Take the plunge with your Strategy String

Happy holidays, everyone! As we bustle about getting last minute gifts and attending the myriad of get-togethers, many entrepreneurs, business leaders, and managers find themselves consumed with year end planning.

The start of 2011 is looming. Many organizations have faced immense challenges in the past three years that are shuttering doors and sending hardworking employees into the streets. Yet, some organizations are thriving. How can you beat the odds and make 2011 your best year yet?

Go deep with your Strategy String. When times are uncertain, logic tells us to hold back and play it safe. But setting strategy today requires amping up your competitive edge (as well as being nimble and vigilant, regardless of your organization's size). That means setting aside your fear and telling your story with increased fervor.

For example, Sarah Lateiner of Arizona changed directions when launching her small business. Instead of doing the logical thing and sticking with her educational path of becoming a lawyer, she used a personal experience to launch 180 Automotive, an auto mechanic shop. Instead of competing solely on being another "me-too" service provider, she uses her shop to educate and empower women to take care of their vehicles. The result is a strategic advantage that shapes a deeply-defined Strategy String. With educating and empowering women, her vision, mission, and values clearly show through in everyday actions, and her positioning sharply delivers a competitive edge that no one else can touch. Watch her story.

So take the plunge when crafting your Strategy String: don't hold back. Bring the core of your organization and its passion to the forefront. Use the Strategy String to continuously tell the story to your employees, your vendors, your customers -- all of your stakeholders. If you can substitute someone else's products and services into your vision and mission and it still makes sense, then your Strategy String lacks the depth to highlight your competitive advantage. You can survive without depth, but it's hard to swim when your knees keep bumping the bottom of the lake. Without taking the plunge, your purpose, people, and profits will always be wading in the shallows.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
Does your Strategy String have the depth needed to showcase your competitive advantage? Do all of your stakeholders know about it? If your strategy is missing depth and keeping you from thriving in 2011, call me to schedule a planning session: 206-782-4040.

Order the Strategy String today! They make a great gift for your entire team and your clients. Call me for discount information on orders of 12 or more. 206-782-4040

Related articles

• Matt Wilson: Three Steps to Gain a Competitive Advantage (huffingtonpost.com)
• On Annual Planning Day, strategies for 2011 take shape on one sheet of paper (commercialappeal.com)

Keep Eager Beavers from Damming Productivity

Image via Wikipedia

Great new team member
or a potential source
of terror and rabies?

Talent reigns supreme in an economy that has shifted from goods-dominated to service-based. Organizations need enthusiastic, bright people with great ideas and the ability to communicate those ideas effectively. But if you're not careful, these bright-eyed, bushy tailed talents can turn into rabid nightmares for your bottom line. [Okay, beavers don't have bushy tails, but let's move on.]

How? New employees can get antsy. Our culture delivers instant gratification in so many ways: instant messages, on demand entertainment, personalized learning experiences, customized jeans. New recruits wonder, "Why can't I get instant results at work? I have a great idea that could save this place thousands/millions of dollars. And I've only been here a few weeks; why doesn't everyone else see it?"

Eager beavers bring fresh energy and ideas that at first glance, could generate thousands, if not millions, of dollars in increased productivity, new opportunities, and cost savings. Leadership, however, must be thoughtful before implementing new ideas. Balancing great ideas with due diligence and proper governance can be a challenge for any growing organization or one that is undergoing a significant change. Eager beavers often don't realize that building a dam at one location might improve the resources and depth of one line of business, but can dry out systems and revenue sources downstream. Each idea should be evaluated for effectiveness in the organization as a whole. And, more importantly, those ideas - and the talent - must fit with your Strategy String and organizational culture. So how do you keep eager beavers from damming the flow of productivity without stifling their creativity?

• Start with a trial period. All new people, including those who have been promoted or moved into new roles, should be given a trial period in which to demonstrate consistent performance. Trial periods also give new team members time to learn and understand culture, stakeholders, and direction. On his first day, make it clear how long the trial period lasts. Define what happens at the end of the trial: what if the employee cannot meet expectations? What additional responsibilities does he gain with successful completion of the trial period? Set a time frame that allows for the eager beaver to learn the needs of his position and that allows the manager to see if he can meet expectations and fit with the culture. The greater the role that person will take on in the organization, the longer the trial period. The last thing you want is a team member who doesn't play well in the swimming hole with others and constantly misjudges the depth of the stream.
• Set clear, realistic expectations. When on-boarding any new team member, establish minimum expectations for him to meet. If these expectations differ in any way from the job description used to recruit him, point out those differences. If expectations can change over time, point out how they will change and how they will impact his career. Managers should also be asking if the minimum expectations are realistic for one person to take on. If you set the bar too high, you guarantee that your talent will fail. Don't let good beavers spend all their time swimming upstream: they can get tired and drown if they don't find another organization's stream first.
• Measure performance each day. Can the eager beaver meet expectations and meet them consistently? Effective performance by anyone in your organization (new or old, eager or resigned) is measured by how well they consistently meet expectations each day. Exceeding expectations is inappropriate if employees fail to meet minimum expectations. Document how well the eager beaver meets minimum expectations, and ask her to document her performance as well. Check in at least every two weeks with her to compare notes on performance. Are expectations being met 100% of the time? If not, should her responsibilities be revised? Or does she lack the capacity to meet the baseline expectations needed for the role? Beavers who cannot swim should not be in the stream.
• Link great ideas to your Strategy String. Ideas are only great if they have the ability to relate. A Strategy String ties culture, stakeholders, and direction to performance. Eager beavers should be able to demonstrate an understanding of culture, stakeholders, and direction so that they generate ideas that are meaningful to your organization. Without this understanding, ideas are created in a void, without understanding of stakeholder concerns and market forces. Eager beavers and their supervisors can waste a lot of time living in the land of possibilities while real opportunities pass them by. Don't let eager beavers divert you into shallow streams and sewer pipes.
• Translate great ideas to performance-driven actions. When the eager beaver demonstrates that she can consistently meet minimum expectations and link ideas to your Strategy String, reward her with the opportunity to put those ideas into action. If she has a great idea for a new injection molding process and can keep up with minimum expectations, accommodate her by making the talent, space, funding, and other resources available to pursue the concept. Set a deadline by which she should present the results and demonstrate how the new idea will deliver long-term positive return on investment. If the candidate can translate the idea into sustainable, performance-driven actions, let her manage or lead the idea. If not, ask that the idea is not pursued further, and encourage her to come up with more great ideas to test in the future. Don't let eager beavers get discouraged: promote creativity and innovation.

Eager beavers and the dazzle of instant gratification can dam the flow of productivity and performance for the core products and services they have been hired to support. If they can show consistently, over time, that they can meet minimum expectations, show measurable performance each day, link new ideas to the Strategy String, and transform those ideas into sustainable, performance-driven actions, trust these energetic sources of talent to be creative and innovative in thoughtful, meaningful, responsive ways that support your initiatives for change and growth.

If you need help getting your eager beavers to demonstrate Vision Driven Results for your organization, give me a call at 206-782-4040 x104.

