Leave a trail of breadcrumbs

Posted on August 29, 2013 by John.Myrna

My one-time boss and long-time friend Dan was sharing his work experiences at Westinghouse and IBM. Over a dinner of succulent lobster and locally grown corn, he contrasted the two company’s staffing strategies.

When Dan was at Westinghouse, they promoted a talented salesman to a major management position. It quickly became obvious that he was in over his head. Westinghouse left him in the position until they couldn’t ignore his failures and then they fired him. An exceptional employee was lost because the company promoted him too soon and had no process in place to correct the mistake except termination.

After Dan joined IBM, a similar thing happened but with a completely different outcome. “IBM was fanatical about never having to fire talent,” Dan recalled. “When the promoted employee was failing as a district manager, he was quickly reassigned to run a smaller, more manageable branch office. A few years later, after regaining his footing, he had the experience and confidence to be a very successful district manager.” IBM’s ability to match employees with the right jobs at the right time was one of their secrets to success.

When I was managing computer programmers, I was always careful about promoting people to management positions. The top salesperson or engineer promoted to a failing management position is a business cliché. I would always structure things so that the employee could “try the job on for size” with a face-saving way to return to their previous, non-managerial position.

Ideally, you can have a candidate experience management responsibilities by leading a temporary task force and/or an ad-hoc problem-solving team. You can structure a position where the candidate is acting manager while the current manager is on vacation or a field assignment. Make it clear up front that if it turns out that if the new job doesn’t feel right within 90 days, he can return to his old responsibilities. Be sure to defer changing titles or compensation until you both agree that this promotion made sense.

Leaving a trail of breadcrumbs back to an employee’s current job will allow you to skip the all-too-common (and often destructive) cycle of promote and fire. Identifying staffing strategies that support your overall business strategy is part of the strategic planning process. It’s common for a company to identify developing a middle management as a strategic goal for the coming year.

If you’re interested in having a facilitated strategic planning meeting that moves you from concept to tangible implementation, check out our service offerings online, contact us, by email or better yet, give us a call at (800) 207-8192 to arrange for a complementary consultation to determine if you are ready for strategic planning and if our program is right for you.

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Beware hiring a “Charles Ponzi” to lead your sales or IT team

Posted on April 29, 2013 by John.Myrna

“How strong is our sales pipeline for next year?” Bob, the CEO of Creative Analytics asked in the annual strategy planning meeting.

“Great!” replied Pat, the sales VP. “I’ve got a dozen projects lined up, at least half are a lock to start in the first quarter. Revenues next year should be more than 50% higher than this year.” Pat had been a real find, a sales executive who had joined Creative Analytics eighteen months earlier with a solid track record with her past two employers.

Creative Analytics typically had a two- to three-year sales cycle for most of its projects, so it wasn’t surprising that Pat hadn’t yet brought in projects that were generating revenue. With that positive report from Pat, the team put aside their concerns that half of this year’s projects were coming to a close. In anticipation of next year’s anticipated growth spurt, they focused on plans to insure that there would be sufficient staff and capacity to support it.

Two months later, Pat surprised everyone by resigning to accept an attractive offer from anther company. She explained: “They offered me more money and a relocation to the city where I grew up and where my family still resides. I’ve loved working here and wish you all the best of luck in the future.” When Pat’s prospective new employer had done a reference check, Bob had given Pat a glowing report, highlighting how she had filled the pipeline for Creative Analytics.

One month later, Bob had a completely different view of Pat’s track record. None of the projects that were thought to be “a lock” came to fruition. As it turned out, Pat was an expert in three areas. She always appeared to be busy with lots of sales activity. She was very good at reporting progress, whether or not there was any. Third, she had impeccable timing in switching jobs before being held accountable for the ultimate results. When Bob had a chance to talk to Pat’s former employers, he found out that they had the same experience he did.

In effect, Pat had successfully pulled off a Ponzi scheme — using “good will” from a previous job to “pay off” the next duped company. There are two aspects of a position that attract potential Ponzi candidates:

  • The executives of the company don’t have a base of experience in hiring and working with senior executives in this position.
  • Tangible results won’t be seen for several years, creating a window of opportunity for the Ponzi schemer to get paid for talking a good game and then leaving before he or she is found out.

Big IT projects are notorious for attracting Ponzi-style leaders. The pattern involves many promises for a major system development, a couple of years of positive “progress reports,” and the Ponzi schemer moving to a new position 6 to 12 months before the new system effort is declared a failure. Having moved on, the former IT leader can claim that “had I still been there, it would have been a success.”

