How to De-Risk Your High Stakes Strategy – Interview with Go To Market Impact founder Susan Schramm

BUSINESS GROWTH & SCALING, BUSINESS STRATEGY & PLANNING

Susan Schramm on de-risking your high stakes strategy

With an impressive background in leading go-to-market initiatives for Fortune 500 companies, my guest for today’s Rising Resilient series is Susan Schramm, founder of Go to Market Impact, and a seasoned business consultant specialising in high-stakes strategy execution and risk management. Stay tuned as Susan helps us understand how to systematically address risks, align teams, and fast-track your big ideas.

 

Welcome to our latest episode (article) where we’re thrilled to introduce Susan Schramm, founder of Go to Market Impact LLC, and a seasoned business consultant specialising in high-stakes strategy execution and risk management.

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INTRO

With an impressive background in leading go-to-market initiatives for Fortune 500 companies like IBM, Siemens, and Nokia, Susan has also played pivotal roles in driving change for startups, nonprofits, and community-focused organisations.

Susan is not only an expert in aligning leadership teams and boards to fast-track strategic initiatives but also in navigating the complex people side of operations, which is often the biggest hurdle in transforming visions into tangible outcomes. Her proprietary approach, the De-Risk System for Impact®, has been instrumental in helping leaders identify and overcome hidden risks, ensuring that their strategies are implemented successfully and swiftly.

Today, Susan will share her insights on what it takes to introduce and accelerate new strategies, especially in disruptive times, and how her unique methods can empower your organisation to achieve quicker, more impactful results. Whether you’re looking to optimise your strategic communications, manage post-merger integrations, or position your organisation for future success, Susan’s advice will be invaluable.

For anyone leading a high-stakes initiative or looking to pivot an existing strategy to meet today’s market challenges, this is an episode you won’t want to miss. Stay tuned as Susan Schramm helps us understand how to systematically fast track your big ideas, addressing the risks, aligning collaborators, and keeping everything from going off the rails.

 

INTERVIEW

JAY:

Okay, so here we are with another amazing entrepreneur joining our Rising Resilient series for the Leverage Business Podcast. A big welcome to Susan Schramm from Go To Market Impact. It’s wonderful to have you on the show, Susan.

SUSAN:

Well, thank you. I’m delighted to be part of this amazing brain trust you put together to explore resilience.

JAY:

Yeah, I’m loving the growing group that we’ve got here of women led business owners and talking about entrepreneurship and career development and resiliency from them, their specific context.

I’m really excited. Really excited to get your input here because I know that you’re going to bring some amazing insights. So I’m literally on the edge of my seat for our conversation because it’s been a long time planning, right? We talked about getting this booked in in March and then various kind of obstacles on both sides came into being. So a real test of resilience, right? Yeah, including hurricanes. Hurricanes, floods, sick relatives, all sorts of things going on.

So as you know, the theme for the series throughout 2024, I know you listened to some of the previous interviews, is Rising Resilient: Tackling Challenges and Changes in your life and business with confidence, compassion and courage. And what I found was we’ve got far more Cs going on than just those that I started with. So that’s kind of been fun.

So let me kick off with a question about how do you define resilience? What does it mean to you?

SUSAN:

The resilience word is interesting because I think we bat it around a lot. We think we understand each other. But the way I use it and find I’m building into it is this idea of moving forward, despite the potholes in the road. And that means bouncing back not only to the same place, but adapting to be able to get to even a better place. That’s resilience. It simply isn’t recovering, but it’s actually adapting to get to a better place.

Bouncing back is just one part of this – other people have said as well – it’s also bouncing forward and like going to a better place, as you said.

JAY: So what was it that jumped out particularly for you?

SUSAN:

Yeah, well, you took it on and to be honest, I saw the series, I saw the people you started interviewing and I thought: Ooh, it’s all that touchy feely stuff.  You got some great people and they have amazing ideas of coaching individuals. And what hit me as I listened to the different experts was I realised that what I could contribute to complement what they were saying, which was powerful was we’re not only talking about resilience of individuals, but resilience of how organisations and even ecosystems can actually help change the world.

