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Selfie time: A review of WGP in 2023

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A look at what we’re building at WGP, with 2023 under the microscope.

Geoff Wilson

WGP hasn’t done a thing in 2023.  And that’s totally what our model is built on.

Allow me to explain later in this note.

As you’ve probably seen, this blog tends to be more about this blog than it is about me or our WGP team taking a long, listless, duck-lipped selfie.  I’ve tried over nearly 10 years to put it all out there philosophically and practically without reference to our practice (much).

But it’s the end of the year and I’m catching it suddenly from all angles.

Angle 1: I have our team members wondering why we don’t make more noise about our practice, given how much ground we’ve covered.

Angle 2:  I’m running into promotional selfies from consulting organizations big and small that are, in my parlance, “cute” because I know from the inside that things simply aren’t that good for them.  Yes, I’m a curmudgeon when it comes to only promoting the facts.

Angle 3:  I’m realizing that–after a really long run–my own ego has gotten in the way of sharing the good news (see my curmudgeon comment above).  I get my nose in a twist when it comes to promotional pieces because, well, our work speaks for itself.  And I’m realizing as I mature that I need to break out of that a little bit.

So, I’m gonna let ‘er rip on this one. I’m sure some of what follows is a rant, a philosophy statement, and perhaps a call to arms for the dedicated executives I know we work best with.  But, that’s ok because this is on some level an explanation of why you haven’t seen us marketing ourselves much. And, it’s a good one, if I do say so myself.

What’s the big picture selfie? 

Over the past 2 years, we have completed roughly 36 engagements for 10 different organizations. Yeah, we’ve got our “loved ones” that we work with steadily; and yes, we do occasionally take on a new client (in fact, 2 new clients signed up in 2022, and 1 in 2023).

But, and this is a big but:  More than 90 percent of our professional fee revenue came from existing clients in 2022 and 2023.  Our clients know and we don’t talk about this, but we’ve been on a tear for years, with no consulting capacity unassigned since at least 2019. Yes, we have had no “beach time” here at WGP, and we think that makes for great value for our clients and our team members.

Is that healthy?  I don’t know.  What I do know is that the people who work here and the people we work with tend to be happy.

I make no bones about it: Our employment value proposition is variety and professional development. If you are engaged with WGP, everybody you work with  is a-growin’ or a-goin’.

Our client value propositions (the ones they can see) revolve around our Team (talent and structure), our client Experience, and the Depth we bring regardless of topic.  The values they can’t see revolve around Honor, Agility, and Leadership in any circumstance.

As we’ve articulated these values, it has become clear that they are why our clients keep coming back.  And they do come back.  In almost 10 years we’ve done roughly 150 engagements with only 5 being “one and done” where we engaged with an organization and moved on.

So, we have to be doing something right.

Right?

What if we zoom in…what are the topics we have covered in 2023?  

The only way we can have such a solid client partnership profile is to be truly great at running to fire.  Okay, so not merely great, but absolutely the best, most trusted option in the market.  And what does that mean?

It means we have a multi-faceted practice that has produced referenceable results in every, single engagement instance.  To demonstrate the multiplicity of our facets, here are examples of topics we engaged on in 2023:

  • Tackling a change management challenge with a large distribution company working to insert a middle distribution tier. This work, led by Paul Currey as a deeply embedded team member, has showcased our ability to work on day-to-day change challenges as a “member of the team” while remaining independent.
  • Rebuilding workforce strategy with a distributed and technically skilled trucking and delivery operation in the building materials space.  This work, led by Brittany Timmons and John Adducci, re-set expectations across the employee lifecycle for a key and very challenging employee type in the 2021 – 2023 timeframe. The work has not only been a “let me tell you a story” strategy but also day-to-day, in-the-dirt work to get recruiting pipelines right-sized and training and retention approaches designed and deployed.
  • Leading integration strategy for a contracting organization in the government services space. Carrie Elliott led this work that involved establishing post-merger integration principles and processes in an environment of mild culture clash.
  • Building a go-to-market strategy for a manufacturer in the foam fabrication space, where we focused on ensuring a fact- and action-based strategic plan that brought many different points of view together, including external ones. Alex Cauble led this effort.
  • Standing up and executing a transformation management structure that re-set and re-aligned plans, expectations, resourcing, and pace in a large organization. This has been a Team effort with Dani Zielenski (emeritus…at the moment), Carrie Elliott, and several others in the management seat.
  • Executing on a product management strategy for a large industrial services organization that has had just a few too many SKUs enter its portfolio over time.  This piece of work has seen WGP go from the “strategy recommender” (read that:  We wrote a deck of slides a couple of years ago) to the “strategy execution partner” (read that: We do real work to help clean up the portfolio as a first step).  John Adducci has led this work with Ejona Korcari as the key analyst.
  • Supporting, cajoling, and running to fire on a complex global sourcing effort that involved substantial risk management, operational, research, analytical, and product management components for a business in the automotive aftermarket. Alex Cauble was the leader here.

Those are some examples, and not even absolutely the best ones since, like fine wines, some engagements have to stay on the shelf a bit before we can bring a glass of them into the selfie. I can’t write too much about all the stuff that we’ve been involved with in the immediate past.  Other places we have been in the past year?  How about:

  • Hazardous materials compliance
  • Top-team effectiveness
  • Talent management
  • Market research
  • Fleet maintenance strategy
  • Financial model building
  • Growth project due diligence
  • Management best practices playbook and training
  • and, yes, corporate strategy and risk management…our old standby.

