Our Small Business CEO Leadership Principles Updated for 2022 (and Notes from Kim Scott’s Radical Candor)

Posted by Patrick Briggson October 26, 2022Leave a comment

Our Small Business CEO Leadership Principles Updated for 2022 (and Notes from Kim Scott’s Radical Candor)

If you’ve read our small business CEO Leadership Principles 2020 Edition (we didn’t author a 2021 edition, it was a busy year), you know the core values that guide how we work and lead small business teams. While these values are important to us, we subscribe to strong opinions weakly held from Paul Saffo and thus like to revisit our leadership principles for possible revisions. Recently, reading two books has pushed us to add a new principle: Caring deeply and challenging directly.

How did we get from three principles to four? Two books read back-to-back that were more connected than they might seem on the surface. Connect by David Bradford and Carole Robin (we wrote about building connections in small businesses) and Radical Candor by Kim Scott (more on her book below) showed us that leadership requires personal connections to build trust and direct feedback to drive results. Leadership is done through the relationships that the leader builds with each direct report. Those direct reports in turn model the leader’s style and build relationships with their direct reports. This pyramid of connection creates the pathways to getting things done in an organization at scale (beyond 5-6 direct reports it becomes too hard for a leader to interact with everyone in an organization, especially as they grow). Our new leadership value, “Caring Deeply and Challenging Directly” is a blend of the concepts from Kim Scott and David Bradford/Carole Robin that both speak to building strong relationships one-to-one (caring deeply) to promote trust (and psychological safety) and using that trust to drive improvement in outcomes through changes in processes/systems (challenging directly). While it is tempting to try and build relationships one-to-many, the reading of these books shows us that 1) relationships matter, 2) relationships/trust drives connection and results, and 3) a one-to-one culture is extremely difficult to duplicate, thus protecting the long-term success of an organization that takes the time to get it right. For us, that is worthy of being our fourth leadership principle.

Small Business CEO Principle One: Lead from Behind

The CEO’s job is building a sustainable and defensible business. To build a sustainable and defensible business, scaling is often necessary. To scale, a CEO’s must push his/her team to the front and empower them to be successful (this gives everyone leverage on his/her time and thus enables scale). Support can be listening, empathizing, training, compensation/incentives, more team members, or just empowering the team member as the decision-maker. The true power of the CEO is raising up others around the team to carry the mission forward.

Small Business CEO Principle Two: Measure for Alignment and Growth

What gets measured gets done. Measuring doesn’t just “track” what’s going on with a project, it forces us to think at a more granular level and understand the inputs that drive results. This is why measurement is so important. It’s not for understanding what happened last week or last month relative to the current time period, that’s important too, instead it is understanding how to execute and optimize that execution to materially change outcomes. We humans come to work in small businesses packed with biases (both good and bad). Measuring the inputs/outputs helps to mitigate some of those biases by making it about the results and improving those results (alignment of the team and growth of the outcome).

Small Business CEO Principle Three: Create a Culture of Done

Getting things done matters. Without execution, even the best business strategy in the world is worthless. Said differently, execution eats strategy for breakfast. We believe that a CEO of a small business has to get things done to be the example of what done looks like in his/her small business. This helps the team understand the speed and quality of done and also gives them an example of the CEO making mistakes (mistakes always happen) and the psychological safety of making mistakes (that are corrected).

Small Business CEO Principle Four: Care Deeply, Challenge Directly

Our three above principles lightly touch of the concepts of our new CEO Principle Number Four (e.g., you can’t lead from behind without listening and empathizing with your employee’s current position/needs), but caring deeply and challenging directly are so important in building successful small business work relationships, that we felt it must be explicitly stated. At the end of the day, we are all put on this planet to be part of relationships. We believe a true leader and CEO is actively building and growing those relationships. There is no better way to do that than to care deeply and challenge directly.

