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Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization Back On the Growth Track - and Keeping it There
Les McKeown's Predictable Success® Blog: October 08
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McCain's Whitewater, Obama's Treadmill
I'm not making any political points in what follows - as the pundits would say, I have no dog in that hunt - just interested in the application of Predictable Success in another arena.
Political campaigns (and more generally, political parties) follow their own version of the lifecycle, but with different descriptors.
One of the formative political events in my lifetime was watching the UK Tory party in the Thatcher era as it cycled through the entire lifecycle over a 15 year period:
Early Struggle = Underdog
Fun = Populist
Whitewater = Electability
Predictable Success® = Governance
Treadmill = Entitlement
The Big Rut = Sleaze/Scandal
Death Rattle = Wilderness
As a lay observer of the current US political cycle (I'm what the US Government quaintly calls a 'resident alien' which means I have no voting rights), it seems clear that this race has been all about Electability - what we know in the business world as Whitewater.
In political terms, 'Electability' means: does the candidate, his or her campaign, and their party as a whole have the policies, processes and systems to deliver stable, dependable, predictable governance.
Because their candidate is running to be the first African-American US President, the Obama campaign appears to have been acutely aware of the 'Electability' issue from the get-go. The McCain camp, on the other hand, seems to have relished the 'populist' (Fun) phase so much that they have struggled to maintain the discipline and focus to push through 'Electability' (Whitewater).
Indeed, in these last days of the campaign there are signs that the McCain camp is going all the way back to the 'Underdog' (Early Struggle) stage in an attempt to play to their candidates perceived strength. I'm not a political advisor or pundit, but my observation of the shifts in the UK Conservative and Labour parties (they've both gone through the entire cycle above a number of times) would lead me to believe that 'Underdog' status needs to be worked out in opposition, and that a campaign needs to start at least in the 'Populist' phase, and cannot avoid the 'Electability' stage if they want to get to Governance.
On the other hand, Obama and the Democratic party now face an issue they might have viewed as unlikely 12 months ago - with a week to go, do the polls make their election look inevitable, and are they in danger of slipping into 'Entitlement' - even before they are elected? Republicans who recall the 1948 election presumably hope so.
The Importance of Being Ruthlessly Constructive
One of the tenets of Predictable Success® is the importance of being ruthlessly constructive. (We discuss it a little here and here.)The concept is simple, and self-explanatory: seek to be constructive and positive in all your interactions, but do it without fear or favor, and always for the better good of the organization as a whole, not for your personal benefit, or that of your project, or you team, department or division.
Easily said, but tough in practice. Being ruthlessly constructive is particularly difficult for passive-aggressives, emotional manipulators and bullies (and is one of the reasons it is so powerful - it shows them up and if practiced consistently by others, eventually calls them on their behavioral dysfunctions).
In the last few weeks I've been thinking a lot about the power of being ruthlessly constructive. Why? Because about 80% of the leaders I work with - CEO's, presidents, VP's, owners, founders, general managers - have asked versions of the same two questions:
"How do I and my team do any sort of realistic planning in the current climate - short and long term?", and
"How do I keep the morale of my team high right now?"
Now both questions deserve longer treatment than a blog entry will allow, but it has struck me how often the importance of being ruthlessly constructive comes up in answering both questions.
Let there be no misunderstanding - times are tough, and for many of us, they're going to get tougher before they get better. But when it comes to importance of good planning and high morale (two interconnected drivers of Predictable Success), there's no point wallowing in negativity, and there's certainly no point in throwing in the towel.
Dwell a while on the importance of being ruthlessly constructive, and how you might incorporate it more in your organization's interactions. You will find it a powerful tool in these difficult days.