We’ve had moments of creativity to break up the drudgery.  Despite what most would say is my, ahem, intensity, I’m a big fan of cheering success and sometimes have to be the cheerleader, hooting and hollering. We even played Jeopardy with the management team of a billion-dollar company, just to liven things up.

A meta-analysis of our engagement mix.

What do you see when you peer into our mix of engagements?  Well, you see diverse topics that stem from being a trusted problem-solving partner.  That’s our calling card.

You see engagements that are led by people who care about our clients and who bring a team spirit to any problem at hand.  You also see continuity of people and topic–in some examples above the engagement has run 2+ years and we’ve kept the same people on it from start to end. This is enabled not only by our talent model but also by our approach to professional fees that allow for us to engage as a partner and “for the duration.”

If you press me in my most sour of sour grapes moments, I will also say that you also see a few times we’ve picked up the pieces from bigger, branded, expert, and “safe” consultancies that couldn’t crack the code of people, problem, and pace in the way we have.

We’ve “destroyed value” for some of these “esteemed competitors” because we’ve gone faster to results, better in terms of experience, with more skill transfer…and all for a fraction of their fees. I suspect at this point we could point to avoided [insert fashion-name-brand consultant] fees as a massive value driver for at least a couple of our clients…before even getting to results.

Still, what you don’t see in our repertoire is a bunch of transactional stuff. You don’t see 2-week due diligence sprints or “build me a strategy in 3 weeks” engagements where the result is a deck and some derrière coverage for a weak executive team. We aren’t built for that, and I don’t believe in it.

Why? Well, if you believe an outside consultant can come in and write the strategy for your business in 2 to 3 weeks, then you aren’t an executive we are likely to work with because frankly, you don’t respect the business you lead. Strategy requires understanding texture, context, facts, opinions, and ultimately choices. That takes some time.

We are built for partnership at pace–staying politely ahead of but never outrunning our clients and always leaving their people better than they were before.

I’m extremely proud of that.

Who “we” are.

I keep using the word “we” as if I have a mouse in my pocket.  Everyone knows that I founded this thing years ago just by stepping out on my own.  It has to revolve around me, right?  Well, no.  Not exactly.  Our strategy has been to grow a consulting system (and people indoctrinated in it) that provides outstanding problem-solving and client experience.

So, how are “we” doing that?

This is where it gets interesting.  I’ve already mentioned our talent value proposition, but what I haven’t mentioned is our dedication to “How We Work.”  This is our focus on the delivery of the same client experience no matter the leader and no matter the topic.  This is part of our special sauce and something I grew to appreciate while enduring far too many consulting partner inconsistencies early in my career.

This means we focus on a common problem-solving approach, a common approach to planning and executing engagements, and a common approach to getting the best of our own and our clients’ perspectives into the arena. I believe this is truly special in the market space we occupy between high-power independent consultants and large consulting houses. 

A WGP engagement is a WGP engagement, not a contract given to a smart person with a pedigree. Unfortunately in the post-pandemic world, even the biggest and blue-est chip firms are producing work that looks more like the latter because they broke their talent and team interaction models during the lockdowns.

To wit, when you are McKinsey or Bain or BCG or pretty much any large consultancy built on an up or out pyramid, with average consultant tenure in the 2-plus year range, a massive uptick in hiring and a massive downtick in face-to-face coaching and culture building because of gee-whiz technology and oh noes risk management leads to culture change and loss in a matter of months. Culture at those firms (and ours) is an all-the-time thing, and when a culture of deep in-the-room coaching and “osmosis” for young consultants becomes one of scheduled interactions via videoconference, things get lost.  

But I digress.

The people side of “who we are” hasn’t been said yet:  Sure, we are Ivy League and Michigan and Vanderbilt and U of Chicago and Georgetown and Stanford and MBA and Master of Accounting and Master of Finance and even a CFA candidate.  But I’ll say this:  We get a lot more at many moments of our engagement with clients by being Appalachian State and Clemson and Robertsdale, Alabama and Aiken, South Carolina and Tar Heel and Roll Tide and Eagle Scouts (3 and counting) and Wofford Terriers.  We get a lot more out of backgrounds that go from railroads to the Peace Corps, from big automotive to startups, and from sales to operations.

Why? Because having people who have had to flex their career and educational backgrounds comes with something that few Ivy-elite backgrounds come with: The knowledge of the possibility that we might be wrong.

The glue that binds together a fantastic client experience and result is in us.  It’s in How We Work, and it’s in our values, and it’s in the forthright diligence we espouse.  It’s probably also in some sort of productive paranoia that I, personally, bring to the table in sometimes fanatical, sometimes tyrannical, and sometimes undefinable Ted Lasso or maybe Mr. Miyagi sorts of ways (paint the fence because I said so, Daniel!).

One of the big reasons you don’t see much marketing and promotion from us is we can’t really grow fast and stay “us.” The rate-limiting factor isn’t how many clients we can cultivate or engagements we can ink, it’s the (no kidding) indoctrinated capacity that we have. We are growing, but only at the pace of our Associate’s willingness and ability to “get it” and “deliver it.”

In short, “we” are presently 10 consulting professionals equipped with a system and looking to make a difference.

