Dynamic Business Strategy, LLC

A 2019 survey conducted by Doodle estimated that the cost of poorly organized meetings is $399 bn per year in the United States. That's a staggering amount of money lost due to ineffective meetings! As someone who has spent up to 10 hours per day in meetings, I know firsthand how frustrating it can be to feel unproductive outside of them. But there are solutions! Here are five things you can do to improve the quality of your meetings: 1. Identify the purpose of the meeting. Is it necessary? If so, what type of meeting is it? Transactional, relational, or adaptive? Each type of meeting follows a different process. 2. Create an agenda. This sets expectations, allows participants to prepare, keeps the meeting focused, and prevents wasted time. 3. Assign time to each topic. Having a timekeeper and adding up the time for each agenda item will ensure an appropriate length of the meeting. 4. Invite only the right participants. Each participant should have a purpose for being in the meeting. They should be responsible for an agenda item, accountable to an action, have something of value to add, or need to be informed. 5. Send minutes. Follow-up is key. Record what was talked about, what additional information may be required, and decisions that were made. Assign actions to participants and include deadlines. Accountability goes a long way to ensuring things get done. With so many ineffective meetings, it's important to make your meetings count. By putting in the time to prepare, inviting the correct people, keeping the meeting focused, and following through on decisions, you can ensure that people won't dread your meetings. Let's make every meeting count! #timemanagement #effectivemeetings

Are you feeling overwhelmed by the constant stream of communication? You're not alone! With so many channels to keep track of, it can be challenging to manage the volume and complexity of messages. Here are five tips to help you stay on top of your communication game: 1. Establish clear communication channels: Define specific channels for different types of communication, such as email for formal messages, texts for quick updates, and phone calls for high-stakes or urgent conversations. 2. Set communication guidelines: Ask if the person really needs to be on the communication string and ensure that your team understands when to use each communication method and what the expectations for response time are for each channel. 3. Use filters and labels: Set the expectation with your team that they will communicate directly and include tags in the subject line to prioritize messages. 4. Limit notifications: Turn off notifications on your watch and set a schedule for checking emails, texts, IM's, and calls to put yourself in control of your schedule. 5. Encourage concise communication: Provide a summary of the issue and a clear request of what is expected when bringing someone else into a conversation and ensure that your response addresses the question fully. These are just a few techniques to help you manage the volume of communication. What other methods have you found to be successful? Share your thoughts in the comments below! #CommunicationTips #Productivity #StayOrganized

How many pieces of contradictory information do you need to change your mind? I went for a run in an unfamiliar area recently. I took a wrong turn early in my run that had me going in the opposite direction to what I expected. My first piece of contradictory feedback was when I ended up on a street that wasn’t on my route. It was enough information to make me notice, but not enough to conclude that I had made a wrong turn. When I was approaching a street that I wasn’t expecting until much later in my run, I reassessed and realized what had happened. In general, we are slow to change our opinions, even when faced with evidence to the contrary. This can have major implications for business leaders. I have seen businesses ignore data that suggests a change in market conditions. The indicators were there, but they were ignored. Business leaders can’t be swayed by every piece of information that contradicts our beliefs. Yet we can’t just ignore mounting evidence that we need to change direction. In Great by Choice by Jim Collins and Morten Hansen, they note that leaders of great companies make decisions based on “empirical validation, not predictive genius.” Following metrics in your business can give early indications that something has changed. For example, if sales are still strong but backlog is starting to dwindle, it should trigger an investigation into why that is happening. Another skill that Collins and Hansen noted among successful business leaders is the ability to zoom out, then zoom in. The idea is that we get engrossed in the details of our work (or run), but we need to zoom out to look at the big picture to understand changes in the environment. Then zoom in to focus on “supreme execution of plans and objectives.” Taking a wrong turn on a run isn’t the worst thing that can happen. Missing early indicators that your business is changing could be disastrous. Message me if you want to increase your business focus. #businessstrategy #businessanalysis

I've often experienced higher than normal employee turnover after an acquisition. In my experience, employees want to know: 1. That they belong within the organization. 2. That their contributions make a difference. 3. That they are appreciated. Employee retention is always important. It becomes more challenging in the period after an acquisition. When you consider that companies target acquiring capabilities, having those capabilities walk out the door erodes value. Have a plan to retain your employees. Be proactive and create an environment where they feel appreciated, where their contributions make a difference, and they see how they belong within the organization. https://lnkd.in/gcsUcqXG

