How to Grow Your Business in the Face of Change
Mark Samuel
CEO & Founder
“Welcome to a journey that I started back in the 1980’s. I was delivering leadership and team sessions that were getting high praise. But in my follow-up, I discovered one thing – it wasn’t producing meaningful business change.
That put me on a mission that turned out to be my life’s work, creating meaningful and lasting business results and accountable business cultures. As you read below, we will share these tested approaches for you to try out yourself. I invite you to reach out to me, and our team, with any questions you have.“
Businesses Need to Evolve and Grow to Thrive
If you aren’t evolving and growing, you’re stuck.
When you grow a business, you need to establish structures, processes, and technical systems that support your ability to scale. In a similar way, large organizations need to evolve expectations and execution between levels and functions to anticipate and respond quickly to new market and business drivers.
If you don’t, you’ll not only stall, but you risk becoming obsolete.
Just because the business runs, doesn’t mean it runs well. Most companies experience some, if not all of the following:
- Leaders work one or two levels below their role
- There are too many meetings, leaving little time to do the work
- Everything is urgent, creating a reactive rather than proactive work environment
- People feel overloaded and frustrated, causing high turnover
- There is no time to select, onboard, and develop future leaders
It doesn’t have to be this way!
Here’s What to Do If Your Business Is Stuck
If you’re stuck, it’s time to make a breakthrough change. But research from McKinsey and Company shows that 70% of all transformations fail.
Why? Because companies do lengthy assessments focused on past performance. That’s like trying to drive to your destination by looking in the rear-view mirror.
Instead, you need to start by painting a future picture based on your future business drivers regardless of the past.
Here are 5 steps to get you moving quickly.
1. Create a compelling future Picture of Success
Creating a compelling picture isn’t a guessing game or an aspiration. It’s a direct response to your external business drivers like customer expectations, the economy, regulations, competition, and market demands.
Responding to these is non-negotiable, and they become the foundation of your vision.
2. Rapidly diagnose how to best leverage your effort
Once you have your future Picture of Success, diagnosis becomes a powerful tool to identify how to leverage your effort to get immediate traction. Watch the video below to learn how to leverage your effort.
3. Replace old thinking and behaviors with new team habits
You can’t achieve new results with old thinking and behavior. When you establish new leadership team habits, you come at problem-solving and decision-making from a fresh perspective—one that creates and sustains a breakthrough transformation.
4. Rally everyone around shared, non-negotiable priorities
Priorities are essential to successful execution. Leadership teams need to identify and rally around the B STATE priorities that accelerate delivery, minimize unexpected breakdowns, free up time, and take less important things off the table.
5. Reshape your leadership team meetings to drive rapid, meaningful change
Your leadership team can shape and drive rapid transformation, but not if they waste meeting time on information-sharing, crisis management, and status updates.
Leadership teams should use the bulk of their time anticipating future business drivers, setting clear direction and priorities, removing obstacles to success, and strategizing their change efforts.
Move Beyond Change Management
B STATE transformations go beyond traditional change management.
- Creates shared ownership and accountability for new behaviors in 3-6 hours
- Achieves predictable, measurable, breakthrough results in 3-6 months
- Links performance and culture measures to ensure ongoing success
- Anticipates future demands and evolves your organization to meet them
NO lengthy assessments – NO training – NO styles inventories – NO wasted time
Compare a B STATE approach to other popular change management and team building approaches.
B STATE Methodologies Implement Today’s Thought-Leading Best Practices… and More
IMPAQ’s 2-day Breakthrough Leadership Team System implements the outcomes from three of the leading best practices and more to ensure you the highest possible value.
The B STATE Leadership Team System goes beyond what other consultants offer by increasing the speed and completeness with which we can offer results.
Leadership teams come out of the working session with a clear direction, agreed priorities, improvement plans, communication to speak with one voice, and a methodology to manage change in their existing meetings.
