The Four CEO Meetings That Drive Transformation | Profitable Growth Accelerator Overview

All right. Hey everyone, Bill here again. We're going to walk through the 4 key CEO meetings. I find from a CEO standpoint, this is how you get momentum going in. This is how you set expectations and you get everyone really excited about what's happening, right? So, the 4 meetings happen over 100 days. Now, first of all, the 100 days is a little bit of a euphemism. You can do it shorter. You can do it longer. Most of it is how fast you want to go. is dependent on the situation the company's in. So if the company's in danger of going out of business, you got to go fast. If the company is doing great and you just want to take and make changes and get it better, even this, you're going to go slower. You'll have to make that determination coming in. You're there for a reason, and generally if you've been hired to come in, something's gone wrong. But if you're a business and you just want to take and get it going, decide how fast you want to go. It's up to you. But I call this the 100 days You know, it's funny, it goes back to Roosevelt's time when he came in and over 100 days he passed more bills than any president in history. This was around the war and everything, lots of great things were going on, but it's been a standard that we've all measured to since then. So you can get a lot done. Do not expect all the results to come in in this 100 days, but do expect the start to happen. And how you come out of here is really going to make a difference. You can change the world in 100 days for sure. All right. So what happens in this 100 days? So the first meeting is get a goal. I like to do this in week 1. You can do it week 2 or 3. It just depends if you're remote and they're remote. You might need a little extra time if you're all in the same building. Heck, do it on the day you start. Get everyone together. Get them offsite. Do it within the first 2 weeks. Get some conference room that's big enough for everyone to hang out. Have some simple food and all that. But generally, it's going to start with you and your CFO sitting outside going, what can we grow this thing to? You're going to get aligned around that. You'll have an inorganic and an organic. So, you'll have what you can do yourself and then what you can go buy. That'll determine your— what you can buy is determined by your balance sheet. What you can do yourself or your team will determine the quality of your team, what markets you're in, all that. But this is the stuff you can control. Focus on the organic. Focus on what you control. All right. So, you get them together. You're going to lead this. Inside there is all your key people. If they're reporting to you, be in the room. Your assistant, whoever it is, let them be in the room. You get to know each other. I'm most going to take this from the idea that you're new, but it doesn't really matter. Everyone's in the room. Maybe it's just you and your spouse. Maybe it's you and a mirror. I don't know. But you need to have this come-to-Jesus meeting. So, hopefully that didn't offend anyone. But the idea is, let's get real. Let's get aligned. This is your meeting. You're getting the goal, and the goal is wherever you're going. So, I always like to talk in just hypothetical percentages. I can use my own, but I like to say I'm half, so I'm at 50, 50%, $50, $50 million, doesn't matter. I'm going to 100, 100%. How am I going to get there? My balance sheet will tell me what I can afford to do. My P&L will tell me where I need to focus. I want to focus around organic side. We will come to inorganic, but if you let people talk about that, that'll be their savior. They'll be like, yeah, yeah, but I can go buy someone. Nope. Make them focus on the organic. You'll thank me for it later, right? So you got them all around the toll, around the table. Maybe it's a toll. I don't know. But you've got them all around the table. You're going to look at the history. The point of looking at the history: if you say you got to double the business every year and you've been shrinking, how the heck are you going to do that? I'm not saying it's not possible, but you better have a good plan about why you think this is reasonable. And the team's going to have to buy into it and own it. Make sure of that. So make sure you're going in with something that's stretchy but possible, right? Off of it. So use your historical performance. Look at what you've got. Look at what's happening in your market. Is it possible? Is it even humanly possible? Discuss the stakeholder expected. So I'm assuming you're the CEO. I'm just going to make the assumption it's a private equity. It doesn't matter. But you have someone you're reporting to. We all have someone we're reporting to— our bankers. our spouses, the private equity board, the family who owns the business, whoever it is. You want to start with what they want. It does no good to come up with a great plan that the owners of the company doesn't agree with. So make sure you have that, whoever that may be. Make sure you identify all the root issues. If the company is having erosion, if there's customers hate you, they're concentrated, whatever it is, let's get it all on the table, right? We're not going to live in a fantasy land. We need strategy. We need exciting. We need a good goal. But it's got to be based in reality. So if you're a $2 million business, you probably aren't going to be $200 million. Not saying it's impossible, but you better look at your balance sheet. In other words, the size of your wallet. See what you can do there. Get it down to one clear goal. I'm at 50, I'm going to 100, and this is possible. Here's why, right? I'm going to improve my margin by 300 basis points in 12 months. Here's why. It's got to make sense, and you have to convince them of that. And hopefully it's so obvious you don't have to convince anything. Maybe they're convincing you that's where you really want to be. Then