This idea of resilience as an organisational attribute. And that needs to be intentional. So that’s what I’d like to contribute to the dialogue.

JAY: That was what I was hoping for as well.

For context, tell us a little bit about that work, who you help, how you help them because you’re working far more with organisations than individuals necessarily, but you’re still working with individual leaders.

SUSAN:

Right, right, at the end of the day, all organisations are made up of individuals, but yes, I’m a business consultant and I help  organisations that usually are purpose led – they have a big mission in the world – to drive new high-stakes strategies and get them accomplished faster or more often to help them get their strategy back on track when it’s falling off the track.

So my clients are CEOs and boards, leadership teams.  I work with businesses, nonprofits, and faith-based organisations, and often the situation is they have this big idea for what is possible, but then they need a lot of people to come with them. And it’s there that a lot of times the people side of a strategy falls apart, and it’s in that work that I find that building a resilient mindset is so crucial.

JAY:

We’ll come back to that as well because I know that it’s very true to your heart at the moment in terms of a book coming out and some workshops going on, and how you work, as a consultant with businesses. So, we will definitely come back to that.

Share with our listeners a little bit about your own background, your career, your life experiences that help you to show up resilient as well as help your clients.

SUSAN:

Well, we can start little.  I grew up in just an optimistic family. And I was thinking about it as I was getting ready for this. If I were to describe my dad, he’s like the little boy who’s been given a pile of manure for Christmas. And instead of being upset about it, he starts whistling and shovelling the manure. And if you were to say, what are you doing? He’d say, well, with all this manure, there’s got to be a pony here somewhere.

And that is sort of the culture of the organisation called my family. We had setbacks, a lot of moving around the country, career positives and negatives, and through that, there was always this framing of when you run into a problem, how can you take that problem and figure out how to make the best of it.

And then in my career, I ended up working in Fortune 500 companies in the IT and telecom industries. And there’s a lot of disruption: not only what we sell, like I was in sales marketing and strategy for those companies, and most of the time we were executing something that was disruptive.

So our world was changing, but also the industry itself was a mess. We had tons of consolidations and mergers and acquisitions and downsizings and restructurings. And I was always on the front row of helping this idea get executed and figuring out how for both the organisation and the people, we could make the most of this and not let it sink us.

And so my role was always driving a new idea to help people do something new. Lots of times it worked; there were times that it didn’t, and I found myself waking up worried about what can we do to take this great idea and ensure it works.

And that’s when I think I really learned resilience. I learned that resilience isn’t only a thing you just do once in a while. It’s a culture that has to be nurtured and, you know as well as I, you work in some organisations that are just more resilient than others. You can feel it. You can feel how when they get a setback, they move and they adapt and it all comes down to this, resilient leaders at all levels, not just the top, which is critical, but throughout the organisation, this adaptive leadership that creates this resilience, so an organisation can shift.

JAY:

Yeah, maybe this leads into what’s in the book, but that kind of resilient leader has certain qualities and abilities in some key areas, how you rally the troops kind of thing. What would you say were the foremost things that show up for you?

SUSAN:

So this very much compliments some of the other interviews you’ve done because I think this adaptive mindset is a critical element of this. And what’s interesting is you almost need to build that as a person, as a leader, and as an organisation as well, this adaptive mindset.

And I think that as a leader of people, you sometimes think that adaptive leadership is about telling people what to do so they can adapt and giving them answers, right? That’s often what we look to from bosses. What are we gonna do, boss, the place is a mess, things aren’t working. What are we gonna do?

And I think what is the aha for me is that adaptive leadership is about equipping people and challenge them to be courageous and confident about facing the problem without fear. So they could assess it objectively, understand it, figure out what they have as strengths, and what they have as openings, so they can move forward as part of solving it.

As part of solving it, not you being the ‘Shell Answer Man’ [1] having to have all the answers. That’s, I think, a learning for some people who as they get into leadership; they feel like they have to have all the answers.

