Blog

“If you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of your arm. As you grow older you will discover that you have two hands. One for helping yourself, the other for helping others.”

Audrey Hepburn (1929 – 1993)

Who’s the best teach ever?

You are!

Here’s a practice to see if this is true. Note the word practice; you need to work at it like practicing to play the guitar.

Daily Learning Reflection

1. Find a quiet place to sit at the same time every day (go ahead and turn off the mobile/cell and take the landline off the hook). An excellent piece of technology called ‘ear plugs’ can be really helpful to find quiet!
2. Close your eyes and watch your breath for 5 minutes. Initially be aware of the rise and fall of your breath and the feeling throughout your body, then bring your attention to the sensation of the rise and fall of your breath on the rim of your nostrils. Altogether 5 mins for this is fine.
3. Now for the next 5 minutes reflect on yesterday (or today if doing this at the end of the day). Reflect on interactions with others. If in a leadership/management position reflect on how YOU were with your staff member(s). Contemplate three questions: (1) What did I do well? (note: you need to exhaust this question as most people have a tendency to move on too quickly to the next question. (2) What could you improve?, and (3) what are your intentions for the next 24 hours.
4. Open your eyes and write your intentions down in a notebook or electronic diary. Have a look at these the next day and reflect on them before you start your practice.

You’ll be amazed at how self aware you’ll become and how much you can improve yourself to become the person you want to be. All we need is awareness and familiarity with the who we want to be.

This practice comes from my philosophy that ‘we need to lead ourselves first if we want to lead others’. Check out a paper I wrote on this a while ago called Leadership Made Simple

Would love to hear how you get on with the above practice or thoughts on my paper?

“Clients are just like us. When you look for a doctor, you want one who listens, explains things, and doesn’t just say “Bend over. Next.” Would you pay more for this doctor? Yes,”

I’m trying to follow the rules of romance to market effectively. According to David Maister (Guru on professional firm consulting) ”When your clients really trust you, they subject you to fewer beauty contests. You’re much more likely to get new work automatically. When your clients trust you and you take a relationship-building approach to marketing, you also get higher fees.”

He lists the following Rules of Romance – and Marketing

Honest communications. “Honesty is essential. The slightest transgression takes you backwards a long way. Shut up and really listen. “Spend your time asking clients about them. Seek first to understand and then to be understood. How much of your marketing plans are seeking to understand?”

Frequent communication, especially when not needed. Read the trade publication of your clients. “You can’t build somebody’s trust if you don’t keep up with their interests,”

Be supportive and understanding. Treat clients gently instead of critically. Ask yourself, ‘how do I phrase this so that it comes across as supportive?’

You actually have to care about the relationship.

Express appreciation.

Listen to a Podcast from David Maister on The Rules of Romance: Building Relationships from his book ‘The Trusted Advisor’

I’ve been applying David’s advice over the past six month in particular, and it does work. Try it out.

Is your business on purpose or autopilot thinking making money is your purpose?

Peter Senge, author of the new book, The Necessary Revolution

Here’s an interesting abstract from an interview with Peter Senge with Business Week regarding Peter Senge’s latest book ‘Necessary Revolution’:

Business Week: “How else does the corporation need to change?”

Senge: “You go to any MBA program, and you will be taught the theory of the firm, that the purpose of the firm is the maximization of return on invested capital. I always thought this was a kind of lunacy. A well-managed business will have a high return on invested capital. But that’s a consequence. It’s not a way to manage a business. I remember a great quote of Peter Drucker. He said: “Profit for a company is like oxygen for a person. If you don’t have enough of it, you’re out of the game. But if you think your life is about breathing, you’re really missing something.” The purpose [of an enterprise] is never making money. And I think a lot of the best innovators inside big companies, the reason they succeed is that they really understand the theory of their business.”

Part of my strategy work is to help Irish SMEs to identify their purpose, their raison d’être (reason for being). Most often when I ask this question I get a silence wonderment. What else could our purpose be but to make money. I usually respond with a question to the business owner: “Has there not been a time in the history of this business when you’ve had an opportunity to go elsewhere or cease an opportunity that would have made you more money that you make in this business?” They always say ‘yes for sure’. I continue to suggest “so the reason you stuck with this business is because you believe you could do something more with this business than make money, you started this business with a passion, a dream, an ambition. Then that’s where you’ll find your purpose, we just need to reignite it” They’re normally happy to proceed with the search!

Finding a clear purpose for your business is one of the most important things you can do. Then you can say you’re ‘On Purpose”!

If you need a hand let me know?

Full article mentioned above with Peter Senge here.

Can you articulate your company’s strategy in 35 words or less? If so, would your colleagues put it the same way?

According to the experience of David J. Collis & Michael G. Ruckstad in a Harvard Business Review Article (2008) and in my own experience here in Ireland very few business executives can answer this question in the affirmative. For those that can Collis & Ruckstad say they are the most successful in their industry. For those that can’t they have failed to execute their strategy and even worse may never have had one in the first place. The primary consequence of not having a clear strategy statement that is understood and known by all employees is ‘frustration’ say the authors. I would also add consequences such as confusion, low morale, wasted effort, wasted money, wasted time, loss of competitiveness, loss of opportunity, and I could go on!

