By Daniel Harkavy

In April of 2007, I had the Building Champions Vision in writing. We had just released Becoming a Coaching Leader as well as a suite of new products and offerings around Coaching Leadership. It was a very exciting time for us at Building Champions.

The Global Economic Crisis Begins in August of 2007

Our first contract cancelled, then a week later, another. Soon there was nobody left to answer the phones in the headquarters of one of our larger clients.

The bottom was falling out so fast that we did not know how to respond. As the CEO and visionary, I was less than calm and confident. I was uncertain, fearful and frustrated.

Fast forward to November of 2007

We made the decision to only focus on our core offerings: one-on-one coaching, Masters Coach and onsite coaching.

By early 2008 we had righted our ship

We focused on operational and coaching excellence and everyone grabbed shovels and started digging. We launched one new offering, our first public group coaching event — The Building Champions Experience.

The last few years have been full of learning, double-digit growth, diversification and expanding our territory. The emotions I feel most days are excitement, opportunity, confidence, gratitude and passion.

What I learned from this experience

The best organizations are led by visionary leaders. These leaders not only see the trends, results, opportunities and challenges of today, they see what is possible tomorrow and in the years to come.

They have Bi-Focal Vision.

They spend 50% of their time in today’s business and 50% on strategies and with people that will enable their organizations to Take Ground in the years ahead.

I have met leaders or managers who live in today’s crisis or opportunity, always managing the now and never engaging the heads and the hearts of those they lead. The other end is where the leader is always living in the future and never managing today’s reality.

The best leaders have the ability to live in the now as well as the future.

They believe everyone on their team wants to play a role in building something special. It is up to us to own and share a vision of who we can become and what we can build if we all sacrifice and give our all to something bigger than ourselves.

My Action Plans for Leaders are:

• Your Business Vision must be in writing
• Your Leadership team owns it, plans from it
• You as CEO live and share it all the time

Second Insight, Taking Ground

Leaders must always be looking to Take Ground. We must expand our territories. If not, our teams, cultures and results will stagnate and decline. We must continually grow. This growth can be in improving our operational excellence, our footprint, market share, volume, profits, etc.

The key is for us to have a high performing executive team. We see the vision, believe the vision and truly embody the vision of the company. We must look at all aspects of our business as if each key area was a wall that surrounds our company.

A united and high performing leadership team understands and has plans for attacks that come from the outside as well as from the inside.

Too often, I have seen unhealthy executive teams where there are such turf wars, and so much dysfunction, that there are gaping holes in each of the fortress walls. Business is hard enough fighting off legislative, economic and competitive attacks. Companies don’t stand a chance when they are also getting hurt from internal arrows as well!

Think of the scene from the movie “Gladiator” where Maximus joins the elite ranks and has his debut in the Coliseum. He and his fellow gladiators go up against Caesar’s finest warriors with their horses, chariots, blades, arrows and beasts. Maximus takes the lead and tells his comrades that if they circle together and unite, they can defeat their foes but if instead they try to fight on their own, they will die. They unite, they circle and they cover each other’s backs. They win.

Please visit my blog for Actions to Take Ground:

I challenge you to take a look at each key function of your business and identify where you have great opportunity or great risk. Look at each of these areas as critical fortress walls that most be strengthened and reinforced as you expand and increase them in the pursuit of serving more customers or creating more products.

The global economic crisis tested our strength as leaders but it also taught us how to manage a company through a difficult period. There will always be challenges and there will always be opportunities. Strong leadership can mean the difference between success and failure.

Take Ground!

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