Ep 179: Les McKeown on Making Success “Predictable” (Pt. 2)

SUMMARY 

In this second part of a two-part episode, GLN President and CEO David Ashcraft continues his conversation with author and consultant Les McKeown on the lifecycle stages of organizations, and the different ways leaders can respond in order to meet the unique challenges of each stage.  

IN THIS EPISODE 

0:00 Intro. 

02:20 What does Predictable Success mean for an organization?  

04:50 What’s the difference between Predictable Success and “momentum”?  

06:50 What comes after Predictable Success?  

09:00 Indicators that you may be in Treadmill. 

13:20 What comes after the Big Rut?  

16:10 Can you pull out of the Death Rattle? How?  

19:00 How the stages play out in larger organizations. 

22:10 Can an organization go through the lifecycle multiple times?  

23:10 The number one challenge Les has with leaders that he works with. 

28:50 How relationships change through the lifecycle.  

27:45 Outro 

LISTEN 

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STANDOUTS AND TAKEAWAYS 

•  When you are in the Predictable Success stage, you feel like you’re in control of what happenings, and the organization is moving forward in reliable ways. 
• You can have momentum in White Water, but when you are in Predictable Success you feel like you are in control of the momentum and how fast you are moving.
• When you are experiencing success, there are two constant pulls: one is back towards Whitewater, and the other is towards decline.
• Systems and processes are what help pull you out of Whitewater, but if they come to dominate your culture, they are also what can pull you towards the Treadmill.
• When you are on the treadmill, the processes begin to become more important than the goals they were meant to help accomplish.
• If you don’t deal with the Treadmill, you enter the Big Rut, which is the mirror image of Fun. When you are in the Big Rut, you are over-processed, and you like it that way.
• The larger the organization, the longer you can stay in the Big Rut, but customers will still inevitably move on.
• In Death Rattle, it may look like something is happening, but you are really dying, and there’s really nothing you can do about it.
• Once you enter the Big Rut, the organization has lost the ability to self-diagnose, which is critical for survival. For positive change to happen, it usually means a complete change in senior leadership.
• Different parts of larger organizations can find themselves in different places on the lifecycle.
• Senior leaders of large organizations will naturally assume that all parts of the organization are in the same place on the curve as the one they are most familiar with.
• A shared vocabulary is a critical tool for leaders of larger organizations so that everyone can talk more clearly with each other about what they are experiencing.
• The habits that are solidified during Fun are hard-wired into the thinking of leaders, but what’s coming next (Whitewater and Predictable Success) require an entirely different toolkit, and that toolkit cannot be built on the same foundation that worked during Fun.
• When leaders encounter a significant crisis that constitutes an existential threat to the organization, your instincts are not probably going to take you in the wrong direction.