In fact, this adaptive mindset is something that you encourage and develop at every level in an organisation.

JAY: It’s also like checking that directionally they’re going down the right path and …

SUSAN: Right.

JAY: That classic Stephen Covey of like, we’re making progress, but you’re in the wrong forest type of thing.

SUSAN:

That’s true. I mean, you’re right. You’re gonna need to, as a leader of people who are more confident in adapting, still need to make sure they’re aligned so that you’re all moving towards the same goals and have clarity about what you’re trying to achieve. But I think that moment where something disruptive has happened, maybe you lost a big customer or a product didn’t work the way you thought it was going to, or if you’re in a nonprofit, the big, big fundraiser flopped.

And in that moment, I think as a “manager”, you might feel like you give everybody the answers right there. But that’s the moment where challenging the group to think adaptively about their situation and objectively, calmly understand how to evaluate it and say, okay, this happened: what if we were to go this way or that.

When you have more questions than you have answers is actually a strength. It’s actually just as important as having the answers. It’s freeing! actually, isn’t it? It’s freeing!

JAY:

It’s very freeing, but the word evaluation always jumps out at me because that’s a key area for me in my consulting business. As you said, evaluating what’s happening and really doing that analysis and using the data to back up instincts. I think that’s probably what a leader does more than a manager.

SUSAN: Right.

JAY: Having that kind of experience or 30, 000-foot view, or mindset, however you want to put it.

There are two things I’d like to dig into a little bit. One is what do you see the difference between adaptable and agile? Because that’s a word in the consulting world.

SUSAN:

That is great. You’re right. And we talk a lot about agile because in many cases, the agile framework does reflect this idea of try shift, try shift, you know, this idea of minimal viable product that allows you to get just enough insight so that you can learn from it and then take in more about the environment at that point and move forward.

So, maybe there’s people who’ve written a lot about that. I think the way I’d frame that is the Agile toolsets and processes allow you to manage risk in a way that you’re taking on just enough new ideas to prove out a concept, and then incorporate that and move forward. There’s probably lots and lots more to it.

But when I then think about adapting, it’s more the human aspects of that. The Agile allows you to use a process for moving forward, but the Adapting is where you go from seeing this around you and internalising it in a way that doesn’t create fear.

One of the things that’s fascinating about the brain is if your brain is doing that “fight or flight” thing all the time, right?  It’s always protecting you. And that’s how we were designed. The thing that’s interesting about it is without a plan, your brain thinks it’s got to protect you. So this moment where you have this insight and in an agile way, you create a minimum viable offer or minimum viable program, and then it doesn’t work.

That moment causes your brain to get fearful. It’s the adapting that allows you to calm your brain down and say: okay, this is what we know now, how am I going to take that what we’ve learned and what needs to adapt? Is it us that needs to adapt? Is it the choices we’ve made that need to adapt? But that human ability to take this change and recognise that you aren’t necessarily in fear; that you actually can use that to your own advantage is what I would call the adapting.

I’ll have to write about that. That’s a very good point.

JAY:

Yeah, it could be just terminology and semantics, but I think, you know, you’ve unpacked it really nicely in terms of, like, one is kind of the operational agility and the other is the human agility.

The other area I wanted to touch on was when you said about creating a culture that nurtures resilience. Tell us a little bit more about that and how you would approach that if you were a c-suite leader in an organisation?

SUSAN:

Well, one of the things I’ve learned is – and this is why I ended up writing a book about it, because I found that the adapting needed to have a tool set. You really can’t adapt continually without having ways to do it. And clearly, the idea of adapting needs to have this mindset.

You also have to have this ability to embrace a “what if” scenario. You definitely want to be able to get comfortable with a regular routine for questioning the scenarios around you. And again, going back to your brain, the idea that when you see things around you that scare you, that create fear, you will shut down.

And we’ve learned that it creates anxiety; it stops decision making; it stops communication. So the idea of creating a process in an organisation that invites people to have “what if” discussions, and not shut them down as not being loyal.

