I Like The Way This Guy Thinks…

Take It From a Pro…

I am so heartened after each of my cups of coffee, and I hope that you, as you read of them through this blog, are equally as encouraged as I am by the integrity, creativity and absolute power and positive promise of the independent business owner in America.  I spent an enlightening ninety minutes this morning, through GoToMeeting, with Ron Cox [www.tailwindconsulting.com] in Tampa, Florida.  I know that I was having my own home-brewed cappuccino at the time; I don’t know if he had coffee or not, but it counts toward my thousand.

I had been  very intrigued by his notion of “Strategic Literacy”, and I wanted to know more.  He and I had been introduced, only peripherally, because we each know another mutual acquaintance, but more about that other guy later.  We started off with the normal “show and tell” of “what do you do” and soon got into a discussion that raised an interesting question in my mind. 

We have all seen the professional football head coaches on the sidelines, holding a laminated [usually large and colorful] piece of paper in front of their mouths, as they discuss options with their coaching staff.  These papers are summaries of various “strategic options”  for the team, considering the opponent of the week, based on particular circumstances.  Also, most quarterbacks have a corollary, usually hinged, laminate on their forearm, a summary of these options, often with execution assignments. 

Ron, when he was CEO of his own company, developed a similar laminated “front and back” strategy sheet.  In fact, even today at Tailwind Consulting, they refer to it as the “Strategic GamePlan^©”.  The value of this sheet, and this process, was that it explained and supported Ron’s strategic thinking about his company.  His managers could review this one-pager and, like the quarterback, have their own “laminate” on their forearm.  That way, when faced with a particular situation [third and long], considering the circumstances [bad weather, strong pass defense], Ron could choose the “right play”.  His managers could then look at their own laminate about “that play” and call the assignments to the rest of the team. 

What if all the managers at your company had a similar set of documents?  If we can do something like this for a football game, why can we not do that for business?  Imagine the alignment, and the buy-in, and the excellent execution that a company could achieve with a well-communicated game plan such as this.  Ron has completed these types of strategic alignments at multi-billion-dollar international companies with amazing results.  One of his last client CEOs, one he still counsels today, said simply, “One company, one plan” while that company’s COO’s comment was “Our company has never run this well before”.

A great strategy, poorly executed, is still poorly executed.  A great strategy, to be well executed, must first be well articulated, well understood, well communicated and well translated into tasks and assignments.

What is your team’s game plan?  Do you have it on a simple “front and back” laminate?  Why not?  Too crude?  Not professional?  Doesn’t work?  It works for a company that just made a $1.2 billion dollar facility investment, the Dallas Cowboys.  Are you beyond that level of decision?  Didn’t think so.

And as for Ron Cox, I like the way this guy thinks.

The Business of Christmas – A Guest Blog

My deepest thanks to good friend, Ken Lerman, and his permission to resend this business message to my readers in this Christmas season.

The Business of Christmas

The 1951 movie, “A Christmas Carol” remains an endearing favorite to many – best  for acting, props, music score and content.  Past its wonderful Christmas message, Charles Dickens’ early Victorian economic insights and social commentary of 1843 closely align with our diminished U.S. world position and eroding U.S. cultures – social, corporate and political.

My brothers and I, all with careers in business, often quote “A Christmas Carol.”  My favorite is from the Ghost of Christmas Present:  “We spirits of Christmas do not live one day of the year.  We live the whole 365.  So it is true of the child born in Bethlehem.  He doesn’t live in man’s hearts only 1 day of the year, but in all the days of the year.” 

When Scrooge’s first employer, Fezziwig, is approached by the 1818 M&A (Mergers & Acquisitions) teams of investment bankers, he is first told “We’re men of vision and progress.”  When he wavers on selling, he is then told “We small traders (businessmen) are old history – dodos.”  Fezziwig wasn’t biting.  “The offer is large,” Fezziwig acknowledges, “but it’s not for money alone that one builds a family business…  it’s to preserve a way of life that we knew and loved.

Jorkinson finally wins out and after some quick years of fraud and embezzlement he announces to his Board of Directors – “Come, come Mr. Snedwick – we’re all cut throats under this fancy linen (GQ) and to pack me off to Botany Bay (prison) would be poor compensation for the panic that would arise among the shareholders.  Their annual meeting would resemble an orchestra of scorched cats (Enron).”  Scrooge and Marley immediately recommend a cover-up (Arthur Anderson accountant-consultants) and in an eventual business “takeover” they become the company holding 51% of the stock.