you're going to align around how what good looks like. What is the end? What is this? What we're trying to do? Align around with that and work backwards and say, is it possible? So if the idea is to get 300 basis points and you've got to take and get all your contracts renegotiated around pricing, and yet you have two-year contracts, it's not possible unless you have a force majeure in there that you can come in and say, I have to change this because by an act of God. I can do this. Your contract's locked for 2 years. So make sure what you're doing is possible and everyone can align around it. So example here, middle market company. If you're $1.5 million, you're $15 million, $150 million, $1.5 billion, just move the decimal wherever it makes sense for you at. Make sure— so I'm just using a lower middle market company here. Make sure this is possible. Make sure the leadership team believes it and everyone knows about it. And then what you're going to take and go do— the result here was simplification and price moves. Yielded six million in nine months. Now look, that's a big deal. Are you going to do that? Heck, you might do more, could do less. Depends on you, the quality of your team, where you are in this journey, and what your systems are to get it through. So this is just an example, a failed example. The and I see this way more. I've got twenty-five things. Generally, it's a hundred and twenty-five things, and they're all important. I can't afford to make anyone upset because they're working on. These are terrible things to say, right? It's gonna. I'm keep what you're really saying is I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing. And we're going to need growth and digital transformation and ESG and on and on and on. Pick something that's going to deliver it. One is better, 2 is okay, you can probably live with 3. Get beyond that, you're fooling yourself. So because everything was important meant nothing was important. It's like everything's bold, nothing is bold. So you can see this is bold, this is not. You can tell the difference. So execution's diluted and it falls apart. So we When that happens, look in the mirror. You're the guy, you're the woman, you're the person in charge. If you're letting them do it, that's a you problem. All right, set the strategy, right? So the purpose here is to translate your strategy into focused goals. 80/20 informed means you're just looking at the data. You're understanding what's winning, what's not. You're focusing on what's winning. Don't try to fix something that's not working. Get rid of it. Fix the things that are working. Make those go faster. Pick where the money's at. John Dillinger was asked, why do you rob banks? That's 'cause where money is. Why do you fix these problems? Because that's where the money is. Don't go waste your time on trivial pursuits that are interesting but not important. So, you get to the second meeting, right? So, you finish the first meeting, you come out, everyone's aligned around this goal. I'm going from 50 to 100. They all need to be aligned. No pocket vetoes. That means they've— yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm all in, but they walk out and they're telling everyone, that guy's crazy. There's no way. Can't have that. Person who's doing that, either you've done a poor job or or they're not a fit for the team. Either way, it's got to change. What's going to happen between that first meeting and the second meeting, if you're following the 100 days, is going to be 30 to 45 days, maybe 60. Around 45 is about where you want to be. They've got to come up with a strategy to deliver your goal. This is not yours to come up with. This is theirs. You're going to work with them. You're going to talk to them all the time. You're going to set boundaries and guardrails and all that. It's got to be realistic, but they've got to own it. One central reason, if they don't own it, they won't believe it. They're not going to do it, and you're going to be in trouble. And when it fails, they're going to say, Bill, I told you it wouldn't work. You told me I had to do it anyway, and it didn't work just as I told you it will. They own it. They're going to find a way to make it possible, probable, and happen because it's theirs. They'll know what's happening out there. So, this is going to happen over setting the strategy. They go back. They work with their teams. You're working with them. You're having lots of meetings. These should be short and all that. Work's got to be happening. And remember, this is just a key team. Depending on the size of your team, it's just a cop people in that group. Someone's got to be running the company. Let the people run the company day to day. Again, this is middle market. You're smaller. Maybe it's just you and one other person. Whatever it takes, whatever works on it. The rest are running the company. You and this person or them and their couple of you on their team, they're putting this together, right? That meeting you started with in the first meeting, everyone in the company reports to someone in that meeting. Here, it's those groups. So if you have business units or operating companies, whatever you have, you're going to kind of strategize that way. You know, 2 companies ago I took it over, we had 60 different companies. Uh, we got it— they wanted 8 divisions, I wanted 3, we got it to 4. I mean, it's negotiation. It's got to be based on what people believe, and it will constantly change. So, second meeting, really the same group is here, same group that was in the first meeting. They all come, get them together. You now have set the vision. You've had lots of conversations. It's not like you showed up, didn't talk to anyone between the 2 meetings. You have all these conversations. You set the guardrails. The CFO is continuing to be the sanity in the room saying, can we do it? Can we not? Strategy or profit advisors. This is the person who knows how to do it. So, if you're