Chris Kolenda, founder of SLA, helps principled business owners who want to drive their growth at the right time, with the right team, in the right way.
Servant leaders come in one of four broad leader-archetypes: Pioneers, Reconcilers, Operators, and Mavericks (PROM).
Your servant-leader archetype is outward-facing, describing how you best contribute to the world, whether that is your company, cause, vocation, or community.
Once you know your servant-leader archetype, you can be very intentional about serving as the best version of yourself. Once you know the WHOs of your team, you can help them serve as the best versions of themselves. Your energy, team performance, and internal communication will improve significantly … immediately.
Take our assessment to find your PROM Servant-Leader Archetype. Share it with your team and compare results. Do you have key leaders among all 4 types?
https://chriskolenda.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Leader-Persona-Feature-Image.png6281200Christopher KolendaChristopher Kolenda2019-02-05 18:10:572020-06-02 15:39:44Which Great Leader are You?
Expert Board Members could be Killing your Nonprofit
So, you or someone you know are starting a nonprofit or looking to bring new members to your existing board of directors.
Seeking subject matter experts seems to be the right way to go. After all, shouldn’t any nonprofit want the top academics, advocates, and expats from the areas you serve to guide the organization?
But here’s a surprise. Often, the answer is no.
Certainly, many expert board members take their governance responsibilities seriously. But others, with the best of intentions, carry their own agendas and pet projects into the nonprofit. This can result in significant conflicts of interest, decision-making paralysis, wasted resources, and bickering and back-biting. These problems undermine the integrity of the board and the impact the nonprofit seeks to make.
The purpose of a board of directors is to govern the nonprofit.
Governance responsibilities fall into three categories: Strategy, Oversight, and Policy. Strategy determines how the nonprofit aims to pursue its mission and vision with the greatest possible impact. Oversight deals with stewardship of donor dollars, transparency in spending, and adherence to acceptable accounting practices. Policy addresses matters such as by-laws, hiring and evaluating the executive director, and selecting and maintaining a competent board that governs according to sound rules.
Unfortunately, being a subject matter expert, academic, advocate, or expat does not necessarily help board members fulfill their primary responsibilities. Superb thought leaders or people with important lived experiences who have little to no training or experience with governance can damage your organization, usually inadvertently, by drowning meetings in esoteric debate and scrimmaging to fund pet projects.
These problems create internal revenue bleeding. Decision-making paralysis forces the organization to tread water. Shifting priorities lurch the efforts of your team from one initiative to another. This burns the time and energy of your team. You cannot create and sustain momentum or generate the kind of productivity that comes from consistency. Your employees get frustrated, which lowers their levels of engagement. You spend endless hours dealing with drama, interpersonal disputes, and sometimes even subterfuge, rather than growing the organization. Many nonprofits detect the damage too late and never recover.
To add to the problem, experts may be less likely to donate to your nonprofit. Many rationalize that their academic work and volunteer support for the board is sufficient skin-in-the-game. This is an understandable sentiment, but it could hurt your organization. Nonprofit watchdogs and grant-makers want to know if each member of your board is a donor. When board members do not donate, watchdogs and grant-makers perceive that significant internal problems must exist.
What to do
Hire board members with governance experience who agree to donate to the organization. The amount of the donation does not matter. Create a board of advisers for subject matter experts. They can give you the benefits of their research and experience and not be put in a position to damage your organization.
Develop conflict of interest policies that prevent board members from participating in discussions in which they have a vested personal, financial or professional interest.
Conduct governance training as a part of your board development process.
French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau famously remarked that war is too important to be left to the generals. Like generals, subject matter experts can be helpful to your nonprofit with their research, experiences, and professional backgrounds. Exercise great caution before letting them run the show.
https://chriskolenda.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Boardroom.png5121024Christopher KolendaChristopher Kolenda2019-01-22 15:20:102020-06-02 15:39:51Expert Board Members Could be Killing your Nonprofit
https://chriskolenda.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Which-NFL-Hall-of-Fame-Coach-Are-You-Feature-Image.png400900Christopher KolendaChristopher Kolenda2019-01-18 18:40:072020-06-02 15:39:58Which NFL Hall of Fame Coach Are You?
