell you how many times I used all that stuff this year. I used it for my hiring. I used it to manage my guys. I used it to get out of meetings I didn’t have to be in. I used it for our performance assessments. We were able to hit those numbers because I was able to run my crews full of guys who knew exactly what to do, when to do it, and who to go to for help. We got so much more done. It was awesome!”
You have to use the tools. Yes, it’s a little awkward at first. No, you don’t have to be religiously dogmatic, but the tools work. Keep using them.
If you feel a little overwhelmed, take heart. That’s normal. It’s okay. This, too, shall pass as you work these steps one at a time, and just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.
If you’d like any help, if you don’t want to do this alone, and/or if you want to know you’re doing it right the first time, give us a call at 678-490-8330 or schedule a free acceleration consultation; we’d be honored to bring Predictable Success to your organization.
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