We all love the certainty of the solid revenue that comes from a big customer. It gives us credibility with other prospects. It pays a lot of salaries. Occasionally we reflect on the risk to our business if they left us...most of the time we don't.

Yet the tyranny of the major customer can help us hide from the real foundations of creating a repeatable sales process or building products that many customers want. It can keep us too focused on the needs of that major customer.

Many task oriented CEOs claim success through their focus on task completion. They make employees accountable. They then micro manage to ensure they are on top of everything. This works in smaller companies where each member of the team is accountable to the 'boss'.

However, as companies grow, CEOs become more stretched by the 'always on' work environment. One-to-one conversations happen less frequently. There is less time. The task oriented CEOs can't cope and become overloaded with too many decisions. Business growth slows down. Everybody becomes frustrated.

Some teams are winners. Others never quite make it. Pundits debate the reasons endlessly. For me, the main factor is leadership style.

Like many parents, I watch my children playing sport. When kids are young they need lots of advice. Most coaches start off with a directive style.

We’ve written lots about how building the right metrics into your business can help transform growth. It makes sense – focus on the right metrics or KPIs and good stuff happens. But when the good stuff happens how do we choose what to celebrate?

High performing teams celebrate success well. They intrinsically understand that to drive the right behavior you need to celebrate success. Yet we had an interesting conversation with a client’s team earlier this week.

In the nine years since I became a parent I’ve spent a lot of time observing how little people interact. The interesting thing I’ve noticed is that you can learn a lot about human behaviour by watching your kids!

I have always been a bit skeptical about the impact of team building exercises – you know the 'take the team out to the woods and get them to build a bridge' type of stuff. However a recent trip away with my eldest son’s rugby team caused me to rethink this skeptical approach.

 

Recently we have been doing a lot of work with companies on trying to get the right metrics for their business. Done well, implementing the right set of metrics or KPIs can be a real game changer in transforming business growth. But it’s not easy to get this right. 

So here are a few tips based on our experience:

You know the management meeting. Some helpful 'process-o-crat' suggests - 'we should introduce a performance appraisal system'. Even as I write the words, I start to get a pain in my gut. They don't work. They create frustration. No good comes from the paperwork they create. The processes they create block honest day-to-day feedback conversations. They focus on weaknesses too much.