Gosh, I tried hard to be an extrovert. I’d bought into the idea that the best leaders were extroverts. I convinced myself that I needed to work the room, be energetic ALL THE TIME, and be the life of the event. It exhausted me and, frankly, I wasn’t very good at it. I made some key mistakes along the way.
Extroverts are people who get their energy from being around other people. Introverts, by contrast, recharge their batteries when they are alone or with people who are close to them.
Sure, there were plenty of times when I felt highly energized being around people. I loved being with my soldiers and with people who shared common interests and aspirations. But being with a bunch of people outside those parameters was hard for me. I preferred chatting with one or two people rather than try to small-talk my way to meet everybody.
I still envy those who can work the room and speak with everyone effortlessly. It’s just not me.
I learned after much study that extroverts have not necessarily cornered the market on good people skills and that introverts do not automatically lack charisma. Some extroverts can be boorish jerks just like some introverts can be reclusive. Extroverts can be engaging and introverts can be inspiring. Extroverts and introverts can be great leaders.
Like many non-shy introverts, I’m what people call a situational extrovert. I get energized being around people in certain contexts.
I also tend to enjoy working through complex issues —precisely why I find a place like Afghanistan so compelling.
I know that nailing the details is essential for any solution to work. I could do the details well, but the process would exhaust me. As a leader, I always found that having detail-oriented people around me made me better, enhanced my energy, and improved our team.
All this makes me what we call a Maverick; that is, a visionary introvert. My comfort zone is nerding-out on wicked problems like the Afghan peace process, or helping organizations with culture and strategy, or creating a business franchise so former senior military professionals can build a thriving consulting business. To make any of these endeavors work, I need Operators, Reconcilers, and Pioneers to complete our team.
Over the past 30 years of leading people and teams, I’ve seen great leaders among all personas. What do they all have in common? Authenticity. Authentic leaders are comfortable in their own skin and willing together put a diverse team.
Authenticity starts with self-awareness. Do you know your leader persona?
To help you see yourself, we designed a simple, 8-question quiz based on our leadership and behavioral sciences research. You will discover your leader-persona and what it means. You can sign up to receive highly-personalized information that will help you build diverse and balanced teams that get the best from yourself and others.
Why waste time in jobs that suck you dry? Imagine what happens to productivity when you match the talent on your team to the roles that suit them best.
What was the cost when your team:
missed a critical detail?
missed an opportunity?
failed to anticipate a change in the market?
unintentionally damaged a key relationship?
Go ahead, take the quiz and share it with your team. See how well balanced your team is and if any gaps exist. Learn how to make the most of your natural inclinations and to bring the best out of others.
What’s the difference between a Strategy and a Plan?
Here are three things you need to know.
What’s the difference between a strategy and a plan?
We were executing our plan perfectly. All of our metrics indicated that we were on an upward trajectory. We were working hard, creating efficiencies, and consistently improving. We felt very good about our performance.
And yet, we were not succeeding.
That was exactly how I felt after the first 60 days as a commander in Afghanistan. I learned that while successful organizations perform at a high level, the reverse is not necessarily true.
When we begin talking, many of my clients express the unsettling feeling that something is missing – and that missing “something” is creating a gap between high performance and success.
The normal approach to this problem is to stay on the trajectory but work harder, in the belief that this will lead to incremental progress and greater efficiency.
The problem, however, is that high performance does not necessarily equal success.
This is a difficult truth to swallow, especially for leaders. To admit that is to recognize that the plan is flawed. What we are directing our employees to do, what we are prioritizing, and what we are measuring may all be off-target.
Leaders excessively concerned with execution can begin to drink their own Kool-Aid, believing that blips in performance are leading toward success. This can reinforce the blinders and refuel the desire to do the same things over and over again, but expecting different results. The technical term for this is confirmation bias.
This is where strategy comes in.
Strategy helps you expose disconnects between success and performance, ask the right questions, and adjust as the marketplace shifts under your feet.
