Creating and Executing the Perfect Business Strategy

hello everyone and welcome to another LTB webinar a series of free webinars with different business experts Community leaders and successful entrepreneurs to talk about valuable topics that will help you learn grow and lead today we'll be discussing a critical topic that applies to every single business out there which is creating and executing the perfect businesses business strategy my guest today is Stephen Lynch head of strategy and Consulting results.com let me tell you more about stevenh he has personally consulted on hundreds of firms assisting them with strategic planning business execution accountability had had article published and Economist and writes a weekly column to over 40,000 Business Leaders around the globe Stephen is also the author of award-winning book business execution for results a practical guide for leaders of small businesses his book has judged the best management book in USA 2014 Small Business book award before I introduce him I want to give you some housekeeping first of all we'll hear from Stephen about the one one page strategy and then after that we'll discuss a little bit about results.com and we will have a live Q&A panel discussion um for Stephen so along the lines if you have any questions on the presentation feel free to use the chat box to submit the questions and we'll get to as many questions as we can without further Ado hello Stephen welcome to the LTB webinar thank you Minnie and and welcome to the LTB uh community and yes uh my name is Steve uh as you could probably gathered from my accent I'm not originally from around here I'm originally from New Zealand but I'm now based at our results.com San Francisco office and I've got the rare privilege of being able to observe thousands of client firms working on their strategies working on their goals and I get to see what works and what doesn't work in the real world over a large number of business cases and from there I'm able to identify the best practices of our most successful firms and what I'm going to do is share with you a small selection of those best practices with you to day go for it we're very excited well every week I I get companies contacting me you know wanting help with their strategic plans and what I uh find with with most companies that I speak to is that they don't really understand what strategy is and many people confuse goal setting with strategy Now goal setting is important but setting goals is not strategy and many people say hey we want to grow our business and I go yes you know perhaps growth is important but setting goals for growth no that's not strategy other people tell me they want to improve the quality of their products and their services and yes improving quality is important but quality improvement no that's not strategy either other people say they want to improve efficiencies in their business and yes improving efficiencies is important but efficiency Improvement no that's not strategy either and other people say hey we want to be better than our competitor firms and yes being better than our competitors is is important but being better than our competitors beating our competitors is no that's not strategy either so what is strategy well strategy is about understanding how your industry is likely to play out and getting very clear on the few key strategic moves that your company needs to make in order to position yourself for future success and that's what we're going to talk about today and yes the game is getting tougher and faster all the time and technology is playing a big role in this in fact it seems technology is changing faster than society and business can keep up and the rate of change is accelerating and this graph illustrates the exponential function which is very hard for most people to grasp we think that things are progressing linearly but they're not we are actually experiencing exponential change or accelerating growth particularly when it comes to technology change and this is a story that I found that the best way to illustrate the exponential function it's the story about the creation of the game of chess and the way the story goes is that chess was invented by a mathematician by the name of cesa some 1,000 odd years ago and when CA showed his invention to the ruler at the time the ruler was so impressed that he allowed cesa to name whatever he wanted as a reward and cesa told the ruler that what he wanted was for the ruler to put a single grain of rice on the first square of the chessboard then put two grains on the second Square Four grains on the next Square then eight and so on B basically doubling the amount of rice for each subsequent square and and the ruler thought well this is a bargain and he agreed to Cee's reward not realizing that if you were to start with a single grain of rice on the first square and then double it until you got to the 64th Square you would end up with 18 quintilian grains of rice and that's a thousand times the global production of rice in the present day uh and if you want to know uh how much rice that would be here's the world's population represented by grains of rice so here's all seven billion of us represented by grains of rice right now in order to honor ca's bit you'd need a pile of rice as high as Mount Everest that's the exponential function it's it's it's it's a challenging concept for people to get their head around but once you get to the the second half of the chessboard things really start to accelerate and according to Ray kerswell he's a a futurist author and he's the director of engineering at Google he said when it comes to technology change we are now in the second half of the chessboard that's when the growth in in technology the exponential technology growth it's going to begin to have a dramatic effect on our lives and the way we do business this is Mark andron the founder of Netscape he's a well-known venture capitalist here in Silicon Valley and short he says software is eating the world but Bill Gates said it's it's actually a f fantastic time to be entering the