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#120: Triangulation

In executing strategy, we bring about change. Sometimes, this change seems to come easily, other times, it feels really, really hard. We divide our time between understanding how to make change easier (process) and actually making change happen (output).

Things start to happen when:

• There is a need (real or perceived). The person who invented the phrase 'no pain, no gain' (pun intended) had a lot of foresight! A 'need' is foundational. If an investment is made without inventing or discovering a need, nothing is going to happen, or something bad is going to happen (think 'failed projects' and 'wasted resources' and 'frustration').
  
• Resources are applied to fulfill the need. Sometimes even a little bit is enough. At other times, even a lot is not enough.
  
• The timing is right. This is intangible but often crucial element. Finding the right timing is part science, seems mostly art. It requires the right mixture of intuitiveness and experience and risk taking ability to spot 'timing'.
  

Does having all three ensure success? A lot could go wrong in execution, nothing can be taken for granted. Needs or priorities may change, leaving assumption about timing in shambles.

The point being, after identifying critical success factors (3 examples are given above) and evaluating them individually, try 'triangulation' as an additional step to assess the readiness for change and success.

#119: Approaching complex problems

When walking thru a thick fog towards your destination, without a light, how do you proceed?

Many complex problems seem that way. If the stakeholder base is large and the culture is collaborative, there is churn. Discussions seem to be endless and at times, pointless.

If the destination is unclear or not agreed upon, efforts will not be coordinated. Everyone will assume a different destination and pull resources in different directions.

A productive way to proceed is to agree upon the next 3-5 steps. Reconvene to ask if the destination is clear. If not, agree upon the another 3-5 steps.

Speed is not critical when the destination is unclear. Safety is essential.

#118: Why bother with 'taxonomy'?

It would seem that professional managers focus on 'doing' and academics focus on 'knowing'. Somehow, the two audiences are able to communicate and collaborate to improve the 'doing' and the 'knowing'.

By creating a definition and taxonomy for the activities in strategy execution, it makes it possible to identify what is broken or, if everything is working :-), what needs to be tweaked to go to the next level.

One of the first things that need to be clarified is the difference between 'strategy' and 'strategy execution'. Setting overall strategy (low-cost, differentiation, market focus) is the first step. The strategic objectives are specific statements of intent, aligned to the overall strategy.

'Strategy execution' is needed to convert these intentions into reality. In the course of execution or implementation, there is a feedback loop, where lessons learnt are then applied to improving strategy. This feedback loop is in place for all organizations that look to learn from their successes and failures.


Strategy definition and execution are 'always on' and consist of a set of clearly identifiable activities. These activities are performed every day, by all organizations. If these activities are performed without understanding what they are and how they are interconnected, the opportunities to systematically eliminate roadblocks in converting strategy to reality are harder to discover.

#117: What is 'strategy execution'?

Here is my attempt: "The processes that convert business strategy to operations. 'Business strategy' is the choices made (and excluded) in creating value (can be explicit or implicit). 'Operations' is the on going (steady state) effort to deliver value to customers."

This will cover all the steps from discovering/inventing value to actually delivering it to customers. In explaining this, concepts such as 'in the business' (create value using existing processes), 'on the business' (improve processes) and 'transform the business' (move the business to an entirely new ground) need to be explained.

I am looking forward to comments and learning from other perspectives.

#116: Types of meals

There are 3 types of meals:

• A grand sit down dinner, with real cloth napkins, silverware and possibly, candle lights! The company around the table is polite and well mannered. All in all, its a wonderful, relaxing experience. You don't have to do anything other than be present and enjoy yourself (and pay the bill). Someone cooks the food, serves it and cleans up after.
  
• A meal you cook yourself allows you both flexibility in preparation and the experience of a creative joy. You decide what to cook, when to cook, how to cook and how to serve and eat it. You also have the choice of who to eat it with. You have to make the effort to get the ingredients to make the meal.
  
• A frozen dinner. You take it out of the freezer, heat it and eat it. It is the ultimate in convenience and speed. Very, very handy when you are tired and not in the mood to cook and don't want the expense of eating out. A variation of this is the 'take out', 'order in' or 'to go'.

Information is consumed in one of the three ways listed above. When executing your strategy, getting the right information to the right person at the right time can mean the difference between moving things forward or getting stuck and spinning your wheels. Communication gaps are like serving the wrong type of meal to the wrong audience.

#115: Art? Science? Business? (Yes!)

If diversity is the norm in strategy execution, it is necessary to try and understand preferences in crafting a solution. The artist will try to make the solution look beautiful, the scientist will make the solution work correctly and repeatedly and the business person will try to make money from it.