When hiring people for a top sales or IT position, it pays to get outside assistance. Call on board members, outside consultants, and CEO group members to vet the candidate. Push harder when doing reference checks. Identify just how tangible the results were that the candidate is claiming. Once someone is hired, insist on meaningful metrics and periodic audits by outside experts. If your new leader yells something like “don’t you trust me?” call on the old President Reagan slogan: “Trust but verify.”

Identifying key positions to fill in order to support your strategy is part of the strategic planning process. It’s common for a company to identify recruiting, on-boarding, and retaining a key new senior team member as a strategic goal for the coming year.

If you’re interested in having a facilitated strategic planning meeting that moves you from concept to tangible implementation, check out our service offerings online, contact us, by email or better yet, give us a call at (800) 207-8192 to arrange for a complementary consultation to determine if you are ready for strategic planning and if our program is right for you.

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Implementing accountability: lessons from Brazil

Posted on April 26, 2013 by John.Myrna

Helicopter image of Foz do Iguaçu
We facilitated a strategic planning meeting in southern Brazil. While there, we had the opportunity to visit IguaçuFalls, one of the great sites on the World Heritage List. IguaçuFalls has a flow capacity equal to three times that of Niagara Falls. It is also the site of Itaipu Dam, the largest generator of hydro-electric power in the world, located in the Parana river, between Brazil and Paraguay.

Our guide drove us out to visit the dam, the falls, and a bird sanctuary. Along the way, he was exceptionally careful to stay within the posted speed limit. His behavior differed from that of the other guides we’ve traveled with in other locations around the US and Europe. Why? Because there were significant consequences to exceeding the speed limit that fostered personal accountability.

First, there were speed bumps on the major roads every few miles. Since anyone speeding would knock the bottom off of his car, every driver was careful to follow the speed limits. The speed bumps led to automatic compliance.

Even without speed bumps, our guide continued to be very careful about obeying the speed limit in the park where the IguaçuFalls were located. I asked him why and he explained that the first time he got caught speeding in the park, he would lose his right to take tourists into the park for a full month. If there were a second violation, he would lose this right for life. (Losing access to the Falls would be the end of his career as a guide.) The consequences of breaking the law were dramatic enough to lead to automatic compliance.

When we visited the bird sanctuary, we were given stickers to put on our jackets. The stickers had the name of our guide, nothing else. Our guide asked us to be careful not to hurt any of the birds. If any sanctuary visitor hurt any of the park wildlife, the guide would be banned from bringing anyone else in. Our guide explained that he was careful to only bring responsible people to the sanctuary.

Establishing believable, enforced consequences is often more productive than policing detailed policies. For example, consider a simple expense reimbursement policy at your company under which all expenses have to be reasonable. When an employee abuses the policy, just don’t reimburse the expense. That will be the last time he books a suite at the Hyatt Regency rather than an equally available HiltonGarden room.

It always works better to tell people what they should do rather than give them a long list of things they shouldn’t do. Focus on the consequences of poor judgment. However, be careful. Don’t threaten a consequence that you are unwilling to enforce.

Establishing an environment supporting and promoting personal accountability is key to successful implementation of strategy. If you’re interested in having a facilitated strategic planning meeting that moves you from concept to tangible implementation, check out our service offerings online, contact us, by email or better yet, give us a call at (800) 207-8192 to arrange for a complementary consultation to determine if you are ready for strategic planning and if our program is right for you.

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It isn’t enough to tell people what you want

Posted on April 25, 2013 by John.Myrna

In 1979, Ted Kennedy, brother of the assassinated President John Kennedy, was asked this straightforward question during an interview with CBS Newsman Roger Mudd.

“Why do you want to be President?”

Kennedy couldn’t come up with a straightforward answer. He couldn’t express why he wanted people to elect him President, and that was the end of Ted Kennedy’s candidacy.

Too often, I’ve seen a company CEO clearly communicate WHAT the company strategy is and HOW he and his team want it implemented without explaining WHY it’s the strategy.

When people don’t understand why they are being asked to take action, they will fill in the blanks with their best guess. Often their guess is that this latest directive is just another waste of their time that will eventually fade away and can safely be ignored.

Effective communication is a key element of implementing your strategic plan. Strategy is about taking actions today that are consistent with creating the company’s visualization of the future. Investing time and focus today in the expectation of a better tomorrow impacts people’s ability to deal with their immediate, tactical challenges. People will focus all their energy on today’s challenges if they don’t have a clear sense of WHY they need to make today’s life more difficult by spending time on implementing strategic goals.

