les mckeown- predictable success (unplugged)

8/7/2019 Les McKeown- Predictable Success (Unplugged)

1/20

Predictable Success (UnpluggeA conversation between Les McKeown & Moe Abd

www.33voices.com
http://www.33voices.com/


2/20

Predictable Success (Unplugged) !Les McKeownwith Moe Abdou!

33voices.com 1

A b o u t Les McKeown & M o e A b d o u L e s M c K e o w n

Les McKeown is an accomplished entrepreneur, strategic advisor,bestselling author and highly regarded business speaker. His latest book -Predictable Success - is a rare blueprint to help businesses of all sizesdevelop the skills, tools and business strategies to increase profits andcreate sustainable growth. As a native Irishman, Les first distinguishedhimself as that countrys youngest-ever accounting partner.

Moe Abdou

Moe Abdou is the creator of 33voices a global conversation about things

that matter in business and in life. [email protected]

www.33voices.com
http://www.33voices.com/http://www.33voices.com/


3/20


33voices.com 2

This is Moe Abdou. Im delighted today to be joined by Les McKeown,author of, in my opinion, the best business book that have been written inthe last few years - Predictable Success. Les, Im more excited to have thisconversation with you today than I have been in a long time. I reallyappreciate you joining us.

Im absolutely delighted to be with you Moe. Thank you for having me.

First of all, as I have mentioned briefly, I was wondering when I firstpicked up this book about three months ago, where it was 20 years ago.Hundreds of books are written every year on the topic of business successand evolution of business.

I think it might be important Les to share your perspective early on. Whatmakes Predictable Success, for those who havent read it, a little bit more

unique than a lot of these other business books that are written out thereall year?

My own view of course is going to be coming from a slightly biased perception. Ithink that what has made the bookcertainly in terms of the feedback that Iget from people who have read it. What has really given it the impact that ithas is that first of all, I have been able to encapsulate literally a lifetimeswork in watching and participating in what makes organizations succeed and

fail into something as very readable.

I combine I think an anecdotal way of telling the story of the life cycle of asuccessful business together with really hard edged stuff that I have learnedhaving suffered bruises out in the marketplace. I started 42 businesses myselfbefore I was 35 years of age. Since then I have helped literally hundreds more.

Even a dumb Irishman like me, you got to see some patterns as you go along. Ithink I put those into a very readable format that is also instantly actionable.You know, you read the book, you put it down, and you go do the stuff that Ishare in there. You dont sit and mull about it for a long time.

About a week and a half ago, I had a small mastermind group of

entrepreneurs here in San Diego that I visited with and I brought them eacha copy of your book. As I was handing the book to a very young, veryambitious and successful entrepreneur, he looked at the title and looked atme and said, Moe, if success were really easy and predictable, why isntevery entrepreneur wildly successful because nobody gets into thesebusinesses to fail? I felt that was a great lead in to our discussion thatday. Im curious how you would respond to that.

www.33voices.com


4/20


33voices.com 3

The first thing I would say is that I dont think youll find the word easyanywhere in the book. I dont say it anywhere. I dont claim that predictablesuccess is easy. In fact, one of the things that I show is that at two criticaltimes in any organizations development stages I call Whitewater orTreadmill getting through those stages and getting to the stage that I call

Predictable Success is in fact incredibly painful. I mean, it really is toughparticularly for founders or owners. That would be the first thing. Im notsaying that its easy. Im saying its achievable and its much more achievable

once you know the vocabulary and the methodology that I laid out.

The second thing is that many of us have got different varieties of businesstraining if you want to call it that. Im from the school of Hard Knox. I learnedbasically everything that I put in the book from the reality of building, running,growing businesses. There are a lot of wonderful business leaders out therewho have got a huge academic background supporting all of their knowledge

about business leadership.

