There is an enormously seductive alternative to doing the hard, tedious work of building a functioning business: find one exceptional person and hope they make the problems go away.
Business owners do this all the time. Instead of establishing an operating system, defining processes, creating measurements, assigning accountability, building a marketing plan, and installing a CRM that actually gets used, they go looking for a hero.
The fantasy is understandable.
The right operations manager. The right salesperson. The right property manager. The right executive assistant. The right integrator. The right rainmaker.
Somewhere out there, presumably, is a magnificent human being who possesses unusual intelligence, extraordinary initiative, impeccable judgment, inexhaustible energy, perfect memory, exceptional people skills, and an almost supernatural ability to discern what the owner meant without being told.
Hire that person, the theory goes, and the owner can finally relax.
This is not a management system.
It is an external locus of control disguised as a hiring strategy.
The distinction is not whether external events matter. Of course they matter. The distinction is where the owner instinctively looks for the cause of results—and therefore where he looks for the solution.
Results are expected to come primarily from forces outside the owner's direct control:
The economy. The market. Employees. Organizations and relationships. Referrals. Luck. Timing. Talented hires. Influential connections. Serendipity.
Results are treated primarily as the consequence of deliberate choices, habits, systems, measurements, standards, and repeated execution.
External conditions are acknowledged, but attention remains focused upon the variables management can actually influence.
Every business is affected by external circumstances. Markets matter. Interest rates matter. Employees matter. Competitors matter. Luck matters.
But internally controlled companies concentrate their attention on the variables they can govern.
Externally controlled companies spend enormous amounts of time hoping that circumstances, people, connections, or opportunities will eventually align in their favor.
Hiring excellent people is good.
Depending upon excellent people instead of building a system is something very different.
“She'll figure it out.”
“He's experienced. He shouldn't need a checklist.”
“I need somebody who takes ownership.”
“A really good operations manager would just know what needs to be done.”
These statements often sound like high standards.
Sometimes they are merely evidence that the owner has declined to perform the work of management.
The business has no clearly documented process, so the employee is expected to invent one.
There is no dashboard, so the employee is expected to somehow know whether performance is good.
There are no explicit accountabilities, so the employee is expected to infer them.
There is no meeting rhythm, so communication occurs when someone happens to remember.
There is no documented standard, so the owner evaluates performance afterward according to whatever standard happens to be in his head.
The employee has not been hired into a job.
The employee has been hired into an organizational vacuum.
A durable company does not depend upon clairvoyance.
It creates an operating environment in which competent people can reliably succeed.
What exactly are we trying to accomplish? By when? How will we recognize success?
Who owns each outcome? Not who is vaguely “involved,” but who is responsible for seeing that it happens?
What are the recurring steps required to produce the desired result consistently?
What numbers tell us whether the process is working before a customer, employee, regulator, lender, or bank account tells us that it isn't?
When do we deliberately review reality, identify constraints, resolve issues, and make decisions?
When reality differs from the plan, how quickly do we notice, learn, and correct course?
Call it EOS. Call it Scaling Up. Call it Rockefeller Habits. Call it a management system. Call it disciplined execution.
The particular vocabulary matters less than the principle:
The same external-locus temptation appears in business development.
An owner wants more customers, but rather than building a marketing system, he joins something.
A trade association.
A networking group.
A mastermind.
A business organization.
He pays the dues. He attends the meetings. He gets the name badge. He occasionally sits at a table with eight other business owners.
And then he waits.
Associations, networking groups, and masterminds can be extraordinarily useful. They can provide education, credibility, relationships, market intelligence, introductions, friendships, and opportunities.
But they are ponds. They are not fishing.
Joining an association does not create a prospecting system.
Joining a networking group does not create a sales pipeline.
Attending a meeting does not create follow-up.
Sitting next to an interesting person does not create a relationship.
Exchanging business cards does not create a sales process.
Some owners effectively operate according to a marketing plan that looks like this:
Join organizations.
Show up occasionally.
Meet some people.
Be generally pleasant.
Wait for something to happen.
Then, six months later:
“Networking doesn't work.”
Maybe.
Or perhaps nothing was actually executed.
