Strategy – Page 3 – thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World

11 Proven Ways to Build Rapport in Your Negotiations

April 17, 2023/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Communications, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

If you want better outcomes in your negotiations, you’ll want to master the skill of rapport-building. Here are 11 simple tips on how to do it.

Today’s guest post is by Cindy Watson, author of The Art of Feminine Negotiation: How to Get What You Want from the Boardroom to the Bedroom (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

If you want better outcomes in your negotiations, you’ll want to master the skill of rapport-building. Rapport is all about relationships: finding ways to make (rather than break) connections and build (rather than tear down) bridges. Building rapport diffuses potential tension as it creates a perceived shared frame of reference.

Rapport-building can be instantaneous, or it can take time to develop. It can grow naturally, or you can build it with intention. Some people seem to connect with others instantly. If you’re not one of those people, don’t panic. Contrary to popular belief, rapport-building isn’t an elusive gift you’re either born with or destined to do without.

There are many ways to build rapport in a negotiation. Here are 11 simple tips on how to do it.

Be Yourself.

Being authentic will always be more effective than trying to adopt a persona that’s unnatural for you. A lack of authenticity undermines rapport; the other party will sense it, and this will erode trust.

As you practice the skills that build rapport (including those set out here), err on the side of being yourself. Don’t get stuck in your head or overthink how you’re going about it. If you do, you’ll lose your natural charisma in the process.

Make a Good First Impression.

Study after study have shown that first impressions matter. We all have a visceral reaction to other people within seconds of meeting them. Invite a favorable reaction by getting yourself into a positive state of mind before you start the negotiation. Show up with an inviting posture, a genuine smile, and warmth in your eyes.

Find Common Ground.

While you don’t want to jump straight to business, I’m not a fan of the often-cited advice, “Use small talk to create rapport.” Instead, try to find a common interest or connection. Find your shared humanity. That’s a much better place to start.

Get Curious.

Most people like to talk about themselves. Researchers have found that people spend 60% of their conversations in “me mode.” When chatting on social media, this figure jumps to 80%.

Why not use these stats to your advantage? Show genuine interest in others. Discover what brings them joy. What are they passionate about? Get curious. Ask open questions. Stay genuinely engaged. Ask some variation of “tell me about yourself.” In doing so, you’ll build connection and rapport.

Give a Compliment.

Find something you appreciate about the other person, and then acknowledge it. A genuine compliment can go a long way to kick-start rapport.

Use the Person’s Name.

We all like to be seen. Make a point of calling the other person by name early in the conversation. It creates an immediate connection and familiarity.

A word to the wise: Be sure you have the person’s correct name. Nothing breaks rapport like mispronouncing someone’s name or, worse, calling them by the wrong name.

Be Candid.

If you want to build rapport and trust, always be the person who tells the truth. Admit when you don’t know the answer to something. Acknowledge mistakes.

We often mistakenly believe these types of admissions will undermine our credibility when, in fact, the opposite is true. It humanizes us and makes us more relatable and trustworthy. Being honest builds rapport.

Create Shared Experiences.

Spending time together and creating shared experiences outside the negotiation process can turbocharge the connection process. This doesn’t mean you have to set up a high ropes challenge or whitewater rafting adventure (both popular in today’s team-building culture). Simply pick an activity with the potential to create a meaningful connection.

Mirror and Match.

When it’s appropriate, try to mirror and match the other person’s posture and language. But be careful and discreet about it. Otherwise, your actions will be jarring and break rapport.

A good starting place is to note the other party’s speech patterns, tone, tempo, and volume. Try to match these elements to increase the opportunity for connection.

Gradually Increase Intimacy.

The more you create a personal connection, where the other party feels they know you and gets comfortable sharing with you, the more likely you’ll build the bond necessary for superior negotiated outcomes.

Gradually increasing intimacy by strategically sharing personal information can be powerful. Don’t, however, prematurely overshare and dump inappropriate private information.

Inject Humor.

Humor is the ultimate cure-all and connection-builder. Laughter releases feel-good chemicals (endorphins) in our body, which open the way for better bonding.

Practice Makes Perfect

Get comfortable with these approaches so they become natural, and you’ll slip into rapport-building mode authentically.

For women who worry about their negotiation prowess, it’s worth noting that building rapport is typically regarded as a “feminine” trait. This isn’t surprising, as women were required to develop this skill in a world where, for too long, they enjoyed so few rights. Survival depended on becoming adept at developing relationships.

If you lose rapport at any point in a negotiation, don’t ignore the elephant in the room. Be humble. Address why you lost it. Take ownership where appropriate. Apologize if necessary. Get curious and determine how to get back on track.

By building better relationships, you’ll enjoy better negotiated outcomes.

Cindy Watson is the founder of Women on Purpose, a TEDx international speaker, and the award-winning author of the Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller The Art of Feminine Negotiation: How to Get What You Want from the Boardroom to the Bedroom. Learn more at ArtOfFeminineNegotiation.com.

