Stan Leopard's Notebook

Regularly Shape Your Commitments to Accomplish your Ambition

I just completed participating in a 3-day Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Power conference produced by The Aji Network. This was our 2nd conference on working and deepening the distinctions and practices for top 1% business and career planning. I am continually appreciative of the rigor and depth of discursive help I get from The Aji Network–help that enables me to increase the velocity of my thinking and acting to fulfill my personal ambitions and business mission. 

For me, this conference was timely for the evolution of new strategies I've been working on for the past few months. I help CEOs/principal owners constitute, build and monetize private enterprises with targeted outcomes normally in the $10 million to $100 million range. One strategy for 2013-14 is to locate a satisfactory private company in which to acquire a controlling interest. We welcome introductions to companies with operating earnings of approximately $1 million that are either within the Boise, Idaho metro area or could be moved to this geography. 

One of my new actions (resultant from the conference) is a commitment to shape my commitments to be more coherent with my intentions and strategies for the coming period (approximately 3 years). Since relocating our headquarters to the Boise area about 2 years ago, I've intentionally been very open to new relationships and new possibilities, building my local network and learning the local economy to see where we can invest most successfully. Now that my strategies are clear and I'm completing the planning, it's time to eliminate commitments I have that produce insufficient return. I find myself in this situation periodically–I have commitments, relationships and/or practices that no longer produce sufficient return as a result of shifts in my strategy, my situation, the environment, the market forces, etc.

Assess

Our time is finite, both the time we have for work each day/week/month, and the timeline we have to fulfill our ambition. All of us will age, encounter increasing challenges for competing and ultimately die. There are endless requests and offers that vie for our time and attention. I don't know about you, but I have way more things I would like to do or see I could produce a return from than I have capacity for execution.

Some questions for thinking about where I'm spending/investing my time:

• What relationships and practices are strategically valuable?
  • How do I assess the return on my investment in these relationships and practices? What practice do I have or will I appropriate or invent?
  • Should I increase or decrease my investment in the current relationships and practices? If so, what actions will I take?
  • Do I have sufficient strategic help?
  • How do I know?
  • If not, what actions will I constitute to increase my strategic help?
• What relationships and practices are tactically valuable?
  • Do I have sufficient tactical help? 
  • How do I know?
  • If not, what actions will I constitute to increase my tactical help?
• What am I habitually doing that, on reflection, isn't sufficiently valuable for my ambition? Think about any recurring meetings, get-togethers, etc. that are part of your work.
• Are my practices for taking care of my body and for competitive learning sufficient? Where will I improve these practices?

Design and Act

After reflection and assessment, specify what you will stop, what you will modify and what you will start. Put actions into your calendar and the other existence systems you use for making and managing commitments. Act with your commitments, including noticing where you fail and starting over.

Diligence is the mother of good luck. Benjamin Franklin

One of the actions I'm taking is to modify my practices for writing this blog. Rather than hold a schedule as I have, I will write when I have a concern or issue where writing for a public audience helps clarify my thinking, or when I feel compelled to offer assessments or interpretations. 

Best wishes with your reshaping.

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Antidote for So Much To Do, So Little Time

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Stop Allowing What You Know Won't Work

I have renewed my intention to stop allowing actions I know cannot work to continue. This means that in all of my strategies, projects and practices I will do my best to think and act to fulfill my personal ambitions. I will modify or stop the action whenwhat's occurring is less than what I know is required to meet global standards to be effective, strategic and competitive.

Recently, I complained to a colleague about the slow response and poor coordination occurring within a project I'm working on. He reminded me that situations such as this don't improve without with time, and that I already know poor communication and coordination will thwart the intended outcomes of the project. My initial response was to defend–I was doing all I could in this situation as my project partner has the access to prospects for the offer we're constituting. However, it was soon apparent to me that if we performed at common standards we would be unseductive to prospects and the project would fail. No one is looking for help that is slow, sloppy and unreliable. I saw there is no way to produce a satisfactory return on costs if the project is not impeccable and powerful.

To fulfill our ultimate ambitions in producing financial autonomy with our businesses requires we recurrently accomplish strategic objectives that are sufficient. It is common and ultimately unsuccessful to complete strategic objectives producing results that are less than required. 

To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult. Johann Wolfgang Van Goeth

Take Inventory

Notice, observe and assess where you have allowed practices, moods, communications, coordinations, and productions to continue around you that you know won't produce the outcomes required for your personal ambitions and business mission:

• Where are you expending capacity on actions you know are ineffective, non-strategic and uncompetitive?
• What loops are you performing where you must be the customer (so you have capacity to perform those actions where you can produce superior outcomes)?
• Where are you putting up with poor communication and coordination you know won't produce the intended results?
• Where are you being "polite" and not speaking up about unsatisfactory actions and moods?
• In what current projects and strategies do you lack confidence in producing the intended results?
• What relationships are you putting up with (as opposed to being in a strategy to either change or replace the relationship)?
• What personal practices you know support your success are you not holding or working rigorously to hold? 

With this inquiry, I produced an inventory of possibilities where I can take action to improve my likelihood of success. The marketplace continues to become more competitive, and the economic environment more challenging. We are not entitled to succeed. We can increase our odds of succeeding by being rigorous and disciplined in noticing what won't work and not continuing that course of action.

