E166 | How Metronomics can Help Grow your Business with Shannon Byrne Susko

If you’re wondering if there’s a silver bullet to help you grow your company and get you there with speed, ease and confidence, then don’t miss Shannon Byrne Susko discussing her latest book, Metronomics, in this episode. 

Shannon is a CEO and leadership team coach, bestselling business author, speaker, serial entrepreneur, and corporate director. She has distilled her extensive knowledge gained over 25 years at the helm of various companies, and coaching clients, into her new book Metronomics, a definitive How To guide to take your CEO and leadership team on a very prescriptive journey. 

Metronomics is the silver bullet your organisation has been looking for. Shannon’s book takes you on a journey, it guides you to where you want to go, asks what’s the goal, and shows you why the one thing people need to do – define purpose, core values and their culture – is the one thing they never want to do. 

In this episode, Shannon discusses her 3HAG system, why she wrote Metronomics, how Metronomics will help high performing teams win their business Olympics, why businesses need a playbook, the Coach Cascade System, and why key function flow map (KFFM) is essential to business growth.

On today’s podcast:

• The 3HAG system
• Why businesses need Metronomics
• Using Metronomics as a playbook
• The hardest part of the system
• Key function flow map (KFFM)

Links:

• Twitter – @MetronomeEffect
• LinkedIn – Shannon Byrne Susko
• Website – Metronome United, Books by Shannon

How Metronomics Can Grow Your Business with Shannon Byrne Susko

Shannon Susko is the founder of Metronome United, a CEO and leadership team coach, and a serial entrepreneur. Located in Whistler, British Columbia, Shannon has worked with companies and coaches all over the world, teaching them the growth strategy that she used to grow her companies. 

The 3HAG system

Shannon spent 25 years leading high-growth global companies, but when she was approached by other CEOs to help them achieve the same success that she was getting, she realised she had created a silver bullet. She’d spent 25 years building, iterating, and innovating what we now know as Metronomics, a repeatable system which is used by hundreds of coaches and thousands of companies of all sizes all around the world. 

According to Shannon, every company needs a 3HAG – a 3 Year Highly Achievable Goal. This is a strategic execution system that she and her team created to help make their long-term goal achievable and believable. 

It doesn’t matter if you have a team of 4, 40, or 40,000, Shannon’s 3HAG system will help you articulate your company’s strategy, simply, in a way that everyone understands. 

Shannon wanted to create a repeatable system that companies could implement and forget about, because it would be ingrained in who they are and what they do. Once in place, they can then get on with growing the business and reaching the goals they are trying to achieve. And that’s precisely why she wrote Metronomics.

“Metronomics is a system for companies, any company, two or more people, and it will enable the organisation and the team to actually save time, grow value, to balance your team, your business and your life. With one system. It’s like the backbone of the organisation.”

Why businesses need Metronomics

Metronomics is a playbook to help high performing teams win their business Olympics. When teams find themselves on the high performing path, guessing which way to go, they should use this book, which is science based and human based, to tell them what they should do next, in order to get the results they want and hope to get. 

Rather than write a book simply about ‘what’ teams need to do, Shannon wanted to write a book about ‘how’ to do it. Because too often, teams learn a specific skill set and then they don’t practice it and they forget it. But by writing a book about the how, they will always have a reference to guide them for when they get busy and forget to practice. 

“It’s overwhelming as business leaders to think about all the different things we have to do: we need a strong culture, we need a cohesive team, we need clarity of what we do, we need a differentiated strategy, we need a kick ass execution, we need cash, a cash plan. As a CEO, I was like, holy cow, this is whack a mole.”

Using Metronomics as a playbook

Businesses need a playbook, says Shannon, they need a coach to bring the process, and team members who are willing and desire to carry it out. 

First you need to build the foundations, where everyone understands the process and the system, this is where you get committed to the business. Once that’s built, you need to develop cohesiveness among the team and start developing trust. There’s always going to be healthy conflict, says Shannon, people are going to get fired up about different things, but the team needs to execute well together. 

Once these things are achieved, then you need to create momentum. That’s when you get going as a team, when the team starts to really get it and collaborate on the strategy. The team is thinking more, the systems are in play and they’re executing every day, and as they get better they get more confident. 

And then you move to the next level, where team members and the business are willing to evolve their behaviour and grow themselves and grow the other members in the company. This, says Shannon, is called the Coach Cascade System. The coaches coach the leaders, who coach the team, who coach other members of the team. It’s a compound effect, allowing even newest members of the team to access essential knowledge right at the beginning of their journey, rather than waiting until they’re in a leadership position to learn it. 

“I coach companies that are 75 years old, 67 years old, 32 years old. And I coach companies that are one year old, it doesn’t matter. Companies that are more mature, and the leaders have been there longer, they’re the ones going shit, what was I doing for the last 30 years?”

The hardest part of the system

The part of Metronomics that people struggle with the most, says Shannon, is the soft squishy stuff, the stuff that gives businesses the greatest momentum. 

Leaders everywhere assume they’re nailing the soft stuff: the culture, the cohesiveness, without actually working on it. The reason being that people don’t like to admit when they’re not good at something. We don’t like sharing our weaknesses, says Shannon. 

But you need to write it down and you need to know what you’re going to do about it, she advises, and you can’t avoid it in Metronomics. It’s not in your face, it’s step by step, turn of the dial stuff, ‘we get better together’, she says, and the best bit is that CEOs won’t even know they’re doing it. 

Key function flow map (KFFM)

The foundation of everything, says Shannon, is the KFFM, a tool where you map out your quote to cash process as a sort of flowchart. You map out the functions and the widgets that flow through your business to generate cash for your business. It’s essentially a big map of how your business makes money. 

But it’s something that leaders haven’t typically thought about in years, however says Shannon, it’s something that you should bring to life every week. You should use it as your scoreboard every week. It’s the most enabling thing you can do for your business. 

“We don’t play on a field and get to the end of the game and don’t know the score.”

Essentially what you don’t want, says Shannon, is executives all thinking the KFFM is something different, otherwise everyone will be pulling in different directions. One thing she does early when she’s coaching CEOs and leadership teams, is she gets them all together and goes through the KFFM with them in the kickoff. 

“Eyes are so wide open. As a coach, we know that that’s a major aha for all teams. And in some cases, a lot of teams are sitting there going, that is just so simple. Why didn’t we do that [before]?”

The KFFM is the foundation for everything a business needs to get them to where they need to go. It’s as essential as a leg on a stool. The KFFM is an open scorecard, the clarity of how a business can play together with a playbook, enabling the compound growth system, allowing the organisation to get to where they need to go faster, with clarity and alignment. 

“Metronomics will help you get consistent behaviour and evolve the behaviour of your team together. I mean, that’s it. I choked when I figured out alignment equals behaviour.”

In a nutshell, says Shannon, humans want to be connected to each other and to a plan, and if you don’t have that in place in your business, it’s hard to grow your company. You need to break things down to widgets and form a plan of how you’re going to grow the business. 

Book recommendations

• Unlocking The Customer Value Chain: How Decoupling Drives Your Disruption
• No Rules Rules: Netflix and the culture of reinvention

---

Enjoyed the show? Leave Us A Review

Follow Us and be the first to listen to a new episode each week on your favourite platform.