Does Your Strategy Need Glasses?

Like perhaps many of you, I surrendered to the fact several years ago that my eyesight needed some help.  In my case, it was nearsightedness requiring prescriptive lenses to help me focus on objects further away.  What a huge difference it made when my new glasses arrived and I was once again able to see objects in the distance with clarity.  It matters not whether you may have near or farsightedness, it seems that for many like myself, age has slowly robbed me of my 20/20 vision.  As leaders, we may be faced with a similar condition and in need of a prescription to restore clarity.  When it comes to how you see the future or how you assess the present, our experiences can sometimes make us near or farsighted.  This problem can show up with potentially devastating affects when it comes to strategy.

Nearsightedness whether minor or severe can make it difficult to judge distance and view objects on the horizon or even just a few hundred meters ahead.  From a strategic perspective, this can be detrimental if not fatal to an organization.  I’ve had numerous encounters where the words “we tried that years ago and it failed” were uttered as an excuse for not examining something further.  Or what about those situations where leadership was absolutely determined that a competitor would surely not take a certain path because historically they never did in the past?  I’m sure you can add to the list of nearsighted mistakes or missed opportunities from your own experiences and organizations.  Failing to identify the events emerging on the horizon is a common reason why companies encounter “unexpected” turbulence.  While it’s true that some things are not easily seen or may be camouflaged against the backdrop, more times than not, there were indicators that were simply missed – leaders were unable to focus their sight enough.

Farsighted people have little trouble seeing things in the distance, but can’t recognize what’s right before them.  With the quickening pace of business and the onslaught of technology change, the dynamics literally at the end of our noses can be easily overlooked or dismissed if we suffer from farsightedness.  What should be warning signs requiring urgent attention are not easily distinguishable when all we see is a blur.  If your response to a competitive shift or a disruption looks a lot like stumbling over your own two feet, then perhaps you’ve lost your ability to focus on things that are close to you.  Ignoring these signals is a precursor to failure.  Strategic farsightedness often results in poor execution.  You may have perfect clarity on the horizon and a great strategy to capitalize on your insight (and foresight), but if you can’t close the deal operationally, then all that vision does you no good.

Just as in eyesight, prescription lenses can help to restore clarity and get you back on a path to your destination.  The question to reflect on is can you recognize when it’s time to apply a prescription?  I know it took me several years before I realized I needed to have my eyes examined.  Deterioration of sight is often subtle and creeps up on us slowly.  The same can be said about strategic vision.  Our biases, experience, and myriad of other factors may have served us well, but over time, they can lose their ability to help us focus and instead become impediments. 

Strong leaders recognize when their sight has become impaired and are willing to ask for help.  Whether it’s reaching out to others on their staff who can apply corrective lenses (such as alternative points of view), seeking outside assistance or second opinions, or engaging their larger team, there are many different types of prescriptions that can be applied.  Just like the various lenses the optometrist uses when working to find the right combination to correct your eyesight, it may take several iterations before clarity is improved or restored.  And just as I have found with my glasses, my prescription has changed several times since.  That means leaders must recognize when the lenses they are using need adjustment.

For most of us, our eyesight is an essential part of our senses and our lives.  We often take our sight for granted until suddenly (or slowly), we begin to lose it.  Vision is likewise a critical element for a leader and without it strategy suffers.  Therefore, take good care of your strategic sight and if it’s time to get corrective lenses to restore clarity, then by all means get the prescription.

Duane Grove is founder of Connect2Action, a strategy execution specialist at the intersection of employee engagement and executive leadership, igniting innovation as a lever to accelerate your growth.  Follow Duane on Twitter @connect2action and connect with him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+.  Learn more by visiting www.connect2action.com.

Five Leadership Lessons Learned In A Canoe

Here's a piece by Eileen McDargh republished with her permission.  Learn more about Eileen below.