Manual High School's Strategy String Puts Students at the Head of the Class

As Rob Stein completed his third year as principal of Manual High School in Denver, Colorado, he knew that he had done what he set out to do. Stein managed to perform a turnaround that would make turnaround consultants jealous. In just three years, Stein converted a failing inner city high school into the third highest performer in the Denver Public School system.

So how did he do it? Stein interlaced Manual High School with a Strategy String.

Manual High School had been shut down due to poor performance. In an impoverished neighborhood where more than 70% of its students qualifying for free lunches, Manual boasted the lowest test scores in the entire state of Colorado and was stricken by low attendance and sky-high drop out rates. By organizational standards, the school had given up on its customers (the students) and allowed poor performance to close its doors.

In August 2007, Manual reopened as an Innovation School (a public school that thinks and acts a bit differently). This experimental school clenched a vision that committed the management team and staff to do “whatever it takes to ensure that students stay in school and are prepared for success in college, career and in life.” They then transformed that vision into an actionable strategy.

They began by scrapping the strategic plan. "Strategic plans are never fruitful," said Stein. The long-term strategic planning process of old turns into a massive "to-do list for lower level people" that disconnects from performance results. Instead, Stein and his team of volunteers worked collaboratively to answer, "Who do we want to be?" Through this collaborative process, they created a mission statement and Core Principles to support the vision of doing everything needed to keep kids in school. They linked the Core Principles to performance by creating Core Practices that state clearly how Manual's day to day operations would address performance and drop out rates.

For example, all teachers use daily learning goals to communicate and act on daily agendas. Daily learning goals and other consistent practices ensure that students get bell-to-bell learning and no time is wasted. "You will never see a teacher sitting behind [his] desk," said Stein. At Manual, day to day performance demands interaction. When teachers and students are required to provide evidence that they are reaching incremental and long term goals, there is no time for dilly-dally.

With regulations and reporting required by school districts, success measures require a mind-numbing amount of communication for the team at Manual. But constant, open communication with all stakeholders -- students, teachers, administrators, district leaders, and school management -- breaks through the hierarchy and keeps the Strategy String at Manual High School tightly woven to ensure that each student has a chance at a prosperous future. Students are the number one stakeholder at Manual, and its daily practices constantly remind you of that. Without open communication and participation by everyone involved in doing what it takes to ensure student success (including the students), stakeholders disengage and lose sight of the commitment that they signed on for at the school's relaunch. The same is true of businesses, nonprofits, and other organizations.

Aligning Core Practices with stakeholder needs also meant decentralizing decision making and putting more responsibility into the hands of the principal and management team. Like an entrepreneur, Stein was allowed to negotiate many of Manual's contracts to focus school functions on the needs of its students. For example, weekly access to psychotherapists and counselors often work in affluent, suburban schools. Not so much in intercity schools. If a student is dealing with a problem at home and has to wait a week for support, they are more likely to disengage or drop out than wait for that support. By providing regular resources like counseling services on site each day, the school was able to immediately address student cultural, emotional and social needs and quickly re-focus them on learning. That's not common in public schools. But with efficient management and the ability to negotiate services independent of school district mandates, Manual was able to shape a school that met the unique needs of its at-risk student population.

At the end of the 2009-2010 school year, Manual claimed the title of the 3rd highest performer in the Denver Public School district. This year, Manual will celebrate its first graduating class since the relaunch. By creating a responsive strategy that emphasizes daily check-ins with Core Principles and adherence to Core Practices, Manual High School possesses a Strategy String that will allow it to course correct for any changes to the needs of its teachers and students. Now that Rob Stein has turned over the reigns, I hope that the new principal can keep the string from unraveling. With Manual's collaborative, responsive method for connecting strategy to performance, if the ends start to fray, students, teachers, and community will do whatever is needed to keep its kids in school.

Check out the new movie about our education system:

Waiting for "Superman"

Great information resources for improving our country's education systems

Why clean tech is like a newer model smartphone

In a recent business conversation, I was asked to share my thoughts on what the future of the clean tech industry looks like. The question: are there specific clean tec sectors that our region should focus on developing for the future?

Traditional business practices and economic development focus on key industry sectors to nurture and grow for regional prosperity. Businesses were encouraged to choose a niche and keep their heads down.

Unfortunately, the clean tech sector cannot be segemented as simply as other industries.The information age is changing how we look at industry clusters and what we choose to nurture. The economic development of clean technology should be approached less like an industry cluster and more like a technology development. A cell phone is a great example.

My new Droid X is a master of operations and technology. It combines all of my social networks, email accounts, contact lists, productivity tools, and news resources with an internet browser, navigation system, text messaging, and a host of custom applications. Oh, yeah, there's also a phone.

If a person were putting together a wish list, I couldn't ask for much more. But when it comes to my cell phone, it's not a solo effort of Motorola or of Verizon Wireless. To create and deliver services for Droid X requires dozens companies, working together to create a complete experience. Clean technology promises a similar model.

The clean tech industry aims to reshape the experience of how we use technology and energy in our world. Like Droid's impact on communications, clean tech requires dozens companies working together, each collaborating with its expertise to create a complete experience for global citizens.

What is it going to take to develop a robust regional clean tech industry?

1. Start by asking, What experience would we like to deliver to the global economy? Would you like to lead the world in creating and supporting closed loop systems for waste management? If so, develop a broad-reaching vision that is inclusive of multiple industry clusters. 
2. You've defined the vision, take a look at your current economic landscape. Does your region currently host organizations that already deliver solutions related to that vision? The organizations do not have to be directly tied to the vision (for example, a waste management company). If a nonprofit organization delivers outreach and education to community sectors, they would qualify as one that could assist with future outreach related to your vision. 
3. Align existing organizations. As small businesses and support agencies grow, they need the support of enterprises, governments, and educational institutions. As enterprises, governments, and educational institutions strive to remain relevant, they need the input and support of small businesses and support agencies. Bring these players together to start and further conversations that promote growth and long-term development.
4. Establish policies and legislation that reward growth and encourage collaboration. A business must make it easy for customers to buy their goods and services, or else customers will go elsewhere. The same is true of economic ecosystems. Regional policies, rules, and regulations will determine how easy or challenging it will be for enterprises, small businesses, and nonprofit organizations to do form, grow, compete, and collaborate. Reach out to your customers -- the impacted organizations -- so that they can help inform and shape clean tech policies.
5. Invest in your vision. I know that this can be a difficult conversation in a tough economy, but regional leaders and influencers should be ready to put dollars on the table to support a clean technology strategy.The investors include governments, private industries, and institutions. They should work together with private investment interests, federal programs, and state/local governments and institutions to map a financial plan, determine ROI measures, and build a fund  (or group of funds) that would support long-term returns and investments.

