Within each stage of growth there are three unavoidable zones a company will experience. We refer to these zones as the Preparation Zone, the Performance Zone and the Pressure Zone.
It is helpful to walk a CEO through these zones to help them articulate to their employees the challenge of maintaining a healthy approach to growth.
You can find a graphic of these three zones on the membership site under Resources, 7 SOG, Handouts and it is called Preparation, Performance, Pressure.
A healthy company will spend approximately 20% of its time in the Preparation Zone. This zone is all about being intentional about processes and their effectiveness. Is there a process in place for marketing, sales and once the sale is made, is there an effective process on how the work flow occurs to meet deadlines and budgets.
A healthy company will spend approximately 70% of its time in the Performance Zone. This zone is focused on how well the company performs during the process of getting work done. Do employees understand their roles and responsibilities? Are people held accountable to performance indicators? Are meetings effective? Is there a healthy culture that helps people collaborate and have healthy conflict in order to continually improve?
A healthy company will spend approximately 10% of its time in the Pressure Zone. This is that fine line a company walks between chaos and equilibrium. That pressure zone is felt in numerous ways including when a company moves from one stage of growth to another; when that company brings on a new product or service; what a company expands to multiple locations; when a company delivers their product or service to the customer. All of these transitions create pressure.
As the graphic unfolds, it shows what happens when a healthy company starts becoming sick and the Preparation Zone is reduced to 10%, the Performance Zone shrinks down to 50% and the Pressure Zone expands to 40%. Your CEOs will recognize the challenges as they grow and things become harder to manage, processes that used to work, no longer do, but there is precious little time to fix them. Bandaids are applied with little success. People are confused over their roles and accountability is lacking. People are frustrated.
A company at the door of the emergency room becomes almost impossible to manage effectively. Now the Preparation Zone is 20%, however, the Performance Zone shrinks to only 10% and the Pressure Zone ramps up to 70%. Now it’s all about just keeping heads above water. No one is happy and the company is on the brink of disaster.
Take time to review this graphic and think about how you can help your CEOs visually understand the value of embracing the 7 Stages of Growth model and the predictive nature of this unique approach to planning.
Again, find it here: Resources, 7 SOG, Handouts.
And for help in positioning the Stages of Growth X-Ray to a prospect, take the time to listen to the video called How to Position the X-Ray to a Prospect. In this video, I talk about competitive positioning statements, how to create benefits from features to answer the ‘so what’ question in terms of the value a CEO will receive from an X-Ray. There is no shortcut to better understanding the value the X-Ray process delivers. Find it here: Under X-Ray Videos, page 2, called: How to Position and X-Ray to a Prospect.
Your first step? Sell one! If you have a client, you should be delivering an X-Ray to that client today. Need more help? Just holler. I’m always here to help.
Your success. My passion.
Laurie Taylor, FlashPoint!
