Are you relying on proven methodologies that propelled you to where you are today? This article delivers a critical warning: even the most successful systems have a ceiling and the CEO is the one working to break through. Ignoring this limit can lead to burnout, declining performance, and, ultimately, a struggling business. Here are three key takeaways with actionable steps to proactively safeguard your company’s future:
Takeaway: Recognize the Inherent Limits of Generic Methodologies
While initially effective, off-the-shelf systems aren’t uniquely tailored to your company’s DNA. Be vigilant for signs that these methodologies are no longer fully supporting your growth, hindering skill development, or misaligning your team’s energy. Proactively anticipate the need for adaptation before these limitations become critical issues.
- Action: Schedule a “Methodology Audit” within the next month. Dedicate a leadership team meeting to critically evaluate the effectiveness of your core operational methodologies. Ask: Where are we seeing friction or workarounds? Are these systems truly empowering our team and driving our strategic goals, or are they creating unnecessary constraints?
Takeaway: Integrate Past Performance with Future Aspirations – Strategically
Don’t just blindly follow a system. Consciously connect your company’s history and past successes with your future vision. Understand how your current methodologies are shaping your company culture and whether they are truly aligned with your long-term goals. This mindful integration will prevent you from becoming trapped by outdated approaches requiring more effort to change.
- Action: Facilitate a “Past-Future Alignment Workshop” in the next quarter. Lead a session where you and your leadership team map key past successes and failures against your aspirational future state. Identify which current methodologies are supporting this future and which might need to be adapted or replaced to bridge any gaps.
Takeaway: Build Your Internal Early Warning System
Don’t wait for a crisis to realize your systems are failing. Integrate a regular check-in on your methodologies into your deep CEO work and quarterly business reviews. Actively question where your company might be outgrowing its current processes. This proactive approach will build your intuition, allowing you to adapt and evolve your systems before they become a bottleneck to your continued relevance and growth.
- Action: Add a “Methodology Effectiveness Review” as a standing agenda item for your next Quarterly Business Review. Dedicate specific time to discuss whether your current systems are still fit for purpose given your current scale, market dynamics, and future ambitions. Encourage open and honest feedback from your leadership team.
This article will guide you through the reality of one CEO and the pitfalls they faced being over-reliance on off-the-shelf and proven systems. You will also learn how they overcame the weight of declining revenue and empowered themselves, which sparked their company in two ways: cultivating a dynamic approach that leverages unique organizational strengths, and being able to anticipate the need for timely evolution, ensuring sustainable success and long-term relevance.
The ability to look to the past and design the future is strongest when you are able to be present right now. There are methodologies with tips and tricks on doing this to help get results … yet they fall short in a big way: you put all your belief in a process or methodology that isn’t uniquely tied to the way everyone works in your company.
Even with short- and medium-term gains from proven systems that all methodologies have, there is a ceiling.
Knowing there is a limit from the beginning gives you power. Power to be on the lookout for the limitations that will require change before you are taken by surprise.
One CEO I worked with organically scaled his company to over 10 people using lessons from his industry coach. The industry expert had decades of experience and proven approaches. Specifically, systems and processes this person found to be successful in optimizing the management of a company where it lacked:
- Developing skills the CEO needs to sustain the growth this system created.
- Preparing the CEO for integrating past performance with future desires.
- Understanding the amount of energy necessary to acknowledge that use of this methodology sets the company’s culture.
When we put technology (or numbers, pipeline, even digital presence) as the core for all innovation, it is no longer the driver of what innovation is. Digging into this more, a company that lets technology lead automatically creates a cost resulting in KPIs that pressure to perform.
The result: the way we’ve been doing work is compromised. Not at first, maybe not even for years. Market placement (the secret sauce of differentiation) and even the ability for the team to continue to grow and develop skill/experience — all have an upper limit. This upper limit compromises your company’s ability to remain relevant over time. Relevancy is necessary to weather industry disruption and internal growth challenges, and remain in business over time.
Back to the CEO of our story … they had sustaining success and growth, until they didn’t. Suddenly people were leaving, customer reviews indicated declining work quality, and the CEO picked up the necessary extra work. Because of these things, there wasn’t time for hiring nor was there time for the CEO to do customer-facing work. You can imagine what happened next. No, they didn’t call me … yet. The company contracted. The CEO was beyond burnout. They were debating selling the assets and closing the doors.
Dear CEO, COO, and CIO, please don’t wait this long. The road back is difficult, and burnout of the leadership team is a factor making the comeback perilous too.
So this CEO heard me speak, and started using my shared information. Eventually they connected with me at another event we were both at. I learned the story and said, “I can help you.” My only goal was to make the current situation they faced a little easier so that they had a bit of space to think and choose the next best step.
When I learned the whole story my first question was: “What parts of the system your coach brought you aren’t working anymore?”
Followed by these two questions:
- What do you really want to happen with this situation for your company?
- What time, energy, and resources are you willing to expend to do the work necessary to get there?
And by the end of our working meeting, the CEO had the next step to try the next time friction or uncertainty begin to slow things down. Jimi Gibson shared with me that when we don’t adapt and change, the world will pass us by saying, “[Embrace] the state of uncomfortable between where you are now and where you want to be.”
That is a place where fear, self doubt, maybe even imposter syndrome can creep in. Mental toughness is necessary for business leaders, too. Being able to take action in spite of the inner resistance you may feel is possible. Jimi shared that it really is a muscle to develop just like reflection and taking calculated risk.
This ties back to the CEO I introduced you to earlier. They are the hero of their own story! With a commitment to do the work, knowing the gap between where they are and where they wanted to go, this CEO started to face the challenges ahead to create lasting change.
The results were quick and energizing — it is significant to successfully battle back from burnout. To be able to see the future again. To be excited to make a new commitment to a new goal (to build a company to exit at a specific value).
Spoiler alert: while not part of this story, this CEO did reach their second goal and exited too!
Methodologies and systems are necessary to save time, maximize productivity, and even scale. Recognizing that there is a ceiling will help you avoid making the same mistakes this CEO did. You can start thinking about this now. It is the small shifts we make each day using the past and future to determine the right work to do right now.
You are designing your company’s future with the work you are doing today.
CEO work is important, and created the Present Retreat Framework which you customize to ensure you lean into the knowledge, experience, and intuition you have because of the work you are doing. The next time you do your deep CEO work, dedicate some time to thinking through where your company may outgrow the methodologies and systems you are using.
Check in with that deep CEO work during your quarterly business review cadence so it is not forgotten. That deep CEO work is the early warning system for signs you are outgrowing a process and builds your intuition about the pulse of business to adapt instead of react. This is where the potential for remaining relevant and having a dynamic lasting growth strategy lies.
While the allure of revolutionary change can be tempting, sustainable and resilient growth for mid-market companies is more often found in the thoughtful evolution of existing strengths and systems.
Recognizing the inherent limitations of static methodologies and proactively integrating past learnings with future aspirations are crucial steps. The real work lies with the management team not discarding everything and starting over, but instead in the continuous, often challenging, process of adapting and refining what already works. It takes courage to address emerging limitations of the way an organization does work — and such action is a requirement to ensure the company will stay relevant and ensure its own future.
By building an internal early warning system which fosters mindful adaptation, management teams can navigate the complexities of growth, overcome inevitable hurdles, and ensure their companies thrive for the long term. The future isn’t built on tearing down the past, but on intelligently building upon it, one evolutionary step at a time.
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Still feel like you need a bit of help with some business direction on this topic? Then ACT to Plan by contacting me for a Business Basecamp 30-min Consultation. We’ll discuss your aims, where you are struggling, and options for you to navigate through it!!