Focusing on the experience instead of the industry subsectors allows your economic development plan to be vision-driven instead of action oriented. The Droid X makes for a seamless communications experience between my many blogs, Twitter accounts, email accounts, CRM systems, social networks, and other web-based systems. Making clean technology and clean energy accessible and applicable to your region requires creating a seamless, integrated experience for your target audience. It will employ thoughtfulness and a true assessment of your region's resources.  A sustainable clean tech strategy encourages collaboration instead of industry segmentation to exceed local needs for export and long-term revenue growth.

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• Ranken tapped to lead the Washington Clean Tech Alliance (techflash.com)
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Join us for Focus On: Tying Strategy to Performance on October 19th

Strategy as we knew it in the 20th century is dead. Even the Wall Street Journal reported in early 2010 that organizations must change they way they think about strategy and use strategic direction to drive performance from all stakeholders. So what does strategy look like today and how can you use it to drive performance?

Strategist, author, and entrepreneur Tracy A. Corley shows you in our October 19th Focus On: Tying Strategy to Performance. She delivers practical ways for nonprofits, small businesses, and corporate teams to create responsive strategies that improve communications, drive performance, and deliver results. Register today at www.seattlechamber.com/events.

Tracy’s new book, The Strategy String, will be available for purchase. Pre-purchase your copy on Amazon.com today.

McKinstry Uses a Strategy String to Outpace the Construction Industry

Image by djwudi via Flickr

Who would have thought that an HVAC supplier in the sleepy city of Seattle, Wash., would lead the nation in facilities management services and environmentally responsible policies?

The team at McKinstry surely didn’t have that in mind when they launched in 1960. But they knew that two things would keep them relevant to the future of the building industry: holistic thinking and relationships.

“The greatest efficiencies in a building come not from how its built, but how it’s operated,” states David Allen, Executive VP of McKinstry. They found that by focusing just on the construction phase, they were leaving the clients without the resources and support to ensure ongoing efficiencies and maximization of resources. But to live up to their positioning of “for the life of your building” means moving to a relationship-based client engagement in a traditionally transaction-based industry.

“Focusing on relationships means that you grow slower,” says Ash Awad, VP of Energy and Facility Solutions. Of course, you wouldn’t notice that from the exceptional rate of growth McKinstry has seen, even with the economic downturn. With revenues in excess of $400 million in 2008, expect to see this company’s revenues hit $1 billion in the next few years.

And how are they doing this? McKinstry’s Strategy String focuses on their people. “We have exceptional people here,” says Awad. “We focus on their needs, and the needs of our clients.” The leadership at McKinstry knows that if you want to attract and retain the best in talent and clients, you always have to give the best of yourself.

In McKinstry’s Strategy String, the vision and mission combine with people-centric values and positioning based on a holistic approach to building construction and  management to create the foundation (see their vision, mission, and values at http://www.mckinstry.com/about). Services include construction, energy, facilities management, and consulting. To ensure performance, their internal teams work together to deliver on these areas and guarantee returns on every project. “If we don’t deliver on the ROI savings that we promised, we cut our clients a check for the difference,” says Allen. “We haven’t cut a check yet.”

McKinstry’s people-centric Strategy String allows its team members to step forward with ideas and develop innovative new programs and services for its clients. As a result, McKinstry serves as an industry thought leader, influencing policy and direction for a number of local, state, and federal entities around the country. Their values help people see beyond the day-to-day services and think about the impact that their programs will have on people around the world in the future. That’s why they have such a strong thought leadership team on the issues of environmental impact, energy policy, and clean energy job creation.

McKinstry’s commitment to its core belief in collaboration and people weaves a seamless fabric of communication between strategists, integrators, and implementers. Though the traditional enterprise areas of accountability exist, all leaders and upper managers are accessible to everyone else in the organization. This accessibility results in a deep sense of trust between leaders, managers, and workers. And when problems need solving, they pull together the best people -- regardless of title -- to work together as colleagues to find a solution. Titles more represent a person’s expertise and passion than their “level” within the organization.

McKinstry gets it. That’s why they have been repeatedly awarded as one of Washington’s and Idaho’s Best Places to Work. With the Strategy String tying together all areas of its organization, from the reception desk to the engineering lab to the fabrication shop floor, McKinstry leads the construction and facilities management industry in innovation and performance.

Read more about McKinstry’s Core Beliefs http://www.mckinstry.com/core-beliefs

Order your copy of The Strategy String at Amazon.com.

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Kill the hourly wage

In a previous post, I discussed why CEO compensation should be in the millions. However, the article did not address the disparity between executive and worker pay. Well, here's how to bridge and narrow the gap: kill the hourly wage.

Hourly wages worked well for a manufacturing economy. They allowed organizations to break productivity into easily measurable units. To measure productivity in a manufacturing economy, organizations simple divide input into output to get a quantitative figure. When wages can be broken into hours, hourly input dollars could be divided into hourly output product values to get hourly productivity per worker.

The measure of success in a mentisfacturing economy distorts this formula. You see, when service-centered economies and organizations take a look at input, the speed of the flow of ideas doesn't require hours to bring about multi-million dollar results. Some of the most cost saving measures an organization can take can be conceived in minutes.

For example, a client was in the process of shuttering its business thanks to the 2007 mortgage defaults. During a conversation about how best to fold the company, I asked the leadership to stop the process. They had invested millions in developing technology, systems, processes, and people to deliver their organization's services. They did not have to close their doors, no matter what analysts said. With a bit of creative thinking, I suggested, they could re-purpose those investments and assets to launch new services and recover their losses.

That two-minute bit of advice combined with a four-hour strategy session led to a business plan revamp and relaunch -- and more than $50 million in investment.

What would advice like that be worth to your organization?

Charging by the hour for ideas that are backed by years of experience, personal knowledge, problem solving skills, and collaboration is ridiculous in a mentisfacturing economy. When more organizations are making things with their minds instead of their hands, the time to put together products and services is exponentially reduced. Service industries continue to grow while contributions of goods-based industries to our national GDP are falling. So how do you compensate an employee, vendor, or consultant who takes 3 minutes to explain an idea that brings your organization $50 million in investment and $100 million in revenue over the next two years?

I recommend killing the hourly fee/wage and replacing it with a base salary or flat fee for services. For internal compensation, handsomely reward your employees with a variable value-based compensation model that shares a percentage of the savings or revenue based on the contributions they make to the organization. For example, if your receptionist answers the phone from 9am to 5pm, provide him with a base salary to cover the basic skills and time needed to greet customers and direct calls to the appropriate extension. But if that receptionist happens to handle a customer complaint and prevents a $400,000 per year customer from taking their business elsewhere, provide that person with a 5% customer value bonus ($20,000).

I know it might sound outrageous  at first glance -- receptionists don't receive $20,000 bonuses! But the only way to fill the wage gap is to shift compensation models from time-based to value-based. That process will take time for some organizations. For others, their enterprises are small enough to make compensation changes more quickly. The mentisfacturing economy requires that we reward people for the value they bring to organizations, not the time they put in at their desks.