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Is It Time to Revise Your Goals?

April 12, 2023/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

When your goals become irrelevant, it’s important to revise them and change your priorities accordingly.

Markets can change quickly. Those changes can alter priorities. They can render some of your goals irrelevant. When that happens, change the goal. Do so quickly so the team can change its focus to higher priority objectives. It’s foolish to continue pursuing an irrelevant goal. Be willing to change it and set new goals that are more appropriate for that new environment.

I know one startup that had an original goal of site traffic. They were concerned mostly with how many people are coming to their website. The initial funding they received was based on those initial goals. Follow on funding was based on them hitting those traffic numbers. Their business model changed. They learned more about the customer. They figured out it was much more important for them to focus on how much time a user was spending on their site instead of just overall traffic.

The company was about to have a big meeting with possible partners and a new funding source, but to have that meeting they needed money to fly the executive team out to California to meet with this new partner. When they went to the original investors and asked for money, they original investors said no. They refused to change the original goal. They said they wouldn’t provide any additional funding until the organization hit that metric, but the metric was no longer relevant. The company went under, and it was pretty sad that they did. Even though this is an example of a company versus a business unit, the lesson remains the same. When the environment changes, revisit your goals and see if they need to change.

Review your current goals. Ask, are any of them no longer relevant? Has the market changed? If they’re not relevant, revise the goal. Focus the team on something more meaningful. Change your priorities accordingly. If you’re inflexible and say, “Well, we set this goal at the beginning of the year, and, you know what, we’re going to stick with it even though the market has changed,” you’re going to get results that follow that metric. Be willing to shift. That’s a sign of maturity in your organization that you’re willing to assess the market environment and change your priorities accordingly.

Want to learn more about setting business unit goals? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to set business unit goals. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

Best Practices for Building a World Class Strategic Growth Plan

April 10, 2023/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Learn ten best practices for creating a strategic growth plan for your organization.

Today’s guest post is by Mike Fata, author of Grow: 12 Unconventional Lessons for Becoming an Unstoppable Entrepreneur (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

A strategic growth plan is a crucial component of a company’s long-term success. It serves as a roadmap, guiding a business towards its goals by outlining objectives, strategies, and tactics. A well-constructed strategic growth plan enables businesses to navigate through market shifts, adapt to new trends, and capitalize on emerging opportunities.

This article will discuss the best practices for writing an effective business strategic growth plan, focusing on ten key points that will ensure your organization is set up for success.

Define your vision and mission

The first step in creating a strategic growth plan is to clearly define your company’s vision and mission. The vision statement should describe your long-term aspirations, while the mission statement should communicate the purpose of your business. These two elements will serve as the foundation for all subsequent decisions and actions.

Set SMART goals

Establish specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals to ensure your growth plan is realistic and effective. SMART goals are more likely to be reached and can be easily tracked and evaluated. Prioritize your goals based on their impact on the business and their alignment with your vision and mission.

Conduct a SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis is an essential tool for identifying your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. By examining these factors, you can better understand your competitive landscape and capitalize on your strengths, while addressing your weaknesses. This will enable you to uncover new growth opportunities and create strategies to mitigate potential risks.

Identify your target market and segmentation

Knowing your target market is crucial to creating a tailored growth strategy. Identify the specific customer segments you want to focus on and analyze their needs, preferences, and pain points. This will allow you to develop products, services, and marketing strategies that resonate with your target audience, ultimately driving growth.

Analyze your competition

Understanding your competition is essential to maintaining a competitive edge. Assess their strengths, weaknesses, market positioning, and target audience. This information will allow you to identify gaps in the market, opportunities for differentiation, and potential threats that you need to address.

Develop a unique value proposition

A unique value proposition (UVP) is a clear and concise statement that communicates the benefits of your products or services, setting you apart from your competitors. Your UVP should address your target audience’s needs and preferences and showcase your company’s competitive advantages. Developing a strong UVP is critical to attracting and retaining customers, ultimately driving growth.

Create a marketing and sales strategy

Your marketing and sales strategy should outline the tactics you will employ to attract and convert customers, focusing on channels and messages that resonate with your target audience. Consider a mix of online and offline channels, such as social media, email marketing, content marketing, and events, to reach a wider audience. Align your sales and marketing efforts to ensure a seamless customer experience, and set performance metrics to track your progress.

Establish a financial plan

A robust financial plan is a cornerstone of a successful growth strategy. Outline your expected revenue streams, expenses, and investment requirements, and create financial projections for the next 3-5 years. This will enable you to identify potential financial risks and ensure your growth strategy is financially viable.

Implement an operational plan

Your operational plan should outline the processes, systems, and resources required to execute your growth strategy. This includes hiring and training new employees, implementing new technologies, and streamlining processes to improve efficiency. Regularly review and adjust your operational plan to ensure it remains aligned with your strategic objectives.

