What is Metronomics?
Metronomics is the most effective and complete system to grow companies with ease, speed and confidence.
It builds on the work of numerous business thought-leaders, putting their work into a usable framework for CEOs and their teams to drive outstanding growth, with A-Player teams highly committed to the culture, strategy and objectives of the business.
In my experience, it is the best business growth and scaling methodology available to entrepreneurs and CEOs today. Companies I work with using Metronomics consistently grow 30% or more year- over-year
Designed specifically for CEOs and Leadership Teams like yours, Metronomics is your key to transforming your business, stimulating growth, and fostering a high-performing team.
Why Metronomics?
As I founded and built a high-growth restaurant business, attractive significant investment and in a fast-developing market, I searched for a business growth system that would provide a map as we moved from one phase of growth to another. Rather than whack-a-mole problem solving as we rapidly grew the business, I wanted a consistent framework the whole team could use to take us on the journey.
I was unable to find that system, and continued the search when I became a business coach. It was only after I found Metronomics that I was finally confident I had a system that I know is usable by CEOs and their teams at various growth stages – be it an early stage $10m revenue company or a $200m company with a growth senior leadership team.
What separates Metronomics from other systems is its comprehensive growth framework thatprovides a regular rhythm and structure that revisits all key growth aspects of the business. Metronomics draws on the work of many business thought leaders, including Jim Collins, Michael Porter, Patrick Lencioni, Brene Brown, Steven M. R. Covey and many others. It is flexible enough to easily accommodate other approaches. You would like us to include Alex Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas? No problem, that fits right into our strategy system and will complement the work we are already doing.
The Six Systems
The key to the power and flexibility of Metronomics is its’ seven systems – Strategy, Execution, Cash, Cultural, Human, Cohesive and Coach Cascade. These encompass all areas that a CEO and leadership team need to focus on to growth their business. All need to be worked on consistently, and as they progress and come together, the tremendous power of your entirely focused business is directed towards the company’s goals.
To put things in simple terms, strategy without strong execution will obviously not succeed. Neither will execution without an A-Player team that are highly committed and have a deep understanding of how day-to-day execution drives longer term strategy succeed. It’s only when all these elements work together cohesively that outstanding success is achieved.
The systems are divided into Hard Edged systems (Strategy, Execution and Cash) and Soft Edge Systems (Culture, Cohesion and Human). Almost all CEOs that I work with want to focus initially on the Hard-Edge systems as they equate these with real business progress and that are also very tangible. But it’s the Soft Edge systems that will enable the Hard-Edge Systems to progress fluently to success.
So, let’s have a look at what each of these systems bring.
Soft-Edge Systems
The Cultural System
The Cultural System ensures that there is a clear and known culture in the business and team. The Culture System creates the teams’ strong belief in the Core Purpose, Core Values and the very long- term goals of the business (its 10-30 year goals or BHAG). The key learning and outcome of this system is to create a daily, repeatable behavioral system that ensures the company’s culture is actually lived in the business and not just a placard on the wall or website that is not observed.
The role of the CEO is to model these beliefs and behaviors, and to be accountable for the culture of the business. This is usually easier for the CEO in the early days of the business, but if anything becomes more important as the business grows.
The Cohesive System
The Cohesive System is all about building trust in the team. The power of trust in a team cannot be overstated. High-Trust teams have cohesion and are much more effective in driving strategy and execution. As we all know, lack of cohesion saps energy from the organization and distracts from what the team should really be doing. Fighting turf wars or who should have done what, rumours and backchannel communications.
The Cohesive System develops team cohesion on a daily basis, given that the daily behavior of team members affects cohesion as a whole. This system is highly interconnected with the Cultural System and draws on the work of Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
In my view, building the Cohesive System with as much prominence as the Hard Systems is unique to Metronomics, and is what really drives its success with growth companies longer-term. Cohesive teams are able to build trust, manage conflict, communicate clearly and maintain commitment when things get difficult. All winning teams are highly cohesive and work together at this every day.
The Human System
The Human System is founded upon A-Players who want to be coached and given an opportunity to grow. A-Players ooze the company’s Core Values and consistently exceed expectations. The purpose of this system is to provide team members with the same repeatable process, from recruiting to hiring and training, to clarity about their functional role’s scorecard, to coaching, feedback and opportunity for growth and reward.
The Human System is inspired and powered by Brad Smart’s Topgrading process, and is a powerful path for the CEO to ensure he is surrounded by a team of A-Players in the right seats with the right incentives.