business world because business is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 50 so there's going to be lots of opportunities for those of us who are able to understand those opportunities and those of us who are able to grasp those opportunities now Charles Darwin didn't say it's survival of the fittest here's what he actually did say it's not the strongest who survive nor the most intelligent but the ones who are most responsive to change so we need to understand what those changes are and we need to make sure that we respond appropriately in order to do that you need to operate with what I call dual Vision du dual Vision you need to have one eye looking through the microscope that's improving what is but you also need to have one eye looking through the telescope that's looking out to the Future on the horizon and that's about creating what will be and most companies that come to me they're pretty good with the first part they're pretty good at looking through the microscope and proving what is they're pretty good at choosing projects to improve what they're currently doing as an organization but where many of them struggle is creating what will be which is setting your company up for future success and in some cases that may mean that you need to do something very different to what it is that you're doing right now and that's a real Paradox isn't it but that's the key to effective strategic leadership being able to improve what is whilst simultaneously creating what you need in order to succeed in the future and many companies struggle with this they keep doing what made them successful in the past but they future here's Professor Phil Cotler from the Kellogg School of Management and he explains this concept really well you see we need to operate with both shortterm and long-term Vision in the shortterm it's about projects related to improving our current business that's great most companies get that but here's the challenge long-term vision it's not about improving performance it's about forgetting the past and reshaping your business to compete more effectively in the future and sometimes that may mean doing something very different to what it is that you're doing now so strategy needs to Encompass both the longterm and the shortterm and as many said at the beginning we recommend that you capture your key strategic decisions all on one page we call it a one-page strategic plan and there there are many different versions of onepage strategic plan out there they all have their benefits and this is the format we currently use for our clients at results.com and what it contains is a number of built-in video workshops that I've recorded to help our clients work through the decisions that they need to make and this plan and the video workshops are available to you now from our website you can access these workshops anytime you like but what we think it's important to do is to be able to share your strategy with everyone in your organization in a simple easy to understand format on one page because in order to engage and align your people you want them to know who you are as an organization why you exist where you are going and how you plan to get there and these are the key comp sorry you going to say something yes um so let me ask you just a second as a business owner myself and we all know that um we all want to buy more time because we can't have enough of it when we when we wake up every day we have so much on our plate so we're talking to small business owners medium-sized business owners or even bigger you know companies Executives from larger companies um let me ask you we we know that we have so much on our plate currently and then you're saying that strategy means focusing on the future how do you balance before we go into details what a strategic plan is how do you balance just the basics of how much time how much effort are you putting towards it understanding okay this is what I do currently and this is how much effort I need to put into my current strategy or my current um delivering my services and then how much time and effort do I need to put in creating the strategy and looking what my future will look like yeah it's a good question Manny in terms of I was to look at it in terms of percentage of time I usually found the the 10 7020 rule works well we need to carve out 10% of our time to be focusing on the future getting you know really clear on what we need to do first of all but but 10% of our time focusing on creating what will be 70% of our time will be you know working on the business as it is right now and the other 20% of the time will be you know I guess focusing on the past and and doing all the administrative work that we need in order to uh to be successful as well but if we ideally we can carve out 10% of our time and let's just say you worked a 40 hour week I don't know who does but let's say we did you know that would mean carving out four hours a week to focus specifically on on what we need to do to create what we need to do in order to be successful in the future interesting you're saying that because obviously um in our company I've been working on obviously on the current and then obviously on different projects that are more strategy focused and long-term focused and what I found the one thing that I did which is similar to what you just said which is helping me towards the you know really balancing my time is that you create a plan what needs to be done for immediate and what are the stuff you need to do for the strategy and you actually block out time in your calendar on a daily weekly monthly quarterly basis depending on how you know how much time your your strategy needs and that Focus time is only set up for long-term bigger picture priorities on on moving the company forward what I find you know just just to the get-go the listeners should understand that if you have this if you just wake up every morning and come to work that I'm going to focus on my strategy and at the same time also focusing on the dayto day it just doesn't work it needs to be time that are carved out to focus