What “they” say…

And, what is that difference? I could quantify, but won’t out of abiding fear of “spilling” something I shouldn’t.  I can tell you that we have beaten our clients’ “next best alternative” by a multiple of fees in any event we’ve scrutinized. And scrutinize we do.

But more than that, our clients’ results are the most basic measure of our success.  I say it nearly every day.  If our clients are not doing well against the objectives we work on, then we aren’t even close.

There are no moral victories here.

A dirty little secret at WGP is that I survey our clients every single year (for at least the last 7 years).  The survey respondents are the folks that we work with directly and heavily from the Board and C-office level to the manager, director and VP-level.  Here’s a smattering of what they said in 2023…written by them (if it isn’t clear yet, there’s no marketing agency here, folks):

  • “WGP has brought an external, objective guidance to our company during a massive transitional time in our business. They have helped us navigate through ambiguity and the natural stages of internal change management. I truthfully don’t think we would’ve been able to get this far without their help“
  • “Whether it is a recommendation for an easier tool, a dashboard, or a 10-year vision, WGP has been a true partner. They have also helped our leaders become better problem solvers…”
  • “Always one step ahead of us and a blast [to work with]”
  • “The consultants that aren’t consultants. They own results and act like they are part of the team.”
  • “It’s a strength to be able to attract that talent as a small firm. Didn’t feel like a cookie-cutter approach. Instead, project approach felt customized to our needs.”
  • “Clarity and focus on meaningful solution design without the presentation/show “fluff” that ends up slowing progress. WGP associates are highly engaged and pleasant to work with.“
  • “[WGP is] Very professional yet relatable. Produces high-quality work, not afraid to challenge perspectives…”

So why haven’t we done a thing?

Behind any successful consulting engagement is a hidden consultant.  In front of it should be a client team that is having fantastic success.  Meaning that when it comes to impact, our clients have done it… all of it.  We actually wouldn’t have it any other way.

We at WGP haven’t done a thing because we accomplish nothing without great clients.

Not a thing.

But what kind of clients are we great with? 

We fit best with clients who care. The profile is coming into good focus after nearly 10 years. It includes managers that:

  • Lead large, complex organizations or organizations that aspire to be larger,
  • Have organizational or executional ambiguity like a culture or communications gap between home office and field ops,
  • Have business complexity like when customers are hard to segment and understand, or when operations are diverse and divergent, and
  • Have demanding markets or stakeholders that reward, desire, or thrive on clarity.

It includes:

  • New teams with a commitment to excel, like when a new CEO comes on board, or
  • Big change efforts, like when you have to coordinate all limbs at once. Sometimes it’s a transformation even if you don’t call it that, or
  • Small pieces with high leverage in growth or turnaround, like business units that are problem children or that should be contributing more, or
  • Large initiative teams in need of “glue” to hold together, or
  • Areas where there are immediate talent gaps but a commitment to move forward while addressing them.

The profile would include executives who:

  • Face strategic ambiguity but with a dedication to execute. They want a plan, but not just a deck (and boy can we can make some fancy decks), and / or
  • Hope to build a legacy, like when the team is in transition and wants to leave a mark or a firm platform for the next generation, and that
  • Have a willingness to engage in a contact sport where management, the team, and the consultant might be challenged and even (gulp!) wrong on the way to getting it right.

And, it includes companies and organizations that:

  • Are mission-oriented toward doing great things, better,
  • Are in service to others, and
  • Depend on extending and improving the good things in the world, not extracting rents from poverty, despair, servitude or struggle.

Here’s the call to action that I hope resonates:

If you as an executive, board member or manager might see your, your organization’s, or your team’s reflection in the profile above. If you have challenging problems that need specific pressure. If you have organizational challenges that stem from ambiguity, transient talent gaps, or merely huge jobs that need more pressure, then I hope you’ll drop us a line.  Yes, it can be “strategy” in the traditional vein, but it can also just be…in the words of one of our consultants…”helping get shit done.”

In large organizations, some problems can seem intractable and permanent.  I will tell you that while they sometimes are, we bring a focus on chemistry and pace that can help break out of the doldrums.

I hope you’ll consider reaching out.

Closing reflections… 2023 in perspective

2023 has been a good year, and one that is probably best outlined as “on trend” for our practice.  Looking into 2024 it’s hard to say where we go because, well, we’ve gone a lot of places.  We owe everything to the trust our clients place in us to earnestly attack almost any problem.  And, we expect to continue that as long as we are in the mix.

So there it is. That’s the selfie.

If I were more promotional I would tell you that our growth profile probably rivals any “Inc. 5000” debutante, and if I were really promotional I would tell you that I’d put our team up against almost any other consulting team in the country based on our values and commitment to client experience alone.

At the end of writing this, I think I’m realizing that this isn’t a promotional blog post, it’s a weigh station on a journey of loving service and people development–our own and our clients’.

If we can help your team nail its priorities in the coming year, please do reach out.

And with that:  May 2024 be great for all of us!

So how about it?  What can WGP do for you?  Call or email Geoff or any other team member and let’s continue this journey. 

Partners and Padawans

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Musings on corporate mentorship and the humility needed to grow a winning team.

Power, prominence, title, and any number of carrots dangling at the top of a corporate ladder can consume us and our peers.