One hour north of Ely, MN, off a gravel road called Echo Trail, Little Indian Sioux River meanders through lily-pad waters and past beaver houses to meet Loon Lake.  It’s but a tiny part of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, a vast chain of lakes and rivers that divide Canada and the United States. 

It was our fourth season to canoe for a week, testing our ability to paddle against wind gusts of 35-mph, fight mosquitoes and stinging flies, drag our boat over beaver dams, portage up and down slippery trails and sleep most nights under the stars.

A prior trip resulted in a leadership article.  Seems nature can offer insights on many aspects of life that pertain to leadeship. This trip was no exception:

*Necessity IS the mother of creativity.  A small piece of yellow rubber tubing from an exercise band replaced the lost showerhead on our solar shower water bag. I teased our friend, Tom, when he threw the band into his Duluth pack.  Boy, was I wrong.  What can you look at—with different eyes—that might solve a problem?

*If the wind is at your back, make the most of it.  On the few occasions the fierce wind shifted, I discovered that a raised paddle blade, turned to catch wind, acted as a mini sail, driving us more quickly across the open water. Yes, it was also necessity!  If you have momentum, how can you make more of it?

*Expended energy demands refueling to keep going.  Ziploc bags of nuts, fruit and M&Ms became essential when we’d slow down.  Even the birds in these waters are constantly looking to refuel.  During breeding season, a pair of loons can consume 2,000 pounds of fish. That might also explain why I never caught any!   Do you stop and refuel when your body needs it?

*Everything works better when the team is in synch.  Our friends in the other canoe often seemed to move more quickly then we did.  Then I realized: their paddle strokes were in synch.  Plus, Tom sat in the bow and his stronger paddling made up for the times when Pam stopped paddling to steer the boat.  That’s not only synchronization of action but also a synchronization of talent.  Are you in synch with your team and playing to your strengths?

*You can only leave “home” if a champion stays behind.  This trip would not have happened without my sister Susan, a champion of great ability and strength.  She moved into our house to oversee the care of my elderly mother, thus allowing us to journey into the wilderness.  Who tends your home or workplace so you can venture forth into new territory?

© 2011, McDargh Communications.  Publication rights granted to all venues so long as article and by-line are reprinted intact and all links are made live.

Keynote speaker and leadership expert Eileen McDargh, CSP, CPAE, is an award-winning business author and a consultant to national and international organizations.  Eileen offers a free quarterly e-zine and a frequently updated blog.  Visit http://www.eileenmcdargh.com/books/ to learn more about books by Eileen including My Get Up and Go... Got Up and Went, Gifts from the Mountain - Simple Truths for Life's Complexities, Talk Ain't Cheap... It's Priceless - Connecting in a Disconnected World, The Resilient Spirit - Staying Right Side Up in an Upside Down World and Work for a Living & Still Be Free to Live.

Put Your Strategy into Drive

Several weeks ago I posted an article entitled “Is Your Strategy Stuck in Park” (http://bit.ly/QAXEDG) in which I discussed how organizations end up with a perfectly viable strategy they can’t seem to get in gear.  In this article, I offer some steps to move beyond park and get your strategy into action.  Executives often lament the fact that they simply can’t seem to ignite their workforce around the company’s plan and therefore don’t get the lift they seek even with a strategy that should deliver great results.  What can you do then to get moving?

The first thing to keep in mind is that what you might believe is a clear and compelling strategy is probably less understood by the front line than you might assume.  Employees deeply involved in the conduct of business don’t quickly and easily identify with the language often used to describe strategy.  Therefore, the first thing to recognize is the need to ‘localize’ the strategy to the work.  For instance, if your strategy depends upon a change in how certain tasks are accomplished, connect that change with the strategy in straight-forward terms: we are modifying our production process to increase throughput in order to grow capacity so we can increase revenue and expand.  Employees need to understand how the company’s strategy passes the WIIFM test (what’s in it for me).  Without this context, employees won’t care nearly as much.  The stronger the WIIFM case, the more likely acceleration will occur and employees will develop a sense of urgency.

