Category: Strategy

Can someone from outside your company create your organization’s strategic plan? After all, if your future depends on the quality of this document, shouldn’t you hire an expert to do the job? At first glance, this makes sense, but as you contract with an outsider to execute the task, you may have misgivings.

As a consultant, I sometimes receive requests from potential clients (often via an RFP) to draft their strategic plan. It’s a bittersweet moment. While I’m happy to help, I also have a painful duty.

Now, I need to set about changing their mindset around the entire activity. Furthermore, I know something they don’t: these are non-negotiable. To be plain, if they refuse my efforts to change the definition of the project, I won’t work with them. What’s my reasoning for such a drastic demand?

1. Strategic Plans Are Not Documents

While it’s the norm to equate a strategic plan with a document, the reality is quite different. It all has to do with where the document originates and what it’s intended to do.

The best plans lay out a very specific future. This is no 3-line vision statement with vague, undated aspirations which cannot be measured. Instead, it defines a detailed outcome and a realistic pathway to get there.

Ideally, its creation involves the top 10-18 leaders. Together, they seek to understand the current results and the external environment. Nowadays, this always includes the role of incipient and disruptive technology.

Once a baseline summary is created, a fresh, inspiring future can be defined. Usually, it’s selected from several possible candidates. Once the new vision is translated into numbers, it should be “backcasted” to the current year to produce a feasible

plan. This roadmap is converted into projects which are assigned to accountable individuals.

While there may be a document produced at the end of this process, it’s a poor facsimile of the hard conversations which preceded it. In retreats, we warn team members at the start: “Expect to make the 10 or so most difficult decisions needed to thrive in the future.”

Furthermore, they must do so with imperfect information. And they require courage to step into a world of uncertainty to declare a new Promised Land, even though they still live in Egypt.

As such, the document is optional – far less important than the final decisions, and the struggle to make them. Instead, the RFP I receive should focus on following rigorous, analytic steps as a team.

2. There is No Real Delegation

However, there are companies in which the norm involves a CEO spending a weekend at a resort, locked away. During her hiatus, she writes the entire strategic plan. Her team receives the document on Monday morning.

One year, she may decide that she’s busy or needs outside input. She requests a quote from a consultant to perform the task instead. She explains: “My staff always agrees with the plan I come up with, and hardly give any comments. You should have no problem.”

When I share the bad news, she complains. “I just want you to write the plan, nothing else.” Is she making a mistake?

In a word, “Yes.” She hasn’t realized that her team has been left out of the process. Now, they are trained to give her “lip service.” They expect that by saying as little as possible, she’ll leave them to return to their operational, tactical jobs. Business as usual. They are “too busy to be distracted by strategic questions”, she complains.

By taking this path of least resistance, she makes a grave error. By relying on her strength alone, she under-estimates the need for their buy-in. Unless she’s in a tiny company, she actually needs them to do much more to succeed.

Instead, everyone in the leadership team should be engaged in crafting the strategic plan. This is the only way for the most important stakeholders to make challenging decisions. When she disappears for the weekend, she discounts their input.

Furthermore, she acts as if implementing the strategic plan involves no more than ordering people to play their part. This approach is far inferior to the alternative: involving the leadership team so that they can, in turn, engage others.

The bottom-line is, she’s been following a process that doesn’t work. Delegating it to an outsider only makes things worse.

If a consultant is employed, that may help. But the outside assistance shouldn’t diminish the challenge, it should only improve the experience and the final output.

True strategic planning, especially in these turbulent times, is no vacation-like exercise. It involves far more than prose. Instead, the stakes should always be high. The responsibility to confront tough choices and implement them lies with the leadership team.

As a leader of your company, you may notice managers and board members struggling to be strategic. Trapped in low-level thinking, they habitually think micro when macro is needed. How do you help them craft inspiring visions that shift the way your organization operates?

At the start of each year, it’s only natural to aspire to be new, lofty and game-changing. As your followers look to you for direction, you know you need to say “something”. But the past couple of years may have led you to become cautious.

Perhaps your COVID-era plans now seem like bad jokes. You went out on a limb and called for big results, only to see them crushed. Today, you are gun-shy. You would be happy to exit 2022 without being forced to close your business. And if you don’t own a company, you just want to keep your job. It’s only natural to “small up” in the face of such realities.

However, these are exactly the fearful instincts that will turn out another Blockbuster Video, Nokia or Blackberry. They crashed out of industries they once dominated in a matter of years.

