Business plan, Org chart, Enthusiasm………..check, check, check! Now set the foundation with Core Values

Posted on March 2, 2015 by Bob Skidmore

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Most organizations begin with a business plan and an organization chart and a lot of enthusiasm, but eventually they recognize the need for a number of additional policies and devices that define who they are and drive their progress.  One of the most fundamental, and the one we cover here, is your statement of Core Values.   It will be the first step in drawing up the necessary documents and plans that will help animate your ideas into company beliefs and actions. These are the communications to all associates and stakeholders explaining what your enterprise wants to accomplish, what it stands for and where you intend to direct it. These are virtues that you post on the office walls and in the company newsletter that help to create the culture and the language of success that you want all associates to embrace.

www.BusinessDictionary.com

Core Values definition: Principles that guide an organization’s internal  conduct as well as its relationship with the external world, its enduring purpose.

            OK, here we need to tap the brakes a little bit. Defining your company core values isn’t something you can (or should) bang out on a cocktail napkin. If yours is a small company then it’s core values may be an extension of your own personal beliefs that include your views on integrity, philanthropy, value creation and truth. If you are a non-profit organization serving the economically disadvantaged you may want to state diversity, respect and stewardship as your key identifiers. Either way some introspection will serve you well. Other tenets to consider may include: leadership, stretch, global, consistency, creativity and diligence.  Typically this list will include the five or six items you feel are most important, but expanding to eight or nine isn’t unheard of.

Kevin Daum wrote for INC. magazine: “Most concede the power of core values in business.  Jim Collins made a great case in Built to Last.  But it’s difficult to accurately create or accept core values for your company if your own personal core values are unclear. Many claim to understand their own values, but I maintain you don’t really know them until you have:”

  • Articulated them clearly in writing.
  • Tested them through daily decision-making.

Remember that these could be under inspection every day in the issues of customer service, credit and collection and employee hiring and disputes just to name a few. So take some time and be willing to accept input from others in formulating the pillars of what your company stands for.

Robert Skidmore, President

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Creating a Strategic Team Vision

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Bob Skidmore

                    Three stone masons of the middle ages were hard at work when a visitor came along and asked them what they were doing. The first stone mason was toiling away, sweat beading his brow. “I am cutting this stone”, he grumbled. The second stone mason, though less distraught, responded with a deep sigh, “I’m building a parapet.” The third stone mason replied with a radiant face, “I am building a beautiful cathedral that will glorify God for centuries to come”.– Author unknown

Skidbiz istock four man image

While the first two masons saw only what was immediately before them the third mason had been visualizing his cathedral, dreaming of how it would appear at its completion. Imagine him rising each day anxious to play his full part in that effort. Isn’t that the enthusiasm you would prefer to feel each day, and better yet, have your associates bring with them to work as well? When you undertake your visioning task, strive to be that third mason and to bring your co-creators along with you.

Strategic Visioning:

           Mental process in which images of the desired future (goals, objectives, outcomes) are made intensely real and compelling to act as motivators for the present action.

Unlike strategic planning, visioning is more about lofty aspirations and less about the nuts and bolts of implementation. Oh, there will be plenty of time for the nuts and bolts later, but why spoil the fun. Whether you are setting up a new banana stand, directing an established business, corporate division, a trade association or a township, it will grow over the coming years and morph from what it is today into something quite different. Strategic visioning gives you and your associates that uncommon chance to visualize that future as you wish to see it without limitations and make it happen.

In the early 1990’s the Campbell Soup Company of Canada committed a few days to a strategic visioning session.  They brought together all the department heads, movers and shakers, etc. and went through numerous exercises. They broke into smaller groups and wrote imaginary future newspaper headlines extoling their desired accomplishments. They talked about “Gate to Plate” streamlining of their products to the consumers, what milestones they would reach along the way and generally about how dynamic they could be. When all the dust had settled they agreed that they wanted to be the “Best Food Company in North America” or B-F-C-N-A.  Thereafter they tested all new ideas and proposals against their vision to be the BFCNA.  “Would these suggestions contribute to us being BFCNA”?  It became part of their daily lexicon. It was used in communications with all the employees and other stakeholders until everyone knew exactly what they were striving to be. They would be the BFCNA.

It’s said that if you are lucky enough to have a job (or business) that you love you will never have to work a day in your life. Here is your chance to plot that course in a form that allows others to share in it. Take the opportunity now to develop and express what you want that to be and nurture it with your associates as co-creators of your success.

Please contact me to help facilitate your vision.

Robert Skidmore (562) 413-1061
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Confessions of a Neophyte Blogger:

Posted on August 15, 2014 by Bob Skidmore

Skidbiz image iStock writer

I am learning that promoting one’s consulting business is not a laid-back and stress-free undertaking.  Apparently writing a blog to place before your audience is a broadly accepted means of such marketing, but what if you have little or no experience in self-bloviating?  Most of my experience consists of posting cat and dog videos on Facebook.  So, I decided to bone up a little.  I read and carefully dissected numerous other blogs and have determined that a few rules seem to hold sway and give the reader a reasonable incentive to follow along.

Rule #1)      Announce at the top of each article the number of bullet points or rules that you espouse to be really important (Please note here that I have failed to state there would be six, hence the neophyte status).  These could be like five ways to turbo charge your SEO, or three imperatives for effective leadership, and so on.  This rule is used to manage your audience’s expectations so that they know you don’t plan to drone on and on about thirty-five ways to manage Millennials or as I like to call it “Training Your Dragons”.

Rule #2)      You are expected to offer at least a few pithy words of wisdom, and more than “Never turn on your blender while holding your cat or fry bacon naked”.  While those are certainly sound bits of advice, they won’t increase your client’s profits or curb their high employee turnover.  So, given the endless availability of new marketing and management tools and tactics you might think it’s easy to identify a topic of interest, and it would be, but differentiating yourself from the nearly 500,000 other professionals (per the Institute of Management Consultants) is the real challenge.  I had to ask myself, how does one make the subject of properly onboarding new employees sexy or even interesting?  Is there any real interest in four new ways to apply a SWOT analysis to your business?  Why are Core Values really necessary? And these were a few of my best subjects?  My head began to spin.

Rule #3)      Work-in oblique references to your many years of experience and superhero skill sets. This can be a little tricky.  If you don’t claim enough years your wisdom is in question. If you count your work history in decades, you may be viewed as a soon-to-be-extinct dinosaur. You may want to use dog years as an alternative in this case.  Mine would be about five dog years from my first spin in the CEO’s chair through my last dozen years as executive coach and business consultant. I like to think that I am a pretty wise old pterodactyl.

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