Making Things Happen!

Imple­ment­ing a Win­ning Strat­egy is the hard­est part.

As you come to grips with what dri­ves your busi­ness maybe you don’t like what you see in the mir­ror. Or maybe you real­ize you have assets that are being under­uti­lized. What­ever the case may be, if you decide you want to make a strate­gic shift you need to be very delib­er­ate about defin­ing what kind of com­pany you want to be and where you plan to take the com­pany in the future. You need to have good answers for ques­tions like:

• Why is the change advantageous?
• Where will this posi­tion us in the marketplace?
• Where is our com­pe­ti­tion in this space?

Focus on and tire­less pur­suit of the crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tors will carry the day.

Once you know  where you want to go, issues will emerge that must be dealt with.  These issues must be iden­ti­fied for what they are and dealt with. This list of crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tors will become the agenda for any trans­for­ma­tion you attempt to make. Issues such as the fol­low­ing should arise:

• Do we have the right people?
• What assets do we have in this new area?
• How will we bridge this strat­egy back to the over­all cor­po­rate strat­egy (if you’re a brand or divi­sion of a larger company).

The clar­ity with which you under­stand these issues and their pri­or­ity will deter­mine in large part how well you make the trans­for­ma­tion. How focused you stay on them and how much effort you put into them will deter­mine who fast you make the transformation.

When set­ting a strat­egy a com­pany must have a crys­tal clear pic­ture of what their strength (their dri­ving force)  is. But most don’t! Some com­pa­nies are dri­ven by the mar­ket they serve, a la Gillette. Their tag line even says it, “The Best a Man Can Get™.” Is there any ques­tion what mar­ket they are serv­ing? Some com­pa­nies are dri­ven by the method in which they deliver their prod­ucts such as Red­box™.  Red­box doesn’t care who rents their movies or which movies are get­ting rented. Their focus is on that box sit­ting at your near­est gro­cery store or at the fast food drive through. These are two suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies dri­ven by two totally dif­fer­ent forces.

A firm grip on what dri­ves your com­pany is vital.

Com­pany cul­ture, val­ues and vision are all areas of a busi­ness that should be devel­oped but above all the dri­ving force (what makes the com­pany go for­ward day after day) must be under­stood. Here is are a few typ­i­cal dri­ving forces:

• Mar­ket Served
• Method of Distribution
• Method of Sale
• Tech­nol­ogy

For prac­tice take a look around at the busi­ness world and make an assess­ment of what dri­ves cer­tain com­pa­nies. Once you begin to see com­pa­nies within this frame work ask your­self, “What dri­ves my busi­ness?” Bet­ter yet ask those around you. Your ven­dors, cus­tomers and employ­ees will offer great insight into a sub­ject that must be rock solid for you to pro­pel your busi­ness to a new level.

Lots of clients I meet with talk about doing strat­egy work when what they are really doing is plan­ning. Plan­ning isn’t bad unless you think your set­ting strat­egy. The prob­lem with plan­ning when you think your set­ting strat­egy is that plan­ning is not direc­tional. Plan­ning con­sists of say­ing some­thing along the lines of, “we are going to grow this much,” or “we are going to increase vol­ume by this much.”  Plan­ning includes:

• Pro­jec­tions
• Fore­cast­ing
• Bud­get­ing
• Lots of spreadsheets!

Strat­egy is some­thing totally dif­fer­ent. Below are some typ­i­cal com­po­nents of set­ting a strate­gic direc­tion for your business.

• Cor­po­rate Dri­ving Force
• Posi­tion­ing
• Out­ward focus

As you con­sider your annual plan­ning ses­sions don’t be deceived into think­ing you are set­ting strat­egy. With­out direc­tion your efforts might take you a great dis­tance the wrong way. Take the time to set a strat­egy that will become a map for your jour­ney. This way, when put your head down and start­ing work­ing  to hit your goals you’ll know they were the right ones.

Time is our most pre­cious resource and it is our most squan­dered asset.

