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How much is this task worth? Efficient Time Management Using Data.

February 10, 2015Blog, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

*Update: Remember that blog where I said Ruth and I were going to stay accountable for doing the blog.  This is me doing the blog.  Late.  To note, Ruth didn’t say “That’s OK!”.  She said something to the effect of, “So when will you be posting the blog”. Super effective from an accountability perspective. Thus, why I am posting this blog on Tuesday. *

What’s happening over at Whiteboard?  Lot’s of things.  We’re meeting up with clients old  and new, and are super excited about all of the great process work, leadership work, and culture development we get to do with our clients this year.

So this new year has everyone setting goals, emptying their email inboxes, finding new and better ways of doing things. We are all bombarded with so many tasks to do , how do we actually know which ones are the RIGHT ones to be spending time on?

The steps below outline a process that you can use to identify your tasks, identify what they are worth, analyze the data, and then start booking your calendar in such a way that you can maximize the work you do to benefit you and your organization.

Step 1: Brainstorm all of your activities.IMG_0463

What are the primary activities you do in your business; emails, phone calls, actual “work”, social media, presentations, workshops?  Write them all down (or use excel if you are of that ilk.)

Step 2: Assign value to each of them.

This can get tricky, the key is to make your best guess.  Some items might not have a dollar attachment to them, and others you might need to do a little work for. I’ll take you through some of my examples:

Networking events: Last year I went to 27 networking events, and through those events (so far), We have approximately $10,000 worth of business.

1:1 Meetings: Last year I did approximately 100 1:1 meetings, and they yielded about $5,000 in revenue.

Get the point? It’s not a science, but you should start to see some patterns.

Step 3: Analyze the data

So you might start to see some patterns, like the 27 hours you spend on Social Media each week haven’t yet yielded you a client.  That doesn’t mean you should stop doing social media, it is an important part of your business – rather, you could probably spend 10 hours and get the same benefit, and donate some additional time to Networking events, which seem to contribute to your sales pipeline.

Step 4: Book your Calendar!

Now, book your calendar with the activities that generate VALUE, and slot in the time to take care of all of those day-to-day tasks and emails that may not add direct value, but are a necessary evil!

Have a great, productive, efficient, and VALUABLE week!

Until Next Time,

Nicole

P.S. Like my doodle? Check out Carolyn Ellis at Brilliance Mastery! She taught Ruth and I how to doodle and we’re hooked.  Be prepared for many doodles to come!

 

The Structure That Lets You Be Flexible

January 31, 2015Blog, , , , , , ,

structure

Last week I had a consultation meeting with a potential new client. They are a digital marketing agency, and are the epitome of funky, professional, fun, and creative. I very much enjoyed my conversation with them, as I always do when learning about a new (to me) industry.

Consultation discussions always start out casually with the usual small talk and commentary on what is going on around us (this group works in a shared creative work space, and the energy is palpable). As often happens with people who are interesting and interested, the conversation morphed naturally into questions and answers about what they do and where they want to grow and how Whiteboard can help.

This client came to us via a referral from a previous client. As such, they already knew a bit about what we do, and yet they still weren’t sure what we could or would do for them. They just knew they needed us. Why? Because they wanted to build the processes they needed before they needed them.

I thought this was genius, and through the course of our conversation a phrase came up that I’ve already reused a half dozen times since then. “We want to have fun,” they said. “Our clients have to see us having fun. So I guess we are afraid that processes will limit our ability to be flexible and have fun.” I responded, “so what you want is the structure that will let you have the fun.”

“YES!” they replied, smiling as if to say, “By George, I think she’s got it!”

This idea of flexible structure is an important one for all businesses of all sizes, and particularly those that are on the tipping point of growing to a new level.

What’s a Process Again?

First let’s revisit the concept of a business process. Essentially, everything that you do with some repeatability is a process. At a high level it may involve things like this:

  • Sales
  • Developing a quote or proposal
  • Establishing scope or business requirements
  • Project management
  • Customer service
  • Invoicing

You may not think you have a process. Perhaps you are a small or medium organization for which things happen organically. Maybe everyone does everything and does it their own way, and it’s working out just fine, thank you very much. But guess what? There is a process. There are many processes, and they are all different and they all accomplish the same thing slightly differently.

