Frankly, I think the secret to a winning Q4 is getting one’s team—or oneself—focused, aligned, and on purpose.
If your team needs to stick a big landing in the final quarter of 2023, then use the Golden Circle to get everyone aligned, focused, and connected to delivering something big.
Modern Mentor is hosted by Rachel Cooke. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Hey, it’s Rachel Cooke, your Modern Mentor. I’m the founder of Lead Above Noise—a firm specializing in helping teams and organizations create better working experiences that deliver better results.
Now that we’re in full back-to-school swing, I’m spending time on the sidelines watching my daughter race.
She’s a distance runner. And some of her races go on for miles. And in watching her (which is as close as I’ll ever come to distance running myself) I notice that I pay a ton of attention to the beginning and the end. Her start and her finish. The stuff in the middle? Please don’t tell her. But I kind of lose the thread.
What’s interesting is that the stuff in the middle is just as important. Every step she takes impacts equally the outcome of her race. But I can’t help it. My attention is called to the bookends.
And really, this same thing happens at work. Like, we all work the same 12 months—the same 4 quarters. But… be honest. Doesn’t it feel like the 1st and 4th quarters just carry a little more weight?
We are—quite unbelievably to me—rolling right into another 4th quarter. And many eyes are on the work we do in this final push of the year. And leaders—or even just citizens—want to make sure this quarter really counts.
Frankly, I think the secret to a winning Q4 is getting one’s team—or oneself—focused, aligned, and on purpose. And this is where Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle becomes your best friend. I’ve used it with dozens of leadership teams, and today I’d love to walk you through how you can use it to your advantage.
So here’s how it works. Picture three concentric circles. The outer ring is your “What,” the middle ring is your “How,” and your innermost circle is your “Why.”
What makes this simple tool so powerful is that it’s not about uncovering ways to do more—to effort harder. No, it forces clarity, prioritization, and purpose. So your whole team (or self) is working together toward a focused set of goals.
This is all about goals, results, outcomes, and outputs. As you think about the balance of this year, what has your team already delivered, and what are truly just the 1 or 2 things that could tie a bow around it all?
There are some points in the year that are ripe for imagining and thinking big and expansive things. This is not that point in the year. Here we want to focus. To prioritize. To get to the essence of what you most need to deliver.
So here are some questions you might use with your team (or yourself) to facilitate the conversation that gets you all on the same page.
· What is most expected of us (by customers, partners, shareholders, etc.) by the end of this year?
· What will deliver the biggest impact to a meaningful goal?
· What is the unique value that this team—and this team alone—can bring to the organization?
I did this exercise recently with a Sales team and we uncovered some interesting disconnects.
In response to the “what” questions, some members of the team believed their primary goal was to maximize total transactions. So they were making decisions designed to chase volume. The greater the number of buyers, the better.
While other members of the team believed their primary goal was to chase profitability. Which often meant fewer sales, fewer buyers, but more dollars per sale.
Your team may do something really different. But the real question here is—are you sure you’re all working toward the same outcome? Because even a tiny bit of disconnect or a different understanding of what success looks like can lead to wasted energy and effort. Which no one can afford in the final quarter of the year.
This is all about actions, tactics, projects, and processes. It’s the ways in which things get done in service of arriving at your what. It’s about what you prioritize, how you operate, how you collaborate, all that fun stuff.
Here you might pose questions like:
· What 1 to 2 projects or initiatives are most important in getting us to that finish line?
· What meetings, processes, and collaborations support our achievement?
· What should we stop doing—or at least postpone for now—in service of landing our What?
Back to my Sales team example.
Based on our “What” conversation, it became clear that higher profitability was the primary goal. So therefore the team was able to prioritize just a handful of initiatives designed to analyze the profit margins of each product, and to identify which potential customers were most likely to be interested in only those highest-tier products.
Everyone on the team also reviewed their calendars to ensure they were only attending meetings that lined up with this goal—and they were postponing any activities that had been designed to drive volume.
They were also able to polish their outbound sales messages to focus only on the products they most wanted to highlight before year-end.
So starting with strong alignment on their “What” enabled the team to make better choices on how they would spend their collective attention and energy in the year’s final push.
You could make the case that a What and How are all you need. And you might not be wrong. But you’d definitely be missing out on something powerful.
Research by McKinsey states that “82 percent of employees believe it’s important for their company to have a purpose.” And that purpose does not have to be existential. It just has to create meaning.
I work with teams and organizations all the time to craft purpose statements. Also, sometimes called a “why” statement. As in why this team is essential to a particular outcome. Like a positive impact to a customer. Or a specific contribution to company growth.
A well-crafted purpose statement links a What to a Why. Here are a few examples I’ve borrowed from clients in recent months:
· “Our team produces compelling collateral for Sales so that clients are wowed and our business grows.”
· “Our team generates pricing strategies that enable customers to enjoy our products at a fair price while we maintain profitability.”
What you might notice about both of these statements is a few things:
· No one is saving babies.
· Each captures a meaningful contribution to something meaningful (growth, profitability).
· Each describes something done only by that one team or function.
The purpose of a Why statement is to get a whole team rallied behind something they feel an emotional connection to. Something that makes them not want to work harder, but to be more engaged in—more creative about—the work they’re doing.
So if your team is feeling a little burned or scattered or unsure of how best to wrap 2023? Try having a Golden Circle session with them. And see if you can land on some compelling clarity.
Join me next week for another great episode. Until then, visit my website at leadabovenoise.com if your organization is looking to dial up its Employee Experience or deliver some leadership development that activates change. You can follow Modern Mentor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Find and follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks so much for listening and have a successful week.