Rick Miller featured in The Wealthy Business:
Here’s the good news: Many companies are announcing record profit levels. Now for the bad news: Too many of these same companies are saving their way to profitability rather than driving top-line revenue growth as employee engagement continues to fall. While markets have risen, there is a clear concern about whether this growth is sustainable. In my experience, revenue, profit, and personal growth are all attainable and sustainable in tough times using a proven Roadmap.
As a senior business turnaround specialist, I have worked with teams facing daunting business challenges ranging from poor culture and product shortfalls, to external issues like illegal competitive activity and market crashes. In each case, I relied on the All-In Roadmap as a guide. Independent of industry or whether I was in a startup or multinational, each time our team succeeded.
I created the All-In Roadmap, providing evidence that strong performance can be sustained even in tough times by focusing on a set of actions and personal attributes. A famous fighter once said that a plan is fine until you get hit in the mouth. In my experience, when things get tough it’s both the plan and your execution that determine success. The All-In Roadmap includes a balanced focus on five areas: discipline, support, creativity, insight, and values.
Success requires a key component—discipline. I define this as an orderly pattern of behavior that increases the likelihood of a desired outcome. For example, you must develop effective dashboards that include leading and lagging indicators. Do you have detailed plans linked to your strategy? Can you adjust quickly? Do you maximize the probability of your team’s success with strong discipline?
Support is the act or process of promoting the interests of another. First, truly successful leaders offer great support by being the example. Are your words consistent with your actions? Is your team properly trained for the battle and recognized when they achieve goals? Do you go the extra step and take responsibility to “set others up” for success? Do you do all you can to support your team?
Creativity is defined differently in my model. The All-In Roadmap advocates that creativity is actually the ability to manifest or create the future. It is up to you to “make things happen.” Do you listen to your gut feelings? Do you manage your thoughts? Do you speak your words carefully, write deliberately, and act in a way that will align each of these? Do you create fully and consciously?
Insight is the power or act of seeing intuitively that comes with self-understanding. You are most effective when you engage in actions that are consistent with who you are. Here are five ways you can learn more about yourself. Can you choose to be present and focus on the task at hand? Can you be still long enough to get in touch with your own voice? Can you accept what is? Are you generous and grateful? How well do you really know yourself?
Values are the foundation of great relationships. And great relationships can be characterized by a number of values including compassion, forgiveness, respect, empathy, and kindness. How visible are your values? Can team members clearly see your values in how you speak, write, and act? Do you respect the values of others?
Although my approach is research-based, it has also been called unconventional. Regardless of one’s opinion, it works. It’s why I was hired by AT&T in 1995 as the first outsider in 100 years to take over a poor performing business unit. Three years later, employee and customer satisfaction reached record levels while the revenue growth rates grew from $3B to $5B.
At a time when so many organizations face challenges, consider using a proven Roadmap to ask the right questions. Revenue, profit, and personal growth are all attainable and sustainable, even in tough times.