Unfortunately, in a hidebound sprint to the “top,” folks run the risk of missing an opportunity to contribute to a team’s growth. Mentorship, teaching hard skills, and taking the extra five minutes to get a teammate’s life update at the water cooler are a few behaviors that fuel a stronger team…and a stronger you. This post isn’t about being an effective mentor; rather, it’s about two extreme ends of an organization’s spectrum, both experientially and in title, and thoughts on how we can bridge the actual (or perceived) gap between the camps.

But first, a quick segue to a Star Wars reference so that I can lose my more socially-inclined audience.

The Jedi track isn’t too dissimilar from our corporate structures, one enters as a bright-eyed Padawan (student of the Jedi way); and a select few grind it out to the prestigious Jedi Council (governors of the Jedi Order, they probably manage the Jedi’s bottom-line too; but George Lucas spared us that detail). In the journey to the top, there’s a lot of learned experience and growth along the way.

Concurrently, there’s a lot of attrition in the ranks. The Jedi’s worst two-weeks’ notice is Annakin Skywalker (turned Darth Vader)–the remarkably gifted Jedi who was supposed to bring balance to the force (a corporate equivalent of tripling EBITDA)–joining the Sith (an evil rival enterprise) because of a simple: “no, not yet” from the Council.

We’re surrounded by Annakin Skywalkers in the workforce…you may even be one yourself: Talented individuals who’ve grown tremendously under the tutelage of their Obi Wan (company mentor) who; ultimately, walk away from their company because of the same, “no, not yet” or the more painful, “no, never.”

I can’t fix your company’s promotion approval process, and I’m not proposing that every Padawan needs to become a Partner. Rather, I’d like to offer a few items for our friends on both sides of the spectrum (and everyone in between) to consider as we all strive to build better teams. After all, there’s nothing worse than losing your brightest Padawan because of poor communication, unmet expectations, and many other potential pitfalls we face daily.

For the Padawans (my analyst friends in the trenches, following the light of Excel and PowerPoint):

  • Be Patient – You still have a lot to learn, and that takes time. Up until your first gig out of undergrad, life is a sprint of short-term seasons (like the season when you were in the middle school band playing the trumpet with braces, hypothetically speaking); that’s not the reality anymore, you’ve got 40+ more years to master your craft.
  • Work Hard – This isn’t rocket science, but it is…difficult. I’m not authoring an ode to workaholism; but, you need to earn your stripes and sometimes that yields long and grueling days. Remember, that Partner you look up to (and is now ruining your life with all the hard work you need to do) has been there before, and they worked hard.
  • Extend Grace – My first year as an analyst, I remember having the same conversation with a Partner at least ten times. Always initiated by them, always on script, and always leaving me wondering if they have ever listened to my answers in the previous rounds. I understand it now; busyness can be a major inhibitor to meaningful conversations and building authentic relationships; and Partners are really busy. Don’t villainize a teammate for having a full plate, extend grace and try to help them lighten the load.
  • Prove It – If you want to be a Partner one day, start being one today. Francis of Assisi famously shared, “Preach the gospel at all times and if necessary, use words.” It’s easy to talk about being a partner in your firm, it’s much harder to live out the standards that are probably written down (and hopefully lived out) by the incumbent folks that have already “made it.” Prove you’re a partner in action, with humility – healthy organizations will reward that in the end.

For the Partners (looking at the Managing Directors, Executive Leadership Teams, VPs, and managers as well, those titles just didn’t serve alliterative purposes in the title):

  • Gift Time – I’m asking you to give generously of what’s likely your most precious commodity nowadays, time. The analyst whose eye is twitching because of the financial model you asked them to build would love to grab a cup of coffee with you. Mentorship, culture, and fostering a team that will follow in your footsteps are all predicated on your ability to deliver here. Carve out time intentionally.
  • Be Humble – You made it to the top (even though you still; unfortunately, have a boss), emanate the humility you’d like to see across your whole team. Listen, do real work, and don’t be afraid to sit in the pit with the overcaffeinated friend you made at the last bullet point.
  • Share Wisdom – Your experiences have morphed you into the person, and professional, that you are today – impart wisdom to the folks who ask for it on your team (maybe even with the ones who don’t ask for it, too). Being the smartest one locked away in the corner office doesn’t benefit the growth potential of your hungry Padawans, feed them consistently.
  • Prove It (had to double-down on this one for both audiences) – you wrote the book on being a Partner, now you get to do the hard part of living it. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be perfect (the Padawan is going to extend ample grace), but you need to be good. Live up to the values you espouse, it’ll motivate your team and inspire the next batch of leaders you need.

Frankly, there are days where we’ll all fall short of the mark here – Padawans and Partners alike. There’s a life to lead outside your office, and sometimes it’s heavy and burdensome. The moral of the story is this, we need teams that have healthy Padawans and Partners. Teams that can work together in a trust-filled, safe environment. Teams that have comparable tenacity to reach a common goal. I hope some of these guiding principles help us get there together.

What do you think?  How do we ensure healthy leadership and followership behaviors? 

Love is the running towards

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How do you find trusted helpers in an age of transactional extraction?

Geoff Wilson

I’m going to write this one with some trepidation because, in the words of Marcus Aurelius (the character in the movie Gladiator, not the actual historical figure):

“There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish… it was so fragile.”

My family and I recently took a vacation that included a few days in London (It’s this city in England, but I digress). As a complete matter of happenstance, we walked past what I believe to be the only fire station in London that sports a massive banner that reads “love is the running towards.”

