Thirteeners

by Daniel F Prosser

  If you’re in the software business, your perspective will give you one view of the plan you need to create. However, if you’re in the business of providing daily information to your clients through software, you look at your action plan much differently. Being in the software business became how we got our clients to the end result—the solution. We had to have software to deliver the information, but we didn’t sell software—we sold valuable information. That was a very different business from what we had initially gone into.

  Get clear about what business you say you’re in. It will illuminate not only how you think of your business but also how everyone views his or her role in executing your strategy.

  5. You must be committed to not bringing ready answers but instead to being willing to risk discovery and transformation.

  * * *

  If you think you know how your business strategy should look (even if you’re the person who single-handedly started your business on your dining room table), you’re also the one who will shut the planning process down so that others’ perspectives will never see the light of day. And one of those viewpoints just might be the million-dollar solution you’re looking for. That’s a tragedy that plays out in so many businesses today. This is the reason so many non–Best Place to Work companies experience turnover of 12 percent to 25 percent and more. With every employee who feels he or she can’t contribute or whose ideas are shot down, a gold mine of knowledge and experience potentially walks out the door. You can’t turn planning into an adventure in exploring what’s possible, if no one has a chance to make a difference or feel the pride that comes along when his or her idea is adopted. Don’t be the stingy executive who won’t let anyone else contribute.

  6. You must be willing to experience chaos.

  * * *

  It’s tough sometimes to just hang in there through the uncomfortable funnel process of planning. Just how do you hang in there, anyway?

  First, you must be free from pressure to produce immediate results. If you’re intent on not rocking the boat, or if you’re not willing to have the conflicts (debate, not argument) that show up during planning, then you can expect the process to be painful at best. If you feel a need to get a plan into action, you’re not going to have the time to think through what is possible in the future. Putting pressure on the process forces people to rush, and rushing brings up more about the past and less about the new future.

  If you can’t be in the chaos of the process, then what you will end up with is just a new version of equilibrium. And as you recall, equilibrium equals death in a complex evolving system like your business. So when the planning process gets uncomfortable, confronts you in some way, or causes you to become frustrated, step back and let people talk until you see the light again—and then proceed.

  7. You must willingly be continually open to leading the inquiry of planning.

  * * *

  Almost every business prepares an annual budget for the coming year, and frequently, that is the sum and substance of the planning. Usually within the first quarter, the budget is shot and no longer makes any sense. The reason is that no plan in any business goes for any length of time without revisions, because new information and new knowledge are always coming in.

  The information our software provided to our clients changed their plans, sometimes on a daily basis. Our clients were hotels, and what worked one week didn’t necessarily apply to the next week. It was important for them to realize that constant change can be disruptive—but from a marketing perspective, when you can alter people’s focus quickly, you gain competitive advantages over others in your industry.

  The point is that planning never stops with the plan you align on. The Promise-Based Execution Management System process is year to year, yet each month, you will sit down and review how well you and your team are performing. Did you take the actions that each of you promised? You will measure how well you performed, and that creates important feedback and accountability. What actions do you now see that need to be taken as a result of your experiences this month that you didn’t see in your first planning session? You will be planning until you drop dead—and then, when you can’t plan anymore, someone else will. But it never stops. It’s never, ever over.

  8. You must be willing to rigorously make and keep promises.

  * * *

  Your execution plan will require action. This is where most plans fail. Even before you begin to plan, there must be an agreement by everyone who is intimately involved with the planning that once the plan is complete, everyone is committed to make promises for action and to keep those promises. This is the ongoing management of accountability that you will establish as you approach the final phase of planning. A plan without action is simply a piece of paper or a three-ring binder in a drawer or on a shelf. It’s great to plan, but if you don’t bring rigor to the process, your plan will be suited only for the shredder. Make certain that the people on the planning committee have a sense of urgency to see the product of their work executed. Never start planning without that first promise from your team. This is not a “let’s wait and see what happens” proposition you’re about to embark on.

  9. Know when it’s time to move on.

  * * *

  Getting an unstoppable plan right the first time is asking a lot. This may be the first time you’ve really examined who you are and what you stand for. Give yourself some space to work on issues and come back to them when there is an impasse. You can beat a dead horse, but it won’t help the process. When you see that the situation has become a stalemate, move on and come back to it later. Alternatively, take it “offline” with a smaller group to resolve an issue that has the process stuck.

  The way to do this is to tell the people who are stuck that you would like to set up an appointment with them to address the specifics of what can’t be agreed upon in the planning session. Making an appointment may be enough to assure them that (1) you are committed to addressing the issues, and (2) the issues are important to the outcome of the process. If you take a half-day to resolve a major issue, however, your process will suffer from planning fatigue. With planning fatigue comes apathy and cynicism, which can shut down the effectiveness of the entire process.