Love of money rules young Scrooge’s heart as his fiancée Alice releases him from their engagement.  “Another idol has replaced me in your heart – a golden idol.”  She goes on, “If you were free today, would you seek me out and try to win me over – a dowerless girl with neither wealth nor social standing – you who weigh everything by Gain?”

The first words Marley spoke to Scrooge, “The world is on the verge of new and great changes.”  Scrooge replies, “The world is becoming a hard and cruel place.  One must steel oneself to survive it and not be crushed with the weak and affirmed.”  Marley agreed.  Do you?  Will National Health Care be part of 2010 politics as baby boomers pass 60 years?

Marley’s ghost cries, “In life my spirit never roamed beyond the limits of our money changing hole.”  Scrooge recounts that Marley was always a good man of business.  His response, probably Dickens’ most famous and profound statement on business and humanity – “Business, Mankind was my business!  Their common welfare was my business!”

Many hoped the 9/11 catastrophes that shook our world would awaken us – like Scrooge – from a myopic dream of greed and wealth placed above all else and at any cost.  Alas, as those before us daily bowed to a golden calf in the desert, we continue to daily check stock portfolios to measure our happiness and comfort.

Following Scrooge’s own awakening, he attends Christmas dinner to tell the wife of his nephew, whom he’s ignored, “Can you forgive a pigheaded old fool, for having no eyes to see you with, no ears to hear you with, all these years?”  Later he leaves us with the words, “I haven’t lost my senses, Bob (Cratchit), I’ve come to them.”

It is good to be a child sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.

Merry Christmas – God Bless Us, Every One!

Click here for a printable version of this article.

Copyright. © 2009. Kenneth B. Lerman. All Rights Reserved.

Republished with Ken’s permission.

I think you can see why…  I like how this guy thinks.

Do You Sleep Peacefully in Your Bed at Night?

It technically wasn’t coffee, but I will count it among my thousand cups.  It was a great lunch with Tom Solomon, US Air Force Academy, Class of ’69.  He and I are part of a couple groups that he founded, one that meets regularly for breakfast on the second Friday of each month at the Westchase Marriott [all graduates of military academies welcome], and one that meets for lunch on the fourth Fridays at the same location [Air Force Academy graduates].  These meetings are filled former Air Force fighter pilots, Army Special Forces types, astronauts, naval aviators and engineers, Marine pilots, and Coast Guard [current and reserve] and Merchant Marine veterans.  This lunch, however, was an “off-site meeting”, a one-on-one apart from the normal networking interface.

Tom is a lawyer [www.tomsolomon.com] - he’s a business lawyer, and he specializes in helping small businesses [like mine] “get legal” and stay out of trouble.  But we were focused on someone else that day- Tom had just attended a fundraiser the previous evening where the speaker was Ollie North – yep, that one, Iran-Contra and all that.  Tom provided me some startling statistics that Colonel North had mentioned, and the exact numbers escape me, but this is the gist of it:

The average combat service of an American soldier in World War II, the greatest generation soldiers, was about six months; in the Korean Conflict, it was almost 9 months; the average combat tour of duty in SouthEast Asia [VietNam] was 12 months.  But the average combat exposure for today’s soldier in a “normal” 60-month enlistment is almost 45 months.  Almost four years.  Imagine a young man or woman entering the service at age 18, who, by the time he or she is 23, will have spent one sixth of his or her life deployed into combat areas.

I am a veteran myself, having served almost ten years in the Air Force and another thirteen in the Guard/Reserves.  I flew fighters and protected my country, sometimes in remote assignments and sometimes in south Florida.  I volunteered to go to “the war”, but I was not sent.  I have never fired a shot in anger, nor have I been subjected to enemy fire.  Yet every month, and sometimes twice a month, I sit and associate with men and women who have.

Tom went to the Air Force Academy, intending to fly.  Before graduation, nature played him a cruel trick, and his eyesight deteriorated to the point that he was ineligible for flight school.  So committed to service in that difficult period of the late ’60s was he, that he secured an assignment as an Intelligence Officer in SouthEast Asia.  And I respect him for that.  Not only did he find a way to serve, he also figured out how to get on flight status and flew with the Nails [forward air controllers], for which he received a Bronze Star, an Air Medal, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Palm.

And I applaud his service.  Tom learned, as did we all who have attended our nation’s great military academies, that “service before self” is more than a slogan.  Tom joined, without reservation, the long line of men and women who have offered, and continue to offer, to die, if need be, so that we may all enjoy the benefits we do in this great country of ours.

I am working with Project Wounded Warrior, a volunteer organization aiming to support returning veterans from our current warfighting who have given of life and limb.  It is a humbling experience to interact with men and women the age of my son and daughter who have given so much, yet to see no sense of anger or resentment.  As we work to assist these brave soldiers in their re-integration into society, their gratitude embarrasses me as I consider my feeble efforts compared to what they have done for me. 

