STRATEGY CENTRAL

You never know what you’ll find in Fast Company.  I loved last month’s article on the world’s most innovative companies.   Full of great thoughts and ideas.  Among the quotes I marked down was this one from Tim Armstrong, Google’s President of Advertising and Commerce in North America.

I tell new employees, ‘At Google, there are rocks and a stream.  You either become a rock, and the stream goes around you, or you get in the stream and move things along and start adding value.’

Something in there for all of us…isn’t there.

97 degrees out on the patio…but it’s a dry heat.  Probably should have put a picture of my blue Huntington Agave…but the Echium is about to bloom for the first time…and it’s going to be awesome!

So you’re trying to come up with a simple concept that will get your whole team on board.  You’ve talked it through.  Maybe you’ve argued for hours.  You’ve read Good to Great and struggled to come up with your hedgehog.  You might’ve even taken a look at Jim Collins’ Good to Great and the Social Sectors looking for a non-profit take on the idea.

Still need help?  You might want to try Will Mancini’s version in Church Unique.  Taking the time to identify your unique local predicament, collective potential, and apostolic esprit allows you to zero in on that very core idea that will bring impact to your organization.  Interesting take.  The hedgehog concept has always intrigued me.  The challenge with Collins’ version has been describing  what drives your economic engine.  This may be a good solution for those of us who are working the non-profit edge.

The greatest challenge with both versions?  Getting alignment from your team…especially those team members whose areas of expertise are found outside of the hedgehog or kingdom concept.  Mancini has some good ideas on that piece as well.  Watch for that in a future post.  For now…if you haven’t picked up your copy, you can do that right here.

There are a handful of books that I read at least once a year.  Patrick Lencioni’s Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive is on that short list.  I learn something new every time I read it.  It is one of my most marked-up books (both flyleaves are covered with notes and quotes).  It is the perfect companion to Jim Collins’ Good to Great.

Want a sneak peak at the four obsessions?  Here they are:

Build and maintain a cohesive leadership team
Create organizational clarity
Over-communicate organizational clarity
Reinforce organizational clarity through human systems

Why do I re-read it every year?  Those four ideas always need reinforcement.  If you’re in the business of learning how to be great at what you do…you’re missing out if you have not read The Four Obsessions. 

Found this one over at Kem Meyer’s blog:

God always takes the simplest way.  Albert Einstein

Interesting little streak of simplicity quotes.  Here’s yesterdays.

Every been in a situation where everything around you is obviously changing…but the organization itself is locked in some kind of time warp?  If you’ve ever been there, it’s an unforgettable experience.  Then again, maybe you’re in one right now!

The question is, "What do you do?"  What do you do when your organization is stuck and not adapting or changing to fit the realities around it?

Turning the Future Into Revenue has a great exercise for this situation.  Status Quo Scenario.  Here are the steps:

• Evaluate the realities outside of your organization as best you can.  This may involve demographic awareness, Gallup information, psycho-graphic data, etc.
• Once you’ve completed the info gathering stage, ask this question: "Ten years from now, what do we look like, assuming that the external environment changes in the ways we have forecast and imagined, while internally we make no fundamental changes?  What if we keep doing what we do now?  Describe our enterprise at a future date if we maintain the status quo?" (pp. 147-148)

This is an exercise that would be so helpful…if it weren’t for the eyes-closed-to-the-truth posture found in some of the places where change is desperately needed.

What about your organization?  Does it make sense to gather the data and conduct the exercise?

Shout out to the Daughtry segment on Idol tonight. 

Really finding some good stuff in my investigation of Church Unique by Will Mancini.  There’s been a lot written and said lately about simplicity.  How about this quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes?

I would not give a fig for simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for simplicity on the other side of complexity.

Simplicity "on this side of complexity" is less than genuine.  On the "other side of complexity" it’s the whole story. 

What’s the most important thing about strategy?  Any ideas?  I think it’s captured in this one liner from Church Unique by Will Mancini:

The central strategy you choose is not as important as whether there is ownership and integration around whatever strategy you choose (p. xxvii).

That’s it, isn’t it?  Many different strategies will work.  Many different strategies will get you down the road.  The key is to land on a strategy that your whole team can embrace and will support wholeheartedly.  Apart from that kind of engagement…it won’t happen.

Preparing for a talk in Atlanta. I reread a section of Turning the Future Into Revenue.  I just can’t get over how helpful parts II and III of this book are!  Really one of the very best books I’ve read on the subject of thinking about organizations and change.  I’m sure the name turns some of us off…but it’s really not about money.  It’s about becoming more strategic.  It’s about future planning.  It’s about change…and it has the word "revenue" in the title.  And it is one of the best books I’ve read in the last 5 years.

As I was working my way back through it today I noticed this quote (which I didn’t see on the first couple of passes).  Here’s the truth:

"I discovered early in my futuring career that endless research and exploration and discussion and writing of missions and goals and objectives and strategies and tactics and debating what these things actually mean and whether a goal has numbers or not and designating responsibilities and debating budgets and what is feasible and setting time lines and debating again whether we are talking about a strategy or a tactic or maybe it is actually a goal and we should put it there and when is the next meeting, all are designed to keep anything from happening, while giving the appearance of action. (emphasis mine)

Very "The Answer to How Is Yes", don’t you think?