For another example, one small business could not figure out why its bookkeeper wasn't producing results. The bookkeeper was on site for eight hours, two days a week. When the owner asked to see financial reports, the reports were little changed, if any, from week to week. After some discreet observation, the owner discovered that the bookkeeper often ran into difficult bookkeeping questions. Instead of actively pursuing answers, the bookkeeper sat quietly or sent text messages friends and family until time was up, filled out her timesheet, then left. Legally, the owner was obligated to pay the $55 hourly rate for the time spent on site though no results were produced. The hourly wage model rewarded an incompetent hire and sapped valuable financial resources from other areas of the organization. If the fee for service were value-based, the bookkeeper would have been compelled to produce results or would not have been compensated for the time wasted by both the company and the consultant.

You, too, can shift your compensation model from manufacturing to mentisfacturing. However, our public policies and labor laws need a lesson in intellectual value in the mentisfacturing economy. But your organization can make incremental changes that comply with current labor laws. Implement meaningful performance reward programs that provide compensation for goals reached, savings realized, and revenue generated. These rewards can be based on individuals, teams, departments -- or all of the above.

Base rewards on instant bottom line results for each employee's personal concerns. Cash bonuses mean more money for Junior's college fund and to pay outstanding bills. Additional vacation time means more time with the family and to spend time pursuing personal interests. Do not use "vapor pay" like stock options, futures, and programs that require being vested or could go away if they lose their jobs or the economy tanks. Long-term compensation models defeat the purpose of rewarding every day performance results.

In a mentisfacturing economy, the people, their ideas, and the results they bring override the importance of butts in seats. Just like executives.

Product failures are communications failures

When the customer is the last one to be consulted, product development is doomed to fail. Just ask Microsoft. I'm not 100% tapped into their market research process when they design new products, but it seems like the 48-day market lifespan of the mis-aligned Kin device forgot product development 101: Respond to the needs of your customers.

Nancy Xiao did a great job weighing the pros and cons of the Kin in her TechFlash report. As a representative of the product's key demographic, she states some rather obvious points in her breakdown. Why were such obvious smart phone features overlooked -- like a calendar, instant messaging, and an easy to use phone?

Successful product development results from successful communication. Products and services are ways that organizations say to its target audiences, "We speak your language, and our offerings directly translate your priorities and concerns into a response that you can understand." When products flop, it's because of a miscommunication. Either the priorities and concerns of the customer were missed, or the response to those priorities and concerns are translated into the wrong language.

When communications go awry, it's because one or more of the participants in the discussion are hyper-focused on their own priorities and concerns while neglecting those of their audience. This is true in flopped presentations, workplace conflicts, parent-child confrontations, lost sales opportunities, and disrupted friendships. I see this all the time during coaching sessions, assessments, marketing and sales planning, and even product development.  Good communication requires taking the time to really get to know the audience and their motivations.

It is the responsibility of the leading entity (the organization, the manager, the parent, each of the friends, each spouse) to take the time to go below the surface and really understand what is going on. When a teenager inevitably screams, "I hate you!" to a parent, the statement is rarely true. That's surface speak for "You don't understand me, haven't taken the time to understand me, and are constantly dismissing my priorities and concerns, so I no longer trust you and refuse to open up to you unless you start regaining my trust in your ability to be an open, honest, and fair parent." It's just that most teens don't yet have the sophistication to express exactly what they want to say [the same could be said for many adults].

Organizations, like parents, must employ patience and take the time to get to know the priorities and concerns of all stakeholders, not just customers. That means spending more time reading between the lines instead of just responding to the results of focus groups and surveys. It means getting out of the lab environment and into the places where your stakeholders live, work, and play every day.

By focusing product development on the REAL priorities and concerns of your customers, you can avoid costly go-to-market demises that rip holes into the financial fabric of a growing organization. Not all organizations can afford to spend billions to develop a product, test it in the marketplace, then pull product product support and production like some enterprises.  By treating product development like a conversation, you can avoid marketplace missteps and develop thoughtful offerings that respond in a way that is loud and clear.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION
Is your organization leading responsive conversations? Are your actions meeting the needs of your customers, employees, and other stakeholders? If it seems that you and key stakeholders are speaking different languages, call me to help you translate and prepare a clear response: 206-782-4040 x104.

Never say never about the future

Not so long ago, in a client strategy session, the management team expressed great concern about the lack of diversity in revenue sources. The CEO asked the management team why they were so worried. Their organization offers a highly specialized service and, in the past, faced little to no competition. In spite of market bumps during the past 25+ years, their revenue has remained consistent or with modest growth. "We have nothing to worry about," said the CEO.

The management team did not agree. Neither did I.  For the first time in its history, the organization faces newly-formed competitors and real threats to funding sources.

If we take away one lesson from recent history, it should be that none of us have 100% certainty regarding the outcomes of the new economy. Futurists like William Knoke can reveal growth and development patterns -- even predict behavioral and cultural shifts thanks to disruptive forces in our economy (see Knoke's eye-opening book, Bold New World: The Essential Road Map to the Twenty-First Century). But our world is changing at a rapid pace and many of the old models for every industry are either irrelevant or unraveling. The sub-prime mortgage industry collapsed in part because even the most informed financial institutions believed that American homeowner mortgage defaults would top, at most, approximately 6%. The number of subprime mortgages in default stood at 25% by end of 2008 (roughly 14% of all mortgages). With another wave of adjustable rate mortgages about to adjust to higher rates, losses will continue to rise (a few industry fast facts).

Old models, paradigms, and data are not as reliable as they used to be. So what is a growing organization to do? Where can you turn to develop long-term strategies for growth?

Growth-focused organizations never say never. They always expect the best but plan for the worst. Growth-focused organizations need leaders who can put ego and routine aside and expand their visions beyond industry norms and established best practices. Their employees must be ready to learn new things to keep pace with changes in how the company lives up to its vision and fulfills its mission. And the strategic plan doesn't rivet the organization to specific actions during the next five to ten years: it establishes foundations and guidelines that allow for flexible, rapid launches of new innovations, revised systems, and more effective processes.

Never say never. Always be ready with rapid response for oil rig explosions, exceptional loan default rates, changes in immigration policies, or shifts in consumer attitudes about genetically modified foods. As business leaders, your experience is valuable, but serves better as a launching pad rather than a definitive approach and strict path for the organizational roadmap. If you never say never, you can be prepared to take on anything that might shake up the way you do business.

For your consideration
Does your strategic plan allow you to never say never? Or does it contain maxims that could box you in if the economic realities break out of historical patterns? If you're unsure, call me to schedule an assessment: 206-782-4040

BP's and other CEOs should be compensated in the millions

The gulf coast oil rig explosion and BP's slow response to the spill has brought many conversations about CEO compensation in recent months. Suddenly, every major CEO of for public, private, and nonprofit organizations have found themselves under the microscope. People all over are asking: should CEOs be paid millions for running organizations?

