Are You Ready To Grow?

Business Coach, Author and Senior Partner of Experience On Demand, Steve Finkelstein, To Speak At SBM’s Future 50 Luncheon

When Steve Finkelstein started his career at Monsanto in accounting, he soon realized his passion and strengths were in consulting instead. Thus, during his 20-year career at Monsanto, Finkelstein became more of an internal consultant, helping implement new systems, conduct quality and process improvement projects, and facilitate strategic planning.

After retiring from Monsanto, Finkelstein decided to begin his formal consulting career with Dun & Bradstreet Software in order to help companies re-engineer their business processes, train consultants in project management and implement large-scale enterprise resource management systems. “The rest is history,” says Finkelstein. “I became a consulting partner with Grant Thornton for five years and then recruited by Deloitte as a consulting partner for seven years.”

With over three decades of experience and an ever-present passion for consulting, Finkelstein decided to use his expertise in strategic planning and business execution to start his own management consulting firm, Experience on Demand, in 2007.

Finkelstein shares his expertise as a speaker and workshop leader and in his book, “Play Smart to Win in Business: Leadership Lessons From Center Court to Corner Office,” where he applies the concepts of raising your tennis game to business. These include preparing, being in shape, having the right equipment, practicing, planning, developing strategy, keeping score, building a strong team and executing/playing to win.

This month Finkelstein will headline St. Louis Small Business Monthly’s Future 50 Luncheon, helping business owners and leaders identify whether their companies are ready to grow. SBM spoke with Finkelstein about why it’s necessary to know when it’s time to grow and what strategies he’ll be sharing at the August luncheon. Read on to see whether your company is growth-ready.

What do you focus on in your work with your clients?
I specialize in three areas: strategic planning, process improvement and project management. My major differentiation is “excellence in execution.” Most leaders and companies fail not because they have bad plans or strategies but they’re lacking the discipline and skills in execution. Four of our most effective execution tools are:

1. Developing a 90-day plan. What are the key action steps over the next 90 days that will help achieve success? Who is responsible for each action? When does it need to be completed? What is the status on a weekly basis?

2. Relentless focus on the 80/20. The key to success is to do a few things really well rather than a lot of things pretty good. I help clients develop their 80/20: What are the 20% of the things you need to do to achieve 80% of your success?

3. Establishing the right measures. If you are not keeping score, you are only practicing. Developing the right balance of measures helps to provide focus on the critical areas for success and achieving accountability for results. Using the Balanced Scorecard best practice helps develop financial, client, operational and people measures, both lead and lag indicators.

4. Start, stop and continue. In order to promote continuous improvement and open/candid discussion, it is important to conduct nameless, shameless and blameless debriefs monthly and after every major project. What worked and what did not go so well? Next, develop actions for the following questions:
• What worked well that we should continue doing?
• What do we need to start doing to be successful?
• What is not working that we need to stop or defer doing so we can allocate the time and resources to start doing items?

How can business owners answer the question: Is your business ready for continued growth?
• Understand the 10 critical success factors for continued growth I will cover in my presentation.
• Conduct a candid assessment for each critical success factor.
• Determine where they are ready and where they have readiness gaps.

Why is this an important question to answer?
Growing before you are ready is a high-risk proposition. Just because a company has been successful to date, each level of growth requires the ability to scale to the new demands of customer service, business processes, capital needs, people skills, technology, etc. to support the growth.

Entrepreneurs have worked very hard, made sacrifices and taken many risks to get where they are today. It would be a shame to throw much of that away.
Imagine something we are all familiar with: painting a room. Planning and preparing are critical to a successful paint job. It is two-thirds of the time and effort but pays off in the end — less rework, less mess, fewer mistakes, less time, etc. with an overall much-better-quality result.

If growth is a good thing, why is it so important for business owners to know whether they are ready to grow?
Growth can be a good thing or a bad thing — it depends on how the growth is managed from planning to preparation to execution.

Growth for the sake of growth is risky. The key growth questions are:
• Why do you want to grow?
• How much do you want to grow and when — how fast?
• Are you ready to support the growth — people, process, technology, infrastructure and financial?
• Are you ready for the personal commitment involved?
Companies have spent time, money and personal sacrifice to achieve the growth success to date. Going forward without being ready could result in a major loss or even going out of business.

Can you give us a few key points you will speak to at the Future 50 Luncheon?
• What are the critical readiness areas to assess before you grow?
• Take the time to do a candid assessment of your readiness for growth.
• Determine the readiness gaps.
• Relentless focus on the 80/20 — critical gap areas.
• Discipline execution is critical.

Who would benefit most from attending the luncheon?
Business owners, sales/marketing leaders, HR leaders, CFOs, CIOs, COOs. Leaders in all the major business functions will play an important role in assessing and being ready for growth.

If audience members were to walk away with one important idea, what would that be?
Prepare! Prepare! Prepare! Take the time to properly plan and prepare for growth.