Whitewater and Predicable Success

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:

1. Explain organizational life cycles to everyone.  Gives people perspective, hope and power to keep pushing through.
2. 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.”
3. Sr. Management must overtly support, affirm and model the important of adherence to process. 
4. Accept that many of your people will still leave.
5. 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!