Second, consider summarizing your strategy in the form of a compelling challenge or question.  Most people are inherently competitive and throwing down the gauntlet (so to speak) can get them emotionally engaged in the desired outcome.  I have found that structuring the heart or essence of your strategy in the form of challenge enables people to align themselves and focus.  For example: how do we become the most efficient supplier of (name your product or service) that our customers can’t resist?  The key words in this challenge could be ‘efficient’ (to describe production improvements) and ‘customers can’t resist’ (which could be used to inspire changes in customer service).  Regardless of how you describe your strategy, you have to find a way to tap into the emotional power of your employees if you hope to get traction.

Third, involve employees in your strategy development.  This may be counter-cultural for many companies where strategy has been the exclusive domain of top leadership, but your employees are the active sensors in the marketplace especially those in customer or supplier facing roles.  In larger organizations, it may be impractical to engage everyone, so consider using a diverse slice of roles, levels, and experience in small work groups.  Take their input into consideration and look for intersections where the strategic intent of the executive team connects with employees.  These can serve as leverage points where you can move the strategy into action more quickly.  You might also consider internal crowdsourcing as a means of soliciting input.  Regardless of what method you use, you will likely get insight you wouldn’t otherwise have access to and you will find clues into how to improve the way you talk about strategy – again, get to the WIIFM answer.

Lastly, be consistent.  You can’t expect great results if the strategy keeps shifting or you don’t stay engaged with people.  This is particularly true if your strategy calls for significant change.  If employees perceive or conclude that you were just interested in sucking information from them only to discard it later, they’ll stop participating (and supporting) the organization.  This is where apathy creeps in and the results can actually decelerate or even reverse the trajectory.  If you aren’t committed to employee engagement in strategy as a value, then you’re better off not even trying.  In addition, you have to remain consistent in your communication.  Don’t change the message frequently or you end up with confusion.  It’s perfectly fine to adjust how you communicate as long as the message itself remains relatively stable.

Getting your company’s strategy into drive requires patience, persistence, and a commitment to sustaining the course.  Certainly strategy changes over time and requires regular adjustment – everyone understands that.  Markets change, customers demand more, and competitors disrupt.  That’s the nature of business and no one expects it to remain the same over time.  However, once you begin building momentum, it’s much easier to make adjustments.  Remember, you can’t steer a parked car and you won’t get strategic action if you’re stuck in park!

Connect2Action is a strategy execution specialist aligning the front office and front line to improve performance and accelerate growth.  They focus on moving beyond simple communication into action by connecting leaders to organizational habit levers that can increase momentum and revenue through employee ignition.

Duane Grove is founder of Connect2Action, a strategy execution specialist at the intersection of employee engagement and executive leadership, igniting innovation as a lever to accelerate your growth.  Follow Duane on Twitter @connect2action and connect with him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+.  Learn more by visiting www.connect2action.com.

More on Strategic Complexity

Revised thoughts from my previous post.

In many organizations today, strategy has become increasing sophisticated as companies struggle with the complexities and variables in the market.  We often believe that a complex environment requires a complex strategy; this is far from the truth.  In practice, complex strategies become nightmares to execute because if it's difficult to explain, it will be nearly impossible to get an organization engaged and supporting it.  A good strategy comes in layers with simplicity at the most visible point.  When you can simplify your strategy so that nearly everyone's efforts can be aligned to it in some way, you can dramatically improve results sometimes in a short period of time.  Simplicity makes strategy difficult to formulate and execute, not complexity.  The more complex and detailed a strategy is, the more likely it will fail to ignite the kind of action that delivers results.

