Strategy – Page 39 – thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World

Why there’s No Right Way to do Things Like Strategy

November 10, 2014/5 Comments/in Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Social Media, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is by Natasha Golinsky, founder of Next Level Nonprofits.

I saw an article on Harvard Business Review this week that I thought was dead on –Why Smart People Struggle with Strategy. As I read the quote “The problem with smart people is that they are used to seeking and finding the right answer; unfortunately, in strategy there is no single right answer to find” my entire life flashed before my eyes. I saw myself in high school on an event planning committee totally stressing out over the details of something. I saw myself as a young professional totally micro-managing the development of a course I was writing. I saw myself yesterday almost melting down as my kids were being graded for their final home-school report cards. My entire life has been a chronic search for the “right way” to get a job done.

If you’ve been at a startup for any length of time you’ll know that there is no recipe for success. During my first ten years in business I would regularly go out of my way to meet other leaders who were experiencing a lot of success in my field and ask them “what did you do to achieve your results” and they would give me an answer that was totally opposite of what the person I had sat down with last week had said. The inevitable result of each weekly coffee date was total confusion and discouragement. I would find myself trying to create a master strategy by fusing together everyone’s best tips hoping I would strike gold. The mix and match approached never really worked out financially but did a great job of driving my confidence as a business leader way down. I was following the best advice I knew and was getting nowhere.

Have you ever felt like that? You read a great blog post about what it takes to succeed only to read a totally contradictory post the next day but both are working for those individuals? “Who’s right” is probably what you ask yourself. My best response: instead of looking at what they’re doing differently, look at what they’re doing that’s the same. One of your competitor organizations may be having a lot of success gaining visibility through Facebook while another doesn’t use Facebook at all but uses Twitter. Who’s right? Both. Both invest in communicating with their stakeholders. No one method is the right way. What works for one may or may not work for the other; you’ve got to remove all expectations, try it out and see what happens for yourself. Who knows? It may work great or it might not work at all. Unfortunately there is no other way to really know for sure.

Why You Should Build a Culture of Purpose

October 27, 2014/3 Comments/in Books, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is by Christoph Lueneburger, author of A Culture of Purpose (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

In the summer of 2002, John Replogle – currently CEO of Seventh Generation Inc., a leading maker of environmentally friendly personal and household products – was US President of a beer company. John recalls that one morning, as he was backing the family car out the driveway… “I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw these two young girls looking back at me.” His daughters. “I had an epiphany. I had been working with my coach that morning on a mission statement, and frankly it was all about me. I was thirty-five years old. I was president of $900 million business. I lived in a wonderful house in Connecticut with my wife and two kids. I mean it was ideal. And I realized I was on the wrong course.” Then and there, John started focusing more of his energies on improving the wider world.

Fast forward a year. John was now general manager for Unilever’s North American skin care division, encouraging his new team to break out of business as usual, innovate, and be nimble. “We were talking about how we needed to be more maverick, to take more chances,” John says. He soon experienced a powerful connection between this drive to be bold and his earlier epiphany in the family car. As part of exploring new directions for its iconic Dove® brand, Unilever team members were asked to videotape their own daughters talking about beauty. “They could all see beauty in each other, but they had real difficulty seeing it in themselves,” John notes. The deeper meaning was unmistakable. Here was an opportunity to promote real sustainable change — not just in a process or a product, but in the daily lives of human beings.

Fueled by this realization, Unilever launched a major global study, The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report,which found that only 4 percent of women consider themselves beautiful. These findings in turn shaped the now-famous “Dove Campaign for Real Beauty” which showcased photographs of regular women (in place of professional models), taken by Annie Leibovitz. Unilever also launched the Dove Self-Esteem Fund in collaboration with the Girl Scouts, and committed to ongoing efforts to actively foster confidence among girls and women.

How Embracing Risk is the Key to Business Success

September 15, 2014/0 Comments/in Books, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is by By Tom Panaggio, author of The Risk Advantage: Embracing the Entrepreneur’s Unexpected Edge (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

The time has come for the reprogramming of American business leadership. No longer can companies simply “play not to lose” by anchoring to the archaic habit of detailed five year planning, staunchly imposing boundaries by way of organizational charts or the avoidance of any risk lest we kill stockholder value. An entrepreneurial tsunami must wash this academic corporatism out to sea and replace it with a new paradigm, an entrepreneurial mindset. My advice, do not get out of its way. Let this massive wave of uncorrupted idealism and purposeful enthusiasm wash our corporate minds clean of the sludge of bureaucracy, fear of risk, and the clinging to irrational formalities.

