Navigating uncertainty with Shannon Susko

In the ever-evolving business landscape, where uncertainty is a constant, insights from serial entrepreneur and best-selling author Shannon Susko emerge as a beacon of strategic clarity.

The author of The M Game and three other books will share her Three-year Highly Achievable Goal (3HAG) method and related strategies at a breakfast event hosted by Communitech Nov. 21 at the Walper Hotel in Kitchener.

Registration for the event is now open.

“I want people to set a clear three-year goal, recognizing its power to reshape their company's trajectory, and “win” their game.” Susko said in an interview with Tech News. “Strategic confidence is key. Understand your current position, where you want to be strategically in three years and making better, faster decisions towards it will be key to success and winning  in 2024.”

Susko co-founded and exited two tech companies before establishing Metronomics, a business operating system designed to empower CEOs and leaders to achieve their goals.

“Metronomics comprises three essential elements: a repeatable playbook, an open playing field and the blind-spot remover, or Metronomics coaches,” she said.

The idea to start Metronomics was sparked when a CEO sought Susko’s coaching expertise. Initially hesitant, she eventually embraced her new role as a CEO+Leadership Team coach.

“Coaching the system into that organization yielded the same results that my companies had got,” Susko said. “Wanting to extend the benefits to more companies, I penned The Metronome Effect, a street version of the business operating system, now known as Metronomics and prescriptively described in the book Metronomics.”

As coaches adopted this consistent growth methodology, Susko recognized the need for a crucial component she had initially omitted – 3HAG. This realization prompted her to write her second book, The 3HAG Way, in 2018. Coaches sought certification in the 3HAG Way, leading to the establishment of Metronomics as a coaching company.

“My core purpose was to ensure no one faced the desperation I felt in growing a company,” Susko said. “Enabling coaches to train and impact more companies aligned with my vision of exponential positive change.”

Metronomics is a business operating system, also encapsulated in the book Metronomics, providing CEOs and leaders with a step-by-step guide to implementing the system.

“Today, Metronomics stands as an organization with over 80 coaches globally, impacting CEOs, their companies, teams and lives, helping them achieve their goals in less time,” Susko said.

Drawing from her experience of achieving her goals in less time, Susko emphasized the transformative impact a coach can have.

"A coach is your blind-spot remover, propelling you faster toward your goals three times as fast as without,” she said. “Many entrepreneurs hesitate to invest in coaching, but I did so concurrently with launching my first company and it proved invaluable.”

To find the right coach, Susko suggests finding a coach with a proven methodology and who you fit with.

During her talk at the Communitech breakfast on Nov. 21, Susko plans to address the three phases of growth, the critical path to win every year and why 3HAG is the secret sauce to achieve that.

She'd like founders to understand the importance of cultivating awareness regarding the growth phase of their companies.

“As Canadian companies, not everyone follows the conventional year-end planning cycle, often occurring in June,” she said. “I want founders to walk away with a three-year highly achievable goal that could reshape the trajectory of their company."

Susko also wants founders to foster a deeper understanding of their strategic execution confidence, and she aims to demystify the concept of a business operating model.

“I want founders to grasp their current position in terms of confidence and strategy, comprehend the reasons behind it, and realize how a business operating system will not only meet them where they are but set them in the right direction for 2024 and so far beyond.”

This event is thanks to investments from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario, the Scale-Up Platform is a collaboration among Communitech, Invest Ottawa and MaRS Discovery District that will help hundreds of high-growth firms in Ontario.