Be Different or be dead

June 27, 2016

10 simple ways to make your business plan execution great

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10 proven ways to make your business plan execution great.

Amazing results don’t come from the eloquence of your plan; successful performance depends on how well you execute.

Most organizations are challenged to execute well; these rules will help turn your “brave idea” - theory - into a “crude deed” - practice.

Rule #1 — Loosen up on strategy development (get your strategy just about right) and tighten up on strategy implementation.

You can’t execute if you spend all of your time trying to perfect your plan. Every hour you spend trying to fine tune your direction reduces your ability to get anything done.
Spend the extra time you would normally spend on your plan on detailing what has to be done to “breathe life” into your strategy.

Rule #2 — Don’t repeat the same mistake twice. Learn what works and what doesn’t work from your execution tactics.

Rule #3 — Don’t try to boil the ocean in terms of the projects and tactics you undertake. Focus on the critical few things that will achieve 80% of your strategic goal and do them well.

Rule #4 — Stay focused on the direction you have chosen. Avoid getting sucked in to Yummy Incoming: the over-the-transom work that comes to you and is a distraction but is not on strategy. t’s fun to chase Yummy, but progress eludes you when you do.

Rule #5 — Cut the Crap. You can’t execute if there are internal barriers in the way. And if you are busy with activity which may have been important in the past, but is no longer relevant. Cleanse your environment of the non-strategic!

Rule #6 — Ship lot’s of imperfection fast. Be ok with no getting it exactly right; chasing perfection is a waste of time and prevents you from getting anything done.

Rule #7 — Use what you learn from execution to inform your next steps. Don’t take your next step without incorporating what you’ve learned from your last step.

Rule #8 — Get every function - marketing, sales service, operations etc. - in the organization to determine the critical three things they must do to achieve the top 3 organizational priorities. Make this task non-negotiable. If every department in your organization doesn’t have direct line of sight to your overall strategy, people will tend to march to their own drummer and effective execution doesn’t happen.

Rule #9 — Build execution deliverables into every employee’s annual performance plan. If you don’t make it a personal matter to every individual, it won’t get done.

Rule #10 — You need a voice for execution - The Strategy Hawk - in an organization to ride herd on execution. To monitor progress. To kick ass when things are not proceeding as planned.

Build execution as a core competency of your organization and you will definitely stand out from the herd.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 6.27.16 at 04:58 am by Roy Osing
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June 20, 2016

Why an outrageous goal is necessary for a winning career

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Why an outrageous goal is necessary for a winning career.

I had a bold audacious goal very early in my career.

It was to be the VP Marketing before I was 40 years old.

You may not think this was bold, for today there many CEO’s and executives much younger, but in the day working for a monopoly telephone company with the executive ranks replete with mainly engineering professionals, it was very ambitious.

Marketing was, at that time, thought to be a fluffy discipline. The company decided what it was going to provide its ‘subscribers’ and the prices that were to be charged and that was it. Very little market research; no competitive pressures to worry about.

Therefore the Marketing VP position was not viewed as one of great strategic value to the organization and was typically filled by one of the engineering brethren.

So my goal was not only a stretch, it was ‘impossible’ given the circumstances of the day.

But that’s what I wanted, so I declared it (to myself) without any idea of how I would achieve it.

I had no plan. I just ‘put it out in the universe’ and went about my duties as Group Product Manager.

I knew, however, that if I were to be successful in achieving my objective I would have to consciously deviate from what I had been doing in the past.

I had to step up my game if I were to successfully break through the engineering glass ceiling, be noticed and win the prize.

That was my plan — Step up. Step out. Raise my game. Be a force to be reckoned with.

My intent was to make my move to VP so compelling to the executive leadership team that when the opportunity availed itself there would be no other logical conclusion that I would be the ideal candidate. I would be the ONLY logical choice.

My outrageous goal drove the strategy that was necessary. A huge challenge demanded a revolutionary approach. An incremental more modest approach would not yield the outcome I coveted.

I looked for opportunities to be different. To do things differently than others. I did more of what was required. I did the unexpected. I went in the opposite direction to the thinking and trends of the time.

I voraciously learned what had to be done to make the move from a monopoly telephone company to a highly competitive enterprise.

And I talked up internally the moves we had to make in marketing new services that would enable us to stand out from other competitive suppliers and in customer service where we had to lose the tag of treating customers with a monopolist’s attitude derived from being the only game in town.

I stuck to my game plan.

The regulatory rules changed and competition arrived in the telecommunications business.

Marketing and customer service became key components of our competitive strategy.

A new marketing VP was required.

I competed against many external candidates.

I won.

I was 39. I beat my ‘impossible’ outrageous goal.

My message to young professionals is to declare what you want.

Let the outrageousness of your goal be your guide to achieving it.

Keep it in your consciousness. Do big things.

Do different things.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 6.20.16 at 05:34 am by Roy Osing
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June 13, 2016

Expert advice on how to build a winning business plan

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Expert advice on how to build a winning business plan.

Much has been written about how to build a business strategy that is effective in today’s height volatile and competitive world.

Here are a few tips from the experts on how to build a business plan that works in today’s highly volatile world, and on the common mistakes organizations make.