Here are three critical differences between a strategy and a plan:
A strategy faces outward, first. A plan faces inward
A strategy orients on factors you don’t control; a plan focuses on what you do control
A strategy measures success; a plan measures performance
Let’s break these down.
A strategy faces outward, first. A plan faces inward
A sound strategy begins with a diagnosis of the current marketplace and your place within it. This establishes the context in which you will advance your vision and mission.
This context is always dynamic. The marketplace is in a constant state of flux, influenced by factors like technology, social and political changes, government policy, competitor choices, and so forth. Your strategy should identify those factors most likely to affect your outcomes. How you believe they will unfold and shape the future become your assumptions.
Once you have outlined the context, you can develop your theory of success. This expresses what you intend to do to succeed. A good strategy process will develop and evaluate more than one theory of success, so you can choose the one you think is best.
Your plan faces inward. It focuses on how to execute the course of action delineated in your strategy. A good plan ensures these tasks are integrated and properly resourced.
*PRO-TIP: THIS 5-D PROCESS HELPS YOU DEVELOP A STRATEGY
A strategy orients on factors you don’t control; a plan directs what you do control
As outlined above, a wide range of factors will impact the environment within which your business exists and may potentially impact how successful you can be within a given context. You cannot simply wish them away. But what you can do is develop a tool that monitors and addresses these external drivers of change. That tool is your strategy.
A strategy is not a crystal ball that foretells how your organization can move toward a desired end-state. Nor is it a blueprint of the bridge from the present to the future. These analogies are too deterministic and too self-centered for a dynamic and uncertain marketplace.
A strategy is a hypothesis based on your diagnosis and chosen theory of success. It is a best guess that relies on assumptions about the future and factors you so not control. A proper strategy is explicit about these assumptions, allowing you to monitor them as the future unfolds.
Revising your assumptions later on is not a sign that you were wrong, but a reflection that you have been sensitive to the salient changes in the environment. When you revise your assumptions, you may need to modify your strategy.
*PRO-TIP: DISCUSS THE STRENGTH OF YOUR ASSUMPTIONS DURING YOUR QUARTERLY BOARD MEETINGS
Now that your strategy outlines how everything fits, you can make an implementation plan to direct the activities under your control. These activities should be properly resourced and integrated, and then broken down into team and individual workplans.
*PRO-TIP: HAVE THE PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR EXECUTING THE PLANS DRAW THEM UP. MORE OWNERSHIP LEADS TO BETTER EXECUTION
Strategy measures success; a plan measures performance
Your strategy should outline your mission, vision, values, and goals. Your goals should focus on the impact and outcomes you seek to achieve. These become your strategic measures.
Your plan outlines the critical tasks you selected as important to implementing your strategy. Measuring performance enables you to assess the strength of the execution.
Keep your impact and outcome measures separate from your performance measures. This is because impact and outcomes are influenced by factors you cannot control.
High performance on your implementation tasks coupled with low achievement on your strategic goals is an indication that factors outside your control are undermining your ability to advance your mission and vision.
You need to understand these factors and adjust your strategy and plan accordingly.
*PRO-TIP: MINDING THE GAP BETWEEN SUCCESS AND PERFORMANCE WILL HELP YOU ADJUST FASTER THAN YOUR COMPETITORS
Getting the strategy right enabled our team of paratroopers to succeed in Afghanistan. A sound strategy helps our clients to create sustainable growth and impact.
To learn more about the difference between a strategy and a plan (and why a “strategic plan” tends to be a reverse Goldilocks), see our short video “Strategy versus Strategic Plan.”
https://chriskolenda.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/strategy-or-plan.png5121024Christopher KolendaChristopher Kolenda2018-12-10 15:40:292020-06-02 15:40:12What’s the Difference Between a Strategy and a Plan?
What I learned talking with the team before their big win on Sunday.
Changing the culture
The Cleveland Browns won big on Sunday – their first road win since 2015 and first back-to-back win since 2014.
What’s changed recently? The coaching staff, now led by interim Head Coach Gregg Williams, is creating a winning culture based on Discipline, Accountability, and Focus. The team is starting to believe.
