We recently invited Andrew Coronis from Coronis Group to come and speak to the participants on Owner Manager Program 8 about some of the lessons he had learned and things he had achieved over the years.

Here is a guy that following on from what his father started, has created a great business. He has taken things further than the vast majority of Real Estate Agencies in merging multiple related product and service lines into one group and a cohesive offering. In my experience it is always difficult to make sure this cross selling works with multiple competing interests and agendas among staff. Some of the ways they have overcome these challenges were:

1. Coronis use the  Net Promoter Score  (NPS) as a mechanism to measure every individual in the company and the feedback that they receive on their service to clients. They have found it a great way to keep staff focused on the customer and their needs rather than internal processes or operational priorities. They use the NPS to assess where things were at, and then help staff to develop a plan to improve their personal NPS. The results are released each month and the expectation is that staff scores will be moving in the right direction over time. This may not work for every business, but for an organisation that is focused on service, it can be a great metric.

   NPS provides a score from -100 to +100. Generally by international standards an NPS above 0 is considered good, above 50 excellent, and above 70 world class. Interestingly, we ran the NPS on the last group of Owner Manager Program participants and received an NPS score of 93 (We thought this was pretty darn good for an education and development program for business owners!).

2. Recognising that sometimes senior leaders need to get out of the way. Those coming through are hungry and are looking to progress and move things forward and at times there are leaders that need to change roles or move sideways to let the rising generation take greater ownership and responsibility. Mandy Johnson referred to it as having “no sacred cows”… (a bit of pun with a couple of Ag business owners in the room). This is often a challenging situation with people in senior roles that are not only staff, but business partners and close personal friends.

   Sometimes as a business owner, you need to recognise that you may be the roadblock that that is hindering progress.

3. The magic number 3. Andrew and his team have applied the philosophy that most people can only focus on three things. If you create a good vision and direction as to where the business is headed and then give staff three core areas of focus for their day-to-day roles, most of the other “crap” takes care of itself. In Andrew’s experience it really helps to align people on what matters most without them getting caught up in the unnecessary “noise” that always develops within organisations.

Overall some practical ideas that have made a significant difference to Coronis Group. Above all the participants commented:

How great it is to hear the ” warts and all” stories and lessons from other business owners as they share their experience at the Owner Manager Program