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Guest: Greg Martin, an entrepreneur, CEO, private equity investor, and a coach at CEO Coaching International. Greg led four separate companies onto the Inc. 5000 list while achieving growth rates of over 6,000%. Combined, his businesses have generated more than $3 billion in revenue, created over 2,500 jobs, and resulted in two high-eight-figure exits.
Quick Background: A great company is always BIGGER than the sum of its parts. The very highest performers align everything they do around key elements that ground the company’s purpose and guide its daily operations toward achieving BIG goals.
On today’s show, Greg Martin explains the five business elements all CEOs need to align to Make BIG Happen.
Keys to Achieving BIG Alignment from Greg Martin
1. Define what matters.
“There are five circles that all of the best companies pay a lot of attention to,” Greg Martin says. “I like to think about these rings in a vertical stack. And the top of that stack is Vision, then Mission, then Culture, then Strategy, then Execution. A leader should align those circles so that if it were a Venn diagram, there would be one circle instead of five.”
Greg puts Vision and Mission at the top of his stack because, in most successful companies, these are the elements that change the least. Your company’s goals and the values you’re going to follow on your way to BIG set the tone for everything else the company does. As the facts on the ground change, the CEO can use those top two rings to guide the company through challenges with consistency, even when adaptation or pivots are necessary. Vision and Mission can also be rallying points that keep top talent aligned with the daily processes that push the company forward.
“I think the best examples of Vision are ones that create a North Star for the company,” Greg says. “In other words, what are we tracking towards? Whether that is a revenue goal, whether that is a social impact or economic impact goal. A Vision has to serve as an inspiration to the leadership team, but also it has to inspire those people who’ve joined your team. They think, ‘I want to be a part of that. That’s meaningful. That motivates me. That gets me out of bed in the morning. It makes me excited to come to work and do what I do on a daily basis for eight or ten hours a day. That animates the work.’ So, Vision really has to infuse itself throughout the organization, get people excited, inspire them, keep them motivated, and keep them focused on that company North Star.”
2. Communicate with clarity.
With a stable Vision and Mission at the top of your company’s stack, CEOs can make adjustments at the lower levels to maintain alignment.
“Start from the bottom up,” Greg says. “The basic element in ensuring that these circles align is communication. Generally, that communication has to be formalized. Ad hoc communication is great, but it’s become more challenging now in both the virtual and the hybrid world. I grew up in an environment of water cooler, hallway, break room chat. And a lot of really interesting ideas and innovative ideas over the course of my career came out of some of those chats. But those aren’t enough. You need a formal communication protocol to really ensure that you get these circles to overlap.”
Greg believes a good communication rhythm starts with one-on-ones between frontline managers and their direct reports. Consider letting employees set the agenda so managers can hear what’s on their minds and take the temperature on the ground floor. This also establishes two-way communication as a best practice that top talent will carry with them as they progress through the company.
When it is time for the CEO to speak up, don’t bury your message behind buzzwords and silver linings. Employees want human-to-human empathy from their leaders, but they also want honesty.
“Generally I don’t tend to pull punches and I communicate very clearly and shoot straight,” Greg says. “If the feedback isn’t all A’s across the board, people don’t enjoy hearing that less-than-favorable news. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that as clearly as I communicate, it’s not a guarantee that 100% of listeners are going to line up and go, ‘That’s great, I get it, I understand, I’m on board.’ That’s just not how human nature works. There are always going to be detractors and naysayers, but the responsibility of the leader is to deliver the unvarnished news in the most concise, clear, and compelling way possible.”
3. Scale leadership along with the company.
Successful companies, by definition, grow. And, in many cases, they outgrow their founders and original leadership team.
“There are far more examples of leaders who are not able to transition from that small company environment to a large company environment than there are the reverse,” Greg Martin says. “The blockbuster examples would be a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs. Some people just are much more comfortable in a startup environment. They’re comfortable in firefighting mode. And some leaders just are not able to make the transition from that small-company feel well.”
The excitement of the early days of a business can be difficult to let go of, especially when you’re at that tight-knit stage where everyone is on a first-name basis and every new challenge is a challenge for everyone to pitch in and solve. As a company grows, the c-suite has to move further and further away from those ground-floor issues and that camaraderie. At the same time, responsibility and pressure become more highly concentrated at those higher levels, especially in the CEO’s chair. CEOs who can’t learn to delegate and manage run a high risk of burning out, especially if they don’t have a mentor or CEO coach they can lean on to help them grow the skills they need to maintain alignment, progress, and growth.
“It is definitely a challenge for a startup leader to understand what it’s going to require in terms of your own personal leadership abilities and what the environment is going to require from you in terms of managing a much larger, much more complex, much more complicated organization,” Greg warns. “You have to be honest with yourself about whether or not that’s where you want to go. Most people say they want to grow. But some people find when they get what they ask for, they’re lost, they’re bewildered, they’re in a world of hurt and don’t know how to get out of it.”
4. Review and realign.
Misalignment isn’t always a failure of leadership. Being slow to realign almost always is.
No CEO can control a natural disaster that disrupts a supply chain or a major regulatory change that affects how your entire industry operates. But it’s a lot easier to adjust to the new facts on the ground if the things you can control are rock steady.
So, do you have the talent you need to maintain your culture and get things done?
Are you monitoring clients, products, and competitors with AI analysis so that a swerve in customer behavior won’t catch you off guard?
Is your internal communication rhythm reinforcing goals and responsibilities?
These are the kinds of alignment gaps that CEOs need to be clear-eyed about acknowledging and addressing. The stakes for your company are BIG, and the rewards for achieving and maintaining alignment can be even BIGGER.
“Generally, five to seven companies are competing for 90% of the profit pool in an industry,” Greg Martin says. “The top two competitors in any of those relevant industries share almost 70% of that 90%. That’s because they are the most nimble, the most agile, and the most aligned along those five dimensions. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. That’s why not all of those competitors are getting an equal share of the profit pool. Getting those circles as aligned as possible through embedding the communication in the operating rhythm of the business, making sure that the people on the team are all-in on the culture and on the vision and on the mission — that’s how you distinguish your business. That’s how you become one of the two companies that splits 70% of the profit pool in your competitive space.”
Top Takeaways From Greg Martin
1. Maintain alignment and everything your company does will be building towards BIG.
2. Communicate clearly even when your message will be hard for some stakeholders to hear.
3. Keep pace with what your company needs through learning, growing, and coaching.
Links:
I Can See Clearly Now: Define Your Vision for the Company – The CEO’s vision defines the company’s goals and ambitions and should be ingrained into the organization’s culture and environment.
Active Listening Techniques for CEOs and Senior Executives – Active listening at the C-suite level is a strategic communication skill that increases your leadership effectiveness by ensuring clear understanding, greater trust, and a fostering of positive relationships.
About CEO Coaching International
CEO Coaching International works with CEOs and their leadership teams to achieve extraordinary results quarter after quarter, year after year. Known globally for its success in coaching growth-focused entrepreneurs to meaningful exits, CEO Coaching International has coached more than 1,000 CEOs and entrepreneurs in more than 60 countries and 45 industries. The coaches at CEO Coaching International are former CEOs, presidents, or executives who have made BIG happen. The firm’s coaches have led double-digit sales and profit growth in businesses ranging in size from startups to over $10 billion, and many are founders that have led their companies through successful eight, nine, and ten-figure exits. Companies working with CEO Coaching International for two years or more have experienced an average revenue CAGR of 31% (2.6X the U.S. average) and an average EBITDA CAGR of 52.3% (more than 5X the U.S. average).
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