Quarterly Themes: Creating alignment and Boosting Team Morale

As we have been working in a pandemic for more than a year, there is one thing that all the leaders I have spoken with have agreed upon: we and our teams are exhausted. I am a big believer in optimism, but I am an equally large proponent of addressing what Admiral James Stockdale calls the “brutal facts of your current reality,” and, in this moment, addressing the brutal facts means recognizing that team morale and alignment may be suffering. 

One powerful way to re-inspire your team and bring energy (and fun!) back into your workplace is to announce a quarterly theme that you and your team can rally behind. Quarterly themes are generally created by gathering a representative from each department and/or your leadership team for a quick 45 minute meeting.

In the meeting, you and your team should consider where your company is at, upcoming priorities and future goals. The most important thing to remember while creating this team is that it should create a “win x4;” a win for the company, a win for customers, a win for the employees, and a win for the community. By ensuring that your theme is one that will motivate your employees and create value for customers and community, you will effectively be drawing in a crowd of individuals who will support your work. 

As an example, this quarter we at PFD have decided that our quarterly theme would be “Paddle!” We wanted to capture the idea that in order to catch a great wave of change, you have to put in significant effort to ensure that the wave does not pass you by. As a company, we have several key thrusts in the works, which led us to choose a theme that will remind us to keep paddling so that we can catch a wave that will generate enormous benefits for our team and community. 

Q3 2021 Theme: Paddle! The Key Thrusts have been generalized so as not to give away our strategy.

If you would like more inspiration on potential themes for our company, check out some of our past themes:

Q2 2020 Theme: “Our Finest Hour”. For this theme, we were in the height of uncertainty with the pandemic, and we were searching for empowerment in our team. We found inspiration from another period of history marked with fear and uncertainty, WWII, and specifically Winston’ Churchill’s “This Was Their Finest Hour” speech. It was because of this speech that we decided to rise to the challenge - making that quarter “Our Finest Hour” - and finding creative ways to positively impact 1,000 lives. If you would like to read more about this theme, check out this blog post here.

Q1 2021 Theme: And… Action! For this quarter, we wanted to inspire our team to be very action-oriented, so to accomplish this end, we had our team track their use and adoption of our new project-management software. By ensuring the team used the project management software, they had a clear means to track progress on their projects, thus inspiring action. There also was a celebratory component, as we also had our team members submit photos of the different things they were doing - both within work and outside of work - to commemorate all that been done during the quarter.

Q3 2020 Theme: Partner Pinball (names removed this blog post). For this theme, we wanted our team members to engage with key partners throughout the quarter to help facilitate a strong launch to a project. A star was added next to the name of each partner engaged, to make sure we kept the focus on partners present and at the forefront. The relationships we have with CEOs and other leaders are critical to our success, so we wanted to focus on treating those partners well for the duration of the quarter.

If you would like more help creating your quarterly theme, I recommend this 9-minute video: Developing a Theme for Your Team.

Why do I Need a Strategic Coach?

As sports fans, we would never expect our favorite athletes to win games without coaches. Could you imagine an Olympic gymnast getting a gold medal without someone to correct their form and push their limits? Could you imagine an American football team winning the Superbowl with the Quarterback responsible for calling all the plays, analyzing the opposing team, and coaching the defense in addition to the offense?

When we think of professional athletes, we understand how ridiculous it is to expect them to compete and win on a high level without a coach. This being said, when it comes to business leaders, we tend to expect them to perform at extraordinarily high levels without a similar kind of guidance. Like athletes, business leaders are professionals. They need to understand their strategy, execute that strategy, pivot to various demands, consistently be learning new skills, work with and lead their teams, all so that they can win in the marketplace. With all of these duties, plus ensuring that the day-to-day activities are completed, there is an extreme amount of pressure on the CEO and leadership team. This is where a business coach can help.  

Take a look at this video of Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt:

Despite the need for a coach, we have found that, in the market, there is some confusion as to what exactly strategic coaches do. Let’s provide some clarity.

Reduce stress by creating simplicity in strategy and building teams 

“I really enjoy working with Ethan for not only his creative strategic insights, but also for his ability to recruit and inspire diverse teams for lasting results.”

— Barrington Irving, CEO & Founder of Experience Aviation

First and foremost, as strategic coaches, our goal is to reduce your stress as CEOs. Typically, when CEOs come to us for coaching services, they spend the majority of their days firefighting – jumping from task to task that is necessary for business survival. In the past, when their company was smaller, these CEOs could handle many of these smaller tasks personally. As the company scales, however, these leaders find that there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to handle all that is asked from them, and their days are becoming filled very quickly with duties that don’t seem to matter this much. Exacerbating these stressful days, if the CEO were to continue like this, it is very unlikely that the company would grow, because the CEO doesn’t have time to spend on their vision of the future, nor do they have the time to guide their team in getting there.

