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Join Lex for a virtual book tour of Organizational Physics – The Science of Growing a Business.

During this 50 minute call, Lex will talk about the key concepts of his pre-release book (get a copy here), how to apply them, and answer your questions.

Space is limited to the first 25 callers. Copy and paste the phone number and code into your calendar.

Join in, ask questions, get inspired. I hope to hear from you on the call. Thanks!

The notion of getting more energy than you give from your key relationships can be a hard one for successful, driven people to embrace. It’s especially hard for entrepreneurs in the heat of battle to even fathom. How will a company that’s cost so much blood, sweat, tears, and capital ever pay back more than its cost? But making this shift from energy-costing to energy-adding is not only the key to greater happiness, it’s also the key to successfully scaling a business. Let me share a story to explain why.

A few weeks ago, I had lunch with a thirty-something entrepreneur and CEO. He runs a medical device company with revenues of about $10M. As we got talking, I learned a little about his history. He had started the business six years prior and fought through incredible challenges and turmoil surrounding his team, the market, and the investors. Like many entrepreneurs, he is in significant debt and double mortgaged on his home because every spare penny goes to the business.

Like every good entrepreneur and CEO, he was incredibly determined and willing to fight it out to make things work. But I could also tell that he was feeling worn down, beaten up, and resentful from the constant grind. His plan was to raise some more capital, get the company to profitability, and sell it off to a strategic acquirer. Then he could “take some time off, rebuild my marriage, and figure out what I want to do next,” he said.

Even though I knew he didn’t have the answer yet, I asked him, “Imagine you do sell the company. What do you think you’ll do next?” “I know I should know this,” he replied, “but I haven’t got a clue. Something where I can start fresh and this time . . . do things the right way.” “OK,” I said, “I get that. But let me ask you another question. If you were able to run your current company, extract yourself from the things that cost you energy, and spend 80 percent of the time doing things that you love to do and are good at, would you still sell the business?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “On the one hand, I’d really enjoy doing that kind of strategic business development. I know that I’m at a point where I need to be working on the business rather than in it, but I just haven’t been able to make the leap. On the other hand, my wife hates how much I work. She’s terrified of how much equity we have tied up in the business. She wants less risk, not more. The current board is a pain in the ass to manage. It’s like herding cats […]

When I was growing up, my grandfather used to tell me: “The key to communicating a new idea is to kiss your audience. Do you know what kiss means?” “Ah, no Gramps, I don’t think so and I’m sure you’re going to tell me anyway, so what does it mean?” “It means ‘Keep It Simple Stupid.'”

Grandpa was right but he didn’t go far enough. If I had to respond to him today, I would tell him the secret is “MAPS: Make a Picture Stupid” instead. This is because I’ve realized that, when trying to communicate and get buy-in for a new idea, it’s not enough to keep things simple. You can actually accomplish much more – and more quickly – by using concept maps, or visual representations of your idea. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you can’t describe your new idea in one elegant picture, you haven’t thought it through well enough. You need to go back – literally – to the “drawing board.”

We live in a world of extraordinary complexity and noise – and the things that capture our attention tend to be the most iconic. In other words, it’s the memorable visual representations that stick with us the most. The data also shows that most of us are visual learners and thinkers. By translating complex concepts into simpler images and mind maps, we allow others to better grasp and conceptualize – as well as remember – them. Using images also allow us to bridge any gaps in background, context, vision, and values between us and those around us. It’s not surprising that the proverbial picture is thought to be worth a thousand words.

In the workplace, we’ve all suffered through ineffectively lengthy meetings, the ramblings of long-winded colleagues, and the obscurity of convoluted presentations. I know I’ve been in meetings where one string of “blah blah blahs” followed the next, leading to no real clarity. Often what makes these meetings so bad is that people are not operating with a shared concept, terms, and context. A good picture can establish all three of those things very quickly.

We know this intuitively. That’s why we have white boards in our meeting rooms. Duh! But the point I want to make is that the white board (or picture-making capability) isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity. Use it and start there. Begin with the picture. Then have the discussion. For example, if you’re out raising capital, make the first slide in your deck a picture of your business model. If you’re trying to win a new account, lead with a picture of your understanding of the client’s problem and how you can fix it. If you’re working to secure votes for political change, start with […]

If you’re like me, the journey to finding alignment between expressing a meaningful life purpose and growing a business has been arduous. On the one hand, you crave that deeper sense of meaning and contribution that comes from living your life on purpose. On the other, you need to make a living, support your family, and pay the mortgage – not to mention your desire for financial and time freedom. Too often these things seem diametrically opposed.

So how do you do it? How do you live your life guided by a deep sense of purpose and, at the same time, have a meaningful and prosperous career? Although it took me years to find the answer, I ultimately realized how anyone can find that alignment. In this article, I’m going to show you how. But first, I need to debunk an all too common myth about money.

Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow? Not Even Close

“If you do what you love, then the money will follow.” I know you’ve heard that one before. Is it true? Nope. I admit that it sounds great. I know it sells a lot of books and tapes. But you’re doing yourself a huge disservice if you think that doing what you love will bring in the dough.

