Strategy Execution Newsletter

Strategy Execution Newsletter

Measure What Matters

Marc L Daniels — 22 April, 2021 

Most companies measure outcomes...this is a mistake. To drive the results you are looking for; you need to track leading metrics.

If most of your dashboard numbers have currency symbols with them ($-£-€), you are most likely not measuring what matters.  Results are important, but you can not manage Results. What you can manage are the activity and effectiveness measures that drive those results. 

What Metrics should you measure? Metrics are what you use to measure the critical success factors that drive your present operating model; they drive business as usual and can improve what is.

How do identify powerful Leading Metrics?
Start by asking yourself these questions:

 1 - What are the critical functional areas of your business model?
 2 - What Result or outcome are we looking to achieve in each functional area?
 3 - What activities or actions drive this outcome?
 4 - What effectiveness measurements let us know how well the actions are being performed?

Let me give you an example of a traditional sales department. The coomon approach I see is that companies track revenue achievement by Sales Development Representative (SDR) and % of quota attainment. Yes, you will know how they are performing at any moment in time but are you helping them? Can you visualize or understand the underlying metrics that is either driving their success or lack thereof?  

When we answer the question "what activities or actions drive the outcome we are looking for" we come up with a list of leading measurements;
 ● # of Calls
 ● # of Appointment Booked
 ● # of Sales Presentations
  ● % Conversion Rate

And when you track these leading maesurements, work to improve them,  you far more likely to achiv the results you are looking for; your sales team will hit or exceed their revenue and be above quota. And if not, you will know what actions you need to improve and focus your energy on.

Tracking leading metrics work for nearly any department. Measure What Matters and the outcomes will improve!

Pandemic Recession Recovery Strategy

By Marc Daniels — 30 March, 2021

Is it time to put together a strategy for a Pandemic Recession Recovery?

Harvard Business Review, after the last financial recession of 2008/2009, did a study. It looked at companies in the three years after the financial crisis and there were some startling key takeaways:
 — Seventeen percent of the companies didn't survive the recession. 
 — Three years later, 80% had not yet regained their prerecession growth rates for sales and profits.
 — Only 9% flourished after the recession.

Who flourished after the recession?
 — Firms that cut costs fast and deep? - NO
 — Firms that outspent their rivals during the recession? - NO

Who did well?

It's Not Too Late!

By Marc Daniels — 23 March, 2021
The Bad News: Only about half of small businesses survive past the five-year mark, ranging from 45.% to 51%. Five years of hard work, money, and dreams are all gone, five times out of 10.

Beyond that, only about one in three small businesses get to the 10-year mark and live to tell the tale.

There's a particular reason for every failure, but they mostly ripple back to one underlying component, the lack of a strategic business plan. 

Procrastination kills businesses. But as the title of this article reads.. "it is not too late" read on to hear the Good News....

Share Your Plan and Engage Your Team

By Marc Daniels — 17 March, 2021
If you are based in New Zealand, you are most likely in the process of putting together a strategic plan for your company's next fiscal year. Elsewhere in the world, you have hopefully completed the assembly of your strategic plan. Regardless, you've invested in an enormous amount of internal resources. You spent days in sessions with your key management team to assemble your plan.

What I find most disturbing is how often this effort fails, not in determining a business's path forward but in not disseminating the information broadly and effectively to all the organization members, especially those who were not part of the decision-making team. To execute your plan, you have to share your plan and engage your team!

The first step in engaing your team is driving acceptance and agreement of your new strategic plan with your wider executive and management team. The second step is to elevate engagement and participation company-wide—a communication plan must be created and rolled out to everyone. 

Plan or Fail 

By Marc Daniels — 10 March, 2021
"He who fails to plan is planning to fail" — Winston Churchill.

This is perhaps the most overused quote of Strategic Planning Consultants around the world. I myself have stated it hundreds, if not thousands of times. Why is it used so frequently? Because it is real. To validate Winston Churchill's words, I have gathered facts from several published studies.

Only 20% of companies have a strategic plan, and as a Harvard Business School study also showed, 85% of those companies fail to execute their strategy. That means that out of 100 companies, only 3 will have a strategic plan and successfully execute their strategy.

Facts show a plan is critical to your success!

It's Not Too Late!

Inspired Employees Make for Stronger Companies

By Marc Daniels — 3 March, 2021
What is a Core Purpose? — It's a compelling reason for employees to work for you beyond simply making money. It provides meaning for all the work that they and you do, and it keeps them going, even through tough times. It transcends whatever your current product or service offerings may be and speaks to your organization's passion. It speaks to the difference you want to make in the lives of the people it touches and the difference you want to make in the world. 

