Shift Your Business Into Drive with a Balance Score Card

To achieve a balanced business perspective consider using a Balanced Scorecard as part of your strategic planning initiative. A Balanced Scorecard is an approach that is used to align your business to the vision, mission, core values and strategy of the organization. The emphasis is to turn strategy into forward thinking actions that the senior team can implement against key performance indicators. To embark on a Balanced Scorecard, the company must have a mission and vision and know their financials, the present business structure and levels of employee expertise. They must also have extensive knowledge regarding customer satisfaction levels.

There are four key elements in a Balanced Scorecard: Customer, learning and growth, financials and business processes.

1. Customer: Research has shown that having a customer-centric view focused on satisfaction is one key to success. If the customers aren’t happy they’ll move on. Good or poor customer performance is a leading indicator for the future success or failure of a business. The ultimate question is this: What is the value proposition that you deliver on in your customer markets? Knowing your value as defined by the customer and having a clear understanding of what your customer is willing to pay is essential. This part of the Balanced Scorecard helps you focus on your markets and customers.
   
2. Learning and Growth: This part of the Balanced Scorecard includes your business culture, employee and business attitudes, self improvement initiatives and your investment in employee development. It is known that successful long-term businesses invest in the success of their people. High performance is driven by dedicated happy people. Most organizations today are operating on a knowledge platform. It is the unique knowledge of the people that keeps things going. Unfortunately, when people leave their knowledge leaves too and getting it back is painful. Things to consider include: employee satisfaction, retention, skills, experience and aptitude and the business’s beliefs, values and attitude. Ask yourself this: What kind of infrastructure is needed to foster long-term business success enabling us to grow and change to meet ongoing demands?
   
3. Financials: Data on company financials is important. The key is having the right kinds of data along with timely and accurate information. For management, just having return on investment information might not be enough. As data becomes more centralized, other financial data and key performance indicators become important. For example, consider cost-ease-benefit analysis or risk analysis to consider long-term impact. This is a slight shift that changes thinking.
   
4. Processes: This refers to the internal processes of the organization. Most businesses have a maturity line when it comes to processes. They are usually chaotic, reactive, proactive, service or value providers. These can all be measured. The management team needs to know what is working and what is not working in relation to the customers’ needs and the business mission. Understanding the present state of business processes allows for a focus on a desired future working state that will provide positive, measurable results for the business. The best people to do that work are the people who do the work. The key is to know what existing and future business processes must be focused on to excel as a business.

Having a Balanced Scorecard that is aligned to the mission, vision, core values and guiding principles of the business is an important part of your success. If constructed well it becomes part of a strategy map and a communication tool that allows you to easily share your work and progress with stakeholders. With a Balanced Scorecard you can forward think and create the success you deserve.

3 Requirement Categories to use in Strategic Planning and Business Analysis

Recently while facilitating the strategic planning program with a company in the technology industry we had to make some decisions on how to categorize the requirements. Since the company had a lot of different types of requirements we had to revisit the definition of a requirement (see article Four Requirements That Make a Difference in Creating Solutions).

Due to rapid growth, expansion and culture of the company (very employee centric) the items on their strategy map ranged from the strategic to the operational. The strategy map needed to be vetted. The senior team thought it prudent to review the options for organizing their plans to ensure they took a good approach prior to moving forward. Every organization I have ever worked with always wants to discuss the best way to organize their strategy map prior to proceeding.

The options discussed included categorizing requirements by either stakeholder, sequence or purpose.

Stakeholder: Organizing by stakeholder means grouping all the requirements by one stakeholder group or individual together. In this case it could be by department, business unit or by the business leader. The challenge is this approach is that often requirements are required by multiple stakeholders. Often stakeholder groupings are seen at the road map level (execution plan) and not the strategy map level in planning.

Sequence: Organizing by sequence groups requirements from the highest level with least details to the most detailed. This would mean that you would follow the standard requirements format.

• Business Requirements – strategic, tactical, operational
• Stakeholders – logical groupings that have influence and impact on the business
• Solutions – functional and non-functional (quality)
• Transformational – Implementation and Change 

Purpose: Organizing requirements by purpose has to do with creating links in the process of the business. It has a lot to do with a logical grouping of activities or actions that must be taken. At the strategy map level this does not make a lot of sense. However, it can be argued that when you categorize strategic elements by business impact zones (Process, Technology, Business Development, People and Culture) you are categorizing by purpose. The challenge is something called traceability.

The technology client found it useful to review the different requirement categorizing options. In this case the leadership team was familiar with business analysis best practice and wanted to review the options.

Since we were dealing with a company that grew rapidly and had a vast amount of information in a strategy map that needed to be vetted it was logical to choose to categorize by Sequence Business Requirements. This allowed the leadership team to break down the strategy map into strategic, tactical and operational business elements. They ended up with three maps for each level. 

They realized that as a leadership team they could focus on the things that would make a difference in their business (strategic) and their teams could handle the other components (tactical and operational). This provided the senior team focus. Great lesson learned. 

This Weeks Red Question: In what way has your team(s) clearly categorized your business requirements so that your people focus with purpose?

9 Known Group Characteristics Present during Facilitated Planning Sessions - - Here’s how to identify them and what to do about them

Recently I presented a breakout session on Group Dyamanics and the Characters in the Room to about 100 participants. The audience was a combination of business leaders and professionals all striving to improve their abilities to effectively work with groups. An interesting dialogue happened so I thought I would share. Thanks.

As a business leader your business acumen is important to develop. One of the skills you need is the ability to facilitate to solve business problems. Sometimes the group dynamics create challenges that need to be overcome.

In working with groups, there are a number of dynamics at play. It is helpful if you consider the different group characters and how to deal with them. Here are nine for you to think about.