on strategy and that's how you could balance it out and you actually go have to go ahead and actually put it into your calendar the same way you would put in a calendar invite for this webinar or anything else you do and just do that stuff so at that point at that time you're only focusing future not present that's a great and I guess getting really clear on what is important for the future will help inform what we need to do in the present as well sure so let's go into once we know we that we want to do the Strategic plan what does that one pager look like how do you go through the different bullets yeah well this is what our onepage strategic plan currently contains is what we consider to be the key strategic decisions that you need to make and and share with your people so that they understand who you are where you're going and how you going to get there and how you're going to measure success along the way now obviously there's no way I could cover every element of the of the of this onepage plan today so what I'm going to do is cherry pick this one piece where I I see many client firms struggle and uh I'm going to focus on long-term strategy because it's an area that that many companies I see struggle with and I'm going to share with you uh some tips and best practices that that I hope will help you get clearer on what it is that you need to do in order to be successful in the future now as many said I have written a book on our methodology if you want to understand these key strategic Concepts in more detail you can access them you know in this book uh at your leisure so what I'm going to do is just focus on best practices for choosing your three to five year strategic moves now some people challenge me by saying hey it's impossible to predict you know what will happen that far out into the future and and and that planning that far into the future is a waste of time and I always smile and I share this quote from Jeff bizos of amazon.com who as you know canete at the Forefront of the rapidly changing technology industry and I figure that if Jeff is willing to plan and play strategic bets seven years into the future with amazon.com a company at the Forefront of the technology Revolution it behooves us to at least Plan Three and hopefully even five years into the future now there's a lot of change an increasing rate of change as we've seen and some people say hey we just need to be agile and just move quickly to deal with threat or to pursue attractive opportunities but here's the thing the research that successful companies they aren't more agile than the losing companies in the sense of responding faster changing fast just to chase after every opportunity no that's not a recipe for Success a winning strategy it's not about being agile it's about being smart agile and other words the winning companies the most successful companies they win because they W make wise strategic choices not necessarily because they move fast so yes your strategy should focus on the long term we're going to look at at least three to five years and what we're going to do is choose the the key strategic moves to position ourselves for success in the future we also accept that things are going to change and we need to check in and and challenge our strategic assumptions regularly and here's what we do to help our clients understand the future we we have our clients do this exercise once every year it's a a discipline strategic thinking exercise called an industry analysis now here's the thing of all of the companies I've looked at most companies do this poorly if at all but those who do they're far better prepared to make wise strategic choices about the key moves that they need to make to set themselves up for future success so we encourage our clients to go through this Workshop each and every year what I'm going to cover today is not the complete Workshop it's just a scaled down version of the real 3 to 5e strategic moves Workshop again you can access this for free via our onepage plan later if you wish and the aim of this analysis is to look for inflection points that are occurring or are likely to occur in our industry and what we want to do is make the right strategic moves to address these issues so that we follow the Blue Line our business goes on to new heights now I'm sure you can think of some well-known companies some well-known Brands and for whom they experienced inflection points in their industry and they made poor strategic choices and as a result their business went into to decline or even bankruptcy and and some many well-known well publicized cases and when I'm in the room working personally with client firms I usually hear names like codec or or you know Borders bookstores or or or Blackberry or Blockbuster Video you those companies very successful companies well-known companies they did some great things that made them successful they dominated their Industries but an inflection point occurred in the industry which they missed or they made a poor strategic choice and as a result their business went into decline you know Stephen just the if um just a interesting um point to share I've met an executive a former executive of codec recently and we and he shared the following which is even more mindboggling Kodak at one point actually bought off a small Israeli company which was focusing on digital photography uh and they basically started going into that industry and then all of a sudden there was a you know a memo going out that they're going to be shutting down this whole Division and the executives of that company came to you know to the CEO of Kodak at that time and asked them why are you doing that the words that he said is I feel digital photography is a fat it's going to come for a little bit some geek Geeks will will work with it about everybody wants to have a physical film in their hand and therefore he was firm with his decision so not only that he didn't adopt he actually killed a division a company that they bought which started do working in that space whoops yeah that's really hard when you when you've done something