It’s been said, by someone wiser than me, that success breeds complacency and complacency breeds failure.  I’ll bet if you think hard enough, you can come up with a short list of companies – even societies throughout history – that bear this out.

One of the early steps in the planning process is about coming up with assumptions about the future.  Not assumptions about your organization’s future – or even it’s plans to adapt – but, about the external environment that impacts your business.

Categories of assumptions would include:

• Customers
• Vendors
• Competitors
• Technology
• Industry
• Economy
• Marketplace

During our sessions, we would divide the participants into groups of five people each and give each group a category or maybe two related categories, like customers and vendors.  We’d also provide each group with a flipchart and ask them not only brainstorm and list their assumptions for each category, but you rate both their probability and their impact as either high, medium, or low.

After the categories are brainstormed, you then move on to exercises about your business situation and identifying the ‘Big Hitters’ that really matter.

This is an excellent exercise we use in our “Developing A High Performance Strategy: Competing To Win” sessions and programs.  I think you’ll find it informative, as well.

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True story!

I had always been a very `hands-on’ manager during my days in the corporate world, and during the years I owned an advertising agency, as well.  So, it was no surprise to anyone I took the same approach when I went into local community papers.  It wasn’t long before the 52 weekly deadlines each year were beginning to get to me.

It was during my second year I began reading Robert Townshend’s Up The Organization, and that’s what set me free.  Robert Townshend was the person who took Avis from an unknown rent-a-car company into one with a very strong brand capitalizing on the slogan, `We’re number two, so we try harder.’

One of the chapters was about how to not only untie yourself; but also to learn just how good your organization really is!  So, when my parents called from Florida that they were going to celebrate their 40^th anniversary with a big event and wanted me to come, I used the occasion and followed his advice, virtually to the letter, and here’s how it happened:

I waited until Friday evening before I told my second-in-command, a guy named Nick (my wife and I were leaving the next day for two weeks and I hadn’t given him any advance warning, as Mr. Townshend said was essential).

At five p.m. Friday, as Nick was saying ‘Have a nice weekend’, I asked him to sit down.

I said, “Nick, my wife are leaving tomorrow morning for two weeks.  I want you to run the papers while I’m gone.  Whatever comes up, just handle it.  Don’t call me for any reason.  No matter what it is, just do what you think is right.  I don’t want ANY calls!  When I get back, I want a clean desk and no left over issues.   I’ve left a few signed checks in this drawer in case you need to make any purchases during that time.  Again, don’t call me for anything… just do it.  Whatever you do has my automatic approval.”

He said `Okay’.

We had a great two weeks with my parents in Florida; but, I have to admit, I sometimes wondered if the paper would come out with some ads upside-down or something equally as bad.

Guess what?  I guess nothing happened.  When I got back to California and walked into my office on Monday morning, my desk was clean.  Everyone came in as usual and it appeared nothing had missed a beat.

My wife joked, “There isn’t any difference, except for the improvement.”

Nick came in, said `Hi’ and said he only needed one check to renew a Chamber membership.  He never told me what happened while I was gone and I didn’t ask.

It was a great lesson.  I now knew I had a real organization.  What was better, they could operate without me!

And, that’s the best kind of organization to have.

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Change often makes people feel like victims or owners – or winners or losers.  They become either rigid or resilient.

We’ve all seen resistance to change and doesn’t have to be negative; sometimes people resist in response to some other force.  Many times it’s something the leaders of the change do that evokes a reaction we call resistance.  Often, however, the people actually doing the resistance don’t see it that way; they see it as a question of surviving.

There are usually three forms of resistance to organizational change:

• Resistance based on knowledge and information
• Resistance from physiological and emotional responses to change
• Resistance based on something bigger than the proposed change.

Resistance based on knowledge and information may come from

• Lack of information
• Disagreement with the idea itself
• Lack of clarity about the outcomes of the proposed change

Quite often, resistance to physiological and emotional responses to the change is uncontrollable.

Resistance based on something bigger than the proposed change may come from resistance to whoever is proposing the change or something else on a deeper level.  Often, people have learned to distrust what they hear from their leaders, so they’re automatically suspicious of the message they receive – a big reason why training, not only on change management, but trust in the workplace is an important component in an organizational development process.

Identifying change issues is important for leaders; but they must be able to manage change at the process level as well as at the behavioral level and help others develop resilience.

Helping your leaders become effective change leaders means teaching them the process for moving ownership of the change down the line organization.

There are literally hundreds of excellent change management training programs available today – It’s not hard to buy ‘change in a box’, but simple ‘how-to’ information is only the first step.  For example, our program, Managing Change, can set the stage in one long day or, better, two half-day sessions; but it’s the top-down commitment translated through the line organization that truly makes it work.

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Everyone’s familiar with SWOT as a planning tool, where you analyze your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in order to determine strategy.  It’s pretty `101’ stuff, but still valid.  The weakness of SWOT is in it’s use;  when it’s considered the `core’ of strategy development.

A recent Harvard Business Review article cited a Bain & Company’s  study of 57 organizations between 2000 and 2006 and found that fewer than one-third of the companies going through a change management process experienced any meaningful improvement and most had no effect whatsoever – and some even destroyed value!  One example cited Chrysler, who had reorganized its operations three times in three years preceding its bankruptcy and eventual merger with Fiat.  During each of the three changes, executives proclaimed the company was on a new path to profitability.  Guess what.

The disconnect between structure and performance is based on a misunderstanding of the link between the two and a fundamental rethinking about the concept of reorganization.

It’s been noted by people smarter than I that a company’s value is equal to the sum of its decisions; and the link between performance and decisions shouldn’t be underestimated.   Therefore,  it would seem decisions, rather than structure, should be the primary focus.

The risk in SWOT, of course, is that you could end-up with an organization misaligned with your strategy simply because you ignored your decision process.   The point:  SWOT can be a meaningful exercise in determining strategy; but, not necessarily as preparation for organizational change.