The Isolate:  This is that one person who remains outside the group or is thinking about previous topics. Consider spending time helping people get acquainted or have discussions using pairing and triads. Provide opportunities for debriefing or summarizing what was discussed. Get the participants involved.

The Monopoliser:  We all know this person. They monopolize the time and focus of the group. Be clear on your expectations, use your body language to hurry the speaker, or when they take a breath say “thank you” and ask for other comments. You can also use a parking lot to write their points down. It is best NOT TO INTERRUPT, however, it is OK to watch for the talkers to draw a breath and leap into the instant of silence this creates to try to regain control. Move fast, but speak softly and gently.

The Facilitator as Expert:  Your best “Rule of Thumb”. . . do not go there. The facilitator should never set themselves up as the expert. You are there to understand the requirements and help establish direction. Consider avoiding answering every question yourself by letting group members respond to each other. Do not feel obliged to comment on everything that everyone says. Reduce your own authority by sitting down with the group.

Group Sharply Divided:  This is where the groups are together physically but not together in interests or point of view. Mix the group up and get people to move around the room. Put them in new requirement work teams and assign the groups a specific relevant task to complete.  Have team members present and then debrief. If a solution cannot be reached, get agreement to park it! Make sure you ask the group if they feel comfortable moving on even though the issue dividing them is not settled. Be prepared with several group exercises, tools and techniques. Most important, keep cool, detached, and unhurried. Use a light touch.

Antagonistic Duo:  These are the two people exchanging negative vibes and everyone is uncomfortable. Confirm that conflict is positive and ask them to continue their disagreement. Set the stage by moving them closer together, arrange other group members as observers, and establish a scribe. Most importantly make explicit ground rules for conflict. Ask group members for feedback. Get everyone involved by taking the issue away from the duo by saying, “You have highlighted an important issue for us. Here is an exercise for the entire group to participate in that continues exploring these issues but in a different way.

The Cozy Duo:  Here two friends are choosing to give each other comfort. They are making side conversations. This is not all right. Best solution is change up the teams and rearrange the seating locations at a break to split the cozy duo up. Position the change as an opportunity to get a different perspective.

Unresolved Members:  People are not engaged. It happens. Sometimes people do not understand why they are participating, they never wanted to participate, they just do not care or maybe they are bored. Break time! Check the thermostat and drop the heat in the room. Maybe change things up. Consider a group exercise, a short controversial video on the topic, have the group brainstorm on a new agenda and create consensus. Be brave and leave the room while they do it. The break may help you to refocus and help them to become more active. 

Highly Defensive Group:  In this case the group members have erected barriers to protect their personal or professional images. This is about self-preservation. You need to get people talking and sharing in a low threat way. Move slowly with no pressure. Focus on facts and intellectual work for a time, gradually introducing small amounts of selective attitude. Avoid role-playing. Be open to revealing more about yourself.  Sometimes this sets the stage for other people to reveal information.

The Big Group:  If the group has many members and no sense of inter-relatedness be prepared to use pairs, triads and work groups. Rearrange the group into round tables so they can see one-another. Get people discussing specific related topic. Make sure you walk around the room making contact with people. Establish “associate facilitators” to manage the different groups. The larger the group the more ground rules, definition of roles and leadership required. Avoid feeling and attitude work with large groups. Keep people on track.

The most important thing as a senior professional, business analyst, manager or leader in developing your facilitation skills is to have fun and enjoy the process. Find ways to enhance being a facilitator and applying requirements elicitation best practices. Develop your group dynamic skills along with the tools and techniques of requirements elicitation. Remember leverage the group unique character and get the members engaged.

The Red Question: In what way can you use the group character identification to help you facilitate your business planning meetings?

Richard Lannon 2008© Edited 2014©

Four Steps to Align Your Organization to its Strategic Plan

Often we want all the moving parts to connect together in our business. We want everything and everybody rowing in the same direction together. This is not always easy to accomplish. 

In today’s competitive climate with global competition we need to break down internal barriers and align the strategic thinking and goals and objectives of our departments.

The starting point is to ensure that you have developed the key strategic vision and mission along with our strategic agenda items. Once that is complete alignment planning as part of the strategic planning process can be embraced.

Alignment planning as part of your strategic planning initiative seeks to accomplish three main objectives:

•       ensure strong connection among the organization’s mission and its operational resources

•       fine tune departmental goals and objectives and discover implementation gaps

•       address issues that may exist around internal efficiencies and effectiveness.

There are generally four steps to the Alignment Planning Process for the strategic planning team to engage in. These include:

1. Outline the organization’s mission, programs, resources, and needed support areas
2. Identify what’s working well and what needs to be adjusted
3.  Identify how these adjustments should be made and determine the best approach
4. Include the adjustments as strategies in the strategic plan and roadmap with an alignment path

The challenge with the Alignment Planning is that you require a solid model to follow prior to applying it. You must have gone through a proper strategic planning approach to ensure your have identified and defined the direction of the organization.

If that work is done then you can benefit from bringing your strategic plans to the department and management level. You can engage them in the process of aligning the organization. Your management can help you engage the employees to avoid disconnects between your business strategy and operational reality. The final objective is to link the strategic and operations to establish employee commitment and motivation.

Alignment planning is part of the overall process when making plans for your organization. It is important that you embrace the need to establish business alignment. 

This Weeks Red Question: What areas of your organization could be better aligned to ensure operational efficiencies and connecting to the strategic plan?

3 Key Levels of Risk Planning and Analysis for the Business Enterprise

Recently I delivered a workshop on Risk Planning and Analysis for the Business Enterprise. I was asked about the various levels of risk within an organization. In response to that question, I explained that there are many levels of risk that could be organized along standard company structure. My preference is to use three structure approach - - strategic, tactical and operational.