This is usually just fine for a while. Because it’s a small team, you can roll back your chair and shout down the hallway to your partner and solve issues easily. Customers know you all by name, and although things go wrong once in a while it’s no big deal because someone is always able to fix it.

But here’s the thing. Before you know it, this will NOT be ok. You will hit a tipping point in your growth, and suddenly things will be confusing and chaotic and you’ll be stepping on each other’s toes. You won’t be able to outsource anything because the roles and responsibilities you have defined (or not defined) are unclear and difficult to chunk out into trainable units. You won’t have clear expectations for outcomes, customers will start getting annoyed, and you will be limited in how fast you can grow because you simply can’t handle everything on your own anymore.

This is when the structure becomes important.

By taking the time before you hit that tipping point, you will set yourself up with just the right amount of structure to ensure you present yourself as clear and capable, while remaining flexible enough to grow, change your minds, and yes, have fun.

How to Define Your Structure

The structure I’m talking about does not involve your org chart, and does not require a huge amount of work. Rather, it involves three things:

  1. Goals and priorities: Take the time to define your Mission & Vision statements, and settle on your goals for the coming period. You may have this locked down in your own mind, and it’s just as important to ensure it’s documented and visible for others so they know what they are trying to impact.
  2. Roles & responsibilities: Document the various roles in your organization. This doesn’t mean write down what everyone does (e.g. Ruth handles the sales process). Rather, it means document the person-agnostic roles that are required to run the business well. (e.g. Business Development, Outside Sales, Project Manager, Customer Service) One person can of course do more than one role, but the roles must be distinct.
  3. Key Corporate Processes: Note the key processes that your organization needs, and that must be done in a certain way in order to achieve a quality outcome? This definition allows you to outsource and train new people to a given standard. It also allows you to modify and be flexible as needs require – a process is just written on paper. It can always be changed!

Once you’ve set out your goals, roles and process expectations, you’re ready to grow. Everyone knows what needs to happen and (perhaps more importantly) HOW it needs to happen. Standards are clear and timelines are defined. You have structure, and you also have the option of changing that structure as required. Why? Because good processes are flexible.

Until next time,

Ruth.

The Office Version of Vitamin D

January 16, 2015Blog, , , , , , ,

VITAMIN_D
As I write this, it is a rare sunny winter day in Toronto, with blue sky and small fluffy snowflakes floating from the few clouds I can see. And because of this, I have altered my working location from my comfortable but dark basement office to my bright dining room table.

Why? Because I need sunshine. As much as I also enjoy the winter months, I crave sunshine! It lifts my mood and my spirits and my outlook and just makes everything better.

It occurred to me this morning that many of you do not have the luxury of working in your sunny dining room, and instead are holed up in your windowless office or cubicle. You may or may not have the opportunity to get outside and hold your face up to that sunshine, and you’ll go home after it’s dark, counting the days until spring.

And we wonder why we feel grumpy, edgy, or anxious this time of year.

There’s a reason for it, actually. Research shows a strong link between exposure to the sun, Vitamin D levels, and the incidence of Seasonal Affective Disorder (or SAD). Just a few minutes a day of unprotected (i.e. no sunscreen) exposure to sunshine are enough to maintain adequate levels of Vitamin D, boost levels of the “happy hormones” seratonin and dopamine, and thus ward off the symptoms of SAD.

Sounds easy enough.

What if you can’t get natural sunlight?

If you live in climates with a lot of winter cloud, decreased daylight hours, and frigid temperatures, it can be a real challenge to get yourself outside and bask in what little sunlight there may be. So what do you do?

Well, aside from taking a Vitamin D supplement, there are other things you can do at work (and at home, for that matter) to trick your brain into increasing its production of those “happy hormones.”

And guess what? The tricks involve process improvement and leadership – YAY! Our favourite topics.