You know, sometimes I’ve worked with some leaders who have the big answer and they view any kind of questioning as pushback, lack of loyalty. Right.

But in fact, the idea of having a regular rhythm of talking about “what if” – and what if these things were to happen, what would we do – can help give voice to fears or concerns and help actually invite people to see beyond their current environment, and invite people to look for what changes are going on in the environment that might disrupt our plan.

And I think that is really it.  The idea of risk as a rhythm – talking about risk as a rhythm – is another very important part of being an adaptable environment where you don’t see this as a one-time thing: we’ve got this big thing going and we’re launching it. It’s going to be perfect. And when things fail that it failed. No, you say: Likely, it won’t work as we planned. It is very likely that this road is going to be bumpy.

And when you get to that point, having a model, a process in your organisation that allows you to regularly look at that and have that just be something we do here. This is how we work here. We talk about “what if” all the time. And then if those situations come up, people are ready. And they can get ready now. That’s the other thing you’re doing is equipping them: what can we do today to get ready for these scenarios tomorrow?

Those, essentially tools, allow your people, your organisation, yourself, to respond quicker. You are a more responsive and action oriented group because when you run into those things, you’re not terrified.

JAY: A lot of those words are part of the whole agile development.

SUSAN: True.

JAY:

And also you made a point really that it’s about that mindset at all levels of the organisation. That’s how the culture comes. You can’t enforce that on people; you can only embrace it.  And it’s a little bit like “hope for the best and plan for the worst” from what I’m hearing, in terms of unpacking these risk scenarios.

SUSAN:

Yeah. And, you know, it’s not that complicated. I mean, there’s this balance between optimism that there’s something in there that can be good, but also pessimism.

Truth be told, I was a cheerleader – not a big surprise. I was wired to be very enthusiastic. People are often surprised that I’ll be the first to bring up what might go wrong. Some managers, or bosses couldn’t see this combination in me, which was, sure, let’s take the hill, but let’s bring up this ugly stuff that is the elephant in the room no one wants to talk about.

So then it leads to this idea of taking imperfect action. You know, at least we can do this. At a minimum, let’s get this done. You know, and that leads that idea of action –  and getting over the fact that it has to be perfect action – is another part of creating this adaptive culture, which allows people to sort of narrow the scope of what they need to do so that they can feel a sense of momentum.

JAY: Mm-Hmm.

SUSAN:

I’ve worked in huge IT projects and huge build outs of cities, and a lot of times the goal almost became the plan, right? It started feeling like if we didn’t accomplish that big goal, we were failing.  I think as a leader, you can contribute a lot to an organisation by framing: so what’s the minimum thing we could do where we could be proud? What could we do that would make us feel like awesome, even if it was small?

That idea of helping people move forward with that smaller scope that then they can take action, then you get that feeling of, you know, all the endorphins, all this idea – sort of an environment – that you’re moving forward and creating momentum allows the team culture to, to thrive better.

JAY:

I was thinking of the expression: “you can’t steer a parked car”. That seemed appropriate. I love that whole thing about action and momentum and taking imperfect action. Because, you know, actually, that’s how you learn how is it going? And you’re taking those tentative steps. And back to the agile-adaptable, it’s that iteration, isn’t it?  Tweaking it as it goes forward versus a whole pivot.

It’s why we do our business plans in 90 days, because by the end of 90 days, what would you like to have happened that will take you towards the bigger vision, you know, and how to eat an elephant type of scenario.

SUSAN:

Yeah, I’ve always appreciated that about how we work. I used to say, I can do anything for 2 years. I could take any job for 2 years. I can live anywhere for 2 years. I can do anything if I create the denominator over which something I can extract value.

And in the same way, I have learned, especially in working with teams, that if you can frame what success looks like in tangible terms that are in some cases steps toward the big goal, and declare victory and help people feel a sense of celebration about it.

That’s just like riding a bicycle, darn it. You don’t put a kid on a bike and say: Hey, go do it, try  you end up helping them get on a bike and just stand there for a minute and have balance.

And then, you know, that, that kind of…

JAY: Mini- wins.