Strategic Risk: Generally strategic risk is at the enterprise level and requires a business risk management enterprise plan. There are many models that can be used. At this level risk management, planning and analysis should be part of the strategic planning process. An enterprise risk management plan should be created that addresses strategic planning elements, cultural risk appetite and attitude, governance, stress testing, identification, measurement, response and control. These elements should be brought forward as a standard in the rest of the organization. On a regular basis the organization should complete an enterprise risk environmental scan to ensure they keep their business risk artifacts current.

Tactical Risk: This level of risk is at the project management level. Often it is part of the project management process for key approved initiatives. Its objective is the successful completion of the project while addressing risk concerns effectively and efficiently as possible. Often tactical risk analysis requires that the organization have a risk management plan that provides the guidelines as to how risk is to identified, qualified, quantified, responded, controlled and monitored. Guidelines should be provided by the business enterprise so that project teams do not create their own risk management standards.

Operational Risk: The here and now of any organization is the operational level. It is what happening with the front-line of the business from your customer facing employees, the manufacturing floor equipment and product assemblers, to the field maintenance people. Operational risk varies by company and by industry. One thing is for sure, operational risk needs to be aligned with business guiding principles to ensure people and equipment is functioning appropriately. For example, safety is a huge issue in a number of industries. Therefore, risk response mechanisms need to be put into operational place to minimize risk impact.

Risk management, planning and analysis are a huge discipline that impacts all levels of the organization. It is not something that is meant to be done neither in isolation nor with a single group. When you consider risk management consider all levels of your company. 

Maybe by putting together a solid risk management plan there will be a less of a need to carry a rabbits foot.

This Weeks Red Question: What is your integrated standardized risk management approach that aligns all levels in your organization?

Check out more about Richard Lannon www.richardlannon.ca 

How did I develop my technology support staff when I was a Senior Manager of IT Operations for a major professional service company?

Surprisingly, I get this question a lot. Really it came down to a plan that the people could get into. The key is to recognize that tech people want tech or hard skills training and the business wants business or soft skill training. Over a 4 year period I (we) developed a program that included:

1. Annual National Conference with focus on soft and hard skills training
2. Annual Regional Conference that focused on specific requirements for the region including hard skills and soft skills plus effective team building events
3. Individual SWOTs where the techie actually had say into the four quadrants
4. Individual tailored learning plans with SMART goals and objectives
6. The identification of levels for core competency development
7. Mentorship and Support tagging on company initiatives
8. One on one coaching sessions to build skills and sometimes just talk about what was important to them
9. Team hiring practices. All interviews would be conducted by HR for fit, the team for technical expertise and personal fit, the team lead for future fit and then head office for approval
10. Befriend HR professionals and leverage their expertise. We had 3 in our region
11. Working with your boss to best build your team
12. Sharing with peers the responsibilities of the job and cross training
13. Weekly meetings were people would do a quick round table of what they appreciated about the other person. We would record this and encourage people to put it in their personal evaluations
14. Monthly reports where we would do CAR stories (challenge, action, result) in three sentences. These could be placed in annual performance reviews
15. Opportunity to work with different teams in different locations across Canada
16. Opportunity to travel to work in different areas with different teams
17. Developed a cross-training matrix were people could back up other people when needed

These were the things we did to develop our technology team’s hard and soft skills. In the end it worked great. Skills improved and team members advanced to higher professional levels based on core competencies.

Questions: What are you doing to develop your teams?

A RACI Against Time

You just never know what is going to happen in your business life. Recently I had to work like crazy to get a bunch of deadlines completed to free my schedule so I could take an unexpected trip, half way across this wonderful country of ours, Canada.

As events unfolded, an unexpected team came together with each member naturally assuming a specific role. From leader and manager to subject experts, advisors, information generators, documentation creators, and experienced friends and family members, there was a natural stakeholder relationship created that fit a RACI – responsible, accountable, consult and inform. This was a good thing.

A RACI is a powerful tool for stakeholder analysis used to identify and understand key roles of individual team members in an organization. The simplest definition of a RACI goes like this:

Those who are Responsible:

These are the doers – the people responsible for the nuts and bolts.  If you and your team are reporting to a sponsor who is the final person accountable for the work, then you belong in this category.

Those who are Accountable:

The buck stops here. This is the person(s) who has the most at stake in events and happenings. They’re the ones who have the final decision or must present key recommendations to others in a final presentation. At the end of the day they sign the cheque. In most organizations this would be the sponsor, but it really can be anyone who has the final call.

Those we need to Consult:  The experts.

Every task needs people with the right information at the right time onboard, subject experts and advisors who can help the team leader gain a clear perspective.  You might have that person(s) in house (internal stakeholders) or need to outsource to find them (external stakeholders), but either way, they’re vital for getting the job done efficiently and effectively.

Those we need to Inform:

These are all the stakeholders that need to be kept in the loop. They need to know what is going on from a logical and rational perspective with key information.

Though my recent RACI was unexpected, it’s really helpful to make RACI a formal part of your business’ planning process, particularly if you are going to be involved in any strategic, tactical or operational planning. 

This will help clarify the different roles and responsibilities needed to complete projects, ensuring your people are able to work with focused intent and to the best of their ability. 

Question: For which business initiative can you use a RACI to help putting your team together?

Four Requirements That Make a Difference in Creating Solutions

Recently I was working with a group of 25 professionals in developing their business analysis capabilities. Business Analysis as a profession has gained a lot of popularity over the last 10 years. All sorts of professionals and consultants are focusing on creating a tool kit so they can help businesses make better decisions.

