February 4th, 2008

Strategic Execution Plans: The Next Phase In Strategic Planning

I was recently invited to return to the Wharton School of Business for the fourth year in a row to teach a special class on strategic planning for the Securities Industry Institute. I called them last week to ask if it were possible to shift the class more from “planning” to strategic “thinking” this year, but was surprised to find out that 98 executives had already signed up for the class based on the catalog description of it as a solid look at how to write and effective strategic plan. So I decided to go back and take a hard look at the class and see if I could update it a bit and was surprised to have an epiphany of sorts.

I have long decried that one of the factors that inhibits the ability to write a good strategic plan is the lack of “strategic thinking” that typically goes into the planning process. If a practitioner is not spending serious time and effort on the thinking part of the equation, there is the possibility they can do the planning part of the process (the methodology, the framework) superbly, only to create a flawed plan because it was based on poor information and ideas. Then I realized that was another major issue that I simply had not been stressing enough; the execution of the plan.

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December 23rd, 2007

“Make Them Easy To Manage”

I was recently out in California having a conversation with one of my clients, the COO of a Fortune 500 firm that has engaged me to coach several of his senior leaders. Currently I am working with a handful of divisional CEOs, each running a 200 – 600 million dollar enterprise. During our talk the COO said something that really struck home for me and gave me a super idea of what he wanted me to do for him. “John, these are absolutely fantastic guys, but they can be tough to manage… please help make them easier to manage.”

Wow, that is a perfect statement because it gets right to the heart of why I am typically called in to coach someone. The executives I coach are bright, talented, bold, creative, entrepreneurial and driven… all truly valuable traits. But taken to the extreme, these same traits can make these sorts of folks very hard to manage and direct. What’s more, if they cannot learn how to control their behavior and fit in more comfortably in a senior role, the very things that made them successful up to this point in their career, can actually lead to their demise.

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November 17th, 2007

Systemic Solutions to Execution Problems: The Process of Crossing the “Knowing-Doing Gap”

For the past three years I have been invited to be a guest lecturer on “strategic thinking” at a special event at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. Typically I have about 120 senior executives in my class and during the session I will pose this question: “What percentage of the time do companies that have a clear vision and a specific plan to achieve that vision, effectively execute to that plan?” The answer I most often get is 10-15% of the time. Wow, that is scary

This is one of the biggest issues I face in all of my consulting and training assignments. It is what we refer to in our firm as the “Knowing-Doing Gap.” Companies know what they are supposed to do, they have a solid plan to dominate their market - but creating a performance-oriented culture of disciplined execution that can effectively implement the plan seems to be a challenge that few can conquer. If that were not frustrating enough, when you step back and look at the financial implications they can be staggering. Inability to execute to plan is likely responsible for the overwhelming percentage of lost revenues in most large organizations.

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October 21st, 2007

A Note to Student Interested in Marketing Excellence

I recently had a student email me with some questions about how to be an outstanding marketer. Here was my response:

Here are some things off the top of my head:

1. Do you truly understand exactly who your target customer is in great detail? You have to have a very clear and detailed picture of specifically who you are trying to entice. Age, race, attitude, income, hobbies, TV and reading preferences, where do they get their info, which media do they trust, how do they make their buying decisions… everything you can possibly understand.

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September 12th, 2007

Some Ideas on How to be Successful in Sales

Now, let’s get clear at the start, I am not the world’s leading expert on sales nor do I claim to be. However, I will admit I did spend about 10 years where the main focus of my career was delivering very high-level sales training to Fortune 500 companies around the world and I have also read well over 200 books on sales, have listened to hundreds of hours of sales training CDs and attended dozens of sales training seminars — as well as having been the main sales person in my own company for more than 15 years. But there is still much to be learned!

So with all of that said, I wanted to send you along some comments and ideas… some things to think about, as you start your sales career.

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