Post-Script: Additional Insights from Radical Candor

Kim Scott’s Radical Candor is full of insights and advice from her years leading the biggest companies in technology. It is impossible to build a list of all of her insights, but we captured a few that we are going to strive to implement into our leadership practice this year. We suggest you read the book if any of these insights spark your curiosity for more.

Leaders need feedback to survive. Don’t let your direct reports off the “feedback hook.” Kim makes the point that leaders need feedback just as much as their direct reports may need feedback. The challenge is that as a leader moves up the ranks it is harder to get honest feedback. In those moments, a leader must continue to press his/her direct reports to get that feedback that is critical to the growth of the leader and improvement of the organization. Kim’s favorite feedback question to direct reports: “Is there anything I could do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me?”
Guidance and feedback must be as close to the moment as possible to improve performance. The closer your feedback is to the moment, the more meaningful the insight will be to your direct report (added bonus of you will not forgot to give the feedback if you do it immediately). When giving feedback, describe three things: 1) The situation you saw, 2) the behavior (always describe the behavior, not the person!), and 3) the impact you observed.
Find help to coach and support your team. Coaching and supporting your team shouldn’t be you coaching the team directly. You will become the bottleneck! Instead, find external resources and support systems to offer the same insight/support, without waiting for you to deliver it.
Align the role of your direct reports with their values. Employees that feel a connection to their career goals and values will be more insightful and impactful than those that are not connected to the work on a deeper level. Start having career conversations and value alignment with the three step career goals conversation: 1) Life story conversation, 2) Dreams conversation, and 3) 18-month plan conversation.

As always, if you’re looking for a team that has core values aligned with your own, contact us at Endurance Eagle about selling your small business now.

Building and Maintaining Lasting Relationships – Our Small Business Relationships Cheat Sheet from Connect

Posted by Patrick Briggson July 14, 2021Leave a comment

Building and Maintaining Lasting Relationships – Our Small Business Relationships Cheat Sheet from Connect

While we haven’t attended Stanford, we consider ourselves lucky to have recently attended a Zoom talk by founder of the popular “Touchy Feely” class, David Bradford, and read the class book, authored by David and Carole Robin, Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues. The book shows us how to cultivate exceptional relationships for richer and more meaningful life both inside and outside the office and is brimming with actionable tools – too many to remember unless put into practice. To help, we created a cheat sheet on small business relationship building based on the key learnings of the book. Below we attempt to fit their tools into three categories: Booting/running relationships, relationship glitches, and relationship crashes. Some might scoff at a relationship metaphor using hardware and software terminology but we’d argue that it is important to have rigid templates for interactions as a fallback until personal experience can better guide.

Small Business Relationship Building Cheat Sheet from Connect

How to Build Small Business Relationships (from Connect)

Booting/Running Relationships

Starting a new relationship or building an existing one towards exceptional has a few key steps that should be applied. These steps are at the bottom of our hierarchy because they are the foundation for all exceptional relationships.

Be Curious, Listen Fully: Sometimes called active listening, be curious about the other person’s experiences. Unpack how it made them feel, ask open questions (yes/no questions are a no no), use empathy to reflect on how that might have made you feel/act and share that reflection. Make the conversation about their experiences, not just waiting for your moment to talk.
15% Disclosure in All Interactions: When it is your time to share (it will come), consider sharing more than the surface-level, go deeper. Share your fears, your desires, your weaknesses. David had a phrase he used: “Dropping a little deeper.” Share just 15% more of yourself in each interaction to build a stronger bond. That might be too little for you, but it certainly isn’t too much. Strive to share beyond your comfort zone.
Respond on an Emotional Level: We’re emotional animals and it’s silly to deny that. Instead, embrace your feelings and empathy for the other person to increase your connectedness. If appropriate, use your internal feelings for what he/she is saying to show your empathy. David and Carole suggest statements like, “I would certainly be annoyed if that happened to me,” or “That sounds really upsetting,” because they reflect how those might make you feel and don’t label the other person (you’re likely to get the label wrong If you say something like, “you sound upset.”)
Model Behavior for Others: This one is specific to leadership. Leaders in groups and organizations legitimize behavior by modeling for others to see. When you, as the leader of a small business, show the team that actively listening, being vulnerable, and disclosing is important you make it safe for others to do the same.

