Business Mentor Weekly #9 • Develop Strategic Objective

Once you have a picture of how you want your life to be . . . you can
then turn to the business that’s going to help you get there; you
can then turn to the development of your Strategic Objective. ~
Michael E. Gerber

Strategic Objective – A broadly defined target that an organization
must achieve to make its strategy succeed. ~ Businessdictionary.com

Implement This Principle: A company’s strategic objective is the
DNA that controls growth and raises a red flag when things are getting
off target.

To Get These Results: A well developed strategic objective multiplies
the Chief Executives effectiveness and provides employees and
stakeholders with direction at every level of the enterprise.

Thoughts to Ponder: A well thought out strategic objective eliminates
the need for others to develop their own agenda as to how things
should be done and replaces it with the owner’s “passion driven”
objective.

Take Action: Using your motivating passion as the foundation for your
strategic objective, write down how your passion will be manifested in
your business, and how it will be communicated to stakeholders. Using
these elements craft a strategic objective statement, keep it to a
maximum of two sentences. Educate employees, vendors, customers and
investors in how to utilize your strategic objective as a guidance
system for your business.

Next Week’s Topic: Develop Company Story

Business Mentor Weekly #10 • Develop Company Story

When we use the term “Company Story,” we’re not talking about the
biography of your company or the logical, sequential time line of how
you got to where you are today. When we say Company Story, we mean the
story that illustrates the essence of what your business is all about.
It is a tale of passion, motivation and opportunity. It’s the
inspiration that recruits, sells and impacts all your constituencies
the way you always intended. ~ Erin Duckhorn

Implement This Principle: A well thought out company story develops a
rooting system for a healthy company culture.

To Get These Results: Employees, customers and stakeholders love a
great story, it helps people to bond to an organization and creates
loyalty and a since of belonging.

Thoughts to Ponder: People like to belong, to engage in an adventure
in which they believe in. Your company story helps others to develop
roots with your company, to belong, engage and identify with the
company.

Take Action: There are several ways get the word out about your
company’s journey. Write your story and include it in appropriate
literature, insert it in new employee orientation packs, put it in
your company newsletter. You can also create a mural on an appropriate
wall; the mural can be in the form of a timeline or just graphics or
both. If you need someone to create the mural, email me and I will
forward you information to a person I know who can do it for you.

Next Week’s Topic: Company Current Status

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Business Mentor Weekly #11 • Company Current Status

Defining the company’s current status . . . serves as an important
baseline for measuring progress and achievement of goals. ~ Bill Gaw

Implement This Principle: Periodic assessment of company status
relative to stated goals brings clarity to the decision making
process.

To Get These Results: Once you realign resources and manpower you
will begin to achieve better performance to stated goals increasing
profits and reducing costs.

Thoughts to Ponder: Only through management can leaders increase
profitability and reduce costs. An essential part of management is the
yearly assessment where you stop and take a look at where you are in
the development of your company. Getting a fresh perspective is a
great way to motivate yourself and energize you and your troops to
both celebrate achievement and take positive corrective action.

Take Action: List the status of sales, product development, employee
development, marketing and promotion, etc. Use this list to assess how
you are doing to plan. Reward yourself for progress which is meeting
plan and get serious about shoring up areas in which the company is
coming up short. Consider reassessing goals, training, outside help or
outsourcing.

Next Week’s Topic: The Hedgehog Effect

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Business Mentor Weekly #12 • The Hedgehog Effect

The essential strategic difference between the good-to-great and
comparison companies lay in two fundamental distinctions. First, the
good-to-great companies founded their strategies on deep understanding
along three key dimensions . . . Second, the good-to-great companies
translated that understanding into a simple, crystalline concept that
guided all their efforts—hence the term Hedgehog Concept. ~ Jim
Collins, Good to Great

Implement This Principle: Know what provides you with a sustainable
passion, where you want your profits to come from, (profit per x) and
what you can be the best in the world at. The point where these three
intersect is your hedgehog concept.

“BHAG” means Big Hairy Audacious Goals

Created and coined by Jim Collins in his landmark book Good to Great

To Get These Results: A commitment to implementation of the three
guiding principles of the hedgehog effect provides a guidance system
that will focus your company on what really matters, eliminate waste,
improve productivity and improve market focus.

Thoughts to Ponder: How much time does your company spend working on
things that really do not matter. The HedgeHog concept is a tool to
help eliminate this type of activity and develop focus. It gets at the
core of what really makes you money from a sustainable perspective
where passionate efforts intersect with what you are really best at.

Take Action: Take time to study the chart. Start digging into what
drives you, what you are passionate about (click here for more info on
how to do this
.) Figure out what you can do better than anyone else, no matter how
small you are you have skills that no one else has. Write down what
single factor has the greatest impact on your economic engine, your
profit per x.

Next Week’s Topic: Identify Products