Monitor progress and make adjustments

Finally, it’s essential to continuously monitor your progress against your SMART goals and KPIs, adapting your strategies and tactics as needed. A properly scheduled cadence of formal review meetings (weekly, monthly and quarterly), along with standardized meeting agendas and reporting structure, will set you up for success.

Mike Fata is the Chief Executive Officer of Fata & Associates and the author of Grow: 12 Unconventional Lessons for Becoming an Unstoppable Entrepreneur. He is the co-Founder of Manitoba Harvest Hemp Foods and hosts the Founder to Mentor podcast. As a 9-figure entrepreneur, certified holistic health coach, and growth coach, he motivates and inspires people to discover their authentic business passions and live their best life every day.

Measuring Goal Performance

April 5, 2023/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Regular measurement of goal achievement helps you make adjustments to your plans.

Regular measurement of goal achievement helps you make adjustments to your plans. Clearly define the metrics you’ll measure, the data sources you’ll use, the measurement methods, and measurement frequency.

One retailer I worked with had an online, a store, and a catalog channel. Each of those was considered a separate business unit. They all had goals and they all had measures. For the online business unit, they had goals around traffic, orders, revenue, and items returned. The stores had same-store sales growth, revenue, and store budgets. The catalog business had a mailing list growth goal, revenue, orders, and returns. Every metric had well-defined data sources and methods for measuring. The organization built standard reports that were generated on a regular basis. Those reports were delivered via dashboards to the executive team.

When you’re building your measurement method, build contingency plans during the goal-setting phases. This isn’t just about keeping score. You should measure for a reason. When you’re measuring, think about what could go wrong, what could go right, and what are you going to do about it? To the extent you can, put in place triggers for executing those contingency plans.

This retailer had a plan that if same-store sales growth wasn’t where they wanted it to be, they would take action. They would cut back on staffing, delaying new store openings, and launch extra marketing to hit their numbers. There were clear break points for taking action which enabled them to decide and act quickly when business performance wasn’t what they expected.

When you’re laying out your measurement plan, make sure you go through this contingency planning so when things aren’t going well, you can turn your business around quickly.

The Inescapable Conundrums of Managing

April 3, 2023/2 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Management is a practice, not a profession or a science. To appreciate the true complexities of managing, we have to understand its intrinsic conundrums.

Today’s guest post is by Henry Mintzberg, author of Understanding Organizations…Finally! – Structuring in Sevens (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

Management is a practice, not a profession or a science. It is learned largely through experience, which means that it’s primarily a craft, although some of the best managers make considerable use of art. They also use some science, in the form of analysis, but nowhere near as much as in the professions of, say, medicine and engineering. And that’s a good thing: the overuse of analysis, especially an obsessive reliance on measurement, gets in the way of effective managing.

Watch a manager at work, or step back from practicing management yourself, and you can begin to appreciate the wide variety of things that managers do. They champion change, join projects, handle disturbances, do deals. Managing is collaborating and controlling, doing and dealing, thinking and leading, and more — not added up, but blended together.

All this can be seen to happen on three planes — information, people, and action. On the information plane, managers gather and disseminate information to help their people take action. On the people plane, they lead insiders to function more effectively and link to outsiders for the benefit of the organization. And on the action plane, managers do and deal: internally, doing means engaging in projects and handling disturbances; externally, it means doing deals with outsiders — such as suppliers, funders, and partners.

All this creates enough complexity in and of itself, but to appreciate the true complexities of managing, we have to understand its intrinsic conundrums. A conundrum is some problem that cannot be resolved, although it can be alleviated. Here are eight of them that managers face:

The predicament of planning. This is perhaps the most basic of  all the conundrums, the plague of every manager. How to plan, strategize, just plain think, let alone think ahead, in such a hectic job? Put differently, how to get in deep when there is so much pressure to get it done?
The quandary of connecting. How to keep informed—in contact, “in touch”—when managing by its very nature is removed from the very thing being managed? Yesterday you were transplanting kidneys, today you are managing others who are transplanting kidneys.
The labyrinth of decomposition. The world of organizations is chopped into pieces — departments and divisions, products and services, programs and budgets, vertical silos and horizontal slabs. Managers are supposed to oversee and integrate this whole confusing affair. So, where are they to find synthesis in this world so decomposed by analysis?
The mysteries of measuring. How often have you heard that “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” The trouble is that many of the most important things to be managed, such as culture and innovation, even management itself, don’t lend themselves to easy measurement. Hence, how to manage what you can’t rely on measuring?
The dilemma of delegating. Managers who are well connected receive a great deal of information, much of it informal — opinion, hearsay, even gossip — all of which can be very useful. (What would you prefer: to find out in a sales report that you have lost your biggest customer, or to hear a rumor that this customer is thinking of taking its business elsewhere?) Thus, how is the manager to delegate when so much of their information is personal, oral, and often privileged?
The ambiguity of acting. When a manager delays making a decision to better understand a situation, everyone else can be held back from acting. But leaping to action without adequate consideration can be even more dangerous. How, then, to act decisively in a complicated, nuanced world, somewhere between paralysis by analysis and extinction by instinct?
The riddle of change. Constant change can be as dysfunctional as no change. How to manage change when there is the need to maintain continuity?
The clutch of confidence. Managing requires confidence: who wants to be managed by someone afraid of the future? But is this any better than a manager who always acts fearlessly? Accordingly, how to maintain a sufficient level of confidence without crossing over into arrogance?