One challenge I often see is the lack of understanding of the various types of requirements that a business has, and the ability to link those requirements.  It concerns me, as there are a lot of professionals and business leaders doing things that are in no way connected to the business needs and the key strategic agenda items of the company at hand.

The first thing to consider is the definition of a requirement, and the second is to know the four key requirements and how to apply them.

A requirement is a condition or capability needed by a stakeholder to solve a business problem or enhance an opportunity. It must satisfy a business constraint like a contract, standard, specification or formally imposed business rule.

There are four key requirements to consider when working on solving business problems or enhancing opportunities.

Business Requirements: These are generally high level statements as to what the business wants to achieve. They are inclusive of the business goals, objectives and needs. When creating business requirements that team must understand what is on the strategic agenda of the organization and why it is important. The values, guiding principles, strategic agenda items, strategic initiatives, stakeholders and outcomes of the company must be considered.

Stakeholders Requirements: These are bridge requirements. They are representative of stakeholder needs and the way they will interact with a business solution. This is often missed. Stakeholder requirements require the business to capture key needs that link and align with the business requirements.

Solution Requirements: These requirements describe the characteristics of a solution and need to align with both the business and stakeholder requirements. Solution requirements are functional and qualitative and are indicative of the behaviour and environmental conditions that a business solution needs to remain effective. Unfortunately it’s way to easy to offer solutions without taking into consideration the whole picture. This is a mistake. Jumping to solutions without first aligning them with the business and stakeholder needs can negatively impact the business, and leads to ineffective use of time, money and resources.

Transition Requirements: These requirements are about implementation and change. They are the requirements needed to efficiently and effectively transition a solution that meets the business and stakeholder needs into the environment. They need to be well thought out, and require a plan of action that creates business success.

The thinking that goes into understanding business problems and opportunities crosses all professional and business leadership boundaries. It does not matter if you are in Human Resources, Information Technology, Finance, Corporate Services or any other department. The reality is that understanding what a requirement is, gathering and capturing the right requirements, and linking requirements together is key to creating successful business solutions. 

Question: In what way is your organization checking the requirement boxes to ensure they connect to the business?

What Do Your Words Say About Your Business Direction?

It's all Good!

How many times have you heard this statement and wondered what it really meant?

Maybe when we hear this phrase we need to think about what it implies and whether we should probe a little further. It is a simple platitude that may or may not have additional meaning. Understanding this point is important. How often do we use empty phrases to describe our business?

A platitude is a statement that's used so often, it sounds dull or trite instead of interesting, thoughtful or helpful. When someone is coping with a life problem, a platitude is the typical reaction of another person who has nothing genuinely heartfelt or sympathetic to say. It helps fill the silence in an uncomfortable conversation, and can be a very an indirect way of letting people know they should look elsewhere for meaningful dialogue.

Interestingly, leaders and employees use platitudes to describe their business all the time without realizing it. But the stakeholders notice. They see the emptiness in the words.

There is a great article in the Harvard Business Review by Greg McKeown, "If I Read One More Platitude-Filled Mission Statement, I'll Scream". McKeown point in the end is clear.

"Achieving strategic clarity is hard. It takes asking tough questions about tradeoffs, deep concentration to get to the very essence of the issues and real courage to cut off competing priorities. It is worth the effort because with real clarity, people, teams and organizations can fully mobilize, break through to the next level and achieve something truly great," Says McKeown.

Having spent a lot of time working on the strategic plans and actionable roadmaps of many companies I am overly familiar with the rhetoric used to inspire people. The best solution is to be more meaningful and purposeful in your use of business words that provide direction. Achieving this is a process and hard work. It requires commitment.

'It's all Good' has many meanings. It is a platitude that sums up what stakeholders may think about your words; sometimes good, sometimes bad and sometimes indifferent. We have to wonder what business leaders mean by the phrases they use and the way they are interpreted by their stakeholders. Clarity of focus is a challenge to create but a necessity. But maybe, it's all good.

Question: What platitudes are you using to describe your business?

4 Points to Help You Complete Summer and Get Back To Your Business Goals

I was standing in a hallway chatting to a CEO who just came off holidays. So I asked what’s do you think is on the minds of business leaders this time of year? It is mid August, he said, and business goals are emerging. I think Business leaders are thinking it is time to start getting back to work.

So I contacted a few other business leaders and asked, what is on your mind as you return from holidays? Some common themes emerged. The following four points summarize those conversations as things to do to complete summer and get back to their business goals.

1. Celebrate and share our summer fun. A lot of people took trips, spent time with family and friends. They did things. We should all pause and share our stories so we stay connected.
2. Get focused.  We need to review what we set out to do and see if it still holds true. Then create some points of clarity and communicate it so our people know where we are going and why we are going there.
3. Make sure we coordinate our activities. We as a team need to ensure that we have not lost our team alignment over the summer. We need to make sure we all connect and ensure our people start to coordinate their activities and efforts so we reach our destination.
4. Check our KPI (key performance indicators) to ensure we have not missed something over the summer months. We want to ensure that we can make adjustments if needed based on our measurements and the goals that we have stated from our planning process.

It is interesting what business leaders say when asked what you need to do to complete summer. Maybe this is what every business needs to do - - celebrate, focus, coordinate and measure to ensure everyone gets back on track.

As you flow through the next few weeks of summer consider what you need to do to get re-connected with your people and get back to your business goals.

Question: What are you doing to complete summer and get back to your business goals?

Do you Know your Business’ Guiding Principles?

Stay Focused with Guiding Principles 

Companies that get focused and provide a vital service for people’s lives deserve to be around a long time. RANA Respiratory Care Group (http://bit.ly/1zq46Do) is one such company. Recently I had the opportunity to interview Cory McArthur, President, about the strategic planning of RANA and their organization as a whole. As we discussed RANA’s thinking on Strategic Planning and the importance of business growth and development, it became apparent that having Guiding Principles was a key to their business’s success.

