In a recent article I read on LinkedIn titled, Do you have the guts to tear up your priority list?, posted by Verne Harnish he talks about the goals and priorities we set forth in the New Year. We always seem to add more then one but sometimes less is more. Why not focus on one major goal and make it a priority to help you and/or your business vs. a half dozen that does nothing but add pressure to yourself.
Read The Full Article Here
I recently read a white paper entitled “The Focused Company”, produced by Bain and Company. As a business coach, I have found that while most clients understand the importance of prioritization and focusing, they fail to achieve either. Why does this occur?
As an owner of three businesses, I can appreciate the challenge. There are so many things that must be done in order to be successful in business. As a result, it can be hard to see what is crucial. The natural entrepreneur has the “shiny object” syndrome. We are interested in pursuing the “shiny object”, which distracts us from concentrating on the matter at hand.
Business executives mainly fail to focus because of the way in which the human mind works. We operate more on a subconscious versus a conscious level. We tend to learn by repeated behaviors and allow those repeated behaviors to take precedence over conscious learning. In other words, our brains have us operating on auto-pilot. We may know consciously that the way we have behaved in the past is not working, but our subconscious knowledge still drives future behavior.
According to the Bain report, “… 80% of CEOs expect high levels of complexity over the next five years. Far fewer feel prepared to cope with it. A truly focused company, one that has cut complexity to the minimum, does not invest to win in every element of its business. It invests primarily in its core, the business in which it can outperform everybody else. A focused company does not try to appeal to every potential customer. It concentrates on the most profitable customers, those who it can serve better than any competitor can.”
As many of my readers know, I am a certified Gazelles Coach. As such, we take our clients through a process known as the “Four Decisions,” which was derived from a well-read book, “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits” by Verne Harnish. The power of the “Four Decisions” process is not producing the “one-page business plan.” While that is the output of the process, the true value derives from the discovery that occurs by going through the process.
We recently worked with a multinational public company that operates with several billion in revenue and has little-to-no profit to show for it. By working with their coaches, they found that the secret to achieving greater growth and profitability is predicated upon how well they are able to focus. The leadership team was stunned to realize that they had grown to several billion in revenue, and they were struggling because of their failure to have a focused strategy. Our client discovered that their focus had been on how much supply of product they had versus possible customer requirements. If you wanted to analyze their customer base and go-to-market strategy — there was none. As a result, they had no customer loyalty and were more susceptible to market pricing than if they had focused on a core customer and mastered those variables in their business that were important to the core customer.
Now that this has been discovered, it will be important that their coach continues to help them focus products and services in a way that best addresses the needs of the customers that they believe have the highest profit potential and will stay loyal as a result of addressing these needs. We concluded that, if they do this well, they will be able to use up 100% of their manufacturing capacity by serving much fewer customers well. Rather than being supply-driven they will become customer-driven. To accomplish this, it will be important to design the organization in a way that supports making critical decisions rather than supporting existing processes. Also, by being customer-driven rather than process-driven will result in integrated process efficiency rather than functional efficiency.
In the end, companies must attack complexity in their business. Focus is a never-ending journey. Business must focus the majority of organizational emphasis on a very few key areas that are costing too much or causing some type delay in order to best serve core customers. We also recommend that businesses should focus their activity by quarter, treating each quarter as a 13-week race. Race to improve one major area of your business. What you will find is that fixing one area will reveal sizable opportunities for simplification elsewhere for the next quarter.
Howard Shore is an executive leadership coach and founder of Activate Group Inc., based in Miami, Florida. His firm works with companies to deliver transformational management and business coaching to executive leadership. To learn more about executive leadership coaching through AGI, please visit www.activategroupinc.com , contact Howard at (305) 722-7216 or email him
I am supporter of great books that I recommend to my clients and Verne Harnish’s new book entitled “The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time” is a great book that has influenced decisions that changed not only companies, but industries and even nations. If your venture is looking for some powerful ideas then this book is perfect for you. To read a free chapter please visit: http://bit.ly/RYTHWq
Please contact us if you want to learn about other books we recommend.