How can any manager possibly deal with all these conundrums concurrently? The answer: by facing them, to alleviate their worst effects. If each can be seen as a tightrope, then to manage is to walk through a multidimensional space on all kinds of tightropes: managers have to get the balance right. These conundrums are not distractions; they are managing!

Henry Mintzberg is a Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Montreal, the winner of awards from the most prestigious academic and practitioner institutions in management (Harvard Business Review, Academy of Management, Association of Management Consulting Firms, and others), and the recipient of 21 honorary degrees from around the world. He is the author or coauthor of 21 books. His latest book is Understanding Organizations…Finally! – Structuring in Sevens (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Feb. 7, 2023). Learn more at mintzberg.org.

Excerpted from the book, Simply Managing, and applied in the book Understanding Organizations…Finally! – Structuring in Sevens.

Providing Resources to Reach Goals

March 29, 2023/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

If you don’t give your teams the resources they need, they’re not going to hit their goals.

Once your goals are set, you have a responsibility to provide the team the resources it needs to achieve those goals. These resources should be identified during the goal-setting process. Include those resources in budgets and project plans. Failure to conduct resource planning and allocation is going to frustrate your teams. They won’t have what they need to achieve their goals.

At the business unit level of goal setting, resource allocation can be easier in some respects, and more difficult in others. The ways it can be easier are first, you have more control over your business unit’s resources. You can shift those resources more easily. There are also known processes like budgeting that can be linked to your goal-setting process. This ensures that the resources are available for the goals you’ve set.

Now it can be more difficult, too. Getting additional resources outside your business unit can be a challenge. Those resources have to come from higher levels, or you have to negotiate with other business units to get resources allocated to you. It’s not often they’ll give those resources up. If you don’t allocate resources during the budgeting process, you either have to either wait to shift resources or reprioritize all your other efforts due to this new goal.

Review goals that are falling short in your organization. Make sure they’ve got the right resources. If they don’t, shift them appropriately. Ensure your goal setting, budgeting, talent management, and staffing processes have explicit links to one another.

If you don’t give your teams the resources they need, they’re not going to hit their goals. Conversely, if you really think through the goals you’re trying to hit and make sure they’re appropriately resourced, your teams are going to drive the success that you expect.

How Organizations Get Employee Engagement Wrong

March 27, 2023/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Communications, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Employees now expect more. Employee engagement is key to success for most organizations. If we understand the typical and recurring mistakes made in this field, we can predict and prevent them happening to us.

Today’s guest post is by Frank Devine, author of RAPID MASS ENGAGEMENT: Driving Continuous Improvement Through Employee Culture Creation (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

The Roll-out Assumption

During a visit to one of the sites where my Rapid Mass Engagement (RME) process had been implemented, a group of senior visitors toured the site guided by a shop-floor employee who outlined the new high-performance culture. The visitors could see and feel the culture and were impressed by the ‘Behavioral Standards’ – behaviorally specific standards designed to make accountability both easy and transparent developed from employee data and created by employees. One of the visitors informed the guide that they were going to take these away and ‘roll them out’ in the visitors’ own organization.

The employee guide looked deflated and when asked why, explained:

“If you think you can roll these out, I have not explained properly how they were created … and who owns them.”

This roll-out assumption is common. In one site the employees added the following to the organization’s Behavioral Standards:

“Warning: attempts to apply these standards without the process that created them will only disappoint.”

Ownership matters and creates discretionary effort and engagement, and anything rolled-out, by definition, is not owned by those on the receiving end.

Engagement without Enablement

Imagine you do what it takes to create a highly engaged workforce, but employees then crash into overcautious and inflexible legacy systems. Our HR and Quality policies, how we recruit and promote, how early we involve end-users in the design of equipment and software can all be designed to maximize enablement, but frequently suffer from producer capture.

Failing to quickly and systematically align systems to your nascent emerging culture, will mean you have highly engaged employees, but working for another organization.

Squashing Ownership, Solution Space and Discretionary Effort with Unnecessary Standardization

Western universities and organizations dominate thinking and research in areas such as leadership and engagement. In addition, our understanding of improvement science (Lean/Six Sigma, etc., however described) means we first create standards before attempting to improve them.