All three have to come together. Too much time and energy gets wasted in debating the virtues of one approach over the other. The comparisons are pointless even at a theoretical level.

Align efforts to customer outcomes and to what needs to be done to meet and exceed expectations. The leader's preference tends to be imposed on the team and egos will be bruised if they are not able to appreciate and work for the greater good.

#114: Execution: Creating a 'dialtone'

In an earlier blog, we talked about the expectation of a 'dialtone' and how that represents an unstated expectation of customers and stakeholders.

At the heart of it, strategy execution is all about creating a 'dialtone'. I.e., creating value in a consistent and predictable manner.

Whatever your profession, calling, initiative or project, you are working to create a dialtone. I.e. you start with a situation that is not understood, issues are possibly clouded by fallacies and urban legends. You work thru the issues one by one till you can evolve a repeatable process to deliver value in a consistent and predictable manner.

Your every effort builds upon experience and existing capabilities. Even new capabilities are created using existing capabilities. It follows that none of your efforts are truly one off (I am trying to think of examples of truly one off projects and failing). At the physical level, you can never create 'something out of nothing', though it reads very well in marketing literature and performance reviews.

What is needed is the ability to solving problems effortlessly and consistently, handling unexpected situations, and aligned to org strategy, vision and mission. Use friction and conflict to discover missing capabilities.

#113: Fear

The feeling of dread. The fear of the unknown. What is slipping between the cracks? What is going to happen next?

This can range from the mild tension that enhances performance, to debilitating anxiety and paranoia.

If this is happening to you, the first thing to acknowledge that unless some unlawful or illegal act is being committed, this is your problem. No one is "doing it to you." You can choose to be a victim or relish the challenge of looking for the positive while working to turn things around.

The world is not perfect, it never was and never will be. Sometimes it is unclear how words like 'control' and 'predictability' even made it to the dictionary. Maybe these words describe a desire, not a fact.

Paradoxically, if you buy into the previous statement, the anxiety begins to fall away. The feeling and the need to 'cling' on to a safety net will disappear. It may not help solve the problem at hand, but you will feel happier. Not to mention, you will no longer be a pain-in-the-rear to your co-workers by reacting to your inner anxieties.

#112: Bootstrapping the planning process

Everyone knows planning in advance is a good thing. (Well, is there any other time and place to plan!) However, inertia is common and getting started requires an act of calamity. When the need to plan is recognized (at which point it moves from 'planning' to 'damage control'), everyone complains they are "behind."

It is not a matter of skill. Though planning skills are not hard to acquire, its important to learn the planning process in advance and not struggle with the process in the course of planning. Fed up with the ad hoc nature of doing business, organizations institute an annual planning process. However, the need to plan is not a once-a-year effort. It is required at the start of every initiative, program and project.

What is the sense of urgency that will get teams to plan? It often comes down to strong leadership. If the boss asks for a plan, the wheels begin to move.

Planning is the starting point to building a playbook for executing strategy. If planning does not occur, then the playbook is build tacitly, this will work for only the smallest endeavors, if at all. Organizational learning will remain 'tribal knowledge'. This means the organization will not scale as communication requires close human contact to teach and learn.

The planning process is not a game changer, getting the team to start planning is.

#111: Logomachy

Derived from Greek (logos 'word' and makhia 'fighting'), this represents an 'argument about words'.

Diversity brings benefits, but one challenge is reconciling different perspectives. The perspectives are often expressed in language and the choice of words often creates barriers instead of bringing them down.

"What is it?" should be followed by "What should we call it?"

Amazingly, this simple act will swiftly remove confusion and allow teams to focus on the essence of the problem or opportunity. Wisdom is achieved when the participants in a dialogue realize that conflict over what to call something is unproductive and dysfunctional. Understanding and agreeing what 'it is' is crucial.

The paradox is, you have to describe what 'it is' in order to agree on what 'it is'. This is a partial explanation for complexity in understanding and agreeing what 'it is'. Small wonder that groups have to work through communication gaps, frustration and chaos to answer the above two 'simple' questions.

#110: Creativity & Structure: Timing

Almost all problems, big and small, go thru this pattern.

In the initial stage:

• Its more important to be effective.
• Select a strategy (that means saying 'no' more than saying 'yes').
• Prioritize and focus on what is important.
• Resist the temptation to get carried away with 'gloom and doom' predictions or with cause and effect proposals that have not been tested and verified.
• Take baby steps till clarity on problems/opportunity arises.
  