Success in business requires training [learning] and discipline and hard work. But if you're not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were. David Rockefeller

Take Action

I recommend assessing your inventory and organizing from highest leverage (greatest return on action) to lowest. You can’t act on everything at once, of course. I've found that sometimes becoming aware of the actions we can take to improve our situation produces the mood of overwhelm. For myself, I've constituted a 90 day project to design, prepare and act to eliminate what I know won't work. Some possible actions:

• Practice regularly noticing and observing your own actions in areas you are working to improve. Examples of practices here can be a daily reflection where you write the actions of the day you assess as insufficient.
• Keep "starting over" in your commitment to stop your own actions, practices and moods that you assess as unworkable to fulfill your ambitions.
• Maintain (or constitute if you don't have them) your practices for competitive learning. These practices include both learning new distinctions and practicing the distinctions we have and learn daily in our work.
• Speak to those who are acting in ways you know won't work. Ground your assessments in marketplace standards, not your personal standards. Request and get commitment to performance standards that will work. In some situations others are capable of higher performance when it's required. 
• Change the constitution of the team. If you're the lead, replace team members who can't or won't perform to standards you know are required to be effective, strategic and competitive. If you're on the team, resign if the team can't or won't shift to hold and perform to sufficient standards.
• Be willing to stop actions and disengage from relationships where you know the thinking and action is insufficient for what you must accomplish to succeed. Although it can be very challenging, it's really better to think and design new actions than be engaged in what you know won't work.
• Continuously deepen your knowledge of what's effective, strategic and competitive (moods, offers, practices, narratives and strategies) given your ultimate ambition, strategic objectives and tactical focuses.

Taking action to stop what we know won't work offers high returns. None of us can succeed alone. However, teaming with common or mediocre performers reduces effectiveness. With powerful networks, 1 + 1 = 3. With weak networks 1 + 1 = less than 1.

Live daringly, boldly, fearlessly. Taste the relish to be found in competition – in having put forth the best within you. Henry Kissinger

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Who Are You Listening To?

We live in a time when the rules for success [producing wealth] that held for more than a century have been displaced by new principles. Attempting to produce economic and social wealth with the strategies, practices and narratives of the Industrial Age is a "race to the bottom".

Those who learn to use, rather than merely operate, computers and the internet have access to powerful tools for learning, communicating, coordinating and producing. The ubiquitous use of computers and connectivity dramatically increases:

• Access to knowledge–no longer does the graduate of a prestigious academic institution have knowledge unavailable to others
• Access to means of production–no longer do existing companies have a monopoly on low cost production
• Access to capital–for individuals and companies who can provide marginal utilities to customers
• Speed for competitors to notice and copy innovations

Velocity in Innovation is Required

We make meaning from the world we encounter with our narratives, our interpretations. We create new offers, practices, narratives and strategies with our language. The conversations we are in, with ourselves and others, determine the competitiveness of our businesses. There is a cornucopia of commentary, advice, opinion, etc. available on the internet, in books, on TV, in film, etc. Are these the narratives that produce success? No way. In a time of so much noise telling us how to constitute, strategize, execute, and so on–it's up to each of us to develop the skill to choose and gain commitment from the speakers we will listen to, those who can make a real contribution to fulfilling our personal ambitions and business missions. At no time in my 36 years in business has a powerful network and the expertise to make assessments of speakers and narratives been more valuable.

To produce a steady stream of new offers, practices, narratives and strategies that are scarce relative to demand, i.e. to provide high marginal utility, requires:

• Powerful interpretations of the market forces shaping your space of possibilities for thinking and acting
• Noticing, observing and assessing the threats, obligations and opportunities of your current situations
• Declaring the new situations required for your success
• Expertise in designing, crafting, speaking, fulfilling and producing satisfaction

This expertise exists in the configuration you are–the conversations for design and action you can have with your team, advisors, colleagues, customers, investors, etc.

Choose Your Conversations Mindfully

Because of our biology, we cannot help but be affected by the conversations where we listen and engage. Coontogenic structural coupling names the phenomenon of we (humans) being altered and shaped by the narratives and moods we interact with recurrently. I still find myself thinking that I have the power to listen only to those narratives that are well-grounded while allowing weak, ineffective ones to pass without effect. That's another aspect of my biology–the sense of being the center of reality, or the "star of my own movie".

The fact is you will be affected by the speaking of those you listen to. You can't avoid this. You can't edit later. Your thinking is always shaped by the conversations you engage in, both with yourself and others. What you can do is decline to engage in conversations about your enterprise except with those you accept as appropriate–trustworthy, valuable, well-intentioned. With awareness we can (and must) gently guide conversations to fit what we deem appropriate with each particular speaker. 

Silence is a great source of strength. Lao Tzu

I offer some guidance for developing your criteria and practices around your conversations for thinking and action in building your enterprise:

• What is your personal ambition? What outcomes are you working to accomplish ultimately?
• What are the accomplishments of the speaker relevant to your ambition?
• What are your values?
• What are the values of the speaker? Are they coherent with your values?
• How will you be of help to the speaker(s) who are of help to you?
• In what domain(s) do you grant a particular speaker authority? In what domain(s) do you trust their speaking?

I continuously develop and refine practices to cultivate and expand my space of possibilities for powerful conversations, including my network and the offers of help I can make and fulfill. I organize conversations in time horizons, i.e. specific conversations to have daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, etc. I design, as best I can, to have the structure of these dialogues be low-cost (for me and others). I pay attention to making offers of help to my network. This is a practice, not a procedure, meaning it is flexible and I'm continuously assessing and refining.

It is the province of knowledge to speak. And it is the privilege of wisdom to listen. Oliver Wendell Holmes

Know and Remember Your Ambition

When I engage as a strategic advisor to a CEO, I often find that the constitution of the enterprise isn't connected to a well-formed ambition. Thus the constitution is often insufficient for their ambition. When this is the case, winning is the same as losing. I recommend The Aji Network's guidance for developing and articulating your ambition.

