What’s your end game?

by Bill Curry

Ask a business owner if they have an end game plan and they will say "yes, I plan to go out on top".

Ask them to define what going out "on top" means and most will say they will either sell their business for enough money to meet their retirement needs or they will transition the business to someone that will pay them an annuity in their retirement.

Sadly what they are saying is that they hope one of those scenarios will happen. And hope is not a plan.

Whether you are a younger or an older business owner you must have an end game plan that is in play. The plan has to consider all the potential possibilities, good or bad, that could happen.

Planning should not be a ‘someday’ thing but a ‘now’ thing and no business owner should attempt to build or execute a plan on their own.

As a business owner, your end game plan is too important to not use the best minds you can engage to help you with it. Minds plural because there are many parts to a properly constructed plan. Aside from tax and insurance implications there is the qualifying of the desired outcomes and the steps to achieve them.

No one person or firm can claim to offer the best solution for all the moving parts in your plan, so you will need to educate yourself to know how you can identify what you need and who to use.    

There is no shortage of content on this subject. Most all of it is written by people with an agenda, usually a product or service to sell you. But they are your educators so take advantage of the information they offer. 

10 steps to a strategic plan

by Bill Curry

The basics to holding a successful strategic planning session for your company are missed by most companies. Companies will significantly increase their odds for attaining the results they want if they adhere to the following truisms of strategic planning 101.

1.     Hire an experienced facilitator. This is especially true for the first two SP events you do. An experienced facilitator will be instrumental in preplanning and participant preparation, managing the meeting, and setting you up for successfully executing the plan. 

2.     If your company has never done an SP the first one will be spent using the SWOT analysis to turn over all the rocks and addressing the core issues within the company. Yes, at this first session you will come up with a Vision, Purpose, Mission and Values (Culture) for the company but most likely it will not be your best effort. 

3.     The first SP will be more a tactical not strategic exercise. Even with a facilitator it will be internally focused and evolve into dealing with people, roles and process frustrations. The facilitator will keep it moving and not allow any alpha dog agendas to control the flow of the meeting.

4.     A year later at the second SP session the facilitator will be able to keep it strategic by managing an externally focused session on what the market demands and how your company can meet or exceed those needs. At this meeting you will come up with the right Vision, Purpose, Mission and Culture that will drive your success.

5.     Leadership wants the planning session to identify the what and the how. What the company needs to be and how they can be it. Leadership feels if they can get the team aligned behind a purpose they can do anything. This is the holy grail that is always a work in progress. It is also an objective that can be achieved one step at a time.

6.     Every SP will conclude with a timelined and objective based business plan. There will be both a long range plan which will move you toward achieving the company vision and a short range plan that encompasses the first steps toward accomplishing the long range plan.

7.     To accomplish the objectives requires timelined actions or tasks. In example if you want to have the best trained staff in your space you would have a task assignment to determine the definition of best trained staff.

8.     Always assign an objective or any task to a person, not a committee. When a committee is responsible, no one is responsible! Likewise one person has to be responsible for the overall business plan. It is that person’s job to require that the objectives and tasks are tracked using S. M. A. R. T.  metrics.

9.     Use Patrick Lencioni’s guideline for meeting protocols, (Death by Meeting), to schedule SP followup meetings.

10.  Follow Yoda’s credo that: “There is no trying, only doing” in being singled minded in accomplishing the objectives and tasks. That said recognize that objectives can change so they must be continually challenged.        

Win-Win Leadership

by Bill Curry

Every organization should have a vision for what they will be someday and a mission that they focus on each day in working toward that vision. 

Great companies foster employees that live the company values. Values are the culture that everyone embodies while doing their job and they are reflected in how they think and interact with others. 

Above all this is a shared sense of purpose. The reason they do what they do and why this is the best place for them to do that.

In living this way they all see the results ahead of time for what they can do. They believe that everyone understands that no matter what role they play, top to bottom, they play just a part in the desired result and never own the result by themselves.

Companies that fail at this most often do so because the leadership team doesn’t understand the importance of their role as leaders. 

True leaders constantly reflect on the example they are setting. As a leader they understand that they are the topic of discussion at their employee’s dinner table each evening. That what is said about them indicates whether they are focused on the success of their employees, all their employees, which is the prime image for a leader to project. 

