Running a Business Play by Play
When I set out to start Serenity Business Services I knew I had a lot to learn. Never having run a business before, I was certain there were things I couldn’t anticipate or even fully appreciate. A couple of very helpful mentors with entrepreneurial experience made sure I understood that as well.
So where do I start? How do I prioritize the dozens of different considerations I now have in front of me? Business licensing? Pricing? Tax election status? Marketing tactics? Turns out none of them.
I was introduced to Patrick Lencioni and his book The Advantage from multiple trusted sources and as I was preparing to become an entrepreneur myself I took the time to read it. There are A LOT of excellent ideas in the book and I can’t recommend it enough, but Lencioni’s thesis is that leadership teams can guide their organizations towards excellence through the use of a practical framework. I’m going to give an overview of the framework here, but I want to focus on the first one and I’ll explain why.
The framework is six questions about an organization that a leadership team needs to sit down and answer for themselves. Those questions are:
Why do we exist?
How do we behave?
What do we do?
How will we succeed?
What is most important, right now?
Who must do what?
A leadership team that is able to sit down, healthily debate, and honestly agree on the answers to these questions will find their organizational health increasing through fostering trust, ensuring collective commitment, embracing individual and team accountability, and prioritizing results. By extension, an organization that is led by a team that commits to the answers of these questions will have clear and inspiring purpose, core values, and a compelling strategy.
As I mentioned before, for today I’d like to focus on the first question “Why do we exist?”. Forgive me for getting a bit philosophical, but historically it has been seen as the ultimate question. What are we doing here? What is our purpose? Of course Lencioni is asking the question in the context of the purpose of an organization, which may not be as universally applicable, but is far more practical.
I’m a big fan of going back to the “Why?” of any question. Why am I getting up in the morning? What am I doing here? Why am I pouring hours of my life into this work?
If the members of an organization have to respond to that question themselves then the tendency is for those answers to be based on utilization. Examples might include: to get a paycheck, to provide for my family, because child care is too expensive, or the rent is too dang high! Money is important and useful, but these answers are circumstantial and not particularly inspiring.
I am still a solo-preneur, but I know myself well enough to know that I excel when I have a purpose greater than myself. So I challenged myself to put Serenity’s purpose down on paper and have individuals I trust help me refine it. Why does Serenity Business Services exist?
“To help business owners and non-profit organizations identify and accomplish their most fundamental goals.”
Let me break it down…
“To help…”
I believe I have been made to help people and my life experience has taught me I am at my best when I focus on that.
“...business owners and non-profit organizations…”
Who I know I can help.
“...identify and accomplish their most fundamental goals.”
In a lot of ways this is a natural outflow of what I love about answering the “Why?” question. What we do once we know our fundamental purpose is to create goals that help us achieve that purpose.
You might be asking yourself questions about Serenity’s purpose, such as: what about being a fractional CFO? Or the accounting and finance aspect? Isn’t that what you do? One step at a time. Look at the questions in Lencioni’s framework and you’ll see we still have plenty of runway. I’ll discuss those more in my next post.
In the meantime, if you're the executive director of a large non-profit, challenge yourself to go back to your organization’s mission statement. If you and your spouse run a business out of your house, pick an evening to sit down and ask yourself these questions. If you're the president of a multi-million dollar revenue generating construction company, take one of your meetings with the rest of the executive leadership team and have an introspective conversation about what benefits your company ultimately provides.