When you listen and dialogue, listen from your ambition, listen actively:

• What claims is the speaker making?
• What assessments?
• What speculations?
• What evidence or grounding is being offered?
• What offers are being made?
• What new possibilities for thinking and acting appear for you?

It seems automatic to listen from a posture of defending or convincing. Try on a posture of co-creating. Listen to expand your narratives.

To listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words. You listen not only to the "music", but to the essence of the person speaking. You listen not only for what someone knows, but for what he or she is. Ears operate at the speed of sound, which is far slower than the speed of light the eyes take in. Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in yourself, so you can slow the mind's hearing to your ears' natural speed, and hear beneath the words to their meaning. Peter Senge

Relevant Prior Posts

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Making Major Decisions with Mindfulness

Last week I wrote on strategic thinking and a strategy for making major decisions. This post focuses on mindfulness in decision making–working with forces that are structural and often not easily seen. I draw on Phillip Moffitt's work on making mindful decisions (see chapter 9, Emotional Chaos to Clarity). Phillip claims that decision-making is a source of emotional chaos in everyone's life.

The absence of a clear practice for decision-making and an awareness of what is happening in our own mind, body and heart can result in our neglect of a crucial decision or making decisions that are ineffective, costly and damaging. Phillip advises we first distinguish between a decision to be made and embracing reality's operations. 

Before you can begin to make a wise decision, you first be real with yourself about the decision: is there a genuine decision to be made, or are you just postponing the inevitable?

Phillip advocates mindful decision-making to go beneath the surface level of moment-to-moment life experience to see the truth of what's happening. 

In daily life mindfulness helps you see clearly what needs to be done, what you are capable of doing, and how it relates to the larger truths of life. Applying mindfulness to decision making leads to clearer thinking and to staying connected to your core values, which is crucial to your peace of mind.

Moffit specifies 3 stages of mindful decision-making.

Stage One: Come into the Present Moment

…direct your attention to the felt experience of this particular decision.

How does it feel in your body right now? Do you feel pressure? Anxiety? Often you don't notice what's going on and miss the body's signals telling you what to do. By feeling the decision in your body, you connect with your intuition.

Often our moods, sensations and emotions are informative. When a decision is optimal, we will experience coherence and alignment of our strategies, narratives and moods. 

Next start to name the actual decision you are making, as best you're able, which will help bring it into focus.

Naming may be the single most useful skill you can develop for decision making. By naming the question, you clarity it for yourself. You may be surprised at how hard it is for you to correctly name the decision in highly charged situations.

Putting the decision into language–I recommend in writing–enables us to reflect, evolve and refine our articulation as we progress. 

Another important step in being mindful of a decision is to notice if you're obsessing over the decision instead of engaging in making it.

If you are replaying the same thoughts over and over in your head, this is often a sign you're avoiding making the decision. Your obsessive thinking means you are focusing on your fear of not getting it right rather than focusing on the decision. When you become mindful that you're just recycling your same old anxious thoughts about the decision, redirect your mind elsewhere. Often just noticing obsessive thinking and naming it will help you to stop obsessing.

State Two: Clarity through Investigation

Phillip's guidance for clarifying is similar to the questions offered in my prior post. He distinguishes five kinds of decisions we can see in the process of clarifying:

• Benevolent: all your options are good. What seems like a benevolent decision can sometimes indicate a deeper, hidden conflict. Ask yourself, "Am I creating options for myself in order to escape facing a deeper issue?"
• Neutral: You don't have a preference for any of your choices, yet you hesitate. This may be a sign of a conflict not yet seen, perhaps with another person of between objectives.
• Mixed: There are gains and losses inherent in all your options, and it's not clear which is the wisest choice.
• Undesirable: All your options have unpleasant consequences. In this circumstance listen to your heart: ask yourself which choice will be the easiest for you to live with, despite what are likely to be unpleasant external conditions.
• Unknowable: The consequences of the decision are unclear. For example, deciding whether to have a risky operation or an experimental medical procedure. It's a tough decision to make because you really don't know how it's going to play out. It's best not to make such a decision until you absolutely have to, and then clearly state to yourself the full consequences of making the choice versus staying with your current situation. People often underestimate the risks and downside of the unknown and exaggerate the negative aspects of the status quo.

The final step in clarifying is restating the decision (in writing of course). Moffitt advises us to cross-check our options with our core values and ask ourselves whether they're aligned. We are much more likely to feel at ease with our decision, no matter what the outcome, if we make a choice based on our values.

 

Stage Three: Surrender to the Decision

Observe whether you're clinging to the idea of making the right decision. When you insist on a perfect outcome, you're only deluding yourself and procrastinating. Applying mindfulness, you'll recognize that there is no perfect outcome and that it's impossible to know what all the consequences of your decision will be, no matter what you choose.

Write down what your mind is telling you to do, then what your heart seems to want, and finally what you intuition seems to be saying. People are often surprised to discover that these three centers of knowing are in conflict and that the conflict is paralyzing them. My usual advice is to go with your heart and intuition… but to do so utilizing the practical planning capacity of the mind.

Obstacles to Implementing Your Decision

Phillip points out that when the time to act with our decision arrives, we may be stopped or slow to move. His advice here is to be compassionate with ourselves, and get help from one trusted advisor to mobilize ourselves to move to action. 