Writing a business strategy can be daunting for anyone, even a seasoned business strategy consultant like yours truly. There are so many formats and so much information you could include, and you always end up questioning whether you’ve included too much or not enough. Admittedly, I have used multiple formats and metrics, and my style has evolved over the years, but today I can say there are six strategic planning communication “tools” that must be included in your plan.
1. Business Purpose. State the sole mission, or purpose of the company…in one word. I know, I know. This is a huge challenge, but it is an exercise that forces company leadership to get specific, visionary and inspired. It has amazing effects on the theme of the business strategy and unites the entire team behind one concept or idea. This one-word purpose will not change every year. Like the mission statement, it should only be revisited every 5 to 10 years, if it is written well.
2. One-sentence Strategy. What are you trying to achieve in the business right now, in one sentence? Like the “purpose” exercise, this exercise will help you get to the core of what your business aims to do, and communicate it in a concise and memorable way.
3. Brand Promise. What kind of relationship do you want to have with your customers? What problem do you want to solve for them? How will you make their lives better? This is what you want to describe in your brand promise, which will begin something like this: To be the best____ by _______. Or like this: To enhance our customers’ _______by _________.
4. Main Target Audience. Please don’t tell me “anyone is a customer”. Even if anyone could use your product it doesn’t mean they are the primary decision-makers. You need to identify one main target audience. You must do this in order to strategize which decision-maker pain points you will address, and how you will market and sell to them. In this regard, all audiences are certainly not created equal.
5. “Big Hairy Audacious Goal”. Business leadership is not for the faint of heart. It commands us to be bold and set our sights high for the future. What is the ultimate destination for your company? What does your Mount Everest summit look like? State it in a way that is inspiring—if Denzel Washington were describing it in the climax of a film, what would he say?
6. X Factor. What truly makes your product or service different? Be ruthlessly honest. What is the one thing you do that none of your competitors can claim?
When was the last time you revisited your business strategy? Does it include any of these tools?
Howard Shore is an executive leadership coach who works with companies that need leadership development and business management coaching. Based in Miami, Florida, Howard’s firm, Activate Group, Inc. provides strategic planning tools and management coaching to businesses across the country. To learn more about strategic planning and development through AGI, please visit www.activategroupinc.com, contact Howard at (305) 722-7216 or email him.
A quote from Evangelos Venizelos, Greek finance minister regarding the austerity measures they passed to avoid defaulting on their financial obligations:
“When you have to choose between bad and worse, you will pick what is bad to avoid what is worse.”
It made me think about business planning. During the Great Recession, plenty of companies had to slash budgets and overhead to stay afloat. These are uncertain times (just ask the citizens of Greece) and I think part of planning for prosperity is thinking through possible worst-case scenarios.
If you had to institute your own austerity measures to survive, what would you cut first? Have you at least thought about bad-case and worst-case scenarios if we hit another recession?
Howard Shore is a business planning expert who provides business strategy and consultation services. To learn more about how an executive coach, management consultant, leadership training, or business coach can help you, please visit his website at www.activategroupinc.com or contact Howard Shore at (305) 722-7216 or email him.
I get a lot of calls and emails asking about writing a business plan. There are so many books and articles on writing one it can be overwhelming, but there are three resources I like and recommend as good starting points.
1. Entrepreneur Magazine. There are oodles of great articles on their site, but I especially like this one on the Top 10 Business Plan Mistakes.
2. Small Business Association of America has a wonderfully thorough section on writing a good business plan. Plus, tons of other great tips and advice.
3. Activate Group blog. Okay, a little shameless self-promotion. But seriously, I have a great section on my blog with some down-and-dirty articles on business planning.
What other resources do you like for advice on writing a business plan?
Howard Shore is a business growth expert who provides business strategy and consultation services. To learn more about how an executive coach, management consultant, leadership training, or business coach can help you, please visit his website at www.activategroupinc.com or contact Howard Shore at (305) 722-7216 or email him.
In John Maxwell’s book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership he identified “The Law of Influence”, which states that, “The True Measure of Leadership is influence – nothing more, nothing less.”
