Strategy From a Different Perspective

Red Teaming: How Your Business Can Conquer the Competition by Challenging Everything – Bryce G. Hoffman (Crown Business)

Your seen firsthand. You probably at one point participated in it. Someone higher up the management food chain comes to the table during a strategic planning session and present what they think is a brilliant idea and they can site statistics and dialogue that soundly supports their take on things; it sounds like a winner. Then all of the yes men line up and sound off in support of the proposal, no one steps into the breach to challenge any assumptions.

Then six months or a year into the execution cycle the wheels fall off and the strategy either heads back to the drawing board for a retooling or gets scraped completely. More often than not no one gets held accountable and we all move on to the next brilliant strategy that we can all get behind. If you’re like me, this kind of thing will drive you crazy. As I gained experience and confidence, more and more often I would offer push back to challenge assumptions and often tweak or improve on strategies. Often, that’s not an easy thing to do.

So what’s a better why to be the contrarian in the room? While it’s being billed as a revolutionary new way of approaching strategic thinking, red teaming as it’s been dubbed, is a strategic approach that has been around for awhile, but more recently gained the title and has evolved and been honed into a business planning strategy.

Bestselling author Bryce G. Hoffman (American Icon) has penned book to 

summarize not only the process but of his stint working side by side with the 

military to learn firsthand how the process all works. In Red Teaming: How Your Business Can Conquer the Competition by Challenging Everything Hoffman gives you the historical reference for red teaming and walk through how the process moved from military application to the board room and how major corporations and even small business can used the process to improve results.

The process really boils down to elevating critical thinking and expanding the strategic planning process. While so often we tend to focus on our own business during the planning process, Red Teaming really forces us to change our focus; to help identify holes in the plan, challenges from the competition and I think most importantly identify opportunities in the competitive environment.

For the strategist that is familiar with the red teaming process, Hoffman’s book may seem a bit basic, but it never hurts to have access to a primer on any subject. For those looking to delve deeper into the process I would recommend searching out the military’s Applied Critical Thinking Handbook, which was formerly called the Red Teaming Handbook. You can easily Google it and find it in PDF form or Amazon has the Kindle Version for less than ten bucks.

Leaders Are Built…Not Born

Leaders Made Here: Building a Leadership Culture – Mark Miller (Berrett-Koehler Publishers)

“___Fill in the blank____ is the only sustainable competitive advantage”

After stringing together millions of them over the course of my career, I have to admit, that I am a sucker for words. So when I read a great line that literally jumps off the page at me, I tend to get fired up.

When I read the opening part of the line above in leadership guru and bestselling author, Mark Miller’s new book, Leaders Made Here: Building a Leadership Culture, I perked up. What was the answer? A quick Google search will yields things like innovation, a business’s ability to learn faster than their competition (?) but it is Miller who truly hits on the answer. “Leadership is the only sustainable competitive advantage.”

While learning at a greater velocity is a competitive advantage and innovation certainly is as well, it is the sustainability piece that make it more difficult. But when it comes to leadership and building a culture of leadership, that all important bench strength, is something that is doable if a business makes the commitment to make it happen.

Miller, a Chick-fil-A executive and co-author of a number of bestselling leadership books with Ken Blanchard, uses the time-tested business parable to impart his story and the leadership culture lessons in Leaders Made Here. While I am not a huge fan of this style of book, I think Miller does a great job of pretty clearly delineating actionable steps that businesses can take to create and grow a leadership culture.

He provides the building blocks that you can put in place to form the cornerstone of your leadership culture; from agreeing on basics of a definition of leader and some of the potential roadblocks that can create within a business if everybody is not on the same page. This would make for a great exercise to gauge what your leadership team is thinking and how to build on a unified platform. It cuts down on wasted time, inconsistent messages and agendas and the lack of focus.