Before embarking on a change initiative, however, it may be beneficial to look at positions in terms of another grid:

                                           Dreamers                                   Winners

                                           Losers                                        Defenders

Let’s take a look at these positions, starting with the least favorable:

• Losers:  These are the companies whose strategy for preserving value is based on cost and risk reduction.  The result is almost always the same:  They lose competitive position.
• Defenders: These are comfortable with the ‘go slow’ approach.   This approach can work if the gap between them and their competitors isn’t growing too rapidly or too large.  Often, this can backfire, however.
• Dreamers: These companies create value through product or business transformation; but, almost always without a linked high performance strategy.  The result is often unrealized goals and unkept promises.
• Winners: These companies have combined the ability to create value through a product or business transformation with something the ‘Dreamers’ didn’t have:  The capacity for strategic execution of a true high-performance strategy.
  
  

The process of developing a high performance strategy is something that’s learned, preferably through some `hands-on’ learning experiences directly tied to your organization’s needs.  But, rest assured, there is a process and a roadmap to go with it.

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We’re living in a time when everything customers want to know is readily available online.  They don’t have time for salespeople who walk in to ‘introduce themselves’ or ask ‘can I have a minute?’   For many customers – particularly high-level buyers – it’s a ‘who needs you?’ world for owners when it comes to salespeople.

Be careful.  They just might be.  But, don’t blame it on the internet, cable television, the `balloon boy’ or the Kardashians.   You may want to grab a mirror.

Let’s review.

• Your customers have access to all the information they’ll ever want on the internet, including your pricing.  So, you post all your goodies on there to keep up, lest you be left out.
  
  
• Everyone in the industry talks about enhancing online presence to increase revenue when customers, particularly at the decision making level, are seeking strategic advisors. 
  
  
• We preach long-term commitments while we continue to sell quick-buck solutions, usually after asking about three or four open-ended questions we learned in sales training – in interpersonal skill we hope to enhance through webinars and chat boxes.
  
  
• We still believe our collateral materials are critical, while ALL of us know some of our biggest, best, and longest-lasting client relationships were developed with little more than a blank piece of paper or a napkin.   And, you don’t need no stinking business cards.

In short, we’ve mastered short-term thinking and placebo solutions beyond Jack Kevorkian’s wildest dreams!

I began talking about the necessity of moving away from tactical selling to strategic partner selling – adding value beyond the product – as far back as 1984; but, I certainly wasn’t the first, or brightest, to see this move as an imperative.

While many have been preaching the ‘consultative’ model for decades, the truth is many have fallen short due to a poor understanding of strategy itself – still promoting product value disguised as strategic value.

It’s one of the reasons our training sessions continually emphasize two main points (it takes a lot of emphasis to undue decades of brainwashing):

1. Never `Present’ anything.  It’s the application of knowledge clients want to see, particularly if your application can be couched within their long-term ‘big picture’ strategy.
   
   
2. Don’t even think about ‘closing’ sales.   If you’re doing it right, you’re OPENING relationships.  Sales are short-term.  Relationships are long term.   And, they’re built on truly, really, honestly, actually, inevitably, and increasingly adding value.

Want your reps to be relevant?

1. Don’t focus on how to influence clients.  Focus on how they can impact the clients’ business.
   
   
2. Quit focusing on your competition.  If I see one more ‘how to sell against….’ seminar, I’ll need an airbag.  It’s time to move into the real world:  Focus instead on how you can impact your client’s business.  That’s where success really lives.
   
   
3. Quit worrying about making sales.  Focus on making a difference.  You will astound your clients and baffle your competition.  They won’t know how to act.
   
   

“But, Jim, our salespeople can’t learn all that stuff!”

Who do you think you’re talking to?  Sorry.  I don’t believe you.  But, you’ll have to teach them something besides the endless parade of how to sell another special section series they’ve become accustomed to enduring.   They need challenges and – believe it or not – they want to sell at a higher level; but, you have to take them there.

Remember, there’s a big difference between you doing something and your simply getting it done.  You don’t have to know everything in order for your people to learn.  You simply have to know how to get them taught.  There’s a difference.

Once you understand these key points and understand you’re in the results business – not in the delivery business, you can move your people to a higher level.  That’s your ticket to success.

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Successful managers do things unsuccessful managers don't - or are afraid - to do.  We've all seen it far too many times.

This week my E-Zines – I publish two currently – are both about the difference between ‘doing things’ and ‘getting things done’.   In it I allude briefly to the differences between managers who succeed and those who somehow remain forever stuck in their careers.

The one major difference I’ve seen is that those who get ‘stuck’ seem to thing THEY are the ones who’s job it is to DO things.  Those who I’ve seen succeed have held a different philosophy:  They see themselves not as the doers; but as the catalyst charged with ‘getting things done!’

This doesn’t apply only to managers.  Some major league corporate CEOs have fallen prey to the same fixation, much to their detriment.  You can even look back at the U.S. Presidents over the past half century – the failures always seemed to be the ones who felt they had to DO everything, never realizing their need to micromanage was their worst enemy; and the ‘successes’ always seemed to be those who managed the ‘big picture’ – something business schools call ‘the view from the balcony’.

A recent Harvard Business Review article discussed this in terms of ‘diminishers’ vs ‘multipliers’.  You can guess which is which, but suffice to say ‘multipliers’ get things done through people, both internal and external.

My ezine articles mentioned a CEO I met many years ago, as well as a specific client who’s attitude was quite different.  You can make your own comparison between these two separate unrelated instances:

• The CEO of a failing newspaper:  (Coming up to me after a convention session) “Jim, I’d love to have you come in and train my people; but, I think I’d have some political problems if I did that.”
  