Everyone talks about the importance of aligning strategy with results and establishing accountability and metrics to drive performance, but how many companies actually do this?  Based on informal discussions I've had with executives over the years, the anecdotal evidence would lead one to conclude that few companies actually achieve this degree of alignment.  In my experience, one of the most significant challenges facing strategy practitioners and executives is translating strategic elements into operational plans down to and including front line employees.   This process is made more difficult as the size of the organization grows.  For example, a large company's strategy may seem abstract when they attempt to cram their entire strategic plan into something that is compiled and extrapolated from the many (often diverse) operating businesses.  This kind of bottom-up/top-down process (much like a yo-yo) can result in a corporate level strategy that has no meat to it and could describe any number of companies by simply removing the company logo and replacing it with another.  On the other hand, a plan may be very complex with lots of moving parts broken into an excruciating degree of detail.  I've seen plans at the corporate level that came equipped with several dozen 'strategic objectives' that after propagated to the LOB level grew to so many objectives that it required an entirely new process to track them all.  Really???

Another challenge is in the translation process itself.  Even when there is a strong strategic plan at the company/corporate level, it often loses its impact as strategic objectives undergo a progression of translations when propagated.  Many companies attempt to cascade objectives through their performance management systems, but without context, employees may not understand the significance of an objective with respect to strategic execution.  Complicating the process is that managers often lack strategic acumen skills and knowledge and can therefore mis-translate an objective.  It's very similar to the exercise most of us have gone through where a fact is whispered at one end of a line of people and passed along - more times than not, what was put in at one end isn't what comes out on the other.  If your strategic objectives are that critical to your success (and they should be), wouldn't it make sense to ensure that those objectives are accurately and effectively communicated and applied throughout?

What can an executive or strategy leader do to improve execution consistency of their strategy?  First, each organization is unique in many ways and culture and context are vitally important.  What worked well in one group may not be a simple lift and reuse in another.  There are however some basic principles to consider.

1.  Wherever possible, leverage the diversity of your workforce in the strategy development phase.  Employees across the wide range of skills, levels, and functions each have a unique perspective on the business.  Engaging them directly can help you understand how particular strategy elements appear and are interpreted by others.  Don't wait until you finalize your strategy to do this.  

2.  Find a strategic leader in each major part of the organization and ask them to be responsible for interpreting and translating for their respective areas.  When you need something translated accurately, you don't typically pick someone who has a casual command of the language - you use an expert.  

3.  Don't consider communicating your strategic plan at employee briefings, all-hands, or other media forms sufficient to meeting the need.  In fact, if all you do is brief the same plan you use at the executive level or with investors, you may be doing more harm than good.  People want and need to see themselves in the plan.  Therefore, care should be exercised to make the plan relevant and useful in the context of people's work.

4.  Lastly, make sure people know where they can help.  Connect the work they do with the direction and success of the company.  Align performance management and reward systems in ways that allow people to see the direct path from effort to objective.  Keep it simple. 

Duane Grove is founder of Connect2Action, a strategy execution specialist at the intersection of employee engagement and executive leadership igniting innovation as a lever to accelerate your growth.  Follow Duane on Twitter @connect2action.  To learn more, visit www.connect2action.com or email at info@connect2action.com.

Are you ready for the storm?

We’re all familiar with preparations for a coming storm.  We stock up on provisions, prepare our home for the weather, and make alternative plans should we be without electricity, be unable to get to work, and a host of other concerns.  Some view an incoming storm with measured prudence and others in a near panic.  Scenes of home improvement stores getting cleaned out of storm-related materials are common as the forecast becomes more accurate.  But do we exercise the same degree of caution when it comes to our business or do we do choose to stick our heads in the sand hoping the approaching weather will turn away and not hit us?

The approaching storm in the aerospace and defense (A&D) community is sequestration, but it goes beyond that.  In hurricane parlance, you could categorize the approaching weather as nothing short of a Category 4 or 5 event with potentially devastating results.  But there’s more to it than just sequestration.  In fact, I would submit that the convergence of issues facing political decision-makers looks more like the conditions depicted in the 1997 book by Sebastian Junger, “The Perfect Storm” where the convergence of conditions created a monster event.  All indicators support conclusions that without a dramatic shift in the political and economic conditions, two or more of these factors will meet at about the same time to create a significant fiscal mess.