Real Rubber Meets the Road Advice

Move: How Decisive Leaders Execute Strategy Despite Obstacles, Setbacks and Stalls – Patty Azzarello (Wiley)

What are some of the chronic challenges that your business faces when it comes to executing on strategy? You know, those nagging problems that just ever seem to change or go away, but continue to roadblock change, expansion and acceleration of growing your business.

There are plenty of high powered, highly recognizable business consultants that you can hire, familiar names like KPMG, McKinsey, Bain Consulting and dozens more you can hire to help guide you through the process. Pay them a substantial fee and in return you will get a very well educated MBA; think Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton, who will assess your business issues and then try to pigeonhole them into their patented way of thinking, based on their consultants perspective. This won’t be based on the thought process of someone who has actually run a business, but on a protocol or set of protocols based on their companies approach to things.

It’s like those “smarter than you” folks who make careers in academia who try to tell business owners what they are doing wrong. That’s why I think Patty Azzarello’s new book, Move: How Decisive Leaders Execute Strategy Despite Obstacles, Setbacks and Stalls, is so different. This is REAL, rubber meets the road, actionable business intelligence.

Azzarello compiles a business “greatest hits” in the pages of Move, and displays a real bias towards action. She offers up tried and true advice for breaking through those age old barriers to create actual forward motion, hence the title. Change can be uncomfortable for those folks who like things the way they are or as they have always been. Azzarello addresses those sticky issues of engagement and details how no successful project moves forward without full on buy in from the team. She gives you the tools to get people on board.

I love books that give you the tools that you can put into play today and Move certainly accomplishes that without coming off as a one size fits all approach to business.

Snowflakes Beware

Extreme You: Step Up. Stand Out. Kick Ass. Repeat – Sarah Robb O’Hagan (Harper Business)

For me the word EXTREME just conjures up the image of a millennial decked out in a brightly colored outfit either strapped to or dangling off of some kind of motorized device or board(s) of some variety, flying through the air without giving gravity a second thought. So when I read the title of Sarah Robb O’Hagan’s latest book, Extreme You: Step Up. Stand Out. Kick Ass. Repeat, I had a level of certainty that it was somehow a motivational/career advice book for the millennial set…and it the end of the day I was completely wrong and completely right!

O’Hagan has seen meteoric rises and equally high speed, epic falls during the course of her career in leadership roles and at the helm of companies like Virgin Atlantic, Nike, Gatorade and Equinox and whether riding high on the wave or face planting on the sand, she has maintained an even keel and pressed on in the face of any setback. She truly practiced what she preaches in Extreme You, putting a driving passion and a go big or go home attitude at the heart of everything she does.

Her takedown of the everybody is a winner, everyone gets a trophy world we find ourselves in, just overflowing with special Johnny’s and special Susie’s had me convinced that O’Hagan could be the perfect leader to move millennials out of their safe places and into the real world; convincing them that losing doesn’t mean you give up, suck your thumb and pull out the Play Doh. It’s time to take that defeat, learn from it, hone your skills, work harder and come back even stronger next time out.

The list of folks who would benefit from O’Hagan’s advice certainly includes those that are just starting out or are early in their careers, but even veteran leaders and mid-career path types can take the advice gathered in Extreme You, from a wide range of folks and equally diverse backgrounds and put it to work when kicking things to the next level. No you won’t have to dangle from the conference room light fixtures, but you can level up and bring the best possible you to the table.

Limitless

No Limits: Blow the CAP Off Your Capacity – John C. Maxwell (Center Street)

Think about it; there seems to be no limits to what bestselling author, speaker and coach can bring his ability and focused training skills to. Clearly he delivers the goods on leadership, but he has also trained countless folks on positive thinking, communication, influence, success, team work, growth and relationships.

With his latest book, No Limits: Blow the CAP Off Your Capacity, Maxwell shifts his focus to examine how folks can expand their capacity and drive themselves to even greater success. When you ponder the word capacity it is easy to view it as a measure of our limitations, but Maxwell posits that any limits on your capacity is based on something that we consciously set for ourselves. He makes the persuasive case that by re-working your thinking you can actually grow your capacity in a wide array of areas.