A picture of it is featured at the top of this post.

In our practice we talk openly and ernestly about “running to fire.”  We ask ourselves whether we are actually working on the stuff that matters.  Stuff that is urgent.  At times, stuff that looks little but is actually the big.  All of this is stuff that we, perhaps, weren’t engaged to work on first.  It’s fire.  And, we run towards it.

Love is the running towards.

And, so what is it that I’m writing on?  It’s a particular professional services model that is built not on transactions, hours, days, weeks or “bodies deployed,” but on help.  True, genuine, trusted help.

Wilson Growth Partners LLC has executed well over 100 engagements over the years.  Those engagements have ranged from preparing and executing single-day workshops to multi-year transformational execution engagements.

Like snowflakes, no single engagement is like the others.

But one thing is for certain:  Engagements where we work in concert with our client leaders dynamically to improve performance, execution, and ultimately results are the ones where we run toward fire.

Sure, it’s sexy and neat to work on strategy-setting topics.  Yes, it’s easy to recruit, retain, excite, and promote our own people with stories of top management strategy and “working for the CEO.”

But, you know what?

We are at our best when we do that and we identify and execute on the things that truly allow progress to happen.

This might mean running that tactical meeting several times a week to ensure there is no ambiguity of purpose. It might mean helping interview and hire that person who can and should take over a mission area our team is covering currently. It could mean pausing the high falutin market strategy to priortize a sales funnel with the sales team.

And, it can mean grinding away on change management even as we shelve our impeccable strategic planning capabilities.

Above all it means having the humility to step away from the scope of an engagement (or…dare I say not even having an engagement at all) and helping.  

That’s the running towards.

That’s the model we have worked to cultivate with clients, and the one we deploy where I would say our work is the most trusted.

Sure, sure, we at WGP are a for-profit enterprise and have to ensure that we are sustaining ourselves.  That cannot be forgotten and on some level will always create tension between the value we provide and the value we receive.

But the business can never be bigger than the mission.  Love is the running towards.

That tension can and is constantly secondary to the tension between the actions we take alongside our partners and clients and the real-world litmus test of “are we helping?”

Love is the running towards.  I would like to thank the professionals in and around the London Fire Brigade for crystalizing that thought for me as I reflect on our own practice after all these years.

We live in an age where data, analysis, and culture allow every bit of value to be sliced, diced, allocated and captured.  Do a little bit of study on how Disney has taken the capture of consumer surplus to a maddening level in its theme parks and you’ll see a great example of this. Observe your average consulting or law firm constructing proposals or jealously allocating time only to things that are “paid” and you’ll see it.

But maybe there’s still room for a model built on help…a model built on finding the things that matter and addressing them with aplomb. A model built on…Love.

I wish I could end this post with a massive call to action for readers to “reach out if you need help.” But I can’t, because we have so much love and so many fires that capacity doesn’t allow it. This blog and its hundreds of posts over the years haven’t really been about marketing WGP.  They have been about a better way.  So, what I can say is this: If you aren’t experiencing such a model in your professional services experience, a better way exists. Go look for it.

I hope that in writing on this topic I haven’t cheapened the very real and daily focus on it in all that we do at WGP.  A model built on loving help is fragile…Just like the dream of Rome was.

What do you think?  Is it possible to express love through a model of service?  We think so.

Actually, the issue is that you have no vision

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Single issue focus is just as bad for business as it is for government policy.  It’s vision that counts.

This post springs from the debates surrounding the tax reform legislation currently gestating in the bowels of D.C.

Interviewed on one of the many news programs early this morning was a leader of a home-building special interest group.  With great bluster, this gentleman spoke of how the capping of mortgage interest deductions for mortgages above $500,000 would be detrimental to home values, and because of that it is ultimately a bad idea.

This guy was a single-issue representative–the very personification of a “special” interest lobbyist with a single issue to flog up on Capitol Hill.  The interview was admirable for its pureness; but it was cautionary for a single reason: It lacked any nod toward vision for what the government ought to subsidize through tax policy.  When you are a homebuilder, a lot of what you focus on is the amount of money that can flow to homebuilding.  You care a lot about whether the government decides to stop subsidizing mortgages for homes that only really wealthy people buy because, well, those kind of homes represent a lot of income for you.

What you might NOT focus on is whether the government ought to subsidize luxury housing of any kind.  A reasonable person could ask whether tax policy ought to subsidize jumbo mortgages at all.

The interview didn’t get into the role of government, it only got at the desires of a single-issue interest group; and it brought to mind an important management imperative for almost any of us:

Never, ever, allow an issue of any sort take the place of a vision.

How often do you see managers focused on productivity in a single part of the plant or shop floor, or efficiency of a single department in a company, only to have no concept of–or, indeed to work against–how the overall company delivers value for customers.

You may think you don’t see this, but you do.

You see it every time you sit on hold waiting for a customer service representative whose time was determined to be more valuable than any specific customer’s (if that weren’t the case, then why make the customer wait and the rep not wait? Hmmmm?).  You see it every time you walk around a big box retailer…searching for a person to help you find that item you are looking for.  You see it every time you receive an appointment window of 4 (or 6?) hours for a service call at your house.

These are the outcomes of single issue votes in the business world.  They are the results of a focus on efficiency (or inefficiency) in one place at the expense of the whole or, in the worst of cases, the customer.

