# Leadership Lessons for Scaling Your Business > A NachoTuesday interview — the C-Suite Insights series from NachoNacho, the B2B SaaS and AI > marketplace. In conversation with Doug Walner, CEO, Align. - **Page:** https://nachonacho.com/nachotuesday/video/Leadership-Lessons-for-Scaling-Your-Business - **Guest:** Doug Walner, CEO, Align - **Guest on LinkedIn:** https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-walner/ - **Recorded:** 2023-01-17 - **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK_Fn1o4hpY ## Summary In this NachoTuesday Andy Karuza interviews Doug Walner, CEO of Align. This interview covers many great leadership ideas to help you scale your business. This discussion also covers leadership lessons from an experienced executive, how to apply leadership principles to get actual results, and how to identify the qualities of a leader when building out your leadership team. Watch this interview to get practical leadership ideas that can help your business grow today. ## Full transcript Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to another episode of NachoTuesday. Today, I have Doug Walner from Align, and we're happy to learn more about his company and his extensive experience as an entrepreneur and executive. I also found out that he's a big fan of history, so we can expect some insightful knowledge from him. We're really pleased to have him here. I'll refrain from teaching history today, but I'm open to answering any business-related questions you may have. Great! Let's proceed to the next question. Can you give us a brief overview of Align and what your company does in 30 seconds? Sure. Align essentially helps companies track and measure their success in achieving annual goals. It provides a structured way to manage and assign key priorities, ensuring that everyone in the organization is aligned towards executing those goals. Our software promotes good communication, meeting cadences, and creates rhythms in your business to keep the focus on the right work. It allows you to visualize the execution of your business goals, complementing financial data with actionable insights. It's all about continuous performance management and staying focused on execution. Many companies struggle with translating their plans into actual results, and that's where Align comes in. Absolutely. It's crucial to have a system in place that not only creates plans but also guides the execution and measures progress along the way. So, what are the common pitfalls where businesses often fail to achieve their strategic goals? As you mentioned earlier, it's primarily the execution piece and staying focused. Businesses tend to develop plans without diving deep into the details of how to execute them effectively. To avoid this, it's helpful to break down annual goals into quarterly objectives and identify the key priorities. By aligning everyone in the company around these priorities, assigning ownership, and establishing reporting mechanisms, businesses can ensure progress and accountability. It's about introducing structured processes and methodologies to drive execution and get the work done. That's where many businesses fall short. That makes sense. Execution and focus are indeed critical for success. Moving on, throughout your years of experience, what essential leadership lessons have you learned beyond strategic planning and execution? That's a great question. Leadership lessons can vary from person to person, but for me, it boils down to a few key principles. First and foremost, it's about being a good listener. Taking the time to understand your team members, their perspectives, and their ideas fosters collaboration and trust. Additionally, leading by example is essential. Demonstrating the values and behaviors you expect from your team sets the tone and establishes credibility. Another crucial aspect is empowering your team. Encourage autonomy, provide guidance and resources, and trust your team members to make decisions and take ownership of their work. Lastly, continuous learning is vital. Embrace a growth mindset, seek feedback, and be open to new ideas. Leadership is an ongoing journey, and adapting and improving are key to staying effective as a leader. These are just a few leadership lessons that have resonated with me personally. Being authentic, both with your team and with yourself, is crucial. We prioritize starting from within the organization by identifying core values early on and staying true to them. To me, this is everything as it sets the tone and requires living out those values. For me, authenticity means being genuine with my team. One of our core values is "getting things done," which emphasizes execution rather than just talking about it. This value is prominently displayed on our website because it is essential. Leading by example and demonstrating these core values is vital for employees to see and follow. From my perspective, it is preferable for someone to go out and try something, even if they fail. Of course, we provide guidance and prioritize tasks, but taking initiative and learning from failures is valuable. As a founder and leader, I understand the importance of building a strong core team from the start. Hiring the right talent and ensuring cultural fit are significant aspects. Attracting the right people and aligning them with our company culture is crucial. During interviews, I look for authenticity and integrity, both of which are core values we hold. Assessing how candidates align with our core values helps in evaluating their fit within the company. Over the years, I have found numerous books on leadership principles valuable. One of my favorites is "Execution" by Larry Varsity and RAM Charan. This book emphasizes the importance of getting things done and avoiding analysis paralysis. It has been influential in all the companies I have led, as execution is key. Many people fail to grasp this fundamental concept, focusing too much on talking rather than taking action. Being unafraid to execute and learn from failure is essential for growth and success. Failure is a part of the learning journey, not a reflection of personal worth. Embracing failure as an opportunity to learn and pivot is crucial. Startups, in particular, require a problem-solving mindset and an openness to not having all the answers. Failure can lead to new opportunities and innovative solutions. In the startup world, it's the thrill of solving the remaining challenges that attracts certain employees and drives the business forward. Yes, I have experienced failures throughout my career. It's safe to say that I've had