What do you need to do to lead your company effectively from the future rather than the past, even when your recent track record has been spotty?

1. Stop Trying to Predict

By definition, a prediction is an extrapolation of the past. In stable, predictable times, you could use this tool to plan the future and your strategy.

But that’s exactly what you were taught. Your job as a manager was to produce results in the short term based on the recent past; tactical thinking that won’t help you when strategy is needed. Unfortunately, those days are over.

Now you must lead even if your prior predictions were terribly wrong, and you looked bad, foolish or stupid. Your natural tendency may be to think in shorter time-frames in order to make fewer mistakes.

As a leader crafting a fresh future, you need to stop predicting. Coming up with a new vision was never about making predictions and never will be.

2. Replace Predictions with Intentions

The best strategic planning is about crafting intentions rather than predictions. They are always born in the future. Imagine a six-year-old saying “I want to be a doctor!” Good parents don’t scoff at such intentions, even though they aren’t based on facts.

However, the same child, if asked to predict, would probably say, “I want to keep playing with my toys!“

As an adult, you should gather all the facts you can muster. But at the end of the fact-finding, you must still craft an intention that is merely informed by the data, not limited by it. In other words, there will always be a risk when creating intentions which are meant to be ground-breaking, or transformational.

But what if your last few intentions produced nothing at all? What should you do then to be an effective leader?

3. Close Out Prior Intentions and Craft New Ones

Even if recent efforts have failed, your organization still needs you to lead from the future. However, you could be hampered by your track record.

If so, consider bringing previous intentions to closure so your followers can hear a new one.

This may sound challenging or painful, but it isn’t. Simply take a critical mass of employees along a journey to explore the facts regarding the last failed intention. Doing so will lay the ground for whatever is coming next.

But be clear about your role. As a leader, you are the limiting factor. When you fail to create an effective, inspiring vision, don’t expect your managers to take up the slack. Their skills are limited.

However, as the leader, you have no excuse.

Your job is to get up in front of your staff each and every year with a vision of breakthrough results. When you shy away from doing so, you are dooming your organization. Don’t be surprised when it returns the favor with mediocre performance.

Seems impossible? If you can’t manage, get expert help. As the new year starts, your company needs you to be at your best, on top of your game. Call your personal development the recurring price to be paid by anyone who is in your position.

Also, you may need to train your managers and board members to think from the future, and be inspiring. At the very least, they should understand what a strategic vision is meant to do, so they don’t become obstacles.

But the buck stops with you. It’s your job to demonstrate that everyday management may be about predicting, but strategic leadership is about crafting inspiring intentions.

In summary, your people want to be led. As the occupant of an executive position, do your job.

Like most people, do you share the challenge of keeping track of your to-dos, especially during the holiday season? You may think it has something to do with your personality, but…surprise: it doesn’t. Here’s why.

We human beings have a flaw. When we make future commitments, we find them hard to track, manage, and trigger at the right instant. Consequently, quite often, we simply forget to do what we intend.

In fact, the further away in the future a tricky activity must be performed, the more likely it is to fall through the cracks. In those moments, we blame our memory, or psychology. We suspect it reflects a lack of personal motivation.

But the most effective professionals have found a way to recall tasks later, every time. But their performance has nothing to do with their mental ability or willpower. What can you do to be more like them?: flawless.

1. Forget About Using Memory

Some believe that the right answer is to cut down your commitments, but that isn’t a real solution for people of even average ambition. Don’t surrender. Instead, craft task management techniques which match your aspirations.

Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. First, you’ll have to undo mistakes you are making and untruths you were taught.

One mistake is to continue using your memory to track tasks. Why? Unless you have relaxed into a simple retirement, you are already committing to more tasks than you can recall. This is the direct outcome of being an engaged employee.

Unfortunately, your brain is no longer 11 years old. It cannot track tasks the way it once did, without help. Inside of a complex life, it doesn’t keep up.

Instead, give your memory the sack. Take away the job of tracking tasks and hire an external tool. You’ll stop complaining about the onset of early dementia, and, like the most accomplished professionals, your focus will shift.

When these exceptional individuals fail to manage their tasks, they talk about systemic issues instead of personality weaknesses. They know they use a system comprised of a range of paper and digital tools, and they are willing to upgrade it as needed to stay on top of a growing task volume.

As such, when there’s a failure, they change their system, rather than feeling guilty, or stupid.