A customer-centered vision for service would envision no customers waiting, just as a citizen-centered focus on the tax code might envision no subsidies for luxury homes.   Yet, we have special interests that win in the corporate office at the expense of the customer; and we have special interests mining the tax code in spades.

The next time you entertain that consultant who just wants to help you cut “inefficiency,” make sure you ask how that inefficiency fits within your vision for value delivery.  That consultant’s issue isn’t a vision.

Just make sure that your issue isn’t that you lack vision.

What do you think? 

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

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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?

How to keep culture from crushing progress

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Big ideas aren’t enough to change things. You need powerful sponsorship.

This anecdote has played out more times than reruns of the original “Star Trek” series, so bear with me as I set it up.

The situation

Geoff Wilson

A highly motivated, energetic, experienced new hire is brought into the organization as an agent of change by the business unit’s president. The new hire is brought in because she thinks differently and has rich and relevant experience in organizations that look the way her new organization’s president and leadership team say they want the business unit to look over the long term. She is the poster child for effective organizational change leadership in appearance, word, and deed.

The new hire does what all highly motivated, experienced hires do: She gets to work. Carrying the president’s imprimatur by virtue of being hired, she starts propagating new ways of doing things—perhaps on processes like project management or in performance areas such as pricing or cost efficiency. She’s driven. She’s smart. She’s organized. She’s logical. She’s practical. She is, quite possibly, right.

The president of the company, sensing the strong glow of a great hire, lets her “do her thing” without guiding or intervening. After all, that’s what great leaders do: They let great people go “do their thing.” Right?

The organization’s leaders quickly sense a world of pain coming from changes to the ways things have always been done. The changes aren’t necessarily bad—just different.

Fast forward to a year later. Our motivated change agent is watching the clock. She’s waiting for 5:48 p.m. every day (that’s just late enough to not signal that she’s thrown in the towel). Her great ideas sit on white boards and in documents across the organization. But progress has been slow. She’s figured out that the organization really didn’t want all of her resume—just a few parts. Her job is easy. Her life is hard.

The leadership team, having figured out that she had no power in the first place, decided that the change agent’s recommendations, while smart, were too painful for them to implement. They have marginalized her through passive and deliberate pseudo-compliance and back-channel opting out. When one functional leader delays participation with good reason, the rest simply follow suit.

The president has entertained every grievance. By making backroom agreements on who needs to comply and who doesn’t, he has undermined the change agent—unintentionally, but still.

The organization likes her. But, hey, “Those great ideas could never work here.” And besides, the president sure didn’t seem to mind that key leaders opted out.

The president wonders why there hasn’t been more traction on his new hire’s ideas, but in reality, he just likes the fact that the business unit is performing well this year and that everyone will achieve nice bonuses.

The change agent polishes up her resume.

When our once-motivated, now-crushed change agent leaves for greener pastures, the organization gives itself a self-righteous pat on the back. See, they were right all along.

The change agent and the president (if he is a person of vision and integrity) wonder what happened.

Here’s what happened

First, the president quickly moved from a position of obvious sponsorship (he hired the change agent, after all) to a role of spectatorship. He removed the most important tool in his change agent’s toolkit: the lever of executive sponsorship.

Second, the change agent—armed with the confidence that her ideas would work and work well—fell into the trap of idealistic pursuit vs. practical and pragmatic progress.

Both have ignored the practical realities of power—call it influence, pull, or realpolitik. They misjudged the power of an organization’s culture to reject even the best ideas in favor of the status quo. They let the organization and its culture crush a valuable addition to its midst.

Don’t kid yourself: Culture is heavy. The weight of any organization’s culture will crush any change agent.

So what?

There’s no such thing as a “fire and forget” change agent. The agent—whether in the form of an initiative team or a seemingly heroic individual like our anecdotal new hire above—must have real power.

In any change program or worthwhile process, there comes a point in the organization’s journey where the broad population realizes that change is hard. They have an “Oh, shit” moment. At that moment, there must be enough momentum and felt need (or other sources of power) to move the change forward. Otherwise, change won’t happen.

In turnarounds, the momentum and felt need is easy. Either we perform or we’re gone. The change agent can drive change with that implication alone.

In improvement situations, the reality is far more nuanced. Going from good to better is hard. Really. How often do you see people who are in great shape make a New Year’s resolution to get in better shape? Not often. They make choices that diversify their focus vs. intensifying it. They want to spend more time with their kids, take up art, or shoot for that promotion at work. Their health is secondary because, well, they already have health.

That’s the problem with change in organizations performing “OK” or, especially, performing great but in an unhealthy manner (a diversified business with a few bright spots that carry the portfolio comes to mind). The organization—convinced it’s “doing alright”—sees the change as an annoyance. This is especially true in the absence of a transparent agenda. And that’s where power comes in.

Executive sponsors and change agents have to agree on the source of power that will ensure the change. And they must follow through on it!

The agenda must be explicit and have teeth. The change agent has to be able to walk into any room with the full blessing of power, and with a ready set of implications for non-participants and opt-outs. But the change agent should never have to articulate them!

For the other leaders in the organization, opting out must be a visible, deliberate action that is advertised to the highest levels of sponsorship. Opting out has to have consequences. Or else, why bother?