  
• My Ad Director client: (When I asked him about his CEO’s attitude about his bringing me in)  “Jim, my job isn’t to spend my time doing things.  “It’s my job to see they get done.  I see you as a resource.”   He was saying I was a ‘tool’ in his tool chest.  He was right.  He wanted me to train his people and be a resource for the ongoing coaching the line organization must do to make the training effective.
  
  

It isn’t hard to see who the ‘multiplier’ is.  In the meantime, the CEO was stuck – afraid of his middle managers’ attitude – or just as bad – the managers may have been afraid to look as though they weren’t doing their jobs.

This is my second blog post on this subject; but, it’s so central to effective management, I felt it was worth the effort.

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Sales fundamentals never really change.   It also appears to be true in some corporate cultures.  I was just looking at an article I wrote that appeared in the American Marketing Association’s Marketing News back in 1986(!)... and was a little surprised to see much of what I wrote way back then still has meaning  today.  In fact, if I hadn’t told you this, you might even think this is a brand-new blog post.

Here are a few excerpts:

The `soft sell’ – making it easy for buyers to buy the way they want to buy – carries a hidden danger:  We may be creating a generation of salespeople who are little more than clerks…  The newspaper industry isn’t much different.  What passes for sales training is often only product orientation.  When sales reps call on prospects, 60-seconds doesn’t pass before the talk turns to demographics, circulation rates, or some other set of numbers….

To avoid manipulation, soft-sell reps turn into questioning clerks who are great at problem solving but lousy at directing the sale to a conclusion…  A strategic approach to guiding the process is more important than ever.

The next generation of sales professionals will combine the best elements of the first stages: solving problems with a market-driven approach and a strong,  strategic sales plan.  Where a company is on the evolutionary scale will determine its place in the market and its ability to attract top talent in the years to come; but it takes guts and a corporate culture that isn’t fearful of making mistakes.

Top-down commitment gets bottom-up support…. Skill development is handled by the line organization, not the people in HR.  Management needs to get out of the office – even try the uncomfortable!

Want to learn how to ask questions.  Quit carrying collateral.  Leave it in the car.  One sales manager who took my advice and called on a national account carrying only a yellow pad told me, “I felt naked; but it worked!  It’s the first time in six years I found out what he really needed and now he’s a client!”

Interesting, huh?

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High performance isn’t something that just happens because everyone agrees to ‘get on the same page’.  The fact is your organization must be set-up for success – and that requires organizational alignment.

An organization that’s well aligned literally hums like a well-oiled machine.  Employee roles are clear, focused, and processes flow almost naturally.

Sounds good, huh?   Reality is different.  Few organizations are ever really aligned because changes are occurring literally all the time!  For poorly-aligned organizations, this creates problems on many levels:  Processes can become ineffective or roles may have changed when processes have not.

The conflict between technology, processes, and roles can make team members feel disorganized, making work more difficult.   Oops!  Back to ambiguity, confusion, and overlapping roles.

So, how can an organization improve alignment and move toward a high performance culture?  Like many things in life, it begins with questions about:

• The gap:  How far from the ideal organization model are we?
• Reality:  Differentiate the possible from the practical
• How to begin:  What’s the first step to attaining our goal?
• What shouldn’t change:  Some things should stay the same.  Why?

Every journey begins with a first step.   Before an organization can move – as an organization – toward a high-performance culture, the team members must learn the principles of high performance, including:

• The difference between traditional vs. high performance paradigms
• The characteristics of high performance
• Learning how to achieve a win-win culture
• A high-performance development model, including a model for transition planning and its tools.

You’ll then need to conduct an assessment your organization’s current high performance potential.  After all, knowing the principles won’t be enough unless you know – like the sign in the mall when you’re trying to find the shoe store – you know where you are now.

That process will allow you to develop a high performance strategy and high performance teams.

Easy?   No.  Not much is.

When does it end?  Probably never.  Or, maybe when things quit changing, which is saying the same thing.   Maybe that’s why so many successful organizations in America have understood and come to grips with the one simple fact of life:   People determine the organization’s success or failure.  They must succeed for the organization to succeed.  That means becoming a ‘learning’ organization – one that sends a strong message to it’s people: 

They ARE the future.

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Is it possible that avoiding conflict isn’t a good idea?  Should we be actually fostering conflict in our organizations?  It turns out it might be true!

Our May 3^rd blog post, Is Your Organization In Chaos? offered a 19-point checklist executives can use to check the health of their organizations; but orchestrated chaos can be good!

Actually, according to an article that appeared a few months back in the Harvard Business Review, a peaceful, harmonious workplace can be the worst thing possible for business!  In fact, the biggest predictor of poor company performance is complacency!  Conflict can actually shake things up and boost your staff’s energy and creativity!

The key, according to the article, is to make sure the conflict isn’t petty – it should be over something important, even noble, and it’s fair.  The more important it is, the more those involved will feel they’re working on something important.

This makes sense.  Once people see resistance as a form of constructive feedback, dismissing it deprives the organization of valuable information – a resource that can point the way to valuable solutions.

Take a look at the focus of your organization.  Are you talking about the customer but focusing energy and resources on your product?

Consider the newspaper publishing industry  - one that has for years undergoing a series of changes, usually focusing on product offerings in an effort to compete in an increasingly challenging communications revolution.   Their media kits contain audience and reach data and are posted online along with their rate cards – a process relegating reps to order-taker status and a culture – in too many cases – that more resembles a public utility than an entrepreneurial organization.    Reps come in every morning, check emails, then get on social networks and before you know it, it’s noon and time for lunch.

It would be interesting to see just how many could sell advertising without their media kits as a crutch.  A culture change to a more entrepreneurial mindset would be chaotic, indeed; it would involve re-education and training about how to add value beyond the media kit – merchants don’t want advertising, they want to grow their businesses, advertising is simply a vehicle - but, it might be exactly what’s needed.