With only months left before these issues begin to coalesce and force decisions and actions, some A&D companies continue to ignore the signs believing they can weather the storm with minimal damage or worse believe the whole thing will be averted.  For larger companies, they may surmise that while they may be damaged, their sheer size will allow them to survive.  For mid-size or smaller companies, they may feel helpless in the face of the approaching storm and conclude they just have to take their chances.  In the midst of all this are conflicting forecasts from analysts, political insiders, and anyone with an opinion.  The ensuing confusion makes it even more difficult to make decisions with some only listening to analysis that shows the storm weakening or taking a different track. 

One simple way for A&D companies to exercise prudent preparations without panic and chaos is to spend some time doing some scenario analysis.  The macro conditions are sufficiently understood to identify one of several scenarios that are likely to emerge.  From that point, companies can internalize what impact each scenario might have on their portfolio and what actions would be necessary should that situation unfold.  Using a range of scenarios from positive to catastrophic, companies can conduct sensitivity analysis against which they can compare the fiscal health of their organization.  After careful analysis and prioritization, you can develop a set of watch points or indicators that will allow you to make adjustments as facts emerge and certain storm tracks become more or less likely to unfold.  This disciplined approach has the added benefit of mentally preparing executives to accurately read the weather indicators and make informed decisions as opposed to panic and reacting to every little shift in the wind.

In my experience such scenario analysis is a proven and highly valuable exercise not only in the face of ominous financial weather, but even when the skies are blue and the forecast sunny.  Companies can capitalize more quickly on emergent opportunities when they have invested time to anticipate how changes might affect them.  It makes decision-making more effective when you realize you’ve evaluated a similar pattern before and know with greater certainty what your options are.  In the words of Dwight D. Eisenhower, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”  Use scenario analysis and your ability to be prepared for the approaching storm will improve your ability to not only survive, but thrive regardless of what unfolds.

Connect2Action has extensive experience helping organizations structure and conduct scenario analysis.  With over 30 years experience in A&D, they can assist you in tailoring an approach that will help you and your organization prepare for the approaching storm.  Contact us at:  info@connect2action.com for more information.

Duane Grove is founder of Connect2Action, a strategy execution specialist at the intersection of employee engagement and executive leadership, igniting innovation as a lever to accelerate your growth.  Follow Duane on Twitter @connect2action and connect with him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+.  Learn more by visiting www.connect2action.com.

Have we Destroyed Common Sense?

My father has always been a strong believer in plain 'ol common sense.  I can't begin to count the number of times he would look at something shake his head and declare someone just wasn't thinking.  A recent experience a colleague related to me reminded me of just this point.  She had boarded a plane to return home.  Moments before pulling back from the gate, the flight crew found an inoperable seat.  Now the procedure for dealing with a broken seat is to simply place a white sign on it with red ink saying 'seat inoperable' and let the flight continue until it can be fixed.  This is where common sense gets thrown to the wind.  You see, despite the fact that a flight attendant had a red pen and was ready and willing to place the sign on the seat, she was told that only a union certified mechanic was authorized to do this.  After hours of waiting, a union mechanic boarded the plane and on a sheet of white paper with red ink, wrote "seat inoperable".  The airline and their union inconvenienced several hundred passengers making them even less likely to patronize this airline in the future all because procedure dictated what should have been a common sense solution.  Now the name of the airline is somewhat irrelevant because in all likelihood, any of the major airlines would have probably followed the same silly rule.