Thus, they reverse a pernicious untruth. In school, we were shown that smart kids who did well on tests could remember everything; hence, their high marks. The irony is that, as an adult, the wise move is to do the opposite and stop using what’s called “prospective memory” for to-dos.

It’s fine to use “retrospective memory” to recall facts and figures. If you’re in the horse racing industry, don’t forget the number of yards in a furlong. You need this kind of memory to perform your job.

But when it comes to prospective memory, the best practice is to overturn what you were taught.

2. The Replacements

Once you make the commitment to unlearn the use of memory, don’t delay. Most start with a task or to-do list, usually written on paper. But nowadays, some of your younger colleagues are skipping over paper, going straight to a simple task app on their smartphones. So can you.

That should work for a while until you take on more tasks. Then, you should upgrade to a more powerful task management app. After that, with more growth, you will need to switch to using a calendar or even an auto-scheduler.

But these aren’t just matters of taste.

You should follow the described sequence in order to augment your capacity. To illustrate, think of a spoon as a device to transfer some soil. But if you want to move more earth, you should probably switch to a hand-trowel, shovel, wheelbarrow or tractor. Notice that each tool has greater capacity. But the “right” solution is the one that fits the job at hand.

The same applies to your choice of paper task list, simple task app, complex task app, digital calendar, auto-scheduler or trained administrative assistant. Once again, pick the right one from the lineup for your current circumstances. Then, keep an eye on early warning signs, which indicate it’s time to switch.

These aren’t common lessons taught in school. However, as quality task management becomes a hallmark of high professionalism, they are becoming widely accepted.

It’s ironic – the best memory for all your adult to-dos isn’t actually memory at all – not if you want perfection. Use a system that matches the depth of your commitments. In these tumultuous times, this is a terrific aspiration to create for 2022.

P.S. Registration is now open for the Task Management & Time Blocking Virtual Summit coming up on March 3-5, 2022.

In the past few years, what opportunities has the shift to online business created for local companies? Your firm may be automating its processes, but is it also converting the data being collected into competitive advantage?

In 2003, I started a virtual organization: CaribHRForum. With less than 10 people at the start, it drew together HR practitioners I met in the Caribbean on various trips. New digital technologies were just emerging, and I believed they could be used to close the distance. Consequently, we adopted a centralized online mailing list to initiate a region-wide discussion.

The small group grew to add a website and a podcast – CaribHR.Radio. But the rapid growth outgrew the tools we were using and became overwhelming.

Thankfully, newer technology emerged in 2019 in the form of virtual community software – Mighty Networks. For the first time, an affordable, private internet platform could bring together thousands in the same space.

That same year, by coincidence, I apprenticed behind the scenes of a virtual conference. While I had been a speaker at prior events, now I learned how to host a summit or big event. It was a thrill, and I vowed to make it available to the members of CaribHRForum.

Then COVID-19 hit, and interest in online networks grew. It hasn’t stopped – CaribHRForum recently concluded its second virtual conference, one of the biggest in the region. With free registration, thousands are able to connect with HR experts, consultants and colleagues for the very first time.

But this is only the public side of the story. Hidden away from view, an important inner transformation based on data is also underway.

1) Industry Data Using Linkedin

What are the drivers of customer behaviour in your industry? You may want to have more than anecdotes to make decisions, but don’t have access to anything concrete.

We had the same problem, but the platforms we use have obliged by developing better data and analytic capabilities.

For example, on Linkedin we have learned that there are 23,000 HR professionals in the region, spread across 21 territories and countries.

By offering multiple Linkedin events on a range of topics, the platform tells us what this cohort is interested in learning. Our webinars and conferences advertised on the social network have served as a continuous pipeline. Each one adds new potential members. The cost? Just our time, as the network doesn’t charge for this service.

Furthermore, we have run paid Linkedin advertisements. While these are not cheap, they allow us to target each country’s HR Professionals with great precision. As such, we have steadily “trained” our Linkedin account to recognize people in our audience. Now, it’s a valuable tool: an analytic partner that outstrips our use of Instagram, Facebook and Google.

But the point is that they all offer data which gives us powerful insights into our efforts, and their results. They also track a storm of information on audience behaviour: views, clicks, and conversions which are impossible to gain from other face-to-face methods. Together, we can paint a picture that becomes clearer as they add new features.

2.) Community Behaviour Using Mighty Networks

While social networks have become great assets, our community platform on Mighty Networks has also improved its analytics. Now, we can track the overall behavior of our members as they transition from being newbies to more mature contributors.