The competitive bar has been raised.   If management believes their reps can’t learn – reinvent themselves – at the next level, they – and their organizations – will be run over.

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Think your top talent - the people you're grooming - are securely tied to your future plans?  Think again.  Employee engagement is low these days, despite all those smiles you see in the office.

If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend the May 2010 issue of The Harvard Business Review.  One article in particular should be of particular interest to CEOs and any other senior executive concerned with retaining and nurturing their star talent!  Those of you who subscribe to our c-level ezine are no doubt well aware of this issue.

The HBR article, How To Keep Your Top Talent, discusses the results of a survey of more than 20,000 employees regarded as ‘emerging stars’ in more than 100 organizations over a six-year period, conducted by the Corporate Executive Board; and the findings were consistent regardless of industry, country, or economic conditions.

Briefly, they found that

• One in four intends to leave their organization within the year
• One in three admits to not giving 100%
• One in five believes his/her personal aspirations don’t mesh with their organizations’
• Four out of ten have little confidence in co-workers and even less in their senior team
• 70% of today’s high performers lack critical attributes essential to success in future roles.

And, these are the ‘star’ performers!   It’s amazing if you actually reflect on the implications of each one of these points.  There’s much more in the article and I’ll leave you to read it yourself; but, many engaged in organizational development have been banging the drum about this issue for some time; and, it’s especially important right now.

Another article in the same HBR issue shed some light on what the reasons might be!   In Bringing Out The Best in Your People, Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown point out that corporate environments are breeding grounds for tyrannical management with organization charts skewing power toward the top.   This is still happening even though as far back as 1986, when I first became involved in the productivity business, companies were becoming aware of the need for pushing power down through the organization and flattening their structures.  The result of most current structure appears to be what the authors call straightjacketed thinking.  I recommend this article’s reading, as well.

You can go to the Harvard Business Review website to access the May issue.

I’ve often felt that training is about more than simply improving skills.    As you probably know, our organization had training five mornings a week all year round – both internally and externally produced – not counting other more formal events and programs.  In the companies I’ve run over the years, I’ve felt ongoing employee development initiatives accomplished a few other very worthwhile purposes:

They helped me identify the people who didn’t want to succeed.  That was good to know, for obvious reasons.

• They helped identify the people who were truly committed to growth and development.
• They  sent a strong message to my employees that I was committed to them.  They were worth more than payroll – they were a long-term investment; and it showed I was willing to ‘walk-the-walk’ when it came to their future with our organization.
• The issues that must be understood and the keys to success in this area are outlined quite well in the HBR article; and I would only offer this single thought based on my 25+ years not only on the front-lines, but in witnessing other organizations and cultures, as well:

Top-down commitment gets bottom-up support.  If top management is simply ‘sending them to training’,  it will turn-out to be little more than a placebo.   If you want employees fully engaged, top management will have to demonstrate it – in spades.

Organizations rely solely on line-management to conduct all employee development will inevitably suffer from ‘incestual knowledge’.   The best learning comes from experience and sometimes it’s even better when taken from other organizations – even industries – and applied to current issues.     Bullet points #3 and 4 of the findings mentioned above directly relate to meshing employee engagement with developing a high-performance strategy, often engaging your top performers in the process.  Proctor & Gamble does that today!

Management should be aware of this issue – and take steps to address its implications – now before the hiring begins.

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Is there a difference between traditional work groups and a High Performance team?  Are all teams alike?

I began working on team management concepts in 1985.  In those days, everyone was talking about Drs. Deming and Juran and Quality Circles – Remember those?   I was fortunate to have been mentored by the late Don Butler at his Dayton, Ohio headquarters.  Don was at the forefront of team management and the lessons I learned have stayed with me all these years.

The world economy is very different today.  High Performance is not just a ‘catch-phrase’ and hanging a few posters while simply talking about employee engagement isn’t enough.

Here’s a brief overview of High Performance Teams.   `Brief’ is an understatement.  Just learning the process in our normal training takes seven three-hour sessions spaced over time and is only part of a learning curriculum that includes how to assess your organization’s current performance, as well as learning the Principles of High Performance.

Defining a High Performance team isn’t easy, since they are more than traditional work groups.  Some characteristics might include:

• A shared mission or purpose that motivates and inspires team members
• Autonomy and authority for task performance
• Interdependence and shared leadership
• Broadly-defined jobs and many responsibilities
• Meaningful participation and decision-making
• Higher performance than individuals not organized into teams

Dr. Rodger Allen and Preston Pond of the Center for Organizational Design have offered this definition:  “A self-managing, multi-functional group of people organized around a whole process and empowered with full responsibility for their success.”

Traditional work groups tend to be organized around functions with employees performing specialized tasks under supervisory management.  The organization tends to be rule-governed with decisions referred up the organization.  In short, people are viewed as tools of management.

High Performance teams tend to enable the group to become self-governing with facilitative guidance.  Work is organized around core processes and employees possesses multiple skills.  Leadership is shared and, rather than rules, the organization tends to be principle-governed with decisions made at the point of action.  In short, people are viewed as partners.

Four Types of Teams

While High Performance teams share certain common characteristics, there are also some important differences.  One size does not fit all.

• High specialization, low coordination with work divided between various specialties, each with a distinctive set of skills.   Examples:  Teachers in a high school, a swim team, a geriatrics team providing care for an elderly person.
• High coordination of different disciplines.  Examples:  A product development team, a hospital emergency room, a football team, an executive leadership team.
• Low specialization and coordination.  Team members have the same skill set but have little need to coordinate or communicate.  Examples:  Phone operators, bill collectors, bank tellers, a bowling team.
• High coordination with common skills.  These teams are generally organized around completing a `whole task’ and cross-trained to do other jobs.  Examples:  Manufacturing settings, a volleyball team.