  10. You must be willing to veto anything you authentically can’t support.

  * * *

  Along the way, there will be ideas and inspirations that come and go. If you see that something outside the realm of what you can honestly support is finding its way into your unstoppable plan for action, it’s important to remain calm and ask why the thing is so important.

  Allow proponents of such ideas an opportunity to defend their ideas to the entire team. The Promise-Based Execution Management System isn’t intended to transform you into a doormat for anyone’s ideas, so see if those ideas can stand the test of scrutiny by the entire team. Challenge the team to tell you why an idea should be in the plan for the future. If there is overwhelming support for someone’s “harebrained” ideas, then perhaps you need to step aside and move on (see Rule 9). Just because there are ideas in the strategy that make you uncomfortable does not mean they should remain there. Or perhaps you do need to adjust your thinking and become more comfortable with them. Let the issue go for now. Acknowledge the person and say the idea makes sense; in other words, validate the person. The idea does make sense to the person who is proposing it, and your validation will work in your favor over the long term. If you allow your resistance to it to gush forth, you make it potentially unsafe for your employees to speak up for fear that the big bear (you) might bite them for their “stupid” ideas.

  11. Make the process safe. Speak candidly and directly but never with blame. (Hint: Using the word “you” will put people on the defensive.)

  * * *

  When you’re planning, there is a lot of the past to get behind you and leave there. There comes a point where you can confidently feel that the past is not going to jump out and suddenly appear to take over your strategic ac
tivities, but the threat is always there. While you are visiting the past and telling the truth about it, never put the responsibility on any one other person. If possible, own as your responsibility whatever happened on your watch. That may not be the case entirely, but what would you rather have: a planning process in which people speak up boldly to support the future of your organization or a process that is dead on arrival because people don’t feel safe?

  Never lay a guilt trip on employees who have agreed to participate in planning, and never shame them—not in public and never in private either. In any situation in which you feel there is blame for a poor choice of actions or a strategic mistake, look in the mirror to see who is the common denominator in all things that matter in your organization. If someone isn’t performing, find out what the core reasons are and get off the blame game, which only addresses symptoms and not the real issues.

  Remember: The real problem may be you.

  1. David C. Prosser, Peel Your Own Onion: How to Manage Your Life Like a Successful Small Business and Become Happier and More Productive ((New York: Everest House, 1979)

  “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.”

  — Yogi Berra

  Mapping the Breakthrough Solutions Framework™ for Your Company

  If you look at how a house is built, there’s a blueprint that provides the layout or the primary instructions for building the framework of the house. Once the framework is established, you then put on your choice of a roof, doors, windows, and walls. Then you can decorate it and move in.

  The Breakthrough Solutions Framework serves essentially the same function, yet my framework gives me the flexibility to modify the final creation or outcome. It’s like putting on a different roof, doors, windows, and so forth each time.

  With my Breakthrough Solutions Framework I know what to expect with any client at every stage of the process. I also know that I can’t build a house without a foundation. The same is true for business. I can’t build a business without certain elements, like a vision.

  The Breakthrough Solutions Framework was developed around five things that are missing (singly or combined) in almost every organization I have ever worked with or studied.

  In Chapter 2, I introduced the concept of the “Breakthrough Solutions Framework” in a chart. In this section, I expand on the framework to provide what is missing in most organizations. This chart recaps the framework and adds new information.

  Recap of the Breakthrough Solutions Framework Model

  BSF ConnectionPoints™ Promise-Based Management System

  (fulfilling on what’s missing in most organizations)

  A New Perspective 1. An enduring Breakthrough Vision of the future that puts everyone on the exact same page; an invented future that empowers people, can’t be forgotten, and won’t disappear or go out of existence.

  2. Revelation in Awareness of the conversations and beliefs that undermine and sabotage Breakthrough Performance and a new Awareness of what is truly possible once the essential truth has been told.

  A new Relationship to Circumstances 3. Breakthrough Strategy that eliminates the performance gaps and the need for survival tactics and empowers employees and other stakeholders to take responsibility for causing breakthrough results.

  Conversations that Manage Connectedness and Action 4. A Breakthrough Accountability system that gives people back their power to produce ‘real measurable results’ using a new framework for boosting accountability to support what the organization is committed to.

  5. A future-based Culture of Connectedness that gets the constraints left by past performance out of the way of having what you say you want and create the connections people need with each other and to the activities (roles/goals/responsibilities) that are consistent with the breakthrough vision.

