Category: Business Planning

Here are a few habits for growing your business during the early years:

• Be Consistent With Side Tasks (create checklists, follow up on them)
• Clean and Tidy Up (literally and figuratively)
• Keep Books (too often overlooked or underemphasized in startups)
• Prepare for Tax Season
• Schedule Interviews (forSstaff) Before You’re Desperate
• Create and Follow A Business Plan

Source

These are all very simple habits, but easily overlooked. As the old adage goes, “mind your pennies and dollars will flow.”

What do you think?

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A major difference between leading and facilitating is that a leader often tells; a facilitator always asks. In my book, The Secrets of Facilitation, 2nd. ed., I describe how I learned what I call the fundamental secret of facilitation.

I began understanding the secret during my career with the management consulting division of what was then one of the Big-8 accounting and consulting firms. In the eight years I spent in that consulting practice, we had a standard way of addressing a client problem. We might be called in to review a particular department or activity.

We would arrive with our army of bright people, interview those whom we believed were the key stakeholders, develop a set of recommendations based on our interviews and experience, and create what might be called the “100% Solution.” We would go away and come back a year later and perhaps, if we were lucky, 15% of the recommendations would be implemented.

In my final years with that organization, the practice in which I worked began taking a different approach. We would come in with a smaller group of consultants and work shoulder to shoulder with client personnel. Together we would convene group interviews (facilitated sessions) which typically included 8-20 people. In the facilitated sessions, the participants would create the recommendations, not the consultants.

In most cases, they would only come up with what we might consider the 60% or 70% solution. So we would float ideas based on our experience. Some they would accept, others they would reject as “not beneficial” or “not implementable” in their environment. When all was done, they might have created what we would consider “the 85% solution.” Yet a year later, when we came back, amazingly 80-90% of the solution would be implemented!

Why wasn’t more of the “100% solution” implemented? Why would the “85% solution” gained through facilitation achieve far greater success? Therein lies the secret and the power behind it.

As an expert consultant, we were “telling” our clients what they needed to do. As a result, there was very little buy-in by our clients and their people. When we began “asking” the questions that resulted in them creating their own answers, the difference was staggering.

Dr. Robert Zawacki from the University of Colorado in his book “Transforming the Mature Information Technology Organization” put the secret this way:

ED = RD x CD
Effective Decisions = The Right Decision times Commitment to the Decision

Dr. Zawacki’s point is that the multiplication sign in the formula means that even the best decision can be rendered completely ineffective if commitment to the decision is lacking. (And, this is critical to consider in the process of strategic planning.)

Hence, the key difference between leading and facilitating strategy…

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Certified Master Facilitator Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., The Facilitation Company and author of the new The Secrets of Facilitation 2nd Edition, The Secrets to Masterful Meetings, and The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy. Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. The company is also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States.

Many entrepreneurs were excited last year when Congress legalized the use of crowdfunding for equity investments. This law, passed as part of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS), would allow a business owner to raise up to $2 million over the Internet from individuals who invest a maximum of $10,000 per person. Too good to be true? Continue reading “Crowdfunding Update”

Most business plans appear on paper or on a pdf, but a growing number are on video, or include a video component. Often that’s done in the form of a YouTube video, which you can use to promote your new business in ways that are not possible via paper or email. And even if your plan shows up as a more traditional hard copy document, be sure to include in its marketing section information on how you’ll use video to promote your business and attract customers. Continue reading “Video Business Plans”

Developing strategy takes time and resources. It requires the time and commitment of some of the most highly paid and highly experienced people in your organization. So if your team is not willing to invest the necessary time, I recommend that you don’t do it. Poor planning is often worse than not planning at all.

So why do you need a strategy? Why take time for planning? There are many reasons. But Leadership Strategies’ Drivers Model focuses on five in particular.

 

 

 

 

 

Once you recognize the need to plan, you now have the role of becoming the catalyst for facilitating the buy-in and commitment of your leadership team and the rest of the organization.

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Certified Master Facilitator Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., The Facilitation Company and author of the new The Secrets of Facilitation 2nd Edition, The Secrets to Masterful Meetings, and The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy. Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. The company is also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States.

(Guest post from Dawn Altnam Follow her on Twitter! @DawnAltnam )

Some analysts would argue that virtualization is either having, or getting ready to have its big moment in the data storage world. Companies in large numbers are starting to see the clear advantages of implementing sophisticated and basic virtualization technology into their data storage solutions.

Even with all the tools that virtualization provides – IT simplification, boosted computing power and increased server management efficiency – there are some key challenges that will keep virtualization from advancing into the next phase of technological advancement. In this post, we’ll uncover five of the biggest challenges facing virtualization for businesses in the years ahead.

The Top Five Challenges Facing Data Virtualization

1. Meeting the Demand of Virtualization Technology –

The hard reality of virtualized server management is that the environment itself is highly dynamic. This is a complicated technology, which will require an advanced IT team to be able to understand and manage the virtualization system. Since the technology is always evolving, individuals maintaining the systems must stay informed on developments and breakthroughs in the industry.

2. The Hard Reality of Server Management –

According to a recent white paper published by Morgan Stanley, contrary to popular belief, virtual server management isn’t any more timesaving than a physical server. In most cases, a company is dealing with several virtual servers at once, which can put a heavy burden on the IT staff.

3. Infrastructure Issues –

There are several selling points that make a virtual server environment attractive. Developing a virtual server is fairly easy, and deploying applications within this environment is even easier. The problem is that most organizations don’t have the proper infrastructure in place to keep up with the demands of the constantly evolving virtualized environment that runs their servers.

