Propelling Performance

In Episode Eight, Rob speaks with Ken Weldin about shaping your future with governance. Ken shares his advice on the best approach to embedding good governance into your mid-tier business, by considering governance as a strategic approach to shaping the future of your organisation. Ken details some of the fears that hold organisations back, real-life examples of bad governance we have seen in the last 12-18 months and the key actions you can take to get started. He simplifies the process, concepts and language surrounding governance, so it is relevant and relatable – ‘keep it simple and use concepts that your organisation lives and breathes.”

“Your organisation will make hundreds if not thousands of decisions every day. So you may not realise it, but you're exercising governance at that point; which decisions do you take a chance on, which ones you do fast track, which do you rely on past experience to make a judgement? That's governance in action.” - Ken Weldin

Listen to discover: 

·      At its core, governance is about how you make decisions and focusing on how you make your organisation better

·      Why you should look at governance as shaping the future and shaping change in a fair and equitable way

·      “Systems, processes, charters, policies and minutes, there's a time and a place for that but governance shouldn't start with that. It’s about good decisions, enhancing value, protecting the future, shaping change.” 

·      Why some organisations fear governance is going to create a bureaucracy and slow them down

·      Governance is about finding your own solution and translating it to people and what your company's trying to do. Make it personal and relevant to you.

·      Ask the questions… How do we do that better? How do we do that with less impact on our stakeholders? How do we do that so that we come across as a fairer organisation?

·      Real-life examples of bad governance from the last 12-18 months… an earnings downgrade, a customer dispute, a compliance failure, an ethical breach, fraud, money laundering issues, late payment of suppliers, underpayment of staff, cyber breach, false advertising, poor disaster recovery, poor Occupational Health and Safety, poor reputational management and stakeholder engagement.

·      How a proactive risk framework will enable you to anticipate the impact of major external events

·      The importance of scenario planning, evaluating risk and pausing to measure success

·      “If it ain’t broke, fix it before someone else does.”

·      Encourage boards and management teams to consider…

1. If a product is selling really well, why? Why do people keep coming back? 
2. What is the implicit promise that keeps them coming back to us? 
3. How do we protect that? How do we make sure that nothing goes wrong?

“Work out the invisible thing that keeps people coming back to you. Put in place the ideas, goals and steps you need to protect that, then reassess how you will anchor to that as your purpose.” - Ken Weldin

 Take action!

• Consider hiring an advisor, unless you are comfortable and motivated to handle the process yourself. Sometimes it’s helpful to have an external perspective.
• Do you want to keep the status quo or change and evolve? You need checks and balances, strategies, initiatives and processes to enable that to happen in a sensible manner.
• How do you explain to someone who's never met you, what your organisation does? What do you really do and what do you want to do? What's the invisible promise that keeps you coming back?

In Episode Seven, Rob speaks with Warren Otter, founder of Otter and Associates. This boutique Business Growth Advisory firm helps guide SME businesses to grow profitably and increase business wealth, in a short period of time, reducing their stress and improving their lifestyle. In this episode, Warren shares insights into the advantages of a strategic acquisition, exploring key points for businesses looking to grow and how to evaluate and maximise opportunities.

“I look at this point of view… what is the owner's strategy for the next five or 10 years? That's why I've always termed this strategic acquisitions. It’s not just business acquisitions. You can't ignore good opportunities that come your way. And if a business owner has a really strong business plan, it's a lot easier to work out the types of acquisitions they want, strategically.” – Warren Otter

Listen to discover:

·      The fears that hold businesses back from acquisitions

·      The advantage of buying the strategic position a business holds in the marketplace

·      Why it’s important to look further than your own accountant for advice

·      Warren’s definition of ‘a safe acquisition’

·      The widening gap between sellers and buyers in the market and the new opportunities for sale

·      Why businesses must be really clear on their core strengths and skills

·      Four tips for evaluating acquisition opportunities

1. Investigate density of client base
2.  Assess and lock in key staff and selling owner
3.  Get external assistance for due diligence
4.  Consider special circumstances such as licencing

·      Who to have on your due diligence team

·      Negotiating ‘go and no go’ terms

·      The advantages of appointing a buyer’s advocate

“The safest acquisition is when you're buying someone who's doing virtually the same thing you’re doing and you're buying more market share. You're not having to go into a new market, you're not having to go into a new product range… you're basically buying other clients.” – Warren Otter

Take action!

