I am happy to announce the kickoff of a series of leadership podcasts that will be recorded and released through the rest of this year. The series host is Dr. Lois Sonstegard, and the podcast episodes will be at her excellent BUILD 2 Morrow site. Below are some key points from the interview and a link to the full podcast.
The Entrepreneurial Bug
I was into my early thirties when I started my first firm and so all through those years, I never had a form of business training or finance training. It was really the school of hard knocks, as they say. In that same spirit, I enlisted many coaches and consultants over the years, being a longtime EO member. EO has access to many great learning resources, including coaches, consultants, Scaling Up coaches, and EOS implementers — so we’re exposed to a lot of that thought leadership.
A few years ago, I was selling my last business. I had moved. I had hired a president to replace my role, and I was chairman of the board and I had to figure out what was next for me. Was it buying our company? Was it starting something new?
I decided that it was time to really start to have some fun and play a consultant/coach role for others, something I had been doing informally. I decided to formalize that, became certified in a few different assessments and strategic planning models, and started my practice called Capricorn leadership.
About Capricorn – How It Started
What do Muhammad Ali, Elvis Presley, and Benjamin Franklin, all have n common? These are Capricorns: iconic leaders and sports and music and sciences. The technology that has inspired me over the years, is supported by what I think of as Capricorn traits. In fact, it turns out that there are many interesting leaders whose success, in part, is supported by the strengths, the traits, that we share.
These include things like ambition and impatience; or what some people might call stubbornness. We want to make things happen. We want to get things done and make our mark make, our legacy.
What Problems Do You Solve for Clients?
Even successful entrepreneurs find themselves at that point where they experience a barrier to growth. They’ve probably experienced success, they certainly have customers and employees, and they have a culture in place. But they are stuck – that’s where Capricorn comes in. We don’t need to fix them or turn them around because they’re already good successful companies. What we introduce and manage is a Tune-Up process.
This is where you hear my Detroit automotive language: we do a diagnostic scan. We assess the leadership team, understand the culture, and consider the company’s strategic approach. We then work collaboratively with the senior team to develop a much different, more dynamic business plan — and we start to operationalize the culture in a different way. Every 90 days we come back together to measure the results and adjust the plan as needed. These teams offer fantastic work for me; I currently work closely with a couple of dozen different companies, helping guide them through their growth.
On the Importance of Culture
30 years ago I was working at Ford Motor Company. Certain things really mattered to my manager and the people around me. You know, things like who you went to lunch with, and what sort of car you drove – things that had a kind of political importance, and were not really about the work that I did.
That kind of focus just didn’t feel right to me as a young person at the time. Plus it was a very big organization, and I felt a little lost. Moving to a smaller firm, perhaps with just a few hundred people, was certainly a better fit for me. Today, that opportunity to have an impact is still important.
That way of thinking about culture that is unhealthy vs healthy from the point of view of any team member. As a person who wants to share my thoughts and be listened to., I’ve come to believe that most people want a kind of open culture that relies on them to be engaged and to be honest.
Activities like running startups or consulting with second-stage companies get me involved in growing them and scaling them on a foundation of a healthy culture.
How Do You Learn From Failure?
We all worry about failure. That’s one of the biggest fears that company owners have. And so I think sometimes bad decisions get made out of fear of failure, and we still end up failing.
I think we learn from failure, so here are two quick stories about experiences that were bad, but ended up teaching me some things.
The first was in real estate. I acquired properties and then had to focus on property management. Well, there are different considerations for managing commercial vs residential property, plus it takes a lot of capital. For myself and for the people I partnered with, we had a lot of our money at risk.
Looking back, I did not spend the time to really understand what made each partner tick, who they were, and how they worked, so we didn’t have very clear roles established.
That’s what made that crumble.
The second example involves a completely different kind of business. We had an idea to invest in a startup software company and what we discovered was we had a great idea that we like. However, we did not spend enough time understanding the market, so we spent a lot of money developing something we were proud of, but we didn’t have a good market for it.
What Do We Learn from Success
Here is something you really need to think about to learn from success – when it is time to say “no.” The ability to know when to say “yes” or “no” depends on some very important things.
You need a plan. You need clarity on what you are good at. You need to know how to deliver well, and that involves building a system that works and monitoring quality all the time.
Without this approach, I think that some entrepreneurs move from one opportunity to the next – creating a lot of interesting and exciting ideas, but not really delivering or executing well on those. This is entrepreneurial drift.
Have a plan and make decisions based on it, not on what feels right or seems good. Learning what contributed to past success stops you from drifting away. It is important to find out, and avoid, the things that you are not as good at, and where you are not likely to do well.
What Kinds of Leaders Do you Coach?
I want to make sure they are a fit for me, which means they’ve got to be committed to learning and to change, as well as committed to a process.
And, frankly, my clients need to be coachable. So, I would ask someone who is looking for a coach to look in the mirror and ask “do I actually want help or not? Will I listen?”
For leaders out there looking for help, it is also important to find someone who has been in your chair. There are a lot of coaches out there who are really good people and good listeners, but they may not have the real-world experience of running a company or serving at a corporate level that you have. Finding the right experience and the right fit, in my experience, is a critical element.
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Listen to the full podcast with Rom and Dr. Sonstegard HERE.
To find out more about working with Capricorn Leadership, contact Rom LaPointe