that's made you you successful for so long to actually change or adapt as you say and sometimes it means cannibalizing your old business sometimes it means you actually have to create a a separate business that operates independently so that it can grow unimpeded cool and uh the the questions that I'm going to take you through and again it's just a scaled down version of the workshop it's the exact same questions that we ask ourselves as a company and that we ask our clients each and every year and uh there's a great story attributed to Albert Einstein that I really like now I don't know whether it's true but I like the story because it illustrates a great point and this The Story Goes that in his later years Albert Einstein was teaching a physics class and it was the end of the year and they were the second year students and any gave them the exam at the end of the year and the second year students looked at the exam and they said Albert this is the exact same exam that you gave us when we were first year students and they thought perhaps he's getting a little bit old and perhaps he's starting to lose his marbles and he said no no the questions remain the same it's the answers that keep changing and I guarantee each and every time you go through this exercise the questions will be the same but your answers will be different and that's the power of going through this analysis exercise each and every year because what we want to do is leave no stone unturned you know perhaps when we overturn that stone a nasty threat slithers out it's okay so what moves do we need to make to address that threat or perhaps when we overturn that stone we discover a jeel of an opportunity that's great what what moves could we make to uh you know pursue that opportunity and the framework we use I'm sure many of you are familiar with it we we we start off by using Michael Porter's five competitive forces shape Industries and it's a strategic thinking framework that has stood the test of time and I must confess that when I studied this at University it all seemed very abstract and theoretical to me but it wasn't until I got out into the business world and started working with lots of client firms at using this framework that I just discovered how powerful it is and how I use it every day now many companies when they go through this analysis with me in person they they say hey stepen I honestly don't know when I ask them some of these questions and that's good that you're honest admitting that you don't know opens us up to learning but if you don't know how to answer any of these questions that I'm going to put in front of you today you do need to know so make a note to yourself about what you're going to do to find out this information first of all we need to look at our current competitors our existing competitors we need to understand who they are and by that I mean the key players they're the companies that you see out there in the marketplace right now competing for the same customers your customers are comparing your offering to their offering now you might think you're Superior to these competitors but they are valid competitors and the signs are there that they probably will be solid competitors in years to come as well now I'm not saying we should let our competitors dictate what we do in the marketplace but we absolutely should understand who they are and get some good Market intelligence as to what they are offering right now and also what moves they planning to make in the future so the first question we ask our clients is well who are your key competitors and what moves do you think they're likely to make and can you see any threats or opportunities arising from that the second thing we look at is new entrance the threat of new entrance and here's an example here I'm sorry to interrupt a second on the on the if you go back a second to the slide um so basically you're telling the audience that when if they want to go through the exercise really take a pen and paper identify who are those those key competitors correct yes correct yeah and what I always tell um you know um business owners is that be a customer of your competitor uh actually go on the website sign up on the email address with email list and see what they're doing because sometimes it g gives you a good Insight where that company is uh is heading and what uh I always say in the same time is make sure that you don't blindly follow what they do because they might never maybe they have no clue what they're doing so now we're gonna have two companies doing the same not knowing what they're doing so just focus on what they do and then obviously see how it aligns with your strategy or how you want to differentiate yourself that's that's about it what you're doing not just trying to copy somebody not knowing what if they know what they're doing fully agree and I I love that absolutely become a com uh become a customer of your competitor but also interview your customers who are perhaps you know uh you know working with your competitor firm sometimes or even interview customers of that competitor firm to find out why they chose that product and what that company is looking to do in the future cool so let's move on okay we also need to look at the sweat of new entrance and here's an example uh I'm sure you've seen this play out we had the incumbent product Microsoft Office we had the new entrant product the Google apps Suite of office productivity tools so here's what typically H so what what are you seeing with that you seeing me see seeing who who could enter your Market yeah and and here's what typically happens and Professor Clayton Christensen of Harvard he showed how typically when a new entrant enters the market they often enter at the low end and as you can see here as illustrated by by this graph you've had Microsoft Office the incumbent product lots of performance lots of functionality lots of features it certainly met customers requirements and over time that the incumbent product gets more and more features and you know gets more and more advanced in fact it has sometimes