No One Asked My Opinion…But $100 Billion for What?
Filed under: Management Education, Social Commentary, Strategy
As of this writing, the world is abuzz with the expected Facebook IPO. The number $100 billion is being floated and passed around (probably by those who stand to benefit from a big IPO), and whether real or wild speculation, that’s a number that gives one cause to pause.
This is beginning to feel like Déjà vu all over again (thanks, Yogi Berra), much like that fascinating period in the late ‘90’s when stratospheric valuations were applied to firms that had no products, no earnings and sometimes no revenues. That was a heady time, when the laws of nature, physics and finance were seemingly supplanted by the value of eyeballs and business models that had no substance or staying power.
Unlike many of the great dot-com flameouts, Facebook has a lot going for it, including near world-domination of the social media scene and reportedly, good and growing revenues for advertising. Throw in some alleged profits and it certainly sounds like the law of gravity has not been eliminated…just eased a bit.
I’m certain I will raise the ire of the many who now view Facebook as an important part of their lives (disclosure: I’m a Facebook misanthrope), however, I can’t quite comprehend the valuation for the value proposition.
The proliferation of this medium is fascinating and not to be ignored, but it doesn’t fundamentally change much of anything as it relates to how companies run their businesses. It does offer incremental opportunities for communication, connecting and monitoring, but I don’t think most firms in most industries are rethinking their business models and value chain activities based on Facebook.
While my crystal ball is notoriously cloudy when it comes to prognosticating on stocks, I know enough to steer clear of numbers where a reasonable person cannot connect the fundamentals to the price. Of course, many years ago, I met a guy named Howard and had a strong cup of coffee and failed to see that this would ever catch on. After all, good coffee at the time was weak and cheap.
For a more cogent view of why this doesn’t makes sense, be sure and check out the article on Forbes: Four Reasons Why Facebook’s IPO is Irrelevant.
And for those who have a strong defense of the game-changing, we should all rethink our business models impact of Facebook, I’m looking forward to your thoughts.
Strategy-Towards Hypotheses, Experiments, Involvement & Learning
Filed under: Leadership, Leading Change, Organizational Transformation, Project Management, Strategy
Few would argue that a nimble, quick-to-learn and quick-to-adapt organization is a bad thing. Given the rate of change in our world, those characteristics are increasingly table-stakes for survival and success.
Why then has the approach to strategy and the notion of “strategic planning” in so many organizations remained mired in a 1960’s kind of static, top-down event-focused model?
Many firms practice a style of strategic planning that might have worked in a different time and place, but today, fast-to-try, fast-to- fail and fast-to-learn are essential for survival and success.
Give Me an Epiphany, Darn-It!
Rarely does just the act of thinking through circumstances, opportunities and strategies yield the epiphany that allows a firm to carve out a competitive advantage.
In my experience, the management teams who have pursued the “strategy as event’ approach with the annual or semi-annual meeting(s) serving as the time to talk strategy and decide, are often frustrated with the time investment and disappointing outcomes. Few epiphanies…a lot of time…a lot of bickering and ambiguous outcomes with no clear next steps. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?
Hypotheses and Informed Experiments, Please!
The best outcome of the front end of any strategy process is one or more (a limited number, please) of ideas…hypotheses, that can quickly be turned into and managed as experiments.
True value in the form of learning accrues to the organization from working through the strategic experiment, assessing outcomes and refining the ideas. Because these workplace and marketplace experiments require people to implement, manage, and assess them, the act of engaging the employee population creates understanding, involvement, excitement and importantly idea sharing.
It Feels So Good When We Stop!
I’ve worked with teams who were accustomed to and frustrated by the “event” orientation of planning. When refocused on assessment, analysis and importantly, hypothesis generation, the unreasonable expectation of finding the magical answer was replaced by high quality dialogue around generating ideas for better serving customers and beating competitors. After a series of these discussions over time, and with some focused facilitation, the teams were able to zero in on one or two strategic hypotheses to invest in and learn from.
The Project Management Art of Building out Strategic Experiments:
While I frequently reference this phase as the Execution phase, I prefer Experiment…both because it doesn’t sound so fatal…and it implies Doing, Measuring, Learning and Refining (DMLR). In my estimation, its in the DMLR cycle where the real work…and the real “Ah Ha” moments of strategy occur.