His assessment of what had been undermining the Browns’ performance: it’s not the talent, it’s the culture that needed to be fixed.
I see many small businesses and nonprofits grapple with culture challenges, too. Gregg’s approach is very practical and effective.
Discipline, Accountability, and Focus have been his watchwords.
Gregg asked me to talk to the team about creating a winning culture on November 24th, the day before meeting their in-state rival in Cincinnati.
Discipline, Accountability, and Focus
I told the story of how Bulldog Troop went from being our most troubled team in 2005 to our best by 2007. This was thanks to the extraordinary leadership of Captains Nathan Springer and Tom Bostick.
Both of them believed in Discipline, Accountability, and Focus.
Discipline: doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.
Accountability: holding one another to the highest standard.
Focus: every repetition, drill, decision matters. Make each one count.
Do this 1-60-24. Make each 1 count, every minute, every hour. Turn these winning hours into winning days. Turn winning days into winning weeks. Turn winning weeks into winning months. That’s how an organization builds a winning culture.
And that’s exactly what Nathan Springer and Tom Bostick did.
This culture of winning was tested in Afghanistan, under dire circumstances. On July 27, 2007, Tom Bostick was killed in action leading his paratroopers during a massive firefight.
So many times, the loss of the leader in combat leads to a unit disintegrating. But not for B Troop. The lieutenants and sergeants took charge and continued taking the fight to the enemy. Their willingness to step up, believe in themselves and their training, and finish the fight saved many lives that day.
Joey Hutto continued this culture of winning when he took command of the Bulldogs. Based on what we learned, we adapted our strategy and began to win over the people. The result: a large insurgent group stopped fighting and eventually joined the Afghan government.
The insurgent leader and his men are now fighting on the side of the government against the Taliban. This outcome may be the biggest win since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001.
The Cleveland Browns could see themselves in this story. Their response was overwhelming. It gave them one more reason to believe their instincts: Discipline, Accountability, and Focus – 1-60-24 – is how teams create a winning culture.
The Browns are doing just that. It’s a long and bumpy road requiring persistence and hiring people who fit the culture.
Small businesses and nonprofits
How does this affect small businesses and nonprofits?
The words may be a little different, but the concept is the same.
Set clear expectations about performance and values (discipline)
Hold employees accountable to meet them
Be held accountable to your team for setting expectations, strategy, and development
Make every task and decision purposeful and make them count (focus)
Do that 1-60-24 and you will get a winning culture.
“The discipline has been great,” veteran center JC Tretter told the media Monday. “It’s something we desperately needed…[Williams] has reined everybody in and gotten everybody focused on one single goal.”
The level of clarity Gregg Williams achieves with his message of Discipline, Accountability, and Focus has given his team confidence and on-field competence. They are beginning to believe in themselves.
Your team can do the same.
https://chriskolenda.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/browns-image.png5121024Christopher KolendaChristopher Kolenda2018-11-30 03:36:122020-06-02 15:40:20Creating a Winning Culture: 3 Things You Can Learn From The Cleveland Browns
How sustainable is your business or nonprofit? This chart will help
Use this Simple Chart to find out and learn what to do about it.
Zombie or Volcano?
By the end of this article, you’ll be better positioned to answer three crucial strategic questions for your business or nonprofit:
Is my organization sustainable?
How can I realistically assess the situation and avoid confirmation bias?
How can I frame my strategic options so that I make the best decisions?
Just about every small business owner and nonprofit leader I know is incredibly busy. You are so passionate that your work stops feeling like work and becomes a part of you. You love what you do and do what you love. But is there a downside?
As a matter of fact, there is. Leaders can get so caught up in their product, service, or cause that they become blind to the first strategic question: how sustainable is my business or nonprofit? Ignoring or avoiding this question can lead an organization to become a zombie (sleepwalking to failure) or a volcano (suffering catastrophic growth on the way to failure).
A zombie is an organization that is no longer increasing its revenue or expanding its impact. It is merely paying the bills and keeping the lights on until the money runs out. The problem, of course, is the drain of talent and resources entailed by clinging to the status quo. Zombies do not fail fast—they linger.