working with us, we're going to be the profit advisor in here making that happen. It could be your strategy leader, but it's whoever understands your operating model, your business system. This is where you're wanting all that. These can be 2 separate people. They could be owning the calendaring, how it's going to happen. They may not be actually Doing strategy. They could be owning the process, and this could be the person who owns the processes. So we'll figure that out as we go. You'll figure it out as we go. We'll help you get there. The initiative owners are— they're coming back. So you had company number 1, they're your big one, and they say, I'm going to do this. Who is in there? You need— I hate to be aggressive, I call it the one throat to choke, but you need one person in charge. Don't make it a whole army. They can be one themselves. They can have a secondary person if they're not available. You want one person. Believe me, this becomes important. If it's the same person on everything, it's not going to work. Remember, one or two things, one's better. And then whoever's looking at the numbers, right? Who's looking at pricing? This is your operations team. These are the system folks. These are the people who are, uh, can tell you what's happening there. A lot of times that may be in your IT group. It may be some third party you're using, but it's someone who can look at the metrics you've got. The agenda. So, the first one was to get aligned around this. This agenda is, do you believe the strategy? Do not expect it to be fully landed. It's only been 45 days. It's going to be shallow. You should see things like it's in the core. It's based on what we're doing. So, if you are making compressors and they come back and say, nah, we can't get there. We're going to get in the restaurant business. Do not believe them. Stay within your core. That doesn't mean the core is always going to work, but it is the rare thing that it doesn't work. Look at Western Union, right? At one point they sent telegrams. Today they're known for sending money. Their core market went away. Nobody sends telegrams anymore. They found something instead of transmitting information. They transmitted money. Money is nothing more than digital bits and bytes. So it's kind of the same thing. They had to change. My bet is you're probably not Western Union. You probably have a good product and a reason that it's out there. The question is, can you protect it? Can you scale it? That's going to be your bigger issue, right? Are you just lucky? And then you're small and you got it, or do you really have something there? You got to understand that. Okay, the agenda. Go through it. Start looking at the stuff. You should have been getting data by this. We kick off the 80/20 process at the same time we kick off the first meeting. That's a team looking at the data. You should have some things to look at by this point. And are you using 80/20 to isolate the critical few? As you're doing this, we look around what's start, stop, and continue. So things that are obvious, do it. So if your house is on fire, put out the fire. If your ship is sinking, Plug the hole. So in other words, if you have good pricing opportunities, take them. Don't be too crazy. Don't be too aggressive. If you have customers that you can help that need help, go do those, right? Take the obvious stuff first. This is how you get momentum going. Team needs win, right? Prioritize your 3 to 5 things. So you're just looking for reality. You're just looking for something that has potential. You're in these markets already. Have they identified the key thing? They probably have already been working on it. Maybe, maybe not, but most likely it is. Can they resource it correctly? Is it worthwhile? Is the juice worth the squeeze, right? If they do this, will it get to where you need to be? Right? Make sure you've got initiative owners and that they're clear with it and draft high-level execution maps. So you're going to walk out of here. So the first thing you walked out with a common goal and it's divided up by business units if you have them or operating companies. You walk out of the second meeting, you now have clarity in what the framework looks like where you're going. So it's the outline of a book. It's the chapters in the book. Maybe with a paragraph or 2. So it's pretty shallow, but it should resonate with everyone in there. It should be what you're already doing. So here's an example, right? They decided they were going to take and raise pricing on unprofitable areas. They were going to get rid of tail customers. I'm not a huge customer firer. Sometimes I do it. I typically just raise prices and go with that, or I try to make them self-serve, whatever. So firing customers, if you're overwhelmed, things going— makes sense. If you need the business, Maybe you're going to have to figure out how to take and get them to go there. So be careful with this one, but people do look at it and you're starting to consolidate things that are killing you, right? Low margin areas, starting to put those together, move things around. That's a lot of moving parts in there. Make sure you got a team that can handle it. Here's the results they did, right? They did a very nice job. $12 million EBITDA, 6 months. They had redeployed $4 million of SG&A into the areas. They didn't fire the people. They actually brought them into the other side so they could get after and go faster. That's what happens. Sometimes, you have people move on. Sometimes, you still need the people, they just don't have the skill set. Got to figure that out. Failure example, right? What happens on these types of things? It becomes in the brainstorm. They come in, they don't know what to do. You didn't spend enough time with them. The strategy person doesn't. They're not clear. Do you have the right leader? Are you giving them the direction? Make sure you're getting them there, right? This is a work in progress. It's not about being