Aligned Execution

In working with various growing companies, I've seen one very clear theme. Every organization (both commercial or nonprofit) has great potential, but is looking for better ways to harness it.

There's a Chinese proverb "binding your own feet to prevent your progress". Teams often hold themselves back through some very common wastes of time and energy:
a) "Cross Purposes": Individuals on a team haven't developed a shared vision, or they, or their teams, don't share any common 'good for the company' goals that strategically align effort.
b) "Shoot from the Hip": Decisions based on assumptions, not root causes.
c) "Goal Clutter / Goal Quantity Over Quality": The more goals, tasks and objectives...the harder to focus on the few most important things.
d) "Fire and Forget": Doing a planning exercise once...without establishing a formal drumbeat of revisiting it.

The methodology below is simple and is guaranteed to spark "Aha!" moments the first time a team uses it. It will work at any level of an organization.

End Goal:
Each member of a team should walk away with a clear idea of what is most important to the company (values, outcomes, metrics, projects) in the next year, as well as the 1-2 most important things they personally need to do next to move the ball forward starting right NOW.

STEPS

1) What's Your Common Calling? (Why are we doing this?)
* What is our mission, the core values we aspire to?
* Why is what we're doing important to us and our customers? (Long term vision)

2) Align on Destination (Where are we going next?)
* What is our vision or snapshot for what the organization looks like in the near future? (6-18 months).
- Example attributes: revenues / people and teams / branding or positioning / organizational design / channels / customers / new markets / margins / pricing and products / investors

3) Align on Causes & Effects (What will get us there the fastest?)
* What are the root causes that create the desired effects/results?
- For example, if revenue growth is a desired "effect", what is the "cause" that drives it? (You'd be surprised at how much disagreement there is here)
* What projects or initiatives will make the biggest impact on getting the company there?
- Examples: more business from channels, more salespeople (or more hitting quota), better cash management, raising money from investors, landing a strategic customer, hiring an internal or external recruiter

4) Align on Metrics
* What are the three most important metric the company needs to focus on improving this quarter / year? Which one is #1?
* What are the three most important metrics for each team? Which one is #1?

5) Bottlenecks? (What is holding us back?)
* What obstacles or bottlenecks are in the way of the above priorities?
* What is the root cause of each bottleneck?
* What can be done to tackle each bottleneck? Add these 'bottleneck breakers' to your list of important projects.

Example: Channels aren't growing. Why?
...The right person to grow the channel business doesn't have time today. Why?
...Because they are constantly fighting customer fires. Why?
...Because internal reports are error prone, so customers get inaccurate reports. Why?
...Because there is an issue with the database's configuration. Aha!
Address the root cause: fix the database configuration to create the time to grow channel business.


6) Rank Projects (Who does what next?)
* Take the above 'cause projects' and 'bottleneck issues' and rank them by the order they should be addressed
* You now have a list of prioritized projects to execute on
* Divvy them up to logical owners
* Each owner now has a list of ranked projects. Start with the most important one and focus on it until it's done, then move onto the next.

7) Establish a Drumbeat
* This initial plan is just a starting point. How will the team establish a regular drumbeat (or drumbeats, with daily/weekly/monthly cycles) to check in on progress and make sure everyone stays aligned?
* Depending on how fast the company is changing or growing, this could be every week, two weeks, month or quarter.
* To avoid getting into mental ruts, consider throwing it totally away and redoing it from scratch every 6-18 months.

Do You Take Sales Sales Complexity Seriously?

Companies are used to a simple view of the world: sell to small companies or to large ones?

With the growth of on-demand business models, more companies are trying to deliver products and services to both small and large customers (including departments of large customers).

There's a potential complexity trap here. In evaluating your customer segments, consider complexity to sell and deliver the solution in addition to the size of the company or its budget:


Another way to think about the vertical axis might be "Willingness to pay for complexity". In essence, how likely will this kind of company actually commit enough money to fixing the problem? Including money to cover all the hidden costs your own company will incur through support, product development, and other services?

The trap companies fall into, especially younger ones refining their customer and sales models, is trying to deliver a complex solution to businesses or departments who aren't willing to pay for the complexity. That's the worst of both worlds.

If you can charge large premiums for delivering a simple product, does that mean your competitors can easily copy you and undercut your prices? What are your barriers to entry and differentiators that will maintain your pricing premium?

Remember "Pass The Phone Message Game"?

Every time information is passed through someone or a level in a company, it's filtered and changes. As a CEO or executive, how often do you talk directly with employees on the front line for unfiltered feedback? What do your salespeople tell you is their #1 bottleneck in growing their numbers? According to the front line customer service employees, what are the top customer complaints? Or from the employees that handle current customers, why do they cancel?

These reasons should all be different than last year's reasons. If they're the same - is your company really working to break the bottlenecks that are slowing your growth?

Even in a company of 20 people, a lack of communication creates unnecessary problems. In fact, it can be more of a problem because the pace of change is faster than in a big company, making regular CEO-to-frontline-employees communication even more important.

Do You Think In Customer-Centric Ways?

People tend to have self-centric worldviews, that is, they view everything in how it matters to themselves. "What do I need to do today? Why should I do this?" Since companies are made of people, companies tend to view the world in ways it matters to the company...not necessarily their customers.

Company-centric questions:
"What kinds of customers do we want? What do we want to build? What do we want to sell? How much money do we want to make?"

Customer-centric questions:
"What kinds of customers need our service? Why do they need it? What will they buy from us? What is the (quantifiable) value to them?

How do you and your company think?