Some thoughts on strategy, leadership, and corporate culture.

BIV Boardroom Strategy: Execution: the missing piece of the corporate strategy puzzle

January 26, 2010 · 1 Comment

[read time: 3 mins]

This is the time of year when many businesses are deep into strategy planning. It’s the perfect time to talk about the missing piece of the strategy puzzle: execution.

The more time you spend focused on strategic planning the more you will start to notice a trend. Let’s call it the “10/90 Rule.” 10% of the value of strategic planning is in the creation of a solid plan that outlines strategic direction and priorities for the coming year. 90% of the value of a strategic plan comes from an organizations ability to effectively execute that plan.

This begs the question: if 90% of a plan’s value comes from successful execution, why do so many organizations focus on creating a plan and fall short when it comes to execution? Unfortunately, most of the time there exists a Grand Canyon-sized gap between what needs to be done to execute the plan successfully, and the approach within the organization to making it happen.

Here is a four-step process to help you make the shift towards execution:

Step 1: Clearly Define Actions and Accountabilities

Without clear action steps connected to each objective, owned by a person, with clear dates, budgetary requirements, and metrics, most plans are simply position papers on “where we should focus for some period of time”. Focus on fewer priorities attached to realistic budgets and time frames. The pay-off will be a powerful momentum that builds as people start hitting target dates, versus the motivation drop that comes with consistently missing accountabilities.

Step 2: Connect the Strategy to People

The second challenge of execution is having the right people in the right places to handle the action steps required within the plan. Start by bringing the organizational chart into the picture during the planning process, and demonstrating an openness and willingness to shifting roles and responsibilities. Avoid the trap of assigning accountabilities to people by default – instead, choose the people who have both the motivation and the competence to produce results. Ensure people understand what is expected of them, and reward them when they produce great results.

Step 3: Create a Culture of Change

Creating a culture of change requires openness to exploring possibilities outside of the framework of “how we do things here.” At the same time people would far prefer to be engaged in the process of change versus simply being told that changes are coming.

Work on improving candour within your organization by encouraging, supporting, and training on difficult conversations. Ensure that the leaders in your company are following through and demonstrating openness to candour and new ideas. Align your day-to-day decisions and actions with the priorities outlined in the plan – especially those that people are skeptical of, and others should follow suit.

Step 4: Review, Evaluate and Revise

The current pace at which industries, markets, competitors, and the economy is changing puts pressure in the form of a reality check against your strategy plan. Even plans that were strong at inception get sidetracked and what was once a solid plan now ends up as a binder collecting dust on the shelf. Schedule quarterly strategic planning follow-up sessions that are designed to review, evaluate, and revise the plan and provide a check and balance around individual accountabilities. Schedule them early, and demonstrate follow-through by placing equal importance on the follow-up meetings as you did on the original planning session.

The success of your strategy plan is inextricably tied to your organization’s ability to execute against that plan. A less robust plan executed flawless will trump a complicated plan left in the filing cabinet any day of the week.

If your organization has faced some of the challenges discussed in this article and you’re interested in reading more on this topic, I’d recommend reading “Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done” by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan.

BIV Boardroom Strategy – Execution – Jan 19-25, 2010

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Join the 22nd annual PROFIT 100.

January 19, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Every year the PROFIT 100 turns successful entrepreneurs into the heroes of Canadian business. Once again ViRTUS is a supporting sponsor.

Now in its 21st year, the PROFIT 100 is the definitive ranking of Canada’s Fastest-Growing Companies. Its alumni include some of the biggest names in Canadian business, such as Research in Motion, Open Text, 1-800-GOT-JUNK? and WestJet Airlines.

You’ll enjoy many great benefits as a PROFIT 100 company, including coverage in the June 2010 issue of PROFIT Magazine and online at PROFITguide.com. PROFIT 100 leaders also receive an exclusive invitation to the PROFIT 100 CEO Summit, Canada’s most rewarding conference for entrepreneurial achievers. What’s more, a PROFIT 100 ranking can attract new customers, employees and business partners—and lead to higher sales.

The entry deadline is March 31, 2010.

Apply now at http://www.profit100.com

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The quickest way to measure your corporate culture.

