Jill Belconis on Scaling Business with Clarity and (Data) Alignment
Jill Belconis, career CEO and former YPO International Chairman, is an accomplished business leader with a passion for helping fellow CEOs scale their businesses with clarity and alignment. Jill’s strategic coaching and leadership consulting is in high demand, and we are grateful for the insights she shared during our recent Expert Insight Series interview.
Prior to starting Jill Belconis Enterprises, Jill was President and CEO at Shelter Mortgage, where even in the midst of recession she grew the company an average of 20% annually and scaled it to 500 employees across 35 states before selling in 2013. Jill was elected to the Young Presidents’ Organization in 1997, and in 2011 she became the first woman elected as YPO’s International Chairman of the Board. Her TED talk highlights her experiences and women’s unique talents for leadership.
Listen to the podcast episode or read the highlights below. The interview covers five themes: why tough economic times are cyclical and present an offensive opportunity, how to maintain laser focus on the one most important priority, how job scorecards drive accountability and employee engagement, why leaders should democratize the flywheel rather than go it alone, and how trust and data visibility build a data-driven culture.
Remember, Tough Economic Times Are Cyclical
With economic uncertainty on the horizon, many leaders naturally adopt a defensive stance. But Jill encourages business leaders to remember that economic fluctuations are cyclical in nature and present an opportunity to gain momentum while competitors huddle. Research from the National Bureau of Economic Research confirms there have been eleven distinct cycles since the 1940s. Starting with that premise, it is possible to maintain a glass-half-full mentality and even adopt an offensive stance during a downturn.
Challenging economic times provide unique opportunities for differentiation. Bain and Company’s research shows that companies who took opportunities during the 2008 recession vastly outperformed those who did not. Leaders should ask hard questions, use data insights, think strategically, and focus on what they have rather than what they do not have.
Focus on the One Thing
Many leaders develop extensive task lists of items they need to complete. But to grow a business, laser focus is critical. Business coach Randy Nelson asks, “What do you need to say NO to, to free you up to focus on your most important priorities?” At Shelter Mortgage, despite a 16% interest rate environment, Jill and her organization found success through focusing on their main thing: partnerships, avoiding the temptation to engage in popular subprime mortgage loans and the subsequent fallout. To find your focus, Jill recommends Jim Collins’ Flywheel Concept. After identifying your flywheel, learn to say no. Breakthroughs come to leaders who are proficient at staying focused. Jill writes more on this topic in her blog.
Use the Job Scorecard to Drive Accountability
For any organization, Jill asks: do you have a culture of accountability? In order to scale business, leaders must trust their team to contribute. As a leader, you need to maintain oversight without micromanagement. Instead, distribute ownership of the growth plan with a job scorecard.
Scorecards support employee engagement and accountability through surfacing KPIs and automating consistent, empirical feedback. No matter the size of your organization, employees should never have to wonder whether they are performing, whether their position is secure, or whether their contribution is valuable. Vague, constant pressure to “do better” creates insecurity and burnout, while fair, objective accountability creates a high-performing team culture. Jill writes more on this subject in her blog article on job scorecards.
Don’t Go It Alone
Leaders often fall prey to the illusion that they must do it all alone. The assumption that tasks require their personal involvement to be done correctly, or that delegation is more time-consuming than handling it themselves, will quickly wear down even the strongest leader. Jill’s main advice is that these assumptions are wrong. To scale up, leaders must democratize the flywheel: delegate responsibilities wherever possible and use data intelligence to automate accountability and oversight. Jill also recommends Patrick Lencioni’s book The Working Genius, which focuses on recognizing and harnessing the six unique geniuses employees bring to an organization.
Winning with a Data-Driven Culture
One of the biggest hurdles in building a data-driven culture is cultural resistance. Jill discusses the primary reason for employee resistance to job scorecards and data-driven cultures: a belief that the data is not accurate. This brings us to the heart of the matter: trust. Lack of trust is one of the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, according to Patrick Lencioni, and the need for valid, trustworthy data cannot be overstated. To build a data-driven culture, employees must trust that the data they see is accurate, whether it appears on a job scorecard or a company dashboard.
Blue Margin’s CEO Brick Thompson and VP of Delivery Operations Caleb Ochs discuss how data warehousing can help with data quality on the Dashboard Effect podcast. Jill also advises that leaders involve their employees in defining the KPIs they are held accountable to. This creates the buy-in needed to overcome resistance to change. Through engagement and trust, data visibility can become your strongest tool for growth.
If you would like to contact Jill, she can be reached at jill@jillbelconis.com or jillbelconis.com. If you would like to explore how Blue Margin can help you use data visibility to drive growth and team accountability, contact our team here.
