Rhythm

How to Achieve Breakthrough Execution and Accelerate Growth

Patrick Thean

• Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781626340794
• eBook ISBN: 9781626340800
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

From USA Today & Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author!
Want to achieve breakthroughs and get exceptional results? Discover the system that successful growth companies have used to achieve their results. All growing companies encounter ceilings of complexity, usually when they hit certain employee or revenue milestones. In order to burst through ceiling after ceiling and innovate with growth, a company must develop a reliable system that prompts leaders to be proactive and pivot when the need arises. You also need to learn simple systems to empower everyone in your company to become and stay focused, aligned, and accountable. In Rhythm, you'll discover all this and more, including:
• How to identify potential setbacks and avoid them;
• Think-Plan-Do rhythm to fire up and maintain great execution;
• The inside scoop from growth companies showing you how they turned their potential setbacks into opportunities;
• Practical tools that you can use immediately;
• The habits you should start building to achieve your own breakthroughs. Patrick Thean's process applies to any growing business and ensures that your organization gets into the habit of achieving success, week after week, quarter after quarter, year after year. Get your copy now and start leading your business towards successful growth today!

Part 1

THINK RHYTHM

CHAPTER 1

THE SECRET TO GROWTH IS
DEVELOPING A HABIT TO THINK

It is not enough to have a good mind;
the main thing is to use it well.

—René Descartes

In January 2012, a company called AvidXchange celebrated a major event: a single online bill payment. Doesn’t sound like much, right? You—or your bank—probably make online bill payments every month. You go to the online bill-paying system for your account, enter payment and payee information, and ta-da, you’ve paid your bill online!

While it is easy for an individual or consumer to make a payment online, it is harder than you might think for a business to pay their vendors electronically. Unlike individuals, businesses have to make sure that payments are integrated into their accounting systems, that the right people have approved the invoice, that payment is sent to vendors in a form they can receive. It can be a complex process for some companies, so it took years of thinking and planning for AvidXchange to launch an online bill-payment system for businesses. It was a move that put them on a path to double their business in fifteen months. I call these high-growth moves winning moves.

would like to think that success happens overnight, that winning moves appear overnight, but they don’t. The lesson we can learn from AvidXchange is that it takes the habit of spending time—on a regular and consistent basis—working on and refining your strategy to create success. I call this a Think Rhythm.

We would like to think
that success happens overnight,
that winning moves appear
overnight, but they don’t.

Think Rhythm: Put Thinking
Time in Your Flight Path

Most executives I ask would agree that it is important to spend time thinking strategically about the future of their businesses. Yet most leadership teams fail to do so. They fail because they do not have a clear and simple way to get this strategic thinking time into their company routine or regular flight path.

Take a closer look at your regular day. What does it look like? Is it filled with various meetings and customer deliverables? Maybe a fire to put out here and there? No leader is sitting on his or her butt waiting for something strategic to do! Being busy with the day-to-day operations of the business is the most common excuse I hear from

executives for not having time to think and work on winning moves. Then a few years down the road, their growth flatlines. They are left scrambling desperately for growth. As a CEO or executive, you are accountable for the growth of your company. Provide a clear path to that growth instead of scrambling to try to birth a winning move overnight. “We don’t have time” really means that a strategy for growth was not important enough. It did not make the short list. If you truly believe that it is important, prioritize it above the other things that compete for your time. Put a Think Rhythm into your flight path!

“We don’t have time” really
means that a strategy for growth
was not important enough.

RHYTHM EXPERT TIP

Be proactive about scheduling time to work on your strategy and the future growth of your business. Schedule a weekly lunch meeting with your team and focus only on strategy.

Michael Praeger, the CEO of AvidXchange, said to me, “The best advice you ever gave me was to take two days every quarter and every year, get out of my company, and work on the business. It has turned out to be one of the best habits we have today. We do this every quarter

Figure 4. The Think Rhythm

and year, regardless of our current situation. We spend that time working on the future of our business and planning exactly what we are going to achieve as a team for the upcoming quarter. Here we are in 2012, over the last twelve years we have never missed a session and they have been amazing. Over the years, this rhythm forced us to stop and think when we least wanted to or when we thought we couldn’t afford the time. We kept to our rhythm and met anyway. Ironically, those were the times when we needed to stop and think the most. This rhythm has allowed us to head off a number of crises and develop a vision and strategy for our future.”

Not only did the Think Rhythm help AvidXchange develop a

[Our Think Rhythm] forced us
to stop and think when we least
wanted to. . . . Ironically, those
were the times that we needed to
stop and think the most.

game-changing winning move, it has also helped the team beat their competition to become a leader in electronic invoicing. In 1999, one of their competitors raised $200 million in capital, compared to AvidXchange’s $1.5 million. I remember discussing the competitor’s war chest in a Think Rhythm meeting. Michael was wondering how they could compete with their tiny $1.5 million. Imagine that—going to war against a competitor with 133 times more capital than you! I helped Michael and his team focus on what they could affect, and they built a strategy based on e-invoicing for a single industry. They worked on that strategy every quarter. Ultimately the competitor with the massive war chest couldn’t compete against AvidXchange’s focus and discipline. The competitor flamed out during the dot-com bust. AvidXchange rode it out. In fact, they’ve repeated this victory time and time again, most recently with their winning move of becoming an e-payment company.

Implement this Think Rhythm in your company today if you want to ensure your future:

Two-day annual and quarterly sessions: The first day is part of your Think Rhythm. Spend time working on the future of your business. Work on systematically developing winning moves and building your foundation to make sure you are able to grow with purpose. The second day is part of your Plan Rhythm, which I will cover in part 2.

Weekly talk and think time: Spend at least an hour every week pushing your strategies forward. In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins provided a great process he calls The Council.

Yes, the Think Rhythm includes meeting quarterly and weekly. If you want to achieve breakthroughs in your growth, you have to keep moving your strategies forward. If you put strategic thinking on hold between quarterly or annual Rhythm sessions, you won’t successfully execute your strategy. I’ll explain winning moves in more detail in the

rest of part 1, but know that you should be testing your ideas before you pour your full resources into executing them. You should be collecting real-world data, observing customer reactions, and talking about your findings with your executive team. Don’t be afraid of obstacles. Confront them and solve them. The obstacles were already there. You did not create them. The faster you uncover them, the faster you can bust through them and succeed! Use your Think Rhythm to uncover them quickly and find solutions.

I recently facilitated a company’s annual strategy and execution–planning session. I had also facilitated their last annual session. As we reviewed their strategy, the lack of real-world data and insights made it clear that they had not made progress. They had not spent time thinking and working on their winning moves over the last twelve months. This com...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Breakthrough Execution
• Part 1: Think Rhythm
• Part 2: Plan Rhythm
• Part 3: Do Rhythm
• From Good Execution to Great Execution with Rhythm
• Rhythm Products
• About Rhythm Systems, Inc.
• Index
• About The Author