Listen to Warren’s real-life case study of how Otter and Associates guided an engineering company from a $2.4 million to $4 million enterprise value through one small acquisition, buying only what they needed.

You can try growth the old, hard way – or double, even triple your value in a fairly short period of time through strategic acquisition. Which would you choose?

In Episode Six, Rob speaks with Founder of Marketing to Mums, Katrina McCarter. Katrina is a wealth of information about Australia’s most influential market segment – mums. In this episode, Katrina shares insights, gained through in-depth market research, on the changing mum market, to give businesses the latest information on tailoring their marketing messages more effectively to mums.

“It's about getting the right information available and accessible to these prospective mums, on the right channels. It's so vital that you have a clear understanding of which segment of the mum market you're trying to reach. Because, otherwise, you can be wasting a hell of a lot of money.” – Katrina McCarter

Listen to discover:

1.     Why B2C businesses need to improve their marketing to mums

2.     Why mums are unhappy with the way companies undertake their marketing

3.     The two biggest mistakes in marketing to mums… 

• Businesses target too broadly
• Lack of understanding of their segment of the mum audience

4.     Why stereotyping and assumptions are a big marketing mistake; the disconnect between marketing and reality in the mum market

5.     Results from Katrina’s survey of 1300 millennial mums during lockdown, with themes including affordability/family finances; changing purchasing habits; a boom in self-care and putting health needs first and a trend towards sustainability and minimalism

6.     Introducing the ‘tech first’ mum

7.     Why written testimonials have the greatest influence on a sale 

8.     How the desire for convenience and time drives purchasing decisions

9.     Opportunities for female owned businesses; tell your brand story to build a relationship of trust

10.  The increasing influence of grandmothers, a new emerging sector. 

“There are 6.2 million mums here in Australia, collectively responsible for spending $132 billion every single year. To put that into perspective, research shows us that if mums were an industry, this group would actually be our largest contributor to GDP.”

Take action!

Mums are the powerhouse of our economy; responsible for 80% of consumer spending in this country. How well do you know them? How well do they know you? Is now the time to rethink your strategy to target mums?

Consider a Marketing to Mums Masterclass - educating brands and businesses about the mum landscape in Australia and the opportunities that are available.

In Episode Five, Rob explores business transformation with former CEO of T2 and Dimple, Nick Beckett. Nick has spent 15 years working in fast growth and innovation, applying his expertise in two highly successful companies, T2 and Dimple and working with Founder/Owners. He is proud to have played his part in building sustainable and scalable legacy businesses that have meaning and purpose.

“The founder-led business… this is a business model that I actually love. I love working with these people… the ones who light the fire of opportunity. It's kind of a privilege to be invited into this environment, to fan the flames once the fire's lit.” – Nick Beckett

Listen to discover:

• The effective partnerships Nick made with the founder/owners of T2 and Dimple; acting as a pragmatic foil for creative and driven founders
•  The entrepreneurial character; why emotional intelligence, self-awareness, accepting change and putting trust in others is crucial to working successfully with an external CEO
• ‘It’s very hard to shine when the sun’s still in the room’ – how two entrepreneurs stepped back to allow Nick to gain the trust of others and create change
• How a CEO can show a team that change is a good thing – and break away from the founder’s point of view
• The need to get people who are bigger than you need, because you grow into them and they drag you up to where you need to be. “Get the right people in and around the business. That's part of unlocking the opportunity.”
• How to assess your capability to take the change journey
•  The trigger points to deciding if, or when to bring in somebody external as a CEO… 

1. Is the business in a rut? 
2. Are you feeling overwhelmed and unhappy with what you are doing?
3. Has growth diminished?
4. Are you continually seeing lag indicators?
5. Is profitability flat or diminishing?
6. Is your team continually churning?
7. Do you have far too many direct reports?

“Change can materially improve a business, but it’s not for everyone. New people, new thinking, people with different experience and pedigree need to be brought into the business for it to move forward.”

“If you want to keep winning Grand Finals, you've got to keep curating your list. And curation isn't a destination, it's an ongoing journey. That's part of the reality of growth.”

Take Action

Is it time to take on an external CEO? 

• Consider the trigger points listed above - which do you recognise?