January 7, 2010 · 1 Comment

[read time: 2 mins]

One of the biggest challenges in corporate culture is finding ways to effectively measure and gauge the strength of your culture. Over the past decade companies have used various survey methodologies in an attempt to uncover the truth about their cultures with the most popular one being an Employee Engagement Survey. The problem is that these surveys are time consuming, difficulty to analyze without outside support, and require a fair investment to implement.

The answer for companies who aren’t ready to take the plunge into instituting a full-blown employee engagement survey actually comes from the world of customer experience. By combining two questions together you can create an easy to use survey that’s fast and efficient, and so simple to complete that your response level will also be considerably higher (important with any type of survey).

First, we need to talk about the The Net Promoter Score (NPS). NPS was designed to measure how likely clients are to recommend a product or service to a friend. Satmetrix Systems, the company behind NPS, researched companies that experienced above average profitable growth and their research showed that customers who answered one simple question with a 9 or 10, are promoters of your business, customers who answer 7-8 are passive, and anyone that ranks your company 6 or less is actually a detractor – they are highly likely to actively recommend that people not do business with you. The question, “How likely are you to recommend our product or service to a friend or colleague?”

Here’s how to modify the NPS for a simple corporate culture survey: take the Net Promoter Score question and alter it slightly to focus on your employees’ perception of your business instead of your customers:
1. On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend to friend or family member that they come work at our company?
2. If you gave a score of 8 or less, what would need to change in order for your answer to be a 9 or 10?

Using these two questions you can rapidly put a corporate culture survey in place. Although this will not give you the richness of a full Employee Engagement Survey, these two questions will provide you valuable insight into the core areas that you need to pay attention to now.

*If you’re interested in learning more about Net Promoter Score, Harvard Business Review has a fantastic article that summarizes the entire concept entitled, “The Only Number You Need to Grow” (www.hbr.org).

[original post at mcnakblog.com]

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BIV Boardroom Strategy: Corporate culture is critical to implementing business strategy

December 15, 2009 · 1 Comment

BIV Boardroom Strategy, Dec 15-21, 2009 – Corporate culture is critical to implementing business strategy

[read time: 3 minutes]

As you start to develop your business strategy for the new year, look at all of the factors that can support it, one of which you might not have linked directly to your strategic initiatives in past years: your company culture.

Strategy and culture both affect a company’s bottom line. While a strong culture can’t replace or act in lieu of a strong strategy, there are several ways that you can leverage your culture to support and drive strategic initiatives.

Here are nine ways you can leverage corporate culture to drive strategy.

Employee engagement

Engaged employees have higher commitment levels. They’re willing to go the extra mile, are consistent performers and are more likely to buy in and commit to the strategy and long-term goals of the company. Improve engagement to achieve your strategic initiatives by ensuring that you’re providing employees a direct line of sight to how their work contributes to the company’s growth.

Accountability

This is a key factor in the successful execution of strategy. The critical first step in leveraging a culture of accountability: translate strategic initiatives into objectives and actions, make sure all your staff members know what’s expected of them and hold their feet to the fire from the word go. Being able to hold others accountable is tougher than it sounds, especially since the first step is to lead by example: do what you say you were going to do, when you said you would do it.

Values, vision and mission

We all know that our company values, vision and mission are only as valuable as they are easy to understand, remember and repeat. Spend some time ensuring that leaders not only know the values, vision and mission of the company, but that they understand what they mean and how they connect with strategy. Here’s a great way to leverage a strong vision and mission: start looking for, talking about and rewarding real examples of employees living out the vision and mission.

Performance management and rewards

Your strategic plan for the year is full of initiatives and actions designed to take you where you need to go. What gets measured gets done, so use current performance-management practices to influence how corporate business objectives get translated into action across departments or business and involve each department in creating performance measures to generate buy-in and increase accountability and success.

Physical space

We don’t often consider how things like office space contribute to the bottom line, but it could be worth your while to note how your physical environment supports or contradicts your strategy. Does your office space reflect the innovative, forward-thinking ideas represented in your plan? Does your plan encourage or even require a flattened organizational structure, when all of your upper-level executives, including the CEO, have offices on the same floor, away from all others? Examine how you can rework your physical space to encourage successful execution of your strategy.