Six Ideas for Implementing an Effective Doing, Learning, Measuring, Refining Program:
1. Treat each strategic experiment like a project. Assign a Project Manager and use Best Practices PM to charter, scope, engage stakeholders, define the work, assess the risks, plan and estimate the work, implement the work, monitor and communicate. Yeah, that’s a mouthful. Your Project Manager in this case is priceless.
2. Ensure that there’s a strong sponsor in place for every experiment. Yes, best practices project management again. If this is important enough to be betting your strategic future on, it’s important enough to provide a Supportive Sponsor with heft and teeth.
3. Explain, Engage and Listen! People work in compliance under orders, they work with their hearts and minds when they are part of something big. Getting them involved is good. Arming them with context on why, and what and importance is critical. Listening to their feedback is priceless. Since many strategic initiatives involve doing new things or doing things differently, this holistic approach to engagement is essential.
4. Create Learning and Sharing Forums with Teeth. It’s good to pre and post-mortems…it’s better to create ample opportunities for idea sharing, lessons learned and adjustments to experiments on the move. Hey, I’m probably violating several tenets of The Scientific Method with the adjustment statement, but timeliness is critical and your Project Manager will help you manage changes in the plan.
By the way, by this time, you may want to give your PM a big fat raise!
5. The Truth is Always in the Field…Sometimes You Just Have to Look Carefully. The best strategic experiments involve customers and partners. Invite them in…make them part of the process and of course observe and listen carefully. And then act.
6. Do Something with the Outcomes-Plan to Change or Move Forward. After a period of time and armed with the insights and feedback of employees, customers and partners, there’s a vetting and decision-making process that those in charge have to prosecute. From kill to change to go to what’s next, you and your team are on the hook for returning to the process and assessing and deciding.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
There are at least two “dirty little secrets” in what I’ve described above. It’s a nefarious plan for involving the broader organization in strategy and execution, and it not so secretly “operationalizes” the work of strategy. While there’s no magic and I would be misleading if I didn’t highlight that the process is filled with bumps, hiccups and debates it’s darned powerful if and when managed properly.
The Heavy Lifting of Career (Re) Invention-5 Keys to Moving Forward
Filed under: Career, Life and Business, Marketing Yourself, Professional Growth
Whether you are a few years removed from college or a few years removed from that time when prior generations began thinking about retiring, chances are, you or someone you know is involved in defining or redefining their career.
It’s a daunting task in a world where the old rules no longer apply. For those just starting on their career journeys, many have sprinted out of college only to run face-first into the brick wall that is the job market in so many sectors and markets. For this group, career development has turned out to involve a lot more work than just graduating.
For those of us with a few more laps around the block to our credit, the future doesn’t quite look like what we expected. The book on career management has a new chapter that many of our parents never experienced. It’s called, “Reinvention,” and it’s really daunting.
Regardless of where you fit on the chronological scale, there are at least five key issues that I encourage you to wrap your arms and mind around. Like much of the invention or reinvention process, tackling these items is challenging, uncomfortable, and critically important.
At Least Five Keys for Career (Re) Invention:
1. Aligning Your Values, Purpose and Goals around a Vision.
While your tendency may be to roll your eyes at the fluffy and abstract discussion of personal vision and values, the reality is that you do have a set of operating instructions (your core values) and there is a purpose that drives all of us. Sometimes we ignore that purpose (often for decades), but it is there and aligning values and purpose around some big, exciting and challenging goals is an important part of the process. It’s awkward and difficult and squishy to grasp but when you focus in on a vision for yourself, it’s transformational.
For some help here, check out Ed Batista’s outstanding post, “Developing Your Professional Vision,” and Jesse Lyn Stoner’s (with Ken Blanchard) excellent book, Full Steam Ahead.
2. Cultivating Your Confidence and Self-Esteem.
Confidence is critical for fueling invention or transformation. Without it, we just dream. With it, we take actions to build towards our dreams.
