Category Archives: Professional Services

From Think to Execute

“The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret of outward success.”
– Henry Ward Beecher

It is not enough to simply have a good–or even great–idea. Ideas are plentiful. I have them. You have them. The bum on the downtown street corner has them. People whose faces grace the covers of business magazines have them. Why are they on the cover and not us? Quite simply, they have become very proficient at executing their idea(s).

Brad Feld, of The Foundry Group and TechStars says that he gets emails all the time from would-be entrepreneurs with the latest software and internet ideas:

Often these entrepreneurs think their idea is brand new – that no one has ever thought of it before. Other times they ask me to sign a non-disclosure agreement to protect their idea. Occasionally the emails mysteriously allude to the idea without really saying what it is. These entrepreneurs think their idea is special and magic. And they are wrong.

The great entrepreneurs are already focused on the implementation of their idea. They send me links to their website or software. They describe the business they are in the process of creating (or have already created). They point me to what they’ve done to implement their idea and show real users who validate that the idea is important. And they quickly move past the idea to the execution of the idea.

Google? Not the first search engine. Facebook? Not the first social network. Groupon? Not the first deal site. Pandora? Not the first music site. The list goes on. Even when you go back in time to the origins of the software industry: MS-DOS – not the first operating system. Lotus 1-2-3 – not the first spreadsheet.

The products and their subsequent companies became great because of execution. First, they had to execute on building a great product. Next, they had to execute on building a great business. Finally, they had to execute on scaling, sustaining, and evolving a great business.

Notice what Feld says…

  1. Execute on building a great product. As you move from Ideation to Conceptualization, it is important to vet the commercial and market value of the idea. Determine whether the “back of the napkin” math shows that the idea has promise to anyone other than yourself.
  2. Execute on building a great business. Creation is the process of doing one’s initial research and development, followed by producing a prototype or beta version of the product or service. The work done here will reveal what not to do and what to do as you go about determining what you plan to take to market.
  3. Execute on scaling a great business. Evaluation of your strategic plan and markets, validating them and building a strong team around you will allow you to grow with less problems down the road.
  4. Execute on sustaining a great business. Preparation for the launch and Commercialization of your product or service require thinking through what you plan to do with a systems and process mentality so that procedures can be developed that help the business to run itself.
  5. Execute on evolving a great business. Commercialization looks differently at later stages of business growth. Sales organizations and operations must change and  as market data is analyzed and new opportunities for competitiveness emerge.

Be someone known for execution rather than ideas–even if you are not trying to impress a venture capitalist, you will meet with greater success in all that you undertake!

 

Retool for Catalytic Success

Business macrotrends are illuminating. With sufficient data, organizations like BCG, McKinsey & Bain can advise their clients better as to thought leadership positions, best practices, and optimization. As the national economy has improved from recession to stagnation or slow growth, businesses have shifted their focus from expense reduction to growth. Increasing revenues is important to companies providing goods, services, or non-profit benefits.

When Bain performed a study last year, 80 percent of the executives believed innovation to be important than cost reduction for long-term success. Also, 68 percent of respondents believed that taking care of customers and employees should come before shareholders. Bain’s interpretation: executives realize that growth depends on having happy, productive employees and satisfied customers. Shareholder returns will be the natural byproduct.

Growth Catalysts:

In the Bain survey, popular management tools were rated by respondents. Of 25 total tools, the top 3 were:

  • open innovation (expanding the sources of breakthrough products)
  • scenario and contingency planning (testing the “what ifs” to plan for the future/minimize risks) &
  • price optimization (addressing rising commodity prices). 

Social media was seen as an additional emerging tool of choice. Whether websites, micro-bogging, or online communities, there has been a growing commitment to explore the value of the medium to enhance relationships–internally as well as externally. “While only 29 percent of all respondents say they used social media in 2010, usage is expected to surge to 56 percent in 2011. Even so, executives tell us they’re uncertain about how to measure the effectiveness of this tool.”  

The standard approach with the introduction of new tools is to make a limited investment to vet the value of the tool, then make a more sizable commitment if it proves to have merit. Bain study leaders felt that this approach presented two risks:

First, while it’s understandable that companies do not want to make major investments before they fully understand how a tool will work, we have found that using tools on a limited basis consistently leads to lower satisfaction, so caution may inadvertently result in failure. The second risk we have found: companies start using a tool because their competitors are using it, or because it’s the hot topic in the business press, but if they do not fully understand how and why to use it, the experience ends up in failure.