Identifying a work group as one of these four does not make it a High Performance team; and not all teams are purely one type or another.  Think of dimensions and continuums.  Sometimes teams blend with others depending on the task at hand and not all teams will develop and function in the same way.

Talk with your people.  Apply the model above to the teams within your organization and ask them:

• What type of team do you belong to?
• Identify the specialization required on your team.
• Identify the coordination required on your team.

Viewing your entire organization, which teams or workgroups would you classify as types I, II, III, or IV.

It may change everyone’s view of just `how things work around here’.

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It's more about the mindset than the document.

When managers think of strategy development,  the tendency is conduct a SWOT analysis and applying resources – both human and capital - to the results.  Even so, it’s amazing how many five-year plans across America are updated annually with impossibly specific prognostications about costs, prices, and market share only to sit on shelves in their binders doing little more than gathering dust.

What’s worse, most of these companies are doing it wrong.  While most poor planning can reasonably expected to occur in the small and mid-market companies – those with under $500 million in annual sales – even the  ‘big brands’  enjoying dominant positions shouldn’t be resting too easily.

The Story of the Marts

During the late 1970s, Kmart was a dominant retail leader with 1,900 stores - and revenues in excess of $7 million per store!   They had huge advantages in purchasing, distribution, and marketing.   At the same time, a younger and far less well-known Wal-Mart had just over 200 stores with per-store sales only half of what Kmart was posting.

What a difference ten years makes.   During those 120 months, Wal-Mart had become the highest profit retailer in the world… growing at 25% annually and achieving a 32% return on equity and a valuation of more than 10-times book value.   During that same period, Kmart had shrunk!  - both in size and public perception.

What happened?  Kmart did planning!  They did it every year!  The plans were constantly updated!  Their top management team had graduated from the best business schools!

Two Basic Strategic Orientations

Like most things, strategy begins with philosophy.   There are two basic orientations companies tend to take:

• Preserving – Reacting to environmental changes and competitive challenges; protecting past gains; managing based on historical success.
• Renewing – Anticipating changes, seeking new opportunities, future-vision orientation; innovating; managing based on seeking new competitive advantage.

Kmart had adopted the posture of a market ‘defender’.  It’s approach was to  ‘seal-off’ the market and hold onto it’s gains – actually a very common tactic of companies, even entire industries, that have achieved some measure of success.

Years ago, the business world we’re all familiar with was characterized by defined markets, stable customer needs, and clearly-defined competitors.  Companies could win by staking out – and defending – a market position.

Today, `owning a market’ is less likely as product – even `message’ – lifecycles have shortened and competitors have multiplied.  (You might enjoy The Attention Economy by Thomas Davenport and John Beck.)

Success today requires anticipation and adaptation to trends and changing customer needs.  Wal-Mart, for example, built business processes and core competencies in areas such as information and transportation sharing.   When a sale is rung-up at any Wal-Mart register in America, an instant message is sent from that register to inventory control in China! (You might enjoy The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman.)  Those competencies are far removed from a traditional retail competency like, `We have the best blue shoes east of Fairbanks’.

YOUR core competencies, in all likelihood, are still undiscovered!  – Still hidden from your traditional planning process due to a lack of innovation inside your organization.   This will make more sense as you approach the end of this piece.

Three Approaches to Strategy

There are three fundamental approaches to the strategic process.  Before you can create a ‘high performance’ strategy, you must first understand what approach you have been using in the past – and indeed, what you should be using, based on the strengths and weaknesses of each.

1. Internally-driven.   This is what most companies do, despite the lip-service paid to the other two approaches.   This is the approach that’s driven by past experience – a concept difficult to override in the planning process.   In some companies, it’s characterized by a product in search of a market, i.e., identifying an industry in terms of the product rather than the service or function it provides.  The huge weakness of this approach, of course, is failure to anticipate change; and even when it is anticipated, it’s difficult to act upon.  ‘Change’ is an external concept; and in a company driven by experience and a product-centered orientation, companies in this category don’t act on it very often.
   
2. Customer-driven.  Many companies take pride in this approach.  They’ll spend a lot of effort talking about ‘being close to the customer’.  ‘Listening’ comes up a lot.  It’s a mantra we’ve all heard in recent years and an `outside-in’ approach based on asking customers questions.  It’s all good, of course; but there are some weaknesses:   There’s a danger of trying to please too many people, causing a lack of focus.  It also almost always results in a failure to link processes to competencies, as well as a poor differentiation for position and value.
3. Market-driven.   Here markets are targeted with value differentiation.  Decisions are based on ‘how to compete’ rather than customer feedback.   An example would be Southwest Airlines, who decided to compete by targeting the frequent, short-haul business traveler willing to trade convenience for price.

Know Your KRAs

Before you begin designing strategy, you should know how to tell if your strategy is successful!  That means knowing how to measure… and knowing WHAT to measure.

You need to know your KRAs – Your Key Results Areas:  These are the areas that are critical to your success.   Do you know your KRAs?  Do you know the metrics for measuring them?

It should be noted that a positive performance in a KRA does not necessarily mean you have a good strategy.  The reason is simple:  The results you’re achieving today reflect strategies implemented in the past.     It naturally follows that those strategies may not be the ones you need if you plan to compete to win in the future because there’s one thing you can count on:  Change.   As business conditions and the environment change, your strategy going forward will have to address a new set of assumptions.    Your process for navigating that obstacle course will define your success.

So, what are YOUR KRAs?  As thought starters, some KRA examples might include quality, response/turnaround time, productivity, cost control, etc.    You should sit down with your team and brainstorm your own KRAs.   Each KRA should have it’s own specific data-based metrics for measurement.