I’ve long believed the biggest barrier to individual success is self-confidence. Recognize this issue as human, get over any stigma attached to it, and seek coaching, help and guidance on developing the inner-strength to tackle problems and issues that seem foreboding and practically impossible. A good coach is priceless here. My post, “9 Ideas for Strengthening Your Self-Esteem” is a starting point.
3. Strengthening Your Professional Presence.
A critical part of the confidence issue is the ability to project this confidence and to engage as an articulate, intelligent professional. Those who lack confidence AND who lack the ability present themselves as confident, knowledgeable and interesting human beings are relegated to bit roles in their own careers.
From your posture to your eye-contact to your smile to your eyes to your ability to listen and importantly, your use of your vocabulary and your ability to articulate your thoughts, it’s all on display and it’s all being judged. Solicit feedback from trusted sources, engage a speaking coach and take deliberate action to match the vision. One of my favorite books on this topic: Seeing Yourself as Others Do, offers some great guidance.
4. Planning to Act…Creating a Strategic Plan for Your Career.
Pardon the lofty sounding label, but you cannot operationalize a vision…you can’t put into play unless you’ve created a roadmap complete with those items on the critical path that are essential for success.
Armed with a vision, you need to set clear goals and define those very clear actions and milestones required for success. My favorite definition of strategy: “integrated actions in pursuit of competitive advantage,” reminds me of the need to coordinate my activities, measure my results and adjust accordingly. Put pen to paper. The act of planning forces you to think through what it takes to succeed. And then engage. You can update the plan along the way.
5. Building Your Professional Brand.
There’s never been a better time to build and form and frame your professional brand…to build yourself as a thought-leader than now. The tools are there, they are mostly free and they are truly powerful. Sadly, just about everyone I know who is struggling with the career issue is failing to leverage these tools in the proper manner to position themselves as thought-leaders, as exciting and relevant professionals and as people worth listening to and investing in.
The person I pay attention to on this topic is Dr. Bret Simmons writing at Positive Organizational Behavior. Bret is a champion of the topic of building your professional brand…particularly when it comes to leveraging the power of social media to do this.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
Whether you are building, rebuilding or transforming your career, the work described above is some of the sticky, dirty, roll-up-your sleeves hard work that builds towards success. There’s no silver bullet, no convenient short-cut and no getting away from the heavy lifting.
Thoughts on Your Personal and Professional Success in the New Year
Filed under: Career, Leadership, Leadership Skills, Leading Change, Leading the Generations, Management Education, Performance, Professional Growth
Hang out with really smart people and teams and some great lessons can’t help but rub off on you.
I was truly gifted in 2011 to gain access to and work with and support some remarkable professionals across a number of different market segments…from high tech to professional services to manufacturing, and I learned something with every engagement and encounter.
Here are Six Lessons Learned that Can Help Us All in the New Year:
1. It’s Critical to Think Deeply About Your Business: Strategy still counts. The strongest teams/firms I observed are the ones who took the time to step-back and evaluate their situation and rethink their futures. And then back all of that lofty thinking with action, learning and adaptation.
Call it what you want…I call it strategy work…and done right…asking and answering tough questions and then backing the ideas with key hypotheses and experiments is the corporate equivalent of a continuous fitness program.
2. Operational Myopia Guarantees Mediocrity (or worse): Conversely, the firms and teams mired in the muck struggled to get beyond the endless operational discussions and move towards the tough questions that help assess the current state and begin to identify options for the future. Yeah, everyone needs to make sales in the here and now. We all know that. Adding in the work of thinking about and adapting your business in pursuit of better serving customers, finding new customers, extending into larger growth areas or more attractive categories takes that extra level of discipline that separates the big winners from everyone else.
3. Leadership Counts. More than ever…and not just at the top. High performance firms have an unrelenting focus on developing people who can think critically, lead others to challenge convention and stimulate people to provide their best results. And given the past decade or so of leadership failures, people are quick to sniff out and mentally discard the disingenuous leaders. If you are leading others, you need to bring your “A” game, and the game isn’t about you…it’s about everyone else and what you can do for them!
4. Behold The Rise of the Integrator Leader: individual contributors who embrace the role of integrator…bringing together disparate groups and resources to solve problems are the future formal leaders in organizations. We are all well served to view our own roles through the filter of the new integrator leader. Build your network(s) internally and externally and learn to connect networks in pursuit of solving problems.