A volcano, on the other hand, is an organization that grows faster than it can manage. Often, leaders fail to recognize the problem until too late. They get distracted by the euphoria of success and drawn into the chaos that they fail to develop their leaders and systems to handle it. At some point, growth becomes unmanageable. A major crisis or scandal often breaks the organization.
There are simple and common reasons for these problems.
Confirmation bias is one of them. This refers to the tendency to place excessive weight on data that conforms to our existing beliefs and to discount information that does not. Confirmation bias can help explain why nonprofits cling to causes that too few donors will support, and why businesses fixate on products and services too few customers want to buy.
It gets worse. Those with confirmation bias tend to dig-in their heels when confronted with disconfirming facts and information. Highly-selective data drives their decision-making. Like the sooth-sayers of old, people invested in the status quo may be at higher risk of searching the entrails for hidden messages that everything is fine.
A disciplined look at the big picture may help leaders make better decisions.
This simple quad chart could be useful. The north-south axis depicts profitability: the + direction means revenues exceed expenses. The east-west axis is for impact. The + direction denotes the tangible impact on your cause or mission.
Four strategic directions emerge from this quad chart. The upper right quadrant is the ☺ place. Solid revenues and clear impact give your organization a strong foundation for growth. The danger in this situation is growth beyond your ability to manage it – catastrophic growth.
Within the upper left space is a situation in which revenues are ahead of expenses, but the actual impact of the product or service is unclear. This is a dangerous position because you may be tempted to hire more staff and commit more resources. If, after some time, you cannot clearly articulate your impact, then revenues are very likely to dwindle. This means layoffs and possible bankruptcy. One of my clients found himself in exactly this situation; saving and repositioning the business was painful but ultimately successful.
A sound strategy in this situation is to maintain your current scope and scale but fix how you measure and explain your impact of the mission or cause.
If that becomes impossible, then merge with another organization. The ideal time to do so is when you can bring substantial resources to bear. This gives you leverage and influence. Too many organizations make this decision too late and have little bargaining power.
The lower right is where many organizations turn into zombies. Your team is making an impact, you believe, but your revenues are insufficient. This may be the result of one or more problems. The way you are measuring and explaining impact, for instance, might not be convincing. Your strategy could be causing you to miss important shifts in the marketplace, or your business plan could be wasting time and resources on activities that are no longer valued.
Again, you have two options. First, try to fix what is impeding your progress. Get a comprehensive and thorough strategy review and organizational assessment to determine if the required changes are feasible. If yes, give yourself a decision-point for knowing when to move to the second strategy option: merge.
If you decide that your organization is unlikely to recover, your best option is to merge.
The lower left quadrant is the ☹ place – insufficient resources and impact. Your best option here is to harvest: shut down, learn from the experience, and begin again with something different. Failing fast successfully requires you to measure your revenues and impact from the very beginning and to set a decision-date to establish whether your business is viable.
This chart should be a part of every business or nonprofit strategy. It is a constant reminder to determine the compelling impact you are trying to make, measure it, and explain it clearly to your customers or donors. The aim is to create a virtuous cycle: compelling impact results in positive revenues and greater revenues lead to higher impact. When one or both of these elements is flatlining or declining, you need to diagnose the problem quickly and decide whether to improve your organization or close it down.
https://chriskolenda.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/zombie-or-volcano_.png5121024Christopher KolendaChristopher Kolenda2018-11-14 00:53:132020-06-02 15:41:01How sustainable is your Business or Nonprofit? This chart will help
My parents, David and Joanne, and three siblings—Dan, Laura and Mark—all taught me the importance of perseverance and determination, the will to succeed at whatever you put your mind to. We would always challenge one another to be the best that we could be.
Determination helped me endure some terrible experiences.
I learned that I needed to use them to empower me … or else be destroyed by them.
