An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
You Can’t Win if You Don’t Keep Score — The most successful organizations all have goals, and they measure to them. Teams gel and develop a magic camaraderie around chasing goals. It is the spark that brings the life, the drive, and the sense of urgency to the organization.
Startups usually start with a small cohort of close colleagues. But what happens when you add a bunch of new people into this close cohort? How do you maintain the company culture? In addition, what is needed to successfully scale a business to increase market share or to increase offerings? How can a small startup grow successfully to a midsize and then large company? To address these questions, we are talking to successful business leaders who can share stories and insights from their experiences about the “5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business”. As a part of this series, we had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Kirk Alexander.
Kirk Alexander is a consulting COO to that organizes and scales organizations that have become too big not to have one, but not large enough to afford an in-house COO. He has spent the last 20 years in various COO roles, delivering hyper-growth to medical practices, dental practices, and medical distributors. In his consulting practice, he works with businesses from a myriad of different industries, particularly focused in the small-to-medium market space.
Thank you for joining us in this interview series. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’?
Thank you for taking the time with me today. I have a wide-ranging background, and all of the experiences contributed to my ability to add value to my clients today. I started in the armed services, graduating from the US Air Force Academy. In the Air Force, I learned operations principles of one of the most well-oiled outfits in existence; lessons I still apply with my clients today. During my service commitment, I earned an MBA and joined the civilian business world. Early in my career, I worked for large corporations where I learned what organizational structure and operations discipline looked like at scale: American Greetings, Honeywell, Mannesmann, and ADT. While at ADT Security, I led major IT Initiatives, learning the power of leveraging technology to accelerate business at scale.
All this experience was put to work when I was hired as the COO of a mid-size orthopedic surgery practice in South Florida. I nurtured a team of professionals to bring 300% revenue growth to the practice over 3 years. We were the first large orthopedic practice in South Florida to implement Electronic Medical Records (EMR). We vertically integrated the business, adding an MRI, Physical Therapy Department, and commercial pharmacy. We grew the practice from 60 employees to 160, and it is still thriving today.
I went on to serve as the COO of a medical distributor in South Florida, an independent sales company of orthopedic implants. Over a period of several years, we successfully pivoted the company’s strategy from selling to civilian hospitals to selling exclusively to the VA and DoD. The reason? We found a sustainable advantage in government sales when we certified the company as a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB), a certification that gets preferred treatment in all procurement activities in the US government. To operationalize this massive change, I led a software development team to perform a complete overhaul and re-write of our order management and fulfillment software, pushing it to the cloud in Microsoft Azure. This software was successful and spun off to its own Software as a Service (SaaS) company.
My most recent COO position, I joined a mid-sized dental practice to focus on driving revenue growth and improve operations. Our plan was a 5-year vision to scale the practice and sell to private equity. Joining this practice in steady state, we selected some key projects that would “move the needle.” From June of 2020 to June of 2021, we grew company revenue by 52% (during COVID!). We sold at the end of 2021 to Heartland Dental, the nation’s largest Dental Support Organization, well ahead of our 5 year window.
Today, I’m helping bring chaos to order for my clients. We go through a process of defining values, culture, goals, and putting in place operational disciplines to keep the team on the same page. We map workflows, leverage technology, and get teams aligned. I’m providing peace to frazzled CEOs and scalability to fast growing organizations.
You’ve had a remarkable career journey. Can you highlight a key decision in your career that helped you get to where you are today?
I was given an opportunity in 2004 to leave Corporate America and lead a mid-sized medical practice. It was a significant departure for my career, especially without experience in medical practice management before. I discovered that the foundational skills of leadership, focus, organization, and process orientation were just the same in this new industry. I was able to take my previous lessons and integrate them into new solutions for the practice of medicine, a process that “burned in” the lessons that are timeless and add the most value to any enterprise.
That career shift helped me be a better consultant. Much of the time, being able to separate the noise from the signal is the very skill that can add the most value.
What’s the most impactful initiative you’ve led that you’re particularly proud of?
In 2000 to 2001 I led a project at ADT Security to “glue” together their siloed IT software systems. We pulled together a team of software developers from the United States and India and implemented Tibco Software across the silos so we could keep our customers’ information consistent across systems. With over a $10m budget, we were able to clean up an extremely messy enterprise, gluing together their myriad systems: billing, marketing, alarm monitoring, etc.
