Contemplating the clean slate as a part of your business strategy

/0 Comments/in , /by

When in your planning cycle do you wipe the slate clean?

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of sitting through a planning session with a client management team. The team defined a new direction for its product management function. The old structure worked well during an earlier phase of the company’s growth but was now taxing very senior resources who needed to re-deploy their time. So, the team needed to build a new structure for the new phase.

It was time to wipe the slate clean and draw up a new structure.

The conversation got me thinking about the question of when to start with a clean slate.

When do you start over?

When do you fire yourself and start again?

When do you throw out the old and begin again with the new?

While I’m a big fan of the tried and true, it’s clear that “doing things the way we’ve always done them” can be antithetical to the needs of today’s strategic management environment. So, when do you know it’s time to wipe the slate clean? I’ll lay out three areas, and then leave it at that.

First might be the most obvious:  You’ve kept doing what you do, and aren’t getting the results that you need.  This is the old “definition of insanity:”  Doing the same thing and expecting a different result. It’s probably time to wipe the slate when results just aren’t adding up.

Second is a little tougher, but it’s one we face every day:  You have adequate results, but the ideal state would be so much better.  Transformation in “ok” times is perhaps the most challenging. It’s probably good to pick one or two “ok” areas of your business on a periodic basis and wipe the slate clean just to test the “ok to better” opportunity.

The third is the toughest, particularly for stretched organizations:  You are getting great results, but at the expense of higher use of the talent as you have it currently deployed.  Ever see the organization where the most talented person does everything?  Or, have you ever seen a high performing business unit whose massively talented leader can’t get a promotion because his bosses don’t want to lose the local performance?  This is one of those issues.  If your most talented people could be re-deployed to improve overall results, but at the expense of locally great performance, it might be time to go with a clean slate.

In a lot of organizations, this is the time of re-setting budgets for the coming year.  Is it time to wipe the slate clean in your organization? Are there parts that deserve the clean slate treatment?  Are you brave enough to try it?

What do you think?

I learned this from my worst bosses…

/1 Comment/in /by

Even the worst bosses teach you things.  Here are a few from my experience.

Have you ever had a bad boss?  I don’t mean somebody you just didn’t click with, I mean a really bad boss.  They didn’t have to be a bad person (though they might be).  They just might not have been competent bosses.

That ringing a bell yet?

The cool thing about a bad boss is that short exposure to one can actually make you a better leader.  Seeing what “bad” is is almost as valuable as seeing what “great” is when it comes to leadership. I’ve learned a few lessons from bad bosses.  Here are some that are the lessons that come to mind.

Never throw things.  I once had a boss whose tantrums were epic.  You just waited for something to hit the floor or wall.  I had another boss who already had a bad reputation and who “playfully” threw something at a person who asked him a question, only to be thought of as attacking the person physically.  In both cases the intimidation factor wasn’t good for team morale.  If you must express your displeasure physically, consider clenching your teeth or at least throwing things in the privacy of your home.

Never use physical means to stifle a conversation. I once had a boss who would raise his hand into people’s faces when he thought they should stop talking.  He might as well have just turned his back on them. Needless to say he was an ineffective leader.  If you must cause someone to stop talking, consider thoughtfully asking a question directed to another person in the room instead.

Never start a feedback conversation with a speech about why you are right. Feedback is about giving and taking.  I once had a boss who thought it smart to start any feedback conversation with a preface that sounded like “I have a lot of experience on these issues and you do not, so let me give you some feedback.”  Talk about killing the give and take…Consider offering the feedback and the rationale for it, instead of your resume.

Never go passive on topics of compensation or promotion. I once had a boss who was very busy.  They were too busy to discuss HR matters.  That led to very long times between discussions of critical compensation issues. If you want to lose your team, ignore them when they bring up comp issues.  It’s ok to say “no” to the discussion, but not to ignore it.

Never play games with your subordinates. I once had a boss whose go to question when a subordinate brought a problem to them was “what have you tried to do so far?”  That is a fine question; but it was used as a sort of lever to get to a “more work” answer vs. a “I’ll help you solve the problem” answer.  The subordinate could say “I’ve tried A, B, C, and D” and the boss would answer with “well, let’s not talk until you’ve tried X, Y, and Z as well.”  While this may sound helpful, it actually was utterly demoralizing because the staff new raising any issue only resulted in more work vs. possible solutions.  Consider offering feedback and support on what has been tried vs. just assigning more work.

Now, to be clear, these lessons are a bit nuanced.  I’m also in no way innocent of them. I’ve thrown things a time or two (no, I’m not proud of it). These are also items that are somewhere between great manager who does everything right and psychopath boss. If I’ve had a boss who slept with a subordinate and cheated financially, do I really need to list that as “what not to do?”

How about you?  Do you have any “bad boss” stories that come with lessons?  Consider sharing them. 

The elephant in the strategic planning room is often an 800-pound gorilla

/0 Comments/in /by

A world-beating competitive advantage doesn’t make you smart, it makes you lucky; so don’t try to emulate people who have one.

Perusing my “clutter” folder today, I came across a post on the Harvard Business Review that highlights how “The Best Companies Know How to Balance Strategy and Purpose.”

It’s not a bad read, other than the fact that it introduced me to the jargon-ized notion of “corporate plasticity.”  Seriously, folks, we very well might need another term for the overused and tired notion of “agility” at this point, but…plasticity?  Good grief.

However, I digress.

In developing the thesis that purpose has to be dominant over strategy, the authors–a couple of A.T. Kearney partners and a Senior Advisor–choose a set of companies to serve as exemplars.  The names?

Apple

SpaceX

Nestlé

Unilever

Lego

You notice anything interesting about these companies?  I do.  They are the 800-pound gorillas of the markets they serve.

And there is the rub.  Management thinking that is guided by what the best companies do is fine…to a point. That point is that such thinking has to be careful about what “best” really is. If the company you aspire to be really derives all of its value creation mojo from a competitive advantage that is singular, then you might want to look elsewhere.  Or you might want to at least acknowledge that to be the next Apple, you have to build the brand- and customer experience-driven loyalty that Apple has built over the past couple of decades, rather than trying to “innovate like Apple” as so many misguided management teams have tried.

Once you recognize that the companies you compare your own company to have competitive advantages that you simply don’t have, you will have identified a really big elephant in the strategic planning room.  Then, you can get busy building your own competitive advantage vs. trying to be someone you are not.

What do you think?