Welcome to Growth Accelerator!  

This program is designed to help you build a business you LOVE, then scale it up predictably. It leverages the tools from frameworks like Scaling Up and EOS to give you a simple, actionable growth framework. 

No thick, dusty strategic plans here.  We're going to build an agile roadmap for your business that we will be constantly evolving.   

The most important thing you can do is build a healthy organization.  

What is a healthy organization?  

It's an organization that has the right people in the right seats.  It has a culture they LOVE being part of and low drama.  It has clarity and connection. 

In BE 2.0, Jim Collins talks about how the most important thing you can do is get the right people on the bus, in the right seats.  When you have that, you can take on any challenge.  

Creating a healthy organization isn't something that just happens, you need to be intentional about it. 

First you need to define your culture, then, nurture that culture until it's pervasive throughout your business.  

We're going to get started on that journey.  

Let's get ready for our first round table session!

From the early days, explorers used the North Star to set their direction and ensure they were on-track. 

In your business, it's no different.  You need something to set your overall direction and be a primary strategic filter for your decision making.  While it may go by many names, we call this North Star your Core Purpose. 

In this module, we're going to start creating clarity and answer the key question:

Why do we exist?

Imagine your business as a child you're raising.  In raising a good person, you work hard to establish and nurture the right values.  

In your business, it's exactly the same.  Core Values are the definition of who you are as an organization, who fits in and who doesn't.   

Getting them right is very important, as it's the foundation for your culture. 

Are you ready to dive into the real work?  Yes?  Awesome. 

We're going to start preparing for your Annual Planning Session. 

Your Annual Planning Session is the most important 2 days you'll spend on your business.  

It's time to unplug from the day-to-day of your business and focus fully on where you want to go, then breaking it down and creating a plan to make it happen.  

Your first day is spent on strategic thinking - doing the intentional work to create clarity in your business and make it more healthy and smart.  Our focuses:  vision, culture, strategy.  The second day we shift to being more tactical, working on the key disciplines and the execution planning.  

If you'd like to create an aligned team who all feel engaged building the business, one of the most important things you can do is involve them in the strategic planning process.  

We've intentionally build our modules to help you get your team involved in the brainstorming process and engage them in the process.  

To prepare for your Annual Planning Session, you'll work through the brainstorming phase for each exercise with your team, then bring the results (the Mural) to our planning workshop, where we will refine it and plan how to execute.  

Lots of great work coming!  Exciting stuff.  

One of the most powerful things you can do is start running a weekly meeting with your team.  In Scaling Up, it's called the Weekly Leadership Team meeting.  In EOS, it's the Level 10 Meeting.  

This meeting is designed to keep the team focused, accountable, and to leverage your collective intelligence to solve issues and get past roadblocks.  

What is Strategy?  

If you had to come up with a definition of strategy without looking it up, chances are you’d define it as something along the lines of the moves you need to make in order to win. Most entrepreneurs would probably agree with you.

While this definition is correct for military or sports strategy, it doesn’t get to the core of what business strategy is all about. 

When it comes to business, strategy is all about setting yourself apart from the competition. As strategy guru Michael Porter says, this isn’t about being better at what you do. It’s about being different in what you do.

In the upcoming strategy modules, we're going to help you create a strategy to stand out from the crowd.

Additional reading:  What is Business Strategy | Incrementa