In your body, your brain is the most important organ for a meaningful life. It houses your Aptitude, Attitude, and Altitude. Sure you can have a great body with other healthy organs functioning well, but if your head isn’t straight or your brain is not functioning properly, life is a challenge and you’re not living out your maximum potential.
Same goes for your business body. The cumulative brains of your organization represent the brain of your business body. If it doesn’t have the right Aptitude, Attitude and Altitude that your business needs, then your business life is a challenge, not producing to its maximum potential . . . it’s lifeless and not creating the impact it can.
This blog focuses on Business System Truth #2 that states, of the 3 Core Components of a business system (People, Process & Infrastructure), it starts with People.
Lessons from The Profit
In the TV series, The Profit, Marcus Lemonis goes into businesses to help owners get more out of their business. He focuses on the 3 P’s (People, Process, Product). It’s different from my model since his 3rd component is Product, but that’s another future blog post! However, we do agree that the most important in this trinity is People. His show always starts with the business owner’s strengths and shortfalls. He also evaluates the strength of the leadership team beyond the owner. Most of the time, when he makes an offer to help by infusing money into the business for part ownership, one of his requirements is to provide ownership to a key leader on the team. This usually raises the eyebrows of the current owner because Marcus is placing a lot of value in the non-owner that’s actually leading the organization, instead of the owner.
A business is a lot more valuable with strong People (leadership and strong employees) to carry out the vision of the company. You can have a great product, but if you don’t have the right People to stay competitive and execute plans, then your product doesn’t matter. You can also have good Processes and a strong Infrastructure, but if your People don’t follow the Processes and leverage the Infrastructure, then you will still fail. Back to Lemonis, notice in his show that he changes the Infrastructure of the businesses in order to streamline Processes. But it’s always secondary to People. If he can’t work with the People in the business, he walks away . . . sometimes even if means losing his investment.
Diagnose Your People – You First!
When your business system is broken and you don’t know where to start for diagnosis, before calling Lemonis, first look at the People component of your business. Is it an Aptitude issue? Do your employees have the right skills, talent and experience level to do the job? If not, have you provided the proper training to develop the right Aptitude? Or is it an Attitude issue? Do your employees possess the right motives and values that’s consistent with your company? Have you defined your core values and expectations so they know what’s expected? Or is it an Altitude issue? Do your employees have the capacity to connect to the grander purpose that your business serves? Has that purpose been defined?
The People diagnosis starts first with you as the owner, then to your leadership team, then to the rest of your team members. When things are not well with our own personal lives and our family lives, we must first look at ourselves. Are we the People issue? Are we leading and behaving in the way that our family needs us to? We are parents and stewards of our businesses. Without proper leadership and strong People, businesses fail.
Right People Right Seats
Imagine your business thriving with the Right People in the Right Seats across the organization, top to bottom. Everybody has the right Aptitude, Attitude, and Altitude. How would your business operate? Picture less drama, everyone is accountable, things are getting executed with discipline, and nobody has hidden agendas so everyone works as a team for the greater good of the company.
Lemonis does follow-up shows to check in on the businesses he’s helped. Sometimes things are better, sometimes not. It always depends on the development of the People.
Is it time to diagnosis your People? When looking at your Business System consisting of People, Process and Infrastructure, the most important is People. When you fix the People issues, everything else falls into place. Do a diagnosis and start with YOU!
Take the Organizational Checkup to gauge the health of your company! For more information on creating a healthy business lifestyle, read about the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS).
My next blog will go into a deeper dive about the second component of People, Process and Infrastructure – Process. Even good people fail with bad processes!
To Your Business Health!