It doesnt matter where you come from. Nobody ever sits down and tellsbusiness leaders that success can be predictable. Its like were given theexpectation for success. After all, thats why we do it. Then we give it a wholeset of tools to achieve it but nobody ever really links the two and says, how doyou use the tools and what sequence to get success in your business which areleft to rummage around the toolkit to see whats appropriate at what point.

Really, all I have done with predictable success in one sense is to show what

the sequencing of the use of the most common tools that we all meet everydayin building a world class business like building an orchard for example. Wheredoes that come in, when do you use it and how do you use it.

I think thats the main thing that I have heard people said to me over and overagain. You know Les, Im not reading anything here that I have never knownbefore but what you have done for the first time is you really showed me tohow sequence all of this.

And make a sense of a lot of this as well. There is a beautiful model thatsillustrated in your book. Again, I want to really focus on the steps in themodel but talk to me a little bit about the early stages of a business fromyour experience?

What I show in the book and, I should mention that I didnt invent any of thisstuff as I say in the introduction. I just spent a long time chipping away until Idiscovered what was underneath what are the fundamental dynamics of

www.33voices.com


5/20


33voices.com 4

business success that every organization goes through whether its for profit ornot for profit.

I did spend a lot of time by getting vocabulary right. I wanted to be able toconvey these lifecycle stages as intuitive a way as possible. As I said, I dont

make them up. Its just a reflection of what anybody who has been in businesswill already recognize.

What I have noticed is that there are three growth stages if you will that leadup to the apex of maturity for an organization; the stage that I call PredictableSuccess. Those three growth stages real quickly are, first of all, Early Strugglewhich is pretty obvious to anyone. Typically, though Im generalizing hugelyhere, around about three years for most businesses.

Its all about finding a sustainable profitable market. Thats all it is. The race is

to get to that sustainable profitable market before your external funding runsout. About 80% of all businesses dont even make it through that stage; a high

death rate in Early Struggle.

For the not lucky but hardworking 1 in 5 that get through their businesses getto the second stage which I have given a highly technical name. I call it funbecause thats what it is its fun. Its the first stage rocket ship growth thatmost businesses go through starting from really low market share.

Weve got our profitable, sustainable marketplace. Were very enthusiastic,

loyal. We sell like crazy. The business grows like crazy. We build the myths andlegends of the business. We snatch victory from the jaws of defeat on a weeklybasis. And then with that success and fun, comes an avoidable complexity asthe business is growing through Fun it gets more complex.

At some point, every organization hits the third stage which I call Whitewater.Thats really the point at which the growth of the business has brought adegree of complexity that takes the ability away from the founder/owners tomanage the business viscerally. The business and fun quite rightly is typicallymanaged by the gut.

You worked very close to decision making. We can make things happen. We canturn in a dime. We say things they get done. But at some point, we hit thestage of Whitewater where weve got to put some systems and processes inplace. Really, its the point at which management needs to be professionalized.

You talked about the Early Struggle phase. The focus of that particularphase in the business cycle is to identify the market. Is it correct to

www.33voices.com


6/20


33voices.com 5

assume that the majority of people who fail in that stage there are tons is it because of a lack of focus on identifying that particular niche?

More or less. There are a number of sort of sub-versions of that. Essentially,they fail either because there is just an outright lack of a sustainable market

for their product or service. Sometimes people launch businesses and painfullydiscover that just not enough people are interested in what they have to offer.But more often than not, they just miss the mark.

One of the things, for example, were seeing at the moment just as we talk iswere beginning to see over investment in tech startups. There is sort of aslight bubble sense to all of that. One of the things that I have noticed over theyears is that when startups get over invested, it numbs them to the importanceof finding their sustainable profitable market very quickly. They think there is alot of cash rolling around that they can just buy another 9:35 share, spend

another three weeks in R&D.

Really, what youve got to do whether youre a tech or not, you got to have abuzzer or a bell or something on your desk and be able to ring it once everydayto indicate that youve gotten closer to finding exactly who is your targetmarket and how do we sell to them. That sort of ruthless focus on who is ourtarget market and how do we get to them. Thats what gets you out of earlystruggle.