Decisions and authority

How easy is it for employees to navigate the levels of official and unofficial power in your organization. Are the people responsible for doing the work empowered with decision-making authority? Do the unspoken behavioural norms make it difficult to get things done or approved before the “by when” dates? Increase the chances of achieving objectives on time by aligning lines of authority with strategic initiatives.

Counter-culture

With every culture there is a counter-culture – a group within the organization that opposes or is critical of the organization’s norms and values. Be aware of these counter-cultures and leverage them by allowing them a voice that holds you to a higher standard of performance. Learn the lesson from Toyota and reward employees who find problems, announce them to everyone and work toward a solution that works consistently.

Leadership

When it comes to buying into strategic direction, employees will always look to their managers to lead by example. Leverage this opportunity by acting with discipline and following through on your commitments. Take performance management seriously, hold others accountable and make sure you’re focusing on the priorities you and your teams have agreed on.

Communication

The way we think we should communicate and the way we actually communicate are key to your company’s culture. Leverage the communication norms of your culture by using the mediums that people really respond to. Make sure the emphasis is on the actions expected from what’s being communicated. Clarify goals and provide consistent updates on outcomes.

The best strategy without the right cultural platform to executive upon it is simply an intellectual exercise. If you’re the CEO of a large company you’re probably far away from the reality of the culture of your business. Start by asking your frontline staff, “What is the culture of our business?” And then work your way back up the hierarchy. •

Mike Desjardins is the driver (CEO) at ViRTUS (www.virtusinc.com), an organizational development consulting firm with expertise in strategic planning and implementation, leadership development, change management and succession planning for medium to large organizations. He regularly blogs at www.mikedesjardins.com. This column was co-written by Shannon Lawder, a certified coach and the content director at ViRTUS.

This article from Business in Vancouver December 15-21, 2009; issue 1051

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How can I make people care?

December 4, 2009 · Leave a Comment

[read time: less than 1 minute]

I received an email today from a CEO the other day asking me, “Do you have any good references / literature on ‘how to make people care’? I’m having some employee challenges.”

I thought I would share my response with you:

“Three ways:

1) hire people who care (it’s an attitudinal thing, not a training thing)
2) show a direct connection between success for them and why they should care
3) lobotomy – expensive and illegal but can dramatically shift innate personality traits. For examples of when this doesn’t work I suggest renting Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (and yes, I know, that was a potion, not a lobotomy – you get the idea).

Motivation is not something people need to receive. It’s finding ways to remove the things that demotivate people that keeps them motivated (if you hire self-starters).”

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What I wish I’d known when I was a teenager.

November 29, 2009 · 2 Comments

 

Here is the Core Values experience I speak about in the first part of the video.

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Figuring out your core values

November 28, 2009 · 2 Comments

One of the challenges to goal planning is understanding how your goals will affect the quality of your life. Many people (including me in the past) set goals that led to outcomes they don’t want. By planning your goals around your core values you set yourself up to create the life you want while you achieve your goals.

The best online goal tracking website I know of is Lifetick.com. It’s focused on values before goals, and goals before actions. The challenge is that if you don’t know what your core values are you can get stuck at the first step.

Focusing on personal and business core values has always been a critical part of our ViRTUS Exchange experience. For our Exchange Members we created a competency that will allow them to figure out their personal core values. At a speech I gave the other day at UBC I promised I would share  the core values worksheet with step-by-step instructions. Here it is: Core Values Experience PDF Download.

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Habits of Millionaires

November 12, 2009 · 3 Comments

In 1998, Thomas Stanley and William Danko, wrote The Millionaire Next Door, after 20 years of research into the habits, attitudes, and behaviours of millionaires.

It turns out that most millionaires reach that level of wealth not by selling a business or cashing out from a corporate stock plan, but instead through a systematic approach to building financial wealth.

They found multiple examples of people making $70,000 per year who, through using the techniques below, managed to amass over $1M in net worth prior to retirement.