That project proved that the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) principle still works at scale. It was a profound value-add for such a simple concept… glue together the systems, so we could have an end-to-end view of our customer.
Sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a mistake you’ve made and the lesson you took away from it?
Only recently has my biggest career mistake become clear to me. Over 20 years, I’ve had the benefit of taking a lot of personality surveys and preference tests. The more tests I take, the more I see consistency across findings. I discovered that my personality type is one of a problem solver and a builder. I am a classic operations-focused COO, and I’m drawn to building and scaling teams and companies.
My mistake was I stayed too long in some of my roles. I have always valued loyalty, and typically stay in a role 5–10 years. What I have discovered over time is, that once the role shifts from “building” to “maintaining,” I find myself less enthusiastic. In retrospect, there were a few roles I should have left sooner.
How has mentorship played a role in your career, whether receiving mentorship or offering it to others?
The value of mentorship cannot be overestimated! I have played both the mentor and the protégé over my career. These relationships have led to most of my career moves. My mentors have helped my career, have helped my development and progression, and I would not be here without their influences.
I pay that forward in my leadership roles, serving as a mentor to key people, even after we no longer work together day-to-day. Many of these have become long friendships. In medical and dental practice management, much of the individual-contributor roles are staffed by young, high-school educated newcomers. I have always felt a personal responsibility to help them learn the early adulthood life lessons, almost in a paternal role. My greatest compliment was on my 50th birthday, when the team bought everyone WWKD (What Would Kirk Do) bracelets.
Ironically, the role that derives the most benefit is not the protégé… it is the mentor!
I have seen such value over the years, that I hire business coaches from time to time. As an entrepreneur, their external accountability, “outsider” perspective, and feedback help me navigate tough transitions and keep me focused as a businessman.
Developing your leadership style takes time and practice. Who do you model your leadership style after? What are some key character traits you try to emulate?
I am lucky to have grown up with a father who is a world-class leader. Also, an Air Force Academy graduate (he was the 4th class to graduate), he served 32 years in the Air Force. I watched and listened to every bit of advice he ever gave, and I deeply value it to this day. Dad retired from the US Air Force a Lieutenant General. If you met him, you’d never guess it. Dad is a mild-mannered Southern Gentleman with a humble, gentle affect, the perfect combination of humility, confidence, and gravitas.
A few lessons stick with me today. He taught me that one of the most important things that led to his success in the Air Force was a book that he read at least once a year. That book, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, is still an annual listen on my Audible account! They are principles of leadership and interpersonal relations that transcend generations.
Another lesson I learned through action. It was the Summer of 1980. We were at RAF Fairford, England where Dad was the Group Commander. There was an air show called the “RAF Fairford Open Day,” with static aircraft displays, flight demonstrations, and the tarmac was open to the public. At the end of the show, I needed to get from the flightline down the mile-long road (“miracle mile”) to the housing area. Dad said I would have to walk and couldn’t ride in his Air Force staff car. He said, “Son, when you’re in a leadership position, it’s important not only to avoid misdeeds, but it is also just as important to avoid even the slightest appearance of impropriety.” I walked home the mile so no one on base might misinterpret his use of the staff car for personal use.
Those are just two examples of countless. Thanks to Dad, I’ve learned the finest lessons of character, integrity, and service anyone could ask for.
Thank you for sharing that with us. Let’s talk about scaling a business from a small startup to a midsize and then large company. Based on your experience, can you share with our readers the “5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business”?
This is the real meat-and-potatoes of what I love to do! Two decades of constant study, application, success, and failures have left me with some lasting truths of how to scale. To quote Sam Walton (Walmart founder), “Most of us don’t invent ideas. We take the best ideas from someone else.” These 5 things have been borrowed, modified, and integrated from my experience and learning. I stand on the shoulders of those who I studied.
You Can’t Win if You Don’t Keep Score — The most successful organizations all have goals, and they measure to them. Teams gel and develop a magic camaraderie around chasing goals. It is the spark that brings the life, the drive, and the sense of urgency to the organization.