• Think about what you're really good at. Saying, "Okay, if I was only doing this and I could hand all this other stuff across to other people, how much better would this business run and how much happier would I be?" When you focus on what you're good at, you will be happier and the business will be better for it.

• Think about your capacity to let go of control in your business. If you're having challenges with this, reflect on why that's the case. Is it a question of people you've got around you or a reflection on your innate desire to control everything? What are the implications going forward? If you're going to attract and retain A-grade talent, they don't want to work with control freaks.

“In almost every case I've come across, the lead indicator for founder/owners to make a change is a gut feel. The lag indicators are obvious; they point to tangible metrics. But their gut tells them, it's time to do something different - to change gears.” 

In Episode Four, Rob dives into strategy with one of the top eight innovation thought leaders in the world, Kaihan Krippendorff.

Founder of growth strategy and innovation consulting firm Outthinker, member of the prestigious Thinkers50 Radar group and finalist for the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award in Innovation in 2019, Kaihan Krippendorff lives and breathes strategy every day.

“Strategy is not like science or medicine where we have agreement on what terms are and should be. I believe we should look at strategy as a living breathing thing – an ongoing exploration, where we introduce new terms and language into a body of knowledge.” – Kaihan Krippendorff

 
Listen to discover:

·      Why Kaihan sees strategy as intangible - a ‘living, breathing thing’ 

·      The five common mistakes people make in tuning their strategy:

1. making incremental goals based on the past
2. focusing too narrowly on one element of your business model
3. limiting ourselves to the consideration of only a few strategies
4. deciding to do what looks most logical and likely because it's been done before
5. failing to view strategy as a conversation that engages stakeholders.

·      Why ‘vision without action is a daydream, but action without vision is a nightmare’

·      Aligning strategy with a belief system

·      How Outthinker views each strategic concept through 36 different lenses, including the ‘deer in the headlights moment’ and ‘coordinating the uncoordinated’

·      Why a smaller pool of ideas is less likely to result in an optimal strategy

·      The importance of ‘killing off a strategy’

·      Kaihan’s five levels of strategy from the Way of innovation: 

1. Metal (Admit you are stuck)
2. Water (Conceive new winning options)
3. Wood (Assemble your resources)
4. Fire (Break out your innovation)
5. Earth (Make it sustainable)

·      The Three Box Model; doing stuff that creates the new future, doing stuff that strengthens and maintains the current future (your core) and forgetting and stopping stuff

·      How a crazy idea can become the differentiator – “it's the difficult things that differentiate you - those high impact difficult ideas that we call crazy ideas.”

·      How to use an ‘ideas matrix’

·      The story of how the IKEA flat pack box turned IKEA into the largest furniture retailer in the world.

Take Action

• How can you focus attention, activities and assets in such a way that you achieve what you want for your organisation?
• Your breakthrough idea is not going to come from you as the CEO or the founder. It is going to come from your employees. Your job is creating the context for people to act entrepreneurially inside your company. How can you enable your people to think like strategically?
• Will you add a ‘crazy ideas’ quadrant to your ideas matrix? 

In Episode Three of the Propelling Performance Podcast, Rob and CEO and Managing Director of UCS Group, Stephen Ellich discuss Stephen’s journey from corporate leadership to management of high growth, family-owned business, UCS. 

Stephen shares his journey of leadership; how he has created exceptional engagement, insights into motivating and leading high performance teams, as well as reflections on the company’s performance and success during the COVID pandemic.

“When you get into an organisation the size and nature of UCS, everything's connected. It's a very personal, relationship, one that is about building on their trust. 

Even down to the first-year apprentice who called me to discuss his concerns about relocating from Bendigo to Geelong. It made me sit and pause to think out how cool the culture is when the apprentice can ring up the CEO and talk about his concerns and trepidations about making a first move out of home.” – Stephen Ellich

“The concept of a high performance team for me is four words - clarity, alignment, focus, and purpose. A leader has to trust their team, but a leader must provide the clarity, alignment, focus and purpose of the team. 