Can you share with us your personal experience with your first startup?

One of them that I talk about in the book Im a CPA by training or achartered accountant as we called ourselves back in the UK. A colleague ofmine, another chartered accountant, bought the master license for Pizza Hutfor Ireland. That might sound pretty routine but in Ireland, we had no historyat all of destination restaurants such Pizza Hut. We had Mom and Poprestaurants. There were no McDonalds in those days. There was no Burger King.We were the first people into the market. Believe me teaching Irish people toeat flat and hard bread was no mean feat.

I can imagine.

Here we were, two bright, as we thought, certainly financially literateaccountants of all things but very entrepreneurial people, the pair of us. Wethought we couldnt fail with this. Pizza Hut gave us all of the manuals and the

details and the spreadsheets. It looked like a no-brainer.

www.33voices.com


7/20


33voices.com 6

Well, nine months into this thing, we were deep in debt. I talked about it inthe first chapter. I remember clearly staring out the window of our conferenceroom one really wet November day in Belfast and thinking, how did two brightchartered accountants get themselves so deeply in debt here?

We had just done exactly what we just talked about. We havent really thoughtthrough who our target market was. We had to work out how do we get peopleto come in and eat in these restaurants when theyre not used to.

As it turned out for us the secret was to discover that really our target marketwere young families with young children because the restaurant was very, veryappealing to young people. Once we got that and we re-tooled what we weredoing and focused towards it then it all began to come right but it took us ayear to get it right.

How about the mindset? Tell us a little bit about the mindset that you hadthrough that process?

Of working through what we were looking for in Pizza Hut?

Yeah, absolutely.

Of course, in those days, I have been brainwashed by my accounting training tobelieve that it was all about the numbers. What we really changed in me, notjust in the Pizza Hut startup but in all of the startups that I did was it becameabundantly clear to me very early on that the numbers are only one part of thestory.

Sure its good to be well-financed and its good to be well-structured. You canthrow as much as money as you want at the wrong people and youll never geta good business. If you picked the wrong team you can over fund them untilyour blue in the face. Theyre not going to deliver. Conversely, if you get theright people we have all seen really good people deliver successfulbusinesses that are grossly under funded. We call it bootstrapping these days.

Part of the learning process that I was going through at that point was to move

away from Im not thrashing the training that I got as an accountant. You doget a narrow focus there that has been, to my great credit ever since then, oflooking at the PNL, the balance sheet, and cash flow. I learned, at a greatexpense, that thats only one dimension of at least a four dimensional part of

success. The second part is getting the team right.

www.33voices.com


8/20


33voices.com 7

The third thing that really made the Predictable Success methodology begin tocome together was I then learned many years later through work that I wasdoing with incubation units helping other people launch businesses that eventhe people and the money together wouldnt deliver success through the whole

life cycle.

What I discovered was its the people, its their financing but its also thestructure within which they operate. To cut a very long story short, what Idiscovered in short order was that you could launch businesses that were wellfinanced with the right team but once they hit that second stage that I calledFun, and then moved into Whitewater, the whole structure of the businessneeded to shift in order for it to succeed in the third stage.

You talk a lot about good decision-making and success in any businesslarge or small is a process of repeatedly making good decisions. Im curious,

who are some of the best decision makers that you have worked with?

Probably the best people that I have seen are folks that just nobody wouldknow their name. I have been very impressed with the founder or owners oflarge businesses and Im talking here, in many cases, of businesses that are halfa billion to a billion dollars in revenue. You really got to be a world class

decision maker to take a family business to that size.

There a number of folks that wouldnt thank me for talking about them butprivately hold businesses in the heartland here in the U.S. where you maybe

got a second or a third generation family member who has typically had it easy,maybe even had a soft ride because dad or grandpa built the business. If theyhad wanted to, they could have just rested on its laurels but instead havereally taken hold of the business and pushed it forward and deliveredsubstantial growth to what could have been a very old slowly declining business.