True leaders take a positive approach in dealing with their employees. They talk to them as if they are the successes that they can be. The leader is always looking for ways to help their employees be better and they do so in a supporting, not correcting way. 

They treat all their employees as partners and key contributors. Leaders constantly communicate with their people. They understand that communicating the mission and purpose of the company and reinforcing the values they live by is best done by identifying examples displayed by the employee’s of the company.

The leader should keep score of how the employees are doing their jobs each day. Measuring the leading activities that the employee’s can individually control, not the lagging results of the company.

Soulful Purpose

By Bill Curry

When a company is new it's easy to know what the Strategy is and for everyone in the company to live it - or they don’t survive. Once a company has progressed to their next level of success they are then bound by their Soulful Purpose in order to achieve greater success.  

For a company past this initial survival stage their Soulful Purpose may not be obvious. It can be brought to the surface by the stories you tell about the company. The heroic deeds performed, the near-death experiences you survived and the recognitions received. All these stories contribute to why you are doing what you do. It is never about being the best or the biggest. It is about the contribution you make, how simply by being, you make a difference!

The Vision of one’s future is as Victor Frankl saw in the believing of what can be. It is the story of your Soulful Purpose unfolding as it relates to your leadership, people, processes, and customers. It manifests in the energies and activities of what you do and how you do it.

When an organization knows its Soulful Purpose, it will know what its core values have to be. Living this conscious life does not mean you are perfect but it does mean you never lose sight of the behaviors expected.

Your Soulful Purpose is what aligns you and keeps everyone moving in the same direction. You follow it unconsciously, as your people do instinctively and autonomously, without constant oversight.

The solution lies in their understanding the nature of decision-making; that every decision is made within a set context. The context is what they are there to do, what the company stands for and where it is going. The leaders must constantly reinforce the Soulful Purpose of the organization.

15 ways to become an industry expert

by Dan Greenwald

1. Be active in and attend regional and national association events.
2. Take the lead in lobbying for change, become a voice for the industry.
3. Reach out and build relationships with owners of peer companies.
4. Broadcast that you are open to partnerships.
5. Read industry media like magazines, web sites, blogs, etc.
6. Be an SME and thought-leader in your industry.
7. Provide value to the influencers at your key vendors. Serve on their advisory boards.
8. Be an active influencer in your Buying Groups.
9. Be an active influencer with your software user’s group.
10. Look outside the your industry for concepts that you can apply.
11. Bring leading edge ideas to your company.
12. Recognize and promote other thought leaders.
13. Championing the cause of bettering the lot of all channel partners.
14. Expose yourself and experience the reality from other’s perspective … Your employees, Your customers, Your customer’s customers, and Your vendors and manufacturers.
15. Take risks in exploring the possibilities.

The Carnegies: The Original Secrets to Success

by Bill Curry

Andrew Carnegie and Dale Carnegie were not related but they are still recognized today for holding the mantle on leadership skills that lead to personal success. Andrew’s words came through Napoleon Hill and later Dale completed the message.

The following short list are their ‘keys’ to your personal and professional success:

Andrew

1. Know your purpose and have a defined action plan for living it today.
2. Determine what you need to learn and find the mentor’s that will teach you.
3. Know and stick to your priorities. Do not let others agenda’s distract you.
4. Believe in yourself and have confidence in your ability to succeed.
5. Have personal integrity and initiative. Always do what’s right without having to be told.
6. Be enthusiatic. Always go the extra mile to over-deliver.
7. Mistakes and adversity are your greatest teacher.
8. Talk to people as if they are the person they can be.

Dale

1. Show genuine interest in others, make it about them.
2. Ask questions, encourage them to talk about what is important to them.
3. Be a great listener, know and use their names and the names of those important to them.
4. Always act as if the person you are with is the most important person to you.
5. Never criticize, complain or blame others.
6. Praise with genuine and detailed feedback and sincere appreciation for them.
7. Seek to understand, not to be understood.
8. Admit and take responsibility for your mistakes.
9. Via Andrew’s lessons, help them to create a personal and eager want.