What fundamental commitments must our business owner and executive team make to each other before you will agree to schedule our Focus Day?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Before I will sit in a session room with your team for Focus Day, your leadership team must make five non-negotiable commitments to the process and to each other:

- Total Vulnerability: You must be willing to be open, honest, and vulnerable about everything in the business, including financial realities, operational failures, and personnel issues.
- Zero Operational Interference: Every member of the leadership team must be present for the full eight hours with cell phones and laptops put away. Fires must be handled by your tier-two staff.
- Relinquishing Autocracy: The business owner must genuinely want a leadership team that runs the business, rather than a group of managers waiting for founder permission.
- Healthy Conflict: You must agree to abandon artificial harmony, debate hard truths without taking feedback personally, and support every team decision once the room reaches a resolution.
- Commitment to Simplicity: You must commit to using the 20/80 rule, simplifying your operations rather than over-engineering complex procedures or clinging to obsolete systems.

If the owner is looking for a consultant to validate personal biases, or if executives are unwilling to hear hard feedback about their seats, the implementation will fail before lunch. We only schedule Focus Day when the entire executive group is ready to do the hard personal work required to scale.