As in generic terms, that sort of group of people continues to impress me. Theyare the heart of who I work with and its why I work with them. Im justfascinated and full of admiration for founder or owners who take the businessto the third level, in terms of what were seeing out there at the moment, thesame people that are mentioned frequently.

I think Steve Jobs does a wonderful job of, almost in a sense, pretending to bethis PR crazed, upfront, and charismatic guy. He is all of those things. I thinkone of the things were going to discover in the next couple of years as hepresumably will move away a little bit because of his health from themanagement of the business is that hes a superb leader and that there is areal depth to how the business is being done there.

www.33voices.com


9/20


33voices.com 8

I love to listen to Warren Buffet talk about how he makes decisions. I listen tothat man read the telephone book but when he starts talking about how andwhy he thinks about what he does, hes got a superb brain.

Is there a particular pattern that you see in these great decision makers? I

think one of the things that handicaps especially Im going to sayemerging businesses, that 10 to 20 million dollar businesses the abilityto make those decisions. Are there patterns that people can gain fromgreat decision makers that are out there?

Its interesting I was having a discussion just last week with a group of investorsasking me the same thing as we debated around the table. The way in which itcoalesces for me is that I see a lot of people who would be capable of beingreally world class business leaders and world class decision makers, if you wantto put it that way.

If they werent so convinced about the uniqueness of their own business andsometimes themselves we have a phrase back in Northern Ireland where Icome from. We talk about somebody having a wire by themselves.

Sometimes I see people who are in organizations where they are reallybelieving their own PR too much. When you look at people like Buffet and thelatter Bill Gates not so much the early Bill Gates, he definitely didnt have awire about himself. What you see is a person who is able to think systemically.In other words, their business, they see it as part of the universe or the solar

system in which it operates and they talk from that perspective. So its almostas if they are above whats going on and seeing the broader patterns.

Sometimes I see a CEO and he or she is sitting I was watching one just inCharlie Rose the other night. Its almost like they wear their own businesseslike an accessory and everything about the uniqueness of what they have got.

Well, no business is that unique believe me. I have been inside literallyhundreds, probably by now, thousands of businesses. While there is a degree ofuniqueness to every business, 80% of what they do is absolutely the same. Youbetter understand where you fit in the wider scheme of things or youre goingto get bitten. So that systemic thinking, that ability to get up above and seethe patterns is really what for me marks a great leader.

Its interesting that you bring that up because one of the real eye openingconcepts for me in the book personally was this whole concept ofWhitewater. As an entrepreneur, as somebody who for the past 25 yearshas worked and coached with entrepreneurs specifically in the wealth

www.33voices.com


10/20


33voices.com 9

management business, I know that this whole issue of Whitewater isunavoidable. How does an entrepreneur make sense of that?

The great thing about my job is this, for most entrepreneurs, founders orowners, many professional CEOs, general managers or whatever who are in the

driving seat when the business hits Whitewater, they are not sitting with mygraph or any other understanding of life cycle. Imagine where theyre at.Typically the business will have six to seven, maybe eight or nine years of funand then it will hit this Whitewater stage. It can happen at any time buttypically thats the sort of model.

But when youre going through that Fun youre not thinking, this is early stagegrowth; this is the second of seven stages. Youre just thinking this is what Iwas made for. This is how business is supposed to be. I can do no wrong.Everything I touch is turning to gold. This is wonderful and then bang, the

business hits Whitewater. And although it takes between three to six monthsfor it to really take hold; it really is like driving in the molasses. Everythinggrinds to a halt.

So for that CEO, founder or owner or manager, theyre not thinking here is anatural stage in growth. They are thinking, holy cow, my child, my baby, mybusiness, this thing thats everything to me is dying. They think they are on thelast stage of the lifecycle which I call Death Rattle and theyre not. Theyre

going through adolescent growing pains.