In this podcast you will discover:
1. Ways to surround yourself with the right people, so that you will be challenged to be your best;
2. Ideas on how to emerge stronger from terrible experiences, so that you can empower others;
3. How to use empathy, so that your team can learn and grow in a dynamic situation;
4. Insights on Determination, so that you have a guide for when to stick to your guns and when to make a bold change.
How Did You Start Using Your Talents?
I was a skinny and awkward kid. By the time I got to high school, I was bullied relentlessly by classmates and assaulted by two priests. West Point was a place whereI was exposed to many different opportunities. I decided I was going to do the toughest and most difficult things I could possibly do — like boxing and close quarters combat — because I was never going to go through again what I experienced in high school. And that led to Airborne School and Assault Ranger School—some of the toughest schooling and assignments that the Army had.
The Most Impactful Turning Point?
Some of the best role models and mentors I had were from the history department at West Point and were either infantry or armor officers. Because of their personal example—the way they taught and led and cared for the students in their classes—they truly inspired me to want to be like them when I became an officer in the Army. I decided that I wanted to come back to West Point and teach one day because I aspired to do the same thing for other cadets that these fine men did for me.
The Most Powerful Lesson Learned?
I learned several essential lessons from my parents and siblings: the importance of perseverance and determination along with the will to succeed at whatever you put your mind to. We would always challenge each other to be the best we could be. Another key lesson from a great teacher I had in high school was the value of honoring each person, including myself, and the vital importance of empathy.
Steps to Success from Christopher D. Kolenda, Ph.D.
Use perseverance and determination, along with the will to succeed, to achieve whatever you put your mind to.
Find a group of people where you can challenge each other to be the best you can be.
Honor each person, including yourself.
Learn to be empathetic, to see things from the eyes of others; seek to understand, first, then to be understood.
Are Battlefield Lessons Useless to Business and Nonprofit Leaders?
Dear Business and Nonprofit Leaders,
Your instincts are right: many so-called battlefield lessons are useless for you and your team. Stories of hardship, heroism, and sacrifice might be inspiring, but their practical utility is often minimal. This is because those lessons haven’t been tailored to your organization’s needs.
Those of us offering insights from a military perspective must work harder to understand issues through your lens and present feasible, practical, and implementable ideas. Our failure to customize military leadership lessons to your needs has, understandably, resulted in waning enthusiasm. If the trend continues, the pendulum may complete its swing toward the view that military experience is interesting but irrelevant.
But battlefield lessons are useful to non-military contexts; the right framing just hasn’t been applied to them. Let’s take a few common examples and provide some simple ways to make them more relevant to you.
Staff Rides and Battlefield Tours.
Militaries have long used staff rides as part of leader education; I used them several times in my commands. A group of leaders or students studies a particular battle in advance and then takes a trip to the actual grounds to discuss what happened there, why it happened, and what lessons they can learn. Done correctly, staff rides can have a tremendous impact.
Battlefield tours for business leaders are less useful because they normally devolve into sightseeing. In most cases, the military tour guide explains in great detail what happened at each point in the battle and then challenges the audience to determine how to build agile leaders, good decision-makers, expert planners, and so forth. The absence of context and a clear connection to the audience’s contemporary challenges undermine the business utility of this leader development experience.
What to look for.
Find programs that focus on learning about you before offering advice. The best ones begin with an assessment that helps you and your leaders see your salient challenges and opportunities. Next, they should coordinate learning objectives and preparation work, such as readings and individual research. On the battlefield or historical site, the emphasis needs to be on linking key lessons to your business challenges.
Boot camps.
For the military, boot camps and other forms of initial entry training are essential parts of transforming civilians into soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines. These intensive courses last several weeks and are often followed up by additional training before the service members arrive at their first organization. The development of military skills and values are essential for them to be able to function effectively in their first assignment. My initial training as an officer lasted nearly a year. Few businesses and nonprofits, of course, could devote even a fraction of that time for new employee education and training.
Leadership boot camps run by former service members may promise the same transformational results but in record time. Some leadership boot camps promise that a 3-day experience will result in a “quantum leap” in a leader’s performance. You know this is unlikely. Improvement is a long-term process that relies heavily on self-development: leaders sort through a wide array of concepts and ideas to determine what is most meaningful to them and then work on those attributes.