"Once that's done, the job of the leader is to get out of the way and empower the people to execute the plan. A leader is there to create the right environment and put the right players in place.” – Stephen Ellich

Listen to discover:

·      Leadership differences between the ‘helicopter perspective’ of a corporate environment to the personal culture in a family owned, founder/owner business

·      Finding balance in a working partnership with founder/owners and a private equity company 

·      Joining a founder/owner business as an external CEO

·      Scaling at speed and managing fast growth in a family owned business

·      How the Scaling Up approach has enabled engagement, success and growth at UCS

·      Why clarity, alignment, focus and purpose are key

·      Building and empowering high-performance teams

·       Stephen’s lessons from the COVID pandemic  – always be prepared; listen to knowledgeable people; manage cash well; over communicate, but only from one source of truth; the critical importance of an IT Roadmap Investment; don’t waste a good crisis; be kind.

Take Action

Stephen’s advice to founder/owner leaders right now

Rather than be overwhelmed and challenged by COVID, it's time to take back the initiative. Ask yourself and your people - what are the opportunities that COVID is presenting to stop waste, innovate processes and pivot into new growth segments?

Your organisation’s culture starts at the top and is felt by everybody inside and outside your business. Leaders - how you driving alignment of your company culture to your values, brand promise and purpose?

In Episode Two of the Propelling Performance Podcast, Rob and Peak Performance Coach, Eric Partaker discuss practical strategies and mindset changes to help leaders operate at a peak level without sacrificing their health and relationships.

“If you're on your deathbed - or suddenly given five more minutes of life - there's not a single person who would say, ‘Would you mind passing my laptop, so I can fire off a few more emails?’ In that moment, your soul speaks whatever is truly, deeply most important to you.” – Eric Partaker

In November 2010, at the height of his hectic, demanding and successful career, Eric Partaker had a heart attack at 35,000 feet on a flight to London. After an emergency landing in a small town in France, he remembers saying to a paramedic, ‘Please don't let me die. I have a five-year-old son.’ 

Eric says his definition of peak performance prior to that moment was all about work and business. He became determined to find out how he could perform at a peak level without sacrificing health or relationships. This life or death moment was the catalyst to changing his life. 

Listen to discover:

1. How to define ‘the best version of you
2. Why you should stop putting off changing your future (hint: you might not have a future if you don’t)
3. The key differences between being an amateur or a professional
4. How to use ‘three alarms’ and a persona to switch gears between work, health, and home
5. Implementing a ‘shutdown ritual’ to be more present outside the workplace 
6. The answer to negative self-talk and procrastination is to make a choice
7. Why we should learn the practice of focusing on ‘the one thing’
8. How to understand your roadblocks, set milestone and behavioural goals to overcome them and start showing up in a different way.

Take Action

• Ask yourself, where are you being an amateur? In business, your health and at home, where would you benefit from showing up as a pro?
• Being intentional reminds you that you don't just need to be a star at work. You also need to be a star under your own roof, and you need to be a star when it comes to your health, mind and body.
• Perfection is not the goal. Each and every day, do the very best you can, with what you have, that day.
• Life is a combination of wins and losses. It's just about managing the equation in your favour.
• If you want to focus on your health, don’t wait until this season is over, the merger is complete, you’ve hit that milestone, the time is right. The best time to do something is now.

Thanks for checking out the Propelling Performance Podcast. 

Here's a short explanation of the objective of my show and the value you'll gain by digging a little deeper into topics covered in my first business book, Propelling Performance. 

In Episode One of the Propelling Performance Podcast, Rob and Intellectual Property expert, Andrew Chalet discuss the ‘hidden’ value in your business, and how to protect it and use it to your advantage.

 “In business, people have to examine where their value is being created - protect it and use it and not waste it. That's the key.” - Andrew Chalet 

 Listen to discover:

1. Typical barriers to assessing Intellectual Property 
2. How to identify your Intellectual Property assets
3. Recognising the value in your business
4. The advantages of an external Intellectual Property Audit 
5. How an employee agreement can impact Intellectual Property
6. How an Intellectual Property Audit helped a company in crisis
7. The value of an Intellectual Property Audit during a company sale or strategic exit
8. How to get the most out of the Intellectual Property in your own business
9. Why you should look at your assets strategically with a view to commercialisation
10. When is the best time to do an Intellectual Property Audit on your business

Take Action

• Look at your business creatively. Really look at why it works. 
• Think critically about your processes, your people. Why do you think you're being successful? 
• What part of your business model is giving you the market edge? Are you doing all you can to protect and commercialise that in some way?
• Don't underestimate the level of intellectual assets, ideas and creativity you have in your business.