Identify your organization’s major threats and opportunities by assessing these five aspects of your market.
As you begin your strategic planning process, it’s important to assess the market you’re competing in. A classic tool for doing so is Porter’s five forces. Dr. Michael Porter, who’s a professor of strategy, came up with this set of five forces to evaluate all the different dynamics that can affect your organization. Read more
Avoid these three behaviors to improve your next brainstorming session.
Today’s post is by Samuel Sanders, author of Your Next Big Idea (CLICK HERE to get your copy).
We’ve all heard of brainstorming, but what exactly is it? In a business sense, brainstorming is the process of coming up with creative ideas and solutions to problems using rapid freethinking. Brainstorming is critical in problem solving, creativity, ideation, and innovation. While in business, many imagine brainstorming as a group activity; it can be done alone or in a group. There are many tips and tricks that can help you have more effective brainstorms. However, there are three unique counterintuitive tips that many ignore. Following these tips can take your brainstorms to the next level.
The first tip is, “During a brainstorm, do not use cell phones, computers, or tablets.”
This is a tough ask for everyone. We take our laptops and phones with us almost everywhere we go. Many of us are addicted to our devices. You may even be wondering, what if I come up with an idea but need to look something up? Don’t. Write down everything that you want to find out more information on in a list during the brainstorm. Then after, look it up. Staring at a device or looking something up will distract your train of thought. It is better to minimize the distractions and get out all of your ideas before bringing devices into the process.
The second tip is, “Always add to ideas, don’t edit or compare ideas.”
Often when we hear a new idea, our first thought is to analyze whether the idea would work. In brainstorming, that is counterproductive. The goal of brainstorming is to get as many possible ideas out there, not edit and start checking the viability of ideas. When someone pitches an idea, it is not our job to rate, evaluate or edit that idea during a brainstorming session. Additionally, it is essential not to compare two ideas to each other. Remember, brainstorming is for getting ideas out there, not trying and figuring out what idea is best. You can feel free to add to ideas, though! Here is an example of the difference between adding and editing: if someone pitches an idea for a new sneaker, you may think, “Wow, that sneaker would go well with these laces.” That is not editing but instead adding more valuable information to the brainstorm. If you instead said, “Well, this sneaker won’t work with this feature.” That is editing. It is important that you or your team clearly understand the difference as editing will hurt a brainstorm’s effectiveness while adding can help grow ideas.
The third tip is, “Don’t have a rigorous schedule.”
In American culture, this one comes as kind of a shock. Typically meetings are set for a distinct amount of time, whether on the hour or half-hour, lasting an exact amount of minutes. A rigorous agenda or schedule can hinder people’s ability to think creatively. Say you need to brainstorm three topics, and you have one hour. Naturally, you’d think it would make sense to brainstorm each subject for 20 minutes. But to be the most productive, you should brainstorm each topic for as long as it is comfortable. It may take 35 minutes for the first topic, 15 minutes for the second, and 10 minutes for the third. If you run out of time, it is important to schedule another meeting or extend the current session to continue. Often ideas can start flowing near the end of a time limit, and putting a time restriction can add unnecessary pressure. During a brainstorm, you want to make sure your team comes up with as many ideas as possible. That way, when you go to evaluate the results, you have as much information as possible.
Today, brainstorming can feel like a lost practice. We are so busy getting work done that it does not seem fruitful or financially profitable to direct employees to brainstorm. However, the best ideas come from the workers in the trenches. Giving employees time to think over their experiences and ideas for innovation in a brainstorm may lead to high-quality cost cutting or profitability-growing results.
Samuel Sanders is an award-winning entrepreneur who has seen innovation, creativity, problem-solving, and ideation in action at many different levels: a Fortune 500 company, an Inc. 5000 fastest-growing company, as well as incubators. He also co-founded the company Wundershirt, which at its peak, sold athletic training clothing to Olympic athletes preparing for the 2016 Olympics. Currently, he runs Heard, LLC, a software application that helps governments and large companies get targeted and reviewed feedback from their citizens/employees to improve decision making. His award-winning and highly-praised new book, Your Next Big Idea, is available for pre-order at www.yournextbigideabook.com and Amazon. Connect with Sam Sanders at www.samueltsanders.com.
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Learning how to build goals from the bottom up connects individuals to the broader mission.
In addition to building your goals from the top-down, a useful exercise is to build goals from the bottom-up. It helps get team buy-in and it can identify new opportunities for upside. For bottom-up goals, start with what the team thinks they can commit to. What they can deliver. Ask them what they can stretch to. Then work from those individual drivers, those individual goals, up to the bigger metrics that matter for the organization.
If you have an organization that’s trying to drive sales and you have a team full of sales reps, you may look at the individual bottom-up goals of number of calls that they’re going to make in an hour. Those then roll up to the number of calls that they’re able to connect on in an hour, which rolls up to a broader goal of the number of pitches that they’re making to customers, and a goal above that of how many pitches are being accepted by the customer. That can tie to a bigger goal of the number of contracts sent and pricing being achieved, a bigger goal of number of contracts being closed, and ultimately, end up in the big organizational goal of how much revenue is being generated.