perfect. It's about making progress. They need to come back with something. Remember, results matter. They need to be on pace. They show up with nothing. They did not get any results and they were off pace. These are big signs, right? They make it all up. They didn't do data. That'll surprise you. These are the 4 things. You don't want any of those things, right? So, the result when they did that, nothing worked out well for them. It was a PowerPoint deck. We've all seen a great strategy. Boy, it looks so beautiful. Colors are perfect. Font is right on point. We put it back on the shelf. We do nothing with it. We're not going to play that game. We need things that are actually going to work, right? Meeting 3 is reorganizing the company, right? So, what that is about Is you now know your top 1 or 2 initiatives. Put people on it. Shift them. This is where people show their hand. When people say to me, well, how do you know when people are on board or not? It's here. Are they willing to make the changes to make these work? People talk a good game all the time. This is going to— you're going to find out, are they on board or not? This is where if you can't get them on board, you're going to make changes. That could mean people leaving the company. That could mean people getting promoted. Means all sorts of things. You got to get action going. You're going to be about 75 days into this, right? Somewhere around 60 to 75 days. Time's running out. You only got 100. So, whoo, you got a month left. You're going to start moving. Have you moved everything? Of course not. But you've shifted a couple of key people working on these initiatives, right? Same group again, back in the meetings, right? You're around week 6 to 9. You got the same agenda, but here It is, their strategy should have fleshed out more. Remember, they had the first 45 days after the first meeting plus the 45 days here to go deeper. Now they know what they need. So, they've really got about 3 months on this, believe it or not. And are they ready to make those moves? You're looking for people who are willing to make it. And when they're wrong, and you will be sometimes, they're flexible. They'll take and change it back if they have to, right? So, you're looking at things about what would the org chart be? The biggest red flag I see here is people come in with these massive organizations. Look, I need HR. I need finance. You don't need any of those stuff. You have what you have. You're going to move people, initiative owners, over. You want to give them the minimal viable resources, right? You're going to get the minimum viable here. You cannot build in some huge group. You're probably going to shift people from what they were doing on here. So before, however you were closing the books, keep closing the books that way. Over time, you'll earn the right to grow in there and you'll bring people in. But don't you dare go build all that headcount in there. It'll kill you. Get the minimum amount you need, right? So some examples here around successes, right? The, uh, the CEO basically supporting the strategy and saying it around the org chart. They remove layers. So look, you should be flattening organizations, putting people out of the corporate center into the operating companies. Let them go work with customers, develop products, take orders, do all that stuff. All right, let other people who are counting and things like that— you need the minimum in there. You need people Making it happen, going to sell something. Nothing happens until something's sold. Then it's got to be made and delivered, right? Company becomes faster, flatter, and more focused when that happens. And then when does it fail? Typically because the CEO isn't making the hard calls. The team doesn't want to make those changes. There's all sorts of reasons I hear. Well, you know, they don't know what they're doing. We've got to be— nope, we're going to go. We're going to go. We're going to hold each other's hand. We're going to go together. We're going to learn together. And if that team doesn't have the right skill set, go get someone that does. Harsh to say, but it's how it works, right? Because you're on— you've got a limited amount of time here, a limited amount of resources, and you're going to make sure that they're used around where it's the best opportunity. If not, you may be helping that one person, but you could be killing your company. This is the one that makes it all stand out. Okay, meeting 4. Meeting 4. So look, they came into meeting 3, they've been working on strategy, they leave meeting 3, they're still working on the strategy, still continue to polish it. It gets deeper and deeper. But now, saying, all right, I need to take action. They're going to have to move people as they go, right? They're going to find people and shift them over and make sure that the key initiative they have is fully staffed. If they have more— they wanted 2 initiatives, they have more people, you can move them into the second initiative. If you don't have enough, there's no second initiative. Very simple. Staff them as long as you add people, and it can't be all the same people. They have time to do one job, not 10 jobs, right? So it's about taking action. This is your announcing out. As you've been going along, You kicked off your first meeting, you had a town hall, you told everyone what you're doing. You said, this is what we're going to go do. In the middle, you're going to have another one. You're going to say, here's where we are, here's the update. Then you're getting ready to— after the 4th meeting, to have the final town hall to say, here's what we're doing. This lays out the action plans. You're going to get TTIs. We teach you that in policy deployment. That's targets to improve. You're going to say, I'm going from, to, by then. I'm going to go from 15 divisions to 3 divisions by December 31st. Whatever year it is, right? And this is what we're going to go do with it. So from