5 Ways to Get Your Office Version of Vitamin D

  1. Create some goals that will really make you happy to achieve, and then attack them in small bites. January is a great time for process improvement projects! When we achieve goals and cross things off a list, we create a little celebration in our brain that releases dopamine. The trick here is to make sure it’s a goal that will make you feel good, like fixing something you’ve always wanted to fix, and then actually celebrating, even if it’s just with a fancy latte or a glass of wine after work.
  2. Break your “To Do” list into little tasks that are easily crossed off so you can achieve #1 above! It’s a lot harder to cross off “Fix The Widget Process” than it is to cross these things off:       (and P.S. – the items below could be broken down even further)
    • Define improvement opportunity
    • Engage team
    • Collect data
    • Draw the current process
    • Brainstorm opportunities
    • Test ideas
    • Implement solution
  3. Think about continuous improvement vs. one-time improvement initiatives. If you know what your next goal is before you finish your current one, you can smooth out the dopamine “hits” into a flow.
  4. Recognize the accomplishments of your team (in the way they want to be recognized). As we teach in our leadership courses, people are very individualistic in the way they prefer to be recognized, and as long as you consider the individual, then each thing that you do – email, bonus, quick word of thanks – will give THEM a dopamine hit.
  5. Remember things that went well. Interestingly, the brain has trouble telling the difference between what you’re achieving now and what you’ve achieved in the past. In either case, it produces seratonin! So if you’re having a crappy day, or if one of your team members is feeling down, talk together about when things went well, and build on that.

So when you’re down because it’s another grey day and it feels like spring will never get here and you wish that those stupid ads for southern vacations would go away because you can’t take one this year and you just want to put your head down on your desk and take a nap…

Try making a list of little tasks and just crossing off a few. You’ll start to feel better in no time!

Until next time,

Ruth

 

Sources:

3 Steps to Keeping your 2015 New Year’s Resolution

January 9, 2015Blog, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Happy 2015! Hope you all had a restful and enjoyable season.  Now comes January.  The month of overflowing gyms, vegan cleanses (hey I’m on one too….I don’t judge), new organizational goals,and new ways of doing things.

Ruth and I have those annoying type-A and process based personalities that are ripe for habits and accountability.  Look at our blog for example, we’ve been consistently blogging every Friday for almost 4 years. Every Friday no matter what. Literally EVERY Friday. Every single one. Wait…wasn’t our last post a really long time ago? Well…..okay the last couple of months has been a little off. Why? We’ve been busy, but no busier than usual and not “crazy busy” (my pet peeve when people say this).  So what happened?

habitWe lost our trigger….

Of course we had reminders to do the blog! Little miss task list Ruth has us on quite the regimen! We have a recurring appointment in iCal that alternates between “Ruth Blog” and “Nicole Blog”. It was error proof! But occasionally we switched blogging dates. Sometimes the calendar had two different versions and I wasn’t sure if it was my blog day, or Ruth’s. One day one of us just forgot to do it, and then it happened again….and again.

We stopped doing the task….

This is just the actual act of writing the blog.  When we were in the “habit” of blogging it meant me knowing it was my blog week, thinking of potential topics, and making a mental note of what might be interesting that week.  Just the sheer act of getting prepared and starting to write it started a habit.  But as soon as I missed a blog or two, the task just kind of disappeared.

We stopped tracking….

When we were in the habit, one of us would usually ask the other : “Oh have you posted the blog yet?” or “Oh, its Friday, did we forget to post the blog?”, or “Can I help you with the blog this week?”. It was our way of keeping each other accountable (in a kind and curious way of course).  What happened instead was we said to one another: “Oh don’t worry about it, we’ll do it next week!, or “Oh you’ve been sick that’s okay.”, “Or, it’s the holidays, who has time to read our little blog”.  We were making it okay to not keep our habit! Excuses. Excuses. Excuses.

aristotle-quote-habitWhat about MY new habits?

So if you’ve made some new year’s resolutions like reducing your email inbox from 10,000 to 100, or meeting with your team members more regularly, or *gasp* implementing a new process -you need to make it a habit.  Use T3!

1. Trigger: Set a calendar reminder, use Siri,  put a post-it note on your monitor. Whatever works. Do it.  Do it in multiple ways.