my fair share of them. One instance that comes to mind is when we were contracting with a large state organization. providing a wide range of services to the state's citizens. We had a target date in mind, and about a year prior, I came up with the idea to build a new platform for this contract. We had enough time, so I decided that we would complete it within nine months. We dedicated our time to designing a completely new platform to improve our existing processes. On the day of the launch, I was present at the state, working with a client to roll out the services. However, the system failed to work properly on the first day, which was a major embarrassment for us. While my team back at the office panicked, I remained calm and focused on resolving the situation. I had to explain to the client how we planned to overcome the issue. It was a challenging day, but we regrouped and assured the client that we would find a solution. Within a couple of days, we relaunched the platform after identifying and addressing the issues we faced. We had underestimated certain aspects during testing, and it led to the initial failure. However, despite the setbacks, our decision to build the new platform and take the risk completely transformed our business model. We quickly leveraged the solution across multiple states, becoming more efficient in our rollouts and winning more business as a result. This failure turned into a success by learning from our mistakes and persisting. It taught me the importance of staying calm in tough situations and maintaining confidence, even when you don't have all the answers. Another challenge we encountered with this company was convincing C-level executives and leadership to implement strategic initiatives such as OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). Our target audience is usually composed of individuals who recognize the need for change in their businesses. They may have identified pain points related to scaling, communication, or organizational chaos. They approach us because they want to implement a structured process to address these issues. However, the challenge lies in getting internal stakeholders to embrace the change. When implementing OKRs or similar programs, resistance and pushback are common because people feel threatened by increased accountability and visibility. As a software organization, our challenge is to find effective ways to introduce the product within these environments. It requires messaging the benefits, overcoming objections, and demonstrating how the software can tie into existing processes to engage front-end employees. The key is to identify a champion within the organization who can drive the initiative and consistently reinforce the importance of the change. It takes time and persistence to establish new business habits and make them stick. We often advise our clients to start with small steps and gradually build habits over 90 days, such as implementing regular meetings and communication channels. For example, introducing daily huddles can provide managers with valuable insights and foster better communication within the organization. It's essential to recognize the value of structured processes and establish them gradually to achieve lasting change. A messaging tool is used to communicate with others, but the daily huddle is a structured meeting where individuals can share important priorities and updates. We provide the ability to structure the meeting, set the agenda, and include relevant data related to the priorities or key performance indicators (KPIs) being tracked. Sometimes, internally, we find that using Slack can make things more chaotic. People tend to send messages about everything, and it can be challenging to keep track of random streams of conversation. To avoid missing important information, I make a habit of grabbing specific thread links and organizing them. This ensures that essential tasks don't get lost in the chaos. Our software aims to provide the structure and framework necessary for effective meetings and communication. As for advice to entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs looking to launch a SaaS product, I believe it's crucial to build a long-term pro forma. I recommend creating a pro forma that covers at least three to five years. A pro forma goes beyond a simple budget; it forces you to consider revenue sources, revenue streams, and every expense in your business on a monthly basis over the specified period. This exercise is valuable because it helps you delve into the granular details of your expenses. It prompts questions about where things will be situated, the cost of your office or systems, and how your business will evolve in terms of employees and teams. Having a clear vision of your company's growth and direction is essential for effective leadership and hiring. When building a SaaS business, entrepreneurs should focus on solving pain points rather than offering something optional or "nice to have." Pain businesses tend to attract customers willing to invest significant amounts of money quickly. Additionally, it's important not to undervalue your product. Pricing should reflect the value you provide, and it's essential to believe in your product's worth. It's easy to fall into the trap of setting low prices to attract customers, but this can undermine the perceived value and overall brand perception. Setting the right price is crucial. In terms of choosing our platform over other options, we offer a more holistic approach. While other tools may focus solely on goal-setting frameworks, we integrate business methodology with our goal-setting features. Our platform allows users to not only set goals but also plan and execute them effectively. By incorporating goals and priorities into regular meetings and providing visualization tools, we simplify the process for businesses, particularly small to medium-sized growing companies. Our recent dashboarding tools further enhance the experience, allowing seamless integration with other tools like Salesforce. Executives and teams can easily add KPI cards and monitor their progress. We're excited to support more businesses in their growth journey. Thank you for your time today. For those interested, you can find our product in the NachoNacho Marketplace with a 15% off lifetime deal. We aim to be the best platform for managing, discovering, and saving on SaaS products. Thank you once again for the opportunity to discuss our platform. It was a pleasure! --- All NachoTuesday interviews: https://nachonacho.com/nachotuesday About NachoNacho: https://nachonacho.com/llms.txt