Think of business process reengineering, where we witnessed an inverse relationship between usage and satisfaction rates when it was the hot tool of the 1990s. We witnessed reengineering drop from the tool with the fifth highest satisfaction rate in 1993 all the way to 21st in the late 1990s. It was only after usage rates declined that satisfaction began to improve again. Any time we see high usage but low satisfaction, there is cause for concern.

What Tools Work & What to Degree?

Benchmarking made a comeback a couple years ago and displaced strategic planning, a perennial No. 1, as the tool of choice. In addition to benchmarking, the most widely used tools during the recession period were strategic planning and mission and vision statements. These tools have rated in the Bain top 10 for usage over the years, regardless of the economic climate.

The survey found the least used tools included open innovation, decision rights tools and rapid prototyping. One tool that was surprisingly unpopular was mergers & acquisitions. During a downturn, M&A deals often create bargains that give the acquiring company increased scale and broadened scope. Yet in each recession we see relatively few deals. 

Among the  preferred tools, strategic planning was the tool with the highest satisfaction rating. Other tools with above-average satisfaction scores included mission and vision statements, total quality management, customer segmentation and strategic alliances. On the other end of the spectrum, downsizing, outsourcing and shared services centers–despite being seen as expense reduction tactics–were three of the five tools with below-average satisfaction scores. The other two tools with low satisfaction ratings were knowledge management and social media programs.

Task Tyrants Steal Success

When one of my friends invited me to a continuing education luncheon offering credits I did not need, I debated whether to attend. Once there, I was engaged by strong networking and a guest speaker whose subject matter was very familiar to me–professional services marketing. However, his approach was to talk about the predictable objection of time availability. The challenge to the audience was to think about their schedules in a different way. When he pulled out Covey’s four quadrant model for time management (below), I was right at home as I use the tool often in mentoring on a variety of subjects.

If you are unfamiliar with the model, allow me to briefly explain. When performing tasks and crossing off “to-do” lists, too many people spend the majority of their time in quadrant #4–the items that are urgent yet not important.  Quadrant #1 activities demand our attention and get done. What suffers, however, are quadrant #2 tasks, which are often the last to be done but can make a huge difference in overall execution of business goals.

Jeff Nischwitz was the guest speaker and what he said next was very revealing. He said that most billable hour professionals know that marketing (or business development) should be something we place in #2, but our behavior usually places it in #3. As a result, our best intentions are not realized because we never place the appropriate priority or value on what fills our pipeline. He went on to say that, until marketing becomes a quadrant 1 focal point, our organizations will falter and stagnate rather than grow and flourish.

Pause and think about that and evaluate your use of time. If the things that matter keep being put off in favor of what commands our attention today that may not be as important in the long run, we are not managing ourselves well. The message that is sent to a new prospect, for instance, when a proposal is turned in the last day possible, or a call or email is returned much later that desired is that the relationship is insignificant because we already have enough (too much) to do.

Challenge yourself to be better–do what is important on a daily basis as though it were urgent!

You’re No Omni; Nor Am I

 

Rugged individualism is highly overrated. There’s a reason why many successful business owners have either an equally strong co-founder or a significant other who is a top cheerleader. It’s because most people are simply not omniscient, omnipotent, or omnipresent. We need others. When we are willing to become transparent and admit that need, we then are taking a requisite step towards success and away from failure. 

Transparency is akin to vulnerability and is one way trust is built. Determining that you would benefit from the input of another requires humility and is hard to do. Those who dare to become interdependent, however, are amazed at the benefits. Interdependency equals collaboration. Collaboration, by definition, means that we no longer have to carry a burden–positive or negative–alone.

“The fact that I don’t have any technical background means I’m not impeded by my knowledge of what it’s going to take to build something, so I’m free to just dream up features and ideas,” says Cyrus Farudi, founder along with Omri Cohen of Capsule, a web and mobile app built for event planning, group interaction and photo sharing. “Luckily, my partner, who has a technical background, has a very ‘yes, it can be done’ attitude. There have been screaming matches when I’ve tried to get too involved in something on the tech side.”

“Collaborating is about co-laboring,” says Nilofer Merchant, innovation expert, Harvard Business Review columnist and author of The New How: Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy. “It’s not about hugs. I think people think about it as this positive thing, but it’s really about how you solve tough problems that neither party could solve on their own.”