Working from the bottom-up ties the individual to the broader mission. In terms of identifying new opportunities, I found this out firsthand. I had a team where I went to all my team members and I asked them for their profit goal for the year. One team came back to me with five times what I would have expected. I would have given them a goal of say, $5 million. And they came back and said, we’re going to get you 25. I was shocked and I asked them, where did you get this? They showed me they had found a huge new opportunity I wasn’t aware of. When I went to commit to my boss, I only committed 3x of that 5x they had found. I learned on the back end they had sandbagged me, and the number was 10x what I would have asked for them in the first place. They left upside for themselves and had hedged their goal to me. They were excited to exceed that hedge but they made sure they didn’t over promise to the organization.
Building from the bottom-up in that situation was great because it brought forth a new opportunity and we were able to roll it into the broader organizational goal. When you go through your goal setting exercise, go to your team and work from the bottom-up, from those low level metrics that tie to the higher level organizational goals. Look for buy-in from your team in terms of the goals that they’re going to set, and try and identify new opportunities for upside. That bottom-up goal setting process is going to give you tighter goals that are more closely tied to the broader organizational ones and hopefully help you find new opportunities to pursue.
Want to learn more about setting goals? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to set better goals. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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Finding a mentor who has experience in your field can be a transformative step in your career.
Today’s post is by Harma Hartouni, author of Getting Back Up: A Story of Resilience, Self-Acceptance and Success (CLICK HERE to get your copy).
I was born in the U.S. but raised in Iran from the time I was an infant. As a gay man in an extremely homophobic country like Iran, there was no way for me to thrive while being honest about who I was. When I was 18 years old, a horrific car accident broke both of my legs and left me unable to walk for a year as I recovered. Afterward, I packed up everything and moved to the U.S., determined to create a better life and find success as my authentic self. As a Middle Eastern man who didn’t speak English, I was certainly at a disadvantage when I came to this country. But I found success through diligence, investment in myself, and a strong belief in the value of mentorship. Read more
Learning how to build goals from the top down ensures that everyone’s work is headed in the same direction.
Goals shouldn’t just tie from your strategy down to the individual goals. When you add your goals up, they also need to align from corporate goals down to the individual. Ensure everyone’s work is headed in the same direction and people know how they fit in—how their work contributes to the broader goals we’re trying to achieve. The way you do this is you work from the vision down to subcomponents, then down to subcomponents below that, all the way down to individual goals. Goals should cascade from the highest levels down. And when you add them all up, hopefully, it’s more than you’re trying to get to at the top level. Why? Well, you want to make sure that you hit that goal. By over-allocating that goal across the organization, you’re going to increase the chances that you hit the big goal.
I worked for an operating division at one point, and we had a goal of $200 million of revenue. There were five regions in the organization. Each region was given a goal of $42 million. Now, that’s $210 million. Within those regions, each branch was given a goal. And when you totaled up all the branches, it came to $215 million worth of goals. We then looked at the individual sales reps, and every sales rep was given a goal. When we totaled up all the sales rep goals, it was $220 million. Adding up those individual goals exceeded the division goal by 10%, by $20 million. The reason we did this was to ensure that we hit that top level, $200 million goal.
Over the course of the year, obviously, some sales reps exceeded their goals, some met their goals, and some fell short. Working from the top-down ensured the primary goal was focused on. Everyone was focused on driving sales. And by over-allocating that goal from top down to individual helped us achieve that goal. Now, when you do this, if you’re going to go with an over-allocating approach to setting these goals from the big goal down to individuals, be careful about over-planning that hand because you may make it such that that goal is not achievable.
One time I’ve seen this dynamic is when I was in the Army and we had to be at formation at a certain time. Our company commander would say, “I want everybody at formation at 6:00 a.m.” The lieutenants would then go to the organization and say, “I want everybody at formation at 5:30 a.m.” The platoon sergeants then went to the teams and said, “I want everybody in formation at 5:00 a.m.” The squad leaders then said, “I want everybody in formation at 4:30 a.m.” The next thing you know, you’ve got this Corp private standing out there in a parking lot at 4:00 a.m., waiting for a formation that happens two hours from now. Bad things can happen when you over-allocate a goal down to the individual level.
So balance it out. Look at the high-level goal, break it down into subcomponents, and look at the individual goals that are going to add up to that broader goal. Make sure the goals you set at the individual level are still achievable and they’re directly tied to the broader goal you’re trying to achieve. By doing so, people know how they contribute, how they fit in, and you’re going to make sure that you hit those top-level goals if everybody hits their individual goals.
Want to learn more about setting goals? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to set better goals. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!
Do you struggle to get your ideas approved? Follow the structured thought process to create better presentations.
When you have a recommendation you’re trying to get approved within your organization, there are going to be a lot of stakeholders you have to get your idea in front of. You’ll have to put it in front of your manager, maybe their boss, a director, and some vice presidents. Some of your ideas may even go all the way up to the C-suite. There’s something I like to call Figliuolo’s Law, which states:
“An individual’s annual compensation is inversely proportional to the number of slides they can look at before they have a stroke.”
I’ve worked with a CEO who said, “If it has a staple, I won’t read it.” I worked closely with another CEO and we went in to present. The other team went to present first. He picked up their presentation, he felt it for heft, and it was about 25 pages long. He threw it across the room and said, Read more