In this Treasure Tuesday, let’s look at to what extent your business is a real asset. What rewards you are getting for your hard work?
In a previous video, I spoke about the Brilliance ATM, which has three buttons:
- Asset
- Time
- Mission
These are three things that we want from our businesses:
- We want to make a difference, which is our mission.
- We want to create some freedom and time for ourselves and others.
- We want our business to be a true asset.
I call that a Brilliance ATM; asset, time, and mission.
Brilliance is the combination of expertise, experience, and wisdom you acquire over many decades. Ultimately, that is the fuel that makes your business run.
Now let’s look at the Brilliance ATM meter, which tells you where on the trajectory you are to make your business grow to the point where it becomes independent of you and becomes a real asset.
Step 1: Initially, it is probably just you or you and a partner.
Step 2: As your business grows, it becomes an owner-centric organization. You add some people to your team and start to have a team, but the team is still looking at you and saying, “Hey, what do we do next?” That’s the owner-centric stage.
Step 3: Eventually, your company grows into a “real” company with a team of experts. This is where you’re starting to have more structure, and you have more systems, more people and procedures, and you may have an HR person.
At this point, you seem to have arrived at your destination. It’s a real company. It’s no longer just you, and it’s no longer an organization where everyone is just looking at you all the time.
However, when you have a company with a team of experts, when you examine where you are at, unfortunately, you are still a long way from the Brilliance ATM situation.
How do we know that?
You can ask some questions to find out where exactly you are; maybe you are the exception. You may farther along on the Brilliance ATM meter.
- Can you be away from your business for a prolonged period?
- Has all the knowledge in your brain that pertains to your business been transferred in a powerful way to other people?
One Common Situation Is That You Have Transferred Key Knowledge To Another Person
Let’s say Roger is your key employee, and you have transferred much knowledge to him. You are hoping that Roger will take over some key operations in your business when you want to lean out.
That may or may not happen.
Roger may have plans he’s not telling you about or experience some emergency, causing him to go away.
“Bye-bye. Sorry, but I gotta go.”
Roger is no longer there. All of a sudden, your plans of how to continue your business are collapsing.
If that scenario could occur in your business, you are at that yellow arrow on the Brilliance ATM Meter. You still have a ways to go to become a business with a real Brilliance ATM.
What that requires is that the knowledge that’s in your brain is not only transferred to a few other key people but it’s also transferred into a set of training systems. That makes the knowledge immortal. It becomes possible for others to see all the processes that are being extracted from your brain. Not just processes, but other nuggets of wisdom that come from knowing what went wrong, what didn’t work, what did work, and so forth; relationships and all kinds of things.
There is much knowledge you may not even be aware of. I’m betting my bottom penny that there are many things you know but are consciously unaware of. this is “unconscious competence.”
It’s stuff you know, and you don’t even know that you know it. But you do know it, and it surfaces when you need it. The problem is that it doesn’t surface for other people. That’s one thing. If the few key people you’ve entrusted more and more of that knowledge over the years go away for some reason, it’s a huge problem.
It’s like a Brilliance ATM where all three buttons seem to be working, and then a key person leaves (or two or three – that has happened). Suddenly, none of the buttons are working. That is the situation that many businesses find themselves in.
For example, years ago, I worked with a business that was in a bathtub refinishing business that had several locations. The owner did many things very well. He was a great CEO (and still is) and trained other people. He built multiple locations and made those look fairly independent of him. One not-so-fine day, the key crew of one of the locations just picked up and left and built a competing company. That was a big ouch.
Building a Brilliance ATM is that’s what we do. We help businesses become truly an organization that is a true asset and has all the right systems to create time.
We also help you build a success culture so that your people don’t feel like, “Oh, well, now that we have these knowledge systems, we’re no longer needed.”
No, nothing could be further from the truth. You are still needed to create new things and put your time to the highest use of your time. The mission needs you, which is the whole reason why your business even exists. Do you know why people say you’re valuable? Because you have a purpose.
I’m Curious
If you’d like to talk with us about that and see where you might be on that Brilliance ATM Meter and get some fresh eyes on that, I’d be more than happy to talk with you.
Give me a shout; send me a quick message, and we’ll chat.
Live brilliantly,
P.S.: I appreciate you commenting and sharing this Treasure Tuesday with others. Thank you!