I say yes. It's takes a talented, unique individual to meet the  core qualities of a top leader:

• Top leaders make tough decisions. They know that authoritative does not mean authoritarian. They allow their teams to do their jobs, but know when to stop the wheel-spinning and make some final decisions to keep the ship (organization) moving forward.
• Top leaders perform admirably under extreme pressure. This doesn't mean that they are flawless when times get tough. But they remain sensitive to the priorities and concerns of their stakeholders (employees, customers, investors, partners, and society) and keep their needs in mind while working diligently to confront threats and tough issues.
• Top leaders are responsive and responsible. They don't spin their wheels or defer blame. They know that the buck stops with them.  They don't have to state it, because all of their stakeholders can see it in their actions. They take quick action and focus on the tasks needed to get results.
• Top leaders imbue every action with integrity. Their actions align with their words. They are open and transparent when they can be. When being transparent could threaten the results they need, they state that loud and clear. They don't lie or tell half truths to appease their stakeholders. They act as if they are being watched at all times, because they are.

Not many people can do all four of these things at the same time. That's why CEOs and other top leaders should be make millions of dollars. Finding one person who can sensitively make tough decisions, perform admirably under pressure, be responsive and responsible, and act with integrity requires a strong character and high-performance mindset. These folks make the personal sacrifices necessary to keep the organization on course and out of danger in good times and bad.

The question everyone should be asking is, "Is this organization getting its money worth for what it's paying its CEO?"

In the case of Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, the answer is no.

I cannot claim that all of the media sources I have checked are without bias, but Tony's own words sum it up. On May 31, 2010, he stated in an interview, "I would like my life back." I hate to tell you Tony, but in times of crisis, the crisis is your life. That's why you were paid the big bucks when there were no global crises to face. Until the families who lost loved ones in the explosion have been consoled, until the flow of oil into the gulf is zero, and until the sheen on the water, the underwater oil plumes, and the goo in the marshes are non-existent, this is your life.

A CEO and other top leaders cannot foresee every crisis. But they should be prepared to make tough decisions, perform under pressure, be responsive and responsible, and act with integrity. If I were Tony Hayward, I would have locked my leadership team and top consultants in a room with a four-day deadline to evaluate and exhaust all the pros and cons every possible solution to containment and cleanup. We would eat ramen noodles and nap on cots in between strategy sessions until the decisions we made were bringing long term results with a solid positive outcome. No one would grumble, because all of the top leaders on my team would know that is what is expected of them when times get tough. They would know that we're in this together and none of us would rest until solutions were found. Why? That's what top leaders would do. And that's why my top leaders and I would expect to be making millions of dollars in compensation each year. If we could not do that, well, then, we should step down or be fired.


For Your Consideration:
Do you have the right people in the right positions? Do you have leaders working in other roles of your organizations, waiting for their chance to show your stuff? Would you like to find out? We can help you identify the right people for the right roles in your organization. Just ask me how: 206-782-4040.

Thirteen ways Washington State can help small businesses

To continue our conversation about how to grow small businesses and create jobs in the US, below are a list of topics that were important to the participants in our February 9th, 2010 Council for Small Business meeting. Many thanks to Karen Pemerl of the Washington State Department of Commerce for compiling these notes. I have edited them to elaborate on the content of the conversation.

Workforce development
Do more skills matching in jobs. Many states have resources for employees. In Washington, WorkSource uses keywords to help employers find candidates. The system uses a weighted approach and other creative methods will help employers link up with well qualified employees. Since WorkSource has a direct link to unemployed individuals in the state, it has one of the most comprehensive resources available to employees.

Recognition
Recognize new small businesses. Theresa Chambers of RecognitionWorks suggests that the state shows pride in small businesses by promoting them to increase name recognition. One option is a directory with new business name, the NAICS code plus a small amount of information that allows for self-directed search (more extensive than the current licensing database now available). 

Encourage match-making between small and large businesses. Enterprise businesses can be some of the best customers for small and emerging businesses. They often buy goods and services locally. Match-making would encourage more local purchases and help the small businesses stay afloat while helping large businesses find the sub-contractors they need to fill gaps left behind by downsizing, reorganizing, and rapid market changes.

Help small businesses tell their story. In addition to the directory, the state could highlight small businesses through existing communications channels so they get increased exposure to potential customers.


Regulation
Eliminate excessive regulations. Regulation is putting small businesses out of business. Reduce regulation at all levels of government (see my previous post.)

Streamline licensing and permitting process. I discussed this in my previous post. One of the attendees revealed that as a licensed home health care provider and business owner who recently relocated to Washington state, she was informed that it would take 3 to 6 months to obtain license. That's three to six months of not being able to generate income while waiting for a license for a small business owner.

Money Matters
Support economies of scale. Software costs can be crippling for small business owners. The state could help small businesses get lower costs on software, products and services through group purchasing programs. The Greater Seattle Chamber offers similar programs on services like health insurance and 401(k) programs.

SBA loan options are dwindling. Many SBA loans that were previously available are not available today.  Help small businesses by restoring loans similar to what was available in the past.

Be the bank. North Dakota has its own bank to increase lending to small businesses. Washington state is considering the option. It would allow for more fiscal flexibility in the long-run and provide a resource for small business lending programs.

Hold banks accountable. Many voiced that the state should make it easier to get funding through banks. Some even advocated that Washington should force banks to lend to qualified small business owners. We acknowledged that changing federal guidelines are making it difficult for some banks to loosen purse strings, though new federal funding will soon be available.

State Contracting
Make state contracts competitive. One recommendation is to create dollar limits on state contracts so small businesses can compete. It's easier for a small business to respond to a $5 million, five-year contract than it is to respond to a $50 million lump contract.

Respect the creative ideas of small businesses. In one state contracting example, a business owner had submitted innovative process for job skill matching. The state chose a different vendor, but used his idea to build a job skill matching process that wasn’t nearly as successful as it could have been with his additional knowledge and resources.

Establish a buy local priority. The state could create a model and incentives for state organizations and private enterprises to buy goods and services locally.

Ways to Help Build Small Business Viability in Our Communities

Last year at this time, we were discussing access to capital as the number one barrier to success for small businesses. Since then, it seems that small businesses have grown used to the lack of capital resources from traditional financial services institutions and have gotten creative in finding ways to finance growth and development.

Access to capital still leaves a gaping hole in success for many organizations large and small. But as I connect with more and more small businesses, the top barriers to adding staff members and growing market capacity include:

• Patents. For many organizations, the process of getting a patent on their secret sauce can take years (the current average is 22 months), whereas the window of opportunity for their launch might not be as long. For companies whose main clients are beyond our national borders, the lack of international trademark and patent regulations can put a damper on success and introduce a reluctance to launch in countries where proprietary information might not be protected. Our government should work harder to streamline the patent approval process here at home. In addition, our global leaders should work together to put into place standards to recognize patent filings in home countries and to enforce laws against infringement.
• Policies. Bureaucratic processes provide a slow and deliberate process for making changes in public policy and legislation. These processes are designed protect people from sudden changes in the opinions of new leadership and hotheaded activists. However, these processes were created in an era during which horses were more common than cars and the US Patent and Trademark Office claimed that nothing new could be invented. The pace of change has accelerated with the dawn of a new, information-based economy in our country. Our policies have to keep pace, or innovative new companies will face a lot of little hurdles that add up to big dollars when attempting to fill market demands. Economic and trade policy makers need mechanisms that will allow them to be responsive to worldwide market changes. The result will be policies that keep relative pace with the marketplace, instead of a five to ten year lag in policy updates.
• Permits. See Patents and Policies above. Many of the same challenges that stall patent approvals and policy changes also hold up the permitting process. In the recent economic downturn, one property developer saw its previously approved financing completely disappear just as a few of its buildings were completing construction. Not long after they put the construction process on hold in an effort to secure new financing, their permits expired. To renew the permits required starting from scratch -- new master use permits, construction permits, project filing fees - the works. In light of the economic circumstances and developer outcry, local building authorities created a permit extension, giving developers more time to secure financing. We need more responsiveness like this from our permitting institutions to keep business moving forward.
• Prospects. This is the same challenge that small businesses were having a year ago: where are the customers? Last year, customers were reluctant to buy. This year, however, that has changed: more customers are opening their purses, but hungry enterprise organizations are swooping in with extra-low-pricing and extras that small and medium businesses cannot afford due to smaller staffs and limited resources. The mantra of the 1990's that "there's plenty of business for everyone" has gone silent. To help our local small businesses, we have to realize that shopping local isn't just for grocery stores any more. The nation is picking up on supporting local small businesses by contracting and shopping for goods and services within their own regions. Big organizations should not be overlooked, but healthy local communities come from small and medium businesses in our local economies.

Addressing these four areas will help our small and medium businesses go to market more quickly with their offerings, create more jobs, and pump more tax dollars into our local communities.

How do you propose we increase demand and create more jobs for small and medium businesses?

The Big Short Exposes the Deception and Delusion that Led to Our Fall

Book Review
Lewis, Michael. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. , Hardbound: 264 pp. $27.95

I missed author Michael Lewis during his recent book tour stop in Seattle. He has lately received national recognition as author of the book that turned into the film, The Blind Side. After receiving his new book, The Big Short, it took me just a few pages to see how it quickly rose to the top of bestseller lists.

I was immediately immersed in this gripping story. The Big Short quickly dives behind-the-scenes of the mortgage-backed securities and real estate industry meltdown. Through a rich character-driven narrative, Lewis deftly weaves together how the nation’s top financial institutions profited from deception and delusion in the subprime home equity market. Lewis also delivers how those high-risk, low ethic actions have unraveled the financial stability of not just America’s lower-middle-class, but entire national economies. The outrage, intrigue, and dark humor of this peek inside the predatory operations and attitude of our nation’s key financial institutions make this a compelling must-read for anyone who wants to understand more about how these money-making behemoths function, and malfunction, to the detriment of the rest of us.

Get this book. I will definitely also be picking up more of Lewis’ work, including Liar’s Poker, a narrative about the excess and hubris of Wall Street during the end of our last century.

Consider the Requirements of a Mind-Driven Economy

On 4/20/2010, I reported on how the Great Restructuring that we have been experiencing over the past two years reflects the adolescence of a mind-driven, mentis-facturing economy. But exactly what does that mean? Like the industrial revolution, we are undergoing a major shift in global economic drivers.

I can only imagine how all the farmers of the 1800s felt as they watched their children leave the confines of the family farm to make their way in the big city. The city offered more opportunities as factories, mills, and mines drained work-ready youngsters from the less relevant countryside.

This is exactly what's happening in countries like Brazil, India, and China. The United States is undergoing a similar migration. Instead of farmers moving to cities, our skilled industrial communities will retool and reapply their experiences to technology and information-based industries. Advances in technology and the advance of the virtual worker means that people can find new jobs with new companies without leaving their existing communities. More and more companies can build mentis-facturing work teams across the country, leaving physical communities and economies intact.

Fundamentally, this shift extends beyond economics. Our societies and core institutions must change to keep pace with the shift. To strengthen mentis-facturing, the growing leader of our economic prosperity, communities and leaders should consider the following requirements for growing a mind-driven economy:

• Change the way we educate. Our current primary and education systems are designed to train great workers who can follow instructions and fit within manufacturing-based economic systems. Remember that "test" that asked you to read all the instructions before beginning? The last instruction read: "Stop at number 1." It got me every time. Why get my brain going, then tell me to ignore all the creative outputs of my mind?
• Get citizens into the workforce faster. Our community and technical colleges increasingly provide a faster track to getting the technical and information skills people need for a mentis-facturing economy. That means more people in the workforce, faster, without the cost and delay of a four-year college education. Declining birth rates and smaller families mean we need more income-producing (and, I must say openly, taxable) citizens entering the workforce more quickly to sustain our quality of life.
• Restructure federal, state, and local tax policies. Governments and policies require a few upgrades to recognize services and information outputs as the majority of transactions in our economy. Washington State is already seeing this already with proposal to impose sales taxes on services and recently-approved taxes on mentis-facturing outputs like digital goods. This is just the start. Our leaders and communities should be at the forefront of these recommendations to get it right and avoid emotional, reactionary debates.
• Accept that intellectual property is king and work with global leadership to standardize copyright protections and enforce them. This will allow us to outsource more of our innovations to places -- domestically and abroad -- that can produce them more efficiently and cost-effectively.

A mind-driven economy is a global economy that looks beyond a neighborhood's immediate needs and considers its impact in the greater world as a whole. The consciousness of the average American should include a understanding of the different regions of the world and how those regions impact productivity and performance at home. When heads get stuck in the sand and ignore the realities of our new economy, minds go numb and eliminate our ability to leverage our most valuable asset -- our ability to think, innovate, create, and grow.

Leading the Way to Recovery and Tips for Making the Most of Your Tradeshow

I lead conversations on small business growth and competitiveness as the Chair of the Council for Small Business at the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce. On 4/13/2010, Carl Gipson, Small Business Director at the Washington Policy Center, joined me to lead a discussion on recently passed Washington State legislation and its impact on the small business community's ability to lead our economic resurgence. He also shared a copy of the WPC's report, Lead the Way: Small Business & the Road to Recovery. Thank you to all of the attendees who provided feedback and insights on navigating our changing economy!

During the second portion of the program (time stamp 1:14:00), I shared with our viewers some marketing tips for making the most of trade shows. This is in preparation for the upcoming Chamber Annual Tradeshow, the premier Puget Sound venue for showcasing your business and networking with more than 1,500 attendees. If you are a Seattle Chamber member and have not yet registered to exhibit, hurry up! Booths are selling out (they have a few left as of today).

How Should We Drive the Economic Shift from our Hands to Our Minds?

We all know that we've entered a new economy. The Great Recession of 2008/2009 has been renamed The Great Restructuring, and we're all starting to feel the effects. With the demise of the Industrial Age, our economic systems, business practices, and social structures are absorbing the realities of the Information Age. The western world's economy has shifted from producing goods with our hands to producing goods with our minds.