There was no target market. No prospect list. No outreach cadence. No follow-up standard. No pipeline stages. No activity target. No proposal process. No conversion measurement. No systematic re-engagement.
There was simply an expectation that proximity would eventually turn into prosperity through serendipity and osmosis.
A real marketing plan answers concrete questions.
- Who exactly are we trying to reach?
- What problem do they have that is expensive enough to matter?
- Why should they care about us?
- Where do these people congregate?
- How will we initiate contact?
- What happens after the first conversation?
- How many touches are required?
- Who follows up?
- How often?
- What constitutes a qualified opportunity?
- What is the next action on every open opportunity?
- What conversion rates are we actually achieving?
Notice how little of this depends upon luck.
It depends upon deciding what to do and then doing it repeatedly.
A marketing plan that exists only in the owner's head is not much of a plan.
Eventually somebody forgets.
The business card disappears.
The promising prospect is never contacted again.
A referral source hears nothing for eleven months.
Someone says: “Whatever happened to that person we met at the association meeting?”
Nobody knows.
Who the people are, how you know them, what matters to them, when you last contacted them, what happened, what stage the relationship is in, and—most importantly--what happens next.
A CRM is not a digital Rolodex.
It is the execution mechanism for the marketing plan.
If nobody reliably updates it, nobody reviews it, and nobody acts from it, the company does not have a CRM.
It has software.
| External-Locus Interpretation | Internal-Locus Interpretation |
|---|---|
| I joined an association. | I identified people in the association who fit my market and created a deliberate relationship-development plan. |
| I belong to several networking groups. | I use those groups deliberately to learn, develop expertise, build trust, identify people I can help, and initiate relevant conversations. |
| I go to networking events. | I create a measurable number of meaningful conversations and enter specific follow-up actions in my CRM. |
| I hired an experienced manager. | I hired an experienced manager into clearly defined accountabilities, processes, metrics, and meeting rhythms. |
| I hired a salesperson. | I gave the salesperson a defined market, offer, pipeline, activity standard, CRM, and conversion process. |
| We're hoping referrals pick up. | We have a referral-generation and re-engagement process that somebody owns. |
There is a profound difference between participating in an environment where good things could happen and constructing a process designed to make desired things more likely to happen.
is not the same as
Goal + System + Execution + Measurement
A business owner with an external locus of control repeatedly looks outward:
Who can I hire? What group can I join? Who can introduce me? What marketing gimmick can I buy? When will the economy improve? Why aren't employees taking ownership? Why aren't referrals coming?
An owner operating from an internal locus asks harder questions:
What have I failed to clarify? What have we failed to systematize? What behavior have I failed to require? What are we not measuring? What are we not following up on? Where does accountability disappear? What does our data actually say?
Those questions are less comfortable.
They are also considerably more useful.
Building an operating system is tedious.
Writing down processes is tedious.
Clarifying accountabilities is tedious.
Maintaining a CRM is tedious.
Following up with prospects is tedious.
Reviewing scorecards every week is tedious.
Reconciling what people said they would do with what actually happened can be uncomfortable.
That is precisely why the superstar fantasy is so attractive.
It promises to eliminate all of this administrative friction by transferring responsibility to somebody remarkable.
But mature businesses are not built upon the hope that remarkable people will continuously rescue poorly designed systems.
They are built so that good people can produce good work repeatedly.
None of this is an argument for hiring mediocre people.
Hire exceptional people whenever you can.
But give them something worth joining.
Give them clarity. Give them numbers. Give them documented processes. Give them meaningful authority. Give them feedback. Give them a cadence. Give them a system that preserves what they learn.
The distinction matters enormously.
Join associations. Join networking groups. Join masterminds. Attend conferences. Meet people. Hire talented employees. Build relationships.
But do not confuse any of those activities with having built a business.
Associations provide access. Employees provide capability. Software provides tools. Markets provide opportunity.
Management converts those ingredients into results.
Establish the operating system. Establish the marketing plan. Establish the CRM. Establish the measurements. Establish the cadence. Establish accountability.
Then execute.
And when reality differs from the plan, do not wait for serendipity, osmosis, another networking meeting, or the arrival of a mythical superstar to save you.
Look at the evidence. Find the constraint. Fix the system.