2. Task: Do the task.  Do it the first time. Do it the second time.  Do it even if you get behind schedule do it anyways. Even if it is late or seems futile. Do it.

3. Tracking: Find someone to keep you accountable. Ask them to follow up with you.  Ask them to be your accountability partner.  Make a chart in your office that everyone can see. Find someone/something to cheer you on when you did it and call you out when you didn’t do it.

Let us know how these help you keep a habit on your new years goals!  Keep us posted on Twitter @whiteboardcons!

Until Next Time,

Nicole

Happy Holidays to You!

December 19, 2014Blog

Screen Shot 2014-12-19 at 10.46.37 AM

The Holidays are officially here!

Whether it’s Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, none of the above or all of the above, we wish you a truly wonderful, warm and peaceful holiday season, and hope that 2015 finds you happy and prosperous.

Ho Ho Ho!

Nicole & Ruth

After Leading Process Change….

November 28, 2014Blog, , , ,

Did you miss us?  Ruth and I were saying that this is probably the longest we haven’t blogged. Don’t worry, we are back and in full force now!

In today’s blog I wanted to share some highlights of our 2-day course, “Leading Process Change,” which we delivered on November 5 & 6. We had a a great diverse group of participants, from the Ontario Government, Telus, Blackberry, and two web development firms, just to name a few.  It was a total blast.  We shared our experiences in change and leadership and learned basic process improvement skills too.

Day 1

Screen Shot 2014-11-28 at 9.03.23 AM

On day 1 we whizzed through the Whiteboard Way. It was a lot of material to cover, and using a business case, we helped our team of participants to:

1. Define It – Define a specific problem in an organization, without assumptions, without solutions, and using specific data to isolate the issue.

2. Draw It – Use basic process mapping techniques to visually represent a process clearly.

3. Analyze It – Look for opportunities to improve (like bottlenecks, duplication, and roles & responsibility conflicts).

4. Imagine It – Imagine a future state using brainstorming techniques.

5. Prove It – Use data to ensure that the new process performs better than the original process.

6. Sell It – Use excellent communications and stakeholder engagement skills to ensure that the process change is communicated effectively.

 

Day 2

On day 2 we covered a wide range of leadership topics to help participants learn how to guide a change – from embedding process improvement within strategic plans, to using emotional intelligence to increase people’s buy-in, and even how public relations plays a role (care of our excellent guest speakers)! And as well we covered basic communication, relationship building, and change management skills too!

We were really pleased to get some great feedback from participants:

“Love it. I will definitely bring the knowledge back.”

“Great back and forth engagement.”

“Great idea to combine change (of any kind!) with leadership —> practical tools & advice in simple, accessible language. Love it.”

Now it’s on to new and exciting projects to come….what do you want to learn next?

Let us know on Twitter @whiteboardcons!

*Special thanks to our awesome photographer Sara Beasley @Sarabeesphotography, www.sarabeesphotography.com

Until Next Time,

Nicole

 

 

 

 

Business Process What Now?

November 14, 2014Blog, , , , , , ,

process3Picture a business networking dinner, wherein each participant gives an overview of their business, including target market, main products/services, and current concerns. You’ve been listening to some of the dozen or so professionals give concise overviews, and are taking notes – keenly interested in connecting with one or two (using Nicole’s Networking Advice), and thinking you might have some good feedback for a few others. Then it’s your turn, and you stand and give the “elevator pitch” you’ve honed to a thing of beauty. And… people look at you like you have two heads.

That has happened to both Nicole and me in recent weeks, and we were quite taken off guard! We thought we had worked hard to describe what we do (business process improvement) in a way that is easy to “get.” And we have, for the most part – just not in the elevator pitch (2-3 sentences) format that is crucial in networking events and casual conversation.

Clearly it’s something we need to work on.

One of the things that is so interesting to us, and has been since we started this business, is the varying degree of understanding (or lack thereof) of what “business process improvement” is. Being a process geek myself, I assume everyone is constantly thinking how they would improve things, and therefore inherently “gets” what business process improvement is. Not so!