Why is this a problem? I have seen many examples of corporate functions specifying the color, the size, even the font to be used in visual management.

Why do we think corporate knows best? Why carelessly disregard the mountain of goodwill, ownership and discretionary effort available by letting a thousand flowers bloom, by encouraging local people to create their own?

If you have multiple locations worldwide, allow each to design their own approaches to visual management or, as in the example above, how they codify and articulate their high-performance culture. Give them the maximum solution space and they will fill it with locally resonant and authentic words owned by the employees concerned.

Naïve Engagement

I often hear comments such as “no-one comes to work to do a bad job.” The danger is when this is followed by a logical leap such as “all we have to do is empower our teams and they will do a great job.”

In corporate life, I designed the training for CarnaudMetalbox’s Self-Directed Work Teams (called ‘Autonomous Manufacturing Teams’ in French); the key was ensuring clearly defined scope and responsibilities.

If we create a power vacuum the only thing that is certain is that the power vacuum will be filled. The hope is that a highly motivated self-directed work team will always fill this vacuum, but that cannot be relied upon. It some cases this naïve assumption led to systematic restriction of output, bullying and abuse of vulnerable employees.

Random outcomes are the opposite of high performance. Some of my work comes from helping readdress the damage caused by such policy failures which ignore everything we have learned from FMEA and Human Factors in other contexts.

Timid Engagement: Wishing the Ends without Willing the Means

An executive from a global organization who had visited a RME site contacted me.

He told me he was very impressed by the culture he had experienced on the site and the impact on quality, customer service and productivity and he wanted that for his organization.

We discussed what was involved in creating such a high-performance culture and his enthusiasm declined rapidly. This is common.

This was one of many examples of people willing the ends without the will to enact the means necessary to achieve those ends.

In the senior team diagnostic workshops that are the 1^st stage of RME, it is common for at least some of the senior team to imagine that transformational outputs can be achieved with conventional ‘safe’ inputs; they can’t.

Shiny and New

I have worked with tens of thousands of employees in highly participative workshops where, in the early stages of culture change, cynicism about ‘management’ is common. Employees often tell me of an interesting coping mechanism. Having experienced a high turnover of senior leaders and initiatives they advise their peers to smile at the new leaders and make encouraging noises. They go on to say “this initiative won’t last very long and then another shiny and new initiative will be launched that we can give superficial commitment to! It seems to make them happy.”

Why exhaust yourself launching and re-launching initiatives top-down when it is possible to gain employee ownership of change and culture from the bottom-up. This will maintain the humor but also create and sustain meaningful change!

Frank Devine, author of RAPID MASS ENGAGEMENT: Driving Continuous Improvement Through Employee Culture Creation, founder of Accelerated Improvement, Ltd., specializes in creating a High Performance continuous improvement culture from the bottom-up.

For more information please visit https://www.acceleratedimprovement.co.uk/

Communicating Goals to Your Organization

March 22, 2023/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Once you’ve built some great goals, you need to communicate them to the organization. Operating in silos leads to missed opportunities.

Once you’ve built some great goals, you need to communicate them to the organization. People in your department need to understand how their own goals, as well as the goals of their colleagues, tie to the broader organization goals. Operating in silos leads to missed opportunities. Sometimes you’ll find people are working at cross purposes. When communicating goals, provide broader strategic context for why goals were chosen and how they tie to the broader organization success.

I worked with one client that was really focused on changing their business performance. They wanted to improve their gross margins. So they got everybody together and made sure they understood how everybody’s goals tied to this higher-level gross margin goal. The supply chain team was given goals around making their top products more profitable. The marketing team was given a goal of emphasizing the most profitable products in the portfolio. Product teams were given SKU rationalization goals to thin the portfolio and remove less profitable products. The sales team was given the goal of selling the more profitable products.

Everyone in the division knew what everybody else was doing. It prevented arguments, like sales reps demanding low margin products or sales reps yelling at product teams for removing a SKU. All goals were communicated by the business unit president at an all-hands meeting. They all heard the same message at the same time.

For your organization, get your business unit and partner organizations together. Compare goals. Figure out how you’ll communicate it to your entire organization at the same time, so everyone knows and understands the context. Having this clarity at the highest level and making sure that all the goals are aligned is going to reduce conflict in the organization and improve the likelihood that you hit your numbers.

Reality Checking Your Goals

March 15, 2023/1 Comment/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Goals can make sense in isolation, but when you add them all up, you may be asking for unrealistic results from your team. Watch out for conflicting goals.

It’s important to reality check your goals. Goals can make sense in isolation, but when you add them all up, you may be asking for unrealistic results from your team. You’ll need to evaluate how department goals impact one another. If you set a goal for revenue growth, and another goal for cost cutting, you may have created an impossible situation for the team. They can’t spend money to drive revenue because they’re so focused on cost cutting. It’s this kind of reality checking that leads to more reasonable and achievable results.