5. Diversity is a Strategic Asset to Build Competitive Advantage: While we predictably and annoyingly gravitate to those who act, think (and yes, look) like us, the true opportunity for greatness is in bringing together people of disparate backgrounds, ethnicities and ages and setting them loose to change something significant. The best leaders get this. The rest are still mired in the misguided thinking from another century.
6. If You’re Not Learning, You are Failing. Learning is more important than ever. The top performing professionals are learning everyday in the workplace (through experimentation), are pushing themselves personally to continue to grow in their respective fields, are filling classrooms and demanding more from an old and mostly broken educational system, and leveraging technology and unparalleled access to information to expand their thinking. There are no time-outs allowed when it comes to gaining and applying new knowledge.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
The short form:
Strategy isn’t a four letter word. We all need to find ways to break out of the day-to-day crunch to assess and learn and plan. Leadership skills are more critical than ever…and the best and most powerful leaders might not have people reporting to them. Diversity isn’t just an H.R. initiative, and if you aren’t learning every single day, you’re moving backwards at an accelerating pace.
May 2012 be a year of learning, growth and professional success.
3 Key Strategy Questions to Ask Your Teams Regularly
In my experience, the management teams that lead the best performing businesses are those that incorporate at least three key strategic questions into almost every operational and status discussion.
What are Your Teams Talking About?
The gross majority of the dialogue in an organization is about How, and Who and When and the important What and Why issues are left for strategy meetings and other “high-level” discussions. While understandable in the hectic pace of the workday, the shortage of these important What and Why discussions reinforces a dangerous form of operational myopia, where the underlying and unspoken assumption is: If we simply get this done, we’ll be better off as a firm.
No disrespect nor trivialization intended for operations and execution. Getting it done is critical. However, my premise is that you can strengthen (without paralyzing) the quality of these discussions (particularly management and project team discussions) and potentially uncover new ideas or cross-check long-standing assumptions, with the regular inclusion of a few key questions.
3 Key Strategy Teams to Ask Your Teams Regularly:
1. How does this initiative help us grow/create power? (Power: new customers, new revenue in current customers, new revenue in new/adjacent markets, market share). If it doesn’t directly tie to or enable the creation of power, why are you doing it?
2. How meaningfully different is this to our clients? So many ideas are good in isolation…promoted by people passionate about their offerings, but ultimately, they are not meaningful enough to clients to prompt action (investment, change, trade-out etc.). While not all clients can articulate what they want (as Steve Jobs taught us most recently), your team must be able to substantiate that the initiative is one that will prompt action.
3. How defensible is our approach versus our most dangerous competitors? Too many “me too” and easily replicated initiatives is a formula for stagnation or decline. If you cannot pass this critical acid-test question, something is wrong.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
These are just a few of the important questions that must be regularly asked and answered in the course of forming, assessing and adjusting strategy. However, instead of saving all of the good questions for the offsites, start immediately incorporate these three in your management and status meetings, and you’ll dramatically increase the quantity of meaningful dialogue (and action) taking place every day.
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Want More? Check out Art Petty’s latest book, Leadership Caffeine-Ideas to Energize Your Professional Development. Created for fast-moving and highly motivated professionals and leaders, Leadership Caffeine offers more than 80 short, idea-packed essays for the critical leadership and professional development situations in your life. (All royalties on purchases through 12/2 will see the royalties donated to a local food pantry. See original promo note for specifics.)
Join the many groups and management teams and meeting/conference organizers who have adopted Leadership Caffeine as a discussion and development tool. The collection makes a great gift for the newly promoted leader or for your team during the holidays.
- Single and Kindle copies on Amazon.
- Group and Volume orders, visit Marathon Books for the best service.
About Art Petty:
Art Petty is a Leadership & Career Coach and Strategy Consultant, helping motivated professionals of all levels achieve their potential. In addition to working with highly motivated professionals, Art frequently works with project teams in pursuit of high performance. Contact Art via e-mail to discuss a coaching, workshop or speaking engagement or to inquire about being a guest on The Leadership Caffeine podcast.
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