Need a little inspiration to kick off your strategic planning? This is just the book for you. Inspired Strategy quickly takes you through the strategic planning process from a inspirational perspective, not the usual business speak.
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KTVN Channel 2, Reno Features our very own Erica Olsen! Text of the original story is featured below.
It’s never too early to learn how to start your own business. A book called “Strategic Planning for Dummies” is out and the author was in Reno today, signing books at Barnes and Noble. Money from the book sales go to an entrepreneurship program that helps high school girls learn how to create their own businesses.
“We thought it would be a great opportunity to give back to the program and help the girls in our community open their business through our contributions and books sales,” author Erica Olsen said. “Helping your business and helping the girls start their own business,” Frances Brown of the Girl Scouts of the Sierra Nevada said.
If you buy the book in January, that money will go to the program, which by the way is grand-funded.
At the end of the day, what is every business trying to do? Grow. More customers, more sales, positive cash flow, larger deal sizes, higher volume, more billable hours, justification for higher prices, etc. Ask any hard-working entrepreneur what she is working on and you’re bound to hear a comment related to growth. Why? Because if you’re not growing, you’re shrinking. It’s why we are all in business – to build or create something bigger than ourselves. And specifically, how do you grow your business to more than $1 million in revenue?
The standard growth strategies are numerous (and confusing) such as partnerships, market expansion, acquisition, product extension, and franchising. While these strategies are important and useful, I believe growth is ultimately determined by providing value to your customers, the people you hire, the processes they develop, and culture you choose to build. So instead of thinking about the detailed strategies themselves, let’s look at a few exciting and practical ways to help you move closer to the $1 million mark.
Drive the organization with big vision. Growth requires thinking big, then executing like crazy. Success is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent persistence. But that 10 percent is critical, otherwise the 90 percent is lost, aimless, and unproductive. According to Alvin Toffler, “You’ve got to think about the big things while you’re doing the small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.” Growth comes from pursuing a worthwhile plan with measurable rigor.
Account for big goals. Every organization sets goals, but sometimes they aren’t big, and sometimes they are not written down! A big vision is achieved through accomplishing big objectives and goals. That’s all execution really is – your organization’s ability to achieve goals. First, pick 3 to 5 strategic goals that you will focus on in 2007. Make sure all of these goals are focused on growing your business to $1 million. Second, develop action plans for each goal. Identify a responsible persona and a due date for each action item. Review regularly and hold people accountable. Create a culture that people that people feel responsible for “not missing a due date here.” That’s all there is to it – it doesn’t have to be complicated, confusing or time consuming.
Celebrate wins along the way. Publicly share big accomplishments, milestone, project completion, revenue goals. This sharing drives growth in two ways: 1) It motivates the people driving those accomplishments to press on. 2) Success and profit sharing breeds confidence, fueling enthusiasm for further growth. Everyone wants to be appreciated and we often dwell on what we failed to achieve, instead of celebrating the small wins. Do something special for yourself and your team. After all, it’s the journey, not just the destination that matters. Enviable growth business happens when you create something with ‘a feeling that we’re in this together.’
Seek out new ideas. Invite left and right-brained people into your organization to create a complete “brain trust” of skills and competencies. You need both perspectives to invent creative solutions, challenge the status quo, find hidden connections, new models, analyze data for discoveries, and explore parallel industries for new methods. Henry Ford could not have grown faster than everyone else had he not borrowed the division of labor manufacturing line concept from a meat packing plant. Walgreens could not have grown as fast had they not changed their approach to increased convenience instead of big stores, big ticket items. Southwest could not have grown had they not reinvented airline service and the hub-and-spoke approach. Challenge conventional wisdom to solve your customers’ issues and pains with non-traditional approaches.
Ignore distractions. In tandem with new ideas, we must focus! This is the never-ending struggle for entrepreneurs – too many ideas, too little resources. In an increasingly competitive environment, growth comes from being great at one thing at a time. Succeed at one thing that you know customers need. Thattakes focus – focus on the customer and focus on what you choose to do better than anybody. Use your vision as a filter to keep out distractions. If the activity is not line with your big goals, even if it is a good idea, table it and move on.