What I’d suggest is get all your organization’s goals together on a whiteboard. Start with the high-level corporate goals, then lay out your business unit’s or department’s goals. Lay out adjacent business units or functions. Look for dependencies. Look for supporting goals and look for conflicting goals. Go through the same exercise for the teams in your organization.

For supporting goals, make sure there’s no overlap. You don’t want people working on redundant things or getting double credit for going after the same work. For places where there are dependencies of goals, make sure the first goal is properly resourced so the follow-on goal can be met. Also lay out for that second goal the risk in hitting it if the first one isn’t achieved.

In situations where you have conflicting goals, try to get them aligned. You can eliminate one of the goals or carve out the impact of one goal on another. For example, if you have a cost-reduction goal, lower the revenue goal since you can’t market as much since you’ve decided you’re not going to spend. It’s this kind of reality checking, where you take a step back and look at the overall goals and the behaviors that are driven, that’s going to increase the likelihood you hit your most important goals and don’t cause frustration for your team.

This reality check is something that I see people miss all the time. They lay out their goals, their goals are smart, they’re focused, and they understand the behaviors they need to drive, but they never take that extra minute to say, “How do these goals impact one another?” If you do that kind of integrative thinking and look across all your goals, you’re going to spot the trouble spots and understand what you need to change before you launch your team out on its work.

What if the future of our businesses depends upon our ability to be un-business-like?

March 13, 2023/0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Communications, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

Why are memorial services celebrating the life of a loved one who has passed always convened around candlelight, music, and poetry and not around bright lights, PowerPoint presentations and spreadsheets?

Today’s guest post is by Dr. Robert H. Lengel, author of A Place For T: Giving Voice To The Tortoise In Our Hare-Brained World (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

Why are memorial services celebrating the life of a loved one who has passed or that bring communities of diverse people together after a tragedy like a human-caused tragedy or natural disaster always convened around candlelight, music, and poetry and not around bright lights, PowerPoint presentations, and spreadsheets? Memorial services are meetings around the most significant emotional and spiritual events in our lives – not about budgets or cost overruns that seem insignificant in comparison. They serve to help people who might or might not know each other find a sense of presence with change and hold hands to risk moving forward. Change always involves grieving the death of something old and mustering the courage to accept the birth of something new. I think it’s time to shed some new light on how we meet to achieve change.

Nothing would be more un-business-like than convening a business meeting in candlelight with music and poetry and nothing would be less human-like than convening a memorial service in bright lights with agendas, charts, and graphs. We need to recognize that not all meetings are the same. I think there is a practical business lesson here – at times our task requires us to be impractical and un-business-like. Those times are turning points in the life of an organization when change, creativity, and innovation become a survival necessity and people need to support each other as human beings in changing themselves.

The lesson is simple. Organizations exist at two levels of reality. The most obvious surface level represents the brightly lit performance stage on which human beings act out their defined roles. It consists of structures, organization charts, systems, goals, regulations, policies, plans, and job descriptions. These elements are visible and difficult to ignore in our day-to-day work. There is a deeper underlying level of reality, however, that is only visible in candlelight. That fragile flame reflects the spirit of loving, compassionate, forgiving, respectful, and collaborative human beings conscious of their common mortality and their insignificance in the face of the night sky. Any change strategy is more likely to be effective if we could work with these human beings and not the entrenched role players who have a stake in the status quo.

We look more like each other in candlelight than we do in the roles we play under the bright stage lights in the conference room. In this light, people are more open to change and ready to support each other in risking it. Issues like trust, poor communications, broken relationships, lack of employee engagement and buy-in, and leadership development are barriers to change that are amplified in bright light and defused in candlelight. These barriers are surface-level issues that can only be addressed at the deeper level of organizational reality. To prepare people to transcend these barriers and achieve real and sustainable change, it is necessary to reveal them as human beings beneath their business suits. Shouldn’t our meetings about change topics be more like memorial services that invite emotional and spiritual presence than agenda-controlled and facilitated meetings that intentionally deny that presence?

We need to better appreciate the effect of how we illuminate our meeting places. For decades I have been experimenting with ways to bring the spirit of candlelight into meetings where it makes sense to do so. I have just published a book entitled A Place for T: Giving Voice to the Tortoise in Our Hare-Brained World where I share my learnings. My book launch events communicate my message with a simple experience. I begin my presentation in a brightly lit room with shuttered windows. On a table in front of the room, I have lit candles. After a short PowerPoint introduction, I shut down my computer, turn out the room lights, play reflective music, and let my audience sit in silence before I continue. Now those flickering flames become the focus of attention. Then I ask them to share what they experienced with the change in lighting. They naturally get it and awaken to the deeper level of reality without me lecturing to them.