The Strategic Design Sequence

There are many models you can use; but, here’s a seven-step plan to help your team move through the process:

1. Analyze the business environment -  This one should be an obvious starting point.  It includes your customers, competitors, technologies, and all other external influences.
2. Forecast the future – This step focuses on your industry, not your company.  Brainstorm assumptions for the future, as well as the business environment and the implications they hold for strategy formulation.  Brainstorm your opportunities and threats.
3. Create a core ideology – This is your reason for `being’.  Is everyone on the same page regarding your mission and guiding principles?
4. Define your strategic direction -  What direction will you take regarding your customers?  What are your core competencies and deliverables?
5. Define your competitive advantage -  Define your business focus, your competitive anchors – your top areas of competitive advantage – and perform a competitive analysis.  Finally, arrive at your value proposition
6. Set Goals – Based on all the above, what are your new KRAs?  What are the metrics to measure success?  Do some back-testing to measure your current performance using this new set of KRAs.  Set your goals for the future.
7. Create a master plan -  This includes your new critical success factors.  Create performance initiatives and a project charter.  Then: Take Action!

High Performance Organizations are Different

Your organization is traditional if your focus is internal – driven by past experience – and your structure is centralized and/or bureaucratic.  Other symptoms include:  Planning and coordination performed at the management level and communicated down through the organization; specialization and narrowly-defined jobs; standardization of performance (little innovation); uniform and strictly-enforced policies; department boundaries determined by similarity of job function; most training focused on technical skills; and unhappy employees who view themselves as ‘tools’ of management.

Your organization is a high-performance unit to the extent you see any of the following:  Focus is on the customer and competitive advantage; decentralized structure with autonomous self-regulating work units; planning and coordination ‘pushed down’ into the organization and performed by chartered teams; broadly defined jobs with people possessing multiple skills; job innovation (many ways to achieve same/higher levels of performance); minimum of rules; department boundaries determined by task interrelationship; training focused on employee development (teamwork,

leadership, interpersonal skills); employees feel valued as ‘partners’ integral to the organization’s success.

Getting There Isn’t Easy

It’s axiomatic that ‘change’ is uncomfortable.  That’s why so many amateur golfers still slice the ball.  It’s uncomfortable using the correct swing when the old one is so well-grooved.

It may be awful; but it’s predictable.  And, we like predictability.

Most organizations operate in chaos.  Of course, many don’t know they’re in  chaos because their world is both familiar and predictable and therefore not easily visible.

But, if you even suspect chaos may be present, you can confirm it by simply stopping any five employees in your company and ask them, “What’s our mission?”   Then ask, “What’s critical to our success?”

If you get three or more different answers, you’re herding cats.  Congratulations!  You’ve found the chaos operating beneath the radar!  You’re a step ahead of your competition already!  You should celebrate!

Every organization is different; but moving yours from an ‘old school’ model to a high-performance model will be a requirement for those intending to compete successfully going forward.

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Can someone learn leadership?   Can training help?   Let's face it, many people have trouble leading others, while others seem to make it look natural.

What is it about a leader that makes others want to follow. After all, people don't come with an operations manual.

"The soft stuff is always harder than the hard stuff."
Roger Enrico, VP Pepsico, March 2010 issue of Training & Development Magazine

Let's face it, you can learn how to use software online; but can you really learn about managing and leading people without one-on-one interaction using some 'real-world' situations?

What lies at the core of great leaders?

It's a complex subject, to be sure. Many experts summarize it in a single word: Character. It makes sense. They use 'iceberg' analogy: 90% is 'below the surface' and therefore invisible. Only 10% is visible. It's what you do when no one is looking that counts. If that's the way you live your life, it comes across. People can sense it.

Character usually means 'core values' - and when you have those, you have consistency, as well. But, there are some other attributes worth noting:

• Future vision - leaders can paint a picture of a future others want to realize.
• Investment - leaders get more than a 'buy-in'. People become invested in the vision that's been articulated.
• See the opportunity and challenge of reinvention, while many others see only 'change' as a perceived threat.
• 'Walk-the-walk' - They live the core values they espouse. They don't compromise on their principles, vision, or core values.

It's been my experience that great leaders (those I've met and others I've read about) possess an emotional intelligence (self-mastery) others around them don't have. George Washington had it. So did Abraham Lincoln. You can also see it in Warren Buffet and others. They choose their responses, instead of letting a situation dictate to their emotions. This can be a critical trait for anyone who's in a leadership position, especially in times where the economy is bad and the level of trust can be eroded inside an organization.

It's an area of human behavior I felt was so important, we even added a few titles to our training curriculum at Gardner Hathaway. Trust, emotional intelligence, managing change, and getting employees engaged are critical functions that make ongoing employee development and continued learning a prioity for any organization that plans to `compete to win' in this new economy.

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Many are!   I personally can think of three close friends who work in companies that live in constant chaos.  The employees know it - in fact, management even knows it - but for some reason, the status-quo persists.

Here's a little survey a few forward-looking executives have given their people - anonymously of course - to assess their current situation.  You might want to try it, too!

Check the any/all characteristics you recognize:

1. Inconsistent results
2. Excellent performance results
3. Consistent performance results
4. Crisis, short-term focus
5. Growth of new business opportunities
6. Basic processes, structures, and systems in place
7. Shifting priorities, lack of clear directions and goals
8. Excellent processes, structures, and systems aligned to strategy
9. Resources adequate and in place
10. 10.  Processes, systems, and structures not in place
11. 11.  People highly involved and empowered
12. 12.  Clarity of goals and directions
13. 13.  Unclear policies and procedures
14. 14.  Respect for people is part of the culture
15. 15.  Consistency of priorities
16. 16.  Lack of teamwork
17. 17.  Inadequate people and resources
18. 18.  Good communication and information sharing
19. 19.  Well-defined policies and procedures

Why is this good to know?  There are basically three stages of organizational development.  Believe it or not, most organizations operate in Chaos.  Those who put systems in place can achieve stability.  A few outstanding managers are able to transform their organizations and enter the High Performance paradigm.