One last piece of advice: Making difficult decisions is hard work and there is tremendous uncertainty in it. It can be physically as well as mentally exhausting and can overload your nervous system. Therefore, when you are dealing with a [major] decision, it is critical that you cultivate a nonjudgemental, forgiving, and kind attitude toward yourself throughout the process. Not only does such an attitude provide the calm space necessary for making the decision, it ripens these qualities, which are crucial for a meaningful and joyful life, within you.

I have found practicing mindfulness, as best I'm able in each moment, nurtures my happiness, peace and passion. Mindfulness improves my capacity to be effective, strategic and competitive with the knowledge and expertise I have accumulated.

Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different; enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes (which it will); being with the unpleasant without fearing it will always be this way (which it won't).  James Baraz

Other Resources

Decision Time by Phillip Moffit

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Photo Credit: Flicr User/mindfulness

Making Major Decisions with Strategic Thinking

I've recently been reflecting on how to best come to action with major decisions–those that we know will have significant consequences for business missions and our personal ambitions. I am working through a major decision in my own career. I offer my reflections on what I've found empowering in two posts. This one focuses on strategic thinking–using our knowledge and reasoning in making a major decision. Next week I'll write on using mindfulness in decision-making. I see this dual approach as most effective in making and enacting major decisions.

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and sails of your seafaring soul. If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas. For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns its own destruction.  Kahil Gibran

What Distinguishes Major Decisions?

I characterize a major decision as a commitment which closes other possibilities, producing a situation where reversal is not possible or comes with extraordinary costs and risks. Major decisions are those with consequences that may either significantly enhance or jeopardize our well-being or that of the enterprise. Leading an organization with a commitment to build economic and social wealth means we will face major decisions periodically. 

Examples of major decisions I've faced include...

• When to replace myself as CEO to enable a better future for the enterprise
• What level of personal financial risk to take in an enterprise
• How to design a career strategy that's harmonious with both my personal ambition and the obligations of my situation
• Whether to embark upon a strategy to acquire a competitor

A Strategy for Major Decisions

A major decision requires its own strategy or plan of action. It is a project in the sense that it involves a one-time course of action. When you become aware you must make a major decision, make space for the work to be done. Inadequate time or thinking can be highly costly, even fatal. In my experience, major decisions take longer and require more work than I "think they should." In order to move into and through major decisions with equanimity, I advise being aware of the voice of should, e.g. this situation should be resolving faster; this employee should work more skillfully, etc. 

 

Working on a major decision, I organize my thinking in writing and include...

• What is my ultimate objective? 
• What are my strategic objectives?
• What are my tactical objectives?
• What forces compel me to act? What is the situation (threats, obligations, opportunities)?
• What could change, if anything, that would remove the need for action?
• In what time horizon must I design action, prepare and act? 
• What could occur that would force me to act sooner? 
• Who else is concerned with or affected by this decision?
• What power do I/we have?
• What power do others have that I must account for?
• What actions can I/we take? What actions are possibilities that can become opportunities as opposed to fantasies or high-concept narratives?
• What is the likely response from others to these actions?
• What is the new situation I am working to produce with this decision?
• What is my plan of action, including the critical path with dates, for producing the new situation?

I commit time (mark it on my calendar) each week to work on a major decision. Whatever I think, I really don't know how much time I have, so I want to be as prepared as I can be with each passing day, moving with alacrity yet without haste. Preparing and executing a major decision is a dance with other people, companies and forces in the marketplace. Your key business confidante, assuming he or she has expertise, can be of major value helping you flow harmoniously through the design and execution of your decision. 

Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved.  William Jennings Bryan

Other Resources

No Rush The Economist July 7, 2012

Relevant Prior Posts

3 Phases of Projects: Learning, Preparing and Executing

Good Thinking is Real Work

On Being an Effective CEO

Photo Credit: Flicr User/mharrsch

Produce a Profit Every Month

One of the basics I learned from my first mentor early was that in order to be profitable for the year, one must be profitable every month. Profitability is a fundamental element in my business philosophy. Profitability is the lifeblood of business–for every month we run a loss, we lose a degree of our freedom; for every month we run a loss we lose a multiple of that loss in our wealth.

I've found that without a commitment to monthly profitability, most businesses will perform far below their potential. Was I profitable every month? No, but I was continuously learning, designing and reorganizing to be profitable every month. Velocity in acting to achieve, restore and sustain profitability has a high return on investment.

What is Profitability?

In our businesses we are committed to economic profits–a surplus of revenues over expenses including accounting for the market rate for owners' compensation (whether being paid current or not) and for returns on invested capital. Many business owners I've encountered fail to distinguish between accounting profits and economic profits. Accounting profits are the surplus of revenues over expenses based on the book entries of revenues, costs and expenses, usually without accruing for any portion of owner compensation unpaid or for return on capital.

The greater the economic profits of a business, the greater the enterprise value.

How to Produce Profits

If you choose to commit to economic profitability, practices I've found useful include:

• Have management financial statements prepared and available for review by the 5th business day of each month (or sooner). The standard for management accounting is not absolute accuracy (often the accounting profession standard), but rather sufficiently accurate that management can make assessments to determine performance to minimum profitability standards and to the Operating Plan. I prefer some data in this report be presented graphically.
• Design the committed expenses to be at a level you are confident enable you to produce at least a break-even result, on an economic profits basis, each month. This begins with assessing the minimum revenue level you will commit to produce in the lowest month, then working with your team to invent a structure for fulfilling that level of revenues which allows the company to be viable. Start with a blank sheet and work with all expenses–including costs of goods sold, owners' compensation and return on capital–until you achieve a design that works. There are no "fixed expenses", meaning every expense is a commitment and you can reconstitute to achieve profitability.
• Design for fulfilling revenue beyond the minimum level with costs that are fully variable. I advise no committed, ongoing expenses other than what the business can afford in the minimum month.
• Review performance with your team every month early enough to modify practices to adjust to new interpretations, such as an increase in what we say is the minimum revenue we can produce, or new practices we produce to operate with greater efficiency and/or effectiveness.
• Share the game of profitability and the monthly results, in an appropriate form, with the entire company. Speak about your philosophy of profitability and why it's important to everyone in the company. Design and craft this business narrative to be complete and meaningful to everyone involved–staff, suppliers, advisors and other stakeholders who affect revenues and expenses.

