039: Growth Analysis on Two Different Companies

Executive overview

Two similar-sized companies adopted the same scaling framework at the same time. One grew by $10 million in a year; the other stalled. The difference was not the framework — it was execution discipline on three variables: people, cash, and priorities.

Commitment to making hard people decisions fast, while protecting cash and narrowing focus, separates companies that scale from those that plateau.

The three barriers to growth

• Lack of leadership — wrong people in key seats slow everything downstream
• Lack of systems and processes — tools in place but not fully used yield no benefit
• Market dynamics — external headwinds make leadership and systems even more critical, not less

People decisions: the defining variable

• Hawk Aerospace (helicopter MRO) identified two misfits in leadership within six months — CEO Joe Hawk removed both and stepped into the president role himself
• The design company faced the same issues but delayed; a key operations hire was pregnant, adding legal complexity and hesitation
• The design company then hired three leaders in a 60-day window — too fast, too chaotic, and damaging to culture being built simultaneously
• Rule of thumb: replace no more than one key leader every six months to allow proper onboarding
• Rapid simultaneous hiring works for startups building from scratch; it damages existing companies adopting new culture mid-flight

Holding the line on process adoption

• Hawk's CEO held firm when his team resisted accountability tools — KPIs, huddles, performance targets
• He was explicit: results to date are unacceptable; this is not going away
• Companies that allow teams to opt out of the huddle, reject KPIs, or resist alignment tools don't build the operational foundation needed to scale
• Common objection ("my people don't want to do the huddle") contradicts common complaint ("we operate in silos") — the tools exist to solve the complaint

Cash management

• Both companies faced severe cash pressure through 2015 and into 2016
• Hawk's CFO found cash in inventory and real estate — creative, proactive management
• The design company made a large PLM system investment mid-crisis — the right investment at the wrong time
• Cash is oxygen; you can pull over if you run out of fuel in a car, but not in an aircraft
• Missing one payroll is survivable; missing two is usually fatal
• A strong financial leader is not optional — it's as critical as the CEO

Priority discipline

• The design company tried to fix people, technology, and process simultaneously — none got done well
• Hawk ran a one-two punch: drive sales (using Salesforce, which was already in place but underused) + protect cash
• Weekly tactical meetings kept both priorities visible and on track
• There will always be more to do than time allows — companies that can't narrow to 5–6 annual priorities and 4–5 quarterly priorities can't execute
• Implementing a system you already have beats replacing it with a new one

Sales and business development

• Hawk's sales cycle is 18–36 months — they needed pipeline discipline years before revenue showed up
• Joe drove Salesforce adoption personally as CEO, not delegating it
• They recruited law enforcement and lapsed customers; one hire didn't pan out but the initiative moved forward
• The design company, facing Amazon-driven retail disruption, delayed repositioning and tech investment — both were needed but arrived too late and too expensively

The value of a business coach

• Coaches are effective not because they're smarter but because they're outside the water — not swimming in the day-to-day
• Working across 30 CEOs simultaneously means coaches surface patterns invisible to leaders inside one company
• CEOs often know what to do (purpose, values, BHAG, top-grading) — the gap is consistent execution
• Knowing about a framework and using all of it are different things; partial use produces partial results

Hawk's outcome

• Added ~$10 million in roughly a year
• Built new strategic positioning and a brand promise that opens new markets
• Redid compensation and performance systems
• Launched TinyPulse company-wide — gave floor-level maintenance staff a voice
• Rolled Five Dysfunctions work through the leadership team, extending it into the broader company