Entrepreneurs and business owners have shifted how they lead in expedient and ingenious ways. The changes may have been birthed of necessity, but they have great potential beyond this crisis. Let’s look at three…

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Transcript of video:

My name is Nick Leighton and for the next few minutes you are exactly where you want to be.

This is originally recorded August 4, 2020 for Facebook Live - uncut and uncensored .

Last week we talked about COVID-19 and opportunity for leadership.

I don’t intend this weekly FB live to focused on COVID, but that does seem to be the environment we’re in - as leaders - it’s a focus.

Last week, McKinsey & Company came out with a very well researched and written report - The CEO moment: Leadership for a new era.

Everything I am going to talk about today, comes from that report, and is not by any part my subjective view.

Challenges by the global pandemic, business leaders have made four shifts in the way that hold great promos for both companies and society.

As we discussed last week, The pandemic is also a challenge for businesses—and their business leaders—unlike any they have ever faced, forcing an abrupt dislocation of how employees work, how customers behave, how supply chains function, and even what ultimately constitutes business performance.

Confronting this unique moment, Entrepreneurs and business owners have shifted how they lead in expedient and ingenious ways. The changes may have been birthed of necessity, but they have great potential beyond this crisis. Let’s look at three:

unlocking bolder (“10x”) aspirations,
being intentional
and harnessing the full power of their entrepreneur and business owner peer networks.

And for each three - I have three questions you can ask yourself to get ahead.

One - Aspire 10x higher

During the pandemic, many organizations have accomplished what had previously been thought impossible.

Business leaders are thinking bigger and faster,

One member I am coaching has turned their in-person businesses into an online courses in the matter of a couple of weeks.

Another has increased their sales and operational efficiency by moving 70+ employees remote.

Another has been able to open up their business from local to national by being able to build strategic relationships with a national level customer they previously were unable to even get a phone call with.

Another has been able hire a team of 45 in the past 3-weeks.

Of course, the unprecedented scale and speed of the pandemic has created a “burning platform” impetus for these feats, but it is still remarkable that organizations have been able to make it happen.

Business owners are recognizing that the barriers to boldness and speed are less about technical limits and more about such things as mindsets toward what is possible, what people are willing to do, the degree to which implicit or explicit polices that slow things down can be challenged.

As a business owner - here are three things you should be strategically asking yourself TODAY:

Where should we be aspiring 10x higher and/or 10x faster?
What beliefs or long-held assumptions do I need to explicitly reset in the organization and with stakeholders to achieve this?
What do we say no to, or stop doing, to create the additional space to go bigger and faster?

2 - Being Intentional

In addition to the mindset shifts mentioned earlier, there are any number of more tangible reasons why companies have been able to drive this kind of progress so quickly. Remote work and bans on travel have opened up banks of time that give us the opportunity to focus more on what really matters.

I used to be able to visit three business owners in a day, drive between the coachings and then have time for the work associated with those executive coachings. Without the need to drive, it’s normal for me to be on four Zoom meetings instead of three in-person.

We’re all discovering what a capacity trap travel is. I feel a quiet calming sense of control over my own time today.

But be careful of cramming too much in. Downtime at the water cooler with colleagues and travel by oneself can be creative openings and outlets for new thinking. Some business leaders I know have since adapted by booking “flight time” into their schedule so as to avoid spending all day, every day, on videoconference meetings.

In either case, The COVID-19 experience has made it clearer than ever that Business Owners must be extremely intentional about how they use their time.

The magic of the moment is that both the CEO and the organization’s operating models have been unfrozen, perhaps more than in any time in a generation. There is an opportunity to reset how work gets done in ways that make it multiple times more efficient and effective—free of the burden of historical norms.

As business owner’s begin to seize the unique opportunity at hand to recalibrate their personal, team, and company operating models, I’m going to ask you to reflect on the following questions today:

How have we worked differently to enable the impossible to happen during the pandemic (including our decision making, processes, resource allocation, communication, and location)?
What learnings and new muscles should we bring forward into the organization for the future?
How will this change my day-to-day as I run the company as business owner?

3 - Harness the real power of peer networks

Here’s one of the most noteworthy changes we have seen during the pandemic: Entrepreneurs and business owners are talking to one another much more and are seeking to do so at a much greater rate.

Three months ago, the business community was thinking, ‘If we don’t figure out a thoughtful path, we could wallow in this for a long, long time.’ So CEOs, business owners and entrepreneurs started thinking, ‘Let’s learn from each other. Let’s hold hands.’ There’s even a little bit of commiseration. I’ve certainly seen in the peer-boards that I facilitate there is a huge value in the ability to be with a couple of other business owners, and talk about any number of things that are unique that you can’t talk to anybody else about.

I believe that having business owners spend more time laterally will prove useful not only for responding to the current pandemic, but also for addressing emergent issues and unlocking higher levels of business performance, innovation, and multistakeholder impact in an ever more complex and uncertain world.

Business owners are communicating more, and expanding their networks, in part because only another business owner confronting the pandemic can fully identify with today’s leadership challenges.

In light of the newfound connectivity among business owners within and across industries happening in this moment, I urge you as a Business Owners to think today, on the following questions:

What peer networks should I continue or create beyond the crisis (in particular, those in analogous but not identical situations)?
What makes for a valuable peer interaction, and how can I ensure that these conditions are in place when I interact with other business owners?
Beyond role modeling, how can I encourage my team to enrich their own networks and the velocity of learnings with their peers across industries?

And of course, although this is straight from McKinsey and Company last week, I will very intentionally say that I am getting more inquiries today to join one of my peer-boards than ever before. If you’re interested, you can of course direct message me here.

If you found just one nugget of advice or inspiration in this quick video useful, then please like and share.

Join me next Tuesday - when we’ll take another look into Entrepreunership and business ownership for today’s economy.

My name is Nick Leighton and I wish you passion, profit and happiness.