How did your organization do?   -  Remember, it doesn't matter what YOU think.  It's a question of what your people perceive.  Whatever they perceive to be true is their truth; so, it's yours, too.

• Indicators of Chaos:  1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 17.
• Indicators of Stability:  3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 19.
• Indicators of High Performance: 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 18.

So, why are so many organizations chaotic, instead of high performing?  The answer is inertia.

Frederick Taylor's theory of 'Scientific Management' made it's debut in 1903 - and most of American Business was still operating under its precepts even into the 1980s.   It was based on what has become a traditional paradigm:

• job specialization
• process standardization
• division of labor
• centralized decision-making
• procedure uniformity
• central control

Competitiveness suffered, however, as the industrial age began to give way to the information age.   It was the triumph of the free flow of information over centralized control

Soon, the High Performance Paradigm began to emerge as organizations began to discover new ways to compete.  Characteristics of the HP paradigm include:

• Shared purpose
• Decentralized decision-making - closer to the customer
• Multi-functional, holistic processes
• Structures that fit the organization's purpose
• Developmental management roles
• Customer focus as evaluation criteria
• Continuous learning

In short, the focus of HP organizations is results, measured in terms of the customer, rather than on internal metrics.  While traditional organizations have department boundaries determined along functional lines, HP organizations boundaries are determined by task relationships.  Employees become 'partners' rather than 'tools' of the organization.

Developing a high performance organization doesn't happen overnight.  Remember, you eat an elephant one bite at a time.

It's about building-blocks.

Your people should first become  familiar with the principles of high performance.  The next step is to learn where you are today by conducting an internal assessment, which goes well beyond our simple survey, above.  Then, based on what you've learned, you and your people should develop your high-performance strategy and then develop your high-performance teams.

Remember, anything is possible.  All you need is the road map, resources, and the commitment to begin.

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My first lesson about organization commitment came early - at my very first job out of college.    I was a copywriter and disc-jockey at WLDS in Jacksonville, Illinois - the station is still there and still going strong!   In those days, the general manager was a man named Gerry Cassens.  He was an older guy and I was just a kid fresh out of college. After working there about 90-days, I had the (fill-in your own description) to walk into his office and say, "Mr. Cassens, I've been here about three months now and I think I'm worth more than you're paying me."

He sat back in his big chair, puffed on his pipe, and looking at me straight in the eye, he said, "You know, Jim. We were kind of hoping you'd be worth more, too."

I received my first lesson in business. You don't make more money just by hanging around and feeling entitled. He taught me a lot and I've always remembered him.

Now I know what I didn't know then: I was 'interested' in success; but I wasn't committed to it. It's something we've all done at some point.

• How many New Year's resolutions have you kept?
• You've watched Suzi Orman for years - are you any richer because of it?
• You've heard Tony Robbins - are you more successful?

Being 'interested' in success isn't the same as being committed to it.

Learning is active - we learn from interaction and experiences - not `spectating'. As I learned from Gerry Cassens, being worth more to the company meant I had to actually be WORTH more!  I had to quit doing the minimum and 'buy-in' to the goals of the organization. It was up to me to get out and learn more about what made the cash register ring; so I did.

I spent time with the ad salespeople as well as the program director.   I soon found they were selling advertising `time' only; it was a straight 'time' rate card. I started producing strong 'production' commercials with some pretty creative copy, much of it funny with multiple voices.  Pretty soon, the ad reps were getting more and more client ad contracts all wanting these production spots; only problem was, they were time consuming.

When Gerry called me into his office and said, "These ads take a lot of time to produce, don't they?"  I said  "Sure.  You need a production rate card!"  Gerry Cassens was smart.  He knew I had done just what he wanted.   I'd become worth more to the station - because the station was now in a position to make more money existing clients and attract new advertisers, too!

Commitment has power.   And, it's a power every employee in every business has.  The key is to tap it.  Gerry Cassens knew how to do that.

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A company can be compared to a large boat, not unlike those ships from the Roman Empire we’ve seen in pictures, with the drummer banging-out the cadence for the oarsmen, with the ship’s ‘captain’ standing by.   Some occupants do the work of rowing and contribute to forward movement.  There are also some who do little, contributing more to weight than progress.  In a company, however, we sometimes find some who are actually rowing in the wrong direction, actually impeding progress and actively working to subvert the organization!

This last group is ‘actively disengaged’ from the organization and it’s goals.  They’re sitting with everyone else – they’re even facing the same direction – but, they’re doing something very different  that’s destroying progress.  Often, the ‘captain’ can’t even see it.

A recent Gallup survey[i] revealed the following:

• In average organizations, the ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees is 1.5:1.
• In world-class organizations, the ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees is near 8:1.

One of my favorite movies, Office Space, has many comedic – sad but true – examples of just how destructive active disengagement can become.

So, what causes active disengagement?  This isn’t rocket science:  It’s generally an autocratic management culture – even if they pay lip-service to ‘openness’ – which often fosters the symptom:   An employee attitude that says, “They don’t care.”  If you read ‘they’ as referring to management, as opposed to the employee, give yourself a star… you get it.

You have to care.

What would happen if your people truly felt – and acted – like partners in the business?  And, how do you make that happen?

It doesn’t happen by accident.  It’s culture-driven; and, it begins at the top.  If there’s no top-down commitment, you can forget bottom-up support.

Many years ago, when I was in the publishing business, we had a waiting list of people wanting to come to work for us and extremely low turnover – once going three years without a single employee loss.  In the years since, I’ve seen hundreds of different cultures and been lucky enough to learn from some pretty successful managers I’ve met along the way.  Here’s a brief overview of some of the things I’ve learned about creating a culture of engagement:

There are five basic steps:

1.  Develop a plan – Establish your strategic direction;  Create a ‘future-vision’ of success; Set goals; Identify and establish metrics for your key results areas (KRAs); Set goals for all KRAs.

