Your Recipe for Success

What Every Business Needs to Thrive

Running a business can feel overwhelming. You don’t always know where your next customer will come from. You worry about employees and their families. You put in long hours but don’t feel like you’re getting the results you want.

It shouldn’t be that way. Your business is built to add value to the world, to change the lives of the customers you serve. It should have great people and simple processes that deliver the same quality every time. This allows you to step away, knowing that customers will still get the value they need, problems will be solved, and the company will continue to put the right changes in place to grow.

The right structure isn’t necessarily easy to put in place, but the concepts are easy to understand. At a high level, every company needs two things to be successful. You need a clear vision of the value you provide for customers and you need to be able to create a process that delivers that value. When you get these pieces in place, you’ll be amazed at the results.

The first piece of the puzzle is the value you add to customers. That value is what gives you your purpose. It’s the reason your company exists. How you provide that value is your vision. It’s used to create the roadmap that allows you to constantly improve the value you add.

Companies need a clear vision of what they do that makes them unique.

Every company needs to be able to solve problems for customers. You need to know:

Who your customers are – who is it you serve better than anyone else in the world?
What problem do you solve for your customers - how do you make their lives better?
What is your approach – what unique solution do you bring?

These elements define who you are. It’s what differentiates you from every other company and what gives you a competitive advantage. They are also what will drive your company’s growth. Marketing will use them to identify which customers to work with and communicate how you serve them. Sales will use the information to present your solution and the value it adds to customers’ lives. The bigger the problem, the better the solution, the more it resonates, and the more customers your company will have.

This vision isn’t static. As you grow, you’ll identify better ways to solve customer problems. As you work with customers, you will find needs you didn’t realize existed. You’ll improve how you interact with customers to simplify how you deliver solutions. You begin a journey that should never end, constantly discovering and meeting customer needs.

Vision defines the problems, and how you will fix them. Execution turns these ideas into reality. As you find customers, you need to be able to deliver, solve problems and change lives. This is where the second important item comes into play. The company now needs to turn that vision into reality.

The first part is just running the business.

It’s organizing day-to-day operations. That includes making sure all new orders are getting into the system and tracked, existing orders are moving forward, and completed orders are delivered and adding value. A key to doing this effectively is having the right information, which gives you a clear picture of where you’re at and opportunities to improve.

To deliver effectively, you need a predictable process. You want to create the same high-quality product every time. Execution creates the system within your company that ensures this happens. It creates the recipes employees follow. These recipes ensure your customers get the same high-quality product they were promised and create predictability. They allow you to analyze the output and make needed adjustments. They allow employees to follow the process instead of looking for the right solution over and over. They save leadership wasted time trying to repeat instructions, inspect products, make corrections before it goes to customers, or worse, have customers receive a product that doesn’t meet your standards.

The next part is implementing change to allow the business to grow.

Your vision identifies better ways to serve customers. Now those ideas need to be turned into reality. Your vision will set goals of where the company needs to be in the next 10 years, 3 years, and what needs to be done this year. Execution creates specific goals for the next quarter, breaks them down into weekly plans, and then ensures those plans are either being followed or adjusted as needed. It takes busy people who are focused on running the business and ensures they invest into changing processes so your business can grow.

Execution ensures you have the right people in the right seats.

In small companies, most people wear a number of different hats. As your company grows, there are times you need to reevaluate who took on which roles. The first step is making sure you have the right people whose values align with those of your company. The next step is ensuring these people understand the goals, want to do them, and have the skills they need to be successful.

Resolving Issues

Mike Tyson famously said everyone has a plan till they get punched in the face. As you go through each of these processes, running the business, implementing change, getting the right people into the right spot and helping them grow, issues will always come up. Too many businesses struggle with unresolved problems. Having the right structure in place allows you to identify the root cause of the problem, work with your leadership team to discover innovative solutions, and then put a solution in place.

Putting It All Together

These two processes, defining your vision and then turning it into reality, are very different skill sets. If you aren’t familiar with EOS or Gino Wickman, giving companies the process to solve these problems is exactly what he set out to do in his books Traction and Rocket Fuel. Traction defines the processes that companies can use to complete these tasks. Rocket Fuel does a deep dive into the key roles needed, the CEO or Visionary that handles vision and the COO or Integrator that handles execution.

As you look at implementing the ideas, it’s important to note:

Every good company needs both these roles. You need great ideas to fuel growth and provide direction. You need someone who can take those great ideas and turn them into outcomes for the organization.
The people who excel at vision and execution usually have very different personalities. If you don’t understand their role and importance:
- Visionaries will feel frustrated. They have great ideas, but the Integrator is always telling them no.
- Integrators will be frustrated that Visionaries are constantly asking them to do something new without giving them time to finish what they just started.
You can trace every problem in an organization to one of these items missing:
- Either you don’t have the right vision, so you’re not adding value to customers.

-or-

You don’t have the right structure in place to take advantage of that vision.

Your Partner for Success

Your vision is to change the world, providing value to the customers you serve. Our vision is to give you the structure and advice to make that happen. We believe empowered entrepreneurs have the power to create healthy businesses that change the world, one customer at a time:

Delivering great products that solve customer problems
Having happy employees that can see the value they add to the world and love what they do
Serving customers who are raving fans that can’t believe the value you provide

Some people will need our services. Others may only need a little direction. Either way, our goal is to provide value. Our blog section will provide you with ideas, and you can always reach out with any questions. Together all of us can make the world a little better, one outcome at a time.

Structured for Success

What Every Business Needs to Thrive