Strategic Discipline Blog

Your long term goals for your business won't be achieved unless you break them down into individual accountabilities and priorities.  As Peter Drucker pointed out, "Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work."

Forgive the short detour from the One Page Strategic Plan Quarterly priorities.  Yesterday I had about 4 + hours of windshield time and listened to Gallup's audio on Strength Based Leadership.  One business coaching tool that I've been recommending for my clients is the Strengths Based Leadership test.  [A word of warning you may have difficulty navigating this site before you purchase the audio or the book]

Is it comforting to know that even the big guys get things wrong when it comes to customer experience?  Maybe I'm daft, but yesterday when I attempted to replace my old wireless router with a new Linksys [Cisco] wireless router there seemed to be a clear disconnect between what the customer might experience and Linksys efforts to resolve potential problems. 

Just about every business I know can put together a one year plan for their business.  How many actually do is another question.  The biggest issue is whether the plan has the teeth to succeed.  Does it muster the proper support and accountability to achieve the expected result?   You need only refer to my last blog Strategic Planning - Great Strategy Isn't Enough to understand the multitude of reasons why most business plans fail.  That's why you need Strategic Discipline.

Before moving to your One Year Plan it's important to understand that developing your strategy isn't enough.  Getting your executive team together to postulate, plan, brainstorm and discover your 3-5 year plan and then determine your key thrusts and capabilities isn't nearly enough to move the needle on your business.

In Mastering the Rockefeller Habits Verne Harnish states that to become and remain competitive your company needs three things:

A recipe for a great meal is only as good as its presentation.  Clarity in your business is only as good as your ability to communicate it and then implement.  So perhaps your buying into to the idea of creating a vision for your business as the recipe for growth.  What's next? Gazelles One Page Strategic Plan provides clarity and action steps to not only broadcast your intentions but to provide steps to get everyone on board and contributing to the momentum of your top priorities.  It's the key to not only achieving clarity in your business, it provides the next action steps.  You must not only indicate where you are going, you must give your team a way to climb on board and contribute.

In Clarity Dissolves Resistance we discussed how many business owners and executives fail to understand the importance of determining a vision for their business.  While small business owners [less than $1M in revenue] may be more guilty of this than mid-size business owners, it’s not hard to find this lack of vision in larger companies.  The changing economy, advancing technology, competitive pressures, internal challenges all contribute to this so-called fog of war.  It can dull the senses and reduce the leader’s appreciation for developing a vision.  Setting priorities and communicating them to employees is critical to growth. 

How do you motivate action?  Whether it's your employees or customers it's a good idea to make them feel like they have a head start to the finish line.

If you've been watching any news of late you've seen several incidents where employees who have not received favorable performance reviews have gone off and actually murdered their peers or supervisors. If there's an indictment against performance reviews or at least how they are being conducted this is a good example of it. 

The expert on this is Aubrey Daniels and his book Oops, 13 Management Practices That Waste Time and Money lists Performance Reviews as #3 on his list.   Performance reviews go against rule number three and four of Aubrey's Making Performance Work errors to avoid [See Positive and Negative Reinforcement - Oops].

If there's two things that have been consistent in my coaching training with Gazelles [Rockefeller Habits] and E-Myth is that performance reviews are not good tools for improving morale or getting better performance.

Aubrey Daniels quote sums up the lessons we teach in Gazelles coaching, "The best job you will ever have is one in which you know how well you have done at the end of every working day."   

If you still believe in Performance Reviews ask yourself this question. What are you trying to accomplish?

Here are some keys to creating an organization where people do their best every day based on the value of positive reinforcement:

• Knowledge of how you are doing is essential to any kind of improvement
• The best feedback cycle is immediate
• Every job can be measured and
• Performers will help you measure them when they learn that measure is sued to help them perform better and not used as a basis for criticism and punishment.
• The goal of this type of appraisal should be to have all employees performing in the top group.
• Rewards for managers should be contingent on the number of performers reaching the top level, not some aggregate measure of the unit performance.
• When manager success is determined by the employee success it changes the behavior of the manger from evaluator to coach. That creates more involvement in the day to day performance of employees by the manager.

All these points are from Aubrey Daniels book Oops. He points out that managers and supervisors should be teachers and coaches who job it is to transfer their knowledge and experience to others in an efficient and positive manner. It's not to sit in judgment.