If you’re interested in having a facilitated strategic planning meeting that moves you from concept to tangible implementation, check out our service offerings online, contact us, by email or better yet, give us a call at (800) 207-8192 to arrange for a complementary consultation to determine if you are ready for strategic planning and if our program is right for you.

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“Plans are nothing… Planning is everything.”

Posted on April 24, 2013 by John.Myrna

“Plans are nothing… Planning is everything.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Maria Birkhead, Senior Facilitator at Myrna Associates, discussed this famous quote with a client’s executive team during a recent review meeting. She noted that Eisenhower’s quote is an amazing statement, coming from the person in charge of planning the Allied invasion of Europe during World War II. What did he mean by the phrase “plans are nothing”?

Eisenhower and his team spent months and years building the team, the strategy, and the capabilities for a successful invasion. It was a planning process that incorporated input from all of his team members. Prior to the invasion, all of the key players knew not only what to do, but why they were supposed to do it. They understood how their role fit with that of the other team members. They knew the impact of any deviation from the plan.

Eisenhower knew that it was the planning process that would win the day. Yes, the plan would be documented and distributed, but it wasn’t the document itself that would assure success. It was the process of dialogue, challenge, expert input, assessment of resources, and adjusting to conditions that would spell success.

This is how it works with strategic planning. It’s not the plan…it’s the planning. When your team works together to identify the issues, develop the strategy, build the schedule, assign responsibilities and assess the costs, success is almost assured. Team members know what to do, when to do it, why it’s important and how any changes will affect others.

Creating a strategy that captures a visualization of the future everyone is working toward is a key element of strategic planning. If you’re interested in having a facilitated strategic planning meeting that moves you from concept to tangible implementation, check out our service offerings online, contact us, by email or better yet, give us a call at (800) 207-8192 to arrange for a complementary consultation to determine if you are ready for strategic planning and if our program is right for you.

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Wide hallways, no elevators, open doors

Posted on November 4, 2012 by John.Myrna

Bell Labs was legendary for innovation. When asked what the secret of their success was, President Mervin Kelly said it was as simple as long, wide hallways, no elevators, and an open door policy.

Long hallways forced people to walk between offices to meet with colleagues. Along the way, odds were that they would run into someone else and engage in an ad hoc conversation. Wide hallways allowed them to step out of the traffic flow and continue their discussion. Ad hoc conversations generate synergy and collaboration.

Why no elevators? Well, have you noticed that conversation stops when people step into an elevator. People will continue their conversation while walking up or down the stairs. Interactive discussions are the core of collaboration.

And open doors? Magic can happen when people with their heads in the clouds interact with people who have their hands on the manufacturing machines.

Creating an innovative culture can be a powerful status quo changer. Getting the team onto the same page and committed to strategic goals like this is what strategic planning is all about. Our two-day intensive planning meeting helps foster innovation in strategic planning in a similar manner to the way Bell Labs fostered innovation in technology — you’ve got key people in a room, interacting and collaborating, even off-site to minimize distractions, thus somewhat mimicking the conditions of wide hallways, open doors, no elevators.

If you’re interested in having a facilitated strategic planning meeting that moves you from concept to tangible implementation, check out our service offerings online, contact us by email, or better yet, give us a call at (800) 207-8192 to arrange for a complementary consultation to determine if you are ready for strategic planning and if our program is right for you.

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Attitude and Aptitude: What Combination Makes for the Best Hires?

Posted on June 21, 2012 by John.Myrna

When I was earning my BSEE from NJIT, then known as Newark College of Engineering, I was a member of an elite group of five top students. We all had high GPAs, but we all didn’t have the same IQs.

Bob and Jim (names changed to protect the innocent) were brilliant — they only had to attend classes, quickly read the textbooks, and finish their homework before driving home for the evening. (NJIT was a purely commuter college in those days.)

I paid my expenses by teaching the accordion, a business I purchased from my retiring instructor when I was a sophomore in high school. I also put in at least thirty hours a week studying. I wasn’t as brilliant as Bob and Jim, but by putting in the hours I was able to compete with them. Jerry didn’t have to work at a job, but he averaged the same thirty hours of studying to keep up with the rest of us.

Harry, on the other hand, wasn’t as smart as any of the four of us, but still kept up by studying fifty hours a week. He was an excellent student and went on to have an exemplary electrical engineering career, largely because he was willing to put in whatever number of hours it took to match the performance of others who were more brilliant.

