Turning success upside down
How to go from being a do-er / manager / operator to a leader
This is a tough one to share, even though I’ll be doing little actual writing!
I’ve decided to share an article that I wrote in November 2018, which had cropped up again in my LinkedIn feed for some reason.
Back then, I was preparing for ‘retirement’. And it officially happened in January 2019.
I effectively became a non executive director alongside Ben, my business partner in the dt group.
I became part of a takeover of a football club. I finished off the book BOSS IT. All whilst doing some bits for dt, but it could hardly have been called full time by any stretch of the imagination.
So, why is this hard to share?
Because life is full of lessons. I could hardly now call myself retired - and I’m not just at peace with that, but happy with that.
And in my next post, I’ll be sharing what I wish I knew when I wrote this article.
The funny thing is, the stuff in this article still makes complete sense, and I think is extremely valuable advice for anyone looking to scale a business. In it, I share the methodology we were using, the mindset around ‘flipping the script’, and so much more.
As always, the challenges are the blindspots. The bits you don’t foresee and don’t know.
Have a read through it, and let me know what you think. At the end, I’ve popped something else which you might find interesting too around the subject of retirement and life planning.
And of course, make sure you subscribe to be the first to read the next post - this is only half the lesson…!
Originally shared in November 2018:
I often write about things that I feel I can help business owners with. But today, I'm writing about what me and my business partner Ben are learning about as we move into the joint-chairman role - each and every day, on the job.
The biggest change in my business life.
We all have that dream. To build a business, kick back, and retire on a beach somewhere. To let others take what we've built and push it forwards.
I'm part-way on that journey, and I'd like to share the good, the bad, and the ugly of the situation.
Over the past few years at #TeamDT, we've built a management team, and then the processes to help the managers have a way of managing. The wrong way round, but it worked eventually. We had the people, and gave them the tools for their jobs.
This limited us, as management only takes you so far. So, we've been on the journey of building a leadership team. Finding people who are better than me and Ben, to take on our executive responsibilities and take what we've done to the next level.
Making yourself redundant is far more difficult than it sounds!
On the face of it, it should be easy. Give someone else your chair and desk (I did that a couple of years ago). Tell them what to do. And get out the way.
The challenge is that to be a truly effective CEO / MD / head of an organisation, as Ben and I are used to being, you need to make decisions quickly, roll your sleeves up, and get on with it. In truth, that's what we enjoyed doing too. That's the buzz of being in business.
To be a truly effective chair, you need to help facilitate your board. You need to help them identify their and the businesses opportunities and weaknesses. You need to help develop their thinking, and act as a sounding board rather than as a solution.
For someone who is used to creating, deciding, and doing - this is a real culture shock!
For the wider team who may be used to asking you for answers - it's even tougher.
Why are you a joint chairman? Shouldn't there only be one head of the organisation?
This is exactly the point of this article. An effective chairman is not the head of an organisation. An effective chairman helps the board develop it's strategic thinking, so that it can lead the team effectively. The board is the head of the organisation, and the CEO is the head of that board.
Ben and I have shared 'head' responsibility from an executive perspective previously, because the combination of our differences in personality and skills is far more powerful than the individual components. If you've read Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman, you'd understand the phrases "Visionary" and "Integrator". We respect each others' strengths and weaknesses, and work towards filling in the blind spots that each of us has.
So, given that we've already cracked how to do the 'tough' joint job, it should be easy to do the 'servant leader' joint job. After all, we are now not there to decide - instead, we are there to support. The role is actually far simpler to split, once the responsibilities and limitations of the role are truly understood.
Come on Carl, you're usually all about advice. What advice can you give to anyone else looking to make this move?
I normally only give advice on things that are tried and tested, usually by me. So, I'm going to caveat this advice by saying that it is based solely on my learnings to date, and we're still going through this process.
But, that said, this is what I have learned so far:
You need to get over yourself to do this properly. Most of us who have built a business to any real level will undoubtedly have a large ego. To make the transition to chair, you need to first acknowledge the ego, and then get over it.
You need to respect the decisions of your board and your team. If you undermine them in any way - by either making decisions for them, complaining about their decisions, or contradicting their decisions - you end up taking one step forwards and five steps backwards. Whilst you might not agree with their tactical decisions, you need to weigh up whether the cost of undermining the board outweighs the risk to the business of that decision. Bearing in mind you'll be investing a significant sum in salaries, team development, and the sheer effort in managing the organisation-wide change to allow this, it has to be a 'million pound risk' to even be worth undermining. Bearing in mind that our team, our clients, the community, our market, and being blunt - my family - depend on the right tactics being implemented, it is a difficult balance at times, but an important one.
Your job is to serve the board. The board will have different requirements from you, depending on their needs. Being a sounding board is key, but you might need to fill in with functional roles. So for example, I still work crazy hours as an "evangelist" (or as I prefer, a flag waver). Ben still works crazy hours in transitioning all of the operational expertise and experience to the team. But, we have to accept that we are now servants of the board - and when they tell us what we are or aren't needed for, we need to listen.
You have to create even more distance. One of the toughest things about growing a business is that you lose touch with the team. At 20 staff, I knew the names of everyone's partners, pets, etc... this became tougher and tougher, hence the need to build a management team. Now, rather than distance being a factor created by scale, it has to be a factor created by design. If I allow any long-serving team member to come directly to me rather than follow the structure set by the board and the management team, I unwind all of their good work. If I allow any customer or supplier to negotiate directly with me, I risk jeapordising not only the processes but also the culture that the team are trying to set. I have to deliberately make myself impotent insofar as how the business runs, so that the business can run.
Your work isn't over. Instead, I've found myself focused even further into the future. Looking at the next 20-30 years rather than the next few months. Looking at the wider changes that might impact the business. Creating relationships outside of our customers and prospects. And helping to find the seeds for my board to plant, so that #TeamDT can continue to flourish.
I'm sure that there are many more things that might come to mind later - and I'd be delighted to hear the views of anyone either aiming for this, or from those who've been there and done it.
So, there we have it. My words and thoughts, exactly as they came out of my keyboard back in 2018. If you liked it, I’d truly value if you could share it with anyone who you think might find it valuable.
The follow up will be posted shortly, where I’ll share the words and thoughts that I wish I had back then. That post won’t be all business, and you’d likely not even see the link if I didn’t mention it. But I have, and you will ;-)
If you like this post, I’m pretty sure you’ll find this one food for thought as well - it’s called Rethinking Retirement - and it’s about how we can live our lives better, without counting down the days.
Carl Reader is a WH Smith Bestselling Author and international keynote speaker with a real passion for helping people do better. There are two ways to learn more about Carl! You can either follow him on Social Media if you’re just curious (@carlreader on most platforms), or if you’d like to learn a little more about what he does on stage, through content and in the media from a commercial perspective, you can visit his website at www.carlreader.com
You can buy a copy of his last book BOSS IT online, wherever you are in the world. And of course, I’d love you to subscribe to this community to be the first to see everything I have to share - just click the button below. It’s free of charge!
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