  Steps of the ConnectionPoints™ Promise-Based Strategy and Execution Management Process

  The entire ConnectionPoints PBM process can be broken into four stages in this order:

  1. Breakthrough Vision: Declare a seemingly impossible future for you and your business to achieve.

  2. Revelation in Awareness: Disconnect your new future from your past results and judgments.

  3. Breakthrough Strategy: Uncover the execution gaps that need to be closed to produce results.

  4. Breakthrough Accountability: Execute: Establish an accountability system (using the optional Accountability Scorecard™) to support you in executing your strategy and making sure all your planning doesn’t disappear over time, as your old ways of thinking try to take back over.

  Upon completion of the four-step process, the organization then moves into a fifth stage of building and sustaining connectedness, using the ConnectionPoints. Every organization must address each of the ten distinctions separately. This becomes an organizational dialogue that works best when everyone contributes to the process. No organization relates to these conversations alike. You may even think about using the ConnectionPoints™ conversations as your list of values.

  5. Culture of Connectedness: Contribution, Acknowledgment, Alignment, Accountability, Communication, Relatedness, Responsibility, Integrity, Possibility, and Fun/Rewards/Gratitude.

  As you move through each of the five stages, the PowerPoint questions are designed to move you closer to a final result by mapping an executable strategy that you and your team build together—or if you’re a solo-preneur/micro-business owner, you can easily do this just for yourself.

  Why Do I Call It Mapping?

  Whenever I want to get someplace I’m unfamiliar with, I either consult Google Maps or plot my travel route on my iPhone GPS. I’m sure you do something similar. To get to where you’re headed, you don’t want to be running all over the place, trying to figure out the best route. No one does. So it’s critical you have a map that shows you where you are, where your destination is, and the gap between here and there. That keeps you on course.

  It works the same in strategy and execution. Mapping gives you the structure, and your inquiry keeps you on track for the breakthrough in the future you have declared.

  The materials will you need to help you build your strategy:

  A dry-erase board

  Dry-erase markers in different colors

  An easel (preferably two)

  3- by 5-inch sticky notes

  Several boxes of water-based markers in different colors

  A large format pad with tear-off sheets for each easel

  Masking tape

  A computer and a projector

  The ConnectionPoints PowerPoint presentation from www.ThirteenersBook.com

  At the beginning of your design day, you will distribute one sticky-note pad to each person on the planning team and put the water-based markers out. Instruct your participants, “If you are talking, you are writing.” Ask them to write their answers to and comments for each PowerPoint question they’re asked on a sticky note and hand it to you. Then post the notes on the board as they’re handed to you, along with all the answers to each question—until people have run out of answers.

  How to Set Up a Planning Session with Your Team

  The first step in preparing to facilitate a critical planning session is to determine who should be involved. Smaller is better. I usually try to limit a planning session to no more than ten to fifteen people. If you need to involve more, choose the top leaders in your organization and plan to involve the remaining people once the top level of leadership has done the first round of planning. Other alternatives in a larger company are to take your division or department heads through the first round and train them to conduct the next round with their own direct reports. I’ve written a process map for this purpose. You will find it at www.ThirteenersBook.com.

  Next, find a great place to conduct your planning session. Somewhere off site is always great but not necessary.

  Third, set a date approximately two to three weeks to a month ahead to allow people to clear their schedules and to give you
time to survey them. You can write a short invitation (not a demand or an order) asking them to join you in your planning session. You can download a sample invitation for free at www.ThirteenersBook.com.

  Fourth, conduct a ConnectionPoints™ Employee Survey to better understand your organization’s current thinking. This survey is based on ten two-part questions that help to uncover the issues and concerns of employees. It’s a confidential survey that lets people feel safe as they tell you what’s really happening in your workplace. It will indicate where the weak areas are in your employees’ perspectives of your organization, and it can help you begin to uncover the viral meme that has infected your organization.

  You can access the ConnectionPoints Employee Survey at www.ThirteenersBook.com. Download the questions and use Survey Monkey (www.surveymonkey.com) or another online survey tool to set up and distribute the survey anonymously to your entire organization. To get a better understanding of who thinks what, launch two surveys: one for your executives and one for all other employees.

  Alternatively, if you prefer to have your survey administered by an independent party, you can purchase this survey from www.ThirteenersBook.com and have it independently launched and an analysis prepared for you before your planning session. Plan on a ten- to fifteen-day turnaround.

  The ConnectionPoints Employee Survey asks a two-part question that covers both sides of the same issue, and it asks the respondent to answer using a seven-point Likert-scale questionnaire. For example, the first part of each two-part question asks how well you as an organization manage a particular conversation within the workplace. The second part asks the employee to rate how important he or she believes that conversation is to the organization’s future. The result is two numbers, and the difference between the two will identify for you the gap in that particular conversation. Thus it will show your weaknesses and strengths in these important areas that contribute to performance.