Practical points

Cognitive dissonance being what it is, human beings aren’t wired to admit that they individually are the problem. Chances are, you read the anecdote at the beginning of this article with a real notion of who the victim was, and the victim probably looked a lot like you. The reality is that all parties in the anecdote hold responsibility. So, here are some things to do about it:

  • Sponsoring executives have to stay engaged and deliver their positional and personal influence through their change agents. Tell the organization that the agent has power and why. Never, ever leave that communication to the change agent. Define—honestly—the agenda the agent is working to implement. And, for goodness’ sake, don’t undermine the change agent by entertaining back-channel grievances and allowing one-off deviations from the plan without explicit, advertised, and good reasons. Sponsor the right behaviors through influence or force.
  • Change agents need to clarify the source of their power. Can they state in a short sentence what would keep the organization from opting out? Are the power dynamics such that the change agent is set up to fail? Remember: Idealism is great, but not sufficient. Just going and doing a good job is not enough if the power structure isn’t in place.
  • Group or organizational leaders have to own and explain their priorities. To be sure, there are myriad good reasons—ranging from timing to talent—for opting out of change initiatives. Handled transparently, these reasons can be managed well. If handled passively or through backroom deals, however, opting out sends a signal to the rest of the organization (that doesn’t have such good reasons for it) that opting out will be tolerated and accepted. So, why bother?

If you deploy change agents, be sure to back them with enough power to make them effective. Practice sponsorship, not spectatorship. Define your agenda. Lead. Clear the way.

If you’re a change agent, be sure you have enough power through sponsorship to achieve what the organization expects you to achieve. If you don’t have it, get it. Can’t get it? Move on.

What do you think?

May the Force be with your business strategy

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How do you create change? Move. How do you overcome inferior mass? Move faster.

Geoff Wilson

Strategy is a combination of direction and applied force. It’s the force of assets deployed, talent assigned, new products launched, or new initiatives driven. In short, strategy is applying what you have to achieve what you want.

But wait a minute. What if what you have isn’t enough? What if your assets, talent, products, and other “things” are inferior? What if you just think they might be inferior? Well, I have news for you.

The laws of physics teach us about force. Newton’s second law states that force—the “thing” that creates change in the motion of an object—is derived via mass and acceleration. That is to say, if you want to create a change in something, you have to use a mass and move it at some rate over time.

So what does that mean for a business strategy? It means two things:

1. If you have a mass of assets to apply, you need to move them in order to create change.

You can’t just sit on your laurels and expect change to happen. This is a key issue when it comes to critical strategic moments in a company’s life. Need to change the basis of competition in your market? Better get moving, redeploy assets in a new configuration, and do something rather than do nothing. (And no, I’m not imploring you to just “do something.” Think first.)

When we look at well-worn examples of companies that shape and reshape industry segments, we see constant motion. Walmart stores look nothing like they did 25 years ago. Walmart has led all these years not by sitting still, but by shaping and reshaping a set of retail concepts around a juggernaut of a supply chain. They created force by maintaining a massive base of assets in a constant state of acceleration.

2. If your mass of assets is inferior, you have to move faster than the competition.

That’s right, you can overcome inferior mass with superior acceleration of the mass. What this means in business is that you can, in fact, outwork the other person. You can move faster than the competition.

Some might say this is exactly what Samsung is currently doing to Apple. Samsung has settled into a device product-launch velocity that is a multiple of Apple’s. While Samsung may not have Apple’s brand and market weight, the velocity of what it does have is applying real force to change the market.

So, if a strategic direction is known, here’s the question that should come to mind next for the management strategist: How are you applying force? Are you relying on massive assets moved at a steady pace, or are you counting on a rifle shot—a bullet fired at high velocity—to achieve change?

How do you create change? Move. How do you overcome inferior mass? Move faster.

Don’t just take it from me. Take it from one of the most brilliant military strategists in history:

The strength of an army, like the momentum in mechanics, is estimated by the weight multiplied by the velocity. A rapid march exerts a beneficial moral influence on the army and increases its means of victory. – Napoleon Bonaparte

What do you think? Is the force with your strategy?

Don’t be friends with the monster

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Honoring functional leadership above all else creates monsters in today’s over-scienced organizations.

“I’m friends with the monster that’s under my bed”

— Rihanna on “The Monster” by Eminem

Geoff Wilson

Let’s say you’re a leader of a corporate function. Pick one, it doesn’t matter. You may lead supply chain, procurement, human resources, information technology, corporate development, strategy, finance, accounting, or any other.

If I told you, right now, to find me a treasure trove of best practices for your function, you could do so in an instant. Starting with the old standby, Harvard Business Review, you could extend and expand your Google hunt to a dizzying plethora of functional associations, business school publications, case studies, consulting publications, and puff pieces that would provide you with more best practices than you could ever digest. Ever.

And that’s the kicker. Functional leaders now have access to more best practices than ever before, and that abundance has the potential to create a monster. How? In our pursuit of functional excellence within organizations, it’s easy to lose collective sight of business excellence. That’s right. Compliance with functional mandates can have monstrous consequences for business performance and productivity.

Consider an organization with a well-meaning leadership team that empowers several functions to demand compliance from line leaders on their own functional initiatives—all at once. To functional leaders, this is nirvana. They get to install “world-class HR approaches,” or “sector-leading procurement approaches,” or “outstanding business planning,” or “structured strategic planning.” But to the line leader, such initiatives manifest themselves as barbarians at the gate. They are monstrous.

