ScalePassion Partners with Former Navy Officer and McKinsey Consultant Tim Berthold
An expert in building self-managing teams, Tim offers help to founders in connecting the dots between strategy and execution.
When your company is in the GoGo phase of its life cycle, the founder has to bring the energy that powers the company and keeps it focused on what’s most important at any given time. The founder has to communicate the brand to the customer, investor and any other stakeholder who has a part to play in the company’s success. And the founder has to make a lot of decisions, big and small, daily and long-term, tactical and strategic.
In other words, the founder has to immerse in the business. But as the company grows out of GoGo and into adolescence, as the number of employees grows from a handful to dozens or more, as the number of investment dollars (and the demands that go with them) increases, and as the number of customers you reach grows exponentially, you have to be able to step back and think longer term, an activity that takes time to do the right way.
The only way to do this successfully is to bring a new level of talent on board, leaders who can take over some of the decision making for you and execute your strategy with their teams so that you can devote yourself to working on your business rather than in it.
The ability to lead others in connecting the dots between strategy and execution and passion and product is so important that ScalePassion went out and found a partner who learned how to do this under some of the most, shall we say, extreme and demanding circumstances.
Introducing Tim Berthold, a graduate of the US Naval Academy who served as an officer aboard fast attack nuclear submarines where he led teams in executing classified missions on overseas deployments. After his military service, he earned an MBA from Wharton and joined the management consulting firm McKinsey. He has spent the last 10 years launching multiple successful brands in the natural products space, growing them from the ground up to eight figures.
A self-described “military-veteran-health-nut-hippie-with-an-MBA,” Tim may come from an underwater world of checklists and processes, but his main takeaway from the Navy was a knack for developing self-managing teams—an important skill in the complex world of naval warfare that he’s been translating into the business world for the last ten years.
Tim puts it this way: “On a good day at sea, it was possible for the captain of our submarine to go the entire day saying only two words: ‘Very well,’” said Tim.
This surprising outcome is based on what is called “intent-based leadership,” where individuals are expected to break down problems and vocalize what they intend to do to solve it. “As officer of the deck, I may have had a contact approaching us while needing to keep our periscope raised to accomplish the mission. Rather than asking the Captain what to do, I’d tell him the key aspects of the situation and what I intended to do, without waiting for his approval. This turned me into a problem-solver while unleashing my initiative. When my approach was on-point, all the Captain only had to respond with ‘Very well,’ letting me know I was on the right path.”
This approach onboard a nuclear submarine is a lot like the kinds of scenarios any business leader faces on a daily basis, minus the nuclear power plant and missiles, of course. It’s a key component of building what Tim calls “self-managing teams.”
“I have always had this intuitive sense that the team is only as good as how well it runs when I'm not there,” is how Tim likes to describe self-managing teams. Tim is an expert at turning founder-managed teams into founder-led but otherwise self-managing teams. In this sense, the founder can still maintain overall control while removing the pressure from having to come up with all the ideas. “Most founders don’t realize it, but decision fatigue is real,” remarks Tim.
He summarizes basis of self-managing teams rests in two powerful beliefs:
The founder’s belief in the individual and that every one of us has the ability to contribute to the larger objective of the overall team;
The ability of each and every team member to act within specified, pre-approved constraints and standard operating procedures rather than depending on the leader to decide what to do.
If you’re a founder who has ever wondered, “Why can’t my people seem to get it?” or “Why do I have to do everything around here?” you will appreciate the perspective Tim brings to leading a business into healthy adolescence.
One of the exciting things about having Tim onboard the good ship ScalePassion is that he brings systems and practical tools that can be adapted to businesses right out of the box, including SOPs, scorecards, dashboards and even cascading OKRs. It’s all about getting the right people in the right place at the right time and driving clarity throughout the organization.
Do you remember that submarine captain from earlier in the blog? His officer-of-the-deck activated intent-based leadership by informing the captain of his intention, giving the captain just two words to say before execution moved forward. Then the captain poured himself a cup of coffee and returned to that great history novel he was reading.
Very well, indeed.
Sincerely,
Rob Craven, ScalePassion
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All credit to my ghostwriting partner, Dave Moore, who is instrumental in getting my thoughts out in a coherent manner & into these blogs. Thanks Dave!