If you’ve chosen someone based only on skills and intelligence, there might be a personality conflict that, under normal circumstances, could lead to a standoff. But you’re a team, so conflict over personalities would be distracting and frivolous. Sure, the tension of your differences might push both of you right up to the point of failure (the brink of doom, we’ll call it). But there are two reasons you’re not likely to go over the brink of doom: One, your fate is connected (by the handcuffs of mutual interest, for lack of a better metaphor); and two, because a lot of great ideas happen right before people fail–a kind of adrenaline kicks in, which keeps you from creative inaction (the abyss of “Man, we got nothin'”). The point is: Collaboration is harnessed conflict.

-Ross McCammon on entrepreneur.com

McCammon describes collaboration as “harnessed conflict.” It is important to realize that the best partnerships (not necessarily legal co-owners of a business, but in the general sense) pit people together whose worldviews can be decidedly different. Finding a way to respect one another and build consensus on how to move the organization forward is not just an internal exercise–it yields fruit outside the company in other key relationships as well!

When you set out to have a meeting with someone for collaborative purposes, here’s some advice from those who have gone before you:

  • “You have to have the difficult conversations first,” says Jim Moran, co-founder, president and COO of Yipit, a New York-based deals aggregator and recommendation service. “You have to determine who is better at what. That transparency will make everything flow.”
  • The habit of reflecting back to the other person what you have observed being communicated is a good way to build cohesion. “It’s nonverbal behavior beneath people’s awareness, but you can get skilled at doing it deliberately,” says Steve Kozlowski, professor of organizational psychology at Michigan State University and editor of the Journal of Applied Psychology. “You mirror the subtle behaviors of others during an interaction. It’s part of the attraction process. It tends to build rapport.”

Go find a new collaborator for your project/business!

 


Use a Telescope, Binoculars, and a Magnifying Glass

A telescope, binoculars, and a magnifying glass…all are a form of optics that each help the eyes of the viewer to zoom in on something hard to see. What is the key differentiation between each? How large is the object you want to see, and how far off? If, for instance, one wanted to look at a molecule, a microscope would be preferred to any of the three, even over the magnifying glass. However, if the intricacies of a solar system were of interest, a magnifying glass would be of no real use. 

Whether your company is in start-up mode, or you are trying to re-energize it for growth, one must know what is sought after, how to view it through the right lens, study it, and develop a plan as to how to do it. Boldly, I would say that any company in existence needs to approach its goal setting and performance measurement using tools that are scaled to the need appropriately. Peter Cohan, in an article published for Inc. online yesterday, advances this argument persuasively. He argues that the mission, long-term goal (BHAG in the vernacular of Jim Collins in Good to Great), and short-term goals that feed the other two are matters of scope and perspective, but that all are necessary and important:

1. Mission:What is the enduring purpose of the venture?

To answer this, ask yourself what problem matters most to your venture and why you are willing to go years with little pay or sleep to solve it.

Charlie Javice is co-founder and CEO of PoverUp, a social network for university students to get involved in social enterprises. As Javice told me, “One of the reasons I started PoverUp was that in the summer of 2008, I volunteered in a border refugee village in Thailand. That’s where I realized that a little money (I bought 50 donuts for $1) could go a long way to helping poor people start businesses that would lift them out of poverty.”

2. Long-term goal:What will this company look like in five years?

The answer to this question is of primary importance to a start-up’s investors who want a return on their capital– by getting acquired or going public.

Evernote CEO, Phil Libin, told me in earlier this year after raising $70 million to add to storage service provider that his goal was to build a 100-year-old public company.  As Libin said, “I think that Evernote as a publicly traded company could be worth $10 billion, $100 billion or more.” He guessed that the IPO would happen in 2013, when Evernote got big enough, but he wanted the IPO not to disrupt Evernote’s strategy or how the company works.

3. Short-term goal: What frugal experiments must we make to reach our long-term goal?

If the mission and the long-term goal are the 1% of the inspiration needed to build a successful venture, the short-term goals are the 99% perspiration. Create a series of real options. I mean that you should make small, inexpensive bets–a win means that the venture can go on to the next short-term goal; a loss means a chance to learn what went wrong and do it better the next time.

BrewDog’s co-founder James Watt set five short-term goals at his craft beer maker’s outset:

  1. Find something to do after the co-founders quit their corporate jobs.
  2. Decide whether that should be crafting beer.
  3. Create buzz among influential beer bloggers.
  4. Get a distributor in the country where they had created buzz.
  5. Convince a bank to loan money to build a facility to satisfy customer demand.

Learn from these innovative business owners and go create your own “optics” for success. Develop the ability to simultaneously think about what execution matters today, what you want the organization to become in the next few years, and how the world could be improved by your contribution over a lifetime. Manage based on these guiding objectives and you will increase your likelihood of success manifold!