to, you're telling people what that is in that, and they're building the plans out in here. You are starting to do them, but you're right at the beginning, right? So lots of things to get done here, uh, but you start, you start where you are. Same team again. You now make sure you've got the initiative on that. Maybe someone new in there, otherwise it's all the same people coming in together. And your agenda here is to look at the KPIs and the action plans and the targets improved. You want to make sure that they have this. Now look, it's going to be shallow. Your action plan, if it's only 10 lines long, it's too little. If it's 10,000 lines long, it's too much. You should have an appropriate amount given what it is and recognize it's going to continue to flesh itself out. Some of those actions may be they got to develop a plan to go get a plan. You want to go past that, but remember, you're probably at 90 days at this point, right? You're booking it along. You haven't got everything done. You're flying the plane, painting the plane, putting wheels on the plane, and you're doing all the things, right? Give people a little grace. You want them— it's okay if they're wrong. It's okay if it has to change. What's not okay is they're not doing things. They're not moving forward and figuring it out. Get people to decide this is an exciting time. I love doing this. People love doing it because they're starting to win. They're starting to get out of these things that's got them into this. They're starting to have major impacts. Your team will love this. This is not work anymore. Now it's fun, right? Okay, some examples here is, uh, success. You're having your meetings, you're having Monday morning. We actually have ours on monthly with this. We've tried doing the Monday morning meetings. We do those in factories and out in warehouses and in offices. We're doing stand-up meetings, right? But trying to get all my team together, all that depends on the size of your company. Yeah, it can be weekly is great for some areas. Weekly is too much for others. Make a good decision on it. If what you're doing doesn't work, change it, right? Execution becomes part of the operating system and momentum builds. Remember, you're going to be in there. They can say whatever they want to say. When they walk out, you want everyone stacking hands saying the same thing. If they walk out and they go, this is crazy, it's never going to work, then that's what people are going to believe. You need people who are aligned with you. You get these through these meetings, letting people be heard, let their voice being heard, let them understand what's going on. And then the decision is made. That doesn't mean you don't change. Sometimes you do change. But it's because of this feedback loop that allows you to do it, right? Failure, you're not engaged. You're not having the meetings. You delegate it. It's just magically going to happen. That is a prescription for failure. Don't do that. Make sure you're engaged. Read the stuff. Show up at the meetings. Ask what's going on. Don't leave the meetings, right? You go last. Let them— you can kick it off. Hey everyone, great to be here. Give it to the person running the meeting. Let them sit there. And then you ask your good questions and then you wrap it up. If you go first, They'll all say what you say. You don't want that. You want to see what they say. So, what's your 4 meetings? Get a goal. That's define the strategy. You own it. You get buy-in. The team gets aligned and the urgency is set. And you start getting clarity. If you have confusion and scattered, that's a failure. Meeting number 2, set the strategy. The team is going to own that based off of your goal. And it's going to be across your organization, 1, 2, 3 to 5, right? Focus in. Fewer is better. Should be appropriate. If you have a multi-billion dollar company, you got more than 5. That's going to be 1 or 2 per division, right? But your big ones at the very core, if you have more than below that, it should tie back into your 1 or 2, right? Make sure they're all aligned around it, but make it appropriate, right? Failure, whole bunch of lists. Everybody goes, yeah, yeah, but I'm still doing this. These are these lower drawer programs where they, you leave, they open the lower drawer and they go back working what they want. Not, not good, right? Meeting 4, 3rd is the— meeting 3 is reorganize the company. That's getting people shifted around. That's aligning your structure to strategy and the talent and resources applying against it, right? Failure is to keep doing what you have been doing and say that you've made the changes. You'll continue to fail. You'll continue to get what you've got, which is not why you're in this. Final one is deploy. It's the tactical execution. It's taking action. Right? That is driving discipline execution. You have a cadence. It's visible. Wherever you go, you see this. People know it. You meet someone in the hallway, they can repeat it back. Lack of failure, lack of progress is no accountability. No one's talking about it. No one's going on. It's just you and your team. You're going to fail then. All right. Closing statement here, right? You see, as a CEO, you only get one clean pass through this. Understand your role and the others and hold to it. Right. You can redo it, but when you redo it means you have to undo whatever didn't work. Right. But it's you talking to your team with clarity. You own the vision. You own where it's going. You own the goal. It is a condition of employment that they follow it and go through it. If they're not going to follow it, they can't get behind where you're going. You got to get someone else. It's generally not the case, but it does happen. If that does happen, do it quickly. Do it with dignity and respect. Let the team who wants to be there own it and go forward. This is an exciting time. You're going to love doing these things. All right, go get them. Great chatting with everyone.