When I get to show people the lifecycle; literally, theyre just a physical imagethat I have there. This is why I worked so hard and long of getting thevocabulary right. I try to get to the point and I got there. I can have somebodysee exactly where they are and the fact that this is a natural stage anddevelopment and that if they do the right things, theyll not only survive.Theyre going to come through to the best stage which is Predictable Success. Ican get people to see that within literally seven minutes. Thats a wonderfulthing for me to be able to do.

It was a complete eye opener for me too. One of the things that I was goingto say here is this is unfortunately, where I personally have experiencedand seen a lot of people give up.

Yes, exactly right because its devastating. You feel a combination of things.First of all, you think, oh my goodness, all of the people who told me I was anidiot when I started the business up in Early Struggle; all the folks who said,youre crazy just to stay where you are. Theyre going to be proved right. Im

going to be made to look like an idiot here.

www.33voices.com


11/20


33voices.com 10

Secondly, typically these people have cut skin in the game, a substantialamount. They are thinking, what am I going to do for a living here? Thirdly,theyre typically again very strongly bound by ties of loyalty and sweat, equityand blood to the people that they have employed. They are just dreading the

thought that this thing is shaking so much that its going to die.

Very many people will back up a little bit. They would burst course, take theirbusiness back down a tad or two to the stage that I would call Fun, in order tojust stop the shaking and then they sell out. They just say, I dont see what Ican do to run this business because when it scales, its as if I lose my touch.

Its wonderful to be able to show people that there is a few simple things thatif theyll do them, they can get their hands back on the wheel again and theycan take control once more. Thats a huge part of my job. Its just a delight inbeing able to show people that.

Its one of those things this whole sense of ownership and accountability.I know that when you go into a company, one of the ways you get thatpulse is to start to see that level of ownership. As people get to that,beyond the Fun and get to that Whitewater stage, I get the sense that thatlevel of ownership maybe dies down a little bit?

It can die down a lot. By this point, there is usually a management team. Itmay only be two, three, or four. It could be 50 people but typically its a smallmanagement team. At this point, the management team loses that ability to

drive the ship. Its being buffeted around in Whitewater and were makingmistakes and were dropping things.

The whole vision of the business, the idea of where were going and thatalignment around that begins to fragment. The employees, they would doanything for these founder/owners; the management team that have brought itto where it is. Everything has been very highly attuned and aligned.

People literally would just do anything to make the business work. Then theybegin to see not only are we beginning to drop the ball here but the guyswhichever gender we faced, the men and women who are running the business,they seem to be panicking up here. At the very least, they are frozen in action.Of course, everybody gets concerned at that point. The sense of accountability,a sense of ownership, a sense of being aligned around a common vision it dropsdramatically.

The biggest mistake that I see happen over and over again is that whatmanagement tries to do is to whip everybody, I dont mean in a bad way, but

www.33voices.com


12/20


33voices.com 11

to bring everybody back to alignment by redoing the mission statement andhaving some rah-rah events and trying to pull everybody together and givingreally good speeches. All of which is understandable but it wont do anythinguntil management have got their hands back on the tower and they can really

steer the ship again.

Because if youre an employee in the organization and you hear the rah-rahstuff but you dont see that the guys that youre looking for to run the businessare really able to run it, able to move it, then you dont believe it. You just goback into your cubicle. The degree of strength and commitment is weakenedrather than strengthened by that. They can tell that there is an incongruityhere.

What I get people to do is work at getting their hands back in control of whatshappening by fixing their own chart, by getting their organizational chart back

to being a machine for decision making. So they can actually control whatshappening each day. Then once they have got control back, then we can lookback at the mission statement and get people realigned.

Les, I have been a big believer, you know, I have always believed if I hadthe right people that I can almost accomplish anything. But its very toughto find the right people especially in a kind of entrepreneurial world thatwere living in. Tell me how you personally know when you have the rightperson?