Empower through ownership. Inside almost every motivated employee is a frustrated entrepreneur. As we know, entrepreneurs like to build and own their work. They are achievement-oriented and take pride in results. Feed these engines with premium fuel by assigning ownership. Recognition is the number one motivator. You can unleash powerful output by clearly defining roles and responsibilities. Give ownership of action plans. And help everyone in your organization understand their purpose and impact on the big picture.
Neutralize negativity. There is no such thing as “try,” there is only “do.” That’s the attitude of a sustainable growth company. The question is never, “Are we going to make it?” The question is “What do you need to make it” and the answer is “here’s how we can”. But be realistic. Most growth companies don’t grow quickly without sustaining some damage. Consider how to avoid road blocks and road bumps along the way.
Know your market cold. As a wise person (I can’t remember whom) once said – sell something that people want to buy, not something you have to convince them to buy. In other words, know (don’t guess or assume) the needs and wants of your customers. Offer them something that solves their problems, makes their life better, something they can’t live without. Talk to them, go to their business or home, and learn as much as you can about how they use your product or service. And use that information to make your offering the best it can be. Don’t forget, it is your customers that will get you to that $1 million mark!
Passion overall. If you’re motivated and excited about what you are doing, people will follow and your organization will grow. This may be the most important element because it is the true spirit behind growth.
To everyone out there who is striving to hit $1 million (me included), may you hit that goal and them some!
Having a strategy isn’t enough. Many of us know all too well that having a great strategy will never yield results if it is not properly executed. The following article by Scott Glatstein of the American Chronicle takes a look at some of the causes of a failed strategy.
Business Strategy Execution: 4 Reasons Why Your Company’s Strategy Isn’t Working
There are many different value-creation strategies your company can follow to marketplace success. Perhaps your organization’s differentiating strategy is:
Your business strategy defines your company’s intent. In essence, it’s a promise – a promise that defines what your organization intends to deliver to its customers and the marketplace. But articulating a good strategy is only the beginning. It’s the strategy’s execution that determines whether an organization can turn good intentions into profits.
Poor Business Strategy Execution Is Destroying Business Opportunities
Companies invest so much time, energy and finances into identifying market opportunities and developing the perfect differentiating strategy to exploit them. Yet the vast majority of these business efforts fail. Quite often, companies and organizations blame their business failures on poor strategy. However, in most cases it’s not the strategy or plan for approaching the marketplace that should be blamed. It’s the implementation of that plan and the company’s inability to “keep its promise” that causes the enterprise to falter.
In fact, several studies confirm that poor execution is the number-one reason businesses fail in today’s marketplace. David Norton, author and professor at Harvard Business School, tells us that less than 10% of all business strategies are effectively implemented. This means that poor marketplace execution of the strategy is often the culprit, and not the strategy itself. This is a wake-up call for all business executives.
Here Are Four Primary Reasons Why Your Strategies Aren’t Living Up To Their Full Profit Potential:
1. The strategy fails to recognize the limitations of the existing organization.
Marketplace strategy makes huge demands on an organization’s capabilities and resources. While your organization can certainly transform its capabilities over time, there is a limit to how far and how fast. Recognizing what your organization can realistically deliver before crafting a new direction is essential to your business success.
2. Employees don’t know how the strategy applies to their daily work.
Most companies don’t communicate strategy broadly or effectively to their employees. If, for example, your strategy is to offer the best service, what does that really mean? What does it mean to your salesperson on the street, to your customer service representative in the call center and to your marketing manager at headquarters? If your employees don’t know how the go-to-market strategy affects their everyday work, they aren’t likely to implement it properly.
3. The organization’s business systems or processes can’t support the strategy.
It’s difficult to implement a new strategy without changing the way the organization works. Does the workflow across your various departments and divisions support your marketplace intent? Can your systems and tools meet the demands of the new strategic vision? Pursuing a new strategy with old capabilities is a recipe for disaster.
4. Performance metrics and rewards are not aligned with the strategy.
Is your organization communicating that it wants to be a service leader, but instead it rewards its customer service reps for keeping calls short? Or are you creating measurement tools that make employees feel good about their performance but don’t really measure the company’s key success factors. Metrics and rewards must tie back to the specific employee behaviors sought – behaviors that support your company’s strategic vision.
These issues share one common theme – your organization’s preparedness to implement the go-to-market strategy you have created. Strategy has to be more than a feel-good presentation shared with your managers, shareholders and the media. It has to be woven into the fabric of your organization.