The Economic Bailout - Enjoy The Fun
Even economic bailouts follow the lifecycle - albeit a considerably distorted version of it.After about 6 weeks of Early Struggle (is it this plan or that plan? Does the government invest or lend? Is this socialism? What will our constituents think? Is this working? ...and the classic Early Struggle question: Do we have enough cash?), we're now (believe it or not) in the 'Fun' part of the cycle - "Whoo-hoo - we've got money to spend, and it's gonna fix this mess!" - hence the current revival in stock markets world-wide.
In a very short period of time - a few more weeks at best, we'll see the 'Whitewater' hit as processes, policies and systems become vital to the smooth running of the bailout (they're already there in very basic form, but the outcry about possible abuse and 'fairness' hasn't started yet. When it does, watch Whitewater hit with a bang).
As the bailout is by and large being managed by governments at federal levels, the move from Whitewater into Predictable Success will be shortlived - so short as to be unobservable.
The enormous pressure to over-regulate (particularly given the roots of the economic problems, which largely arose because of lax regulation) means that pretty much immediately, the bailout will move into Treadmill, then quickly into The Big Rut, where it will stay for many decades - a gargantuan paper-pushing exercise providing safe and secure employment for hundreds, probably thousands, of people engaged in what will be essentially compliance functions.
Finally, in the distant future some new administration will ask if the Bailout program has run its course, and the Death Rattle will be heard - congressional / parliamentary debates about the program's value and relevance, rearguard action by the program's bureaucracy to protect their jobs, and at the end, the legislation to shut down the program and redirect its people, assets and activities elsewhere.
(The above is not intended as a political comment - just a reflection of the how the Predictable Success lifecycle applies to massive government intervention.)
Reaction is not Strategy
Watching the US Congress as it grapples with the current financial crisis is eerily reminiscent of seeing management teams flounder in some of the failed strategic planning meetings I've attended.The key problem is the same in both cases - confusing 'reaction to a crisis' with a strategy.
A 'reaction' is just that - something which will right the ship, possibly only temporarily. A 'reaction' is at best a tactic to get through current circumstances, and is best hammered out with your hands still on the wheel.
A strategy is much more than a reaction - it's a thought-through, weighed, deliberated plan to take you to the next level (not just to battle on at the current level) in the medium and long term.
Don't turn this year's strategic planning into a 'recession-reaction session'. Get your recession-reaction agreed now (if you haven't already - most of my Predictable Success clients made their recession plans in April or May), and use your strategic planning time wisely.
Four tips:
1. Get up to 15,000 feet at least - if not 30,000. This is probably the only opportunity you'll have for at least six months to take a bird's-eye view of how your business is doing at the macro level, rather than at the departmental or transactional level.
2. Bring an outside facilitator in to help you stress test your underlying assumptions about the medium and long term (particularly growth and hiring forecasts, customer expectations and behavior, and your operating cost base). Don't think you have any? Not likely - you simply haven't sat down and written them out. Time you did.
3. Build on your strengths. Too many management teams get bogged down in negativism - focussing too much on their perceived weaknesses, 'threats', 'opportunities' or whatever verbiage is used to describe them. You won't win by focussing on your weaknesses. You'll win by building on your strengths.
4. Celebrate this year's victories. Again, too many management teams walk into strategic planning sessions and begin by flagellating themselves with an autopsy of what went wrong (or wasn't as good as it should have been) in the preceding period. Winning organizations don't do that. 'What went wrong' should be dealt with as a matter of course in your monthly departmental review meetings (you do have those, right? And you do attend and participate, right?). Strategic planning sessions fail - badly - when they're used as the burning ground to air suppressed frustrations about past failures. They succeed - spectacularly - when they're used to envision success and plan its achievement.
I learned more from Les than in my cumulative 15 years previous business experience.
Les came in from the outside and was able to both accurately identify our current and future business challenges as well as provide us with strategies and solutions for dealing with them effectively. It was like he had been there all along!
If you want a road map to get the the next stage with your organization, I urge you to get on board with Les McKeown.
Quite simply - there is no better, more intuitive, results-focussed business growth process than Predictable Success.