I wish I could get cash back from almost every single external site I had as a founder.
I’ve probably spent over a million dollars over the years on different companies that transport people from all over the world (we were in four countries, which made off-site travel more expensive). We organize laughter and unusual things to promote camaraderie and team cohesion. A particularly embarrassing example was arranging for live snakes to be brought to the hotel for a “face our fears” session. The hotel discovered that one of the attendees had been bitten and was later seen showing his bite in the restaurant. They faced their fears as we were expelled. Good times.
But in reality, most of the money and time invested was wasted. After those off-site activities, not much changed, and all the big things we agreed to never happened or, if they did, they were off schedule and over budget.
At the time, I thought I was a bad founder and CEO, but as I got into consulting and then invested in founders, the patterns and problems related to the general mess of external sites have become clearer.
The momentum and the objective are good. Founders and leaders take their teams out of the everyday environment to talk about culture, strategy, and team building. This is done when things seem a little off the rails or when some companies do it proactively on a schedule. Plans are discussed, with new methods and visions for the future. Perhaps a review of last year, and of everything we haven’t done yet since the last time off the site.
But the external environment is genuinely global with all the demands, conflicts and disorders in the decision-making processes in real time.
After leaving the site, participants return to the site and the existing global continues. The phone rings with a challenge that you want to solve immediately. Jim is still arguing with Jane about some unresolved issues. Stacey and Ryan are still conflicted about x, y, and z. Founders are dealing with shareholders who are looking to take them in other directions.
The plans and new methods discussed and agreed upon off-site are long-term, however the disruptions the team discovers are short-term. The short term kills the long term. Daily demands and conflicts consume all power and all the correct and well-intentioned plans/methods/visions/missions discussed and agreed upon take a backseat.
What is missing is an integration of replacement management and resolution of long- and short-term challenges. A procedure to identify and resolve any short-term challenges along with implementing primary long-term adjustments to bring the new methods to life.
Tribe Global Ventures attempts to facilitate the external functioning of our portfolio corporations and use the equipment and techniques I learned at the Adizes Institute. By making it easy, you allow founders and leaders to participate fully and equally.
Here are some high-level tips.
For this we use the Adizes “PIP” procedure. “PIPs” or potential business improvement points are collected one by one from the participants. Everyone has a say, even if there is no guarantee they will get what they want.
Create a big list. Some of them will be small, some of them will be big, but the thing to do when looking is to build a stock of everything, not just glance at the big, exciting things while ignoring the small, boring ones. It’s the boring little things that get in the way of doing big, exciting things.
And then ask, “Okay, in order to reach those exciting new goals/strategies/visions, what PIP do we want to solve for those goals/strategies?”This is where you will notice all the upheavals that will conspire against those goals. strategies and grand visions.
Actually, the most important PIP is: “We have an inefficiency in proactively identifying and resolving PIPs as a team in the face of daily demands. ” Every word in this sentence is important. If you can replace this to become your greatest asset – “our greatest asset is the ability to identify PIP as a team in the face of daily demands” – you will have a much healthier and more successful business. Training
People are not lazy. If they have the authority and strength to solve a problem, they tend to just solve it. However, what remains are disorders that require other people to solve. People are busy with their own disorders and simply do not have time to come together and agree to work on things that other people require. And then other people have other incentives, other perspectives on what is and rarely is a problem, and other roles. It can be complicated.
What have we solved? Cross them off the list. What do we paint next?Prioritize and release priority areas. Do we have new PIPs? Add them to the list. Create a consistent pace of identification, prioritization, and resolution.
These are the last two issues where rubber deserves to take the road. To make off-site a success, you actually want to be noticed as the first step in a larger process. This is the first step to succeed in creation. groups that can go beyond inevitable conflicts and proactively identify and PIP in the face of daily demands. This will have to be a basic asset of the company.
When I worked with Hungry Jacks and Domino’s, facilitating their external process and implementing the process, Jack Cowin described it as the “rails on which the business can operate” and I like that analogy. Instead of the external process being something unique activity that we do once or twice a year, which becomes an inevitable feast of discussions, our project is to lay and then the rails on which to circulate.
Successful corporations do two things. First, they identify disorders very temporarily and resolve them. Second, they take advantage of opportunities more quickly than their competitors. Internal control procedures cannot do those two things effectively. Therefore, it is not only a matter of resolving the disorders, but also of creating a procedure by which the disorders will inevitably be resolved.
So off-site is not the problem. They are mandatory and can be a lot of fun (try not to get bitten by a snake). Rather, it is the procedure that takes place off-site and how that procedure continues after the off-site that creates the problem.
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