Involve Everyone (appropriately)

If you've never read Jack Stack's The Great Game of Business, I recommend it for practical suggestions on involving the entire company in the "game" of building enterprise value. Stack is a successful practitioner of business, not merely a consultant/writer.

You may have and encounter many objections to this posture if it's new for you and your organization. Develop and continuously deepen your thinking and writing on the benefits gained from an absolute commitment to profitability. Your narrative about the importance, utility and worth of profitability makes fulfilling the commitment possible.

Why Consistent Profitability is Essential

Economic profitability gives an enterprise its value and freedom. We are all working to produce our survival (being able to transact for life's essentials), our freedom (capacity for choices such as not having bad customers or investing in new ideas) and our ability to live a good life. Companies that are robust are more satisfactory places to work, and have an increased space of possibilities for succeeding. It's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to create and innovate in survival. The discourse of business we study and practice emphasizes knowing your numbers, that is how much money you need to earn, save and invest to survive, be free and live a good life during your career and the 20-30 years of old age.

If you lose $100 thousand and the business earns 10% net pre-tax on revenues, it requires $1 million in additional revenues to recover the $100 thousand. Every month of losses has negative consequences for the present and the future.

If your goal is anything but profitability – if it's to be big, or to grow fast, or to become a technology leader – you'll hit problems.

Michael Porter

Image: iStockphoto/sodafish

3 Phases of Projects: Learning, Preparing and Executing

My partner was recently frustrated with his progress to fulfill a project he's holding. In our dialogue, I asked was he learning, preparing or executing. On reflection, he saw he was preparing and that his frustration came from assessing the project as if he were executing. This led us to dialogue about project phases, with us settling for now distinguishing 3 key phases.

A project is a committed, one-time course of action to acquire a new capacity to act (for the individual, team or organization), to invent a new practice which can become a standard practice, or to perform a complex action once. The project may be to take care of a one-time threat, obligation or opportunity.

Action in our discourse of business is anything done with the intention to take care of a concern, so we're "acting" on a project whether we're preparing, learning or executing. We work to have our actions be effective–produce the intended outcomes; strategic–producing, improving or completing a strategy, making possible new strategies; and competitive–enable fulfilling our intentions in a competitive situation. As best we can, we hold a commitment, a a declaration of personal responsibility for results, to perform effectively, strategically and competitively in our professional endeavors. Being committed does not mean we will accomplish what we desire, and it does significantly improve our probabilities for success. Outcomes in the future can never be guaranteed. Because of this, skillful action is most possible when we hold our values and intentions, with clarity on our purposes and objectives, in every moment as best we are able.

The purpose of the learning phase is to be satisfied we have available the required knowledge, expertise, tools, resources, network of help and project team to succeed. Projects are costly, and we work to undertake and continue only those projects we assess can produce a satisfactory return on the costs. We see projects as investments and we invest with the intention to produce satisfactory returns. This phase is also where we make interpretations of the environment in which the project will exist, e.g. other projects, strategies or commitments.

Possible actions for Learning:

• Write your narrative describing the project and its purpose; say why the project is meaningful, relevant and valuable to the enterprise
• Specify what facts or assertions we need to know to prepare and execute, such as what projects, strategic objectives and situations our design and execution must take into account
• Specify the knowledge, tools, practices, etc. we will be able to use in fulfilling our project
• Specify the budget for the project; we think of costs as time, money, energy and lost opportunities
• List the people from whom we may request help; speculate about what roles or contribution each could provide
• Accumulate knowledge we require and don't have available; this may require delaying the start of the project until we accumulate knowledge ourselves or ensuring we have a team member with the required expertise

The purpose of preparing is to design and craft the plan for the project to be as complete, strategic and effective as we are able at this time. We say a plan is a conversation, meaning it is evolving and refining as we act, learn and encounter new situations. At the end of preparation we have a written plan accessible to all team members that will change as we fulfill (our project template).

Preparing (done with the team if this is a team project):

• Refine your project narrative based on your learning
• Gather and organize the information you need to design the project
• Make requests for help from others and gain the commitments you can; form your team
• Specify who will hold the key roles of the project and align the team; we use the roles of holder, specifier, designer and fulfiller for projects
• Design the specific actions to be taken by each member of the project team and the outcome to be produced by the action; organize these in an effective sequence to produce the action plan for the project. We think of who, what, when, where, how and why in crafting the plan.
• Specify the practices for the team, e.g. how often will you meet, what and how will you communicate, etc.
• Assess the costs now that the project is designed and crafted; affirm you can produce a satisfactory return

The purpose of executing is to fulfill the project's purpose by producing the desired outcomes, including a satisfactory return on costs. In our projects we pay attention to accumulating knowledge with projects, and do our best to avoid being task-oriented. We are or become task oriented when our focus becomes getting done without commitment to fulfilling a larger tactical, strategic or ultimate commitment.

