Creating a Transferable Company - 5 Core Elements are Needed with Gene Hammett, CEO Coach

In this episode, I discuss the key components of creating a transferable company that thrives independently of its current leadership. I outline five essential elements: a strong, inspiring vision; effective communication through regular executive meetings; robust accountability systems that empower team members; distributed leadership to avoid dependency on a single individual; and the implementation of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for operational continuity. I emphasize the importance of adopting these strategies early and invite listeners to join our upcoming training sessions for deeper insights into fostering organizational transferability and sustainable growth.

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  You've got to have the right kind of communication. That means you're scheduling regular executive leadership team meetings, ideally weekly. You can do this daily if you want to with huddles format. But I really love the weekly format. And a lot of people resist that. And a lot of companies think that they don't want to be corporate. This is not a corporate thing. This is an alignment thing. You want to make sure you have that scheduled and it has a structure that works for you. It's not just kind of really-nilly and we just show up. Agendas are very important there. There's so many books written around this. But you want to make sure communication is present. Now, go a little bit further with that. You want to make sure people are communicating with each other. So teams are having their regular meetings and they are updating things. They are talking about the key projects.

• 1:44Speaker 03

  Everyone's aligned because we've communicated effectively. Welcome to Growth Think Tank. This is the one and only place where you will get insight from the founders and the CEOs of the fastest-growing privately-held companies. I am the host. My name is Gene Habert. I help leaders and their teams navigate the defining moments of their growth. Are you ready to grow? Today I want to talk about how to create a transferable company. You may have not have thought about this transferable company element. But what I would like for you to look at this is, is you know, how ready is your company to be handed down to someone else? Now, this could be because you've sold all of it. You could have sold part of it.

• 2:26Speaker 03

  You could be passing it down to the next generation. There's many different reasons. Maybe you're just retiring and you know, your executive team is going to take over and run this thing, and you're going to move toward chairman. So there's many different kind of flavors of transferability. So it doesn't matter what you want to do, but what matters is, is your company ready for it? So how do you create a transferable company? There are five core elements that I just want to walk through with you. And this comes from some client work I was doing recently with a construction company. They're over a hundred million dollars, and they are rebuilding their foundation of the company. They're rebuilding the systems, and I'm helping them do that. My name is Gene Hammond. I'm a CEO coach. We do executive coaching.

• 3:11Speaker 03

  We do leadership development, and we really help companies become scalable, and companies that run without them. And that's really kind of a hallmark of a transferable company. But what are the elements to get there? We're going to unpack that in this video. If you are curious about some of the work that we could be doing together, you may not want to schedule a call. I get it. But if you're really curious about how to grow and what the next evolution of leadership looks like in your company, I invite you to come to our next training. Just go to training.corelevation.com. That's training.corelevation.com. When you go there, you will find a way to sign up. It's absolutely free, and you can schedule the next time we do this.

• 3:53Speaker 03

  I am so excited to be able to share my thoughts on this because I think it will help you create sort of a checklist, if you will, of are you ready to transfer your company? Now, I will go ahead and say this. You may not be ready this year. Certainly not ready now. But are you? It takes a few years to get these things working and optimized. And so you don't Want to do it when you need it. You want to do it ahead of time. That's really important. So there are five core things we're going to talk about today. The first one is vision. Vision, you probably have a vision for yourself. Is it written down? Is it more than just a statement? Is it something that aligns people together? Is it clear? Is it inspiring? There's so many things that can go into vision and I'm not going to unpack it for you today.

• 4:36Speaker 03

  But if you want to know what my company vision is, if you want to see example, or if you want to get some worksheets, send me an email to [email protected] and I will give you those worksheets. Just say that I heard you on the podcast. Give it to you for free. I don't have a signup page for this, but just, just know that I would love to give it to you. And just put it in the subject line, send me the vision documents. So that's the first element of a transferable company is vision. I'm not going to get into how do you use it, but you've got to have one. Number two, you've got to have the right kind of communication. That means you're scheduling regular executive leadership team meetings, ideally weekly. You can, you can do this daily if you want to with, with huddles format.

• 5:19Speaker 03

  But I really love the weekly format and a lot of people resist that. And a lot of companies think that they're, they don't want to be corporate. This is not a corporate thing. This is an alignment thing. You want to make sure you have that scheduled and has a structure that works for you. It's not just, you know, kind of willy nilly and we just show up. Agendas are very important there. There's so many books written around this, but you want to make sure communication is present. Now go a little bit further with that. You want to make sure people are communicating with each other. So teams are having their regular meetings and they are updating things. They are talking about the, the key projects. Everyone's aligned because we've communicated effectively. Now I will add in there because I've written a book and it's a neon behind me. If you're looking at the video, how to have tough conversations is a form of communication that you want to make sure is happening.