Guiding Principles provide a litheness test for making better business decisions. They are usually based on your organization’s core values and, to be of most use, should be simple and easy to understand for all

involved. .  Most successful companies have between 3-5 Guiding Principles.  They use these both as a foundation for making short-term business decisions, as well as a platform from which to create their strategic planning.

As Corey explained, RANA has five unique guiding principles, but one stands out the most: good for the client, good for the system and good for RANA. Simple and profound at the same time, it’s something that both the executives and employees can embrace.  It reflects their core values, provides balance, and keeps the company pointed in the right direction.  The executive team felt that with this guiding principle none of them could lose when making business decisions. That is a powerful perspective.  It not only provides RANA focus, but also has allows them to come out neutral or ahead in their business.

Cory went on to break down this Principle in more depth:

• Good for the client keeps the company and its people focused on their primary responsibility: the health and well being of their clients.
• Good for the system is about embracing and enhancing the healthcare system over the long term. As a private provider in a public system they need to benefit and compliment the overall healthcare system.
• Good for RANA has to do with the business side of the organization and sustainability. That means helping patients and maintaining a healthy company over the long term.

RANA has definitely embraced the key elements of strategic planning. In this case, as a company of 25 years, they have grown and developed a set of Guiding Principles for their business decision-making process that can be used over the long term.  A great lesson learned from a company that is a Canadian business champion.

What are your company’s guiding principles?

Listen to our CJOB podcast here The SPAR with Richard Lannon and Cory McArthur. 

A River Runs Through Our Business

Recently I visited Calgary, Alberta, Canada on business. To facilitate a 3 day business requirements session for a client with a focus on the business and stakeholder needs to solve a particular business challenge.

I decided to drive. It was a lovely 15.5 hours there and 13 hours back. I guess I wanted to be home again. Since I drove I took a few extra days, brought my mountain bike and headed for the hills. Calgary has many trails to mountain bike and hill sides with beautiful views. I was interested to see how the landscaped changed. A year early I was in Calgary when the heavens opened and the rain poured down creating a huge flood.

From the hill top where I stood, in Fish Creek Park, you could see where the river runs through it. It had changed course. You see, a year earlier, on that same hill side, where I stood, in the valley below, you could see a meandering river and an island with plush trees. It was now gone. The river had changed course. It shifted to the right. 

There are many things we can learn from our surroundings about business. At this very moment three things came to mind.

1. There are things outside of our control that will impact our lives and business. Sometimes we have to go with the flow.
2. That business meanders like a great river and often our course is changed by outside forces. So we adjust to the new circumstances and re-focus our efforts, and
3. When a new course is set and there are opportunities that we can embrace. The key is to remain open to what is presented.

Sometimes we come to a point in our business where things have changed. This particular week the business leaders and their teams I was working with realized that an external force changed the course of their business. The only option was to embrace their new reality, adjust their course and follow a new flow. A river runs through our businesses and when things change we need to change with them. 

Question of the Week:

What has changed in your business that needs you to review your circumstances and re-focus your efforts? 

If Hind Sight is 20/20, why are we not listening to our people?

In June 2008, while I was teaching a three day workshop on facilitation and gathering and documenting business requirements, someone raised an issue about the economy and stated that the market is headed for a crash soon (within 6 months). Interestingly, the people attending the workshop were not investment specialists. They were professionals from across various industries with backgrounds in human resources, information technology, healthcare, project management and administration. In essence, they were operational and tactical professionals with the same learning goal of understanding how to get the information they needed to create solutions for business problems and opportunities within their respective areas.

Instead on doing the planned assignment we went with the issue raised. I was interested in knowing if a group of professionals from different industries and expertise could apply the five requirement type’s principles (business, stakeholder, solution, data, and implementation) to understanding a complex business issue. Thirty people (6 groups of 5) discussed and brainstormed the issue, defined the challenge, the market parameters, the solution options and build consensus with one key recommendation. They recommended that it would be wise to exit the market by August 2008.

So I decided to take their recommendation to the street. I interviewed three investment advisors independently. Each advisor told me that there was no way that a group of thirty people who were not professional investors could predict the market. They further told me that it would be smart to stay the course with my present investment portfolio and not make any adjustments. Hind sight is 20/20.

There are many lessons we can learn from listening to our people. We must include our people when it comes to understanding business problems, opportunities and creating innovative solutions. People need to work together to unravel complex issues. There are approaches and processes that can be applied to help you make better business decisions. Never under estimate the level of group intelligence of your people. They do know what they are doing. Having a common direction comes in real handy when investing in the success of your organization. More importantly, implementation is the key to the success of best laid plans.

We all know that hind sight is 20/20 and we can chalk it up to a character building experience. Or we can listen to our people. They have something important to contribute. Let them.

Question of the Week: What lesson have you learned from your people that could have made a positive impact on your business? Why did you not implement it? What would you do differently? 

Three Critical Business Skills Learned from Navigating a Pump Track

Recently while mountain biking we came across a pump track; a continuous circuit of small dirt hills and jumps that loops back on itself, allowing you to ride it continuously. A couple of teenagers took the time to explain how to use it and teach us a few lessons. The key they said was momentum.

As an analogy, riding a pump track teaches you three critical skills that can benefit you in tangible ways in your business. 

Successfully navigating a pump track means that you:

• built momentum and are moving through the ups and downs effectively. This takes a lot of self control and management to do. This is achieved through training, practice and making mistakes. Having momentum is critical to your success. It means that you are moving along in your business with a driving power or strength. Focus is key.