Our human consciousness is mirrored in those candle flames. They awaken the human being within us. People who sometimes feel lost, unappreciated, and alone in the roles they play, sense a call home to what they really care about. Now I can talk to an audience that is prepared to be intimately connected to what I have to say and prepared to engage in meaningful dialogue. Isn’t this what organizational leaders really want – to have employees who are intimately connected to what they have to say and fully engaged? But I fear these leaders are a bit afraid of the darkness and don’t trust what might emerge.

Lack of trust might be the biggest barrier to change. If you want trust, then trust. Creating candle lit meeting places challenges leaders to let go of the need to control and trust the natural capacities of employees to do what is right and good for the organization. As I look back on my experiences, I have developed a much greater appreciation for the potential inherent in the natural emergence of change as a product of learning and for the natural emergence of leaders as needed. In their busy lives, employees might have forgotten how to talk to each other, what conditions they need to learn together, and how to lead in their own way. But if the lighting is not blinding them to the fragile candle flame, they will help each other naturally remember that they already know these things. I have seen this emergence happen too often to ignore it. We just need to create the meeting conditions, a meeting place, that invites the conversations we need to have, not the ones we assume we should have. The most critical condition might be how the ‘place’ is illuminated. I think senior leaders need to muster the courage to occasionally turn down the house lights and risk being un-business-like in candlelight. We all look better in candlelight.

Dr. Robert H. Lengel is Associate Professor emeritus at the University of Texas at San Antonio, president of the consulting firm LeaderWork Inc., and author of the new book A Place For T: Giving Voice To The Tortoise In Our Hare-Brained World. He holds a BS and MS in aerospace engineering, an MBA, and a PhD that blended oceanography, environmental management, leadership and organizational dynamics in business. For more information, please visit www.APlaceForT.com

Setting Commit and Stretch Goals

March 8, 2023/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Project Management, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

A commit goal gives your team a clear target to aim for, while a stretch goal gives your team an incentive to go above and beyond.

A goal setting technique designed to provide predictability and generate excitement and upside potential is setting commit and stretch goals. The commit goal is a promise of what will be delivered. It’s non-negotiable. Missing it has big consequences. The stretch goal is something for the team to aspire to. If they reach it, the rewards can be really large.

Let me walk through an example of what this can look like. Let’s say we have a corporate profit target of $150 million. Each business unit is given a portion of that target. And when you add those up, it’s $155 million because we want to have a hedge in this situation. Those are commit numbers. One business unit has a $40 million commit and a $45 million stretch. Let’s say at the end of the year they come in at $41 million. Well, they get 20% of the extra bonus that’s available because they got one million of the five million possible.

Let’s say another business unit had a goal of $50 million as their commit. They come in at 45 million. It’s a bad year. No bonuses and poor reviews are going to follow in the performance management process. Another business unit has a $27 million commit and a $30 million stretch. They come in at $32 million through some really good luck and a lot of hard work. That team should get 166% of the possible bonus if it’s an uncapped bonus structure.

The final business unit has a commit of $38 million and a stretch of 45 million. They come in at 40 million and they get a 28% of the available bonus. The corporate result of this entire goal-setting structure is coming in at $158 million on a corporate commit of 155 from this business unit.

When you look at setting these commits and these stretches, it’s pretty clear that the team knows what they have to hit with the commit. They understand what the consequences are. Having the stretch gives them that incentive to work even harder and deliver above and beyond.

One thing I invite you to do is to create a commit and a stretch for all major metrics for your organization. Ensure there are consequences for missing the commit. Make sure there are rewards commensurate with hitting the stretch. By laying out these goals and letting people know broadly across the organization what the commit and stretch are, as well as the consequences and rewards, you can drive exactly the behaviors you want to hit your higher level goals.

Four Powerful Mindset Shifts To Help You Conquer Love, Overcome Death, And Succeed In Business

March 6, 2023/0 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Books, Business Toolkit, Career, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Strategy /by Trevor Jones

These four mindset shifts can help you create winning strategies in both your business life and your personal life.

Today’s guest post is by Alex Brueckmann, author of Secrets of Next-Level Entrepreneurs (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

Sitting on the balcony of our apartment in New Westminster, Canada, I hold my baby boy and reflect on the past few months. After everything that happened, I’m amazed that I made it through without breaking down mentally. I recall founding a new business while my girlfriend navigated a challenging pregnancy, and my father fought terminal cancer.

My emotions were erratic, and I felt pulled in different directions, trying to be present for my girlfriend, dad, mom, and clients all at the same time. Things spiraled downward, and my father passed away shortly before the birth of my son. I was overcome by a mix of grief and joy, and at the same time, we relocated from Germany to Canada amidst the start of a global pandemic.

This was in the Spring of 2020, and I realized that a few mindset shifts helped me navigate these challenging months. Adjusting your mindset allows you to focus on thinking smarter, more complex, with more ingenuity, and finding multiple paths to success. Let’s explore four mindset shifts that will help you succeed.

