August 2020

As COVID continues to impact how we live our lives and run our businesses, many businesses are in crisis mode. As I work with business leaders on the decisions that they face, sometimes the question comes up — given our urgent issues, does strategy even matter right now? In this episode of the ClearPurpose podcast we compare how two different companies, Sprint and T-Mobile, both in crisis in 2008, responded.

From 2006 to 2016, the wireless industry nearly doubled in size. One of those companies shrank by 30% and the other quadrupled its subscribers. What do you think made the difference?

Is your business in crisis mode? Are you saying “we don’t need a strategy — our strategy is survival?” Or are you discerning what your strategy is and using it to help make your hard decisions easier?

Listen to the podcast.

The core message of Start With Why is incredibly powerful. Most organizations start with defining what business they are in. The best organizations start by defining why they are in business. The message makes for a great 20 minute TED talk.

Read the full review here.

Yesterday, I introduced a framework of six questions that I believe every business needs to be able to coherently and consistently answer. “Why does this business exist” is the first on the list, and I believe the most important.

When you define your business by why you do what you do rather than by what you sell, everything else starts to fall into place. When team members understand the why, they naturally will make decisions aligned with the why, even in the face of significant ambiguity and uncertainty. When customers understand your why, those that select you will be loyal and will more highly value your products and services.

When you don’t understand your why, everything can quickly fall apart. Decisions become hard, take too long, and involve too many people. Customers are fickle, willing to switch for the smallest reason. Employees feel little attachment to their jobs.

Read the full story here.

Whenever I sit down with a new or potential client for the first time, I typically start by asking them to “tell me about your business”. As they respond, I’ll often gently probe for more details. When I first started doing this, it was a somewhat intuitive process, but over the years I have formulated it down to six questions that I’m hoping to get answered:

1. Why does the business exist?
2. What principles will the leaders never compromise?
3. Whom do they serve?
4. Why do customers choose them?
5. How do they make money?
6. What do they need to do right now?

Today I want to briefly introduce these six questions and then, over the next week or so I want to dig more deeply into each of these areas.

Read the full story here.

Introducing my latest eBook – VisuALS: A Startup Strategic Journey. 

My hope is that compiling the content together into one eBook will make it more useful as a resource to entrepreneurs beginning their startup journey. I also hope the book can be an encouragement to those in the ALS community to see how enterprising young people are compassionately embracing the needs of the ALS community.

I am donating all of my proceeds from sales of the book to the Carl Fund to help provide VisuALS systems to those needing help communicating with their loved ones.

Read the full story here.

The systems strategy defines how the organization leverages information technology to accomplish its mission. 

Just as organizations can’t operate without people, they can’t operate without information systems. Therefore, a systems strategy is absolutely essential for any organization. As with most strategies, every organization already has a systems strategy, they just may not know what it is. If that’s the case, you may not realize how much your de facto systems strategy is hurting your ability to execute the rest of your strategies, and you almost certainly aren’t benefiting as much as you can from the available technology.

Similar to the people strategy, there should be an overarching systems strategy for the entire organization and then cascading systems strategies for sub-teams. Each team’s systems strategy needs to align with the organization-wide systems strategy, but must specifically address how information systems will support the team’s own strategy.

The strategy will enable decisions about which systems and development projects get resources and what capabilities need to be acquired or developed within the supporting organizations.

Read the full story here.

It may be cliche for organizations to say that people are their most precious resource, but truly no strategy can be well executed without appropriate people strategies. The people strategy is one that needs to cascade throughout the entire organization — with each level aligning to the one above but focused on the specific needs of that team.

The people strategy has to reflect what is needed to execute the organization’s strategy in terms of the culture and human capabilities required. This should also explicitly translate into clear direction on staffing levels, organizational structure, and insourcing vs. outsourcing. It should also explicitly address how employees will be compensated and rewarded to attract/retain the right employees and to incent the right behavior. The strategy will guide specific recruiting and staffing decisions, investments in training and development, and performance management including promotions and corrective actions. It will also guide the creation of appropriate outsourcing and partnering relationships.

Read the full story here.

Every organization needs a strategy that defines how innovations are prioritized, sourced, and managed.

Virtually all organizations require some form of innovation — whether it be technology, product, business model, or operational creativity. The nature and approach to innovation matters, but what matters most is to ensure that the entire organization is working in lock-step so that innovation initiatives are productive and value-creating.

Read the full story here.