Don't let this one word scare you

We strategic thinkers so easily get our hopes up sometimes.

Haven’t you been in those sessions before where you just know you can drive the group to truly selling out to some key objectives and committing together to make it all happen? Things are going well, you’ve got your tight list of objectives and goals, and it feels like some real barriers have been knocked down.

Then someone points out that there’s one small initiative that hasn’t been addressed in the objectives.

Then another someone points out there’s a small vocal minority that hasn’t been addressed in the objectives.

Then a couple folks realize John and Jane Doe, who have been around forever, aren’t going to think the objectives address an area they’re interested in.

And the snowball builds and builds and builds. And that demon known as consensus creeps in and starts turning tight, focused, strategic objectives into generic, limp, scattered corporate nonsense.

You’ve been there, haven’t you?

It’s one of the most deflating experiences that any strategic session can endure, and it’s way too common.

Maybe it’s due to simple fear. Fear of risk. Fear of alienating a possibility. Fear of offending someone.

Or maybe it’s because people simply don’t understand the basic nature of positioning and attraction. That people are attracted to what’s bold and specialized and exclusive. That no one chooses generic on purpose.

Whatever the reason, there is some good news: you can thwart a lot of this nonsense by just apply a simple word to your process.

You interested?

The One Word that Makes All the Difference

It turns out that it’s not just thirty-something single guys who are afraid of commitment. Corporate leaders tend to be that way, too. When the stakes are high and jobs are on the line, it’s really tough to get the group to buy-in and sell out to “the plan.” It’s excruciatingly painful to get the team to commit to a simple list of five objectives because it’s possible there are five other objectives that you could be doing. It’s tough to get someone to stand by those objectives simply because they could be wrong.

This is a human issue, really.

So you, the guy who has a true understanding and appreciation of strategic planning and commitment, need to add something to the conversation that will put everyone at ease while still getting you a 90% commitment level to the group. It’s just a single word, and it goes something like this:

PRIMARILY

Adding this one fairly simple word can help you cut through most of the crap that strategy sessions tend to turn up, and still retain an extremely high commitment level from the team.

Here’s How It Works

Let’s say you’re narrowing down to three major objectives for 2012. A simple way you may present this is with this statement:

We will grow in 2012 because we will … 

1. Create a customer loyalty program that rewards the right behavior from new customers. 
2. Focus our support on the 10% of our sales force who accounts for 70+% of our new business. 
3. Open our doors in Costa Rica and Ecuador. 

Inevitably, someone will chime in that these objectives don’t cover everything (which is kinda the point, but we’ll save that for later). There are programs, markets and opportunities that aren’t addressed in these objectives. In most cases, after the group has already been discussing the important stuff for hours on end even to get to the point of having three clear objectives, if all this other stuff hasn’t popped up, then it’s probably not that crucial. And therefore, needs to stay off the list.

But human nature will prevail here, and you’ll start getting lobbied to make the list longer, make the sentences longer and make the wording pretty “blah.” All of which are known strategy-assassins.

The way you get around it and ease the tension is by adding the word “primarily.” Check this out: 

“Primarily” puts people at ease, but it still gives you the benefit of keeping your top objectives your top objectives. They are the primary reason you will grow.

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No day-long corporate strategy session or weekend retreat can survive for long without two things being forced upon everyone to ponder and pander over: 1) a mission statement, and b) a vision statement.

I’ll confess, I’ve never had a strong grasp on the differences between them. Most vision statements I’ve seen would pass for mission statements, and vice versa.

To be completely honest, I actually just realized I really didn’t know what a true vision statement should accomplish. Until now, that is.

Go read Christopher S. Penn’s post on the foundations of creative marketing. It’s an excellent post, but toward the end Chris manages to simplify and clarify both the mission statement and the vision statement so well that none of us have an excuse to mix them up any longer. To paraphrase ….

• A mission statement answers the question “Why are you here?” Put another way, “what is wrong with the world and how do you intend to fix it?”
• A vision statement answers the question “What will the world look like after you finish changing it?”