Where does that leave the United States? Like the European Union, our manufacturing base has given way to an increasing need for engineers, scientists, and service industry professionals. Theo Eicher, professor and director at the UW Economic Policy Research Center, succinctly put it that our economy has shifted that from manufacturing to mentis-facturing. That means that we have changed from the bulk of our economy being produced by mechanical means (by hand, or "manu-") to being produced by our intellects ("mentis" or mind).

It is estimated that by 2016, currently "developing" nations will output 2/3 of all goods and the U.S. and the E.U. will produce only 1/3 of goods. That's in strong contrast of where we were in 2000. By 2016, more than 66% of our jobs will in service or innovation industries and will rely on creative, innovative thinking to be productive and competitive.

Yet, if you look at our citizens, we are below average in math and science literacy. And only roughly 30% get a college degree. That means in the new economy, many in our society will slide to lower middle class as the wage gap between college-educated and high school graduates increases. The ones who do not graduate from high school will be completely disenfranchised as un- and low-skilled job opportunities shrink.

We could conceivably see an unemployment rate in this country that surpasses 20%. But there is a way to change this outcome. In order to compete, we need to focus on getting smarter. Doctorate degrees are not required, but we will need more high school graduates, better prepared to take on jobs that don't even exist today.

How do you propose that we prepare for an increase in information-based jobs? I have my own ideas, which I will share on 4/27. In that post, I will discuss the requirements for making the shift from Manufacturing to Mentis-facturing, or a Mind-Driven Economy.

Courageous Conversations Require a Strong Sense of Self

Douglas Conant, CEO & President of Campbell Soup Company, spoke at the White House Workplace Flexibility Conference on Wednesday. Conant was proud to see that his employees felt comfortable enough to have courageous conversations with their manager. These courageous conversations helped them shape an attractive workplace flexibility program.



The Campbell Soup approach to workplace flexibility lives its values and appreciation for its team members. The leadership and team members possess a strong sense of self.

An organization's sense of self blossoms from a solid strategy that has vision, mission, values, and position at its core. This sense of self means that leaders and managers trust workers to do their jobs and get the job done without micromanaging where they work, when they work, or how they work. Workers have more control over their schedules and lives, allowing single moms and dads and sandwich generation employees to achieve work-life fit. Both organizations and workers need a strong sense of self in order to have courageous conversations. They also need the trust in their co-workers to feel safe having open, honest, even difficult conversations to express needs and wants and recommend ways the organization can better compete, improve efficiencies, and save money.

In my post, Workplace Flexibility Begins with a Shameless Workforce, I looked at what workers need to be Shameless and ask for what they need. Organizations also need to have a strong sense of self and trust in their ability to bring out the best in their workers, no matter where, when, or how they work. The Strategy String allows organizations to get beyond what they offer and start looking at why by wearing your values on your sleeve to drive every day performance. When organizations understand why, courageous conversations come naturally. All team members within the organization will have a strong sense of the organization's "self." Every individual, from the CEO to the worker on the manufacturing floor, will have a through understanding of your vision, mission, values, and position. Every one will know how to communicate it and understand how to tie it to the work they do every day.

The Seattle area provides two great examples of organizations with a strong sense of self. If you ever have a chance to visit Seattle University, ask any of the staff about their mission. They can not only recite the mission, but describe in detail how their job educates the whole person and builds leaders for a just and humane society. If you visit any Nordstrom around the world, you immediately experience the best customer service in the world. Of all the luxury retailers, their personable, unpretentious customer service comes through with every interaction you have with a Nordstrom employee.

If your organization needs a better sense of self, order The Strategy String for your leadership team. With Shameless workers and a strong sense of self, you'll be poised to conduct courageous conversations for workplace flexibility -- and beyond.

What is your organization doing to build a strong sense of self and encourage courageous conversations?

Great Escapes for Architecture Lovers Visiting the New York City Area

Book Review
Rosenfeld, Lucy D. and Marina Harrison. Architecture Walks: The Best Outings Near New York City. Rivergate Books (Rutgers University Press). Paperback: 288 pages. $19.99.

Architecture Walks features architectural adventures within a 2-hour drive of New York City. With 288 pages of architectural gems such as the colonial Burlington County Courthouse to Frank Gehry's modern Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, the authors delight the reader with nearly 100 outings that unearths the region's rich architectural history.

The thoughtful layout can help any professional who wants to "get away from it all" find a day trip or weekend adventure just outside of the bustle of downtown Manhattan. As an architect, I appreciate the ample photographs and information on how to contact local tourist bureaus. The only drawback: the book does not contain a single map. Visual representation of each attraction's location in relation to New York City would have aided both locals and travelers in orienting themselves and planning their trips. When using this book, I recommend using a service like Google Maps to plan your route.

Overall, architecture lovers in the New York area or visiting from other parts of the world will find many points of interest in Architecture Walks: The Best Outings Near New York City.

Workplace Flexibility begins with a Shameless Workforce

I would like to extend many thanks to Theresa Chambers of the Puget Sound Recognition Roundtable and Recognition Works for allowing me to lead a discussion on Shameless You! and Workplace Flexibility. At the forum on February 24, 2010, hosted by Snohomish County, we talked about how helping your workforce boost morale and build confidence helps human resource teams craft effective workplace flexibility programs.

Workplace flexibility is a growing trend in organizations large and small. As more people are experiencing more demands on their time, work-life fit (instead of the old 'work-life balance') drives programs for attracting, keeping, and motivating top talent. Smart employers know that happy workers are more focused and more productive. Traditional work schedules were established in a time when men dominated the workforce, women stayed home with the children, and multiple generations populated socially and geographically close communities.

Today's work and social environments have placed many workers in lifestyles where both parents work, single parents are equally as common as two-parent households, and adults care for both young children and aging parents. Work-life fit becomes increasingly important when communities turn virtual and extend globally, and families grow smaller. The average worker has to fit child care, elder care, household matters, personal care, and a full time job into everyday management.

Workplace flexibility introduces new options for where, when, and how work gets done. When crafting a workplace flexibility program, decision makers can benefit from connecting the when, where and how to their overall strategies and focus on"why" the work gets done. When workers can align the "why" of the organization with the "why" in their personal lives, they can influence workplace flexibility programs that consistently deliver exceptional everyday performance.

Shameless You! reveals "why" to your team members so that they understand their career strategies, personal strengths, and work-life fit opportunities. When workers are shameless, they understand and voice their workplace contributions, aligning their individual concerns with the organization's strategy and concerns. Shameless workers know that their contributions are appreciated and speak openly with their supervisors about what works and what can be improved.

When workers are not shameless, they don't understand why they come to work each day, other than to punch a clock and collect a paycheck. They do not feel appreciated, and hesitate to point out inefficiencies and concerns. In the shameful workplace, talent disconnects from the underlying strategy and excellence turns into apathy in everyday performance. Once apathy and disconnect set in, workplace flexibility can only mask underlying failures in strategy and performance. How, where, and when work happens becomes irrelevant if individuals cannot connect with why work happens.

I invite you to learn more about how to bring Shameless You! to your organization. Whether a program for your internal teams, a learning experience for your distributors, or an appreciation seminar for your customers, Shameless You! equips individuals with the tools they need to better understand why they do what they do, and perform each day with more confidence, integrity, and accountability.