So what is the secret to financial prosperity? The answer lies in how you answer three simple questions:

1. Do you operate in a large and growing market opportunity?
2. Does this market perceive that you have unique capabilities that it desperately needs?
3. Do you meet those needs efficiently and in a repeatable manner?

Financial prosperity is pretty simple. If you can answer “yes” to all three questions above, then your business is financially successful. If not, then your business is struggling financially, and it will continue to struggle, until you can.

Why do your answers to these three questions determine your financial prosperity? As I share in lifecycle strategy, these are related because the goal of any strategy is to efficiently acquire new energy (e.g. money, resources, clout) from the surrounding environment, now and in the future.

To get new energy, an organization must develop and integrate its capabilities with opportunities in the marketplace. If you’ve completed the business purpose exercise earlier in this series, then you already have you a good sense of what your unique capabilities are. In addition, the business execution guide will show you how to operate efficiently and adapt to market changes. What remains is the market opportunity itself and it’s a critical piece in creating purpose, meaning, and money in your life and work. Let’s see how it all comes together.

The Sweet Spot

The following is an excerpt from Organizational Physics – The Science of Growing a Business.

If you’re a growth-oriented CEO, entrepreneur, or department manager, then you’re naturally under pressure to lead your business to greater levels of performance. You also need to do this in a fast-moving, turbulent, evolving marketplace. A lot is riding on your judgment and leadership and there’s little room for error. There’s time pressure, money pressure, market pressure—not to mention work/life balance pressure—that can all add to the difficulty of achieving success.

Complicating matters is that there are never enough time and energy available to accomplish everything that needs to get done. Using limited resources, you must drive success, build powerhouse teams, set the right priorities, and execute fast. And because the right plan is only as good as your team’s commitment to implementing it, you have to ensure constant buy-in and continually lower any friction that gets in the way.

That’s a tall order. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit there are countless times when you’re feeling stressed, doubtful, unclear, or simply stuck. Sometimes your job can feel so thrilling, you can’t imagine doing anything else. Other times it feels so frustrating that you want to quit, move to Tahiti, and take up painting. All in all, you’ve chosen a career path filled with adventure, danger, excitement, and the opportunity to manage one mini-crisis after another.

As a wise leader, you have learned to trust in your own experience. But you also keep an eye and ear open for valuable insights and perspectives. In this regard, there are countless management theories and organizational practices that you can choose from. There are top-down, bottom-up, agile-iterative, data-driven, design-first, customer-oriented, outcome-based, decentralized, centralized, democratic, autocratic, process-driven, lifecycle-stages, and X-Y-Z management theories. If you ask a dozen entrepreneurs, CEOs, and management experts which is the best model, you’ll hear as many different answers.

When you’re faced with a myriad of challenges, opportunities, constraints, and choices, how can you decisively lead your organization where you want it to go? When can you trust your past experience and when does it cast blinders on your ability to see clearly? What’s the right approach for your particular situation? How do you maximize your organization’s performance and your personal satisfaction, now and in the future?

The answer, as with all things, is to first understand what’s really going on. For example, a good doctor understands how the body really functions. Rather than focusing on symptoms, s/he will work to understand the systemic causes of a disease. Similarly, if you understand how your business and team really work beneath the surface, you can get at the underlying causes of what’s making them fail or succeed.

The purpose of Organizational Physics is to do just that—to explain […]

In the past month, I’ve had three separate founder and CEOs who are in similar positions contact me. Each of their businesses is doing $3-5M in revenue and they’re expecting to double or triple sales this year. Over the past six months, two of the companies made a key hire in the VP of sales role that they initially thought was great but turned out otherwise. The common refrain is: “We thought we had the right guy – and he is a great guy – but he just wasn’t able to execute in the way we needed him to.” Both are now in the middle of trying to re-hire for a VP of Sales role and don’t want to make the same mistake twice. The third company hasn’t hired a VP of Sales yet but wants to make sure they do it right the first time. There must be something in the water.

There’s obviously a great cost in time, capital, and energy spent in making a key hire. Making a bad hiring mistake once is costly. Making it more than once can be catastrophic.

There is a very simple step to take before embarking on a new hire process. This step isn’t followed by most traditional recruiting firms. It will help your company make great hires — hires that stick and perform well over time. It applies not only to VPs of Sales but any other role, from CEO to customer service rep. Here’s the approach and its advantages.

Step #1: Know the Forces at Play

To know the PSIU forces at play means this: Before you do anything, first break down the new hire need into its most basic PSIU forces. When you can start with the basics, it’s much easier to get things right.

NOTE: Within Organizational Physics, organizational functions and individual management styles are broken down into their PSIU forces. If you’re not familiar with the PSIU forces yet, do yourself a favor and read this management guide. Once you’ve read the guide, continue with this article.

Let me show you how this is done by breaking down the VP of Sales role into its PSIU forces. First, every sales role requires the Producing (P) force to produce results. It is this force that drives making the calls, setting the meetings, doing the work, and winning the sale. That’s easy. But what other forces does the VP of Sales really need? It depends. What does the organization really need?

• Does it need a Stabilizing (S) force to create highly efficient processes and systems to manage a sales team?
• Does it need a high Innovating (I) force to do early-stage business development and ideation?
• Does it need a high Unifying (U) force to connect well with customers and partners and […]