Good stuff, huh?

What I like about these two definitions (can questions be definitions?) is that it clearly separates the two and spotlights the need for both of them. A mission motivates you with purpose. A vision motivates you with a destination. And we all need to be motivated by both.

Chris adds some very good examples to his definitions, too, so be sure to read his entire post on mission and vision statements.

With that said, I need to work on my mission and vision statements. Do you have ones you’d like to share? Or any approaches you’ve used to craft your own?

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I’ve been thinking a lot about strategic planning lately. Partly because I’m in the midst of doing some myself, but mostly because I see so many of us struggle with it. Regardless of what we think we know about strategic planning, the actually “doing” always seems to be more cumbersome than expected.

To simplify, I wonder if an approach like this would work:

To help focus, the CEO sets forth the three strategic goals for the company for a given year. We will grow by X% by focusing on this, this and this in 2011.

Then each department head, be it a C-level person or a VP, sets forth three strategies that their department will focus on to make part or all of the CEO’s goals come true. For example, the VP of marketing may then say, Marketing will do this, this and this to help achieve that, that and that.

Let’s keep going. Directors and managers then create three strategies that will help the VP’s strategies come to life.

Then their reports do the same for the director’s strategies.

Do you see how powerfully simple this is?

If your company was made up of 50 employees, you’d have 150 strategies in place to support just three major strategic goals set forth by the CEO.  A company with 400 employees would have 1,200 plans in place to support just three major strategic goals.

It’s like network marketing for strategic planning.

I bet it would work. I bet it would help you get through “planner’s block.”

I bet this type of thing is how great companies become great. By focusing a lot of brains on just a few things.

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This post was originally posted by Brett Duncan at MarketingInProgress.com.

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It’s that time of year again. No, not the time for Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays. No, not the time when the ringing of the Salvation Army bells serenade our every entrance into Wal-Mart. And no, not just one more year when we wipe the dust off the Festivus pole and let the good times roll.

I’m talking about the “Upcoming Year’s Strategy” time of year.

Heaven forbid we think of a strategy for next year a moment sooner than in the final days of this year. Regardless of how much we will vow to have our strategies for the year after wrapped up by the end of the third quarter, it never happens.

So for those of you entering strategic crunch time, best identified by voluminous Powerpoint presentations for large, bored groups of executives, and peppered with words like “penetrate” and “incremental volume,” heed this warning: don’t do what you normally do.

You see, my experience has shown me that most people confuse the words “strategy” and “wish.” They’ll bellow decrees of how 2011 will be the year we increase sales, or boost recruiting, or retain more customers. Sounds great; who doesn’t want to do any of that stuff?

But it’s not a strategy.

Wishes usually encompass only the “what.” They answer the question, “What do you want to see happen?” Wishes don’t bother with the execution side of it; that’s some genie’s job.

In our minds, we’re our industry’s Patton; the field general who makes stuff happen. In reality, we are Geppetto, wishing upon a star, hoping the blue fairy shoes up and taps our Pinnochio on the shoulder.

But what keeps wishes from becoming a reality is that we rarely bother to answer the remaining questions, because they haven’t even been asked. We hope the wish grows legs and figures out everything else on its own. Once it does, we’ll be hovering around it, nurturing it, coddling it, hoping it sticks around and does what we want it to.

7 Questions to Ask for Strategic Planning

Contrary to popular belief, you have a lot more control and influence over this kind of stuff. Here are the other questions you should be asking as 2011 approaches:

1. Who is gonna make your wishes come true? Good marketing starts with the market, not the marketing. Are your current customers going to make things happen in 2011? Are certain segments going to be responsible? Are there specific folks out there that aren’t your customer yet that should be, and they, in turn, will make your wishes come true? Who do you need to focus on in 2011? Once you answer this question, the others become much easier to answer.
2. Why are you wishing all this stuff in the first place? Yes, you should always start with the “Why.” No, it doesn’t happen too often. When you’ve been entrenched in your company’s culture for months, years, even decades, it’s way too easy to take your mission for granted and completely forget the reason you’re in business. So back up a second and ask these questions: Why are we in business? Why do our customers love us? Why do customers leave us? Why do we bother? Why are we better at what we do than anyone else?
3. How will you make your wishes come true? Once you know why you’re wishing, what you’re wishing and who’s gonna make the wishes come true, then and only then should you talk about how you’re going to do it. This is actually what strategy is: the “how you gonna do it” part of your plan. To start, keep this at a high level. How will we increase sales? How will we keep more customers? Notice that strategy answers add prepositional phrases that start with “by.” See below:”We’re going to increase sales.” = a wish
   “We’re going to increase sales by supporting our northwest sales leaders more through events and coupons.” = a strategy

   “We are going to be more innovative.” = a wish
   “We’re going to be more innovative by hiring five specialized experts in product development.” = a strategy

4. Where will your wishes come true? At this point, we’re nearing the tactical stage of your planning. This can be geography, or media-based. Where will you focus your efforts? In Oregon? Online? In the field? At the office? This can be closely related to the “who question,” but it goes a little further. It could look like …”We will improve  our customer retention by increasing interactions on our Facebook page.” The Facebook page is the “where.”
5. When will your wishes come true? OK, the default answer should not be Dec. 31, 2011. Start adding some deadlines to your wishes. Are your tactics seasonal? Event-based? Or do you simply need to set a date so it gets done? Does your wish become irrelevant after a certain date?
6. Repeat the how, where and when. Once you set certain strategies in place that define how you will make your wishes come true, you then have to figure out how you’ll accomplish each strategy. So, apply questions 3-5 to each specific strategy. This is deep into the tactical phase, where all the details start coming together. How will I set up my events and coupons in the northwest? When must begin promoting these events? Where will each individual event take place?
7. How much is it all gonna cost? It’s only at this point that you can put together a realistic budget. But I bet you don’t do it this way. I bet you take a shot in the dark at your budget, because there’s a hard due date for it, and then figure out what you can do with all that money. That’s stupid. Figure out how much money it’s gonna cost to do all this stuff to make your wishes come true. If you don’t have enough money, see if you can cut anything in step #6 without greatly sacrificing the end result. If not, you’ll have to forego one or more of your wishes. It sucks, but that’s how it goes.

I know there could be ton more questions added. However, in my experiences, if the big dogs (and lil’ dogs) would just go through this exercise, we’d all be in better shape, and our plans would be much more realistic and accurate.

What questions are missing? What process do you go through for your annual planning?

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I’ve been playing  a lot of Risk this week. Admittedly, it’s the computer version, not the actual board game, but it accomplishes the same thing. The beauty of Risk is that it forces you to make choices, or you can’t succeed. There are a lot of other great lessons in it, too.

Here are 19 vital lessons from playing Risk that apply to your business strategy:

1. Focus your efforts.
2. Have a plan, and stick to it.
3. Be flexible enough to react to new opportunities.
4. When the new opportunities are more promising than your plan, at least consider changing plans. If not, take on only the opportunities that fit into your plan, and either neautralize or ignore the others, and be content that others might benefit from them.
5. Don’t spread yourself too thin.
6. Protect your borders.
7. Monopolize whenever possible, even if it’s just a small niche (continent).
8. Be patient, and know when to end your turn.
9. How you deploy your troops at the beginning of the game has a massive influence on the rest of the game and the choices you can make.
10. Having pity on a weak competitor is not smart, and can sometimes be deadly.
11. Do not stick your head in the sand as a strong competitor gets stronger in a far off place. You will eventually have to face them.
12. Focus your efforts.
13. Play often.
14. Know when to defend, and when to attack.
15. Know when to take advice, and when to ignore it (cuz someone’s who’s not playing and doesn’t have anything on the line is ALWAYS willing to tell you how to do things better).
16. Focus your efforts.
17. Allow sacrifices for the greater good – it’s mandatory.
18. Don’t play too many games in a row; give your brain a rest.
19. Focus your efforts.