The process is quite simple. Start with your visionary goal. This huge goal is 10–15 years out, and it’s so big that it should scare you a bit! This is known as the Big Hairy Audacious Goal (the BHAG). These become the “north star” of the organization’s goals and aspirations. They rally the troops and give purpose to the company. Here are some examples:
– Starbucks — Become the most recognized and respected consumer brand in the world
– 1960’s America — Land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth in the next decade
– Walmart 1990 — Become a $125 billion company by year 2000
What’s your visionary goal? What will your team rally around?
The next step is a series of “peeling back the onion.” Break that BHAG into 5, then 3, then annual goals. With your annual goals in mind, what part does each department play in reaching that annual goal? Set those annual goals for each department. The next layer, within each department, what should be the annual goals of the individuals in that department, so they do their part to meet the department goal? At the end, you have total alignment of individual to department to organization goals.
How do we measure progress towards those goals? We need to pick performance numbers that reflect our progress towards goals. These are known as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and they are the “scoreboard” that tells us if we are on track. While this sounds fairly simple, it is not easy. Picking the right KPIs is harder said than done. We need to identify “leading” indicators rather than “trailing” indicators. For example, a trailing indicator in a sales department might be the quarterly sales volume. By the time you see how your numbers were for the quarter, it’s too late to adjust! A better indicator might be to figure out how to measure the activity and amount of activity that it takes to hit those numbers later. For example, if a construction company knows that they only win one out of 5 bids, and they know that they want 10 jobs this year, then they know they have to be doing at least one bid a week to hit that number! You’ll know at the end of week one whether or not you’re on track to make that quarterly or annual goal!
Goals, KPIs, and scoreboards are incredibly important to scaling your business!
90 Day Project Cycles — It is critical not only to work “in” your business, but to also work “on” your business. It’s important for everyone to have a spirit of constant improvement and have projects they are doing to improve the organization and get better. Better at customer service, better at eliminating waste, better at any aspect that will help push the organization forward faster towards its goals. But it needs to be methodical, and metered.
It starts with each department identifying its operational issues. All levels of the organization should participate; often the best ideas come from the people doing the detail work! The issues are the areas where things could use improvement, processes that are broken, or where inefficiencies exist. Leadership meets and prioritizes these issues and picks the top 3–5 to focus on for the next quarter. Those issues become projects that get tracked for the next quarter. Tasks and initiatives are assigned out to the appropriate team members to accomplish team buy-in and engagement.
Why only 3–5? When reviewing projects, it is natural to bite off more than you can chew. Often, leadership sets too many priorities and finds itself with no progress on any of them. This is often called an attempt to “boil the ocean.” Consider the metaphor of light: diffused light can simply lighten a dim room. Focused light in the form of a laser can cut through steel. Diffusion and dilution actually slow progress. This is where organizational discipline and focus come to play. Leadership has to commit to the 3–5 projects, track the progress, and not diffuse the team’s focus.
Why 90 days? One consistent thing about teams and organizations is that they seem to lose focus after about 90 days. Not quite sure the reason, but it’s simply the case. Rather than fight it, build it into the rhythm of the company. 90 days is a perfect tie-in to a quarterly cycle, which coincides with performance reporting and planning cycles.
Communicate, communicate, communicate — To keep multiple levels of an organization all lined up and working in sync, goals tying together, it is critical to communicate, even at the risk of over communicating. I used to joke that when my team is rolling their eyes and lip-syncing my message, I’ve finally communicated it enough. What does this look like in an organization?
- Team “Same Page” Meetings — These are weekly meetings for the team to keep all updated on how they are doing on their tasks supporting the company or department quarterly projects. These are quick status meetings with a disciplined, repeatable agenda. The meeting is held the same day/time each week religiously and kept to a strict timeline. In this meeting, scorecards are reviewed, 90-day projects are reviewed, wins are celebrated, and urgent issues are brought up and prioritized and discussed until time is exhausted. Again, it is critical that this meeting occurs with dependable regularity. Start on time. End on time. Follow the same agenda every time. Don’t let someone derail the meeting. You don’t realize how important it is until you’ve missed 3–4 weeks and the focus is lost.
- Quarterly “reset” meetings — These are one-day meetings held offsite to minimize distractions. Annual goals are reviewed, quarterly projects are assessed and celebrated, issues are stack-ranked and new quarterly projects are chosen.