Only a frac­tion of our time is avail­able to pro­duce the results that jus­tify our pay­check. The rest of our time is spent respond­ing or react­ing to oth­ers. Within that real­ity we must sav­agely guard our time. This can even mean guard our time from our own bad habits. To stop ask­ing the ques­tion: Where did my day go attack the prob­lem from two angles. Yes it’s a pin­cer movement!

Angle #1 Stop wast­ing time Angle #2 Start mak­ing bet­ter use of time

Here’s how.

The Dirty Dozen Time wasters (in no par­tic­u­lar order):

1. Stop using auto noti­fiers. Email and voice­mail were cre­ated for you not the reverse.
2. Stop start­ing your day by check­ing email. It allows oth­ers to set your pri­or­i­ties for you.
3. Stop answer­ing calls from unknown num­bers. They can leave a message.
4. Stop answer­ing calls from blocked num­bers. See #3
5. Stop attempt­ing to mul­ti­task. It’s a myth. Con­text switch­ing kills productivity.
6. Stop going into your day with no plan. If you don’t plan your day some­one else will.
7. Stop pro­cras­ti­nat­ing. You’re delay­ing because you’re scared. Fig­ure out why and deal with it.
8. Stop wast­ing time on social media. Get your mes­sage out (even if it is per­sonal) and get off.
9. Stop going to meet­ings unpre­pared. Demand to know the objec­tive of a meet­ing and prep for it.
10. Stop meet­ing with­out a pre­scribed and worth­while outcome.
11. Stop nat­ter­ing. Get to the point ASAP.
12. Stop wast­ing time on pro­duc­tiv­ity sys­tems. Get orga­nized but don’t be anal.

The twelve step time “recov­ery program”

1. Start track­ing your time. Your mem­ory will fail you. Write it down, for one month
2. Start your day with goals to achieve.
3. Start the day by killing the snakes. The sooner you do the stuff you don’t like the better.
4. Start your day by work­ing for two hours on your stuff. Then check email and voicemail.
5. Start batch­ing wrought actions. Once you start respond­ing to emails get them all done.
6. Start­ing using macros and tem­plates. You can write the tem­plates, talk to IT about the macros.
7. Start using email for what it’s good at. Spread­ing use­ful infor­ma­tion (not a fwd of a fwd).
8. Start meet­ing only when you have stated objec­tives for the meeting
9. Start send­ing out agen­das before you meet. Let peo­ple know what’s coming.
10. Start requir­ing pre-work. Research done before meet­ing will opti­mize your time together.
11. Start sum­ma­riz­ing your inter­ac­tion imme­di­ately after you have them you’ll remem­ber more.
12. Start unplug­ging one day a week. They call it a “Crack-berry” for a reason.

This is akin to a busi­ness leader being good at fight­ing fires in his daily fran­tic over­sight of a com­pany but not invest­ing in devel­op­ing a solid strat­egy that will act as a guid­ing light for the orga­ni­za­tion.  It takes either a lot of courage or a sharp blow to the head for a leader to stop the fre­netic pace of daily man­age­ment and develop a sound strat­egy. Once the effort is made a strat­egy should have the fol­low­ing attributes:

• Speci­ficity: there should be no ambi­gu­ity to a strat­egy statement
• Pre­science: strat­egy should be for­ward fac­ing and not just pro­jec­tions based on his­tor­i­cal data
• Gener­ic­ness: the strat­egy should apply to every­one and not be nar­row (this is a bal­anc­ing act with the first point)
• Action­able: employ­ees should be able to use the strat­egy to inform their actions
• Flex­i­ble: lead­ers should bal­ance keep­ing a strat­egy cur­rent with not let­ting a strat­egy work long enough to succeed

Good strate­gies are all dif­fer­ent but they all have some sim­i­lar traits. The most com­mon is that they fail in imple­men­ta­tion. That said, if there is no strat­egy you’ve failed before you’ve even started. What is the strat­egy that acts as a guid­ing light in your business?