even more features than we know how to use when the new entrant product comes out it usually Services the low end of the market it's usually a cheaper inferior product and the incumbent product looks at it and go well we're way better than that product why why is anyone ever going to want to use that here's the thing there is a section of the marketplace who who does want cheap product who doesn't need all the options but here's what you got to be careful of that cheap inferior product that you're looking at out there right now that cheap inferior service over time it gets better and better and if you're not careful very soon it can drive a wedge underneath you and meet most customers requirements so that's the the threat of new entrance be very careful of a a cheap inferior product coming in at the low end and getting better over time interesting and and this is a very good point because you know we we work with a lot of business business owners as well and when we ask them about the competitor they don't even seem to to identify certain people that are in the low entry because they're so much far so so far better but ultimately those people you know get you know grow up with time and all of a sudden the the the Gap comes smaller yes yes and they they often service a section of the market that you aren't really focusing on right now but beware as they land and expand that they don't drive a witch underneath you and start taking market share from you and I think what people on the on the call could could identify over here which the customer requirement we could think a product is that far better than the competition but the customer requirement is just smack in the middle so it's it's up for grabs on both sides of the aisle yes cool and we saw it play out in automobiles we had the American automobile manufacturers we had the cheap new entrance the Japanese automobile manufacturers that came in several decades ago and they were cheaper and I products to begin with but over time their quality got better and before you knew it they were World leading worldclass products it's happened more recently with the Korean automobile manufacturers a decade or so ago they were cheaper inferior cars now they are you know World leading worldclass products we the threat of new entrance so that's another question what new entrance could disrupt you what threats or opportunities do you see what actions could you take to address those threats or opportunities we also need to look at substitute offering and I've got an example here of of the different ways you know technology in this case is is provided people with an alternative way to to get what they wanted which in this case was to listen to the music they wanted to listen to when they wanted to listen to it so let's have a look at how substitute offerings play out let's just say you were a lawn mower retailer you sold lawnmowers now you competitors are are people who are also selling lawnmowers a substitute offering is people people not choosing to buy a lawn mower instead they just purchase a service someone who comes and mows the loan for them perhaps even technology may substitute for that as well a technology may substitute for that service very soon but here's another form of substitution that's often harder to spot what is your customer really trying to do what they actually want is just a good-look yard a good-look property a good-look section and rather than you know have a lawn that needs mowing they may just opt for an easy care Yard Design now that's a form of substitution that's harder to spot but you You' got to ask yourself what is the job the customers trying to do here and what are the different ways that they could achieve that outcome those are the substitutes that you have to look for so again we put a question to our clients what substitute products or Services could disrupt you are there any threats are there any opportunities what actions do you need to take to address those we also need to look at the dynamic between our suppliers and our customers and we think of suppliers I guess it's who or what do you need to pay in order to run your business now if you're a manufactor I guess it's pretty obvious your suppliers are you know the the the companies that Supply you with your raw materials but if you're in the services business or technology business your suppliers are are your Human Resources the people who come to work for you every day the suppliers of talent they may be your key suppliers and so what we need to think about well who are our key suppliers and what moves are they likely to make and do we see any threats or opportunities there and even if our key suppliers are people there can be threats the threat might be that they uh open up in competition to us they leave us and they take all of our knowledge and and and and go and compete directly with us so that's another question we put to our our clients looking at who your suppliers are and what threats or opportunities do you see there sure what I always say is you can never be hostage by an employee or by A supplier so to speak so what is my plan be you know if this is happening and if we're you know if they are our only supplier you know we can't go under if they decide to raise their prices so to speak yeah and the full version of this exercise absolutely goes into that many looking at how many suppliers do you have and and how much bargaining power do they have in relationship to you and what does that mean do they have the ability to you know fix uh costs and and what is the cost for you to actually go with someone else and perhaps they even your suppliers decide to get into business themselves and and against you that's all things that we need to consider likewise looking at customers if we only have one large customer if everything we make we sell to Walmart obviously they have a lot of power power over us in terms of being able to dictate terms to us but even if we sell direct to Consumers these days they have a lot more power than they used to have thanks to the their their ability to rate their