• 6:03Speaker 03

  It's okay to debate about different decisions and, and strategies, but be willing to have the tough conversations and then work together to find alignment and keep moving forward. That is a really good sign of a great team and it's a transferable company. Now beyond that, you need to have accountability. A lot of people think that they have accountability because They check in on projects and whatnot, but you need real accountability and this means different things for different types of jobs and whatnot. Some accountability is synchronous, meaning you're doing it in the moment. Did you finish the report? Let's talk about it. Can I see it? Can, can, you know, what's your plan? All that stuff. There's also asynchronous accountability,

• 6:45Speaker 03

  which is part of what runs our company because we have a virtual team and we have lots of remote and different time zones and whatnot. And so we do meet, but we also have accountability outside of that. And so you want to make sure you have structures and tools and, and everything in place for accountability. Because if you're going to transfer the business somewhere else, you want to make sure that everyone is doing what they're supposed to be doing. And, and that's not micromanagement, in my opinion. All right. So let's go into the fourth one, which is leadership. Leadership of a company can work really well if you are the CEO and you are really powerful leader. I don't see it as often as you may think. You may think you're a pretty good leader, but single source leadership is a, is a breaking point. It means that if you

• 7:27Speaker 03

  had gotten sick, or if you have a, you know, a family challenge that you need to take a break from, or you just want to go on vacation for two weeks because it's a, you know, great, you know, life-changing trip, then your business is going to have to take a step back because it doesn't thrive without you. Leadership on the, at all levels of the company means that if you step out of the system, for whatever reason, health, or just, you know, taking a break, that the, everything continues to move. You continue to hire people, you continue to sell things, you can continue to put in bids, you can continue to fire people, you look at things, things get better, the projects keep moving, whatever it means, leadership. Now, is everyone meant to be

• 8:10Speaker 03

  a leader? No. But if you don't have leadership at the key spots, like the executive team, your company's broken. I know that that's harsh, but if you don't have leadership at the, you know, mid-level, your company's still broken because that's such an important place. It's really hard to have employees below you and above you without the right kind of leadership. And I think we even have frontline leaders. We have people that are leading the charge. Of innovation and leading the charge of what's next. And they're on the front lines. And so you want to make sure you have leadership at all levels of the company. Not every person is going to be a leader, but leadership at all levels of the company means it's not all on you. Single source leadership is a breaking point in a business and it's not very transferable.

• 8:54Speaker 03

  Now that being said, that was the fourth one. So we have vision, we have communication and we have accountability. And now we have leadership. The fifth one is SOPs. Now, this is the very tactical element of this. If you don't have SOPs, your processes are not defined in a way that they're transferable to another employee. So that's one version of view to look at this. If you don't have SOPs for critical elements of your business and something happens to that one person that does the payroll or does the whatever, then your company's at risk and that's going to be a red flag from an outsider looking to buy your company or buy a stake in your company, or maybe you're just transferring it to others.

• 9:39Speaker 03

  Or maybe you're just going to move from, you know, the owner or CEO to chairman of the board. And if you don't have the SOPs, then it's really hard for things to get better. When it's written down and documented, and when I mean written down, I mean really written down details. What tools do we use? What does good look like? Even using video, and we're doing this with our team, we're updating all of those things right now. And so it's fresh on my mind and I've even said that this whole month of July is about optimizing our business. And that's a big part of it is those SOPs. Now, all five of these elements are really critical. Are there more things that you can include in a transferable company? Absolutely. And you have to make a decision for yourself, what else you want to include in here.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  But if you don't have vision, you don't have communication the way you want to, you don't have accountability, you don't have leadership, you don't have these SOPs and frameworks. It is going to be a little bit of a challenge for you to transfer when the time comes. The key is to have them in place early, get them refined, put in systems so that they're, you know, updated and innovated on so that as AI is coming in, You're updating how we're getting things done and we're actually looking at new ways to use the AI tools. That's what we're doing as a company. Hopefully you're doing the same. I remind you, this is all about how to create a transferable company. And if there's anything in here that you have questions about, make sure you send me an email, [email protected].

• 11:03Speaker 03

  If you're curious about the work that we do, all you have to do is go to training.coral elevation.com, sign up for the next workshop on how to stop being the bottleneck of your company. That's not very transferable. And so it all aligns together today. Again, that URL is training.coral elevation.com. Sign up, schedule yourself for free for the next training we have on how to stop being the bottleneck of your company. So it grows without you. My name is Gene Hammett. I love for you to listen in here and share this with a friend if you think it's valuable. But most importantly, when you think of growth, then you think of leadership, think of growth, think team. As always, with the courage, we'll see you next time.

• 11:46Speaker 00

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