The authors site some example complaints of not having a clear strategy as:

I try for months to get an initiative off the ground, and then it is shut down because ‘it doesn’t fit the strategy’. Why didn’t anyone tell me at the beginning?

I don’t know whether I should be pursuing this market opportunity. I get mixed signals from the powers that be.

Why are we bidding on this customer’s business again? We lost it last year, and I thought we agreed then not to waste our time chasing this contract!

Should I cut the price for this customer? I don’t know if we would be better off wining the deal with a lower price or just loosing the business.

I wrote a while back on this same subject, I listed 5 of the top most common situations I find in Irish SMEs. (and I don’t believe they are limited to SMEs)
They are:

1. No Strategy
2. Strategy is in one persons head
3. Nothing Documented
4. Strategy is Fixed
5. Leadership is lacking

(click here to read the post and what I mean by each of the above)

I like the metaphor that Collis & Ruckstad use to describe how a clear strategy effects an organisation:

“Think of a major business as a mound of 10,000 iron filings, each one representing an employee. If you scoop up that many filings and drop them onto a piece of paper, they’ll be pointing in every direction. It will be a big mess: 10,000 smart people working hard and making what they think are the right deci- sions for the company—but with the net result of confusion. Engineers in the R&D department are creating a product with “must have” features for which (as the marketing group could have told them) customers will not pay; the sales force is selling customers on quick turnaround times and customized offer- ings even though the manufacturing group has just invested in equipment designed for long production runs; and so on.

If you pass a magnet over those filings, what happens? They line up. Similarly, a well-understood statement of strategy aligns behavior within the business. It allows ev- eryone in the organization to make individual choices that reinforce one another, render- ing those 10,000 employees exponentially more effective.

Elements of a Strategy Statement

Mike Ruckstad states that there are three critical components of a good strategy statement— objective, scope, and advantage—and rightly believed that executives should be forced to be crystal clear about them. These elements are a simple yet sufficient list for any strategy (whether business or military) that addresses competitive interaction over unbounded terrain.

I also really like the Strategic Sweet Spot Model. For me this is what strategy is all about. Finding out what is that matches your customers needs with your company’s capabilities (I prefer the more focused term: Core Strength) and ensuring that it is superior to your competitors offerings. All the while being extremely informed about the field (Context) you are playing in.

Developing a Strategy Statement

How, then, should a firm go about crafting its strategy statement? Obviously, the first step is to create a great strategy, which requires careful evaluation of the industry landscape. This includes developing a detailed understanding of customer needs, segmenting customers, and then identifying unique ways of creating value for the ones the firm chooses to serve. It also calls for an analysis of competitors’ current strategies and a prediction of how they might change in the future. The process must involve a rigorous, objective assessment of the firm’s capabilities and resources and those of competitors, —not just a feel-good exercise of identifying core competencies. The creative part of developing strategy is finding the sweet spot that aligns the firm’s capabilities with customer needs in a way that competitors cannot match given the changing external context (as mentioned above). The best ways to do this say the authors is to develop two or three plausible but very different strategic options. In my experience most businesses don’t take the time to do this. I often get them to answer the question ‘what will we not do?’ or ‘what is not our strategy?’ These questions answered greatly help to clarify what the strategy is!

The process of developing the strategy and then crafting the statement that captures its essence in a readily communicable manner should involve employees in all parts of the company and at all levels of the hierarchy. The wording of the strategy statement should be worked through in painstaking detail. In fact, that can be the most powerful part of the strategy development process. It is usually in heated discussions over the choice of a single word that a strategy is crystallised and managers truly understand what it will involve.

The end result should be a brief statement that reflects the three elements of an effective strategy. It should be accompanied by detailed annotations that elucidate the strategy’s nuances (to preempt any possible misreading) and spell out its implications. (See the exhibit  below “Leaving No Room for Misinterpretation.”)

And finally, the authors finish by saying “The value of rhetoric should not be underestimated. A 35-word statement can have a substantial impact on a company’s success. Words do lead to action. Spending the time to develop the few words that truly capture your strategy and that will energise and empower your people will raise the long-term financial performance of your organisation.”

I encourage you to take the time to carve out your strategy and strategy statement, and to involve your management team and for them to involve their teams. Strategy is difficult (and this is the reason why I think it gets neglected). It requires a different way of thinking about your business and requires a different set of skills to coordinate, communicate and to stay the course. This is where my expertise comes in! I have 12 years specifically of helping Irish SMEs and larger organisations to develop their strategy in a meaningful way that doesn’t end up in a file on a shelf but is lived with a sense of purpose and delivers a sustainable business that is successful and has a future, and is an enjoyable place to work. See my different strategy packages here that suit you and your budget. I particularly encourage you to talk to me about my U-Startegy programme which will bring real meaning, purpose and profits to your business.

Download the full article from Collis & Ruckstad here Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?

Imagine how your life, your business, your customers life would be if you ……..

’smile’ from Nic Askew on Vimeo.