Leverage Your Core Values to Build a Dream Team 

By Marc Daniels — February 16, 2021
Core values are the behaviors that define you, your executive team, your employees, and your entire culture. They become clear statements on how you expect every person in your organization to act, regardless of their role. They're going to provide a moral compass for your people and help the staff make the right decisions, regardless of the challenges they might face.

Published weekly, the ResultsBI Strategy Execution Newsletter provides executives with guidance on strategic planning and successful execution. Feature special offers and info about upcoming Results BI Strategy Execution Workshops.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Special 4 Day
Strategic Recovery Masterclass
April 26 to April  30 @ 2 EST 

With vacines being administered around the world, and money being pumped into economies we are about to see an amazing period of opportunity and rapid growth. Every finacial crisis creates a vacuum and in that void amazing opportunities are created.

This special 5 day Strategic Recovery Masterclass (5 days, only 60 minutes per day) will focus on recasting or creating a strategic business plan to leverage emerging post pandemic trends. Be prepared to leverage the post pandemic period of growth!
Registration closes soon...
Ensure you have a strategy in place to recover strong and make 2021 the year you need!

Catch the Wave
FREE WORKSHOP

Every financial crisis creates a vacuum and in that vacuum new opportunities arise.   

As the pandemic passes how do you identify these opportunities?

How do you leverage them into growth for your company?

Strategic Planning Masterclass

It's that time of year again in Australia... Strategic Planning Season. Yes the 2022 fiscal starts on the 1st of July. 

How impotant is it for you to get this year right?

Join a Strategic Planning Masterclass and over just 5 days, only 1 hour day and you will have your a strategic business plan for your company's 2022 Fiscal Year.

Ensure you have a strategyin place.
Make this the year you need it to be!

Share Your Plan and Engage Your Team

By Marc Daniels — 17 March, 2021
If you are based in New Zealand, you are most likely in the process of putting together a strategic plan for your company's next fiscal year. Elsewhere in the world, you have hopefully completed the assembly of your strategic plan. Regardless, you've invested in an enormous amount of internal resources. You spent days in sessions with your key management team to assemble your plan.

What I find most disturbing is how often this effort fails, not in determining a business's path forward but in not disseminating the information broadly and effectively to all the organization members, especially those who were not part of the decision-making team. To execute your plan, you have to share your plan and engage your team!

The first step in engaing your team is driving acceptance and agreement of your new strategic plan with your wider executive and management team. The second step is to elevate engagement and participation company-wide—a communication plan must be created and rolled out to everyone. 
First, provide an overview of the company's history, the previous quarter's results, and the upcoming quarter's major initiatives. Call a company-wide meeting every quarter focused on communicating your organization's strategic plan, either for the entire year or for the upcoming quarter. Introduce the group of people who were involved in putting together the strategic plan because you want them to know that this isn't just coming from the CEO and the CFO. You want to introduce the people that you've included as part of this process.

During the meeting, describe the basic principles of your strategic plan, as well as any new terms or definitions of terms. Show your team how strategy has played a part in the past growth of the company. They have to have a firm understanding that your company has put together strategies that it executes to success, unlike your competitors. In fact, over 75% of companies never put together a strategic plan at all. When you have no plan, you plan to fail. The more the staff and the employees truly understand what the plan is, the more buy-in you'll receive from them in the end. 

Provide key elements of what has led to your growth, the challenges you've incurred in the past, and how that has informed or helped guide you towards providing future direction.     
   
Clearly describe the company's strengths and weaknesses with specific examples, even if it involves mentioning the competition or calling out things that the executive team felt were weak within the company.  

This year is a greatly different year for most companies around the world. A successful year of recovery is a must for most. If you are carrying out your plans in a different fashion, you should communicate clearly that you've taken a new approach or have reworked the plan from the ground up. If you're not specific on how this year is different, you might have a tsunami of resistance against it before you've even begun. So, get ahead of the resistance by naming the difference—this will really help connect the employees to the plan.

Describe in detail how this strategic plan differs from the ones in the past. In other words, describe all the steps you've gone through that have gotten you to this point. Describe the SWOT Analysis (Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Making connection points with employees will give them a mental place to store the information you're sharing. Many companies are disconnected from their employees, and it directly impacts employee management, engagement, the ability to hold them accountable and drive execution.

Describe the plan. Start with your vision, which includes, of course, your BHAG, your core purpose, what you're trying to achieve as a company, and core values. Dive into your core values in detail—if they've differed from the past, spend a lot of time on them now. If you're restating your core values, give them more context. Explain what barriers could arise to prevent your organization from achieving its vision.

Outline the three major strategic projects that the company has chosen for this quarter and the barriers that might prevent your organization from achieving these strategic objectives. Outline the metrics that you'll be tracking to ensure that you're achieving your strategic project's execution. Remember, a strategic project has to be measurable—it can't be vague. You have to have a way to measure its success, such as with key performance indicators or KPIs. (Some methodologies call them OKRs, objectives with key measurable results or OKRs, but they are essentially the same thing.)

