It’s your baby. You love it. You absolutely should, and you should inspire that love in your team, to enthuse them, to carry them along on this journey with you.

And you’re all building this machine as it takes to the road. You’re deep into the detail, you need to be to get it right. Everybody working on their parts, pulling together to create a functional whole. It’s beautiful.

(OK, some of the team may still have their doubts; there’s no single way to enthuse everyone, but we’ll fix that separately.)

So… who can see the pot holes around the bend ahead? Who’s spotting the parts of our juggernauts which are starting to shake a little loose? Who can take the helicopter view?

Who keeps watch over issues which stop investors investing?

The CEO? Vision, drive, instinct, culture, hiring, firing, investor closing… yes all those things, but the helicopter view? No. Necessarily too close.

The COO? Project managing, recutting budgets, firefighting, parenting the team… yep. Helicopter view? Nope. Too deep in the engine to see the road.

The Chairman? Sounding board to the CEO, an eye for the strategic angle… sure. But nowhere near close enough to the business to know the meaning of what’s seen from the helicopter view (our Chairman has more of a private jet view).

UX, marketing, maybe market researchers feeding in from focus groups? They’ll tell you what the customer thinks they want to see but these perspectives are only ever on a tiny facet of the business, and they only answer the questions they’re asked. That’s not the helicopter view.

The Helicopter View.

So you need to bring someone in (it’s me, I’m just being coy) to step back, to look afresh, to ask the stupid questions, some of which will have surprisingly revealing answers. We’ll transport your team to a new clarity about what their success will look like and to look disaster in the eye so they recognise it and know how to avoid it. We’ll do it by understanding just enough about how the business’ moving parts mesh together, not too much, or too little… understanding just enough.

Shared Clarity.

And because your whole team will have all been on this journey together, they’ll have a newfound clarity, we’ll have all learned each other’s languages. We’ll have all heard the answers to the questions we never thought (or dared) to ask.

Embedded Understanding.

And then we take all this understanding, now shared throughout your team, and we embed it in a plan we can all refer back to, in great information for leadership to direct the business, and in governance which is both workable and gives everyone the comfort they need to get on board.

So… who keeps watch over issues which stop investors investing? What issues?