Over the years, I’ve learned to put less emphasis on a potential employee’s resumé and current skills. I’ve found that I had success when I hired someone with a reasonable aptitude and the right attitude. With the right attitude, such a new hire might have to work over 60 hours a week to deliver the same results as a more seasoned employee. But such a person would be more than willing to invest the extra 20 hours to come up to speed. (Once up to speed, the new hire could deliver the same results in the same nominal 40-hour work week.)

Employees with the right attitude view the extra hours as their personal investment in achieving the goals they set out for themselves. While you may think that employees who on day one can achieve the desired results in the normal 40-hour week would be superior, they aren’t necessarily. Consider when there is a new challenge in your business. When there is a new skill set that’s required for a job, which employee is most likely to rise to the occasion because he or she already has the established habit of investing extra time to come up to speed?

Hire based on aptitude, i.e. having enough grey matter to master the skills, and attitude, i.e. the passion and commitment to put in the time to master the skills.

What happened to my brilliant colleagues? Bob went on to MIT for an advanced degree, but dropped out because competing with the other brilliant students required too many study hours. He had superior aptitude but had not yet developed the attitude required to succeed at that level.

Hiring strategy is one of the elements of a well-formed strategic plan. If you’re interested in having a facilitated strategic planning meeting that moves you from concept to tangible implementation, check out our service offerings online, contact us by email, or better yet, give us a call at (800) 207-8192 to arrange for a complementary consultation to determine if you are ready for strategic planning and if our program is right for you.

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Size Matters

Posted on June 14, 2012 by John.Myrna

How large do you want your company to be within five years? Why?

When you hire an architect to design a new headquarters building, the first question he asks is how many square feet you want. If you tell him that it all depends on how well the new products go, what the market does and what your competitors do, he’ll repeat the same question: “How many square feet do you want?” Once the building size is specified, the architect can move on to other design-related questions. Similarly, a company strategy must start with a sense of size. Size frames all the other elements of your strategy.

While revenue and profit are the most common measures of size, they are not the best metrics for all businesses. For many companies the key measures may be the number of contracts, employees, or customers.

Asking yourself what size you want your company to be in the future is not about fantasizing or wishing. Nor is it about forecasting or projecting. It’s about visualizing a company size that supports the answers to the following questions.

What size will you need to be, in order to continue to compete? As in a poker
game, the ante required for staying in the game increases over time. You need to be large enough to sustain the level of resources required to meet the customer’s growing expectations of the quality and scope of your products or services.

What size do you need to be to obtain the resources you need to sustain the
business? What will it take to attract the talent, capital, and partners you need to succeed?

What will your team require to remain engaged in the future? Company growth
creates opportunities for career growth. Key players will require greater compensation to support their lifestyles (children, school tuitions, bigger homes, travel, etc.). Key players also expect opportunities for personal and professional growth, so they can master new skills and increase their own personal market value.

What growth in ROI will it take to keep the owner’s capital in the business?

What size will you need to be to remain important to your vendors? In order
to get priority when there are shortages? To have orders large enough to get the favorable pricing required to remain competitive?

What size do you need to be to fully utilize your assets? Return on Assets
(ROA) is low when utilization of machines, people, and your intellectual property is low. What size do you need to be in order to have enough experience to drive your unit costs down through the learning curve?

What size do you need to be to support the owner’s ultimate exit strategy?

What size do you need to be to minimize risk? Depending on one customer
purchasing one product makes you very vulnerable. What size do you need to be to support a “safe” diversity of customers and products?

What size do you need to be to keep a competitor from preempting you in the
market? One big-company strategy is to identify products that are successful and swoop in and “steal” them. Big companies like to reverse-engineer a small company’s winning product and then use their own well-oiled distribution system to roll it out nationally or internationally.

What size do you need to be to take out your competition? You can do this
either by acquiring your competitor’s customers or acquiring your competitors directly.

What size do you need to be to manage government and customer certifications? It takes resources and time to obtain and sustain certifications from ISO, TSO, FDA, OSHA, EPA, mil-spec and the like.

What size do you need to be to satisfy your vision and ego? What size do you
have to be to make the kind on market impact you desire?

Everyone in a company has a future size in mind as they prioritize their daily actions. Lacking any formal planning, everyone’s number is different. Developing your strategy starts with getting everyone’s number on the table, sorting through their reasons for that number, and agreeing to a common number that will harmonize everyone’s daily actions.