I would have to answer that within the context of the Predictable Success lifecycle. I think thats one of the things that I see shift in a way thats very, veryhard for highly entrepreneurial business people to accept. What I mean by thatis this, in the early day of a business, in Early Struggle and Fun, mostentrepreneurs hire viscerally, they hire by their gut and quite rightly so. Itsreally the only way to run the early growth of the business.

So you bring somebody in, you interview them, you interview them by and largefor attitude because you know that if theyre missing a skill that you will beable to mentor and coach them so long as they got the right attitude. So webring people in and they get a lot of exposure to whats going on. Theyre veryclose to the seat of power. We, as the owners and the managers, we can touchthe tower a lot. We can encourage people. We can manage them and we can

coach them.

What happens as the business gets more complex is we would love to we kidourselves that thats what we can continue to do but the reality is we cant.There is too much else that needs to be done. So we start bringing people in

www.33voices.com


13/20


33voices.com 12

for attitude as a way we did before. But they dont get the touches on thetower. They dont get the coaching and mentoring and so they fail to get theskills adjustments that are necessary to run the business. What we need to doat that point is begin to put some process in place.

At that stage, hiring begins to shift. If youre going to scale your businessindefinitely I mean, you can keep the business as a Mom and Pop operationand continue what you were doing. There is nothing wrong with that.

But if you want to scale your business indefinitely, there comes a point atwhich you got to a piece of hiring for skills and attitude and trust the systemthat will put the right person in place and stop kidding yourself that you, as thefounder/owner, are going to be able to make those touches on the towerbecause thats not the way it works.

And then definitely by the time you get to 1000, 2000, 3000 person business,you better have a world class way of finding, hiring, training, and developingthe right people because you sure as straight arent going to be doing it, andyour divisional managers arent going to be doing, and your team supervisorsarent going to be doing it. So you got to institutionalize that.

I think it changes over time. Im not saying that were not always looking forpeople with the right attitude. Of course we are but over time, you got to shiftwhat is a personalized coaching and mentoring skill into something thatsinstitutionalized and is done by the organization throughout all of its ranks.

Even by the time you are at maybe 50-75 people, it becomes necessary to dothat.

You mentioned earlier, Steve Jobs and really more so, not only is he acreative genius but also a tremendous leader. Youre around leaders allthe time, youre working with them, youre coaching them, is therepatterns in the 21st century traits of a leader in the world that were livingin today where were bombarded by innovation opportunities, the world isnot in a great state but there is still a lot of opportunities out there. Whatdo you see in terms of leadership?

You know, its a fascinating time. Two weeks ago I was in Santa Monica at anincubation event where I was talking to about 70 young people in their early20s, some are younger than that, who were right in the throes of launchingtheir own business. We were discussing exactly the same thing. What are thetraits of someone who will succeed now compared maybe what those traitswere like 20 years ago.

www.33voices.com


14/20


33voices.com 13

Probably the greatest thing that I see that is almost unavoidable unavoidableis not quite the right word, but its close to mandatory. Its transparency. Ithink the old leadership model of you only need to know what you need toknow which is sort of command and control based is being supplanted by amuch more collegial peer type of a relationship. Im not advocating and I dont

believe a democratic management style succeeds in the corporate world.

I do think that leadership can be more transparent, that people can share muchmore not only of their vision for where theyre going but also theiruncertainties. The reason for that is this, that the bright people coming intothe workforce these days are used to what we would now call crowd sourcingopportunities, in other words, pooling the knowledge and strengths of everyone

to make the best of what theyve got.

A lot of the great businesses that are being launched that were seeing at the

moment are a direct result of crowd sourcing, of people getting together in aroom and working out where were taking something. As opposed to just themodel of the single great leader which will never go away. So transparencywould be one thing.

The other thing that I would add which is universal which I think has alwaysbeen around and it harks back a little bit to something that I was talking aboutearlier, is the ability to be dispassionate. I dont mean callous or ruthless. Imean the literal interpretation of dispassionate which is to know when to stepaway from your passion and to view things objectively and make decisions in an

objective basis.