I have to admit that I cry every time I hear the National Anthem, remembering the men and women, friends all, who have given “the last full measure” so that others do not need to.  Same thing for “Taps”.  It embarrasses my step-daughters, but the tears run shamelessly as the names and faces “parade” through my mind.

I recall a quote from George Orwell, the British author, that “Men sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.“  And that is true yet today.  I ask us all to take notice of today’s soldiers, sailors and airmen who stand in harm’s way on our behalf, protecting us to agree or disagree with war, to respect or not respect the role of the military.  And they do it willingly, generally without quarrel nor concern for others.

Being willing to lay down your life for another or for your country does not mean that you want to lay down your life for your country or another- simply that you will if asked.  And so, every Friday, you will find me wearing a red article of clothing of some kind: shirt, tie, whatever I can manage, because our veterans deserve so much more than an annual holiday.  They deserve to be remembered every day, but failing that, perhaps you can join me, and Tom, and countless others who – as a minimum – remember them every Friday.

I do it because I understand “integrity” and I understand “service before self” and I understand “excellence in all we do” – the core values of fighting men and women the world around. 

And I do it because I sleep peacefully in my bed at night.

And I know whom to thank for that.

As for Tom, I like how this guy thinks.

The Myth of Accountability

What a jam-packed day for discovery!!

Hats off to Mattison Grey [www.greystoneguides.com] for showing me Catalina Coffee, an eclectic roasterie and coffeeshop in the Historic District of Houston.  I highly recommend the experience: the coffee is superb, the baristas are performance artists, the ambience is delectable and the patrons are warm, open, talkative and an utter joy.  2201 Washington- get off I-10 at Taylor exit, head south, keep right when it turns to Sawyer, turn left on Washington and it’s on the right on the corner.  I expect to have many many more of my “thousand cups of coffee” there.

Mattison is a coach, and as she explained, she is a “real coach“.  In a time when so many recently terminated mid-level managers are rebranding their unemployment as “executive coach”, it is understandable that she might seem a bit peckish about that distinction.  As always happens in these encounters, the conversation wandered.  Actually “wandered” might even be too weak a word.  “Caromed” comes to mind: women’s rugby, aerial photography, CrossFit Training [all the rage; look it up], Superperformance, underperformance, “Crossing the Chasm”.  Did I mention that I love this project?

About midway through our stay, we ran across the concept of accountability.  I had recently had a conversation with a friend of mine, a coach, a real coach, about the notion of “contructive accountability”, a topic on which he and another colleague of mine have done a great deal of work.  Expect to hear more about “constructive accountability” on this blog at a later date.  But Mattison took the position that accountability is actually a myth in the way it is implemented in most circumstances: “we only use it to get people to do something that they don’t want to do”. 

Think about the last time that you heard the word “accountability” [or "accountable" ] used; most likely it was on a newscast, or immediately after some report of a failure, when someone is demanding that someone else be held accountable.  When was the last time you heard someone insist that another person be held accountable for having done something positive?  “Accountable” strikes fear in our hearts.  What image does this sentence conjure for you: “Someone has to be accountable for this.”  Do you see a mother standing in the doorway with an armful of flowers and adoring children and husband looking on, or do you see that same mother finding a peanut butter and jelly rendition of “The Last Supper” on the dining room wall?  When we hear “accountable”, we internalize “punishment“, creating a response of fear and dread.

I had to ask if this weren’t simply a semantic manipulation, but I have to admit that Mattison’s examples and points did lead me to her same conclusion.

How are you using accountability?  Are you perpetuating the myth?  Why?  Can the dread internalization be changed?  Need it be changed?  I wonder if JP’s ideas about “constructive accountability” will help this.

I would like your opinion on this concept.  Drop me a line through the Comments section below.  I’m going to hold you accountable.

And as for Mattison, I like the way this woman thinks.

Anything Worth Doing Well is Worth Doing Poorly At First

So there I was… driving all along FM 1960 [that's a road name, for all you non-Texans] looking all over for the Dunkin’ Donuts that Mapquest told me would be there.  Finally, I called Nancy Johnson, my coffee partner, to let her know that I was late, I had been unable to locate the place, but I was looking.  When she answered, she told me that she was alsodriving up and down 1960, also unable to find Dunkin’ Donuts either.  Darn Mapquest.  So we agreed on Starbuck’s, which we were both somehow near, with another lesson learned about today’s electronic world.