Executing:

• Work to stay mindful and aware during execution; refine and evolve the plan based on new knowledge, situations or concerns
• Pay attention to the pull to become task oriented, also known as "head down, butt up"
• Stay mindful of the array of concerns, strategies and projects you are holding or acting in, and that all action is to accomplish our ultimate ambition, which includes living coherently with our values and intentions
• Continuously refine and adjust action to be effective, strategic and competitive
• Be willing to abandon the project if you assess it is no longer high-return; the ability to quit (projects, people, etc.) is an important strategy skill
• Use the plan and keep it current; we work to have our plan have every relevant action of the project in sequence; we mark actions complete and keep them on the plan
• Acknowledge the contributions of others; cultivate gratitude for the help you receive
• Celebrate the accomplishment of the project; speak the value of what was produced to your team, network of help and the organization

As designers and builders of private enterprises, which must perform successfully in the most competitive global marketplace that has ever existed, we see that continuously improving our capabilities in the practice of projects is strategic and valuable. I welcome your questions about using projects more effectively, strategically and competitively.

Image: Flickr User/vancouverfilmschool

Strategic Help–Mentors and Strategic Advisors

The mentor and strategic advisor are two of four types of strategic help I have found to be invaluable sources of power in building successful enterprises (the coach and the teacher are the other two). One person can be both a mentor and a strategic advisor, but the commitment of each role is distinct.

The term mentor comes from the Greek Mentōr, the name of the advisor of the young Telmachus in Homer's Odessey. The commitment of a mentor is more casual than that of a strategic advisor, and mentoring can occur in only one interaction, or be a continuing relationship. A mentor primarily responds to questions and requests, offers guidance and makes interpretations of situations to a "best efforts" standard. Mentoring conversations may be frequent or infrequent, and they are characterized by being more ad hoc and less structured than those of a strategic advisory relationship.

The responsibility for shaping and getting value from a mentoring relationship rests with the mentee. The mentor responds authentically from their wisdom and experience to the speaking of the mentee, with the intention of providing orientation and guidance appropriate to the situation. The recipient of mentoring has no commitment to act on the advice or thinking received. The mentor often shares what's "intuitive" or triggered in the conversation.

A strategic advisor is someone who gives advice in a domain where they have demonstrated expertise, with a commitment to understanding the situation sufficiently for the advice to be meaningful, relevant, valuable and purposeful. The advice in this relationship is to a "professional" standard, a standard beyond "best efforts".

We specify expertise as a level of competence in a domain which consistently exceeds the current standard for acceptable knowledge or performance. I have utilized strategic advisors in domains which are essential and critical for success, and where I was lacking expertise or mastery, such as financial strategy and structure, business strategy or the organization of a particular industry or market. I constitute the board of directors, whether a legal board or an informal board, with strategic and pragmatic experts in those domains I assess as essential for producing and sustaining competitive advantages and where I require help.

In a relationship with a strategic advisor, the recipient has an obligation to act as best they can with the advice received. Conversely, the strategic advisor has an obligation to be rigorous in their thinking and advising. Linguistically strategic advising will have more well-grounded assessments than will mentoring. Often a skillful strategic advisor will distinguish for you when they're mentoring and when they're advising, revealing their knowledge of the different commitments of these roles.

Guidance for Constituting these Relationships

Business is a game of power. Therefore, all serious players are aware of power, pay attention to sources of power and manage their exchanges of power as best they can to fulfill their personal ambitions and business missions. Those who are capable of being effective mentors and strategic advisors are skilled participants in this game of power. After all, who would want weak, mediocre or common mentoring or strategic advice? Constituting mentoring and strategic advisory relationships takes thought, design and preparation. Maintaining these relationships requires the same kind of effective management as maintaining any strategic relationship, such as that with a key customer.

Many years ago when I began learning to be effective in the roles of mentor, strategic advisor and coach, I would often ask the person on the other side of the relationship why they thought I was making an offer of help. I was surprised that most people had no idea, showing me they hadn't really considered why I was incurring costs from which they were benefitting. Sometimes the responses were offensive, such as "I imagine you get great pleasure from helping me succeed." A response of this type reveals a blindness or lack of awareness of the ambition and concerns of the one helping.

For someone to function as a highly valuable mentor or strategic advisor for you, they must have power you don't have in domains relevant to your success. Above, we specified two forms of power as knowledge and expertise (as demonstrated by a history of accomplishments). The best mentors and advisors have fundamental and strategic knowledge that fits your situation and ambition. Some will have specific knowledge of the industry or market your business serves. I have found it's more challenging to find people with strong fundamental and strategic knowledge than those with industry-specific knowledge. Additionally, they will have powerful networks with whom they may speak regarding your situation to increase the value of their advice, or to whom they can make introductions to expand your network of help. The more powerful the individual, the more forms of power they will have available to the relationship.

Designing and Preparing

You can produce significant returns on an investment in acquiring and maintaining powerful mentors and strategic advisors. These relationships are costly to constitute and manage–they require time, effort, lost opportunity and money. Mentoring relationships, being less formal and placing fewer demands on the mentor, can be less costly. Their informality also means they can easily become unsatisfactory, particularly for the mentor.

I do my best to be fully responsible in key relationships in my life. I work to maintain awareness of the costs I'm incurring, the costs the other is incurring, the value I'm producing and the value I'm helping the other to produce. I consider the relationships with my mentors and strategy advisors as key assets, and I work to maintain and increase their value.

Some things to think for design and action...

