I’m sitting here in the
airport on my way to Bimini for a long weekend reflecting on the last several
days at the annual Keller Williams convention in Las Vegas. Admittedly, I went
into the event with a low energy tank.
We hit a brick wall the last two months with too many open positions
that serve critical functions in the organization. I’ve been working long hours trying to fill
positions as quickly as possible and attempting to fill the gaps in the
meantime. The challenge with that is quickly filling critical positions is
often in conflict with filling them with top talent. And the reality is the organization is too
big for me to personally fill the gaps with any reasonable chance of success. Frustrating.
I’ve had a few restless
nights lately wrestling with this, and turning 40 this year has made me
evaluate the progress I’m making, or think I’m making generally. Am I making a difference? Am I maximizing my potential? Am I utilizing my gifts to the fullest extent
possible? Where will I be in five years?
With that back drop, what
Gary Keller said on day one jumped out at me.
“You can be anywhere you want
to be in a five-year time frame with no more than five key people.” Comforting to hear.
This helps me feel more
confident in my long-term trajectory, though back at home it’s a bit chaotic.
I came across something that
is helping with that too, a book by Les McKeown called Predictable Success. Les
outlines six organizational lifecycles one of which is called Whitewater the third
stage of growth that follows Early Struggle and Fun. Whitewater occurs as
a natural outgrowth from successful Fun. It is unavoidable if you grow
and is identified when the very success of Fun creates complexity which bogs
down the organization. In Whitewater, more people are added, decisions
become more difficult, lines of communication are less clear, execution seems
difficult.
The goal is to get out of
Whitewater as quickly as possible into Predicable Success by introducing and
maintaining the right amount of systems and processes necessary to tame the
complexity, while at the same time holding in balance the entrepreneurial zeal,
creativity, and risk taking that have grown the business to this point. He
outlines in detail these five steps to do this:
- Explain organizational life cycles to
everyone. Gives people perspective, hope and power to keep pushing
through.
- Make it clear that going back to Whitewater and
Fun is not an option. We are not going backward to the way “things
used to be.”
- Sr. Management must overtly support, affirm and
model the important of adherence to process.
- Accept that many of your people will still leave.
- Ensure that the hiring process reflects the
organizational cultural shift.
I’m off to contemplate for a
few days and reconnect with Christian and then I’ll be back at it next week,
paddle in hand ready to hit the Whitewater!
