Chris Mailander:

Every team that I've worked with always goes into a process believing that they are commonly aligned, that there is an organizational pursuit of something which they all envision, and it's just a matter of getting there.

The reality?

Below the waterline, they rarely are.

Rarely is there a common vision and a common trajectory or pathway that they all agree to pursue. And even more rare is that there is a common financial objective out there on the horizon that they're striving towards.

I recently led an intensive with a half-billion-dollar private company, and the original mandate was straightforward enough, which is: help us articulate our three-year vision and our aspirations for getting there.

Which is what they need for themselves, for their shareholders, for the banks, and for the employee groups that are coming along.

It also is extraordinarily useful when they're out pursuing deals with their customer base to know that there is a management team that has that common aspiration or vision that's out there.

The intensives that are run are dynamic. They are a lot. And they're designed to create an environment that sometimes involves a little bit of friction—cognitive friction—but also provokes breakthroughs.

As we ran through the process, three learnings became evident.

And the first one is this:

The growth paths that they were pursuing today were the ones that they had been pursuing for some time. And that's what most companies do, which is that they fall into the ordinary grooves of their performance, of what they are ready and willing to do.

And the reason is because they've been successful in those ordinary grooves of performance.

There's a game plan that works.

Why would we change it?

We're going to keep doing the same sort of thing.

The problem is that that playbook is not going to get you to a higher trajectory—the one that creates an exceptionally valuable company.

Secondly, when I pushed them beyond the one or two growth paths that they were actively pursuing to consider a myriad set of options, these executives—what we learned, what was revealed—were actually quite different.

One was pursuing operational short-term victories, things that could be accomplished over the next 12 months.

A second one pushed it out a little bit further—strategic shifts over the next 24 months.

A third wanted something that was truly transformational, ready to make gutsy, bold moves in order to achieve a higher path of performance.

These executives were on quite different trajectories of what they actually desired for the future of this company.

So what follows, however, when you have that diversity of viewpoints?

Quite substantial and radically different game plans that you would pursue, whether operational, strategic, or transformational.

What happens when stress is placed on the business in the future—which it will be?

A competitor launches a gambit.

A project goes sideways.

Cash tightens.

One of several things happens.

You can have paralysis in decision-making.

You can have friction, either subtly below the surface or outright hostilities associated with it.

In any of those scenarios, what happens is that that company, at best, is going to pursue the same trajectory—which is well off of creating exceptional value—or it will even regress.

All of those are bad pathways.

So here's the third learning that became visible in the process.

And this is what the right environment does.

When we apply that kind of thinking, the right framework, the right provocations, the CEO at the end of it stated with absolute crystal clarity what his vision for the company was.

And it wasn't polished for the board.

It wasn't polished for shareholders.

It wasn't polished for that group.

But now we know precisely what that high-value trajectory and that wealth-creating event looks like.

Now we game plan.

Now we build execution against that common vision and for getting there.

Breakthrough.

That is the big unlock.

There's a gap between where most companies are in their ordinary rhythms, where that's going to take them, and where they think they should be.

But the only way they can get to that higher-value trajectory is to apply the right options analysis.

Well-vetted.

Thoroughly considered.

Designed to achieve something that has proven elusive up until this point.

Most teams never get there because they operate within their ordinary grooves.

No one has ever architected the journey.

That's the unlock.

That's all for now.

I'll talk to you soon.