Archive for the ‘Strategy Execution’ Category

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The Inexperience Tipping Point

Wednesday, February 1st, 2023 by Troy Schrock

Is your staff younger than ever?  Are more than 25% of your staff new in the last 30 months?  Are you seeing an increase in mistakes in service delivery or quality?

If so, you have hit the “inexperience tipping point.”  Your organization isn’t alone.  Many industries have seen greater than 50% of the workforce leave the industry.  Leaders are grappling with the results – a far younger, less experienced workforce.

Leaders can create a reverse tipping point and change the momentum.  How?  Slow down and train new staff.  Reinforce the basic why, what, and how of value delivery for your organization.

“Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not, With the slightest push — in just the right place — it can be tipped.”  Malcolm Gladwell

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In 100 Words: Breaking Inertia

Tuesday, March 15th, 2022 by Troy Schrock

Inertia – resistance to change in speed or direction – is a powerful force.  Significant energy is required to break inertia which can be good or bad for leaders.  Inertia works in a leader’s favor when it is built around valuable routines, habits, and attitudes.  The more momentum you build in the right direction the easier it is to maintain.

Conversely, inertia works against you when built around negative routines, habits, and attitudes.  It takes committed effort to break the cycle and restart momentum in a positive direction.

How can you spin your positive inertia flywheels?  Where should you break negative inertia? 

“Leaders must wake people out of inertia.  They must get people excited about something they’ve never seen before, something that does not yet exist.”   Rosabeth Moss Kanter

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In 100 Words: X-Factor for Organizational Success

Monday, January 31st, 2022 by Troy Schrock

You have likely heard three commonly claimed factors, in various priority, at which you must excel if you want to succeed – strategy, execution and culture.  These are all important, but what if the X-Factor is a strong, effective leadership team? 

Let’s assume this is true…   Do you:

  • fret over having the right, best people possible on the team?
  • consciously work to increase team cohesion?
  • identify ways to improve capacity, speed of decision-making, setting priorities and follow-up on commitments?

Operating as if your leadership team is the X-Factor should cause you to shift work time and still accelerate the other factors.

“It’s the little details that are vital.  Little things make big things happen.”   John Wooden

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In 100 Words: Certainty is a Mirage

Monday, November 1st, 2021 by Troy Schrock

Leaders should become comfortable making decisions with probability-based thinking. The future is uncertain and the environments in which we operate are fluid.

Some leaders get stuck waiting for more information, a better view. It appears certainty is just ahead… one last question, one final piece of information. But, certainty is a mirage. As soon as you receive the information “certainty” evaporates like the proverbial desert oasis shimmering in front of you.

Two dangers of certainty-thinking:
• Decisions bog down and progress slows
• Absolute-outcome thinking closes off to options for alternatives.

There comes a time decisions must be made and actions taken.

“…logical method and form flatter that longing for certainty and for repose which is in every human mind. But certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

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In 100 Words: When to Say No to Good Opportunities

Friday, January 1st, 2021 by Troy Schrock

Most organizations rarely experience a shortage of good opportunities. What is not rare, though, is a shortage of attention span, time, and resources. Despite these limitations, leaders hesitate to keep resources focused on developing the opportunities already in process and say NO to new opportunities.

We get excited and over-value potential returns of the new opportunities. This reveals the flip-side – we under-value the harvest to be gained by bringing our current BEST opportunity to fruition. Fully invest in the opportunity selected as BEST for now until it is mature. Once it is harvested, plenty of new opportunities will be waiting.

“The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.” Tony Blair

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In 100 Words: Iterate without Lurching

Monday, September 16th, 2019 by Troy Schrock

How do you rate a leadership team’s strategic ability? One thought – look at the team’s ability to iterate strategically without lurching wildly in different directions. Can the team adapt the organization’s strategy to produce more than one economically successful business model over time? Time, in this case, is a decade plus. Success for that duration typically involves at least one business model shift when you consider changing customer preferences, technological advancements and competitive forces.

On this course, teams will need to master two key elements:

• strategy thinking – both the creative and analytical aspects, and
• execution – consistent, disciplined action over time.

“There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, ‘Truth is the daughter of Time.’” Abraham Lincoln

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