Here’s a summary of the key habits:

  1. Be frugal - live below your means and always be on the lookout for deals (eBay, Craigslist, sales, never paying full price). That means putting together a spending and savings plan that works within your current income, not the income you hope to have in the future. Think about how much it cost to “keep up with the Jones.” If you live in a less expensive neighbourhood the reality of keeping up with the average is significantly easier (less expensive car, less expensive clothes, less expensive jewelry, etc.).
  2. Budget and track – create a budget for every dollar you spend each month and then compare to the actual. A great example I heard from Ward Hodsman at London Life, is to put money in different envelopes for what you plan to spend on. When the money’s gone, you’re done spending in that category for the month.
  3. Spend time on financial planning – millionaires spent significant time each month (quadruple the time of non-millionaires) planning their spending habits.
  4. Savings and RRSPs – decide how much money you want to put into savings and RRSPs each month and have that amount automatically withdrawn and transferred into those accounts.
  5. Future wealth – don’t spend money you don’t have yet. That includes not spending a pending bonus. Only spend from the money you currently have.

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BIV Boardroom Strategy: A selection of the best books on strategic planning

November 5, 2009 · 2 Comments

Mike

[Total read time: 4 mins]

There is no “right” strategic planning methodology that works for every company or organization. In fact, using a blended approach to create a customized methodology will likely yield the best planning framework for you and your company. The question becomes, “Where do I start?”

There have been five key books on strategy written in the past 10 years that provide perspectives on how to approach strategic planning. Here is a brief synopsis of each book, and why it’s worth reading.

Good to Great (Jim Collins): Collins refers to this book as the book he should have written first. Good to Great describes in detail the steps that good companies have taken to become great. From leadership to confronting the brutal facts, simplifying strategy, adding in discipline, understanding the role of technology and discovering what builds momentum with your business, Good to Great covers the complete strategy canvas at a high level, simplified in a way that will allow you to share your company’s strategic priorities with everyone in the business.

Built to Last (Jim Collins and Jerry Porras): Before Good to Great, Jim Collins collaborated with Jerry Porras to write Built to Last. This book is a study of 18 visionary companies and how they differ from their key competitors. The core philosophies are:
•stop reinventing the wheel and instead develop and document the core procedures that can withstand changes in personnel;
•stay focused on your core values while trying new things; and
•focus on the long-term goal – the BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) – a 10- to 30-year goal of the organization that is so large and so far in the future that it bears that moniker.

Blue Ocean Strategy (W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne): Written by two professors from INSEAD, Blue Ocean Strategy seeks to understand how companies like Cirque du Soleil, Apple and Blockbuster have changed the foundations of their business models and how they approach the market to move from the Red Ocean, bloody from the fight for market share, to the Blue Ocean, where the companies stand alone to compete for clients who don’t fit the traditional mould of their “old industry.” Their strategy canvas approach is designed to narrow down the key factors that you and your competitors use as the defining points of service in your industry. Then, by eliminating, creating or changing these key factors, a new industry is formed that appeals to a customer segment not being served by the existing industry. The short version of this would be to say that this is the story of the game-changers in their industries and how they did it.

Mastering the Rockefeller Habits (Verne Harnish): Harnish’s first book is based on the one-page strategic plan that John D. Rockefeller had each of his key executives complete at United Steel. The book details how to create a plan that summarizes your 30-year, three- to five-year, one-year and quarterly goals, along with supporting SWOT analysis, financial information (budget and actual) and accountabilities. The real magic is that all of this can fit onto one 8 1/2 x 11 page.

Execution (Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan): Execution speaks to one of the core reasons that most strategic plans fail – a lack of accountability and execution.
Many people think execution is the tactical side of business, best left to those people below the senior team in the organizational hierarchy. Bossidy and Charan argue that execution should be part of an organization’s cultural fabric, starting in the CEO’s office. The book describes a series of behaviours and techniques common within businesses that demonstrate a high level of execution of their plans.

Each of these books has a summary online that does a great job of breaking down the key points and practical applications. What the summaries won’t provide are the examples of real companies whose products and services you recognize and can relate to. Reading some or all of these books will help you relate the decisions made by other successful companies to the strategic challenges your organization is facing today.

PDF of Column BIV Boardroom Strategy – Nov 3-9, 2009

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Motivation

October 27, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Thank you to Mirjana Galovic for this!

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