Hard-Edge Systems
The Strategy System
The Strategy System’s purpose is to develop a sometimes complex strategy that can be hard for the whole team to understand and use it to communicate it as a clear and simple plan that the entire team can explain and use to make decisions. It includes a step-by-step process to develop and validate strategy based on the market the business operates in, its Core Customer, the unique traits of the business and a plan to bring this all together in a powerful way that is hard for competitors to duplicate. There is much more to it than I can communicate here, but it’s the systematic stepwise way we develop the strategy that has so much power within Metronomics.
The Metronomics Strategy System draws heavily on Michael Porters work on Competitive Strategy, and his definition of strategy, being the creation of “A unique and valuable position involving a different set of activities”.
It’s a simple statement but hard to achieve. The structure of the Strategy System and its alignment with the other systems allows companies to build a unique and valuable position over time that is very hard for competitors to challenge.
The Execution System
The secret to execution in Metronomics is the way that it links shorter term execution (daily, monthly, quarterly and the annual plan) with longer term strategy through the 3HAG. It creates a 12-month priorities plan with metrics – both fiscal and non-fiscal – highly aligns the team and brings clarity of what they need to accomplish.
The execution system ensures clear, specific accountable priorities that are owned by leaders and measures for the company on the basis of the annual plan (1HAG), quarterly plan (QHAG). Clarity, ownership and accountability of priorities of metrics are critical, as is placing company priorities ahead of individual priorities.
The Cash System
The cash system is simple – forecast cash first. The Cash System actually forecasts how much cash you want in the bank at the end of every month, month-over-month, for 36 months. These forecasts are driven by the “widgets” or non-fiscal things that run through a business, each of which is owned by a team member.
Forecasting widgets, the real business drivers, which team members own and control , directly connects the team to a very achievable and realistic plan that in turn connects directly to the cash balance required to growth the business.
What is the Coach Cascade System?
The seventh system is called the Coach Cascade system, and is essential to the long-term compound growth potential of the business. The purpose of the Coach Cascade System is to grow all leaders into coaches themselves and their teams into high-performing teams connected through the business plan. This is a part of the secret sauce that, along with the other systems as they become fully activated, creates exponential momentum in the teams’ high-growth results.
The Coach Cascade System takes the leaders’ and the teams’ behavior to the next level. It takes the team’s cohesiveness to the next level of vulnerability, ensuring every leader becomes a coach who can create other coaches within the organization.
The Coach Cascade system develops the leaders into what Jim Collins calls Level 5 Leaders who lead with humility and will. This doesn’t happen overnight and is very difficult to do unless you work with an external coach who can act as the leadership team’s “blind spot” remover.
Bringing it all Together
The best way to visualize how all these systems fit together is the house diagram (below). The foundations and the walls – its structure – are made up of the three Soft Systems and the Coach Cascade System. The inside of the house contains the three Hard Systems – Strategic, Execution and Cash. The Soft Edge Systems ensure we have the right people in the right seats and the Hard Edge Systems ensure we are doing the right things right.
Open Playing Field and Accountability
I have outlined above the Metronomics Compound Growth System. There are two other elements of Metronomics that complement this system– the Open Playing Field Software and the Metronomics Certified Coach. It is possible to implement the system without these two elements, but progress is much slower and there is a greater likelihood of wrong turns.
The Open Playing Field Software in short provides the whole team with real time clarity on how they and the business are going. The key to the success of the Open Playing Field is the commitment of the team to transparent and accountable behavior. The Open Playing Field is where every team member can clearly see others playing the game, their functional role, their execution, what they are accountable for, their Scorecard, and how they will be measured in the context of the company’s priorities and plans. It is an essential element in cohering the team around the company’s goals and progress, and their role in getting there.
As a CEO and Leadership team coach, I am a blind spot remover for the team on the Open Playing Field. Your coach is able to see things the team misses because I am observing the team from a different angle. The Metronomics Growth System and Open Playing Field Software your coach to ask the most impactful questions at the right time.
The most gratifying part of my work with clients hungry for growth and success – both as a team and individually – is witnessing the growth of the team as a whole and the individual leaders within it along with the business. There is nothing better to see the breakthrough insights and plans that they make. This sometimes happens as early as the initial 2-day Kickoff meeting or in the subsequent quarterly meetings.
The Metronomics system, bringing all these elements together, is without doubt the most effective and comprehensive framework for scaling a business. Companies I work with gain relief from being in the “overwhelm” and gain satisfaction from the successes as they accumulate.
David Keir is an entrepreneur that has founded and scaled businesses and is a Certified Metronomics Coach. He works with outstanding Founders, CEOs and their leadership teams to scale their business cohesively with high-trust A-Players teams, with a well-defined values-based culture and highly- developed strategy and execution. Contact us for a complimentary introductory discussion.