As a coaching company, it is our job to help you get out of this daily firefighting mode through both helping you simplify your strategy, as well as build a phenomenal team of leaders to support you in making that strategy come to fruition. Unnecessary complexity breeds wasted time. We will help you gain confidence and clarity in an actionable strategy that you are excited about. Further, we will engage your leadership team in the planning process, creating alignment around the strategy. We will also advise on any significant gaps in the leadership team, and how to fill them in with the right people. Many of the tasks that take up a CEO’s time could realistically be handled by a different, trusted member of the leadership team, and these team members could take on even more responsibility to drive the company into its next stage of growth. This both frees the CEO’s time to work on the business (as opposed to in the business), while creating sustainable growth.

““Everything that your team has done for us has enabled us to grow and learn in ways that are not just solving problems and putting out fires. You can get so bogged down in the minutiae of chasing your tail, and if you don’t dedicate time to growing leaders, you’re going to end up running everything in your company. And that’s not what I wanted to do. I didn’t want my job to own me.””

— Cory Prellwitz, Co-owner of Hometrends LLC

Deep knowledge of proven growth tools and execution rhythms

I’ve never gone to the gym and benefitted from watching someone else lift weights. I’ve had personal trainers show me how to lift weights, walk me through the proper form several times so I am confident and clear on my exercise routine, and that has been extremely helpful. The real power of going to the gym comes when I take what I’ve learned, and I consistently put it into practice – exercising consistently using proper form and routines. It is when I do that, that the trainer can coach me to the next level, introducing more advanced lifts and increasing weight.

At PFD, we have a similar approach to a personal trainer. With twenty years of entrepreneurial and coaching experience, plus coaching certifications through Scaling Up and 3HAG Way, we have in-depth knowledge of the strategic tools and execution rhythms that have helped thousands of companies scale their practices. Further than that, we have invested in our team to be able to support the integration of these systems into your company. Our Director of Client Success, Karissa Feese, has been doing an amazing job with our current clients teaching the software systems to leadership team members to keep the strategy central to day-to-day activities. Importantly, we won’t fill out or update these tools for you, as that would be like going to the gym and watching the trainer lift your weights for you. Rather, by implementing use of the tools, execution rhythms and software, your team will become stronger.

“After one year of working with PFD Group, we reached and exceeded goals that we didn’t think were possible at the beginning of the year.”

— Cory Prellwitz, Co-owner of Hometrends LLC

Being a trusted confidant and seeing the blind spots.

Finally, as a coach, it is my job to understand and help CEOs work through the things that have been keeping them up at night. We have the privilege of working with many CEOs across several industries, which gives us the ability to see reoccurring patterns and creatively produce solutions. When you’re in a company each day, it is inevitable to develop blind spots. Through our position as a coaching company, it is our duty to surface those issues to be solved, so that you are not blindsided by them at a later point. At PFD, one of our core values is to be the confidant - nurturing a culture of confidentiality, trust, and vulnerability. We recognize our responsibility in our positions as coaches, because when our clients reach out to us, they share their greatest opportunities and challenges. We do not take this responsibility lightly.

““Ethan, thank you for your constant encouragement and coaching. I could not have done it without you over the last two years. Thank you for being you - a compassionate, caring, coach.””

— Vijay Sajja, CEO, Evergent

As the CEO, you are the quarterback and the captain of your team.  You are on the field, leading your team, making the plays, and driving your business forward. You deserve to have someone have your back. As a coach, we have a vested interest in your growth, both as a leader and within your company. We aim to reduce your stress by drive simplicity in your strategy and building a strong leadership team around you, and we will help you implement execution rhythms and tools to consistently make progress on your strategy. Simply put, we will help you grow, while simultaneously helping you make running a company easier.

Confidence & Clarity: Inside our May 14th Workshop

What an awesome experience we had on May 14th for our 3HAG Workshop with best-selling author of 3HAG WAY Shannon Susko. What is 3HAG? It stands for 3-year Highly Achievable Goal. It is the bridge between your Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) and your smaller goals. Shannon Susko’s 3HAG Framework will allow your company to connect your business's daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and year-of-execution goals and align them with your 3-year Highly Achievable Goal, so that you are always on track to achieve your BHAG. It is a tool for leaders to be able to create a strategy and execute it with confidence and clarity. Our workshop provided a day of training with Leaders who walked away with practical and simple tools to implement their company’s 3 year plan.

Ethan Martin is honored to become the 1st US based coach to be certified in the 3HAG Way, and we are excited to continue working with Shannon to help give more leaders the tools and gain the confidence, clarity to succeed.

Missed the workshop but want to learn more about 3HAG? Please reach out to us to learn more.