SUSAN: Mini-wins. Excellent.

JAY:

Yeah. I mentioned about the evaluation because I do a lot of evaluation and right at the beginning when we’re designing the evaluation, that’s a classic question is what does success look like?

And also to talk about what it looks like across stakeholders because everyone wants a successful outcome, but they don’t always see that outcome in the same way. You know, they want different things – some are looking for the short-term wins, the immediate gains and others are more interested in the longer-term benefits and social impact. So success looks different to whoever’s perspective you’re gathering.

SUSAN:

That’s an interesting point you’re bringing up because I think adaptive cultures actually look for different perspectives.  It’s hard to work with people that are different than you, right? Let’s be honest.  It’s easier to hang out with people just like you. But one of the things that an adaptive mindset culture of an organization intentionally does is to seek different opinions internally and externally, so that you can do that “what if” thing from different perspectives.

JAY: Yes.

SUSAN: Yeah, it’s a classic case of a big strategy built in the boardroom that hasn’t talked to the front line and flops.

JAY:

Well, this is the whole go to market impact as well, because, you know, you develop your product in your cave and then you wonder why no one wants to buy it. It’s because you haven’t actually done that kind of getting visible and talking about it and gathering those perspectives.

SUSAN:

Yeah. I used to enjoy working with R&D developers, and we take a product and put it in a room with customers and have them either discuss it or use it. We’d be behind a glass screen and watch them. And often, the developers would go, that’s not what they’re supposed to be doing. They’re not supposed to use it that way. And they used to get so indignant about the fact that they had designed it with one intention and people were now like turning it upside down…

JAY: They were seeing lots of other opportunities, yeah.

SUSAN: Their frustration actually usually was an eye opener, because then suddenly they’d say, oh, it could be used for that too. Oh, I never thought of it that way.

JAY:

It makes me think of that film, Big, you know, with Tom Hanks, where he becomes the 13-year-old friend, and then he’s in his Sales and Marketing role, and he’s like, I don’t get it. He’s looking at this product going, I don’t get it. Sometimes kids find the box more interesting than the toy because they just got it so horribly wrong. So I love that.

SUSAN:

Well, you know, that’s a phrase that, it’s interesting that phrase “I don’t get it” is something that often causes senior leaders to just get really frustrated. Like, so you lay out a strategy, you have this big communication, you lay it out to all the people, and there’s usually some, either their faces say it, or they say it out loud: I don’t get it. Why are we doing this again? And it’s just so frustrating.

And I know what it’s like if you’re, you know, you’re a CEO, executive director of a nonprofit, you’ve built this all out, or you’re walking around looking to get funding. And someone you think should get it doesn’t. It’s it’s very hard.

In fact, that’s often that’s who I work with. Many of my clients are people who’ve launched an initiative, and then the feedback they’re getting is that the other side of the table just doesn’t get it. There’s this moment where they realise maybe I need some help because at that point they’ve gone through this whole journey of feeling like they’re being rejected, feeling like the other person isn’t smart, you know, all these different things that they put them in categories. But a lot of time they just haven’t anticipated the different perspectives that you’re talking about.

JAY:

Well, they haven’t gathered the perspectives. Yeah. I mean, it’s the same for entrepreneurs, isn’t it? It’s like, you know, the exactly the same happens whether you’re a big corporate or you’re just a solo entrepreneur. Is, you know, we feel deflated. We feel like we failed because we put something out and people didn’t get it. And so you have to go back to the drawing board and that can be quite hard.

SUSAN:

And I think that’s where resilience shows up. It’s like, well, what’s the attitude you’re going to bring to that situation? Is it, oh, well, I might as well give up and go get a job. Or is it, okay, so that didn’t work. What else shall I try? And it could be something completely different. Or it could be just the need to tweak something.

JAY:

That’s where working with a coach sometimes helps to build up your own belief again: like it was not as bad as it looks type of thing; it could just be one small thing or actually we need to completely move to something else and and test something else.