It reminds me of a situation several years ago while working for a large aerospace corporation that had unionized facilities personnel.  The policy stated that only union personnel were authorized to move a piece of furniture even if it was to shift a bookshelf from one corner of a room to another.  There were instances when the union filed grievances when they discovered that someone had moved something without a work order.  Now certainly, there are safety reasons and other factors that made this policy reasonable, but not for every circumstance.  It made no common sense and in fact made the policy and the union the brunt of jokes and disdain.  I'm sure any of you could add to this list.  But I'm not here to bash unions.  There are numerous policies, rules, and procedures that make absolutely no sense and in fact result in more inefficiency and stupid decision making than you can imagine.

One important question to ponder is whether or not we have destroyed common sense in the workplace.  Most rules and procedures were originally put in place for good reasons.  But like most things, their time has past and yet the rules persist.  Think about all the laws still on the books that have no relevance to our modern society.  Once enshrined, these rules take on a life of their own and no one dare question their utility or legitimacy.  Another colleague once told me he was shocked to learn a supplier was charging the company 3X for a part he knew didn't cost that much.  Figuring he was going to skewer the supplier for gouging, the supplier explained to him the part cost that much because 10+ years ago they had a quality problem and the company insisted that the supplier add additional testing before delivery.  What's really stupid about this situation though was the original part was an analog device that had since been upgraded to digital.  The testing the company insisted on was only applicable to analog devices yet the terms and conditions in their contract had never changed - and no one ever had the sense or courage to question it.  For years, the company had been insisting on (and paying for) testing that made no sense.

I believe at the root of this lack of common sense is a lack of accountability.  You see, if people can point to a rule or procedure that requires a certain action, they can deny accountability and blame someone or something else for the decision, especially when something goes wrong.  Even when it's obvious that something doesn't make sense, it's far more convenient to ignore it than it is to challenge "the system" for being out of whack.  Had the flight attendant chosen to take the same action the mechanic did, she most certainly would have been reprimanded or penalized later even though it was a common sense thing to do and would have made their customers much happier to have been on their way on time.  People become conditioned by the rules and procedures to a level that is ludicrous.  Fear of reprimand or even loss of job for stretching or breaking the rules no matter how stupid or irrelevant they are is a powerful force that erodes accountability.  The safe thing to do is to blindly follow the rules, don't fight city hall, do your job, and let someone else worry about the consequences.  If the phrase "it's not my job" is heard frequently in your organization, you have lost all common sense.  Wonder why you don't have a high level of accountability in your organization?  Look no further than the rules and procedures you have shackled people with or the penalties delivered for those who dared to test them.  Most employees could probably relate horror stories of someone who attempted to exercise common sense only to have been demoted, fired, or punished in some way.

There are companies though that are exemplars of accountability and common sense.  When employees are empowered to do the right thing and exercise common sense, things have a tendency to get done faster and better.  Companies whose policies allow employees to address customer complaints and needs without consulting a rule book first generally have higher levels of satisfaction both by customers and employees.  This actually makes a lot of sense.  I'm not advocating that companies throw out the book - that would likely devolve into chaos.  What I am suggesting is that they maintain an open mind and routinely prune and revise their procedures to make sure that what they do and how they do it passes a reason test.  Most organizations continue to run on policy autopilot not appreciating the drain it creates on employee morale and customer satisfaction.  The sheer weight and drag of corporate policies results in stagnation and hinders innovation.  If you can't figure out why your employees can't or won't innovate, perhaps you should examine the policies and procedures they have to navigate to even get started.  If it's simply too hard, complicated, or just plain stupid to push something through the system, then you won't harvest too many great ideas because people just won't waste the time trying.

I would encourage you to do a little rules and policy housecleaning at least once a year.  Ask your employees what policies are getting in their way and try to strike the right balance.  Give employees a bit more flexibility - increased accountability will likely follow.

Doesn't that just make common sense?

Duane Grove is founder of Connect2Action, a strategy execution specialist at the intersection of employee engagement and executive leadership, igniting innovation as a lever to accelerate your growth.  Follow Duane on Twitter @connect2action and connect with him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+.  Learn more by visiting www.connect2action.com.