Market supremacy will be achieved by those who recognize that risk holds the key to long term success and is not to be avoided, minimized, or mitigated but instead embraced.

How I envy the newborn entrepreneur. In the face of incredible odds and with little chance of survival they blindly press on with a singular focus that sees nothing but opportunity. How refreshingly naïve and idealistic, yet profoundly visionary, in a business culture in desperate need of change, the student should be educating the teacher. The lesson to be learned is today’s business leaders need a new mindset, an entrepreneurial mindset where they have the courage to step outside their comfort zones and embrace risk each and every day.

Success comes from identifying a worthy risk and having the courage to embrace it.

Think Like a Senior Executive and Ask More Questions

September 10, 2014/3 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

Do you know the difference between a “worker bee” and a senior executive? Have you ever wondered what it takes to move up in the world to those loftier roles? It’s pretty simple. You need to move from a world where you provide all the answers to a world where you ask all the questions.

I know there’s a cheeky clueless executive joke in there somewhere but I’m actually not joking around (which I know comes as a shock to you longtime readers).

As we enter organizations and rise through the ranks, we’re expected (and trained) to have the answers. We, after all, are the front line. We do the work. When someone more senior asks us for information, our job description is to provide it. And provide it we do. We become experts in our field. We know all the answers. We become that “go to” person Scott Eblin describes in this post.

And every day we kick butt. We know everything that’s asked of us. Heck, we get to a point where we’ve created everything around us. But one day we wake up wondering why we’re not getting promoted. We can’t figure out why we, the expert of all experts, isn’t rising to the executive ranks. After all, those guys are clueless. All they ever do is ask questions that we have to provide the answers to.

And that my friends is the key to the paradox of advancing to senior management. Questions.

Learning to Achieve Success through Failure

September 8, 2014/0 Comments/in Books, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is by Lori Ann LaRocco, author of Opportunity Knocking: Lessons from Business Leaders, (CLICK HERE to get your copy) and producer on CNBC’s Squawk Box.

Every leader, no matter what industry they operate in, has had a moment when they either rise to the occasion or fail. Wall Street is littered with the carcasses of corporate casualties, but what sets the spectacular success stories apart from the failures is the ability of leaders from both successful and failed companies to learn from their mistakes. In order to not repeat mistakes, you need to reflect on, analyze, and accept what went wrong regarding execution. Failure can be an important piece on the journey to success. The lessons you learn after each setback will help fortify your knowledge and approach future problems confidently by learning what you should — and shouldn’t — do.

Reflection

Steve Case, the co-founder of AOL, would say that he is an example of such a journey. During his long career, Case has tasted both the sweetness of success and the bitterness of failure. While many people are familiar with the spectacular failure of the AOL-Time Warner merger, Case faced challenges even before that ill-fated corporate marriage. Years before AOL, Case left his safe and dependable job with a Fortune 500 company for Control Video, an up-and-coming technical disruptor.

But his expectations of greatness quickly turned into a nightmare. At his first board meeting with Control Video, he found out the company was collapsing. Instead of declaring failure, Case and some of his colleagues chose to view the closing of Control Video as a learning opportunity.

7 Steps to Building a High-Performing Team

September 3, 2014/0 Comments/in Entrepreneur, Leadership, Strategy, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

We all want to lead high-performing teams but where should one begin? Not every team has the ability to be high-performing but I guarantee it won’t be high-performing if you don’t focus on getting it there.

In my experience, there are 7 steps to building a high-performing team. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been a member of and to have led high-performing teams over my career and they all share the same seven characteristics.

If you’d prefer to watch a full video course on how to build your own high-performing team, you can do so by CLICKING HERE and checking out the course over on lynda.com. There’s over 2 hours of explanations and stories on how to build your own high-performing team. In the meantime, here’s an overview of the seven steps you need to consider when building that team. Under each step are some thoughts on the things you have to do or be able to do to achieve the goal of that step.

1. Setting Direction for a High-Performing Team

– Know the difference between a vision and a mission. Understand techniques for crafting them and sharing them.
– Translate a vision and mission into a shared purpose for the team and drive behavior through that shared purpose.
– Link the vision and mission to priorities and translate priorities into projects/initiatives. Use initiatives to drive resource planning and focus because focus leads to success.

