How Visionary/Innovators can get proactive.

Hey there. So are you the innovator or are you the scale up guy? Are you the visionary or are you the operator? This was the conversation last night with Ran Stage and a number of local entrepreneurs and there was a lot of debate and discomfort about moving from a reactive mode to a proactive mode. The things that you had to do to become a proactive company that was better able to scale were uncomfortable for many of the people who thought of themselves as the visionary founder type. But I don't think you have to choose. I don't think you have to choose. I actually think you can be the person that you are as long as you develop yourself to where you allow and empower and surround yourself with other kinds of people. So if you're the visionary person, right, there's a way to be with the operator, scale up person. If you're going to be reactive and engage in that, then there's a way to do that and empower people to also be proactive and in fact even live be comfortable in and enjoy a proactive business environment that is ready to scale up. So we're talking about that balance between startup versus scale up, between that phase of innovation and expansion. So here's the approach. I think it really all comes down to creating at its core. There's a lot of things that we can do to get in that proactive mindset and be scaling up. But it really does come down to some planning and some habits. So we have the whole rock habits, we have The Rockefeller Habits 2.0 version and the scaling up framework. But at its basic we want to set aside some time to work on the business and, and we don't want that time to be set up after, but before we get to and deal with the pressures of things. When dealing with new clients, when trying to onboard and get a new client going in coaching, they always struggle with this and we really push them hard to actually connect and commit things. So here's the way to make it easy. And this is the routine that gives you free freedom to then go be innovative. It gives you the peace of mind to not worry about the time to work on your business because you know you can be responsive and you can do all the things that you do. If you're the visionary person and if you're the scale up person, you know this framework, if you can get your visionary innovative partner to buy into it where you can work with each other within this, then it's great. So here's the work there is to do. We want to consider, say Imagine the company three years or five years in the future and you've really implemented something that you're proud of. The company is idyllic. This is your sort of utopian vision of your future. It's your painted picture, it's your vivid vision. The work there is to do now is to imagine in that future. When does your annual planning occur? Does your annual planning and strategy work occurring before the year ends or just after the year ends? At the beginning of the new year? So are you having it in as early as October, November, December in that time frame, or are you doing it in January, as many companies do? I don't think it's that critical, to be honest, at the stage for most of you, if you're listening to this and debating this conversation, pick either one. The key thing is that we want to set aside two days in the ideal time frame and schedule that now. We want to actually schedule that this year now. And it might not fit in the ideal time frame. But if I create a recurring appointment two days every year, and maybe it's the first week after New Year's, on the Friday, Saturday, and we do an off site or whatever it is, imagine what that looks like and then book that in now as an annual recurring thing forever now I'm booked in, I'm locked in. Invite your key leadership people to it, change that as it goes over the years and then if that doesn't work for what's happening this year, then just go ahead and adjust the current one. Alright? Then the next thing to do is plan the quarterly date, same exercise. When will your quarterly be? Do you want it to happen so you start the quarter with a clear plan, or do you really want to get the last quarter's data in before you plan the next quarter? So either put it in the two weeks that lead up to the end of the quarter, or put it in the first two weeks of the quarter. But whatever you do, plan one, or if you're really going for broke, plan two days per quarterly. So one or two days per quarter for your team planning off site to update plans for the company. So plan that, then book that and imagining it in the future in that three year future. What does it look like now in the next couple quarters? It probably won't work at all with everything that you've already got booked in. If you put it in now, automatically scheduled, booked out, then when you get to that point in the future, you'll start scheduling around it. So for the next couple quarters, where you've got conflicts, don't sweat about that. Move those as need be. But now know that forever you've built in that automatic thing. Then same exercise, the weekly meeting. When is your weekly meeting? Book 90 minutes for that. For most teams it's Monday. Every now and then somebody is on a Friday and then a few teams will do their meeting on Tuesday, but almost nobody's going to do their meeting on Wednesday, Thursday. So it's really. Is it beginning or the end of the week? Same kind of thing. I like the beginning of Monday or Tuesday better than the end of the week. Set aside 90 minutes to do with your team. Of course that doesn't have to be off site. We'll talk about agendas at a later point and then the daily meeting is the next one. The daily meeting just, just figure out 15 minutes. So I like to do my daily meeting at the beginning of the day, but not at the absolute beginning. So I like to get in for about half an hour or so and then do my meeting. And then the last thing is for the monthly. So the monthly is just like an extended weekly meeting. It's a similar agenda with a little bit tacked on. So just add another 90 minutes once a month either at the beginning or the end of the month to that weekly meeting, whenever that's scheduled. And the other last variation I'll tell you around the weekly is that if you can't see your way to doing a once a week meeting, every other week will work. What won't work is to wait a whole month between meetings. In the weekly meeting we're going to look at how we're progressing on the quarterly goals. And a week or two is the maximum. Two weeks is the maximum that you can go. You can't do a once a month to work on quarterly goals. It's just not enough time to tweak it. So that's the rough way to do it. You if you book those the ideal situation in now as a recurring automated for everything, then start to book around it. Protect that time. Don't move it for anything other than like a holiday or a trade show. If you get a key client now a year from now or six months and they want to meet on whatever, wherever possible, just work around it. Say oh no, I'm not available on that Monday or I'm not available that week and you'll find that really the vast majority of things fit and you'll now develop the habit. The muscle of working on the business first, fitting the actual business in and around the working on the business and your company will be a profoundly different place. Now, if you're the innovative, visionary kind of person who likes creativity, and I'm one of those people, I'm an idea monkey. I'm generating ideas. Ideation is the first of my talent strengths. Then I got that too. And I know that I could just relax because I know that my quarterly meeting is already in the calendar and I don't have to stress about when it's going to happen and if it's going to happen and everything else. So you're all set. If you'll do this thing, you'll have moved your company massively down the road to being proactive, even if you're an innovator or visionary. So hope that's helpful. I have a weekly podcast out with great guests on the subjects related to scaling up your business, scalingupbusiness.com and on iTunes, Scaling Up Business and Stitcher everywhere you get your podcasts. Thanks so much. Please share it, Please like it. Please comment. If you got any questions, comments, feedback, whatever, go ahead and comment them here. Love to hear from you. Talk to you soon.