What I’m hearing Susan – just to dive into the book – is there’s a lot of things you talk about that’s obviously around the what ifs and the mindset and de-risking is a really big thing that you lean into. I know the book’s coming out very soon and having read the draft, there’s lots of juicy stuff in there, lots of strategies, lots of tools.

Tell us a little bit about the focus and the core lessons, the core pillars in there that have to do with resilience, if you would.

SUSAN:

So the name of the book – which in itself was an evolution, wasn’t it – is Fast Track Your Big Idea: Navigate Risk, Move People to Action, and Avoid Your Strategy Going Off Course.

JAY: Brilliant.

SUSAN:

Exactly what I’m trying to do. I wrote it to serve so many people who have a wonderful big idea to improve our world, but they get stuck because they make some common mistakes. And so really, what it is, is a practical handbook to help organisations, to help a leader, you could be in different stages of your big idea, but you’ve got this big idea that’s really on your heart that you really need to get done. And you’re trying to ensure that as you do, you avoid common mistakes and truly navigate risk.

Because it’s true that a core principle I talk about is a de-risking system for impact. This is where you can proactively plan for risk from the beginning and that it’s simple.

One of the things I did in writing the book…. I think it’s funny that I grew up in decades of tech – I was adamant to have the least number of acronyms I could in the book – different roles, all different backgrounds, all different cultures, to allow them to approach risk in a way that was comfortable to talk about.

Lots of times people don’t talk about risk; they don’t have a way to talk about it. And really what I wanted to do is provide a system for talking about risk that would unearth the visibility of those risks and help people plan for how to launch.  But also, when things did go off track, have a place to go to help go back to the drawing board and think through: okay, where are we in this plan? And what about those risks happened? And which ones can we address right now? And which ones might we run into down the road?

JAY: Back to evaluation.

SUSAN: Right.

So I frame something called “how to create an acceleration advantage”. As I was getting ready for this conversation, I realised I could have called it a resilience advantage. It’s the same concept.

I defined four factors that need to be considered when you drive a big new idea. And one is De-Risking, the other is Aligning – that idea of getting people on the same page to move forward and continue to move forward. Another is Communicating, so people can take action, not just telling them that helping them take forward action. And the last is Adapting.

And so what I do in the book is provide lots of tools and exercises and specific things you can do at different stages of your strategy, and apply them to ensure that you’re moving forward.

JAY:

That’s brilliant. I can’t wait for it to come out, just to get it into people’s hands and be able to point people at it. Because it really complements a lot of the work that I do.  So, thank you for sharing that.

I think we’ve sort of covered this, but I was going to ask, what do you personally lean into as challenges and obstacles and when crisis moments hit you? So as an example, you’ve just dealt with your parents in Florida getting hit by hurricanes and flood damage and all the rest of it. So, and obviously that takes you then out of the business. What are some of the ways that you rise above it in those more personal moments as well?

SUSAN:

It’s funny, someone else asked me that said, did you use your book during the last few weeks? And I said, it’s interesting because a lot of the concepts are relevant.   This idea of what’s the purpose? What problem are you solving?

The first thing we talk about in de-risking is what problem are you solving? What’s your why? And not simply the why like Simon Sinek talks about the “why” people want to know, what are we doing this for? But what knowing the problem you’re solving helps you do is adapt quicker when things go wrong. Because there are lots of ways to solve it. Right. And I mean, when you’re in the middle of a hurricane and you have no power and no water, it does make for a more disruptive environment. But there’s a tendency to broaden to have it be so aspirational.

People talk about their big why is so aspirational, but unless you clarify the problem you’re solving and know what you’re trying to do as a family or as an organisation and everyone understands that together, you can waste a lot of energy not working as a team.

JAY: Prioritising.

SUSAN: Right. It means that people work at cross purposes sometimes. Yeah, and not prioritising. Exactly. And the other thing is: one of the big principles – I identify six principles for de-risking – and the first is this idea of why and why now. Because a lot of people talk about big aspirational whys, but they often don’t challenge themselves to think about why is that relevant now.

JAY: Okay.

