Catalyst Strategic Consultants

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Breakthrough

A Bit Stuck? Need a Breakthrough? Case #24

I’ve run into some entrepreneurial wizards, who, for all their smarts in conceptualizing and driving a biz to a first plateau of success are frustrated. “We just can’t get seem to get beyond where we are! We growing, but there’s so much more potential. We’re just scratching the surface….”
Now, lots are addicted to good old complaining. It’s soothing to grouch. But it doesn’t get anything untracked. Occasionally, someone is sent to me who really, really wants to break beyond their apparent restrictions. They realize that nothing will change just by grousing. And they recognize the addition of a new element into the equation is required if anything is going to change. You know what they say about insanity….
Here’s an example of what I do with that…
Breakthrough/ Breakout
Our work is always centred from the President/Head of House on out. We extend the power of the office. I’ve been doing this for a long time -so I can help through long experience and very effective coaching.
Referrals come when one of our many friends encounters someone who is stuck and frustrated. And is serious about change.
Stuck because they know the potential of their original idea for the biz, the viability of their concept – it’s just not getting through.
Latterly, it was a young professional firm with a very unusual offering. They act as real, full-fledged CFO’s for midmarket entrepreneurial companies – often in the energy space [this being Calgary]. Their offering is for the firm that is too big for a controller but not big enough for a full time CFO. Actually, they’re better than a CFO because they can lend the full weight and combined experience of their firm behind a client – way more than if they just hired one body.

Hell, I’ll just tell you who they are, ’cause they’ve said it’s ok. It’s Stawowski McGill.

They weren’t getting the traction they knew was possible and wanted to get the show on the road – in a bigger way. And they were willing to invest to make it happen.

Of course this costs money – we all need to make our worlds go ’round – but the more important investment is the time and dedication of the top end people. That is pricey – these folks could be fully billed out for every hour they would spend on this work. And for the other hours of work outside the sessions that it would take to give the concepts we arrived at the life they deserved.

Step wise: I started with the core group. The achievement of more intense solidarity needed to support a drive to the summit is fundamental to success. Some/ most have never experienced the sort of interdependence driven by the combined force of leadership required for any “real team” to get anywhere worthwhile. The first step is to build that core of conviction among those who will share the journey – which starts now and goes on for, well, the whole ride.
That may not be everybody that normally is on the list of “senior” people. It doesn’t faze me to sort out who has to be who – usually in an even and amicable way.

The second is to build the big picture of where the organization is wanting to go. Using our incisive and high leverage 5 Dimensions of Vision approach, we pull into the light the most potent identity of the firm and extend it into the future.
Some have heard me hold forth on the vacuous work that people pass off for “Vision, Mission, Values” in this world.

“The pre-eminent supplier of …..”
“Honesty, Integrity, etc. etc…”
– people just glaze over when the kind of buzzword bingo is produced. I know, sometimes it means something to somebody – often the owner. It sounds like what their peers have!

But it is worse than having nothing. When the people inside [or outside] the organization see those sort of words, they provide no real or particular guidance for what the company is really/ particularly for or where it intends to go or who it is when it works at its best.

So equipping the client with real and distinctive boundary markers of what works and doesn’t for the firm, what’s really driving the process, what a realistic next major destination might be and the bigger plan of how to get there – constitutes real and coherent guidance for the team who are meant to build and for those who work there and work with the company.

More next time.
Oh yeah, is this you???


Sincerely,
Doug Bouey
Catalyst Strategic Consultants Ltd.


What’s Our Business?

Bringing out the best in you, your company and your people.

Doug Bouey, President
Catalyst Strategic Consultants Ltd.

Calgary, AB // Phone: 403.777.1144
Email: boueyd@catalyststrategic.com

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