Your future vision should be based on complimentary dimensions of achievement.  They might be customer satisfaction, internal operations, organizational culture (what it’s like to work here), and financial performance.  Each should be defined.  These become your KRAs.

2.  Create the proper work environment – This is based on trust.  The best managers have learned that it starts by assessing themselves first.

There are three core elements:  (1) Integrity – Actually ‘walks the walk’, (2) Competence – Can actually perform on time and under pressure. (3) Compassion – Caring (there’s that word, again).

3.  Support employee development – This one’s huge.  Committing here tells your people a lot about your belief in them.  Doing nothing tells them a lot about your lack of belief in them.  You get to choose the message.

Many years ago, Foster Grant brought me in to conduct sales training.  The CEO sat in the front row and actively took part, unconcerned about his ego.  The sales force loved it.  The speed of the leader is, indeed, the speed of the pack.

It’s the difference between an attitude of ‘compliance’ or one of  ‘commitment’.  When managers see themselves as the ‘thinkers and planners’ while the rest are the ‘doers’, it sets-up an attitude of compliance.  They’re the clock-watchers.  When people feel ownership in success and failure, it leads to commitment.  Teams share success – and failure.

4.  Become a “Super Coach”[ii] – Be open, with enough self-confidence to drop your ego; Truly care about your people; Lift, elevate, inspire; Establish high expectations; Be action-oriented; and, above all, be completely honest with them.  All of this tied to caring.  My publishing business even provided in-house programs to our employees on how to provide for their families’ financial future by avoiding debt and saving for independence.  The financial education had a side benefit when it came to our salespeople:  They learned there’s no such thing as a ‘comfort-zone’ – anyone who is comfortable, doesn’t understand the situation!  The financial sessions had nothing to do with our business; but it showed we cared – and meant it.  It wasn’t just an ‘HR’ thing and our people knew it.  We were family.

5.  Keep them engaged – This requires a daily focus and constant communication, along with relationship building.  For example, our salespeople had training five mornings a week, 52 weeks a year – and we always made it fun.   We encouraged civic activities outside the office, as well as off-site events.  Sometimes, training was tied to late afternoon pizza parties.  Clients of ours have held off-site full-day events with lunches and spouses invited to the dinner.   Build a ‘team identity’ – you can do it with shirts, caps, etc.

Never, ever, quit.  Your people may begin thinking like true partners.  When they do, you may never hear, “It’s not my job” again.

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[i] http://www.gallup.com/consulting/52/employee-engagement.aspx

[ii] My tips for how to coach salespeople appeared in the August 1987 issue of SMM on page 63.

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Sounds easy; but, the senior leadership teams of large corporations often wrestle for months to understand the answers to four primary questions.

• What is your ideal vision?
• Who are your customers?
• What are your deliverables?
• What are your core competencies

Indeed, our How To Develop A High Performance Strategy course can easily fill four half-day sessions, with two of the half-days lasting over 4 hours each!   In fact, going through the entire course still doesn’t solve client problems; it only teaches them the process.  It’s more about learning what questions to ask and how to engage others in a meaningful dialog.

Defining your ideal future vision, for example, needs to be addressed in terms of four basic areas:

• Customer satisfaction – how your customers judge you on their own measures for quality, performance, service, cost, and other areas.
• Organizational culture – what it’s like to work in your organization, analyzing attitudes and work habits.
• Internal operations – what’s the adequacy and efficiency of your organization’s processes, competencies, technologies, and systems.
• Financial performance – what metrics do you use and do they really tell the story?

This exercise can be an eye-opening one designed to establish direction in each area, not necessarily precise goals.  You might try it with some of your key people!  All you need is about three-to-five items in each area and explore just one area at a time.

During his prime in the 1970s, Jack Nicklaus would meet every spring with his boyhood golf teacher, Jack Grout, and say, “Jack, I’m thinking of taking up golf.  I want you to show me how to stand and grip the club.”   He wasn’t simply going back to basics; he was starting with a clean slate.

That may be a good idea for all of us.

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High performance isn't easy during recessions.   Many companies have seen their stock prices increase largely due to cost-cutting, rather than increased sales.   As payrolls have been cut leaving those with jobs just happy to be employed, companies have been demanding more from those still working.

Beware.  The tables will be turning.

Baby-boomers make up a huge portion of our workforce.  Some estimate as much as 40%!  And, due to their ages, they occupy some of the U.S. economy’s most key positions!  However, as these baby-boomers retire, a significant talent deficit  will likely emerge  throughout American industry.

Where will the next group of leadership come from?   Indeed, are enough people being trained to fill the coming void?

It always comes back to people.  General Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr., who acted as commander of the allied forces during Operation Desert Storm, tells the story of teaching one of his promising lieutenants a lesson in leadership.  The lieutenant was a recent West Point grad and was constantly talking about the advanced technology the U.S. military was able to employ against the enemy.  The general invited him outside and took the young lieutenant over to one of the newest Air Force fighter jets.  He told the young lieutenant to command the jet to fly.   Then, he took the lieutenant over to one of the Army’s newest tanks and told the young man to command the tank to move.  Of course, nothing happened.

Schwarzkopf asked his half-astonished and half-amused young lieutenant what he’d learned.  The lieutenant replied, “I’m not sure, sir.”

Schwarzkopf said, “It doesn’t matter how sophisticated any of this stuff is.  People fly planes and people drive tanks.

The Four Facts of Organizational Life:

• The work of an organization is accomplished through people
• People are interdependent
• Interdependence requires collaboration
• Collaboration is built on a foundation of trust

When the tables turn, will your culture be ahead of the curve – or playing ‘catch-up’.  If you’re doing the latter, it may be like applying band-aids to stop talent leaks that are just too large.  The time to build trust – if you haven’t been doing it already – is now.

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