From Good to Great: Focus on People to Jump-start Your Practice

There are noticeable differences between “good” managed-group practices and “great” managed-group practices. The great groups have what the good groups have, but they also embody an authentic vision, a true purpose, solid core values, and untainted leadership.

Good groups are completely results-driven. This is reflected in who they hire, how they onboard, what they talk about, what they focus on, and what they reward. All you need for proof of this is to listen to what they talk about: “What’s our goal? What’s our strategy and tactics to achieve the goal?”

Spreadsheets, milestones, who is responsible for what, how they shape their accountabilities, and how they determine their agenda for meetings: it’s almost always about the numbers and how to get there.

Many renowned authors, such as Collins, Porras, Lencioni, Maxwell, and Drucker, do not see results as the sole seat of power. Operating purely on the basis of results can leave a company vulnerable. When all the intention and attention is focused on numbers, and not on the people that produce the numbers, that is where the vulnerability lives.

That is where the great group practices differ from good group practices: great groups also focus on their people. Great group practices understand that empowering people is necessary to best deliver on strategies, tactics, action plans, and metrics.

Empower to Achieve

Empowerment is the process of helping people become stronger and more confident. Empowerment is assisting people to become sturdier and more self-assured. Empowerment is vastly potentiated by self-discovery, self-examination, and self-reflection as part of the culture, because what stops people from being more powerful is usually self-imposed limitations. Removing those limitations is what great managed-group practices do for their people.

Rather than being totally results-driven, the company becomes, at least in part, people-driven - with the emphasis not only on how the people are performing at work, but how they are actively engaged in empowering their colleagues.

Good groups are totally numbers-driven. Great groups know that it’s people who drive the numbers - so they make that part of their day-to-day work.

Another aspect of great groups is they honor abstractions. Results are concrete, measurable, tangible. Abstractions are not. Vision, mission, purpose, core values, and culture are all abstractions. Results-oriented groups often just pay lip service to abstractions, whereas great groups fully and earnestly engage in these abstractions. They have discovered that abstractions powerfully influence people and their behaviors.

Abstractions also are what great leadership provides: they are very attractive, appealing to people who are vision-driven with individual intentions for personal and professional growth.

For me, these are the best hires. People can grow and develop far faster and better in an enterprise that is committed to abstractions like vision, values, and culture than in one that is singularly focused on results.

The 80/20 Rule

I fully appreciate the 80/20 rule. I know that 80 percent needs to be about producing the results - that’s what keeps you in business. That’s what you get paid for. But when there is no 20 percent, when its 100 percent about results, there are tremendous costs. Underperformance, politics, and rapid turnover are just a few. When the 20 percent is about empowerment anchored to an authentic vision, mission, purpose and core values, that 80 percent is much more easily delivered.

Our recommendation: If you are 100 percent results, goals and numbers-driven, carve out 20 percent for empowerment and abstraction work. You will find a marked difference in your people and their performance.

When you speak with Rick Workman, Stephen Thorne, or Steve Bilt, yes, they are about the numbers, but they are also wholeheartedly about empowerment, vision, purpose, mission.

And it’s easy to see that when that 20 percent is there, you’re on the right track toward a “great” versus “good” managed-group practice.

- Marc