From this data, we are able to predict which new topics are trending. From there, we can tweak the members’ journey and make timely improvements. As a result, we can better meet their overall purpose: to become better professionals. The data indicates which events and training we should offer.

3) The End Result: a New Organization

What else do all these data-driven insights allow for? Apart from the obvious internal benefits to us as hosts, they also enable more pluses for potential sponsors. As we uncover deeper interpretations, we offer sponsors more than exposure. Today, we can give them a better understanding of the audience and its unique behaviour.

In other words, the availability of analytics has transformed CaribHRForum. Scaling up from our small example, you may see how any organization can transform itself using data. The mere existence of this new information could be disruptive to an industry.

Perhaps your company is similar. You probably don’t intend for it to become a data-driven organization, but as you conduct more online business, consider this outcome. In fact, you may not have a choice.

The availability of fresh, easy-to-collect data in your industry could become a way for your company, or a competitor, to gain a permanent advantage. Don’t hesitate to include this likely scenario in your strategic planning.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.

If you’re the leader of an organization, what should you do when you develop an exciting, fresh strategic direction for your company? Before you rush in, take caution – you could do more bad than good if you don’t proceed carefully.

Imagine yourself as a CEO or MD, just returning from a two-day conference in New York. As you sit in the departure lounge, you’re filled with nervous energy. Three big ideas triggered by your exposure churn in your mind: your organization needs them to secure its survival in these trying times.

However, you also heard from a consultant who cautioned against implementing any new idea from the top down. If the implementation is complex, it’s easy for you to chase up the hill, only to realize that your troops aren’t behind you. How can you ensure that your business transforms in order to survive, while engaging staff at all levels along the way?

Would a town hall announcement do the trick?

The answer is usually “No.” As the leader, you must account for several gaps inherent in your leadership that could doom your effort. These must be accounted for in the way you roll out your ideas to ensure implementation.

Gap #1 – Your strategic thinking, versus that of others

Most CEO’s forget that while they are focusing on the company’s strategy 90% of the time, their direct staff is far less concerned. In my experience, the average leader wants managers who are short-term result-producers. As such, each manager spends no more than 10% of their time thinking about long-term strategy, triggered only by the advent of the annual retreat.

Therefore, managers develop strategic skills slowly, if at all. Consequently, many who are promoted to top positions end up floundering as they simply are not used to the long-term thinking needed to guide the enterprise.

This means that your bright, strategic idea might not be readily understood by your colleagues. While you came to these “sudden” insights based on your foreign exposure, it might take them much longer to arrive at the same conclusion. Therefore, you need to give them time to come up to speed, just to appreciate the nuances of your proposal. Don’t be impatient.

Gap #2 – Your executive’s engagement

While your top executives are used to managing their departments for quick results, they are probably not used to putting the hours into projects that have a long-term payoff. This can doom your strategy.

Most important strategic initiatives impact several departments at once. Also, the people who must implement them are usually far away from the CEO’s office. Therefore, top managers must have more than an abstract understanding; they need to show an emotional connection with the new project. That’s the only way to inspire those who need to set aside old behaviours and implement new ones.

Such executive bonds aren’t crafted via a town-hall speech, or by sending out messages on the importance of creating shareholder value. Instead, you must hold a commitment event – an occasion specifically intended to bring your top managers together in a public show of solidarity.

This usually takes place in a strategic planning retreat. By the time it concludes, each attendee has been asked to craft and engage with the new strategic plan. But it’s not a majority vote in which the losers are forced to sign up to something they don’t believe in.

Instead, there needs to be a sense that your three big ideas are self-evident: conclusions that any team of smart people would arrive at. As this happens, as the CEO, you must release any authorship of the original insights and allow others to build their own commitment, in their own words, for their own reasons.

Gap #3 – Their visible support

But this can’t be window dressing. Having everyone nod together is a start – the rubber hits the road when the plans hit the lower tiers of the organization. Now, leaders must engage staff so that they develop their own commitments as well, which cannot happen in an ordinary meeting.

The point of taking this circuitous route rather than just “issuing a directive” is that complex changes need the buy-in of many people who often don’t work together. The energy required to bring them to a single vision is considerable and doesn’t happen in an instant.

Don’t be fooled by those who offer instant assent. Instead, realize that success occurs only when staff members are applying private, discretionary time and effort.

This approach may not do much for the ego-driven CEO who is a magnet for credit and attention, but it’s the right one for the organization. In the long term, the best way to implement a new idea is through others.

Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com