10 Things that Took Me 10 Years to Learn

August 27, 2014/5 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Career, Communications, Entrepreneur, Leadership, Sales, Social Media, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

Happy Birthday to me! No, it’s not my birthday (although you can send me gifts if you like). It’s thoughtLEADERS‘ birthday and the firm just turned 10. 10 years old. Mind-boggling.

In those 10 years I’ve had ups and downs. I’ve learned a great deal as an entrepreneur, an executive, a leader, and a person. Good times, bad times, y’know I’ve had my share… (yes… Zeppelin). I’d like to share some of those things I’ve learned with all of you. My hope in sharing these things is that you’ll avoid mistakes I’ve made, be more successful than I’ve been, and enjoy your life more.

Before I launch into that top 10 list, I’d like to thank everyone around me who has helped me succeed with this business. My wonderful clients who make it all possible. The awesome participants in my classes (except that one guy that one time… you know who you are). The fantastic colleagues who do such amazing work. My friends and professional contacts who recommend me and my work. My family members who have supported me throughout this crazy ride. Without all of you, thoughtLEADERS is just a cool website. Thank you for everything from the bottom of my heart.

Shutting up now. Time to drop the knowledge. Within each of these tips is a link to another post I’ve written on that topic so if you want to learn more about that particular topic, click on through to the other side (Jim Morrison… kinda).

10. Jump in with both feet. If you’re considering starting your own business (or you’re taking on a major new project or role), you have to go all-in if you want it to succeed. You can’t be half-pregnant. When I first started the business, I ran it part time while I held a full-time job. I reasoned I would go full-time with thoughtLEADERS when I had a big, stable, predictable client base. Hey idiot – you won’t have a big, stable, predictable client base until you do it full time. I have another venture I ran part time while running thoughtLEADERS. It’s not doing so well. You’d think I would learn… Commit. Dive in. You can be an entrepreneur with zero risk.

The Strategic Value of Saying No

August 6, 2014/3 Comments/in Entrepreneur, Leadership, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

Repeat after me: “No.”

Try it again. This time with conviction: “NO.”

Strategy is inherently about saying “no.” It’s about the choices we make and the choices we don’t. I’ve seen plenty of strategies completely derailed due to an inability to say “no” to that incremental initiative that’s kind of “on strategy” but not really.

Good strategists are great at leading the thinking (and I believe leading the thinking is so critical to leadership that it has its own entire section in my book One Piece of Paper – click here to get your copy). As a leader, your job is to lead the thought processes and strategic efforts of your team. That requires you to invest time in thinking about your strategy.

The more effective you are at saying “no” to non-core work and singularly focusing your team on the end vision you’ve laid out, the higher the likelihood of you achieving your strategic goals. Not saying “no,” on the other hand, leads to dilution of your efforts and strategy by incrementalism (which is rarely effective).

Let’s walk this logical strategic dog, shall we? Take the following points as true:

– You know where you want to end up and what your overarching strategy is
– You have a finite amount of resources at your disposal.
– You’ve defined the 3-5 most critical initiatives to help you achieve your goal.
– There are a substantial number of “cool” opportunities you could pursue in addition to those 3-5 you’ve already identified.

The last point is where things get hairy.

Tuning Up Your Strategy so the Wheels Don’t Fall Off

July 21, 2014/0 Comments/in Communications, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is by Rich Horwath, author of Elevate: The Three Disciplines of Advanced Strategic Thinking (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

We’ve all heard the phrase, “The wheels came off,” to describe a situation where things went bad. Meetings, projects and even relationships all have the potential for “the wheels to come off.” Ironically, cars are the vehicles we most often use with wheels and they very rarely come off. This is in part due to the alignment of their tires using the camber angle. Wheels with a positive camber angle have the top of the wheel farther out than the bottom. Wheels with a negative camber angle have the bottom of the wheel farther out than the top. Wheels with a camber angle of zero are vertically straight. And if the wheels aren’t aligned with one another with the proper camber angles, they may literally fall off.

