Strategic thought partners; Their role and the realities of having one in your business.

Strategic thought partners (STP) can be a great asset to your business. 

Especially if you’re ready to uplevel your business or you’re going through a period of growth and need some support. 

But what is a STP, who can fill that role, how do they actually help your business and isn’t hiring one a bit like hiring your own boss? 

Let’s talk about it. MBS style (if you’re new around here, that means with no BS).

What is a strategic thought partner?

A STP can look like a few different roles. 

More commonly, they are one of the big three; Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), or Chief Operating Officer (COO). 

Their role within your business is to bring experience and strategy to help you set priorities and advance towards completing them. 

Ultimately they help you move forward. 

This is a person who doesn’t show up to a meeting to just take notes and have tasks assigned to them. Instead, this is someone who shows up with ideas, thoughts, and plans to advance priorities in your business. 

They are sitting at your table with you when you establish priorities. Not because you answer to them, but because you want them there. 

The mindset shift

One thing I’ve learned in business is that you need to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. 

I’d even go as far as to say that the biggest risk of your business failing is when you are always the smartest in the room. 

But this is a hard pill to swallow and it’s an even harder thing to put into practice. 

In my first year as a manager at the finance office (where I worked before I started MBS), I went to this big event they held each year for managers and vice presidents of the company. Here I met a district manager who I was sharing some of my hiring struggles with and they straight out asked me why I wasn’t hiring people I knew were better than me. 

I instantly took a slight offense to this. 

Because in my mind, all I could think about was that if I hire someone better than me…surely, they’ll end up taking my job. So me being me, I told him this and his reply is what changed things for me. 

He said “If you truly are as good as you say you are, they won’t take your job, these people will just uplift you and make you better.’’ 

It was like a switch flipped in my brain. 

So that’s exactly what I did and sure enough, my team (and I) got better. 

This same philosophy applies when you hire a STP. By surrounding yourself with people who know more about different things than you do and then actually get their thoughts, you elevate your business. 

Yes, it takes a certain level of confidence to hire someone who is better than you but it’s so beneficial. Remember: You’ll be rowing the same boat- they are just going to help you move faster and more efficiently. 

Hiring smarter also doesn’t mean you’re hiring your own boss, it means you’re hiring another brain to pick. It means you have someone to share the load with, to discuss and strategize with. 

This is actually common feedback I get from my clients when they bring me on as a STP. They feel a relief that now they aren’t the only ones who are trying to actively improve their business. 

How does a Strategic Thought Partner Work

Before I elaborate on how STPs typically work, it’s key to note that every STP is different, and how they work and what they bring to the table will depend on the role you bring in and the level of that expert.

However, something that is common is that you’ll have regular meetings with your STP. In these meetings, you’ll talk about your goals and visions for your business and what you want your legacy to be. You’ll also look at where you are now and where you want to go and will work together to come up with a strategy for operations, finance, or marketing (depending on the role you hire) and create a plan based on that strategy. 

They will then work with you to evaluate that strategy as you implement it to make the necessary adjustments, pivots, or additions to keep you moving in the right direction.

For example, when I come into businesses as a COO,  I help owners create strategic plans. This starts with me looking at everything as a whole and talking about each thing they want to achieve over the next 5 years.  But the actual planning piece is for the next 6 months, and we evaluate every quarter. So if things need to shift, we’ll shift! 

What could this look like in your business

So all of this begs the question…what would a STP look like in your business?

Well, as always, I’m here to tell you with some examples. 

One of my clients currently has me acting as a COO on retainer. 

It’s safe to say over the past few months, we’ve been able to turn a lot around very quickly. 

Although this client is very smart and could definitely do my job she recognized that with where she’s at, she wants to be the CEO, not the COO.  This recognition of where she is at is important to note because she came into our partnership ready to do the work and actually take my advice. This is key in having an STP because if I’m your STP I’m going to be asking you the hard questions to help you manage your ideas and build strategies that work. If you aren’t ready to listen, then you aren’t ready for a STP. 

So far, we’ve worked on many things like planning out offers, planning and launching events, creating more internal structure for her team, introducing communication standards, more clearly defining team roles and at one point she had to let go of an employee and I was there to support her through it all. 

Another client had a VIP day with me where I acted as her COO for the day. She is in the health care business and was feeling overwhelmed with her processes and tech. So we spent the day working out how to make the day-to-day of her business more functional so she has the bandwidth to take on greater opportunities and continue expanding the business. 

On the VIP day, we worked through her client experience processes, got her tech optimized and we talked through her process and client experience. She was also able to ask me questions about business in general to someone who gets it and understands. 

If you’re thinking about hiring a COO to be a strategic thought partner in your business, I’d love to chat with you. You can get in touch here.