experience of doing business with you so we need to get very clear on you know who our customers are which is another whole workshop on itself but but what moves are they likely to make in the future and are there any threats or opportunities that we need to take into account and any actions we need to take in order to make sure that we are successful and how we deal with our customers moving forward into the future we then zoom out and we look at some macr level forces political economic social and technological now all of these things will will affect different companies different Industries in different ways you know political factors to start with now for some of you it may be a very minor uh issue in in your industry but rathers you know regulations laws red tape you know may be very impactful on your on your industry and any changes to those regulations could could you know dramatically alter your fortunes as a business so we need to understand what political factors laws or regulations are likely to impact you and are there any threats or opportunities that we need to deal with there sure I'm I'm familiar with the healthcare industry we have a lot of clients in that space which they're constantly being changed around successful years um not so successful years it's all about what's happening you know on political Arena and sadly I've seen companies who knew that regulatory change was coming but they just put their head in the sand and hoped it wouldn't happen to them and when it happened you know it ended their business yeah yeah so you know you know identify the opportunity identify the threat make sure that you put in place plans to address those things should they occur economic factors now yes the state of the economy is definitely economic Factor there's also things like exchange rates interest rates the availability of credit access to Capital even the level of investor interest in your industry how salable is your business how attractive is your industry to outside investors they are all economic factors as well particularly if you're a business owner and you're looking to to exit your business in the near term you know what are some of the economic factors that could influence the size of your exit other economic factors could be I guess changes in the way people you know transact now we've got the major handset manufacturers all looking to take over our wallets we've got even new ways of trans transacting new forms of of currency that that are you know getting a lot of press lately so we need to look at what economic factors or changes in the buying behaviors of our customers could impact us identify any threats or opportunities there and identify the actions that we need to take to address those things social factors which is how we behave as a society what we you know our values our culture and how these things change over time and you know here's some interesting research I just sort of looked at this in this last week as I Was preparing for this webinar Americans now spend an average of 5 and 1 half hours a day interacting with digital media and more than half of that time is on on mobile devices now in some Industries obviously it's a lot higher than that 34s of 18 to 24 year olds say they reach for their phones immediately upon waking in the morning and once out of bed they check their phones an average of 221 times a day it's an average of once every 4.3 minutes they're looking at the phones here's something else that's interesting nearly half of 18 to 29 year olds say they use their phones to avoid interacting with others in their immediate environment so we're transforming into device people and and it's happened relatively quickly it's only since 2007 that these smart mobile devices have existed and it's somewhat heartbreaking really to see parents as Illustrated here who are constantly distracted by their technology when accompanied by their children at the playground or or at the restaurant dinner table and we've got children who are frustrated that can't get their parents undivided attention we've got Gatherings where friends are physically present but you're vying for attention with with people that they're chatting to on their phone we've got classrooms where the professors are gazing out into the sea of people who are you know multitasking on on their mobile phones and perhaps not really listening to what the teacher saying and here's something really scary a study recent study showed that there's a 40% decline in empathy scores among college students over the last 20 years so a 40% decline in empathy so what does it mean the shift in the space of a few short years we've gone from a society in which people walk down the street looking around to one in which people walk down the street looking at these machines yeah so you know to bring it home um I think you know we have this discussion with clients all the time um and the typical conversation let's say from a a retail business owner will say we'll talk about digital or we talk about um you know Google listings local listing so on and so forth it says well I'm a promotor company but you could still be a brick and motor business I'm not talking about the online versus brick and motor retail but those people are finding you through those channels meaning say if somebody wants to you know find the the most the um local um shop that sells this this gadget or whatever they'll make that uh search and then still come in they need it today they might you might not compete on the sale itself but they they'll do that search or actually finding a plumber instead of going to a Yellow Pages they'll go online find the the the you know the most you know the most quickest plumber that could could fix my problem so let you say it when going back on strategic planning is even if you're locked in this is how I deliver my service but maybe you have to look at digital on but how do people find out about my service so you might not deliver the service via digital or you might not be able to um um um to to you know to move into e-commerce I'm not talking about that space