SYNC’d with Cathy Sunshine – Episode 63

“If you know who your customer is, you know why you exist. If you know why you exist, you know what you have to do. If you know what you have to do, do it and remove anything that gets in the way.”

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Episode Summary

Cathy Sunshine is the founder and president of the Sunshine Group, a consulting and coaching firm specializing in family business, leadership transformation, and organization design. Cathy works with leaders and organizations to break through blockages and to produce turnaround growth. Through her work, Cathy has helped hundreds of teams to improve performance and create transformational results. Her book, SYNC’d, lays out a practical guide for organizations to align modern performance with the new pace of the market in a digitally-charged world.

In this episode, Aviv and Cathy expound on powerful insights highlighted in SYNC’d. Cathy speaks to her strategy of making bold promises to customers and delivering on those promises. She identifies three critical propellants for organizational success, which include customer, structure and throughput. Aviv and Cathy reflect on the concept of ranked advantage design structure and its impact within an organization. Finally, Cathy leaves the audience with some sage advice. She proposes that organizations redesign themselves using reverse flow, a concept that suggests building a culture that frees individuals to embrace new information and practice what they do best.

Essential Learning Points:

• 00:56 – Introducing today’s guest, Cathy Sunshine
• 02:02 – How Cathy’s book SYNC’d has been received
• 03:09 – Cathy expounds on why she named her book SYNC’d
• 04:34 – Behavioral operations
• 06:40 – A powerful insight from Cathy’s book
• 10:07 – The value of making bold promises to customers
• 14:10 – How to deliver on bold promises
• 17:02 – Three critical propellants: Customer, Structure and Throughput
• 20:09 – Cathy reflects on the concept of a Ranked Advantage Design Structure
• 21:32 – Defining low-viscosity throughput
• 22:53 – How structure can impact behavior
• 26:07 – Identifying anchor customers
• 27:23 – How Uber failed to identify their anchor customers
• 32:10 – Cathy explains why it is vital for an organization to define who is in service to whom
• 34:10 – Five operational steps to create a SYNC’d organization
• 39:15 – How the government could benefit from Cathy’s steps for a synchronized organization
• 43:10 – Where listeners can find Cathy’s book, SYNC’d
• 44:15 – Parting words of wisdom from Cathy
• 45:27 – Cathy invites the audience to provide feedback on her book
• 47:33 – Now it’s your turn, liberate flow in order to unleash the energy potential and the genius necessary to solve complex organizational problems

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