In the latter stage:

• Its more important to be efficient.
• Do more with less.
• Capacity utilization is critical.

Each stage requires specific behaviors and techniques. Misapplication of either leads to wasted effort and frustration. Find out which stage you are in and then plan for success.

#109: Sniff Tests (vs. Gut Checks)

'Sniff tests' are similar to 'gut checks', with one subtle distinction.

Gut checks implies intuition and a self-awareness. It has to 'feel right'. This has a very important place in decision making for several reasons:

• Often, there is no data available to analyze. Either because the endeavour is so new that no one knows anything about it, or because no capabilities exist to collect and analyze data.
• Even when data is available, it may be presented in a self-serving way. The decision maker has to cut thru the clutter to get to what is super critical and ignore the biases created by the 'noise' of irrelevant information.
• With increase in experience and battle scars, thee is a tendency to trust one's gut more than the data.

Sniff tests implies that you are collecting data from an external source. After all, you cannot 'sniff your gut', even if you could, I doubt if it will smell differently based on the data you are analyzing.

A sniff test is like testing a perfume before buying the whole bottle. Another example is to reach out and look for opinions and data on whether a course of action has any merit.

As you may have guessed, because a sniff test collect so little data, gut check is still required to take a decision!

#108: Trade offs and sweet spots

This graph shows the business scenario of customer dissatisfaction. If a customer complains you can handle it one of two ways:

• Give a refund or an exchange, no questions asked.
• Make the customer justify the dissatisfaction and only the very serious will pursue indemnity.

Or you could have a combination of both. More of one means less of the other. Finding the point on the curve for your business is the first challenge. Industry norms, your operating philosophy and the nature of your product or service will dictate the 'sweet spot'. In addition to finding the sweet spot, you have to worry about executing on the promises made to the customer. Its all very well to say you will give a refund, but setting up the logistics of packing the product, shipping, paying for shipping and refunding the money are just some of the processes that need to work flawlessly. For a service, you may be required to deliver it again. Then there are the processes to capture the incidents and costs so analytics can be generated for future planning.

Treat identifying trade offs and their sweet spots followed by setting up operational processes to execute on the promises as one package for getting and keeping happy customers.

#107: Comfort versus structure

Lower the comfort, the higher the structure desired. The tendency is to stay with the familiar and take risk cautiously, if at all. As comfort increases, the desire to experiment grows, structure just gets in the way. At the highest level of comfort, behavior is almost instinctive, with the minimum of conscious thought.

As you break down the tasks that need to be done to execute your strategy, check your comfort level to determine how much structure you need. If the task you need to get done has been done before, its easier. You can acquire that knowledge by benchmarking or by hiring talent. If the task has not been done before, you can still create a semblance of structure by:

• Putting out decision gates to align progress with capabilities and readiness.
• Defining decision criteria to eliminate options that make no sense.
• Framing up the problem so efforts are focused.
  

#106: What if I CAN'T plan?

Lack of planning is often ridiculed in conversations, articles, books and blogs. There may be times where it is may seem okay NOT to plan:

• When you have no idea what to do and sitting idle is not an option.
• When you are in a start up and there are known and obvious issues to tackle.

At some point, it may be time to stop the madness and plan.

Why plan? The main outcome is to anticipate scenarios. This has several benefits if you get it right:

• Execution efforts are economical, learning by trial and error is always more expensive.
• Blunders are avoided.
• Friction and angst in execution are lowered as roles and responsibilities are clarified.
• Risk is reduced by eliminating options that make no sense at all.
• Bonus: Conversations, if facilitated well, lead to clarity, bonding and thereby to high performance teamwork.
  

If you don't get it right, you still come out ahead:

• Changing a plan from a baseline provides an opportunity to do so in a rational way (as opposed to an emotional way).
• A closed-loop learning process can be implemented to improve the planning process as well as the planning results. E.g., use the 'lessons learnt' from the plan that did not work to improve. If there was no plan, the actions were random. Yes, something can be learnt but a faulty process means no predictability in the output, so the learning is probably not going to lead to the root causes of failure.

In summary, a lack of planning points to the need for deeper analysis and understanding of the organization's situation. Asking 'why can't you plan?' will uncover some fundamental issues and barriers. Tackle that first, then get on with the job of planning.

#105: Creativity versus accounting

Strategy execution requires two kinds of work: the 'creative' and the 'accounting'.

'Creative' work requires 'problem solving':

• Discovering and inventing strategy.
• Developing new product and service offerings.
• 'Dive and catch' efforts to resolve operational challenges.
• Connecting the dots and bringing order from chaos.
  