The Go-Giver: A little story about a powerful business idea by Bob Burg and John David Mann I’m on vacation with my family this week. While on vacation I like to catch up on some reading. I thought I’d share summaries of books I’ve read in the past. I find that the process of writing a summary helps me to remember the key points. I’ve read the Go-Giver a couple of times, the most recent of which was with a networking group. It’s a story of a stressed-out young professional who is seeking the secret to business influence. He has six meetings with a successful businessman who, with the help of five other successful business people, shares with him the five laws of stratospheric success. The five laws of stratospheric success: THE LAW OF VALUE Add more value than you take in payment. Whether an employee or a business owner, we exchange goods and services for money. Our goal should be to provide excellent value every day. In many ways, the payment part will take care of itself. In fact, people often perceive when you are focused primarily on the money. THE LAW OF COMPENSATION Your income is determined by your ability to scale. Reaching more people and providing excellent service helps to increase the amount of money you make. THE LAW OF INFLUENCE Your influence grows when you think of others first. Think of the last social gathering you were at. If a stranger came up to you and started telling you about themselves, and what a wonderful person they were, you would probably seek a quick exit from the conversation. On the other hand, if someone started by asking about you and showed a sincere interest in who you are, you would probably want to know more about them. The same principle works in business. THE LAW OF AUTHENTICITY Offering yourself, expecting nothing in return, is the most valuable thing you can offer. It may not provide an immediate return, but when you are authentic about being generous, people tend to be generous in return. THE LAW OF RECEPTIVITY Giving only works when people are open to receive. Therefore, be open to receiving the value others have to offer. By having a network of people who are open to both giving and receiving, all participants can increase their success. While parable style books are not my main genre, this book provides useful examples of how value is developed by being generous with your time and your expertise. Contact me if you need help with business strategy or process improvement. #businessleadership #valuecreation #personaldevelopment

Does the following scenario sound familiar? The annual strategic plan is kicked off in early March. Over the next two months there will be several meetings, preparations, and revisions. In May the strategic plan is presented to the executive leadership team. Further revisions are completed, and the plan is approved in June. By the time the strategy is approved, you have spent a couple of hundred hours on it as have your leadership team. Next March, you blow the dust off of last year’s plan and discover that the team has made little progress toward their strategic goals. What happened? Studies suggest that this a common scenario. In fact, up to 90% of strategic plans fail to launch. Here are four things you can do to change that. 1.      Treat it like a project Strategic plans are long-term in nature, so it’s easy to put off tasks for other things that seem more urgent. Assign responsibility for strategic objectives. Set high level milestones and objectives. Keep a risk register for your strategic initiatives. Have regular meeting with the objective owners. 2.      Link your operation plan to your strategic plan Your strategic plan should form the basis of your operational plan. Initiatives for your operational plan should detail the tasks required to meet the first milestones of the strategic plan. Incorporate KPI’s that support your strategic initiatives. 3.      Link variable compensation to strategic initiatives The senior leadership team should be strategically focused. One way to ensure this happens is to link performance to progress toward strategic initiatives. Jimmie Butler of Intellibridge reports that “85% of leadership teams spend less than one hour per month on strategy, and 50% spend no time at all on strategy.” 4.      Schedule it into your calendar The authors of “The 4 Disciplines of Execution” describe the whirlwind of daily life. We’re all familiar with events that happen that distract us from our most important goals. One antidote to this is to prioritize the important items. Ensure that they are in your calendar at the most productive parts of your day. Usually this is first thing in the morning before the whirlwind has a chance to change your priorities. Some say a senior leader should spend one hour per day (12.5%) on strategy. I believe that it should be closer to 30%. Either way, make strategy a priority. There are many other factors to successful strategic planning, but these ones deal with the discipline of achieving your wildly important strategic initiatives. What disciplines do you embrace to achieve your strategic goals? Message me to find out how I can help improve your strategic focus. #strategicplanning #processimprovement #strategy #goals

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE PEOPLE! I attended the keynote address by Garry Ridge, former CEO of WD-40 where he encouraged us not to be a soul sucking CEO. Garry wove humor and personal stories into this fast moving presentation. Here are a just a few of the highlights I gleaned: 1. It is all about the people. "Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work" - Aristotle 2. Values need a hierarchy. While profitability and doing the right thing are on WD-40's set of values, doing the right thing comes first. Garry told a story of how that empowered a buyer to make a decision that placed doing the right thing ahead of saving the company millions. 3. Execution of Strategy happens when everyone is aligned. Strategy is destined for failure when people don't know, understand, or agree with the strategy. 4. Take the time to appreciate the learning moments. WD-40 is so named because of the 39 formulas that preceded the award winning formula. Focusing on the failure can cripple progress. Embracing the learning moment can spur on to improvements. 5. Life is a gift - don't send it back unwrapped. This was impactful to me. We are meant to live life, take risks, fail, learn, explore, and share with others. I'm curious to hear what main points others got from the address. Feel free to add to the comments.

I'm excited to be attending the San Diego Business Summit on January 17th. I'm looking forward to the educational component as well as the networking opportunities. Let me know if you are attending so we can catch up. https://lnkd.in/dxf8ZgfQ