Similar Posts on Brett’s Blog:

•  What’s Your Oboe?
• Organically Grown Business

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Watching the NFL Draft can be a rather fascinating process, as it was this past weekend. There’s so much excitement in the thought of grabbing that amazing talent and seeing your favorite team add to their roster, not knowing if they’re going to pan out in the end. Over the past few years, the draft has become quite a complex event, with trades up, and trades down, and trades for players, etc.

Unlike the days at the playground when two captains were picked to choose who they wanted on their kickball team, today’s NFL team management can’t simply pick the best players available. There’s a lot more to consider, and each consideration is something we as entrepreneurs must also take into account on a regular basis.

Here are some quick considerations on the draft and strategy that I hope you can easily translate into your own planning:

1. Consider your needs. More than anything, a team’s specific needs influences the draft pick more than anything. Sure, there might be a stud quarterback waiting to get picked up, but if you’ve already got your QB of the future, then you don’t need another one. Address other needs, or support your QB by getting him a better wide receiver. Each team goes into the draft with certain positional needs they want to meet, which narrows their picks down significantly. By focusing on your area of needs, you can easily wade through the murky waters to find the types of players/opportunities that will help out the most.
2. Consider the market. This year was not a good draft for wide receivers, so you didn’t see any picked in the first round. There are plenty of teams that need a wide receiver, but since the market for them is low, there’s no need wasting a first round pick on something you can easily get in the second or third round. Knowing the market – or better, the opportunities that the current market is providing – has significant bearing on your decisions. It doesn’t make since to invest too heavily in the best choice from a sub-par group. Either go for value (later rounds) or put it off (next year’s draft).
3. Consider the timing. The funny thing with the NFL Draft is that no team can get everything they need to make an immediate impact. You have to choose filling certain needs and leaving other needs still empty. It becomes a question of timing: will picking up the linebacker this year have a significant impact on the team over the next three years, or will getting that cornerback? Can I put off getting the linebacker until next year and still be ok? Again, the ability to focus and plan becomes huge in the draft. The Dolphins definitely can’t fix their team in just a single year’s draft, so they picked up lots of foundational positions they know can help over the long haul. However, the Giants, having already won a Super Bowl, attached their need for secondary defense to make their team even stronger, and it will directly, positively affect their success next year. That’s just where there team is at this point.
4. Consider your reality. Speaking of the Dolphins, you gotta know when you suck and have lots to work on, or when you are only one small fix away from making great things happen. Look at the Chiefs this year: they are clearly rebuilding, so they got rid of some of their current talent (Jared Allend) and managed to pick up additional picks in the draft. The players they picked up this year will exercise huge influence on the team for years to come, but it took admitting that you’re not winning the Super Bowl in the next couple years to make that happen. We often times hang on to our strategies for too long, not willing to define reality. The sooner you can accurately pinpoint where your business is, the sooner you can pinpoint the areas you need to address to get better.
5. Consider your customers. Or in this case, your customers. The Atlanta Falcons picked up Matt Ryan, a quaterback from Boston College. Some people think Ryan will be great, others not so much. But the key for the Falcons has more to do with giving their fans, who’ve had a horrible year (Michael Vick, Bobby Petrino), something to hold onto. Yes, you could probably add a nice offensive lineman here, but fans don’t get excited about the offensive line. Fans like quarterbacks, and that’s what the Falcons are giving their fans. Always consider your customers – they mean too much to your business to simply overlook. Yes, they may occassionally sway you from making smart decisions, and you have to know when and where to draw the line, but often the simplest acts of good will and open communication can do wonders.

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Living the Dash comments on Apple’s ability to focus, and how it pretty much proves the fact that less is almost always more. Read the whole thing.

Here’s the quote by Steve Jobs on focus:

“Apple is a $30 billion company, yet we’ve got less than 30 major products. I don’t know if that’s ever been done before. Certainly the great consumer electronics companies of the past had thousands of products. We tend to focus much more. People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”

Amazing to think that Apple only has 30 products. However, they have the manpower to give each of those products the attention and focus it needs to become great.

