STRATEGY
No More Problems, Please!
A Different Approach To Strategy For All Companies
First, my public apology to all the companies I’ ve misguided over the past two decades, as well as an apology to my employees. And while I’ m at it, let me add a public apology to my family and friends.
I apologize for dredging up all their problems, for focusing on what is wrong instead of on what is right. I apologize for focusing on the F’ s instead of the A’ s. I just didn’ t know any better until I read a thin 70 page book called the Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry.
“ I JUST DIDN’ T KNOW ANY BETTER UNTIL I READ A THIN 70 PAGE BOOK CALLED THE THIN BOOK OF APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY”
QUICK SUMMARY – FOCUS ON WHAT’ S WORKING INSTEAD OF ON WHAT’ S NOT WORKING. PERIOD. Here’ s the rub. During quarterly planning and consulting sessions the tendency is to make a list of problems and then spend the bulk of the time discussing these problems and trying to solve them. No wonder people dread the process.
This was brought home to me recently when a client introduced me, as his new consultant, to some of the people in his accounting department. One of the women quipped“ I suppose you’ re here to point out everything we’ re doing wrong.” Ouch! But an accurate description of the role of most consultants. As a leader of my own firm, I’ ve fallen into this same“ problem analysis” focus of solving my growth company challenges. And as a father, during a recent teacher-parent conference, I caught myself focusing more on the“ B’ s” than the“ A’ s”, even though I now know better – these are difficult habits to break.
DRIVING REVENUES So what’ s the alternative? Let me go back to my latest planning session with the client mentioned above. Their main challenge was driving revenue. Rather than analyze all the reasons why revenues were NOT growing as rapidly as they would like, we took a different tack. Instead, we explored a time when revenues were exploding i. e. when things were going great.
“ RATHER THAN ANALYZE ALL THE REASONS WHY REVENUES WERE NOT GROWING AS RAPIDLY AS THEY WOULD LIKE... WE EXPLORED A TIME WHEN REVENUES WERE EXPLODING I. E. WHEN THINGS WERE GOING GREAT.”
Back a number of years ago, one of their divisions had driven revenues from $ 2 million to just over $ 9 million in the span of twelve months. Since then, that division’ s revenues have gone flat. So we brought in the head of that division and rather than spend an hour analyzing why revenues had gone flat, instead we asked“ what were you doing right back then that caused revenues to explode?”
First, the head of the division was getting to re-live a positive time, rather than hash through a bunch of negatives. More importantly, about an hour into the conversation, as we continued to explore what worked for them in the past, the head of the division had a major insight.
Back a few years ago, he was spending about a week a month out in the field visiting with his main distributors and customers. However, after experiencing the sharp jump in revenues, he was
6 | SPRING 2017