Relationship Glitches

The book talks about relationship imbalances and conflicts and gives us tools for both. What’s the difference? Well, we’re not sure. We might have missed it, but it might also be that there are shades of grey between when a relationship is in imbalance or conflict. It’s like Justice Stewart’s comment on obscenity: “you’ll know it when you see it.” To that end, we think of imbalance like “glitches,” disruptions that should be addressed but don’t require an overhaul. In those instances, use these tools:

Seek Benefit: This might sound like the old, “win win” strategy. But the key here is to explore a solution together. Ask open ended questions like, “how did we end up here?” Seek to unpack a solution that works for the other person too and then check-in to make sure it works for them with active listening.
Realtime, Behavior Specific Feedback: Feedback is a potent tool for correcting behavior, but only when it is timely and specific. Find the next possible moment of one-on-one interaction and share feedback on just that interaction so that the other person has an immediate opportunity to improve. Feedback is hard/dangerous (it can be taken poorly) so give feedback only on a behavior and not outcomes. Said differently, stay in your reality about the event (repeated below because this is so important) – only give feedback on how the event made you feel and not on how others were potentially impacted by event. The other person will have a hard time arguing how you felt or you were impacted, so it’s more likely he/she will accept/listen to the feedback then.

Relationship Crashes

At the risk further alienating readers by mixing hardware and software metaphors, we feel that a crash is more serious than a glitch. A crash means the program/relationship stops and must be fixed. All exceptional relationships have conflict. Will you let it destroy the relationship or seek resolution to make it stronger?

Stay in Your Reality: It’s important to repeat this because it’s hard to remember and critical to success. You cannot fully understand another’s experiences, emotions, thoughts. Trying to understand them is great for building trust, but labeling it destroys trust. Instead of labeling him/her, focus on how you feel, how you experienced the moment to give that other person insight on you. David and Carole call this, “Staying on your side of the net” which is a good visual to keep in mind.
Apply a Problem Solving Framework/Rules: Once conflict has started, it’s important to have a system of steps to address it. David and Carole have a great one (summarized below) but it’s not the only one. What’s important here is to pause, reflect, and actively decide to follow a system to reduce error. Why? Most of us are not conflict resolution experts and don’t have that many “at bats” with conflict situations. A template allows us to apply the learnings from experts and avoid mistakes that could make the conflict worse. Here’s David and Carole’s template:
- Stage 1: Get the other person to take the feedback seriously
- Stage 2: Each person shares all the issues for his/herself
- Stage 3: Find a mutually satisfying resolution for all parties
- Stage 4: Determine if relationship needs repair work

Using these tools is a great step in getting to exceptional relationships, but it won’t always be possible to go deeper with everyone. That said, the ones that do will have more value for your small business. We’re not doing this fantastic book justice, so go read the book. Additionally, the book explores a concept called T Groups by Kurt Lewin, which is worth further exploration. We’re just getting into the concept and might have more to say on that in another post.

As always, if you’re looking for a team that’s willing to drop a little deeper and build a lasting relationship with you and your small business, contact us at Endurance Eagle about selling your small business now.

New York State Business Brokers List for Selling New York Small Businesses

Posted by Patrick Briggson April 6, 2021Leave a comment

New York State Business Brokers List for Selling New York Small Businesses

We firmly believe selling a small business must involve a business broker. As we’ve said in older posts (Pennsylvania business broker list), business brokers are the intermediary that prepare both the buyer and seller for a successful transaction. Business brokers are incentivized by the transaction and future transactions, so they’re uniquely aligned to, 1) sell your business to the best possible party and price, and 2) ensure your goals are reasonably met so that you will refer future business (business listings often come from referrals, maintaining a sterling reputation is very important to business brokers). If you’re planning to sell a New York State small business, then start with our list of New York State business brokers list to find the broker that’s right for your business sale. When you start to meet brokers, we suggest you consider these interview questions in choosing the right broker.