• are looking ahead and know your line. This is critical in mountain biking as you need to know where you want to go not where you are. Looking several steps ahead in any business is important. It means that you have keeping an eye on critical business impact zones. Knowing your line is another story. That is not always as easy to determine. On a pump track as you are moving with momentum critical decisions need to be made at a wink of an eye that will spell out your success or failure. Knowing your line means you are picking a course of action and committing to it before you arrive. Success is dependent on you picking the best course of action.

• created a handling form, allowing you to see interesting choices that might not be as obvious as you get fully engaged and committed to the process. There is a use of the tools and technology in the process, people have to support you and there are measurable outcomes. Individuals and teams become fully engaged when riding a pump track. Whether you are the rider or team member lending a hand, giving advice, maintaining the environment and ensuring that everything is functioning well. It takes a team to make the pump track experience a success. Just like in your business.

It is always interesting what we can learn from our day to day activities and the people we meet that lend well to creating our business and career success. In this case two teenage boys remind us that business has many ups and downs, momentum is important, you need to know where you are going and people need to be committed and engaged. Not bad for a morning of riding a mountain bike. 

Three Points to Make it Happen

Can you make it happen? That is a question that every one should ask and answer yes! We all can.

Recently when working with a client we had to do that. The teams became stalled due to a business announcement around cost cutting. Suddenly the teams did not know what they should do or work on. Everything they do have associated costs. In this situation we applied a simple rule; make a decision, make a plan, make it happen. The point was to help the teams refocus on what was important.

In business, the first part of making some thing happen is to make a decision. This is not always easy. Sometimes you just have to do the best with what you have at that point in time. This means considering all the relevant facts, removing your emotional response, and gauging the impact. 

The second thing we need to do is make a plan. A decision without an actionable plan does not go anywhere. Consider all the items that need to be completed; the key elements of work that must be done in order to move forward. Capture your decision assumptions and constraints to ensure that you do not proceed blindly. Never front load your plan but balance it out with other demands in your business environment. 

Third, make it happen. It is far too easy to get side tracked in business with the happenings at the time. There are many decisions made externally that will impact your abilities to move forward and there are many other things demand our time. Focus with actionable intents on items that will have impact and make a difference in your business. To do so, you and your teams must be clear on what it is they are seeking to accomplish. Clarity of focus and direction is a big part on making things happens.

When things are not moving forward the way you like it might be that you and your teams need to step back, just for a moment, and consider what is going on. This may mean to refocus and make a decision, make a plan, and make it happen.

Question: What questions to you ask to make better business decisions and move things forward?

Four Points to Consider in Stakeholder Based Approach for Your Planning Efforts

The success of every initiative realizes on good stakeholder management. It is all about engaging the right people to make a difference in your business success. The more people you connect with, more influencers you engage, the greater positive or negative impact you will have. It is the difference between success and failure.

Consider these 4 benefits of using a stakeholder based approach:

• Engage the most influential stakeholders to help shape the planning process and support agreed upon initiatives
• Increase access to resources through leveraging the key stakeholder’s abilities to help you get key initiatives approved, supported and move things forward
• Connect through benefit based communications early and often to ensure the stakeholders know what is going on. This activates support.
• Predict challenge areas where key initiatives and work element may not be as populate and to build plans to win support.

Every initiative should start with proper stakeholder analysis. A stakeholder based approach provides a means to activate your strategic, tactical and operational initiatives more successfully. There are benefits from taking a stakeholder approach. It is a matter of knowing the stakeholders level of power and level of interest in your initiatives. Once you understand that you can engage, increase, connect and predict your way to increased business initiative success. 

Question: When you start your planning efforts (strategic, tactical, operational) what do you do to better understand and identify your stakeholders business impact?

Question Everything about Your Business – Know the 3 levels of questions

The words question everything has rung out in the halls of many organizations. It is in essence what makes you better at what you do in your business. That is, to be able to ask key business questions so that you have the opportunity to find or develop solutions to business problems or opportunities. Really, isn’t questioning the hallmark of all great business leaders and champions. Sometimes we need guidance on the types of questions we ask. 

In business there are only truly three levels of questions: These include:

• Strategic: These are what and why questions. What are we going to be focusing on? Why is that so important? The why question is the benefit questions. Find the answer to that question and you have earned your salary. What and why questions are the accountability questions. It has to be where the bulk stops.
• Tactical: These are the questions that professionals ask the most. They include who, how, when, how much. Perfect for the mid level planners and people responsible for getting work done – the doing. These questions must be linked to the strategic questions.
• Operational: Always fun as they are the here and now questions. It is like the phone rings and you had to pick it up, deal with the issue and move onto the next thing. No doubt you use the ‘what and why’ question as in what do you want and why should I care. But most likely you are the who, the know how and need to get it done, when.

All these, the strategic, the tactical and the operational are levels within your organization. They are all linked by the questions we ask, the answers we get and the actions we take. Listen to the questions you ask about your business. The response is in the ask. 

Question: What questions do you ask about your business to get people thinking about making it better?

Bridge the Gap Between the Strategic to the Tactical

For your strategic planning efforts consider your approach to bridging the gap between the strategic and the tactical. Often companies will embark on their strategic planning efforts and not take it to the next level. That is the tactical level. There is a lesson learned here as companies that don’t take the time to translate their strategic plans into tactical plans are less likely to succeed. There are a few things that companies can do to make sure they optimize positive outcomes. Consider the following:

1. Develop work plans that are tied to the strategic plans. These work plans should have enough details that the tactical professionals, managers, leads and project managers know what they need to do to flush out the details.
2. Build in communications through meeting with your direct reports and reviewing the strategy map and road map with them so they know what is on the business horizon. It is amazing how many executives and business owners don’t follow through. The best follow through is to review with your key people and then coach them on what they need to do.
3. Teach your people to know what three to five things are on the strategic agenda and why they are important. The tactical and operation teams should know the answer to this question. However, it is up to the senior management team to engage the teams that will be doing the work on the ‘what’ and the ‘why’. Let the tactical teams figure out the ‘how’.