Sadly, I see many entrepreneurs who are blinded by their passion. Itswonderful to have a clear vision of where you want to go but when that leadsyou to kid yourself about your financials or be far too generous about yourmarket estimates and things like that then thats a road to nowhere.Transparency and the ability to be dispassionate when necessary are two thingsthat I certainly would be looking in people.

Thats a tough one. This transparency I really see that were in a worldwhere thats almost a requirement nowadays is this issue of dispassionatethat you talk about. Its really unique that you address this issue. At thesame time, its probably very difficult for entrepreneurs as well as leadersin general to see that they probably need a Les to come in who is anoutsider who can see that much clearer than they do.

Its an unfortunate side effect I think of just the availability of media andjournalism around business in general. You know, 40 years ago we just about

www.33voices.com


15/20


33voices.com 14

would have had I think Fortune was maybe in its early days or something likethat. These days you can go to the magazine racks or fire up your internetbrowser and go to a million sites that talk about sexy passion; the CEOs thathave got sexy business stories.

What I tell people all the time is you can buy Architectural Digest and look atreally big houses costing millions upon millions but you shouldnt presume thatthats necessary to get a roof over your head. You can go and buy celebritymagazines and you can see rich pretty people. Its fine to want to be like thatand its fine to look at those magazines but you shouldnt imagine for a

moment you need to be those things in order to be a valid human being.

In the old days, at magazines like Inc and Entrepreneur and so forth, if you willBusiness Porn, the way in which we are educating people these days thatentrepreneurship and success in business has always got to be ridden with

passion and its got to be a really adventure story. That everybodys businesscould be a front page story on Entrepreneur, you know, it isnt like that.Sometimes it isnt as great when it is.

Really, most of the times, the hard decisions are made in the very cold light ofdawn. Weve all been there. We all sat a kitchen table at 3 a.m. counting stuffup in the back of an envelop and saying, what do I do in Monday morning tomeet payroll. The ability to be able to handle that stuff objectively. You needyour vision in order to get yourself up in the morning but then to do somethingabout it, you need to be able to be objective.

One of the things I have been trying to do with Predictable Success is bringpeople the tools that enable them at the times when they need to be objective.

Youve done a brilliant job of that. In fact, one of the success factors thatI have picked up for the last four months personally in following your workis this whole concept of managing laterally. I have never heard that before.

It wasnt something that when I began to work on Predictable Success, I wouldhave thought would have appeared in there. Nowhere could I get away from it.Every business that I was involved in or that I helped other people with to growthrough the Whitewater stage at Predictable Success we had this issue everysingle time. Its pretty simple. As youre growing your business through Fun,people become managers originally because they are doing a really good job ofjust that. Theyre managing other people.

So then if you view that as vertical management where youre managing yourown team, whether youre on sales or legal or admin or officer at warehouse

www.33voices.com


16/20


17/20


33voices.com 16

No, you personally. Because you are definitely not only an A-list author butyour material and the way you present information is superb. How do youkeep that edge for yourself?

I dont know is the truthful answer. I could make something up that would

sound really good but I would be making it up. If I was to guess, its that I dontread that much in my own sphere. I dont read other business books much. Idont read business magazines.

I really try to do most of my own information gathering and pattern recognition which is really the business that I believe Im in outside of businessbecause I think it helps me see things fresh. Ill spend a lot of time in andaround science and architecture because there are a lot of patterns in there.My strong belief is that any strong pattern is a truth thats applicable in anyarea and equally applicable into business.

I see myself much more often spotting something else where Im thinking, whatis that application to business? And then Ill see something very much with afresh pair of eyes which is what I believe I have been able to do withPredictable Success as opposed to spending my time in business conference andworkshops and so forth.

When Im not with clients, Im not thinking about business. Im always thinkingabout patterns that are applicable to business but not patterns of businessitself. So probably that would be my nearest guess.