What to look for.
Assess what each workshop and boot camp is offering, and use common sense to determine its likely utility. These kinds of programs can be helpful, but anything that sounds too good to be true probably is. Workshops can play an important role in your team’s development. The best programs customize their workshops to your organization’s particular needs and objectives. Doing these as a team can have a much higher payoff than individual leader’s programs.
The boot camp analogy can be very useful in discussions about culture, too. Boot camps are part of the military’s onboarding process; how your organization onboards new employees is equally essential to sustaining your culture. Programs that help you define your culture, hire talented people who fit, onboard to set them up for success and continue their development on the job are likely to help you achieve high levels of employee engagement. [Did you know, according to Gallup, that nearly 2 of every 3 employees in America reports being unengaged at work?]
Strategic Planning.
“Plans are nothing, planning is everything” World War II Allied Supreme Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower famously remarked. Good commanders drive their staff to identify possible contingencies, threats, and opportunities, and have branch plans or sequels to address each one of them. The planning process, in military parlance, is never completed. Commanders often get detailed playbooks that aid decision-making for every permutation a creative staff (the strategic planners) can possibly think of in the time they are given to think. The results are often impressive.
The desire to bring the military-planning process to a business context is understandable. There’s one problem: very few businesses in the world can afford to have highly-skilled people spending all their time making detailed plans about things that will probably never happen. In fact, most businesses and nonprofits outsource their strategic planning. Here’s what you normally get: highly detailed plans that few employees have time to read. There is little to no sense of ownership. Even worse, your situation may be so dynamic that detailed plans soon become irrelevant. It is no wonder then that, according to one estimate, 90 percent of business plans are not executed. They gather dust. This might not be a big problem for the military, but it is for you.
What to look for.
Businesses and nonprofits that want to grow sustainably need both a strategy and a plan. A strategy helps you understand your situation, select a way forward to meet your goals, and manage a dynamic environment—to know when to stay on course and when to change. A plan helps you coordinate the activities of your team to implement your chosen way forward. With the right guidance, the best plans are ones written by your own team. If they have authorship over the plan, they are more likely to own and execute it.
Bottom line: the strategic plan can be counterproductive – a sort of reverse Goldilocks: not quite a strategy, not quite a plan, just plain ignored. Develop a sensible strategy and then put together an implementation plan that your team owns.
Is military experience useless for businesses and nonprofits?
Not at all. In fact, they can become an essential tool for organizations that feel stuck, want to implement change, or are trying to manage unexpected growth. Breakthrough insights, many leaders find, come from looking at your challenges from different points of view. Battlefield lessons can expand your perspective – your mental framework – and enable you to connect ideas from a different context that help your team grow sustainably.
https://chriskolenda.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Gettysburg-sm-image.png6281200Christopher KolendaChristopher Kolenda2018-11-01 15:36:192020-06-02 15:41:30Are Battlefield Lessons Useless to Business and Nonprofit Leaders?
“Know thyself.’ The ancient Greeks were telling themselves and can tell us today, that by knowing ourselves, we get to know our natural inclinations and our natural strengths so that we can put ourselves in a position to succeed. And at the same time have the humility to recognize that others have different inclinations and strengths. By putting together the right combinations of people, that are tied together by a common purpose, that is what leads to the best results.”
Why Is Self-Awareness Important?
“When you know yourself, there are a number of things that awareness empowers you to do. First of all, it empowers you to put the right people around you. I, for instance, need detail people around me, and those are the first people that I seek out. With the right people, you can amplify your strengths or natural inclinations, and you can also cover your blind spots.”
What Are the Key Lessons?
1. Through self-awareness, you get to know your natural inclinations and natural strengths so that you can put yourself in a position to succeed.
2. Put your top talent in positions that best suit their inclinations and they are going to make the biggest impact on the business.
3. Surround yourself with the right people and you can amplify your strengths, your natural inclinations, and you can also cover your blind spots.
4. When hiring someone, more important than their skills are how they fit within the company culture. You can teach people skills, but what you can’t train is culture.
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