SUSAN:

Even personally in a career, or in a family life, right? These big things that you want to accomplish may be important, but is it the right thing to do in this moment, in this marketplace, in this condition?  And if not, you won’t get the support; people won’t rally around it. And that’s frustrating.

A lot of times, I think there are really well-intended initiatives that I’ve worked with people in all different industries and in emergency services and in 5g technology and all these different things we do to make the world smarter.

A lot of times people, I think, get to the point and I have gotten to the point where you have to step back and say, this may be appropriate, it’s just not the problem for right now. It’s not the problem that people care about solving today. And that is sometimes humbling, or frustrating because they should.

JAY: It could be an idea ahead of its time.

SUSAN:

Right. I had one client who was trying to create a movement to improve the healthcare system. And it’s a wonderful thing. But unless a movement starts with five people doing something right now.

That idea is something that I think comes in handy throughout my life is just, okay, what’s the problem we’re solving? And what’s the problem we’re solving today?

JAY:

Even when you’re writing a sales page for a product, I mean, our three questions are: Why this? Why now? And why you? Why are you the people, or the person to be doing this. What do you bring to the table?

SUSAN:

As I was getting ready for this conversation, I was thinking about the kinds of people that I find most satisfying to work with when I help them adapt and develop the plan for risk. And they’re often frustrated. I mean, they’re people who, when you first meet with them, they’re not necessarily the happiest people to work with because they’re already have a big vision for what they want to do, and they want to accomplish this. But I think that the thing that is common is that they have a heart for some impact they want to make.

I find actually that if you’re in the middle of the room where everybody’s arguing over the direction to take, if you step back and say: What are we trying to achieve? What’s the problem we solve? Who are we going to impact? There is an energy that comes to the room. Everybody sort of finds the centre.

The organisations that I choose not to work with anymore are the ones that truly their end goal is growth; growth for growth’s sake, not the outcomes in lives and communities that they can make.

And so it’s been a very interesting test for me, as I prioritise my own business and my clients, is to work with individuals that not only want to make an impact for their business, but they want to actually change and improve lives around them. And that almost is a qualification criterion for adapting. If you understand human need. Humans need to feel like they’re relevant in the world, that they made a difference. And if it’s simply, your numbers are bigger next year.

JAY:

That’s so interesting because that’s one of the reasons I love working with nonprofit and I work in the nonprofit sector on the consulting side.  But actually, in the work that I do with a lot of entrepreneurs and small businesses is that they are mission-driven. It’s something Sophie Lechner leans into and she was on the show earlier.

Because you do have those sorts of conversations where it’s not just about the money. And like I’ve just said, it’s not just about the money. You take the money, but it’s not just about the money; it’s also about the impact. Your brand, Go To Market Impact, is perfectly aligned with that. So interesting.

SUSAN:

The technology organisations are interesting because they sometimes can lose their way. They’ll say, we’re going to make a product that makes this widget connect to this widget faster, you know, and you have to always be translating, translating, to accomplish what, so that what, you know.  And it’s funny, cause I think there’s a personality type that doesn’t want to be soft.

However, when I always say, so tell me what a day in the life will look like when you’ve accomplished that. Tell me about the change that you’re going to have in individuals or in families or in communities. And that you pull the thread and often it’s nothing there.

It’s almost a test of a board too. If the board doesn’t understand that, their ability to guide and govern – the consequences of financial decisions and everything – is often hurt.

And so I tend to go there more often than the typical consultant would, where they do a lot about traditional objectives. If it doesn’t get personal, and you don’t feel a sense of outcome that you’re creating, it tends to just get completely cerebral and you’re just sitting there checking boxes, right? It doesn’t resonate and you aren’t guarded from making decisions that have consequences you haven’t thought about.

I remember one wonderful nonprofit I was working with had a board; they went into a room, had a brainstorming session to finding what they wanted to be, they walked out. And the executive director was doing fundraising and every board member seemed to have a different definition of what they were doing. So they tried to follow up on leads and follow up on funders and stuff. Everybody was describing it different.