Let’s start by defining a couple of terms:

process1A process can be defined as a series of actions or steps that are undertaken in order to achieve a particular outcome. Some common examples that may resonate with you – think of the steps that are involved in each:

  • going through security screening at the airport
  • filling out your year-end tax forms
  • getting ready to leave the house each morning
  • making a martini or a latte
  • grocery shopping

When we say “business” process, we are referring to processes that happen every day at work in order to achieve a specific outcome. Do these sound familiar?

  • recruitmentprocess 2
  • performance evaluations
  • business expense claims
  • invoicing
  • customer service
  • production
  • strategic planning
  • approvals
  • scheduling

Each of these (and dozens of others) happens every single day in most businesses, and if you’re lucky, they are smooth and efficient and wonderful and everything goes well all of the time and all your employees and customers are happy with them.

No? Well then.

If one of your business processes is somewhat less than perfect and causes you grief, if you go home on Friday night and think, “if only we didn’t have to do THAT thing,” if you get feedback from your customers that they are sick of having to do the same thing over and over with the same (unsatisfactory) results – well then my friend, you have a business process problem that needs improving.

Or, if you have an outcome or metric that is not performing as well as it should be, most likely there is a broken business process in there somewhere, and you need to figure out which one it is, uncover it, and fix it without adversely affecting any of the other processes that it impacts.

There are many ways to approach business process improvement – ours is one that focuses on engagement and leadership skills as a means of making improvements “stick.” It’s different than other more rigid methodologies, yet it uses elements from several of the most popular, including Six Sigma, Lean, Appreciative Inquiry, and Methods Time Measurement. We like to be professional and fun at the same time, and show people what business process improvement is, how it works, and how it can make their organizations better, faster, and cheaper.

Got it? Excellent. Now we just need to get that into an elevator pitch. Any suggestions? Tell us in the comments below!

Until next time,

Ruth.

Guest Blog Post – OMG! Emotions in the Office!

October 24, 2014Blog, , , , , , , , ,

linda hillsLinda Hills is a seasoned Learning & Organizational Development practitioner whose mission is to help leaders, teams and organizations create emotionally intelligent transformational change. Over the past 20 years, she has designed, developed and delivered learning and organizational development interventions while working in software, financial services and the not-for-profit sector. Linda has a Master’s degree in Adult Learning and is a certified Emotional Intelligence, and Vital Signs Assessor with Six Seconds, a certified Change Practitioner through Connor Partners CIBC program, and is also certified as a Strengths Deployment Inventory (SDI) Facilitator/Coach.  She is currently an Executive Director in the not-for profit sector, leading her organization through an emotionally intelligent transformational change.

Linda will be offering The Six Seconds Emotional Intelligence Assessment (SEI™) at our upcoming course, Leading Process Change, in Toronto Nov 5 & 6. Find out more about that and about Linda HERE.

Linda over to you:

 

OMG! Emotions in the Office!

I’m with Linda North on this one:  Process isn’t my favourite thing.  But there are two other words in the title of Ruth and Nicole’s upcoming course (Leading Process Change) that strike a chord with me:  leading and change.  Why?  Because both of these concepts are deeply rooted in human emotion, and helping people build emotional intelligence is my “raison d’etre”.

We first heard the term “emotional intelligence” in 1995, when Daniel Goleman wrote his groundbreaking book of the same name.  Since then, much has been written, many versions of it have come along, and yet it remains largely conceptual, if not absent, in most organizations.  Emotions are still seen as soft and disruptive, and are unwelcome in a professional environment.

And yet therein lies a critical misunderstanding about emotions.  In a work setting the word conjures up images of someone losing their temper and yelling at colleagues, or storming out of a meeting.  These are perfect examples of emotions that have not been managed, and that fuel the aversion to them.  So in the business world, we prefer to “leave emotions out of it”.

This couldn’t be more wrong!   Emotions are assets.  They give us information and energy1. Not to mention they are automatic and pretty hard to hide2 (even when you think you are doing so masterfully, that twitching eyebrow gives you away :).  Think about fear for a moment.  It is seen as a negative emotion, but what is it telling you?   If you guessed that it’s telling you that soEmotional Intelligence Imagemething could go wrong, you’d be right.  And how might that be a good thing?  It can protect you from dangerous situations.