Consider the alignment of strategy in your business, across functional areas and from a hierarchical perspective. Does your strategy align vertically and horizontally like a Formula One car or a jalopy with the wheels about to fall off? There are three elements to consider when optimizing the alignment of strategy for your business:

1. Goals. Not having clearly defined goals across the business is a key obstacle in creating sound strategy alignment. Not having clearly defined goals in business is like two World Cup soccer teams being sent onto the pitch without being told which goals they are shooting at and defending until after the match was over. A universal understanding of the goals is an essential but often overlooked aspect of business planning. Is the goal to grow profits, increase market share, drive gross revenue or harvest the business? The means of achieving these goals can be dramatically different. The first step in aligning strategy is to find common ground on goals. If no common ground exists on what you are both trying to achieve (goal), then how you’re going to get there (strategy) will never be aligned.

How clear is your organization’s mission and vision statement?

July 17, 2014/3 Comments/in Poll, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

Our reader poll today asks: How clear is your organization’s mission and vision statement?

– It’s crystal clear, simple and compelling: 43%
– It’s generally clear but could be better worded: 25%
– It’s full of meaningless buzzwords or we simply don’t have one: 21%
– It’s not clear and it’s hard to rally behind: 12%

Where are we going? About a third of you aren’t clear on where you’re going or why it’s a good place to go. Get your team in a room and discuss why your organization exists. Cut the buzzwords and speak in simple, compelling terms. Tell folks what you do, why you do it, who you do it for, and why you’re better at it than your competitors. If you can lay all that out in a couple of sentences it will be much easier to galvanize and excite your organization to achieve your vision.

Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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Business Execution Lessons from the Kitchen

July 14, 2014/1 Comment/in Books, Guest Blogger, Leadership, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is by Patrick Stroh, author of Business Strategy; Plan, Execute, Win! (CLICK HERE to get your copy).

After 20 plus years of life in corporate America, it was time for a bit of a sabbatical. Or maybe better said, it was time to knock some stuff off my bucket list. You know, that list of things that we’ve always said we’ll do someday, but “someday” gets further and further away and our life gets busier and busier and we just don’t seem to have the time, even though we know they are important endeavors. Well, enough – someday is today! I made a commitment to get a couple things knocked off my bucket list – and that is exactly what I’ve done and I think you’ll find a couple of these stories interesting and maybe applicable to you.

First, I’ve always wanted to write a book on business strategy since that is what I love to do most – conduct due diligence, take an executive leadership team through a thoughtful and worthwhile process, create a strategy including innovation, product/service evolutions, generate financial scenarios and then when we are ready, to execute the plan! The key being, to actually EXECUTE the plan and make adjustments as needed. So I finally sat down and wrote the book, but in a very approachable way which entertains while it educates. Think about learning key business strategy tips from the movies, the bible, from growing up on a farm and other eclectic venues. It’s worth a read – trust me.

A second item on my bucket list was to get some real, technical training as a chef. I had cooked my way through college years ago and have become a self-proclaimed foodie. I would take clients out to eat at high end establishments and many times think, “I could make that.” Or, “I could make that better.” Well, now I’ve gotten my chance. When I’m not consulting or writing, I’m taking classes at Le Cordon Bleu in Minneapolis/St. Paul on classical French techniques and dishes. What a blast! And while it’s not always as easy as some chefs make it look, I love it! It’s instantly rewarding to see someone swoon over your creation and enjoy how you have transformed some basic ingredients. So, what does being a chef have to do with business strategy and what should you learn from this? Good question, let me make a simple, but oh so important correlation.

The Importance of Diversifying Your Business

July 2, 2014/0 Comments/in Entrepreneur, Sales, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

I had a great conversation with a friend of mine. He was bemoaning the fact that his company was almost completely dependent upon one huge customer. He saw the inherent risks in that relationship but confessed his organization had a bad habit they couldn’t kick. They had succumbed to the addiction of predictability and comfort.

Is your business overly-reliant on one key customer? Is your organization tied closely to one key client or partner or supplier? If that customer went away, would your world come to a crashing screeching halt? The rule of thumb I’ve always heard is no customer should be more than 25% of your business (and the same holds true for your suppliers or partners).

We always hear about diversification but usually it’s in the context of our stock portfolios. If your 401k became a 200.5k in the past few years, you know what I’m talking about. It’s easy to do the diversification thing in a portfolio – sell a few stocks, buy a few stocks and presto! you’re done. Diversifying your customer base is much harder to do.

If you’ve never thought much about this topic (or even if you have) you need to understand the true risks involved in not diversifying, understand why it’s hard to diversify, and use some practical methods to achieve the diversification goal.