And getting them together and back in one place that they could articulate their strategy, and what they were and what they were not, was one of the most time efficient improvements for that organisation.

JAY: That’s the alignment you were talking about.

SUSAN:

It’s the alignment, exactly. And it was funny because we went to zero to 60 in days that had taken me years of frustration. And a lot of that had to do with forcing a very willing – they thought they were helping – but they were just interpreting this vision so differently. And I think sometimes there’s a tendency to differentiate between the vision, someday we could, and the game plan.

JAY: The game plan. Yes.

SUSAN:

For what the next three years might look like, and as you say, the next 90 days will look like, and that reining them in without crushing, you know, is important. And then the organisations that say, well, we could be big, we could be global, we could…. and if that’s just the goal just being big and global and there’s no impact on lives, I walk away. That’s not my plan.

JAY:

And also they’re sometimes a group of individuals rather than a collection of like-minded people. And you mentioned, growth for growth’s sake, and then later you were talking about the widgets, and that sort of innovation for innovation’s sake.

We always look at two things. We look at the risk environments, obviously, you know, true to your heart. And the market environment, because the market changes, customer behaviour changes, what people want and feel  they value in the world changes, especially after COVID, we’ve talked about that a fair bit. And so, you’ve got to adapt and move with that, haven’t you? So yeah, that’s the world we live in.

So would you say that those six steps and six questions, is that what you would say is your positive superpower for rising resilient. Or is there another dimension?

SUSAN:

Yes, in a way. As I said, God wired me to be energetic and enthusiastic about new ideas. And it really has been my brand essentially, since I was three years old. But at this point in my life, I think this ability to help people talk about risk in a way that’s not scary, that can be openly discussed, and can bring people together to approach it objectively with simple ideas, helps them navigate risk. And that’s, I think, my superpower right now.

As one client said: with you in the room, I feel more courageous. And I felt like that is a superpower in the sense that the approach helping people become calmer and more courageous about approaching the risks around them is what I feel I’m called to at this chapter in my life.

And the tools and the approach I use and the ways I’ve now developed to help people is I guess a superpower for this time in our world. It had a lot of risks in it and those risks, macro risks or micro risks.  But having a comfortable way to talk about it without feeling like you’re failing. And in fact, in a productive way, I think it’s a superpower.

JAY:

I love that. And you’ve given me another C, which is calm. Obviously, we talk about courageous and confident and those feel like very go-getter type qualities, but that ability to stay calm when there’s chaos around you, I think is incredibly important as a leader, but also for yourself as a business owner, isn’t it?

I see that showing up all the time. I mean, not only your positive energy, but your kind of calm way of thinking through something and you’re not a panic person. And, I noticed that a lot.

SUSAN:

My dad was a turnaround specialist and financial guy. And he worked with all different people from different industries. And he said, there’s two things that you can bring to a crisis. One is calm and the other is humour. And he said those two things in the middle of the fray can really help people move forward. So I’m trying to do both.

JAY: That’s why we’re always laughing on our coach calls.

SUSAN: Exactly. What’s important is my faith, my family and a bottomless cup of coffee fuels me.

JAY:

Susan, this has been incredible. You’ve given us some deep, deep insights and as I say I can’t wait for the book to come out. And I know that you’re running some workshops or will be running some workshops as well. So if we’ve got the details for that, we’ll share them in the show notes as well.

So thank you so much for joining me here. This has been just brilliant. Thank you.

SUSAN:

Thank you for your tenacity in including me despite all the rescheds. I just love that organisational resilience complements so well and is so important to have the individual resilience at all levels in an organisation to create that culture. It was fun to talk about it.

JAY:

Awesome, thank you.

SUSAN:

Thanks. Have a good weekend. Thank you.

 

Endnote

The Shell Answer Man was a series of television advertisements from the 1960s through the 1990s sponsored by Shell Oil in which answers were provided to common questions from the public about driving, with advice on vehicle maintenance, repair and safety, as well as guidance to users of home heating oil. Found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_Answer_Man

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