So what is emotional intelligence?  The model I use was developed by Six Seconds, so named after the amount of time it takes for the chemical reaction in our brains to settle down after we react to something.  The model comprises eight competencies that allow us to use thinking AND feeling to make optimal decisions.   These eight competencies are divided into three main categories:

  1. Know Yourself:  This is about awareness.  It’s being aware of your emotions, and recognizing the patterns of behaviour that they produce
  2. Choose yourself:  This is about management.  It’s navigating your emotions, thinking about the consequences of your actions and behaviours, exercising optimism and engaging internal (vs. external) motivation.
  3. Give yourself:  This is about direction.  It’s developing empathy for others, and pursuing a “noble goal” – a purpose greater than yourself.

These are easier said than done!  It takes reflection and effort to build these competencies, but they can all be learned!

If you aren’t sold on emotional intelligence, consider this:

  • Harvard Business Review called it the “key to professional success”3
  • Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says that “…in the long-run, EQ trumps IQ…”4
  • At the US Army Training Centre, the saying is that “…Leadership is a lifelong journey of just 18 inches – from head to heart…”5

And if that isn’t enough, take a look at the bottom line stats:  when leaders practice emotional intelligence the impact on outcomes is clear; it is predictive of6:

  • 46% of Customer Service
  • 28% of Performance
  • 45% of Retention

With the last Gallup Engagement survey (2013) showing that 63% of employees worldwide are not engaged, and 24% actively disengaged7, it’s time for leaders to up their game.  And that means developing EQ to (at a minimum!) match their IQ.

Looking forward to seeing you on November 6th!

Linda

 

References

1At the Heart of Leadership:  How to Get Results with Emotional Intelligence, Joshua Freedman, Six Seconds, San Mateo, California, 2007

2Vital Organization Field Guide, Joshua Freedman and Massimiliano Ghini, September 2014

3 HBR “Breakthrough Ideas for Tomorrow’s Business Agenda,” April 2003

4 Times of India, “Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella tells students, fall in love with what you do,” October 1, 2014

5 The Vital Organization Field Guide, Joshua Freedman and Massimiliano Ghini, September 2014

6At the Heart of Leadership:  How to Get Results with Emotional Intelligence, Joshua Freedman, Six Seconds, San Mateo, California, 2007.

7 http://www.gallup.com/poll/165269/worldwide-employees-engaged-work.aspx, retrieved October 22, 2014.

Guest Blog: Process and Public Relations

October 17, 2014Blog

Linda North Linda Bio Picis the founder of North Public Relations.  Starting her career at Hill + Knowlton Strategies, she worked with Motorola Canada to launch their Twitter and Tumblr presence. Later at Venture Communications she learned from leading brand strategists and creatives, big ideas went from from conception to execution. After discovering her true passion for entrepreneurial companies, she moved in-house to the forefront of the connected home revolution, ecobee – makers of the world’s first smart thermostat.  NorthPR strives for creative and new ideas, embracing new media, challenging the status quo and achieving outstanding results. One of her international clients at already the top of the map, outperforming all other countries in media coverage results – and that was in the second month working with them.

Linda will be speaking at our upcoming course, “Leading Process Change” in Toronto on Nov 5 & 6. Find out more about that and about Linda HERE.

Linda over to you:

Process and Public Relations

I’ll be honest, I hate process. I’m not good at it, and I have ‘no’ time for it. Case in point, I currently have 5,757 emails in my in
box.

I could be the perfect archetype as the person who needs to go through process improvement training. But then I think, oh no, I’d have to sit through 2 days and just feel guilty because I actually won’t change my ways. But I wish I could because I’d serve my clients, colleagues and vesocial-keyndors a lot better.

Here’s the thing. Once you’ve gone through all the trouble of improving your processes – spending hours researching, finding and collaborating with right experts, and getting to the hard work of implementing process change – you deserve to yell about it from the rooftops. Your stakeholders need to know what you’ve done to improve your relationship with them.

Communicating and PR’ing your process improvements may be the last thing that comes to mind when you’re putting together your full process improvement plan, but it’s a very important step to consider. The reasons you’re going through these changes are so you can serve someone or something better.