This is an important to do and should be on your list. Always make the linkage from the strategic to the tactical. 

Questions: In what way does your company link the strategic to the tactical? 

Lagging vs. Leading Business Indicators – Do you know the difference?

In strategic planning it is important to discuss key performance indicators (KPI). Key business indicators are a type of measurement. They are essential for business leaders to understand what is happening in their business. The first step to determining your KPI is to understand the difference between lagging and leading indicators. The second step is to define and monitor your business indicators.

Lagging and Leading Indicators

Lagging indicators are used to measure performance and allow the business leadership team to track how things are going. Because output (performance) is always easier to measure by assessing whether your goals were achieved, lagging indicators are backward-focused or “trailing”—they measure performance data already captured. Just about anything you wish to monitor will have lagging indicators: returns on investments, a budget to plan variances, number of sick days, bags moved per day, equipment support incidents, etc.

Leading indicators, on the other hand, change quickly and are generally seen as a precursor to the direction something is going.  For example, changes in building permits may indicate the housing market change, an increase in new business orders could lead to increased production, interest rate changes will impact spending and investments, a diminishing of demands for natural resources will often indicate work slowdowns, and ageing baby boomers may indicate future stresses on the healthcare system.  Because leading indicators come before a trend, they are considered business drivers.  Identifying specific, focused leading indicators should be a part of each business’s strategic planning.

Consider These 7 Tips When Defining Your Indicators

Though there are some guidelines that can be used, there is no “one” way to define the key performance indicators for any particular business. It is as unique as your approach to strategic planning.

1. Review your strategic planning process, in particular the assessment section of the various questionnaires and the environmental scan. Identify what you are already measuring and determine if it provides value to your business in your backward and forward thinking.
2. Review your strategy map and roadmap to  identify the key areas of focus.  Identify the indicators that will tell you whether you have achieved your desired outcome(s) (lagging), as well as the indicators that tell you the direction of the market and where you should focus (leading). Be specific.
3. Step outside your core senior management team and get additional leadership and external business stakeholders involved. An outside perspective can often help you determine what your lagging and leading indicators are, as well as help in recognizing the key leading indicators for your market that will drive your business.
4. Always keep an eye on your lagging indicators--they will continue to provide insight into your business. Poor lagging indicators generally translate into poor leading indicators. A performance indictor survey might assist you in the process of ensuring the indicators are appropriate. The challenge is to ensure you have the correct indicators, and that your management team understands how they can be used to align your business impact zones.
5. Choose your leading indicators carefully. The leading indicators should be unique to your business environment, originate from your key strategic initiatives and work elements, and ultimately be used to drive your business. Try not to be too ambitious. Keep focused on the business key impact zones represented in your strategic plan.
6. Train your leadership team in understanding key indicators and how to use them to improve the business. It is important that your team can not only identify KPI’s, but also recognize the potential business impact indicated by them.
7. Ensuring that you have the correct indicators may be a challenge, yet is vital to the ongoing health of your business. Make sure your team’s strategic planning process includes determining your indicators and that everyone understands what they are and why they are important.

Key performance indicators are either lagging or leading. They are either relevant or they are not. There should be no in-between. Remember, what gets measured gets done.

Question Everything About Your Business: In what way do you measure your success and challenges in your business? Are there any trending items that needs to be discussed to ensure that you are not missing any opportunities? 

Do It Right the First Time; Get Measurable Results

Solid planning and implementation methodologies prepare business for the process of managed projects, improved processes and established change with measurable results. Doing it Right relates to the business objectives, the process and work discipline required to successfully achieve a change within an organization.

The desired change should be business driven beginning with requirements identification and shared business analysis. The business requirements could be any number of things. For example, decrease costs, minimize risk, enhance processes and improve productivity or increase revenue and profits. Identifying the business needs and required results helps in developing plans and making sound strategic decisions. Shared business analysis is the first key to creating success.

Once direction is determined, project management should emphasize accountability, shared implementation, mentoring and transition strategies. All operational resources should move towards the desired result as quickly as possible with the least amount of resistances. There are many methods of managing this process. Picking the right method, strategy and people during the upward swing of project implementation and resource development is critical to having small or large initiatives accepted and integrated. Often a combination of economic, organizational methods and influence must be applied.

Project managers must consider operational resource's abilities to provide the support services required to make changes and business improvements viable. You must consider corporate culture and the business mandate. If you need to get a project done, resistance or slow moving efforts get you nowhere. You should focus on communications in an enhanced way of making things happen. Provide mentoring and make it part of the corporate routine.

If the initial investigation phase, planning phase and execution phase are successful then there should be an improved measurable result. The organization capabilities should have shifted from the business operations perspective. Benchmarking should be used to measure the improvements that include both economic and organizational measurements with the appropriate business services support groups. Being departmentally inclusive is important.

The business project team accountable for the process needs to exit the environment with a pre-exit plan in place. They should ensure that the operations people can manage the changed environment. A training and transition plan must be implemented early in the process. The exit requirements should be identified prior to the project engagements with strict efforts on measurable results.

Closure to the project and change process is critical for all parties involved. Once support teams take over operational responsibility, there should be a monitoring and measurement system in place to ensure that objectives are reached. By now the business project team is no longer involved but accountability still exists with key assigned members and stakeholders. There should be identified audit points that exist outside the project and into the operational departments.