Embrace JOMO, because YOLO

The first shift is from FOMO to JOMO. The fear of missing out is that feeling when everyone around you is raving about a new artist, and you feel like the only one who hasn’t heard of them. But you buy tickets, just in case, because everyone else is doing it, and you don’t want to miss out.

If we allow fear to drive our decisions, we waste our biggest asset, our attention, on things that don’t matter. In business, this can lead to poor job performance, lack of career advancement, or even job loss. On a corporate level, FOMO can lead to “me-too” strategies, with companies copying whatever their competition does first. However, success comes from clarity, direction, and differentiation, not copying others.

To shift from FOMO to JOMO, the joy of missing out, we need to define our priorities in life and business. Writing them down helps us crystallize our thinking, understand what matters to us, and how we can achieve our goals. This becomes our go-to resource for decision-making, as we evaluate opportunities based on whether they help us reach our goals.

Overcoming Perfectionism with Speed and Agility

The second mindset shift is moving away from perfectionism and towards speed and agility. As a strategy facilitator, my role is to assist businesses in achieving their future goals. When clients ask me how long it takes to create the perfect business strategy, I tell them the truth: it’s impossible to achieve perfection. We can align a business around an 80 percent strategy and leave the remaining 20 percent for uncertainty. This gives us enough direction to get started and make progress.

In business and personal situations, we must be able to adapt quickly when unexpected events occur. When COVID-19 first hit, we had to decide: wait it out, or pull our relocation to Canada forward, and move within days. Our perfectly planned relocation had to make space for a new reality: we acted swiftly and learned as we navigated the uncertainty of moving to a new continent under lockdown conditions. Prioritizing speed and agility over perfectionism will help you move forward, learn from mistakes, and succeed over time.

From Scarcity to Abundance Thinking

The third mindset shift is from scarcity to abundance. In business, an abundance mindset is crucial for creating a winning strategy. It’s about exploring possibilities, curiosity, and daring to dream. It’s about creating hope. Allowing ourselves to be in an abundance mindset will bring about new perspectives, thoughts, and discussions that were previously unclear to us because we listen deeply and build on each other’s creativity.

Abundance also helped me deal with the emotional rollercoaster in 2020. While I traditionally dealt with my emotions by myself, I wanted to seek out additional resources this time. It might sound obvious, but my next move was a sign that I was starting to embrace an abundance mindset. I reached out to a psychologist. As an additional resource in my life, she helped me sort the emotions and embrace both joy of being a dad, while still mourning the loss of my own father.

From Fixed to Growth Mindset

The last shift is from a fixed to a growth mindset. Instead of thinking in limited terms and absolutes, a growth mindset allows us to see mistakes as learning opportunities. Instead of thinking “I failed” or “I’ll never make it,” we can find new ways of doing things and try something different without giving up. When I was younger, I had a fixed mindset, and I struggled with understanding many things. However, I realized I could do something about it and became an avid reader and embraced learning to overcome my fixed mindset.

Instead of making statements and trying to fit things into what we already know, we should ask questions like “What am I missing?” or “How could I use this negative experience and turn it into something positive?” In a growth mindset, we understand that nothing is too hard. By adding perspective and time, we can figure things out, even if we don’t know how at first.

Making Mindset Shifts Happen

How can we implement these mindset shifts in our lives and where would they be most useful? Adam Grant, a leading organizational psychologist, suggests two concepts: challenge networks and confident humility.

A challenge network is a group of people around us who can disagree with us in a constructive way, providing honest feedback without being aggressive. They help us question our assumptions, identify blind spots, and counterbalance potential weaknesses in our thinking. By building a reliable challenge network, we can tackle speed and agility in execution and learning.

Confident humility is having faith in our capabilities while appreciating that we may not have the right solution or may not be addressing the right problem. It involves having enough doubt to re-examine our old knowledge and enough confidence to pursue new insights.

Implementing these mindset shifts can have a significant impact on our lives. Embracing JOMO helped me avoid distractions in business and prioritize what mattered, resulting in more quality time with my family. Adopting an abundance mindset allowed me to see options that would have otherwise been invisible when starting a new business. A growth mindset helped me rise to the challenge of being a first-time dad in my mid-40s. Finally, speed and agility helped us avoid overthinking and instead move to Canada, even under the most challenging circumstances.

To implement these mindset shifts, we need to have faith in our capabilities while being open to new insights. By doing so, we can transform hopes and dreams into reality and create winning strategies in both business and our personal lives.

Alex Brueckmann is the founder and CEO of Brueckmann Executive Consulting, and the author of “Secrets of Next-Level Entrepreneurs” and “The Strategy Legacy” (Fall 2023). He is a keynote speaker at the intersection of business strategy, leadership, and empowerment. Brueckmann is an alumnus of EBS European Business School (Germany), and holds certificates in change management, leadership, finance, organizational development, and strategy from INSEAD (France), and Harvard Business School (USA).

For more information please visit www.AlexBrueckmann.com

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