Your employees need clear direction and the tools and processes necessary to support them. You need to “activate” your strategy. Strategy Activation is the new bridge that spans the chasm between strategic intent and marketplace implementation. It takes “what” an organization wants to do and defines “how” it is going to do it. It ensures that every employee drives the promises made to the marketplace across every customer touchpoint every day. Without this, your strategic vision will remain a presentation and nothing more.
Creating momentum in your life takes increasing the things that move you forward and decreasing those that hold you back. Sounds like a snap, but I know, just like you do, that living a life that we desire is not always easy to achieve. We have habits and repeat cycles to overcome. But by creating momentum, we can move past those and move toward the life we want.
Momentum, by its nature, requires a lot of upfront push to get the ball rolling. Here are ten tips to jumpstart the momentum in your life:
Create your picture of success and make it a reality. It’s true – if you can’t see your vision of success, you’ll never get there. So what does success look like for you day to day? How do you want to spend your time? How do you want to define success for yourself this year. Write your vision down and post it somewhere you will see it everyday.
Know what you love and do what you love. You know what they say, either fix the problem or quite complaining about it. If you hate your job, get a new one. Go to school and learn a new profession. Start that business you’ve always dreamed of. Pick up that crazy hobby you’ve been thinking about. Sound too scary? Facing too many roadblocks (time, money, naysayers)? Why not tackle one of them. Explore your options, and then take action. There is no time like the present!
Pick a BHAG. What is that big, hairy, audacious goal you want to achieve this year that will help you step into your vision of success? Write it down along with the one thing you can do today to make it happen. Here is an example of the power of a written goal: A study was conducted among a graduating class at Harvard to see how many had concrete goals around how much money they wanted to make. Only 3% had written their goals down. Ten years later, that 3% were making more than the other 97% combined! Now that is power!
Eliminate your energy drains and recharge yourself. Energy drains are those things that drag you down. Things that recharge your energy can be anything that inspires you and puts you in a good mood, like a room in your house, a place to relax, an activity, or a person. Spend more time doing the things that give you energy and stick a post-it next to each drain with an idea for getting rid of it.
Remove your fears. The greatest source of procrastination is often a deep-seeded fear – fear of success, change, failure, ridicule, the unknown. Take a daily step to remove your fears by asking yourself every day, “What would I do today, if I were not afraid?”
Take control of your finances. Do you feel like you are on a treadmill, working more to pay for ever increasing bills? It seems like the more we work, the more we spend to do the things we don’t have time to do while we are working (housekeeper, take-out food, dry cleaner, etc.). Spend a little less here and a little less there and stop hemorrhaging money. Make sure what you purchase is in line with your values. Run a QuickBooks report to see exactly what you are spending your money on. What if you decreased every category (except maybe your mortgage and other loan payments) by 10%? Use your money to fuel your dreams instead of feeding the treadmill.
Create a braintrust. Identify a handful of people in your life who can help you move your life forward. Consider pulling from a wide range of backgrounds, ages, experience and opinions. Sometimes those who are most critical provide the best insights. Call on them together or individually to help you move past any roadblocks and keep the momentum going.
Find the time. One of the biggest challenges to having the life we want is finding the time to do all we want to do. Track how you spend your time for a week. At the end, tally up the time spent on each thing – such as sleeping, eating, shopping, checking email, etc. Look at each category. What things can you do to cut time in each area? Be creative and find the time to do what you love to do, instead of what you have to do.
Let things evolve. When the flywheel of momentum starts to turn, pay attention to clues, connections, and opportunities that are presented to you. Allow your future to unfold and change in ways you might not have been able to imagine when you started dreaming.
Commit to your dreams. Creating momentum starts with commitment. Commit to doing one of the ideas above that will move you closer to your dreams.
We all know that life is short. So, shouldn’t we all live the best life we possibly can? Absolutely! Because remember – how we spend our days, is how we spend our lives.
Erica Olsen is the vice president of marketing for M3 Planning (www.m3planning.com), which helps growth-oriented organizations develop and execute their strategies. Erica is also the author of the newly released Strategic Planning For Dummies. Carol McClelland is the owner of Transition Dynamics (www.transitiondynamics.com) and author of Your Dream Career For Dummies.
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