What can you do to help your team be shameless and understand why they are important to your workplace flexibility program and other strategic initiatives?

Just what is strategy anyway?

I'm getting a bit frustrated: it seems that there's a misconception in the business community about what strategy really means. This week alone, I've heard three different people confuse strategy with initiative, project, or strategic plan. The most appalling misuse of strategy came in the form of a conversation with a friend: she shared how her company relegated the low-performing people in their division to a new "strategy" team. I got physically queasy at the thought of such idiocy.

Companies with solid strategies know better than to lump low-performing people into a "strategy" team just to keep an eye on them. They have more respect for their strategy's ability to strengthen or cripple growth. They treat their strategies like the foundational drivers they are designed to be. And they fire low-performing people who drain company resources.

With all the confusion with business terms and the bad rap that strategy has been getting lately, I think it's time to clarify just what strategy means. Contrary to traditional business terminology, I have broken apart the strategy and the strategic planning process to make it clear the role that strategy plays in a well-run organization.

• Strategy is the foundational soul of an organization. It usually starts as a gut feeling about markets, opportunities, and methodologies in the founding or leading executives. It gets translated into a strategic framework that drives the decisions and behaviors of the organization. The strategic framework captures the strategy into terms that the internal team can understand, and includes vision, mission, values, and position. When well crafted, the strategy of an organization should rarely, if ever, change.
• Strategic plans outline the goals and initiatives of an organization and/or teams over a set period of time. These goals and initiatives directly connect to the strategic framework, yet allows an organization to quickly and easily change their behavior to keep pace with changing market forces and stakeholder concerns. Strategic plans should be reviewed regularly -- in this economy, that means at least monthly -- to adjust to market course corrections.
• Goals capture the key near-term milestones along the road to growth and change, on which the organization hopes to move closer to fulfilling its vision, deliver on its mission, act according to its values, within the parameters of its position.
• Initiatives are the first actions needed to meet strategic goals. Each of these high-level actions ties directly to its goal with a set of processes, tools, and systems that include success measures to gauge everyday performance. Subsets of actions within initiatives are called projects.

 A well-defined strategy drives the day to day actions of an effective organization. CEOs and other leaders who get that communicate the strategy well and don't let their employees think that the strategic planning team is where bad employees go to die. If you're hearing such confusion happening in your organization, puh-leeeze get my new book, The Strategy String, for your leadership. No organization can afford to operate without a strategy in this fickle economy, and everyone on your team should be clear on the role it plays on your success -- or lack thereof.

Help others fill in the blanks when shaping your Strategy String

On January 25, 2010,when The Wall Street Journal reported that strategy as we know it is dead, I knew that my new book, The Strategy String, was timely. Now, with Wired Magazine's about on compressed sensing titled "Fill in the Blanks", I realize that The Strategy String can mean survival for organizations looking for strategies that keep pace with rapid market changes.


Compressed sensing is a new data capture technique that streamlines how information is gathered and reported. The premise is that by only capturing a fraction of the available information, say for instance 20% of a MRI or digital camera image, you can capture data much faster. Mathematical algorithms then interpolate the remaining data bits, delivering a complete picture that is accurate each and every time.

Why this is significant is seen in the article example: a two-year-old boy at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital was experiencing a failure with his liver transplant. Doctors needed to stop his breathing in order to take a clear MRI to find the issue and save his life. A traditional MRI would have required stopping his breathing for a full two minutes, risking depleting his tiny body of much needed oxygen that could result in tissue and brain damage. Using compressed sensing, they were able to capture just a fraction of the data in just 40 seconds, and interpolate the remaining image data after restarting his breathing. The results? No loss in oxygen in his blood supply, and a clear image which doctors used to fix the problem with the transplanted liver and save his life.

Like a MRI, strategy development traditionally took a long time to complete, depriving the organization of changes needed to respond to immediate threats. A six to 18 month data capture and strategy development process runs the risk of forcing an organization to miss immediate market opportunities and stall on addressing immediate concerns. Today's economic opportunities come and go in the matter of weeks, not months or years as in days of lore. Data capture and processing, and the acting on the findings require more responsive strategy development processes that captures only the most critical framework needed to move forward in the market place. And once that framework has been developed, it should be flexible enough to allow for more responsive implementation that clearly aligns with the strategic goals to complete the organizational picture. 


The Strategy String does just that. Instead of mapping every detail of the strategic plan, The Strategy String provides a framework with which each individual and department can fill in the blanks to paint the picture of forward-moving success and growth. With the most critical guidelines of strategy in place -- vision, mission, strategy, and positioning -- each team can focus on how to customize implementation to respond to swift market and stakeholder fluctuations. The strategic team gets to focus on the "why" while the integrators and implementers work in the trenches to deliver "how" and "what" that adapt to whatever changes might arise.

Do you have a strategy that uses Compressed Sensing to be responsive to change and growth opportunities?
 
I invite you to read The Strategy String: An Organizational Primer for Tying Strategy to Performance. The book is available on Amazon.com, or you can save $5 by ordering at www.StrategyString.com.

The Strategy String available on Amazon.com

My new book, The Strategy String: An Organizational Primer for Tying Strategy to Performance, is now available for order on Amazon.com. This book on quickly and effectively setting strategies for organizations of all sizes provides guidelines for teams and clients in need of strategic planning. Order yours today.

PS: Save $5 off the Amazon price when you order on our web site at www.strategystring.com.

Small Business Brings Fresh Ideas to Washington State

On February 9, 2010, Business Solutions Manager Karen Pemerl joined the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce's Council for Small Business meeting to share what's new at the Washington State Department of Commerce. In this video, we heard about great initiatives that Washington State is implementing to fuel a job growing economy, and participants contributed great ideas on how state governments can be more responsive to small business needs.

In the next few posts, I will share a synopsis of the comments shared here and through other conversations with small businesses.

The Council is a great way to engage and explore ways to help small businesses thrive. If you're a small business in the Puget Sound region, please contact the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce about getting involved with the Council and attending our Opportunity Exchange events each quarter. If you're not in the Puget Sound, I encourage you to share your ideas in the comments below.

Here are links to a few of the small business resources we discussed:

• Current legislative bills in Washington State: Lobbyist Brad Boswell’s latest bill tracking report and legislative summary are available online.
• Regional Contracting Forum: http://www.kingcounty.gov/exec/BusinessDev/regionacontractingforum.aspx
• Doing business with Washington state: http://access.wa.gov/business/
• Small Business Liaisons Flyer:  http://www.ora.wa.gov/documents/small_business_liaison_flyer.pdf
• Reports following the Summer 2009 stakeholder feedback sessions with Dept of Commerce: http://www.commerce.wa.gov/site/1268/default.aspx

Here are a few government contracting links for businesses:

• National consolidation for local, state, and federal bid opportunities: http://www.govdirections.com/
• Onvia's 2010 Government Market Outlook Report: http://www.onvia.com/governmentstimulus/fp/government_market_outlook.aspx