• What is your personal ambition and business mission, specifically in time horizons out to at least 7 years? This must be fully articulated in order to make assessments of what's missing in your configuration. We are fundamentally all working to earn, save and invest enough financial capital during our career to have sufficient freedom and autonomy in our 20-30 years of old age.
• Given this future you're committed to producing, in what domains do you need strategic advisors? Possibilities: business strategy, capital strategy and structure, building networks, building a competitive culture, operations, sales, marketing.
• Do you have mentors and/or strategic advisors now? How are the relationships constituted? Are your mentors and strategic advisors "A" players? What are the criteria and standards for making this assessment? What current relationships do you need to modify or quit?
• If you could only have one mentor, what qualities and knowledge would you specify for that person?
• What are your criteria and standards for granting trust and authority to another as a mentor? As a strategic advisor?
• What will satisfy each strategic advisor? You can't just ask them, by the way. That shifts the costs of design to them. Consider their ambition, their fundamental and specific concerns, their situations, their breakdowns, etc. You can think of the strategic advisors you have and want as key customers.
• What will satisfy you in each relationship? How will you assess value? I see many people failing to continuously assess value, and not realize the value they have in a relationship until they lose it. I can say from my own experience, this is a very costly way to learn.

I choose to have one mentor at a time, engaging in mentoring conversations as opportunities arise, and to have a set of strategic advisors sufficient to my current ambition and business missions. I currently have a mentor who's also one of my strategic advisors, a teacher, a study group and three strategic advisors. Accumulating strategic relationships and networks, elements of what I call configuration, has been a major source of power in my career. As you work on this for your career, I invite you to communicate what you're learning and what challenges you encounter.

Image: Flickr User/GrannyFranny2009

Attend to the Details

Learning and designing to pay attention to every detail, the practice we call precision consciousness, is an element of establishing and building competitive advantages in our enterprises. The language of business strategy speaks about sustainable competitive advantage, this means producing high return on costs (time, energy, money and lost opportunity) for customers in ways that can't be easily copied or blocked by competitors. In today's highly competitive, rapidly shifting global marketplace I see that sustainable competitive advantages are established and built with...

• a growing body of practices for continuous productivity and quality improvement
• practices for rapidly prototyping and assessing new offers, in order to discard the weak and develop the strong
• a well-designed practice to move forward with new offers selected for high marginal utilities for customers with rigor and velocity
• robust yet flexible business strategies
• a culture of communication, commitment and collaboration
• an openness to learning, to giving up prior interpretations and strategies in the face of new facts from the fast-changing marketplace
• embracing change as the norm in business, not the exception

Producing economic and social wealth by building a successful enterprise is highly challenging work, and work that is never finished. Resting on past success is the beginning of losing competitive advantage. The initial success we produce by moving from an insight of marginal utility that's highly valuable to customers, to the designing, crafting, bringing to market, producing and delivering the offer satisfactorily, is merely the beginning of producing, maintaining and increasing the value of our enterprise. If we relax in our past accomplishments and fail to constitute and refine practices for continuous learning and innovation, we are quickly eclipsed by competitors.

I continue to be passionate and in wonder about all there is to learn and the challenge of competing effectively; and simultaneously daunted by the relentlessness of global competition. Over my 3 plus decades in business, I've seen the pace of change accelerated again and again, and I anticipate this will continue for the relevant future.

Attend to Details, Get the Facts

Whether in the initial constitution of the enterprise or the continuous innovation required to remain competitive, effective thinking and design require facts and the use of those facts with precision consciousness. Quickly gather the relevant facts, then use them to continuously improve productivity, culture, strategy and the design of new offers.

What are the facts? Again and again and again–what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget "what the starts foretell", avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history"—what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts! Robert A. Heinlein

We use facts (assertions) for the thinking and designing to manage the enterprise. We use details to assess our strategies, measure our improvements (or lack thereof), notice anomalies that trigger the design of new offers. Change is the constant of modern business. We continuously design, execute, measure, assess, refine and redesign our offers, practices, narratives and strategies. Without relevant and sufficient data, our thinking risks being weak and non-competitive.

We recommend building a culture for change, a culture in which it's ok to fail, ok to speak negative assessments, and one in which continuous learning is embraced. I do not mean a "throw it against the wall and see if it sticks" culture. I mean a culture where we continuously inquire into how we can improve, what can we adopt and adapt, which strategies are becoming uncompetitive, etc.

To begin, determine what metrics will enable management to assess performance of each individual, team and function of the enterprise. We aspire to establish and maintain high velocity in assessing outcomes. These include practices that are daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, annually and longer. The time horizon fits the domain. However, we strive to make actionable assessments in the shortest reliable time horizon.

Our purpose in making assessments is to improve performance for standard practices and to assess the value of new offers, practices and projects. To do this successfully requires a culture that actively looks for what's flawed, missing, incomplete and weak in order to improve. Building and maintaining this culture is counter to popular the American culture of "we're the best". Cultivate humility, respect and curiosity. The faster you can improve and generate new, valuable offers and practices, the greater the competitive advantages you can accumulate.

Some additional thoughts for practicing precision consciousness:

• Push your organization to continually increase velocity in knowing details and making assessments; develop and refine fast feedback loops in every area of the enterprise
• Design to always have capacity for trying new ideas, e.g. Google gives every engineer a few hours a week to devote to ideas of their choice, including the freedom to work alone or form a team of their choosing.
• Have metrics for every member of the organization and use these to improve performance; avoid a culture where mistakes are not tolerated (the goal is to not make the same mistake again, to use failures to learn)
• Organize HR around recruiting competent performers who fit the culture; avoid the annual review in favor of fast feedback performance improvement
• Have practices to produce a learning organization; remaining static in one's knowledge leads to an early death in today's competitive environment
• Hold people accountable for their promises and for acting with the company's values
• Be willing to release (fire) those who cannot or will not embrace a culture of communication, collaboration and commitment; free them to find an organization where they fit and free your organization to become stronger and stronger
• Require metrics for meetings and all standing commitments; stop those that are not producing satisfactory returns
• Get periodic assessments from competent observers from outside your culture, e.g. your CPA firm, investors, advisors, teachers, etc.
• Look for and open to well-grounded negative assessments, i.e. assessments of what is flawed, missing, incomplete and weak

Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.  Steve Jobs

What will you start, stop or modify as a result of reading this post?

