In this strategic episode, Scott Ritzheimer, Founder of Scale Architects, shares how to push forward into Predictable Success even when your team is imbalanced and you’re already in Whitewater. If external pressures force you to scale despite missing the ideal style mix, you won’t want to miss it.

You will discover:

- Why some organizations must drive to Predictable Success even with an imbalanced team

- How to protect the operator voice using the designated driver strategy

- What five systems you must build while still freeing operators to execute

This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stages 3,4,5 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz

Scott Ritzheimer is the founder of Scale Architects and a leading expert on organizational life cycle and founder leadership. He has helped launch nearly twenty thousand businesses and nonprofits and, before turning thirty-five, built and sold his own multimillion-dollar company after a decade of double-digit growth. Today he helps founders and CEOs who have people to lead but are still buried in the daily grind, giving them a clear next step instead of a theory. He is host of the Start Scale Succeed podcast and author of The Founder's Game.

Want to learn more about Scott Ritzheimer's work at Scale Architects? Check out his website at https://www.scalearchitects.com/

Connect with Scott through his LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottritzheimer/

Pre-order a copy of Scott Ritzheimer's book "The Founder’s Game" at https://www.scottritzheimer.com/book/pre-order

Hello, hello, and welcome, welcome once again

to the Start, Scale, and Succeed podcast-the only podcast that

grows with you through all seven levels of your journey as a

founder. I'm your host Scott Ritzheimer, and we are here in

part five of our series. You're not in whitewater, dot dot dot

yet, and we've covered a lot of ground so far. If this is your

first time hearing about us, you might want to go back and check

out a couple of the previous episodes because we're going to

give you a much easier path to success if you're feeling some

of the problems we're going to talk about in this episode. In

episode one, we talked about the life cycle, we talked about the

leadership styles, and we talked about really the only good

reason for ending up in that this third stage that we call

whitewater, and you don't want to end there for any reason

other than the reason that you have to, and that reason is

because you have you've operated so well that you've created so

much success that the complexity from that success has thrust you

into the whitewater stage, and if that's the case, you need to

add some systems and processes to how you make decisions as an

organization, and that's what's going to help you get to

predictable success, where you can scale. And this is all based

on the predictable success model from Les McEwen. In the three

episodes that followed, we talked through the three

categorical errors that organizations make in the stage

before that, in the fun stage, that causes them to end up in

whitewater prematurely, and you don't want to do that because if

you do, you end up in this really gnarly stage where you're

making a bunch of mistakes, where there's infighting on the

team, where you're losing confidence as a leader, where

profitability drops, all the bad things, lots of bad things. You

end up in that stage twice as long. It's twice as hard to get

out, and it's going to cost you twice as much to do it. And so

we want to avoid those as much as we possibly can. And the

answer, if you end up in any of those categorical errors, is to

try and unwind it to get back to the fun stage, to simplify, and

then to refine refine the system so that your operators can

succeed. That's fundamentally the same pattern in every single

one of them, although the root is a little different. But here

in this lesson, I want to talk about your other choice because

you really do have a choice when you're in the whitewater stage,

whether you did it by default or by design, you're left with a

choice. The only thing that you can't choose is to stay in

whitewater. But the two things that you can choose are to go

back to fun, which is what we've talked about in these last three

episodes, or you can drive forward into predictable

success, and so what I want to talk about in this episode is

for those of you who are either a glutton for punishment, really

like to do hard things just because they're hard, or are in

some type of a situation where you have to move forward to

predictable success, and I want to talk about what those are and

what you would do about it. All right, so let's look at this.

Why would you have to get to predictable success even if you

have an imbalanced team? So if you're overvisioned and need to

get to predictable success, or overprocessed or over

synergized, well, oftentimes it's because of things that are

happening outside of the organization, or promises that

are made outside of the organization, and so when we

look at organizations that are overvisioned, that have to get

to predictable success, the most common reason why is because

they've made commitments to outside stakeholders and they

have to fulfill them. Again, this is the primary challenge in

tech industries, especially the venture-backed tech industry, is

that we we hyper invest in these early stage organizations

expecting huge returns. Which means that if you're going to

survive as an organization, it's you have to knock it way out of

the park and then maybe even out of the stratosphere, or you

disappear.

Those are organizations that have so much investment that

they can't actually stay in fund because they would never be able

to pay the investment back. So they have to get to predictable

success, and they usually have to do it pretty quick. An

overprocessed organization that has to get to predictable

success is usually one that the process isn't just the the

nature of the founder or leadership team, but it's a

necessary underpinning for the industry. Some examples of this

are like financial services, especially these days. There are

so many rules and regulations that you almost have to have

processors in the mix pretty early, and and so some of you,

if you're trying to scale a firm in a space like that, attorneys,

similar thing for attorneys. Sometimes you have to have a lot

more process than would be ideal for the fund stage, and we have

to figure out how to scale anyway. How about synergists?