Start saying no - to potential clients, promotional opportunities, new products and vendors that don’t fit. Opportunities will always be knocking, but you should never just let strangers walk right in.

Similar posts on Brett’s Blog:

1. Branding: A Product of Strategy
2. Return on Attention 

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My wife and I spent our Friday night at the Meyerson in Dallas listening to Amy Grant and band play with the Dallas Pops Orchestra behind. It was nice, especially for my wife who is one of the biggest Amy Grant fans on the planet.

As things got started, the orchestra began the tuning process. You know the one: you hear a single note, then lots of single notes from different instruments, and then all sonic hell breaks loose for about 30 seconds. And then they just stop.

I had forgotten that the oboe is always the instrument that starts things off. The rest of the orchestra tunes to the oboe, apparently because oboes cannot adjust intonation like other instruments. In other words, the oboe is the standard for the rest of the orchestra to compare to. It is ground zero.

Everyone needs the occassional tune-up, but what are you tuning to? What is your standard, your ground zero? In the case of business and marketing, it’s entirely too easy and too tempting to chase projects beyond your area of strategic focus. Sometimes it’s a wise move; sometimes it’s not. However, it’s inevitable, at least to a certain degree.

The key is knowing what your oboe is, and taking time on a regular basis to tune accordingly. Is your firm dedicated to providing marketing help to small business? Check in every once in a while to be sure you’re not chasing too many large corporations. Are you a designer or writer who specializes and shines in the B2B market? Then limit what you chase in the B2C world.

Identify your oboe and schedule time for tuning. Otherwise, you’ll end up tuning to a trombone or timpani, and nobody wants that.

Similar Posts:

1. Are the Questions Better than the Answers?
2. Give Them What They Want

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I haven’t written a post in almost a week, which is fairly rare for me. The fact is, I haven’t really had anything worth saying, or an urge to say it. I’ve got nothing to bring to the table. And for once, I think it’s better to say nothing than to say anything.

I am offering no value to you, the reader.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t always abide by these rules. I confess, I’ve occassionally posted some real crap over the past year just so I could just have something new up on Brett’s Blog. But I knew it was crap, and I bet you did, too. Sorry about that.

I’m hoping to provide value from here on out. Whether it’s a rant, an observation, a link to something else valuable, a stat, a question or a service, my goal is that each post has value. Obviously, you might not agree with me on what is and isn’t valuable, and we can figure that out along the way. But I have to at least personally think it’s valuable before it can be any value to you.

The principle obviously isn’t limited to blogging. Does your new product add value, or do you just need to launch something? Is your email newsletter adding value, or do you just need to get it out there cuz that’s what you do once a month? Is your time with your kids valuable to them (and you), or are you just clocking in so you feel better about yourself?

The point: Figure out how you can add value, find new ways of doing on a regular basis, and if it’s not valuable, don’t do it.

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Alternative title = Branding: Not the Instigator of Strategy

John clarifies the very conundrum my feeble mind has been wrestling with the past few days: How are branding and strategy different? The answer, in short, is they are almost synonymous.

More importantly, why are some people declared as gurus in branding and others as gurus of strategies? The answer, in short, is that same person is a guru of both.

When people start to separate strategy from branding, and vice versa, you can bet the farm that someone has a bad idea of what branding is. In fact, they probably think it mostly affects the logo, the packaging and the colors and fonts used on the website. It’s a common mistake.

But if branding is “the difference,” then it’s the strategy that identifies those differences and determines how to act on them, and branding is then more a product of the strategy. It’s the result of the impressions you make.

Once you have that strategy in place, and once the impressions are being made, then your brand becomes clearer by the day. At which time you can be sure your logo, packaging and website are all aligned to communicate in a way that supports that brand.

But don’t do it the other way around. Cuz if your customers think your brand means something different than you do, then you’ve wasted a lot of time and money on all the frilly stuff.

Similar posts on Brett’s Blog:

1. The Best Branding Presentation I’ve ever seen
2. If You’re Business Had a Tag Cloud

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