The twin pillars for producing, maintaining and increasing enterprise value are strategy and culture. Take action today to improve your strategy and/or culture. The only actions available in the present are to start something, stop something or modify something. An enterprise is an evolving entity, and all practices that slow its evolution increases the risk of failing to survive. Start more powerful practices, modify existing practices to improve performance and quickly stop practices and projects that are not producing satisfactory results.

A question for organizing action when there are many possibilities: "Where is the highest leverage"?

Look for where you get the best return on investment. I work to execute as much new thinking and action as we can, organizing actions from highest return to lowest return. Success if not about being perfect, success is about doing our best and continually increasing our knowledge and capabilities.

Help from Others

• Survival is Not Enough by Seth Godin. Seth makes many distinctions and offers ideas for numerous practices for producing what he calls zooming. A foundation for zooming is paying attention to the details, getting the facts, and continuously refining your interpretations of what details are meaningful, relevant and valuable.
• To Create Something Exceptional, do Sweat the Small Stuff, a blog post by Aaron Levie, founder and CEO of Box.net.

Imag: iStock Photo: SpiffyJ

Run More Effective Meetings–Guest Post by Jeff Hanhausen

A meeting is an event where minutes are taken and hours wasted. James T. Kirk

Have you noticed the rules have changed? What rules you might ask. The answer is all of them. Competing successfully in today's global marketplace is no longer business as usual. Imagine playing chess when the rules have changed, and you don't know the new ones but your opponent does! Before starting you would be soundly defeated.

The rules have changed for accounting, strategy, competition, pricing, marketing, selling and on and on. There is radical change everywhere we look.

What does this mean for meetings? As I pondered this question, I came across Read This Before our Next Meeting by Al Pittampalli. What he calls The Modern Meeting both perturbed and intrigued.

I’ve often listened to complaints about meetings. “Another meeting – uggh, I have real work to do", “That meeting just dragged on and on, I didn’t think it would ever end” and “Does anybody know why we're meeting?”  I'm sure you have your own version of negative meeting comments. Perhaps how we think about meetings, their purposes and structure, is out of sync with current reality. The rules have changed for meetings, and that means you must change your structure for meetings.

I separate meetings to produce and coordinate action from meetings having a purpose of creation/speculation. These are two very different conversations. Effective meeting design maintains clarity between conversations for action and conversations for speculation, usually not including both in the same event.

Speculative meetings are essential for the continuous innovation required to compete successfully. In a meeting for speculation, let the ideas flow and don’t judge them, simply allow them to be spoken and captured. Encourage and support new thinking by not allowing criticism or evaluation of the new ideas as they're being offered (this is far more challenging than it sounds).  The metric for conversations of speculation is the breadth and quantity of ideas . I recommend you number the ideas and target a number, e.g. go for 10, listing each. It’s fun! Specify a start time and a finish time, and use a timer—really. Ideas usually start coming faster as time runs out. There is something about us, human beings, and deadlines that provokes action. Encourage people to be active during the meeting, walking around to think or moving their chairs. Keep focused on the purpose for the brainstorming, writing everything down so participants can reflect later. Oh and did I mention—have fun!

What about all those other meetings? Other than speculation, we meet to review an existing plan in order to continue action–to correct flaws, incomplete or missing items that impede the production of satisfactory outcomes. Begin this meeting with a declaration of purpose. After making assessments and refinements, we coordinate action. Ensure everyone knows who is doing what, why, when, where and how. Assign responsibility to individuals and the plan is now ready for action.

Let’s look at the rules for this meeting.

1. The leader of the meeting prepares and distributes the agenda and background materials required before the meeting.
2. The agenda states the problem, the alternatives and the decision.  It is not simply making bullet points but requires thought and choices.
3. All participants come to the meeting prepared.  Prepared means they have read the materials and gotten answers to any clarifying questions before arriving.
4. Participants have met 1-1 for complex issues prior to the meeting to add depth.
5. Start and finish the meeting on time–always.
6. Limit the number of attendees to only people critical to the outcome (I suggest no more than 10, and closer to 5).
7. The leader choreographs the moods appropriate to the meeting.
8. Our meeting is about speed, not prudence.
9. Keep meetings brief and moving with velocity.
10. Have people who aren't required for the entire conversations leave when they are complete.
11. Have a recorder who captures all commitments made; review commitments before adjourning.
12. Adjourn the meeting and schedule the next meeting, if required.

In our company we had many meetings that were fast and productive. To accomplish this required a background of trust in our culture so that people understood they did not have to attend or stay to the end of every meeting. Of course we faced challenges changing our common sense, but over time people came to see the increased productivity and competitiveness we were able to produce.

As an attendee, ask yourself:

• Will you be able to function if you read about the meeting after it's over?
• If you're given the decision we’re discussing in advance, can you give me your opinion in advance?
• Do you add value by sitting in the meeting without participating?
• Are you attending symbolically, or simply as a way to demonstrate your power?

OK, you're ready to go.  The first step is to separate speculative meetings from action meetings. Communicate with everyone about what you are doing. Your goal is increased velocity, not prudence.

Image: Flickr user/Iain Farrell