Anything unique that has evolved recently between the time that the bookwas released? I know the next one is coming out this year.

What I had to do with Predictable Success is leave out one enormous and very,very powerful diagnostic tool which we dont have time to go into today butessentially this all camefor me, developed all at the same time. I had tobreak them into two or the book would have been 700 pages and utterlyunreadable and probably too dense for anybody to be expected to plow through.

Essentially, when we look at the seven stages in a lifecycle, the stage that any

organization is in is actually dictated by the underlying management styles thatare most predominant. I have discovered that there are four key managementstyles and its the way in which they mix almost like taking vitamin B and D.Its the mixture of those four management styles that locks an organizationinto one another of the stages.

www.33voices.com


18/20


33voices.com 17

As I say, I had to leave all of that out but thats what the second book isentirely about. Im right on the throes of getting the manuscript ready for thepublisher now. Our intention is to have that out in early 2012.

This book is an absolute blueprint for an entrepreneur or a senior

executive who is a reader. Is there one thing that you didnt want peopleto not forget as they listen to this conversation?

What Im saying in Predictable Success is that getting there, getting to thatapex, getting to Predictable Success and staying there is a constant battlereally, as I said earlier, I wouldnt suggest that its in any way easy. But its aconstant battle between systems and processes on the one hand which arenecessary to scale the business and keeping creativity, entrepreneurship, andrisk taking inherent in what the business does.

If I was to pass anything on to any business person, its that ability to be ableto know when to emphasize one then the other that really keeps a business inPredictable Success and to be all out just for one or the other. Its all aboutsystems and processes or its all about entrepreneurial risk taking. Itseventually what drives businesses under and getting that balance right is reallythe key.

The website is calledwww.PredictableSuccess.com. I know you do a lot ofcoaching and a lot of workshops, can you talk a little bit about theopportunity that people have to get more of this information beyond the

book.

A really good starting point is the book itself then there is my blog which is free.You can sign up for that on the website. I write every weekday. I have a pieceup there. Its a very useful way to keep up with where my current thoughts are.

I do one quarterly workshop every three months obviously. Its very small, just10 to 12 people. We go very deep into the methodology. I help the participantsestablish exactly where they are. We work with the management styles as wellso that they can know what they need to do in that front. We give them anaction plan that they take away with them on their second day. Its a day andhalf workshop. And then obviously, I do one-on-one coaching and counselinginto organizations. All of that is pretty easily found on the websitewww.PredictableSuccess.com

People can sign up for the workshops right on the website? I know the nextone is coming up this quarter in March.

www.33voices.com


19/20


33voices.com 18

Yeah. We got a great group in Seattle, March 10th and 11th. Weve got two seatsstill available there if anybody is interested. They are great fun. They are whatI enjoy doing more than anything I could say. Its just me and 10 or 12 peoplearound a conference table. Its hard work but we have a lot of fun and we helppeople move the needle. When you go back from that workshop, youve got

your own Predictable Success action plan tucked under your arm.

We dont do binders. We dont do those big workshop manuals you go to andthen you can come back from the workshop and they go to binder heaven. Wesend people back with one sheet of paper with two to three very specificaction points. They are really good fun so I highly recommend it.

I appreciate your time enormously. I know that anybody who has anopportunity to read the book or to visit the website, you cant help but getadvance knowledge on how to grow your business. Les, Im very grateful

for your time.

Thank you Moe, its my pleasure.

www.33voices.com


20/20

!"#$"%&"'"#()*(#()"#$"+(#'",+&-.#-/#0-1,+"%/#&+#2)".#0-1#3-.4(#)*'"#(-#

5)--+"#$"(2"".#3-&.6#2)*(#0-1#%-'"#*.3#7*8&.6#*#%&'&.69#:-#&/#0-14,"#+(158#-,#+&7;%0#2*.(#*.#"

les mckeown- predictable success (unplugged)

Documents