even if you don't want to move into e-commerce you want to stay at Brick motor but maybe people have to just find you the sales part is happening on that side yeah and I guess it's it's understanding what's happening in the environment around you and making wise strategic choices as to how you are going to navigate that environment sure and you know we've got changes in the way people View and consume media now often multiple devices all at the same time we've got changes in terms of what's acceptable and what's unacceptable in terms of how we treat the environment we certainly saw that saw that play out recently with with Volkswagen uh you know with the uh emission cheating we' also got changes in the way we we we manage people when you think about it the way we manage people traditionally it has its roots in the Industrial Age which was good for managing standardized work systems processes productivity but it's not so good for the network age when it's all about customized work and we need to engage the hearts and minds and the creativity and the talent of our people in order to help our businesses navigate these These Times of change MH and as Dr Gary Hamil said we're going to have to reinvent management the way we lead plan organize hire and motivate because yeah the challenges we Face are unprecedented and I've put this little chart together I looked at all of this different research on the different generations and for the first time we've got a workplace full of three generations we've got the Baby Boomers who approaching traditional retirement age although some of them are working well beyond uh traditional retirement age we've got the Millennials who are advancing in their careers now and starting to take on management jobs for the first time in the middle we've got generation next they're in their sort of mid-30s late 40s we've got three generations all figuring out how to work with each other and there's a lot of nonsense articles in the media about the supposed differences between the generations and a lot of what they present is just stage of life changes that we all go through as opposed to meaningful generational differences but but there's a couple of things that really do stand out and it seems that Millennial workers they and I've highlighted these points in yellow they absolutely value formal training and mentoring more so than previous generations and they want more feedback from their managers than their current getting so as Leaders as managers we need to make sure particularly if we've got a Workforce made up of a lot of Millennials or Genny that we are providing them with the training and mentoring that they desire and also with the frequent feedback that they desire as well interesting okay so you know it's different for every industry but there's a big process that we take companies through lots of different questions but just trying to identify what are the social factors trends that are going to impact your industry and what threats or opportunities do you see and actions could you take to address those but here's the big one the final one technology factors and you know it wasn't that many years ago that we went into a bricks and motar store to purchase a navigation device to stick on the dashboard of our automobile now of course we don't need that device because our smartphones provide that navigation function for us and as many mentioned earlier now we don't even necessarily need to go into the store because companies like Amazon can provide it for much cheaper and on the same day and on a Sunday now cool we also got drones you know obviously they're they're disruptive to the surveillance industry uh but they're increasingly used in agriculture for crop dusting for you know monitoring livestock spotting diseased trees um Amazon's investigating using drones for delivering packages to your door uh I've got a I live in downtown San Francisco there's a lot of highrises around me I recently saw that the foreman on a worksite using a drone to inspect the different floors of the high R apartment that was being built he was flying the the Drone up another level up another level doing his inspection from the footpath of all of the stories of the building W we've now got companies who are offering to protect you from from drones so if you don't want a drone flying into your your your airspace or flying into your property there's now companies that that will protect you from that and and uh you know I guess another change that is affecting many Industries is is 3D printing and you know 3D printers can basically create and print out whatever you can imagine and unfortunately we've even seen people post recipes on the internet for how to print out a a machine gun that actually fires real bullets but on a positive note positive note I I I saw recently that surgeon's actually 3D printed a replacement skull for a person whose skull was injured and was was able to insert this 3D replacement skull just in the last week the toy maker Mattel they're releasing a 3D printer this year for children who can use an app to design their own toy and have the 3D printer print out a toy that they have custom designed themselves and last night as again I was researching this presentation there's a new 3D printer now that can print out and build bio compatible tissues that form their own blood supply and Fus with your natural tissues for use and transplants uh and as you can see here they've 3D printed a human ear which they can attach to your to your skull and that will fuse with your normal tissues fascinating stuff yeah so so what are you saying with that so I meaning to say as a business owner sitting in his office now is this you know 3D printing obviously technology and it's also new innovation seeing if something like that could come for forward and that could disrupt your Market is that what you're saying yeah it's like just just keep your head up and have a look at what's going around and think you know how could this impact my industry are there any threats here are there any opportunities here what action could I take