Business departments that emphasize using best practices for projects and process change can establish themselves as innovative leaders by establishing work management discipline principals, measuring their activities, and showing the results that they made. This approach can be applied to any number of departments and projects; for example changes in technology, business processes, risk advisory or staff training.

When managing projects and business operational change it is important to keep your exit in mind with a disciplined approach. Measure your success and you will learn and achieve greater results.

QUESTION: Does your business take the time to think through the approach to getting things done better? 

Thought: Maybe it's time to build that brain power into the business best practice to bring down mistakes.Having good solid business requirements upfront can help. It is just a matter of training your people to facilitate that process better and then letting them do it.  

Advocates to build your business, I think

There has been a lot written about having an advocate strategy to building your business presence. Makes sense to me. Business is built on relationships and having people who know your work help you build and grow is important. So what is the best way to create and communicate with advocates?

• I have started with a list of 10 CEO, CFO and VP that I have been through my planning process. I am thinking that this is a good starting point. 
• I am thinking that maybe providing them content rich materials every 2 weeks. Something related to my flagship product and service. 
• I am considering setting up a special dropbox for files just for them (pdf). Some of my clients are old school email, a file folder and paper are all right. Anything else is new technology and they don't spend time with "new" media. I guess this means know your customers and what they like. 
• I am considering inviting my clients to get to know one another. I think we often leave clients in isolation and letting them intersect. In this case I think I am going to step our and connect them. Clients should have an opportunity to know one another. 
• I am thinking that the 10 people on my list should get acknowledged at least monthly in some way.
• I am also considering asking them permission prior to forwarding them value added content.

I hope that if I provide clients with value rich content, connect them, set the stage for additional networking, give them a place they could potentially share information privately that they will be more successful. Maybe this is something that might work for you. 

I think in business we all need to think through our client work approaches. The approach that I outlined above is open for discussion. Having advocates is important to any one's success. The challenge is often what is the best way to reach out to that small group that has the most influence on you success. 

What is the best way to communicate with those that have the most influence on your success. Maybe an advocates approach. I know for the people that I work with their way of communicating is the most important. 

Thanks for letter me write something a little different than my normal articles.

QUESTION: How best do you think a business should connect with their advocates, their fans? For me it was about writing about a lot of "I". Maybe you have a challenge like this. What did you do?

Seven Candid Strategic Questions that Every Business Leader Should Ask

Good questions are the key to successful planning and decision making. Throughout the business planning process we must consider strategic questions to help us understand the current situation, focus areas and our vision for the future. Strategic planning is an intensive process and should be a team effort - it should not be done in isolation.

A good place to start in the planning process is to focus on 'what' questions. What questions are extremely powerful tools for thinking about your business / personal strategy, goals and objectives. The key is to know which questions to ask and to be willing to take a candid look at your business.

Here are seven candid "what" questions that every business leader should ask:

What are the overall strengths and weaknesses of your business?

Strengths and weaknesses exist in all organizations and should include considerations for people, resources, culture, work processes, tools, supply chain, financial situation, etc. The list goes on and on. The important thing here is to start the process by first looking at your organization and its resources.

What are the overall opportunities and threats to your business? 
Focus here on your external world, the things you cannot control but must be aware of. Some items could include a market shift, retirement and succession, competitive movement and changes, the global business climate (local, national or international), obstacles or climate and weather effects. We often miss the opportunity to do environmental scanning. Look outside your office to truly understand the opportunities and threats to your organization.  

What political, economic, social and technological conditions impact your business? 
What's happening in your local business scene (economics)? Is there a product or service that people want or need to buy? Is technology impacting your team and their need for training? What important social change will impact the business? Are you developing leaders for tomorrow? Every answer should lead to another question. Dig deep, exhaust yourself and find people to help you through the process.   

What do you want to achieve, protect, avoid and eliminate? 
This question contains all the elements of risk planning. There are always things we want to achieve, protect, avoid and eliminate on a personal, team or organizational basis. What are they? Identify as many as possible and make a list. Examples vary but could include increased sales, keeping an established portfolio, avoiding trouble or accidents, establishing an employee health program or helping people drop a few pounds. The point here is that whatever is identified must be relevant to your business and its challenges.   

What are the key challenges you face today, tomorrow and in the distant future? 
We're in an era where we must be predictive and adaptive business leaders and professionals. Strategic planning is about time frames with past, present and future considerations. Establish what your work world should look like with time frames. Planning used to focus on 3 to 5 year cycles. That has changed. Now we must keep our eye on short-term road trips with long term implications.   

Where are we and how did we get here? 
This question is a pure honesty question. It is used to establish your present situation and to help you accept complete responsibility and accountability for it. No blame-storming allowed. Outside forces might have contributed, but at some point decisions were made to set your direction. As a business leader, you were either active or reactive and there were consequences. Capture it, leverage it and be prepared to let it go.   

What key initiatives are going to be placed on the strategic agenda of your business? Why? 
At some point you need to focus and make key decisions that will make a difference in your business. Building your strategic agenda is a different type of challenge and may require another approach. This may take 'why' questions, questions that focus on benefits and value. Before adding anything to your strategic agenda you must first clearly establish the benefits and values of those items.

Being honest about your business, the organization and its people is a challenge. When strategic planning it's important to remove yourself from the natural tendency of coming up with solutions. Establishing solutions is the action part of planning. Consider engaging an expert strategic facilitator to help. Remember that you don't plan to fail, you fail to plan and planning requires asking the right questions.

QUESTION: What do you need to do to get your business going in the right direction? Connect with me for a 30 minute discussion on some possible options to moving your business forward in a strategic direction. 1-866-559-8126 Ext 201