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Jim’s session really reinforced the Core Value/Core Purpose portions of the One Page Strategic Plan. How these items are the foundation of all strategy and if used correctly and the foundation of sustainable growth.

They exist in all organizations but aren’t articulated and as a result aren’t leveraged.

Here’s my gems from his talk.

• Your Culture or Ideals are guides for behavior.
• Culture is the only sustainable competitive advantage. Coherence is critical (and the biggest obstacle to building culture, it’s not coherently communicated so it doesn’t guide behavior).
• Best Brands are build on high ideals–A higher ideal driving the behavior of the organization (confirms Daniel Pink’s work)
• Ideal Tree–His model
• Discover it–find it and its derived from the Human Values of Joy, Connecting, Exploration, Pride or Impact
• Build it–must be intentional, not a soft thing, must be intentional, must plan for it.
• Communicate it–Treat communication as a critical driver of growth, measure it with a KPI,  Remember everything you do communicates your ideals, especially your behavior
• Deliver it–Deliver the near Ideal Experience–to customers, employees, everyone.  Does your client experience reflect your ideal, reinforce it?
• Evaluate it–Define a KPI on the ideal
• Keep at it, despite the bloody noses.

Imagine an assessment you could give your team that diagnoses how aligned your team is on the Four Decisons Model: People, Strategy, Execution, Cash.

Would give you a definitive starting point on how to align and then improve your organization, wouldn’t it?

It’s a kind of Organization Health Checkup.  An MRI of your organization.

Well it’s coming soon.  In June or July.

Want a check up.  Reach out to me and we’ll do a diagnosis.

The doctor is in!

Video is an efficiency tool.

They need to be roaring not boring.

Everyone can do video, not everyone should.

Think 1 to few or 1 to 1, not many or viral.

The most watched videos on You Tube are short because most people can’t produce compelling content that keeps the viewer’s attention beyond 2 minutes.

Forget vanity.

Use IRC formula to decide how use video. Where do you have…

• Inconsistencies
• Redundancies
• Confusion

While ROI can be high in sales situations, the highest potential ROI for most companies is internal communication.  Can make things perfectly clear and everyone aligned.

Internal IRCs—Rules, Training, Messaging.

Management is tough.  At any given time 32 % of the team is thinking about quitting.  And 50 % are unhappy.

Two Sides of Management:  Process (hard skills and we default to these) and People (soft skills but most potential improvement comes here).

Only three ways to improve productivity:

1. Working Harder–Effort
2. Working Smarter–Effectiveness
3. Working Faster–Efficiently

Foundation of transforming company performance is improving individual performance.

Management usually only gets 60% of potential performance out of individuals.

• Don’t put in things that aren’t there –trying to improve weaknesses.
• Pull out what is there–building strengths

Four types of Managers

1. Do it all Managers–has trust or time issues.  Wants impact so takes it all on his shoulders
2. Micro Managers  -want perfection not performance
3. Nice Guy Managers  -relationship is important and can’t be damaged–do doesn’t push
4. Coaches–Develops potential and lets them play/perform–very few of these exist

Start acting like a coach not a manager

Constructive Conversations every week–The operative word is constructive.  Most conversations are not constructive.

The weekly coaching conversation goes like this:

• Focus–Todos are aligned for going forward
• Accountability–How we doing on todos
• Reinforcement on progress

The Coaching Mindset:  The coach has one job–to pull out of every ounce of potential out of your team each and every day.

Create the Environment: to be able to coach you must become coachable yourself.  Set the stage by asking you team the following:

• What am I doing wrong?
• What can I do better?
• How can I improve?

Change the conversation to:  What you would like to see.  The future not the past.

WHAT YOU SAY AFFECTS HOW THEY PLAY!

FARR–Focus, Accountability, Reinforcement = Results

Celebrate the first downs, not just the touchdowns.

Here they are

Grow:  How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World’s Greatest Companies  by Jim Stengel.

The Weekly Coaching Conversation by Brian Souza

and surprisingly,

Video Marketing for Dummies by Kevin Daum

My Tower of Guilt gets taller every time I attend a Gazelles Summit.

Built to Last:  Starting a company with a great idea hinders growth of a great company.

Good to Great: the X factor of great leaders is humility.

How the Mighty Fall:  Overreaching is the cause of failure, not complacency.

Great by Choice:  Understand luck and that your return on luck, both good and bad luck, is the difference between good and great.

Makes everything we’ve learned from Jack Stack and the Great Game of Business easier to understand.

Want to eliminate the entitlement attitude in your workplace. Get this book.

Ownership Thinking by Brad Hams

He has a good book.  I’m ordering it.  Abundance:  The future is better than you think. 

We are so empowered today.  Small can do today what only big business and government could do in the past.

Worlds biggest problems are also the biggest opportunities.  Small can solve them.

Human Development –we think local and linearly.  But the world is changing globally and exponentially.  We have trouble seeing the opportunities because we are designed to see bad.

30 linear steps = 30 yards.

30 exponential steps = 1,073,741, 824 meters or 26 times around the planet.

Computers get faster no matter what the economy does.

Scarcity has been the model.  Technology is flipping the model.

3 billion minds are coming on line in the next 3  years.  What will those minds contribute.

We need to be living into an extraordinary world.

….after listening to him for four hours this morning.

Get his book Great By Choice and read it and reread and pay close attention to chapter 7.

If you aren’t a reader, get the audio version of the book and listen to it.  Listen to it twice.

If you don’t have time to listen to it, get a review of it.  Mine is available at the In-Synk Store.  If you don’t want mine, get someone else’s.

This book is that important.  It’s brilliant and it’s his most brilliant thus far.

Pay particular attention to the section on Luck.  Breakthrough thought.

More in the next post.