While writing this blog post, I did a quick Google News search and came across these two articles:

Peace Corps improves application process

Evolving consent processes improve patient satisfaction

Both of these stories are sharing news about a significant change within an organization to makes things more efficient and better for their stakeholders.

So how should you share your process news? A few ideas could be:

  • issue a press release
  • organize meetings with key reporters
  • send out a customer newsletter
  • create a video case study
  • social media (e.g. LinkedIn)

But most importantly, make sure you get your story and angle right.

No one cares about the intimate details about how you improved your process (well, process geeks Nicole and Ruth do, but they aren’t your typical people). Your story isn’t going to be about YOU, it needs to be about THEM.

Better yet, did your process improvement really, truly innovate your company culture, programs, products, etc.? If so, you may be able to go beyond your niche and become a true thought leader in the space of innovation and leadership. Don’t undermine the massive improvements you are creating within your company.

The world needs more people like you who are willing to embrace change to create a more efficient and productive world. So start sharing your story!

Linda

Join us on November 5 & 6 to learn more about sharing your process improvement story.

REGISTER HERE!

Guest Blog: The Process of Strategy

October 10, 2014Blog

We are excited to have a guest blogger this week!

Leyla Razeghi is a consultant for Business Strategy and Optimization, with expertise in business modelling, strategic planning, tools for a customer centric business, metrics and process efficiency. She has helped more than 50 brands and business work on their strategy and grow.

Leyla will be speaking at our upcoming course, “Leading Process Change” in Toronto on Nov 5 & 6. Find out more about that and about Leyla HERE.

Leyla, over to you:

strategy

Do I Really Need a Formal Strategy?

As a solutions provider for small and medium size businesses, I always make sure my clients understand the importance of setting up the right strategies in their business; without clear goals and tactics, you might be able to subsist, but you won’t go far. (Click to Tweet) You need to prepare to face your competition and make sure your customers will prefer you and recommend you.

I started my business to help small and medium sized businesses be more competitive and grow, and I believe that the biggest obstacle they have is that they don’t focus on their strategy – a lot of them make decisions “on the go” and don’t think of the future. In addition, I have encountered many businesses that invest in branding and marketing but don’t really work on business modelling and strategic planning. Some  think that planning is something that they can do in the future, while some simply avoid it because it sounds overwhelming.

Setting up an executable business strategy is of vital importance for entrepreneurs and managers, since a strategy is a plan for success! It answers the questions “where do you want to go?” and “how will you get there?”

It’s a Process!

First, strategy requires clarity, and starts with setting up a mission statement and a vision statement, both of which should be based on a “why” and a “purpose”. (Why am I doing this? The answer to this question explains your motivation and your reasoning behind the company or business.)

  • A mission statement shows how things would look in the near future where you are satisfied with the results.  It is something attainable that you can demonstrate easily.
  • A vision statement shows the destination. It is where you see yourself ultimately and ideally. It is something close to your final goal.

Second, you also need the right engagement from all key stakeholders. Engaging people early in the process (perhaps even as a first step!) will ensure that:

  • The strategy gets translated to each department in a way that resonates with their unique needs,
  • Each department, partner, and employee is clear on how they influence the strategy and impact business success. (An employee that finds his/her work meaningful and impactful will be more satisfied, will work harder, and will stay at their job longer.)
  • Each employee and partner is motivated to work towards the strategy, and
  • Your customers understand your strategy and what makes you different.

Third, you need the tactics, actions, and timelines that will deliver on your mission and vision.

  • What has to happen, by when, and by whom?
  • What are the metrics that will show you’ve reached your goals?
  • What is your process for checking in to ensure you’re not straying from the path, or if you are, you’re doing so deliberately, and with due consideration of the consequences?

If you don’t have a defined business strategy, I encourage you to get on it -now! It is your path to success – it needs to be customized to your business and environment, and it must not stay on paper. Great leaders ensure its flawless execution, which is, of course, an entirely different subject!

Good luck, and I hope to see you on Nov 5 & 6 at Whiteboard’s course!

Leyla

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