- Annual meetings — This meeting is held by the strategic leadership team. BHAG, 5, 3, and annual goals are reviewed. SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analyses are reviewed, major company challenges and issues are discussed and brainstormed. It is a time to stop and look back at the year’s accomplishments and look forward to the next year. It produces a cathartic, team bonding moment in time. Gratitude for the accomplishments of the year, and motivation for the year to come.
Some notes of implementation
- Be disciplined — Only miss the meetings if you are ill or on vacation. Avoid vacation for the quarterly or annual meetings.
- Follow the agenda — Many organizations don’t have good meeting hygiene. It’s important to stay on track, stay focused.
- Celebrate the wins — It’s easy to stay so focused on the project, KPI, or issue that we don’t stop to express appreciation and celebrate even the small wins.
Map your Processes — Every company has a value chain, the series of consecutive steps that go into the final product. There are also operational processes that regularly repeat and are critical to the company (i.e. HR processes, onboarding, offboarding, etc.). How smoothly these key processes run is a primary determinant in your company’s ability to scale.
Marcel Herrmann Telles, one of the controlling partners of Anheuser-Busch InBev, was quoted, “A company can seize extraordinary opportunities only if it is very good at the ordinary operations.” Mapping your core business processes helps you document procedures, improve operations, track accountability, and eliminate confusion.
Laying out your business processes in a simple flow chart or a swim-lane flowchart will help you standardize and bring consistency, improving the reliability and repeatability of the outcomes. It will also help you analyze, track, modify, and improve, leading to a more efficient and consistent outcome. Finally, it will help you identify opportunities to leverage technology platforms to automate portions of the processes, turbocharging your organization’s ability to perform.
Leverage Technology — When demand increases, many small businesses just “pedal harder,” adding people, paper, and more email to the mix. These are the most expensive, least trackable solutions. Rather than throw people and paper at a process, consider throwing technology at it. Workflow automation and project management tools provide centralized management, a single source of “truth,” and management by exception. When configured properly, they can provide KPIs to help focus on goals. And finally, they can allow a geographically distant group of people to perform like a team.
The last 10 years of web development have produced a wealth of platforms to automate and track workflows. Companies like Asana, Monday.com, Microsoft (with Office 365 Tools), Google Workspace, and others present a democratization of workflow automation that only large corporations could afford in the past. With these new workflow and project management tools, a small company can behave as efficiently as a large corporation, at a fraction of the cost (with no IT infrastructure setup!).
When you can apply technology platforms to manage and automate your core company processes, the returns on investment aren’t incremental… they’re orders of magnitude. These very tools are the scaffolds that we can use to scale up a small company without bloating costs.
Can you share a few of the mistakes that companies make when they try to scale a business? What would you suggest to address those errors?
Almost all companies start with limited capital and work from a shoestring budget. In fact, the leading cause of business failure in the United States is under-funding. As a result, early in the evolution of the company, the focus is more on finding the right product and price to trigger customer demand. It’s hard to fund investment in operations when sales are slow. So we typically see underinvestment in technology and operations, and the team just works harder and harder. Eventually the team peaks out and growth levels off to the capacity of the existing staff.
When it’s time to scale the business, don’t make the mistake of leaning on the old way of performing operations. Invest in Business Process Management (BPM) and technology to turbocharge the core company operations. This will allow for a team to operate more efficiently and with better quality.
In summary, nothing can guarantee you’ll successfully scale your business. But mastering these core 5 organizational disciplines will give you a significant advantage!
Scaling includes bringing new people into the organization. How can a company preserve its company culture and ethos when new people are brought in?
Make sure your company culture is concise and easy to understand! It needs to be one that’s inspiring and easy to remember. Limit it to 3–5 core values with specific terms. When recruiting, clearly define and explain how the organization lives those core values. Give examples. If one of the culture words is “flexible”, illustrate how in your job posting. Flexible schedules? Work from home? Job sharing?
Some often-used culture terms are: agile, collaborative, meritocracy, inclusive, flexible, fast-paced, and integrity.
Once you’ve identified your culture, live it. Put the slide in every major company presentation. Identify scenarios where people have lived the culture, and celebrate it company-wide. It can’t just be words on a website, it needs to be weaved into the day-to-day of the company.