Why? Consider the line leader who suddenly has to spend hours in meetings with functional teams. For some leaders, a specific functional team will hit the spot. The meeting or new approach will be extremely valuable. For others—say, a leader without real talent gaps, who is forced to sit through days of talent reviews and plans—they’re a waste of time. But they’re mandatory. They are “the way we do things now.” And they are, quite often, entirely wrong.

They sap productive selling and organizational-development time from line leaders who usually know they are wasting time. In the worst cases (“Hey, Bob, just fill out these talent templates and we’ll see you next Tuesday.”) they simultaneously kill morale and productivity while adding no value.

How do you avoid creating a functional monster in your organization?

The answer is hard because all the management scientists and consultants peddling best practices will find holes throughout an organization that adheres to it. But it’s simple: Have the guts to empower line managers, provide them with great tools, and get out of their way.

Let there be a rational discussion and rule set for allowing business leaders to spend time with customers vs. internal functional teams. Set the menu of initiatives and manage opting out closely, but allow it. Allow the gal whose business team has no credit-and-collections issues to skip the “best-practice contracting” seminar. Allow the guy whose team has high productivity and zero turnover to avoid the talent and recruiting review.

It’s OK. Really. And I say this as someone who has perpetrated plenty of broad-based, high-value corporate initiatives. Outside of obvious risk and legal areas, “compliance” to one-size-fits-all approaches to functional “excellence” results in a distribution of gains from that excellence that very clearly hurts some players who comply.

This isn’t to say that no functional initiative is applicable to all, but rather that you should know whether or not it is.

Don’t be friends with the monster. Don’t allow honor and appreciation for good functional practices to kill productivity and morale in your line organization. Know when to let your business leaders opt out of frightful functional initiatives.

What do you think? 

Welcome to the real, messy world

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Like the real world, real business isn’t as simple as you’d like it to be.

Geoff Wilson

I’ll confess, I’m a bit of a strategy junkie. You don’t have to be one to do what I do, but it helps. However, if you read my writing much, I hope you come away with a sense of the practical bent that I bring to the topic. The real world is the real world. Just as any engineer will tell you that lab scale processes rarely translate directly to production facilities, financial and strategic models rarely reflect reality—at all.

The below image was shown at a recent annual meeting of a private equity firm we have the privilege to serve. It shows indexed revenue and EBITDA performance over the life of a fund’s portfolio. Each line is a portfolio company. Lines that trend upward are green. Downward lines are red.

Keep in mind, this is a top-performing private equity fund. Returns for this portfolio were excellent. What do you see? The real world.

Each of those lines depicts the outcome of an actual business. It’s the result of some management team’s hopes and dreams. Those businesses were probably planned using relatively linear models and margins. But what you get is actual sausage making. And I’ll say it again: This is a top-performing portfolio.

The real world is sausage making. Real business comes with randomness, particularly in companies that are working to make things happen.

If you consider it failure that some parts of your portfolio might not stay in lockstep with your linear growth expectations, you probably don’t understand the nature of risk taking and enterprise building. You might be more comfortable investing in CDs.

The real world is messy. This is good to keep in mind when you’re futzing with a financial model that implies a precision that your business outcomes will never achieve.

What do you think?

(In)Attention to Details

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Are we losing the ability to mind the details?  I don’t think so, but maybe!

 

Chalk this one up to amusement, but I ran across an article today that explains how the state of Oklahoma recently adopted “loser pays” for attorney fees in all civil suits.

That’s a big deal.  A really big deal.

But it was “unintentional.”

Yes, no kidding.  A bill was voted on, passed, and signed into law by a state legislative body and executive. And, its effects were unintentionally broad.  Here’s an article on this doozy.  The key quote:

The amendment, written by state Sen. Anthony Sykes, R-Moore, was intended to apply only to civil cases involving child sex-abuse.

But the amendment had a broader impact, according to the Senate author of the bill, state Sen. David Holt, R-Oklahoma City. “Upon a closer reading of the amendment, it seems evident that it makes all civil cases … loser pays,” Holt told the World. “But nobody caught that.”

But nobody caught that…

We are talking about a massive change in liability for legal fees.  And the response is, essentially, “oops.”

Well, luckily the Oklahoma legislature can change it.

But it raises the question: Are we suffering from a societal migration away from what one of my favorite coaches used to call “attention to detail?”

When a legislature can pass a bill through multiple steps and have such a big miss, imagine what details are being missed in your company or in daily life.  You need look no more than your web browser to see the effect of lowering standards for attention to detail.  Today’s news media are a caricature of the phenomenon, where we are constantly barraged with half truths and partial lies, no matter where you stand on the political spectrum.

In most pursuits, details matter.  In critical ones, they matter a lot.  When you are acquiring a company or putting together the biggest sale of your life, it’s rarely ok to say “let’s let the lawyers handle that.”   In Oklahoma’s case, the law can be changed.  That’s not so when you forget to vet the representations and warranties in your purchase agreement!

Nirvana on attention to detail is challenging.  I’ve known many people consumed by the details.  The trick, I find, is to combine the accountant’s eye for detail with the artist’s eye for completeness.  You have to get the details right, but also be able to notice what’s missing.  You have to see the forest and the trees, as it were.

The best strategists that I know are able to master this art.

Can you?