How to Stop Acting Like a Startup and Expand Without Falling Apart – in Just 7 Minutes with Claire Chandler

Related Links and Resources:

I have put together a mission readiness assessment, it's called 'Organizational Health Assessment' that anyone can go to www.ClaireChandler.net\Resources, it is a FREE download.

Summary:

Working with many diverse startups and corporations over the last 25 years, Claire Chandler experienced that most companies fall apart once they start to scale. As a solution to this business timebomb, she created the ’Whirlpool Effect’ - a revolutionary way to align your leaders and teams around a unifying vision that attracts, retains and motivates the right talent to achieve your mission.

Claire’s simple yet powerful process is helping many companies find and fix bottlenecks that are choking their business performance so they can rapidly scale without the growing pains. It's time to grow into the leader your people can't wait to follow.

Here are the highlights of this episode:

1:41 Claire’s ideal Client: My ideal clients are CEOs, Business Owners, and Founders who are hungrily looking to scale and grow their businesses.

2:03 Problem Claire helps solve: We know that startups and businesses that are at the point of scaling have a very high failure rate. So, the number one problem that I solve is to remove those growing pains and performance bottlenecks that stifle a company's ability and success rate in terms of growing. And part of the way that I solve that problem is by getting their leadership or workforce 'fly information'.

2:50 Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Claire: There are so many; there are what I call these 'stomach-clenching' symptoms. This stomach-churning pre-ulcer condition. There are so many things to include like high turnover, subpart financial performance, high-drama and conflict in the office like 'us vs. them', internal competitiveness, customer complaints are on the rise, and quality defects are on the rise. As they grow, their inability to make timely, effective, efficient decisions.

3:49 What are some of the common mistakes that folks make before finding Claire and her solution: The biggest one is making assumptions. We all know the danger of what happens when you make assumptions. The biggest assumptions they make which is the biggest fallacy is that they have the wrong people. Most business owners that I talk to and work with think that when they come to me, they are looking everywhere but themselves for the root cause of the problem. When in fact, the root cause is much closer to home. It's not necessarily who they're leading, it's how they're leading. Typically, it's because they have lost sight of 'WHY' they are leading. So, that's typically the biggest mistake, is the assumption that "well, if we throw out everybody we have, and start over with new people and train them the right way” we're just off to the races.

4:54 Claire’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): So, the biggest one and they can absolutely start on this immediately is to get crystal clear on what their mission is, and why that matters. That sounds so simplistic, but it can be complicated if they are very far removed from that, or kind of lost contact with that. But it is so foundational to the success of the business. If you can get back in touch with what your mission is and why it matters, you are 80 percent on your way there to building an amazing business.

5:48 Claire’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): So, mission is so important and fundamental to any businesses, and it's foundational to the work that I do. I have put together a mission readiness assessment, it's called 'Organizational Health Assessment' that anyone can go to ClaireChandler.net\Resources, it is a FREE download, and it is a pretty quick self-assessment that anybody can download right away. And it will give you a really good pulse-check of the areas in your culture and your organization that you need to pay the closest attention to.

6:51 What is this 'Whirlpool effect' that you created? Beyond that it just happens to be a book that I wrote, the concept of the Whirlpool Effect comes from a very fond childhood memory that I have. I am a Jersey girl, born and raised in New Jersey. Summer here is very hot and the most popular kids here on the block always seems to be the one with the swimming pool backyard. Which was not me by the way! So, all these neighborhood kids would get together, go to the pool, splash around, invariably one of us would yell "Whirlpool!" and all of the kids would immediately understand what that meant. It meant to stop what you're doing, start following each other in a circle, and after a couple of rotations, we could pick-up our feet and be carried along with the flow. That analogy is exactly what effective leadership looks like. It's a simple message that your people can immediately attach meaning to, understand what a successful outcome looks like, and enthusiastically contribute their whole heads, hands and hearts to making that into a reality. So, that's the Whirlpool Effect and that's really the description behind the magic that I help my clients create.