▪️“The granddaddy of all mistakes is competing to be the best, going down the same path as everybody else and thinking that somehow you can achieve better results.” — Michael Porter, Business Strategy Guru

▪️“Everyone in the industry follows the same advice. Companies benchmark each other’s practices and products. Customers, lacking meaningful choice, buy on price alone. Profitability deteriorates…. Nothing is more absurd — and yet more widespread — than the belief that somehow you can do exactly what everyone else is doing and yet end up with superior results.” — Joan Magretta, Stop Competing To Be The Best

▪️“I saw that leaders placed too much emphasis on what some call high-level strategy, on intellectualizing and philosophizing, and not enough on implementation. People would agree on a project or initiative, and then nothing would come of it.” — Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan/Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done

▪️“The extraordinary—and accurate, as I see it — hypothesis is that we inordinately pay attention to strategy, customers, innovation, and the like, but not the true discriminator between success and failure — implementation!” — Ram Charan, Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done

▪️“Abandoning activities is not as sexy as acquiring them or building them up, but it’s just as important – and the most overlooked aspect of leadership. Yesterday’s star product may produce profits now, but it soon becomes a barrier to the introduction and success of tomorrow’s breadwinner. One should, therefore, abandon yesterday’s breadwinner before one really wants to, let alone before one has to. Of course innovation is risky. But defending yesterday is far more risky than creating tomorrow.” — Peter Drucker on Purposeful Abandonment

▪️“If you want to grow your business; before you decide where and how to grow - the first thing you need to do is stop doing what’s not working and get rid of the outgrown, the obsolete and the unproductive.” — Peter Drucker on Purposeful Abandonment

These are all excellent points which highlight the critical ways to make your business plan successful and to differentiate your organization from every other one in the markets you serve.

My takeaways:

1. A business plan based on copying others will never produce a winning strategy;

2. A business plan without execution isn’t a strategy, it’s a wish;

3. A business plan built on a base of irrelevant activity will never work until the CRAP in the organization is purged.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 6.13.16 at 04:50 am by Roy Osing
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May 2, 2016

7 proven ways to make floundering business planning successful

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I have been the “victim” of traditional business planning methods for years.

“Strategic Planning 101” sessions are not fun; more often than not they are painful to sit through as participants are dragged through a pedantic process which can be extremely boring.

It is time consuming. Literally hour and hours of effort are consumed by preparation, in-session presentations from subject matter experts and debate over the most critical SWOT’s.

ISSUE #1 - current planning emphasis is on creating “perfect” strategic direction; how to execute it plays a minor, sometimes non-existent, role.

The process masks itself as a precise science in a world of uncertainty, randomness, unpredictability and imprecision. There is an infatuation with applying the tool set of strategic planning with the belief that the more analysis you do, the more perfect your plan becomes.

Paralysis by analysis is often the result and more valuable time is consumed.

Helium-filled goals attracts much of the attention in terms of what is desired in the long term. The conversation includes this language: “market leader”, “world class”, “number 1” and “pre-eminent supplier”.

Direction setting occupies at least 80% of the time in an attempt to get it “perfect”. It is tight on strategy but loose on execution.

HOW the strategy will be executed in the marketplace gets little attention. It assumes that execution naturally follows the declaration of the new strategic direction strategy. REALLY? When has that ever happened?

Rather than seeing evidence of active use, “meticulously ironed” planning documents sit proudly on managers’ shelves gathering dust.

ISSUE #2 - there is no practical tool set to determine how an organization can truly separate itself from their competition.

Traditional strategy building is ineffective in producing a true competitive advantage claim to separate an organization from “the herd”; to stand-out and be different in a remarkable way that their customers care about.

The process doesn’t highlight the need to do so nor does it provide practical tools. Traditional marketing concepts like product and market leadership, first mover advantage and technology innovation are relied on accomplish this purpose but are ineffective in clearly defining how one company is different than another.

My approach to business planning — I call it my strategic game planning process — process addresses these inadequacies of traditional planning.

It has execution as its primary focus and it provides a practical and proven tool to create effective competitive differentiation.

It’s called a strategic game plan because the objective is to SCORE! The football analogy is quite apt; move the ball towards your opponent’s goal anyway in a series of moves you can successfully execute and get it across the goal line.

The process of moving down field doesn’t have to be elegant. Exploit whatever opportunities the defence gives you and just get the ball in the end zone. It really doesn’t matter if you score with a “Hail Mary” pass or a series of 10 running plays.

7 building blocks of the strategic game plan:

1. Answer 3 questions and you have your game plan — declare your growth goals; choose the customers you intend to serve; determine how you intend to win.

2. Get your plan just about right — rebalance your planning efforts; loosen up on strategy and tighten up on execution.

3. Plan on the run — your game plan is never complete. Start executing; learn what works and doesn’t; adjust as you go.

4. Focus. Focus. Focus — choose a handful of critical objectives to achieve that have the potential to deliver 75-80% Of your game plan. Don’t try to “boil the ocean” and go after too much. Your efforts will be diluted and your progress blocked.

5. Cut the Crap — eliminate the projects and activities that cannot be directly related to your game plan. Crap consumes precious bandwidth you need to do new things. Hanging on to irrelevant tasks will put pressure to add resources that you don’t need and can’t afford.

6. Create your ONLY Statement — cut through the clutter of vague competitive claims out there and declare what you and ONLY you provide that is compelling and relevant to the customers you have chosen to serve.

7. Review your progress at least every 3 months. Keep execution alive and in everyone’s face as the new business as usual.

Out with the traditional business planning process; in with the strategic game plan as the business plan model for the new market realities.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 5.2.16 at 05:24 am by Roy Osing
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