Momentum Podcast: 319

The Waterfall

by Alex Charfen

Episode Description

It’s the mark of an excellent organization when you know what you’re doing, everyone on the team knows where they’re going, and everyone feels that they play a part. When your team has clarity, it’s crazy how fast they’ll go. One of the tools we use to align teams is the Waterfall. It’s a dynamic document that essentially acts as a 30-day strategic plan. It ensures you maintain momentum and gives you clear direction. The Waterfall is the single most important document in my company and it may become the single most important in yours.

Full Audio Transcript

Today someone posted on Facebook that I've mentioned several times the waterfall, but clearly I've never explained it because she said, "Is there an episode on this. I looked for it, and there isn't." So tonight I'm going to cover the single most important document in my business and what may become the single most important document in yours.

When I was a consultant, one of the things that I did among a lot of the different services that we provided at different times was evaluating companies, evaluating companies for purchase or sale, or looking at how companies were run. And one of the ways that I quickly evaluated how well an organization was run and how well they would execute was to find the most entry level person in the organization and ask them if they knew what the goals of the company were.

And the more they could give me, the more I knew I was in a really well run company. And when they couldn't give me anything, I would move up from there and figure out where they knew about the goals of the company. And the higher up I went, the more there wasn't answers, the more I knew it was a company that was challenged to communicate objectives. Because when you know what you're doing, everyone on the team knows where you're going. It's the mark of an excellent organization that everyone on the team knows where they're going and feels like they have a part in it. And it's one of the hardest things to actually pull off. But when I saw it, it was incredible what happened in those companies. When your team has clarity, it's crazy how fast they'll go.

And one of the tools we use to align teams and to align organizations is called the waterfall, and it's a document that includes your client centric mission, your critical number, your one year objectives, your 90 day targets, and the 30 day goals underneath them. So it essentially acts as a 30 day strategic plan. And we take people through a process to build an accurate waterfall, to build a waterfall that will actually work. It acts as a one page renewable 30 day strategic plan. And the reason why this is so insanely effective in a business is that you build it with your strategic team, you distribute it to your entire team, so everyone in the business knows where they organization is going every 30 days. And I wanted to duplicate what I saw in crazy valuable organizations where everyone knew were they were going, and I wanted to duplicate it in a way where I could do it for multiple businesses at once, because I've always ended up either being involved with or owning or being on the board of multiple businesses.

And the waterfall lets you do it for a single business in a way that's incredibly dynamic, because when you create this strategic plan, you will have clarity as to where you're going. And one of the challenges with running a team and building a team is until you understand where you're going, you won't know how to solve anything but the problem you already had. Because if you don't know where you're going, what you're going to do next, what you're collectively going to achieve as a team, you can't fill in the resources and what your needs will be on the way, and you won't be able to anticipate how to apply the resources you're gaining now. And so as a result, you will always be putting out fires. And the waterfall is a one page strategic plan that renews every 30 days that is dynamic enough that as an entrepreneur it will make you feel like you have choices and you're moving forward fast. And it will clarify an entire team and give them a clear roadmap as to where you're going every 30 days.

And I just finished teaching one of our Billionaire Code Summits the first day to day, and we had 60 people here learning this process and going through it in person. And what was really awesome about tonight was we had some people that were here for an earlier Billionaire Code Summit, so we've actually had people who are taking this content two times, some three times, some four times, one person even five times, from different events that they've been to with us.

And it's crazy what's happening in some of these people's companies. We had once client, [Ashlyn 00:04:32] and Wallace Nelson, who set an annual goal in July. They do they're goal planning, which a lot of our clients do from July to June, and they set an annual objective and hit it today. During the class they hit it. So they're two and a half months in, and it's crazy that they're experiencing that type of explosive growth.

We have another client, Atlas Wealth, and what Ryan and Brad are doing is crazy. They grew their business 400% in the last couple of quarters, and it's insane how fast things are going for them. Brad was back today, Brad Gibb was back today to go through the content again, so he could understand this even clearer, because when you get better and better at building a waterfall, and when you get better at strategic planning, and then communicating that plan to your team, everybody in the organization actually does know where you going. And here's what happens with this single document. When you get good at it, it creates 100% alignment among your team, because you create it with your strategic team, distribute it to everyone, make sure people know what's going on, and your entire team has focused intention.

It provides unavoidable perspective because you are planning and measuring so often, and looking at what your results are, you start really starting to understand what you can achieve in 30 days, what you can achieve in a quarter, what you can achieve in a year. How many of us really understand that? And how many of us know where we should be pushing the bar and where we are going to actually succeed? Because what happens is with the waterfall, it gives you clear contrast and ensures you maintain momentum, because you have absolutely clarity, and your entire team will be there pushing with you. And this is a tool that when you learn how to assemble it, and when you've gone through it a few times, you start wondering how you ran a company before.

So the waterfall is a dynamic tool, and you can assemble it from what I've shared here, but really to get into the process and understand it, it takes being involved with our content multiple times, and really going through it over and over again. And if you're interested in having this type of a process where you have a fast paced strategic plan that renews over and over again, you get a lot of measurement in your company, you will get more out of the team that you have today, you'll be able to build and deliver and innovate faster based on having clarity of purpose and having your entire team know where you're going. If that's something that interests you, go to Momentumsession.com, sign up for a call with a member of my team, and we'll tell you what options we have available.

It doesn't matter what revenue level you're at. We have a way for you to build your waterfall and make more progress in months than you thought you could make in years, which we actually had people doing in our class today. And we see it over and over again. When you have clarity of purpose and when your team is aligned and understands where they're going, it's crazy how fast and how quickly you can make a massive difference in what you're doing. Go to Momentumsession.com, sign up for a call with a member of my team, and we'd be happy to share what options we have available for you. It's Momentumsession.com.

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With gratitude,

Alex

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