Michael Bloomberg

• What’s the best advice you ever got?

Mayor of New York City, founder of Bloomberg LP

“I can’t remember who told me this, but I certainly didn’t grow up knowing it, so I must have gotten this advice at Salomon Brothers in the 1970s. The advice was, first, always ask for the order, and second, when the customer says yes, stop talking…” Fortune Magazine, May 12, 2008

On a long flight recently, I was catching up on some reading. An article in Fortune’s May 12 issue got my attention: The Best Advice I Ever Got, featuring responses from 19 very successful people including Larry Page, the founder of Google, Tina Fey, Gen. David Petraeus, and Robert Iger, CEO of Disney. (Click on the article name to read all 19 pieces of advice.)

And it got me thinking about the best advice I had ever gotten…

From Rollie Tillman at University of North Carolina’s Business School
“Separate the decision of what to do from how to pay for it.”

So frequently in strategic planning sessions with clients or when making personal decisions, the tendency is to go immediately to the shortage of current resources. This sage advice from my professor has frequently helped facilitate first the conversation about “What is the right action to take here?; What do we really want?; What is our vision for our best future?” Then, armed with a compelling view of what we want, we can begin to think about how to achieve it, and how to pay for it.

From another business school professor
Professor Rader at the Darden School taught Rader’s Rules and they had a profound impact on my husband, David. He has often shared them with me and the one I have found most useful is: “Get the facts or the facts will get you.” Harold Geneen, CEO of ITT called this “shaking the facts”. He told the story of buying a tract of land in Canada because of the plentiful and high quality lumber. After purchasing the land, someone finally went to see the land… and learned that the trees were all very small and thin because of the short growing season, and were many many years from being harvested. A graphic example of the need to verify the facts!

So often a conversation or problem-solving session roams from opinion to opinion. Those who know me know I am not always right, and I am rarely in doubt! Life has taught me to look for the facts in a situation and to base my decisions on them. If ignored, the facts have this incredible way of showing up when my actions contradict them.

From my Aunt Alean
“Don’t expect anyone to take care of your financial needs except you.”

My aunt had a difficult life as a single parent in the 1960’s. She and my three cousins even had to come live in our three bedroom house for a time - and it already had seven people in it! Her determination to provide for her girls when life threw her some serious curve balls helped me see the value of being able to take care of oneself.

It was the same important lesson that Maria Shriver shares in her book: Ten Things I Wish I Had Known Before I Went Out in the World.This short book is based on a commencement speech she gave at the College of the Holy Cross. It is full of wisdom and insight for young folks begining their careers. Now, how do we transmit that value to our children? It is a question that has real meaning as our children, Julie and Ed, become young adults.

So, what is the best advice you ever got? Please share it here by hitting the comment button… we’ll compile all the responses and share them later this summer!

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Less than 10% of strategies effectively formulated are effectively executed. - Fortune Magazine

Recently I worked with a leadership team on the end phase of developing a strategic plan. We kept crossing back and forth between finalizing the development of strategies and goals and beginning to implement those elements. We would dive into execution detail, catch ourselves, and then elevate the conversation to finish the strategies and goals.

Being in that moment started me thinking about the best practices for executing strategy. And, experience being the best teacher, I realized that the best resource for identifying pragmatic best practices was to turn to clients who had developed visions, values, goals and strategies, and were now focused on implementing those strategies. In a series of interviews, I asked them to reflect on the practices that lead to successful outcomes and measurable progress toward organizational goals. Turns out, it is never a straight line.

In this edition of Changing Times, we focus on those practices that have led to success. Because organizations’ strategic plans are highly privileged information, we have kept the identities of our interviewees and their companies anonymous. We thank them for their contributions to making this newsletter relevant. Here’s the good advice they offered

Best Practice #1:
Design your strategic planning process with the intent for execution.

One client noted that, in retrospect, their process should have been called: “strategic planning and implementation.” He noted that when the plan written, there was a huge collective exhale, “as if we were done. In fact, the tough work was just beginning.” His organization has since learned to seamlessly meld conversations about strategy with the work to execute them.

In their book: Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, authors Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan note that “an astonishing number of strategies fail because leaders don’t make a realistic assessment of whether the organization can execute the plan.” Management has to ask itself tough questions and have the courage to answer them realistically:

• How good are the assumptions upon which the plan hinges?

• Do we have the organizational capability to execute the plan?

• What do we need to do in the near and medium terms to make the plan work in the long run?

• Can we adapt the plan to rapid changes in the business environment?

• Do we have the right people in place to execute the strategy?

Here are some further insights from our clients’ experiences:

• “We wanted to make sure we could implement our strategic plan so we designed the process with that in mind. We were in a time of transition in leadership and we wanted to make sure the new plan had the chance of standing the test of time and transition. As it turned out, our strategic plan was one of the things that attracted our new CEO to the organization. He had never seen a plan quite like it and so he bought into the plan before he arrived at his new job.”

• “Once we were well into the process of strategic planning we realized that we did not have the organizational capacity to implement it. We simply did not have the level of skills and systems in place to execute our strategies. The first year or so we spent correcting weaknesses, rather than exploiting strengths. We focused our efforts on rebuilding the company in a more robust fashion. Now we are positioned for growth and strength. This recognition of weaknesses would never have surfaced if we had not gone through a strategic planning process.”

• “You can stumble into the trap of thinking that when you finish the plan, you are done. But that is where the work really begins. You have to have a regular process to ensure implementation, and to reassess periodically and, if need be, recalibrate the plan.”

• And finally, one client noted that the strategic planning process made his organization really think about “who we are and what we really wanted for the business. Up to the time of our strategic planning, very little thought was given to our future. We were at risk of losing company value permanently.”

