Growth Whisperers hits 100, effective employee development, ‘Topgrading’ & the fastest-growing company

13th March 2022 Evolution Partners Newsletter

‘A wise man learns from his own mistakes, a genius learns from the mistakes of others’ Mark Twain

Hope you’re Thriving!

It’s been a great week with a couple of days off for a long weekend and a two-day annual workshop. And finally, last week, my state of WA opened its borders to the nation and the world after two years.

The Growth Whisperers celebration

Also, this week I celebrated the 100th episode of The Growth Whisperers podcast with Kevin. It’s been great to catch up with him every week and talk about all things building enduring companies. Also, it’s been wonderful to have so many people say that the podcast has helped them over the past two years. So I thought this week you might be interested in what have been the most popular episodes we’ve recorded.

Here are the 15 most popular episodes:

• 50 Jim Collins Flywheel Concept: How to build unstoppable momentum in your company
• 16 Jim Collins
• 84 The 7 common strategy mistakes from Michael Porter
• 43 The top 7 best practices for weekly meetings
• 83 Why strategy should focus on producing more profit – not market share
• 72 How the best leaders hold people accountable
• 53 What is a Topgrading Job Scorecard and how do you use it?
• 79 Eliminate your emotionally taxing issues – lick your toads
• 82 Profit = Intelligence x Discipline
• 78 4Q The 4 questions leadership team members need to ask customers
• 89 The 4 different types of A players
• 58 Collective intelligence, the key to a successful weekly meeting
• 27 RACI: Accountability vs Responsibility
• 70 Are you an operational CEO or a strategic CEO?
• 21 Gross Margin – Understanding the most important number in your business

 

The fastest-growing company you’ve never heard of

Perhaps if you were to name the fastest-growing company already at scale, you might consider Google, Facebook or Amazon, or at the very least a similar software company. Well, in fact, it’s a lithium-ion battery maker CATL which recorded US$14.5 billion in revenues in 2021, its tenth year of operations, a growth rate of ~125 per cent on the prior year.

CATL has partnerships with Tesla, Fisker, Toyota, Honda, BMW and Polestar to provide their batteries and has just launched an innovative battery swap program that it says will work with 80% of all pure EV’s.

Maybe you hadn’t noticed, but fuel prices are at an all-time high. A whole range of factors have been driving prices higher, and now the war in Ukraine and bans on Russian oil and gas will push the fuel price ever higher. That will lead to more electric vehicles, which will make the fastest-growing company at scale grow even faster.

Check out the comparison with some popular software companies in the image below.

Effective employee development starts with managers

I found this interesting article that aligns with some of my work on my upcoming book about onboarding.

From the article: “As the costs of the Great Resignation continue to grow, companies need more ways to attract and retain employees. One clear approach is to offer more training and development — according to a 2019 LinkedIn study, 94% of employees said they would stay with their employer if it invested in their development.

But another solution to engaging employees may lie closer to home: involving managers. A recent Gallup survey found that “at least 70% of the variance in team engagement is explained by the quality of the manager or team leader.”

It would seem that this solution is often overlooked — most managers express a dim view of the effectiveness of their Learning and Development (L&D) function.”
Read the HBR article here Effective Employee Development Starts with Managers

This week on The Growth Whisperers podcast

Topgrading is a hiring methodology from Brad Smart which is designed to provide you with a ninety per cent success rate when hiring and promoting people on your team.

The Topgrading process should provide you with A player candidates, those who are in the top ten per cent of all candidates at the pay level you provide.
There are several tools within the Topgrading methodology and this week we explain the methodology and each of the tools.

Topgrading, hire with 90% success!

Episode 100 – The Growth Whisperers

Listen to The Growth Whisperers
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Keep Thriving!
Brad Giles