This was a marathon cuppa, not that we noticed until too late, almost three hours, but most enjoyable.  Nancy and I have both been struggling with a bit of “personal” re-invention this last year [see yesterday's blog about re-invention], having been let go from our separate previous employers at the start of the new year, a circumstance not unfamiliar to a great many Americans in 2009.

We are similarly aged, and seeking corporate employment was most often met with the “over-qualified” euphemism, creating quite a bit of angst and anguish.  We were, at our advanced maturity…  well, age, because I certainly cannot consistently claim maturity… having to decide “what we wanted to be when we grew up”.  We had to re-invent how we looked at ourselves, driven by how others looked at us.  Inside, I am still 25, immortal and sporting the body I inhabited while flying fighters and carousing in Korea- I have no idea how that overweight grey-haired guy gets inside my mirror.

We talked about the struggles of learning new skills, particularly the ubiquity and variety of electronic social media – so critical to today’s networking candidate.  Skype, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Naymz… and those are only a few of the myriad options available.  We talked about blogging and what it takes to get into that, and then there is website design and upkeep, and on and on and on.  I had decided simply to jump in, to go get started, but Nancy had found herself a bit more hesitant, wanting to research it “just a little bit more” to “make sure [she] was doing it right”.

That is when a favorite admonition from a friend of mine from long long ago came to mind – “Anything worth doing well is worth doing poorly at first”.  If you want to be “good” at social media marketing, you will have to be bad at first.  You will make faux pas, you will goober up your Twitter account, you will forget the eighty-five new passwords you create [some with caps, some with letters, some not], you will try to make a connection on LinkedIn by signing in to Facebook.  Trust me- I have “been there, done that”.  But all these applications are amazingly forgiving [I can delete the pages I don't like] and the community of users is amazingly supportive and receptive.

So we came around full circle to the adage-esque Nike slogan of “Just Do It“.  Social media is the “new thing” especially to us “boomers”, but it is the new thing. 

We have to become adept at using it. 

Even though we will be poor at using it at first.

And as for Nancy, I like how this lady thinks.

Corporate Re-Invention: Opportunity or Requirement?

Jungian psychology.  Air Force fighter planes and maneuvers.  Bushi-do.  Behavior of teenagers.  Knowledge system optimization.  “Open-book” management.  I love this job.

Although we talked about all of the above topics, when Dick Huiras [www.huirasassoc.com] and I met for another of my “thousand cups of coffee”, the key concept that I chose to report here was that of corporate re-invention in light of today’s economic environment.  Dick had mentioned that, while coaching several of his senior level executive clients in new techniques for managing these stressful times, he would often remind them that this might be a “great opportunity” to re-invent a company.

What does re-invention look like?  It looks like out-of-the-box thinking to expand current revenues in a shrinking marketplace.  Specifically, for Dick’s client, it looked like a plumbing supply store chain that had had significant market share of the housing contractor market before the cards collapsed.  With housing sales tumbling, and building rates along with them, this company was looking at a smaller and smaller buy from fewer and fewer customers as conditions deteriorated.  The old model of “finding more contractors to purchase plumbing”, which had worked famously for the previous five or six years, had to be replaced.  Reinvention meant getting a smaller and smaller number of contractors each to buy more and more supplies from the chain, by adding heating and air conditioning supplies, electrical supplies and roofing materials to the traditional product line.

Was this re-invention optional?  Certainly it was.  To paraphrase Deming, “[Re-invention] is optional; no one need survive.”  Although optional, without re-invention, survival was certainly a questionable outcome.  These are times like no one has ever seen before, and if you find a consultant who tells you that he or she has, grab your checkbook and run, far far away.  We are all “playing this one by ear”, relying on foundational principles and established truths, instead of faddish programs or quick fixes. 

Business leaders all over the country, and around the world, are struggling to make sense of the economic climate, to try to predict with any degree of reliability what the future might look like, and how soon.  In meeting these challenges, they are having to draw upon internal reserves, energy to sustain them through the difficult decisions and implementations [hence, the Jungian psychology].  They are looking for new systems to manage and direct knowledge within their enterprise to make sure that the right people have the right knowledge at the right time in the right format [hence, the knowledge systems optimization].  They have to know, exactly, “On which day of the month, each month, does your business begin to make money?” [hence the open-book management].  The fighter pilot stuff and bushi-do were just for fun.

What struck me through the course of the conversation, though, was Dick having positioned “re-invention” as an option or an opportunity.  I happen to believe that it is no longer an option, that re-invention is a requirement for survival. 

It was no easy task getting into this mess, and it will be a slow and laborious extraction.  In the meantime, it is back to the basics of good business, for all of us. 

And that will mean re-invention.

And as for Dick, I like how this guy thinks.