Introduction to B STATE Business Consulting
Leaders turn to B STATE Business Consulting when…
- Traditional team building does not produce results back in the workplace
- Lengthy assessments simply tell you what you already suspected
- Relationship building doesn’t make a significant dent in the way you execute
- KPIs and dashboards aren’t driving the behavioral changes you need to get results
- Holding people individually accountable isn’t getting the team shift you need
B STATE Business Services
- Create ownership of your new Picture of Success in hours, not months
- Directly implement essential, execution-focused behavior change from the beginning
- Dynamically set priorities so everyone stays aligned as you move forward
- Assess your progress based on built-in meaningful, actionable measurements
- Keep everyone accountable for the business results, not just the activity
Why You Need A Breakthrough Business Change
I am extremely pleased with the results achieved to date and remain optimistic that the IMPAQ approach to team building will have lasting positive impact on our organization. The approach remains the best example of better communication that I have personally been exposed to in my 15 years in this business.
-Daniel Cobb, Southern California Edison
As a result of using Mark’s accountability practices, our college has experienced unprecedented growth – we have created a new collegial environment – and, we have improved our personal lives as well.
-Dr. Robert Barber, President, Central Oregon Community College
Without IMPAQ’s expertise, guidance and support, we could not have achieved our positive growth curve. Inertia has given way to momentum, suspicion has yielded to trust, cooperation and synergy, and this is now one hell of a great place to work!
-Kerry Kugelman, Universal Studios
This is the first program I’ve ever experienced that was based in, and focused on, the TRUTH. I learned to look for causes to issues and not waste time in solving symptoms.
-Karen Wright, TRW
Your material fills-in the “gaps” I have seen in other approaches. It was the kind of course that “keeps on teaching” long after the certificates are handed out.
-Stan Dryden, Chevron Corp
I can already see a difference. Several productive (but somewhat tough) conversations have taken place. Breakout groups have met and reported back. Emails are being answered more promptly. It just feels like folks are more engaged. It’s very refreshing. I’ll also add that having these “tough” conversations hasn’t felt very tough at all because there seems to be an openness to what we all need to work on in order to do for this org what it needs and deserves.
-Emily Ausbrook Executive Director for Santa Monica Boys and Girls Clubs
At the heart of being effective is the core value of Accountability. We have used IMPAQ’s strategies and skills to turn the value of Accountability into an operational reality. As a result, we continue to deliver projects on time and within budget, often yielding a return on investment that is stronger than anticipated as well as high customer satisfaction. We have continued to sustain these results for the past 6 years.
-Dr John W. McCredie, CIO, Associate Vice President Chancellor-Information Technology, University of California, Berkeley
What Results Can You Expect?
A multi-national manufacturing group saves multi-millions in the first year
After two plus years of failed efforts, an IT group had 18 months to complete the change. In 9 months, resistant middle managers rallied to lead a business model change that became a company-wide transformation which…
- Saved 45 Million Euros per year
- Completed 100% of the 7 most important projects on-time (a first)
- Reduced IT project load from 1300 projects to 240
Hospital Conquers 3 Major Transformations in 3 Years
Faced rising costs, dropping patient satisfaction, staff morale, and revenue, a new hospital used the B STATE approach to make a dramatic turnaround. In six months…
- The organization was energized, unified, and speaking with one voice
- 30-day re-admissions went from 4 of 5 to 1 of 5
- Patient experience and physician scores soared
- Quality and safety scores hit all-time highs
- And successfully used their change system to respond to needs for the next four years
Struggling Call Center Transforms Customer Satisfaction Results
As customer satisfaction rates at a small center kept falling, both the management and employees pointed fingers at each other for the decline. Using the B STATE Approach, within six months the leadership team came together and…
- Customer satisfaction scores were consistently measured at over 8.0 of 10 in all metrics
- 50-80% of the employees reported seeing improvements
- Consistently received good reviews from the sales team that depended on them (a complete turnaround)
Inter-Departmental Cooperation in City Government Saves Millions & Improves Service
A lack of collaboration between department leaders in a small city government was halting productivity, squandering resources, and bringing down team morale. In six months, directors, managers, and supervisors joined together and saw these results:
- Reduced expenses across departments, totaling a savings of $1 million
- Internal grievances dropped from two per month to zero
- Staff morale increased, absenteeism decreased, and employees showed up to work on time
- Meetings became more effective
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, and it saves time and money in most cases. We break the two-day session into 2-3 hour segments using video conferencing and cloud- based templates.
It integrates well with Agile. A key element of Agile is how it becomes a team-driven process working with people playing different roles. The Team Accountability System immediately sets up the shared ownership and accountability for the teamwork required for success.
Teams have used the system to pivot their business models three times within three years. It provides them the ability to adjust rapidly to new business challenges and opportunities.