Timing and Schedule? There are three big timing buckets in a business sale: The selling process, the diligence process, and the closing process. Get a sense from the broker about how long the transaction will take at each stage. Ask the broker what time commitments he or she will give your business and what time commitments you need to give to the broker. If the broker is not willing to get on the phone with you or provide concrete time commitments to your business upfront it might indicate that the broker will not be focused on transacting your business. Dig deeper by asking, “why” to understand the issues and be willing to move on if it does not align with your timing requirements.
What’s Out-of-Bounds and In-Bounds? Some brokers will aggressively market a business with business listing websites, e-mailing campaigns, etc. Others will reach out to curated set of buyers with a bespoke marketing campaign. It’s important for you to understand and accept the way the broker will sell your business before agreeing to sell your business with a broker. Make sure you discuss with your broker what tactics/strategies they’re going to use to sell your business and the visibility this will create for your business. If your business sale is confidential, then this is extremely important to understand before signing with a broker.
Successful Deal and Broken Deal References? Always ask for reference checks as a follow-up for brokers that you think might fit your need. Try to speak to a business owner that successfully transacted with the broker (either the previous owner or the new owner) and those that did not successfully transact with the broker. It will be harder to get “broken deal” references, but be persistent. Every broker has a broken deal and there’s a lot to learn from the failures.
Industry Experience? See if the business broker has experience transacting with other businesses in your industry (or adjacent industries). This is not critical to successfully selling your business, but it will help you understand if you think the broker can sell your type of business. Again, you may want to ask to speak to references from successfully closed transactions and transactions that didn’t close with a focus on your industry.
Professionals Agree? Check with your lawyer (and your lawyer’s lawyer friends) and accountant (and your accountant’s accountant friends) to find out what they know about the business broker. Have they worked with that business broker in the past? Do they know anyone that’s worked with the broker? What questions do they want to ask the broker? Your lawyer and accountant will be spending time with the broker, so they need to be comfortable with the broker as well.
Valuation Expectations? It is important that you agree with the broker on the valuation expectations of your business before signing an exclusivity agreement. Make sure the broker is honest with you about the value of your business so that sticker shock doesn’t factor in later in the sale process when it can damage a potential deal. You should expect the broker to push back on your initial valuation, use that as the starting point of a valuation conversation.

These questions put you on the right path to finding a good New York business broker (or business broker in any other state), but remember that selling your business is a two-way street. Just as you would expect the broker to be prepared and enthusiastic about your small business sale, you should be too. This means dedicating time to preparing the necessary financial statements and contracts for the broker to review and time to speak with potential buyers, weekly. Additionally, the more transparent you are with what your selling goals (e.g., highest valuation, fastest close, preserved legacy, employee retention, etc.) the more the broker can filter upfront to make sure he or she presents the buyer that fits your desired outcome. Transparency between you and the business broker will only make the process smoother.

A note on our List of New York State Business Brokers

Selling your New York business with a New York business broker puts you and your business on a surer path to successfully closing the transaction. Our New York business brokers list has 247 different business brokers and can help you get started in your process to sell your business. This list features all the brokers we’ve found that sell businesses in New York State and is not filtered for asset class (e.g., real estate business brokers vs. industrial business brokers), size of the business broker’s firm, quality of the business broker’s firm, or even if the business broker is actively seeking new listings. If you have questions about how to approach brokers, what to look for in a New York business broker, or want to learn about selling your New York Small Business to Endurance Eagle, contact us and we’d be more than happy to help.

Download our list of NY Business Brokers