Best Practice #2:
Leadership must lead.

“An organization’s leadership must buy into the strategic process and the outcome of the plan,” said one client. In fact, in our experience, one of the few uniquely executive functions is to set strategic vision. To reach success, senior leadership must be integrally involved, and has to lead both the planning phase and the implementation phase. Senior leadership has the line of sight to see out into the future while keeping the whole organization in its peripheral view. It is their job to manage the tensions of allocating scarce resources to both the strategic and operational needs of the business. (more…)

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Who are You?

We, at the Wunderlin Company, believe that is it as important for you to know who you are as it is to know where you are going, for where you are going will change as the world around you changes. Who you are defines the enduring character of your organization. It captures its very soul.

So, who are you? I’m not asking about your company’s current product line or customer segments. I’m asking: “What is your organization’s fundamental reason for being?”

It’s not an easy question to answer. It’s not something you can invent, much less fake. It comes from looking deep inside your organization and discovering your company’s timeless character.

This issue is devoted to helping you understand the need for this soul-searching task and to give you some pointers on how to get started on this important work.

• Overview: Defining Who You Are and Where You are Going

• Discovering Your Organization’s Purpose and Mission

• It Helps to Have a Personal Mission Statement

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Defining your organization’s purpose or mission is only the first step to knowing where you are going in the future. This journey is one of discovery. It cannot be deduced by looking at the external environment. You come to understand it only by looking inside. It has to be authentic. You cannot fake it. It is an exercise that enables you to create a clear picture of how you will advance into an uncertain future. By defining your purpose and then working to discover your values and vision, you become clear about how you will remain steadfast to your purpose and values while your business strategies and practices endlessly adapt to a changing world. In the next issue of “Changing Times,” we will look at how you go about envisioning your future and then working to reach it by defining strategies and short-term action.

Defining who you are, what you stand for, and what your envisioned future looks like is a process that continues indefinitely. Your purpose and values probably won’t ever change; your vision looks far out into the future; your strategies should be firmly in place; but your short-term actions require frequent review, for they will change as you accomplish some and set new goals.

What is it About Your Company That Will Last at Least 100 Years?

If you can answer this question, chances are you are close to defining your organization’s core values and purpose (or mission). For it is the qualities that will last “forever” that define what your company stands for. In the case of Disney, those folks will tell you that they are in business “to make people happy” – not to build theme parks and make cartoons.

(more…)

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This issue of Changing Times was originally published just days after the tragic events of 9/11. I have left the original introduction untouched as it was a poignant reminder of the agony most of us felt in the wake of those events…

A Letter from Karen

This issue was ready to go to press when the tragedies of September 11, 2001 consumed our lives and changed us forever. To any of you whose families and friends are affected by those events, our prayers and thoughts are with you daily.

Like many of you, I have worked to put one foot in front of the other, and to “go back to our normal lives.” What we struggle to remind ourselves is that our heightened sense of evil doesn’t negate the goodness on which we build our daily existence. We lean on hope to get us through each day.

In the last edition of this newsletter we focused on how clearly identifying values and purpose can propel your company forward. In this edition, we focus on your trajectory - charting the best course for that forward momentum. It is truly difficult to focus on the future in these uncertain times. And, it may be more critical now than ever. It is how you can restore hope to your organization.

• Defining a Vision - Overview
• A Visioning Process
• Using Future Search to Define Common Ground

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Who Needs a Vision?

“If you don’t know where you are going, you might end up somewhere else.”

What a common sense notion—how frequently do you find yourself or your organization headed in a clear direction?

Experience shows the powerful effect of defining a clear and ambitious desired future. One client we work with recently initiated a round of strategic planning. (more…)

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In an effort to affect change, we frequently begin by focusing on what’s broken. We systematically list the issues then go about identifying solutions to those issues. By starting with what is not working, though, we can make the job of change more difficult. Focusing exclusively on what is wrong or broken can drain the energy, enthusiasm, and optimism from a group in its earliest stages. There’s a new way of approaching the change process that has caught the interest of organizations around the world. It involves bringing employees together to talk not about problems, but rather about their greatest successes. What is it like they are asked, when their organization is at its best? Employees are asked to share stories and review them together to glean common themes. Together they then conceive a vision of what it might achieve when the organization works at its best and, working backwards from that, they devise the changes that are required to achieve that vision. (more…)

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You’ve got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between”

Bing Crosby may have been on to something when he sang these lyrics by Johnny Mercer in the 1944 patriotic film, Here Come the Waves. Whereas in the past, much of psychology and organizational change initiatives focused on fixing what was “broken,” there is now a whole body of research that points to the effectiveness of building on strengths and competencies — focusing on “what’s working,” not “what’s broken.” In the human realm, this emphasis is called Positive Psychology; in the corporate world, it’s called Appreciative Inquiry.

In our work with individuals and organizations, we see the power of this positive emphasis — and, along with our clients — it awes us. During a recent Wunderlin Company workshop built around the book Now, Discover Your Strengths, Chip Keeling, VP of Corporate Communications for E. ON U.S. stood up and said to the group, “I used to say, ‘Don’t let X go to any more writing courses. She is already an excellent writer. Have her go to a workshop that addresses a developmental need.’ I now realize the folly of spending our very-limited training dollars trying to make improvements in areas of weakness. We need to focus our training budget on developing our talents into strengths — making our best writers better.”

In this issue of Changing Times, we share resources and techniques for building on your strengths and also on those of the people you manage, and we share some ways to build a strengths-based organization.

So, as Crosby sings, let’s:

“Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between.” (more…)

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