Well, if you're in the nonprofit space. It kind of comes with the

territory. Most of the people are going to be attracted to

working in a nonprofit. Generally, want to do it because

they want to help other people, and so you might find that in a

nonprofit or in a super customer service heavy industry like a

concierge service, for example, you have to have a lot of

synergists just to do whatever it is that you do to be a

concierge. You need a lot of that people orientation, and so

there will be circumstances when you don't have the ideal mix,

but you still have to get to predictable success anyway. And

what I want to talk about is how you can do that, or at least

give yourself the best shot of doing it because there's no

guarantees. You're in for an uphill battle, one that can be

won, but you have to recognize that it's going to be a

challenge. Fundamentally, what you need to do is you need to

fight on a couple fronts at the same time. The first thing that

you have to do is you have to really fight for your operators.

So again, if you're in, we'll go back to the concierge service,

and and you've got a bunch of synergists around, and they're

driving your operators crazy, and maybe even driving them out

of the organization. You cannot sustain predictable success

without enough operator. It it won't happen. You have to have

all four styles in predictable success, which means you need to

have operators. So it's you have to start by fighting for the

operators that you have, and trying to make sure as best you

can that you have that operator voice as part of your decision

making process. Now the obvious way to do that is to add an

operator to the team, but that's not always a possibility.

Sometimes you don't have them. Sometimes you don't trust them.

There are many reasons why you might not be ready for that or

able to do that. And so, what we want to do is we want to use

something called the designated driver strategy, and that is

where we designate somebody in the meeting as our operator for

the meeting, right? It's not the same person every time because

we don't want someone to be pigeonholed into that role,

especially if it's not their strong suit. But if we share

that burden as a team and we kind of rotate it through and we

say, you know, Jimmy, you're our operator for today's meeting.

You good with that? Jimmy says yes, and Jimmy just sits there

and thinks, hey, what would an operator say in this situation,

now Jimmy may be skilled, Natty may not, but that is a skill

that you can develop as a team: is to try and see the challenge

that you're discussing through the lens of an operator, through

the eyes of an operator, and so that's a really helpful way. If

you can't get someone on the team, then try and get someone

who's already on the team to to carry more of that weight for

you, and the best way to do that is to alternate it and cycle

through the different members. One of the things that you'll

find, and a quick plug for our team leadership styles

report-it's a great way of figuring this out.

But one of the things that you'll find is that you might

have folks on your team who aren't operators. It's not like

they're strong suit, but that they do have that operator trait

in them. It's blended in with something else. Those folks make

great designated drivers in the the VOPS format of that. The

visionary operator processor synergist, not trying to get

home after a fun night. The next thing that you need to do, and

and these are really simultaneous. They're

overlapping, which is what makes it so hard. Is that you also

have to recognize what the systems and structures you are

you need to overcome the complexity that you face, which

is going to be a lot. And what we have to do is recognize that

the systems and processes that the industry demands are

generally not the same systems and processes that scale

demands, and this is why in very processor-heavy industries you

don't see a whole lot of big organizations. Actually, a

better way of saying it is you don't see a whole lot of

mid-sized organizations because you're either really small or

you get really big, and the reason for that is because

navigating the space of getting the right systems and processes

that don't chase your operators away, that meet the industry

need, and then adding the system and process that's necessary for

scale is pretty tricky. There are five key areas that this

happens, and they are in your organizational structure being

really clear, the way that you make decisions being really

clear, the way that you integrate sales and the other

functions of the business that are necessary to deliver value

for your client, we call that cross functionality. You have to

have not just have a mission, vision, values, but you have to

be able to align every action in the organization with your

mission, vision, values, and you do that through clear tactics

and clear strategies, and then finally you have to have a

mechanism for empowering decision making throughout the

organization, not just from the central team. Les goes over all

five of those in his book, Predictable Success. We've got

something called an acceleration program for those of you who

want to implement. All of our scale architects are highly

trained in those five areas and can help you to to figure out

which of them is most relevant for you and your organization.

So, check out one of our scale architects in the directory and

ask them about an acceleration program. They'll be able to help

you out. And what that acceleration program will do,

what again, the Predictable Success book will do is help you

to recognize the difference between the industry procedures

that are necessary and the systems and processes that you

need for scale. And again, you have to walk the tightrope of

freeing your operators as much as possible while staying within

the industry procedures and adding system and process

outside of it is not an easy thing to do, but because it's

not an easy thing to do, generally the rewards of doing

it are astronomical. If you can get through adding all of that

system and structure we talked about and still have quality

operators in key roles, those are organizations that achieve,

you know, to some extent, like hyper predictable success. This

is where you've got the blend of processor and visionary, and the

operator holding that all together and driving it forward.

You can see some extraordinary results from teams that figure

this out. Extraordinary results. It's really really cool, so it's

worth it if you can get all the way through, and that's just the

cost that you have to count before you you really go at it.