Having a common visualization of the future everyone is working toward is key. Agreement on the future size the company is working toward creates a framework for answering the next set of strategy questions. (These strategy questions will be the focus of future blog posts.)

Creating a strategy that captures a visualization of the future everyone is working toward is a key element of strategic planning. If you’re interested in having a facilitated strategic planning meeting that moves you from concept to tangible implementation, check out our service offerings online, contact us, by email or better yet, give us a call at (800) 207-8192 to arrange for a complementary consultation to determine if you are ready for strategic planning and if our program is right for you.

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First things first – the lesson of rocks, sand, and water

Posted on June 13, 2012 by John.Myrna

Author Steven R. Covey inspired today’s retelling of a time management classic. Covey’s story starts with a speaker showing a group of business students a large glass jar and a box of large rocks. The speaker pulled rocks from the box and placed them in the jar until no more rocks would fit.

“Is the jug full?” he asked. The students reply “yes,” and the speaker pulls out a bag of sand, pouring it into the jar so it fills the spaces between the rocks. “Is the jug full now?” he asks.

The students are so sure this time. The speaker pulls out a pitcher of water, and pours over a quart of water into the jar. “Now it’s full,” he said. “What’s the most important lesson to be learned from this demonstration?”

One student piped up: “You can always find time to do more things!”

“Wrong lesson,” replied the speaker. “The right lesson is that you can’t fit the rocks in the jar if you’ve filled it with sand and water first.” This is an illustration of the principle of “first things first.”

In strategic planning, your team determines what the “rocks,” or first things are, after visualizing the future they want to reach. These “rocks are the four to six strategic goals that will literally change the company’s status quo, and which must be the company’s focus over the next 12 to 18 months.

Once the goals are set, next comes a set of four to six Key Result Measures (KRMs) for each strategic goal. When these KRMs are achieved, your team will have achieved the company’s strategic goal and changed the status quo.

Finally come the action steps, which are tactical, fluid actions to be completed over the next one to 90 days.

Strategic goals are the rocks. They need to go into the plan’s jar first. Key Result Measures are the sand. They fill out the space around the goals. Action steps are the water. They utilize small blocks of time to implement.

The impulse is for teams is to jump to action steps. Fill a plan with water and sand and there won’t be any room left for the big rocks. Filling a plan with action steps and KRMs without the big strategic goals in place will keep everyone busy but won’t likely change the status quo.

Strategic planning is the best process for determining what the “first things first” should be. If you’re interested in having a facilitated strategic planning meeting that moves you from concept to tangible implementation, check out our service offerings online, contact us by email, or better yet, give us a call at (800) 207-8192 to arrange for a complementary consultation to determine if you are ready for strategic planning and if our program is right for you.

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Learning marketing tricks from bowerbirds

Posted on June 12, 2012 by John.Myrna

A common marketing challenge is getting prospects to take your company seriously. Your company may in fact be the perfect partner for a specific prospect. This will be a moot point, however, unless your prospect perceives you as such.

Unfortunately, for many companies, size matters. “How could that small company help us? We’ll focus on the vendors who are obviously big enough to earn a second look from us.” The first task when searching for a new vendor is winnowing down the list of potential vendors to a manageable number. Company size is a simple way to reduce the field.

Even if you’re a large company, you may be a small player in an expansion market that is new for you. What’s a company to do?

An answer can be found in nature. No matter how accomplished a male bowerbird may be, he still has to get through a female’s perceptual filters to get a fair consideration as a mate. Successful bowerbirds have developed a way to make themselves appear larger than life, according to new research published in Discover magazine. The male bowerbirds arrange their nests with smaller stones at the base of the nest and large ones at the rear. This creates an optical illusion, so that the female looking into the nest perceives the male as being bigger than he actually is.  This “trick,” augmented with a sparkly object held in the male’s beak, is enough to catch her interest. He may not close the deal every time, but at least he gets considered.

One of your primary goals in marketing is to sustain a “larger-than-life” image. A quality website, responsive customer support, and product or service “sparkle” can create and sustain that image. One the best lessons I learned in business was “sell the sizzle, deliver the steak!”

Marketing strategy will map out the sizzle you’ll need for selling, but to successfully deliver your product or service to a customer, your company will need a strong strategic plan. If you’re interested in having a facilitated strategic planning meeting that moves you from concept to tangible implementation, check out our service offerings online, contact us by email, or better yet, give us a call at (800)207-8192 to arrange for a complementary consultation to determine if you are ready for strategic planning and if our program is right for you.

 

 

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