Many times, a key aspect of scaling your business is scaling your team’s knowledge and internal procedures. What tools or techniques have helped your teams be successful at scaling internally?
The last decade has presented a renaissance in company operations. With $12.50 a month (per user), a small to medium size business can choose Microsoft or Google’s business suites and perform advanced collaboration, document management, project management and workflow automation that would have taken entire data centers and hundreds of thousands of dollars in development just 15 years ago. As I mentioned in an earlier response, these platforms have democratized enterprise IT and best practice operations.
Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace are the two “packaged” solutions that offer a wealth of functions. The challenge that most companies have is that they don’t utilize all the features that these platforms offer. Most companies end up using email, calendaring, and contacts, and leave the most valuable portions of the platforms idle. I refer to this as “shelfware.” You bought the software, you pay the bill every month, yet you let it sit on the shelf adding no value. Just like a gym membership, you’ve got to use it to gain the benefits!
Literally EVERY company that I have encountered is either a Microsoft 365 shop or a Google Workspace shop. You’ve paid for it! It’s sitting on the shelf! Go learn more about it. Develop some projects to leverage the additional tools!
Worse, many companies go and buy “point” solutions that overlap with what they’re already paying for to Google or Microsoft. Do you pay for Zoom? You’re wasting your money. That function already exists and you pay for it! Other Examples: Slack’s equivalents are Microsoft Teams and Google Chat. If you pay for project management platforms like Asana, monday.com, or Trello, their equivalents are Microsoft Lists and Google Tables. The list goes on. Dropbox? Drop it. Use Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive. Using Calendly? Why? Use Microsoft Bookings or Google Reserve. The list goes on.
Keep it simple. Choose the Microsoft or Google platform. Maximize its use. You’ll save money, be more streamlined, and you’ll be leveraging decades of software development if you apply it to your core company operations.
What software or tools do you recommend to help onboard new hires?
Even the smallest company should be using an HR Information System (HRIS) (also known as an HR Management System (HRMS)). Just as Microsoft and Google have lowered the investment cost, so too have HRIS systems that are offered as a Software as a Service (SaaS). They are now affordable to even the smallest of companies.
HR management is difficult. It is rife with regulations and compliance requirements. It needs a dedicated system that keeps your company in line with federal and state employment laws. Your HRIS should be able to handle the storage of employee data, manage payroll, handle the recruitment process, perform benefits administration, time and attendance, handle employee out processing… at a minimum. Additional features are recurring performance management (annual reviews) and training management.
Fortunately, many payroll companies offer HRIS solutions in order to earn your payroll business! If you would consider outsourcing payroll, you should make sure they offer a platform to manage your HR. Good payroll companies that offer complete solutions are ADP, Paycor, and Zenefits.
If you insource your payroll function, then you need to find a company that has a complete HRIS and implement it. Examples of leaders in this market are: Rippling, Paycor, BambooHR, and APS.
One last critical consideration. Buying the platform is only the first part. Make sure you invest in good project management and technical training for your staff. The last thing you want is more shelfware in your company!
Because of your role, you are a person of significant influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most people, what would that be? You never know what your ideas can trigger.
At the core of most team-oriented work today are two things: team collaboration and project management. Every company should be training its staff on how to manage projects, be a good project team player, and how to use the collaboration tools chosen by the company.
I’m consulting a 350 person company right now, and we are rolling out Microsoft 365. Part of that rollout is training for the staff on how to use ALL the tools available, and how to apply them in working environments. We aren’t overcomplicating it either. There are YouTube videos already available from great producers that show how to utilize every tool Microsoft offers. We just curate the best videos and build training playlists for the staff to follow. The same goes for project management disciplines. We’re developing a curriculum of YouTube playlists for people selected to lead projects, so they can understand the basics of how to successfully complete team-oriented implementations.
These tools and platforms won’t implement or operate themselves. They need to be leveraged, and they can’t if the users don’t know how. Abraham Lincoln said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
Learn good project management and how to leverage the IT platforms your company uses, and you’ll be standing on the shoulders of giants!
How can our readers further follow your work online?
You can find me online at www.methodize.us, Instagram @methodize.us, Twitter @methodizeus. I love helping companies scale. It’s my passion!
This was truly meaningful! Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise!
Kirk Alexander Of Methodize us On 5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
