Every startup wants to be a predictable success, yet so few ever achieve this enviable position. In reality, getting there is not a random walk, and requires an understanding of the stages that every business must navigate and the organizational characteristics necessary at each stage.
Les McKeown, in his book from a while back, “Predictable Success” outlines these stages and characteristics for any business. He points out, for example, that every business should anticipate the early struggle stage, a possible fun stage, and probably a turbulent whitewater phase before they can hope for the predictable success stage.
This predictable success stage is defined as a point where you can set and consistently achieve your goals and objectives with a consistent, predictable degree of success. Unlike previous stages, where you may not know how or why you have survived, you now know why you are successful and can use that information to sustain growth in the long term.
His studies show that companies at this stage show five key characteristics, which I believe every startup should strive to achieve from the very beginning:
- Decision making. The ability to readily make and consistently implement decisions. You need a sense of flow – decisions are made without the decision-making process placing a burden on the organization, or the leader. Decision making is delegated and decentralized, freeing management to concentrate on what they can do best, rather than micromanaging others.
- Goal setting. The ability to readily set and consistently achieve goals, and really being in control. It has to happen seamlessly, as part of the day-to-day operation of the business, not as the resource-sucking, do-it-at-the-last-minute event that it is in so many organizations. Goals are hit more than missed, and people are willing to take timely, corrective action.
- Alignment. Structure, process, and people are in harmony. Otherwise, a lot of time and energy is expended by people because they have to manipulate the organization’s processes and/or structure in order to get things done. There is just the right amount of process and structure to efficiently get the job done.
- Accountability. Employees become self-accountable, in addition to being externally accountable to others. When empowered to make decisions of genuine import about their own jobs and responsibilities, and given the resources and freedom required, each employee personally buys into the overall success.
- Ownership. Employees take personal responsibility for their actions and outcomes. This results in everyone pulling together, rather than by the manager group constantly “pushing.” There is a deep sense of co-dependency, where managers are dependent on their teams for delivering, and employees are dependent on managers for guidance.
As challenging as it may seem to achieve these characteristics in your business, the bigger challenge is to retain them for the long haul. Many businesses slowly slide into a treadmill stage, where they become over-systematized, or on toward the big rut where creativity disappears (“the way we have always done things”), on into the death rattle, where the market moves faster than the company.
As a startup, you need to walk before you can run. That means starting early to practice and implement the techniques that will lead to predictable success. Remember that the lynchpin of the entire framework comes down to your own personal ownership and self-accountability. There is no room here for excuses or half-way efforts.