Maxwell has identified seventeen areas for capacity growth ranging from; leadership to attitude and production to partnership. One area that I found particularly useful was the chapter on creative capacity; while my day job is in a creative role, I find that more and more my work with community organizations, leadership coaching and my writing side hustle has taxed my creative energy. Maxwell gave me actionable steps I can put into play to leverage untapped resources in the creative realm.

That was one of the great things about No Limits; while it hangs together well, you can really pick and choose to tap into the very specific nature of areas that you may feel the need to grow your abilities in. As a bonus it’s all delivered in the clear, concise style that has made John Maxwell a go to resource for so many folks.

The Bitch is Back

Boss Bitch: A Simple 12-Step Plan to Take Charge of Your Career – Nicole Lapin (Crown Business)

With her first book, Rich Bitch bestselling author, television host and finance guru Nicole Lapin helped you get your financial house in order. Now she is back with a new book to help you get your career on the right track and help you make some informed choices when it comes to what direction you choose to take when it comes to life and work.

In Boss Bitch: A Simple 12-Step Plan to Take Charge of Your Career, Lapin avoids the tried and true resume building and doles out advice in three categories:

• ·       Section one – figuring out the career path you want to take; this one is short (20 pages) and to the point and helps build the foundation you will work from.
• ·       Section two – boils down to how to “act” like the boss in your chosen field…even if you don’t have the title. No this isn’t about being bossy, it’s about developing a take charge attitude; branding and pitching yourself, interview skills, goal development that keeps you on track and how to look the part. These are a solid mix of hard and soft skills that aren’t often taught.
• ·       Section three – how to be the boss of your own business if you choose that path. Lapin offers the right insights into how to identify the business that’s right for you and even how to get the ball rolling even when you’re not necessarily ready to make the full-time leap. She hits a home run with her advice about what it takes to truly make your side hustle work and the commitment you need to be successful.

While Lapin’s often gruff and gritty style; hard to believe some of the stuff that comes out of this nice young lady’s mouth, may put some people off, but, I think she brings a no nonsense approach that delivers a reality based punch to the advice she doles out.

The bottom line is you won’t need an MBA to understand the knowledge Lapin imparts; it’s practical and actionable. If you’re pondering a side hustle or started one that it stalled out, then I suggest that you focus on section three of Bitch Boss and get your shit on track.

Agile Business: Nothing Finishes, Where it Starts

Sense and Respond: How Successful Organizations Listen to Customers and Create New Products Continuously – Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden – (Harvard Business Review)

I have become fond of saying “nothing finishes where it starts.” While that may seems a bit self-evident, think about it; how often have you seen business or leaders set out on a path to developing something and then the unexpected or unanticipated comes along. How often have you seen examples of a “leader” not well equipped to handle or lead change gets rooted to the original idea, either doesn’t or refuses to adapt based on the challenge and dooms a business or idea to failure?

It happens far too often that these leaders fall in love with an idea and can’t take the steps necessary to see it evolve. “Nothing finishes where it starts” change is inevitable and often necessary. Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden have offered a great overview of how leaders can be well prepared to not only navigate changes, but expect it and react in their latest book, Sense and Respond: How Successful Organizations Listen to Customers and Create New Products Continuously.

Gothelf and Seiden illustrate how nimble businesses and leaders are like the Tom Brady of their team; rather than reading and reacting to the defensive scheme they see, they read and react to their customers. But rather than being reactionary, great leaders can anticipate what their customer’s needs might be and how they and their businesses can develop new products and services to meet those needs.

Gothelf and Seiden deliver real world examples of how businesses/leaders have set in place the tools and resources to become more intuitive to customer needs and respond quickly to deliver those new services and products and continually grow the business. Will businesses who set up this kind of model always hit home runs or to stick with the football analogy hit the long bomb? The answer is easy; “nothing finishes where it starts.”