The 'accounting' work is the tedious effort of managing the details:

• Getting an inventory of existing initiatives, programs and projects.
• Reporting status.
• Collecting and analyzing data and metrics to measure success.
• Validating that the portfolio of initiatives, programs and projects are internally consistent and aligned with customer outcomes.
• Stopping initiatives, programs and projects that are not aligned with customer outcomes.
  

Both are important. Each has a different skill set. People inclined towards one type of activity or the other: the type of people who excel in one will drive the other crazy.

The most damaging leadership behaviors are:

• Putting a creative person in an accounting role and vice versa.
• Punishing the creative people for being creative and the accountant for paying attention to detail.

Align both types to customer outcomes. This will let each type of person be themselves but focus on what is most important: customer outcomes.

#104: A barrier to action

There are times when we feel or realize that we have no control over events and outcomes. Zen masters know this to be a law of nature, but when the less enlightened first realize this, they are overcome by doom and gloom.

An initial reaction is one of 'fatalism', a feeling that events are pre-destined and if it is to be, or not to be, it will be or not be. Therefore, why bother trying to change it? There are two problems with this conclusion:

• It leads to a passive, cynical and negative approach to problem solving.
• Its no fun both for the person who has this outlook and for people who have to interact with this person.
  

If you have to be fatalistic, be so only about the past.

A different approach is to accept the realization that we have no control over anything except our actions. This will result in the following benefits:

• You will learn to live in the moment.
  
• You will put in the best effort you can and not worry about the results. Because that is all you can do, that is all you must do.
• Failures and successes will cease to sway you. Because you have little control over events and outcomes, how can you take the full blame or full success for the bad and good things that happen? A nice side benefit, this may help reduce the hubris that follows success and depression that follows failure.

Leaders have to demonstrate that control is not needed to get things done and be the role model for those who seek security and emotional refuge in 'control'.

#103: Effort and Results gap

Efforts and results are connected in the following way:

• Results typically require effort, sometimes in quantity and sometimes qualitatively.
• Efforts and results are separated by time. Sometimes they happen close together and sometimes they are separated by several years or even longer.

This gap is important to understand for a few reasons. For one thing, everyone's comfort level varies. Some like instant gratification and hence the time between effort and result has to be very short. Which also means such people are limited to small tasks and to small impact.

Others may have a higher tolerance for gaps between effort and result. At the extreme, they may not care about the result and indulge in the effort for its own sake. Such people will typically take on big, hairy problems.

Sometimes execution efforts begin thinking the gap is small enough to work on (anywhere from 1 week to 2 years) and when this gap begins to widen, commitment and interest begins to decrease.

If the desired result is 'too far away', build coalitions by breaking it down and defining intermediate results (milestones). Then sell the intermediate milestones as a way to mitigate risk.

There is no right or wrong or good or bad. Understand your comfort level with the gap will help you understand your motives and the capabilities you need to build. What matters is that once you commit to working towards a result, you treat it as a business decision when defining your effort. If you treat it as an emotional decision, then you are at risk of making poor investment decisions and depending too much on luck.

#102: Dialtone

When you pick up the phone you expect to hear a dialtone. (There was a time that in some parts of the world you didn't, I don't know if that is true anymore!)

Think of a 'dialtone' as something people expect to be there. No 'ifs' and 'buts', if its not there, frustration and annoyance are bound to follow. The most common examples refer to product and service features: you expect a car to be sold with floor mats, you expect a meal to be tasty and not give you a bad stomach and when you flip the switch, you expect the light to come on.

There are some other not so obvious 'dialtone' expectations:

• Communication styles: Clients, bosses and dates who expect you to talk to them a certain way otherwise they will not want to work with you.
  
• Cultural protocols: These are strongly held beliefs of how individual and group interactions need to take place at various occasions, public and private.
  
• Normal and customary: These are the business protocols and rules of engagement between buyer and seller.
  

The above are tough, but you can train people to create a dialtone for them. The hardest part of creating a dialtone are:

• Assumtions: Yours and Theirs. This is the equivalent of a hidden land mine. People act, say and expect things and they have no idea why.
• Inflexibility: Once you know that a dialtone is expected and know how to create one, overcoming your inertia and weaknesses is the hard part (i.e. converting knowing into doing).
  

So how to create a 'dialtone'? Start with audience reality. Do your research. Find the sweet spot where they will say 'wow'. Find where it itches and scratch it. Sometimes physically and mostly emotionally and always take permission before scratching the itch.