The next one is the the over synergized organization. So if

you're an over synergized organization and you need to get

to predictable success, what would a good example of this be

so? I've seen this happen for for a nonprofit that gets a

gigantic grant. Right, they've been plugging along at about a

million dollars a year, and then they get a $10 million grant

given over you know two years or three years, and it's just like

we've got to we've got to deliver on this because there's

$100 million grant behind it if we can deliver, and like you

have to go from zero to 1000 like overnight.

You gotta go, and you've got a bunch of people who aren't used

to that. They're not used to that pace. They're not used to

that speed. They're not used to the corporateness. They're not

used to the accountability. They're not used to the

pressure, and it's a real challenge. Well, again,

similarly, what you have to do is make sure that you optimize

for the operators that you have, like we talked about earlier,

and especially so because being super synergistic is very likely

to alienate your operators. So one of the things that I would

encourage you is usually what happens in this circumstance is

that you're adding a bunch of people, and the first thing that

you want to do is use that org chart stuff that we talked about

earlier, the organizational design, and design it with

operators in mind, not just the synergists that you would

normally know and like and hire. And instead of creating a hiring

process to bring in a bunch more visionary synergists like you,

try to create a hiring process that attracts operators as well.

Really, really important. Create roles in which operators can

thrive, so that when you scale up, you bring in operators. You

get a bunch of folks who get stuff done. You can actually

deliver on the promises you made that led to the reason you need

to scale up in the first place. And then it's the same areas

that we talked about earlier. It's the organization design.

It's how we make decisions. In fact, usually for synergists,

it's getting beyond consensus and this kind of over focus on

buy-in and actually moving it to where the smallest number of the

right people can make decisions as quickly as possible, as

opposed to the greatest number of everybody as possible. And

so, in all of these, what has to happen is you have to focus on

those big five areas, right? And you have to increase the

operator style. And generally, what that means is decreasing

whatever other style came in at the same time, and the problem

with that-the real problem with that-is not actually tactical in

nature at all. It's cultural in nature. The hardest part about

having to do both of these things at the same time is that

you have to-you have to, to some extent, rewire your culture to

fully embrace operators, while also going through the process

of rewiring your culture to embrace processors as well,

while also implementing all these systems and processes,

while also continuing to try and grow, it's just a lot all at the

same time. And for those of you who are in that position, and

really anybody, we'd love to help anybody, but for those of

you who the stakes are that high, I would highly recommend

that you don't try to do it alone because you can get

through, but it usually takes about three times as long when

you're trying to figure it out on your own as it would if you

had a guide that would help you through it. And so, I don't want

to make this a sales pitch that's. What it's about all the

time, but for those of you in the highly unenviable position

of having to plow through and get to predictable success

quickly, even though you don't have the ideal combination to

get there, I would strongly encourage you to find some help.

Get a guide. Get a skill architect to come in and help

you out, and it's going to make a huge, huge difference because

you won't have to guess how to grow. You can bring someone in

who's got the skill, who understands how these are, who's

done it, you know, hundreds or 1000s of times, who's seen the

patterns, who knows how they play out, and can help you to

avoid some of the biggest pitfalls. So check out our

directory. We've got lots of great scale architects all

across the country. In fact, we've even got some around the

world that you can check out, and they'd love to help you out.

They'd love to help you out. And with that, I hope you learned a

lot about Whitewater. I hope you. I hope many of you realized

you didn't actually have to be in Whitewater, and that you've

got plenty of time left in fun. That that really is my deepest

hope.

And for those of you who realize, hey, we really are in

whitewater. We've got enough people around here. We've got

enough on the line that we have to do it now, and I really mean

have to do it now. I hope you've got some insight into what that

road's going to look like, how to start addressing it both

culturally and tactically, and and I hope you get the help to

do it as well. So with that, I want to thank you for going on

this journey with me as fun little project. This is

something that I'm seeing a lot of. The reason why I wanted to

take some time on this and really make a series of it is

because I'm finding most of the people who think they're in

whitewater are actually not there by necessity. Most of the

people that I'm finding in Whitewater actually don't have

to be there, and that might be the case for you as well. And

so, with that, I hope this was helpful for you. I hope you

enjoyed this little series. I hope it was interesting. I hope

you learned something, and more than anything, I hope you have

confidence in the next step that you need to take for your

organization to achieve your vision. With that, you know your

time and attention mean the world to us. I thank you so much

for sharing that with us, and I hope you enjoyed this series. I

can't wait to see you next time. Take care. Hey everyone, Scott

Ritzheimer here. Thank you so much for listening to the Start

Scale and Succeed podcast. I hope this episode gave you

exactly what you need for the level you're in right now. If

you want to discover what level you're in, take our 10 question

Founders Evolution Quiz for free at foundersquiz.com. That's

foundersquiz.com. It'll pinpoint exactly where you are and give

you tailored tips to move forward and reach that next

level in your journey as a founder. If you got something

out of today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, rate, or

review. It helps us reach more founders like you, and let's be

honest, it means a ton to me, my team, and all our incredible

guests. So keep starting, scaling, and succeeding, and

I'll see you in the next episode.