4. Economics –

It’s hard to argue with the fact that virtualization has significantly lowered IT costs associated with server management in recent years. The problem is that as much money as virtualization saves companies, there’s the reality that hypervisor and virtualization costs take up a large chunk of the IT budget on the datacenter level.

5. Virtualization Procrastination –

Finally, there are many companies that continue to drag their feet when it comes to virtualization adoption. A large chunk of these virtualization procrastinators are perpetually stuck in the test and development stage, and they never really make that next step to implement.

These companies are often afraid to make the switch because they feel that virtualization hasn’t “arrived” on the security and stability front. What they don’t realize is that virtualization adoption is more sophisticated and stable than ever.

While these are significant hurdles for many companies to get over, these are not debilitating for the virtualization industry as a whole. Companies can upgrade their infrastructure in a way that scales to meet the demand of their dynamic virtualized server solutions.

They can also overcome economical barriers by rearranging their IT budget in a way that balances out costs. More importantly, they can leap right out of the test and dev phase, and fully adopt virtualization as their server management solution of choice.

About the author: Dawn Altnam lives and works in the Midwest, and she enjoys following the business tech world. After furthering her education, she has spent some time researching her interests and blogging of her discoveries often. Follow her on Twitter! @DawnAltnam

Every business has to attract revenues from selling products and services, and every business plan has to describe how that will happen. Trying to figure out how to do that for your business idea?

One way to approach that problem is to look at common models other companies have used, and see which ones fit best. It’s all too common for a business to get latched on too strongly on one revenue model, too early, so take a look at a bunch of them before you decide. And be ready to go back to this list and make some changes if after your first few months or a year you discover things didn’t quite turn out as had planned. Continue reading “Typical Revenue Models”

It’s been widely reported that the company co-founded by Michael Porter, the famous Harvard Business School professor who wrote The Book on business strategy, was forced into bankruptcy protection.

We’ve written several blogs about Michael Porter’s insights. How could a business started by the guru of five-force analysis, possibly one of the most widely-adopted competitive strategy in the world, possibly fail? Continue reading “Lessons from Michael Porter’s Monitor failure”

The Drivers Model is Leadership Strategies’ methodology for strategic planning and the ultimate tool for masterful planning. The Drivers Model process covers seven key principles for masterfully planning any activity. The seven principles are summarized below. Let’s break down each one.

Seven Principles of Masterful Planning
1. Be clear on purpose.
2. Start with an accurate assessment of today.
3. Create a shared vision of success.
4. Identify your critical successful factors and barriers.
5. Define the drivers: your strategies and priorities.
6. Monitor and report results.
7. Have rewards and consequences to build accountability.

1. Be clear on purpose.

With any activity, start with purpose: Why are we doing this? With the house example, our purpose was to find a house that was more suitable to our needs. Purpose always answers the question why.

2. Start with an accurate assessment of where you are today.

You should always start with an accurate assessment of where you are today. Why is that important? Because you may think that you have overcome certain barriers when you really haven’t.
Perhaps an example will illustrate the importance of starting with an accurate picture of today. Let’s say you wanted to drive from Atlanta, in the southeastern United States, to Los Angeles, on the west coast. You would have to drive west to get there. But what if your perception was that you were in Atlanta but, in reality, you were in Seattle also on the west coast. What happens when you drive west? Let’s just say you might end up a little wet, which probably was not part of your vision. So, you may create a compelling vision of where you want to be. However, if you do not clearly define where you are today, you may end up thinking you are outside certain barriers. As a result, you can end up doing the wrong things and not getting the result you want. Therefore, key point number one is that you must start with an accurate assessment of where you are today.

3. Create a shared vision.

Once you have an accurate picture of today, you then create a shared vision. Not just a vision, but a shared vision. You can probably imagine what would have happened if I and my wife had a different vision of the type of home we wanted.

Yes, we would end up getting the house my wife wanted of course! But can you imagine the conflict and struggle along the way? Because we would want different things and would be pulling in different directions, many of the decisions we needed to make along the way would have resulted in a major fight over whose vision would prevail.

By creating a shared vision up front, we have the “fight” only once. Once the vision was created, we would be able to make decisions together in line with achieving that vision.

In many organizations there are entire departments that have different visions of where the organization needs to be. Imagine the chaos when each department goes off in a different direction. And sometimes those different directions are mutually exclusive – if one is successful, the other has to fail. What a waste – all resulting from lack of a shared vision.

4. Identify your critical success factors and barriers.

With that shared vision defined, principle number four is that you then focus on identifying the major barriers to achieving that vision. You ask yourself, “Why haven’t we achieved our vision already? What’s standing in our way? What’s keeping us where we are today?”

Then, you must understand your critical success factors. What’s critical to getting you where you want to be? What are the key conditions which, if you create them, will drive achievement of the vision?

5. Define your drivers.

After identifying your barriers and critical success factors, principle number five is to define your drivers. What are the key strategies that are going to get you to your vision? Remember that the strategies have to address each of the barriers and critical success factors.

6. Monitor.

With principle six, you monitor your progress to keep on track and stay motivated to achieve your vision.

7. Have rewards and consequences to build accountability.

Finally, be sure to have rewards and consequences to build accountability. Even with a monitoring process, if there is no form accountability people quickly learn that it is not essential to perform.

Learn more on strategic planning and the Drivers Model with this helpful tool: A Quick How-To on Strategic Planning

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Certified Master Facilitator Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., The Facilitation Company and author of the new The Secrets of Facilitation 2nd Edition, The Secrets to Masterful Meetings, and The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy. Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. The company is also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States.