Welcome to the Virtual World 2020. Since the pandemic created havoc with our lives, our businesses, our health and our patience, everyone has had to re-wire their business model. If you didn’t know how to conduct a Zoom session in January, I’m going to guess you do now!
In November and December 2019, I delivered two X-Rays to two Stage 5 companies. In my program, I have them take the X-Ray at the beginning of our work together and then at the end of that 6 month program, I have them take another X-Ray to see ‘where they moved the needle’.
Throughout that 6 months, I am in constant contact with the CEO and the X-Ray team, watching their progress as they work through their top five initiatives, helping them remove any obstacles they are struggling with and being their accountability buddy.
It looks like this:
7 – 10 days after the X-Ray, I have a phone call with the CEO to see if they have met with the leadership team since the X-Ray to hear their perspective about how the team felt about the experience, if they have talked about those five initiatives and if the managers are talking to their teams about what took place in that two-day session. My belief is that communication to the rest of the company after an X-Ray is critical and I want to ensure that those conversations are occurring.
30 days after the X-Ray, I have a Zoom session with the participants from the X-Ray to just discuss those initiatives, talk about the plans they have put in place, again, what have they each done to engage the rest of their team in helping to address those initiatives.
60 days after the X-Ray, another Zoom session. Again, I’m building a cadence of accountability to help each person stay on top of the initiatives in order to move toward success.
90 days out, my goal is an in-person half day session to examine their progress and if they have completed any of their initiatives, pull out others that came up during the X-Ray session and start working on those.
180 days or at the end of my 6-month program, take the team through the X-Ray process in order to:
Explore areas from the assessments where changes have occurred, either in progress and/or increased communication, awareness and education on what it takes to run a successful business. What has the team learned, how do they now look at different aspects of the company, are they better as a team for working the issues uncovered?
With Covid 19, I conducted my 90-day workshop via Zoom with great success. And then I suggested to both CEOs that we do the Follow Up X-Ray virtually, and they agreed.
This series of emails will explain my process for a Follow Up X-Ray. One of my GCS will be conducting an X-Ray for a client in the coming months and this will be a bit more challenging than my Follow Up and he and I will talk through the process. Again, I’ll share that process with all of you. Many of the following steps will be the same rather it’s for a follow up X-Ray or a full X-Ray. The main difference is that in a Follow Up X-Ray the participants all know what’s expected, they have been working on their initiatives over the past 6-months and they are very familiar with the 7 Stages of Growth and the assessments.
I conducted my Follow-On X-Ray in 6 hours, two-hour segments, over 3 days. The full-blown X-Ray will take a minimum of 10 – 12 hours. Keeping everyone engaged for an extended period of time could well be the biggest challenge.
Step One: Determine days and times. I did mine on a Friday, Monday and Tuesday. Again 2-hour time slots.
Step Two: Provided the same participants with the assessments to complete with a deadline at least 3 weeks ahead of the start of our Virtual X-Ray. You need to mail out the ‘booklets’ with their results in time for the Virtual X-Ray. This is critical. Just as the notebooks are critical for the full X-Ray, having a summary of their reports is a necessary part of this virtual experience.
Step Three: Send an email out to the team with the dates, times, agenda and an idea of how this session will be conducted. The more communication, the better. Tell them about their booklets and ask them to make sure they have it during all of the sessions.
Step Four: Send out the Zoom invites to ensure these sessions show up on their calendars.
Step Five: Create the booklets. I did mine as a Spiral Bound booklet. You can use a ½ notebook also. Here is what I included in my booklet:
Cover – Called this a Follow Up Stages of Growth X-Ray and listed the Dates with their logo
Agenda – what I already sent, but wanted them to have it in the booklet with a Note from Laurie outlining expectations such as: Come prepared to listen and participate; turn off your phone; shut down your email.
A Stages of Growth Matrix – they have one from the original notebook, however I like to keep this in front of my clients.
Comparison Report – this is a summary of participants, and a comparison of the results from the assessments from 2019 to 2020. The Strengths, the Challenges, The Builder/Protector, and the NNRs with their NNR Composite Reports from 2019 and the new ones from 2020. I’ll be sharing this on the GCS Membership Site so you can use mine as an example.
Stage Map – small color version of the Stages of Growth Map, 8 ½ x 11” and I put a DOT showing what their completion % was in 2019 and what their completion % is in 2020. (for instance, my client moved from an overall % completion of 50% in 2019 to 68% completion in 2020).
Step Six: Set up my Padlets. I learned from two of my GCS about Padlet.com and it was a great help in facilitating the entire process online. Padlets are essentially a White Board that allows you to not only organize information but you can also create Padlets where people can add and share their own ideas and you can then share that with the group.
Step Seven: Conduct the Follow Up X-Ray.
Stay Tuned for More Details on how to Deliver an Online Follow Up X-Ray Next Week!
Your success. My passion.
Laurie Taylor, FlashPoint!