Finally, remember that all employees have a different level of understanding. They come from different walks of life and are filling different roles within the company. Your plan needs to be described simplistically, as does every aspect of it so that everybody clearly understands what you're talking about. I've seen strategic plans that get way too technical for rolling out at a company meeting—you're not talking development, accounting, or legal jargon. You need to put things in layman's terms so that everybody understands. 

Share your plan and engage your team; it's the first step to ensuring you execute your strategy!

No Plan Yet? - It's not too late. See the sidebar for more information about upcoming Strategic Planning Master Classes - A Strategic Plan for your company in just 5 Days 

                                                                                           See the sidebar to learn more →

Plan or Fail 

By Marc Daniels — 10 March, 2021
"He who fails to plan is planning to fail" — Winston Churchill.

This is perhaps the most overused quote of Strategic Planning Consultants around the world. I myself have stated it hundreds, if not thousands of times. Why is it used so frequently? Because it is real. To validate Winston Churchill's words, I have gathered facts from several published studies.

Only 20% of companies have a strategic plan, and as a Harvard Business School study also showed, 85% of those companies fail to execute their strategy. That means that out of 100 companies, only 3 will have a strategic plan and successfully execute their strategy.

Facts show a plan is critical to your success!

Inspired Employees Make for Stronger Companies

By Marc Daniels — 3 March, 2021
What is a Core Purpose? — It's a compelling reason for employees to work for you beyond simply making money. It provides meaning for all the work that they and you do, and it keeps them going, even through tough times. It transcends whatever your current product or service offerings may be and speaks to your organization's passion. It speaks to the difference you want to make in the lives of the people it touches and the difference you want to make in the world. 

Leverage Your Core Values to Build a Dream Team 

By Marc Daniels — February 16, 2021
Core values are the behaviors that define you, your executive team, your employees, and your entire culture. They become clear statements on how you expect every person in your organization to act, regardless of their role. They're going to provide a moral compass for your people and help the staff make the right decisions, regardless of the challenges they might face.

Published weekly, the ResultsBI Strategy Execution Newsletter provides executives with guidance on strategic planning and successful execution. Feature special offers and info about upcoming Results BI Strategy Execution Workshops.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Special New Zealand 
Strategic Planning Masterclass 
22 to 26 March @ 10 am NZT 

March - It's that time of the year again in New Zealand, planning season for your next fiscal year. 5 days, only 60 minutes per day and you will have your a strategic business plan in place for your 2021-2022 Fiscal Year

Invite your entire excutive team!
Over 5 Days, just an hour a day we review the 15 critical components of assembling of a strategic plan. 

Includes 90 Days FREE Access* to the ResultsBI software, where we will assemble your company's strategic plan plan. Using it's robust execution tools you will drive employee egagemnent and th execution of your startegy.
* Access for upto 10 users

Special 4 Day
Pandemic Recovery 
Strategic Planning Masterclass
March 29 to April 1 @ 2 EST 

The year is already 25% behind us. With vacines being administered around the world, and money being pumped into economies we are about to see an amazing period of opportunity and rapid growth.Every finacial crisis crates a vacuum and in that void amazing opportunities are created.

This special 4 day Strategic Planning Masterclass (4 days - only 60 minutes per day) will focus on recasting or creating a startegic business plan to leveareg emerging post pandemic trends. Ensure the remaining 75% of the year drives the succesful yart you need!

Includes 90 Days FREE Access* to the ResultsBI software, where we will assemble your company's strategic plan plan. Using it's robust execution tools you will drive employee egagemnent and th execution of your startegy. 
Ensure you have a strategy in place to recover strong and make 2021 the year you need!.

Canada Check Back 
Registration Link Coming Soon 

The Land Run is Here!
FREE — Global Workshop
7th of April - 3 Global Instances

The Oklahoma Land Run of 1889 started at high noon on April 22, 1889, with an estimated 50,000 people lined up for their piece of the available two million acres.

The COVID-19 Pandemic has created a global financial crisis not seen in our lifetime. However, financial crises create vacuums and typically enormous opportunities.

With vaccines beginning to being administered worldwide, 2021 will soon be a land-run year for businesses everywhere. The 2021 Land Run has already started; how can you ensure your company is part of it? 

Join me for a rewarding global workshop! This Strategic Planning webinar will help you identify emerging opportunities and leverage them for success in 2021.

Strategic Planning Masterclass
Ireland / United  Kingdom
8 to 12 April @ 2 GMT 

Over 5 Days, just an hour a day we review the 15 critical components of assembling of a strategic plan. 

Includes 90 Days FREE Access* to the ResultsBI software, where we will assemble your company's strategic plan plan. Using it's robust execution tools you will drive employee egagemnent and th execution of your startegy.
* Access for upto 10 users

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