The 5 Most Common Questions Asked About Scaling Up

Scal­ing Up is a frame­work ini­tial­ly found in a book called Rock­e­feller Habits. This sim­ple, one-page strate­gic plan helps to bet­ter cap­ture and exe­cute a company’s long-term vision and strat­e­gy. In addi­tion, there are a bunch of oth­er tools to address and man­age the chal­lenges of growth.

As a key dri­ver of the Scal­ing Up 2.0 book, I inter­viewed 50 CEOs, around the world who had used the Rock­e­feller Habits method­ol­o­gy to suc­cess­ful­ly scale their orga­ni­za­tions. The goal was to cap­ture their learn­ings, insights and advice to help oth­er CEOs on their growth jour­ney. The core ben­e­fit they talked about was the tool set. First­ly, how it increased their abil­i­ty to grow. Sec­ond­ly, how it helped them to man­age the chaos of growth and how it made sure their team was focused on the things that mat­ter most. And third­ly, how the sys­tems and struc­tures helped them to sus­tain that growth.

What You Need to Know up Scal­ing Up

Here are the most com­mon ques­tions we are asked, by CEOs and exec­u­tive teams, about the sim­ple yet pow­er­ful Scal­ing Up framework:

1. How long does it take to com­plete the one-page strate­gic plan?

The answer to all these ques­tions begins with ​“it depends”.

Whether start­ing from scratch or con­vert­ing an exist­ing plan­ning frame­work, we can cre­ate a rough draft of a one-page strate­gic plan – a C+ in terms of com­ple­tion, qual­i­ty and a sol­id start­ing point to build on – in two days of a strate­gic plan­ning session.

Then, through con­tin­u­al refine­ments in six or sev­en quar­ter­ly strate­gic plan­ning meet­ings, over 18 to 24 months, you’ll have an A‑grade plan, which is about as good as it needs to be.

Note: Build­ing off an exist­ing strate­gic plan, if the frame­work is com­plex and con­vo­lut­ed, often takes more time to sim­pli­fy, fix or re-cal­i­brate things that are off track, than it does start­ing from scratch.

2. How often do you update the one-page plan?

This is an iter­a­tive process to con­stant­ly tweak and refine until you get to an A‑grade plan. What dri­ves results is qual­i­ty of exe­cu­tion, and that’s why it’s impor­tant to spend two days every quar­ter (or a min­i­mum of one day for small­er com­pa­nies) to review progress over the last 90 days (finan­cials KPIs, rocks or goals and peo­ple), dis­cuss how to exe­cute bet­ter next quar­ter, then reset com­mit­ments for the next quar­ter. By doing this every 90 days, you make much more progress because there are four fin­ish lines per year instead of one annually.

3. How would you get your team to buy into Scal­ing Up methods?

Again, it depends. If you’re a leader who gets excit­ed every time you read a new book, your team may see it as the flavour of the month. They’ll be more recep­tive if they feel there’s a need to do some­thing dif­fer­ent to make the busi­ness func­tion better.

Gen­er­al­ly, we start with a con­ver­sa­tion – best with an expe­ri­enced advi­sor – to share the frame­work and its effec­tive­ness so they can see the val­ue for them­selves. You can ask them to read the first cou­ple sec­tions of the book (not the whole book, at first) and some­times it’s a mat­ter of work­ing with the tools, guid­ed by a facil­i­ta­tor, in your annu­al plan­ning meeting.

4. Who on my team should be involved in strate­gic plan­ning meetings?

It depends on your intent.

• If it’s pure­ly strate­gic, include the CEO’s direct reports (5 to 7 people).
• If you need more focus on the align­ment of the teams who do exe­cu­tion, in addi­tion to the CEO’s reports, add a hand­ful of key lead­ers who report to the exec­u­tive team (12 to 18 peo­ple in total).

5. What’s the #1 thing that blocks com­pa­nies from Scal­ing Up?

Usu­al­ly, two things:

Strat­e­gy: Lack of align­ment and clar­i­ty on the KPIs (oper­a­tional health) and quar­ter­ly goals (to exe­cute the strat­e­gy) at the com­pa­ny, exec­u­tive team and their direct reports. With­out these, you can­not eas­i­ly cre­ate account­abil­i­ty in the orga­ni­za­tion. And with­out clar­i­ty on account­abil­i­ty, you don’t have a mech­a­nism or an envi­ron­ment that nat­u­ral­ly cre­ates ten­sion, learn­ing and auto­mat­ic, improved performance.

Peo­ple: Lack of high­ly capa­ble peo­ple in key roles. No mat­ter how clear the strat­e­gy, exe­cu­tion, and account­abil­i­ty, if peo­ple can’t do their job well noth­ing is going to change. This is why most of the com­pa­nies we work with have a strong dri­ve towards fill­ing 90% of their key seats with A Players.

6. Do I need a coach or some­one to help me?

The truth is you can do any­thing your­self, includ­ing build­ing or ren­o­vat­ing your house. How­ev­er, it’s faster and eas­i­er to get an expe­ri­enced guide. They have like­ly already done what­ev­er you’re try­ing to do 100 times before.

We’ve noticed that many com­pa­nies fail to scale because they don’t get the right out­side exper­tise. They’re miss­ing that per­son to help them to make smarter deci­sions or quick­ly imple­ment sim­ple sys­tems. Keep­ing every­thing very sim­ple and easy to under­stand and man­age is crit­i­cal to suc­cess. Inex­pe­ri­enced peo­ple often over-com­pli­cate things.

Per­son­al­ly, I would take a low­er-qual­i­ty strat­e­gy that is sim­ple and clear to exe­cute over a com­pli­cat­ed strat­e­gy. An expert can help you move quick­ly and ensure your strat­e­gy and exe­cu­tion plans are sim­ple. Con­se­quent­ly, the ROI you get usu­al­ly pays for itself.

7. Which of the 10 Rock­e­feller Habits do you think is most important?

It depends, com­pa­ny to com­pa­ny. Gen­er­al­ly it’s either an aligned exec­u­tive team, or clar­i­ty on most of the top five com­pa­ny goals through­out the company.

The Chal­lenge

• What do you need to do to bring your strate­gic plan­ning and execution/​accountability process to life? What can you do to make it more effective?

For more, lis­ten to Episode 100 of The Growth Whis­per­ers.

Learn about:

• Keep­ing your strat­e­gy simple
• Scal­a­bil­i­ty & ele­gant simplicity
• How to get the most from your strate­gic plan­ning process
• Find­ing a great exec­u­tive coach

If you need help to Scale Up or to under­stand more about what it can do for you, please get in touch. We have a team of expert advi­sors who do this every day.

Lawrence & Co’s work focus­es on sus­tain­able and enhanced growth for you and your busi­ness. Our diverse and expe­ri­enced group of advi­sors can help your lead­ers and exec­u­tive teams stay com­pet­i­tive through the use of var­i­ous learn­ing tools includ­ing work­shops, webi­na­rs, exec­u­tive retreats, or one-to-one coaching.

We help high-achiev­ing lead­ers to have it all – a great busi­ness and a reward­ing life. Con­tact us for sim­ple and impact­ful advice. No BS. No fluff.