to you know to to make sure that I'm successful in the future based on the changes that I am seeing happening right now cool another example well there's a 3D printer on the space station now where they can print out tools customized for the job at hand here's an interesting one we're seeing a lot of disruption in the in the in the automobile sector this is a 3D printed car it takes 44 hours to print your your average car has around 6,000 Parts this has less than 50 it's a 3D printed body plus some you know bolt-on Parts wheels and electric engine uh it's going to cost around $20,000 and can travel 120 mil on a single charge wow uh with electric cars now thanks to the likes of Elon Musk and Tesla you can now drive an electric car completely across Continental USA but perhaps we won't even need to be driving soon here's Google's self-driving car and I have seen these in in in San Francisco they've got no steering wheel no foot pedals just a stop button and you use your your cell phone to tell them where to go so obviously you know a completely changes the picture of car sharing car owning you know taxis you know maybe we won't need to own cars anymore uh because all we'll need to do is just summon uh one of these vehicles to come and pick us up take us where we need to go we can work in the seat whilst we're on you know on our journey and then once our journey is complete the the vehicle will drive off and drive off and pick someone up and take them where they want to go yeah just just just on this note you know let's look at Uber what it what it did for the for the taxi lousine services around the country around the world meaning to say when medallions for the yellow Cals were going higher and higher on a monthly basis you know people invested thousands of millions of dollars to buy the medallions all of a sudden comes Uber and disrupts the market and takes such a huge share of it and Uber is absolutely you know spending large on on on uh you know AI for driving because they want to replace the the drivers in their cars so that the cost of taking an Uber comes right down you know the the the biggest cost is the driver you know when they you know replace their their drivers with with you know self-driving Vehicles you know it's going to be so much cheaper to use an Uber than it is to own a car and let's face it our cars spend 90% of the time parked sitting in a park sitting in a driveway not being used it's not an efficient use of of of of of assets this year this is a a large mining company in Australia Rio Tinto these trucks do not have drivers in them already it's happening these trucks are driving around the mines getting filled up taking the loads to to other parts of the mine there are no drivers in these trucks here's a truck in Nevada this you know the law says the driver has to be there but he's not driving this truck and it is legal for these large trucks to be driving themselves in Nevada now wow and the workplace here's Baxter a $20,000 robot it's used in manufacturing or Warehouse environments Baxter can work safely next to people and when you think it's going to cost $20,000 to to you know install Baxter in in your Warehouse or packing Department it doesn't take long for you to see that you know that's going to be cheaper over time than an employee and it's not just you know uh you know packing and warehouse jobs that are being disrupted they estimate that up to 80% of what doctors do will be replaced by machines this decade now it doesn't mean that we won't need doctors anymore but what it does mean that what doctors do will be very different moving forward so it's a big one and there's a lot of you know there's a lot of facets to this but we really do need to understand what technology factors or changes are likely to impact Industries and get really clear on the threats or opportunities that lie before us and what actions we could take to address those and when you go through this exercise and again this is just a a a scaled down version of it you're going to come up with this big long list of of of action items and things that you you'd like to do to address these threats and opportunities that you uncover and that's fine it's great that you identify these things but you can't do it all and you can't be all things to all people you can't do it all and Michael Porter of Harvard he talks about the importance on getting very clear what you're not going to do strategy is all about tradeoffs it's getting very clear on what you're going to say no to so many companies they say we've got this big long list of things to do it's really important that we Whittle that list down to the most critical things that are going to make the biggest difference you got to focus you see you you mentioned earlier many you you know you can't do everything You' got you got to free up people time and resources to pursue the small handful of things that are going to lead to your long-term success and I often say to clients you've got to prune the rose bush in order to create beautiful blooms and I ask clients well have you got any products or services that you know are going to be less relevant in the future or if you got any projects that have just never quite seemed to fulfill the original promise you know and you know maybe we need to look at you know scaling back or or eliminating those things all together and this is tough It's you know it goes against the grain for many of us as Business Leaders we want to fix things we want to grow things it's hard to stop things or pull the plug on things but that's the key to effective strategic leadership business execution it requires courage it's all about getting really clear on what you're not going to do it's about getting clear on your stop list and it takes real courage to do that but ultimately when it comes to strategy as I said earlier it's about understanding how your industry is likely to play out getting very clear on the few key strategic moves that your company needs to make in order to position yourself for future success and we're with Jeff IML here this is Jeffrey imel the CEO of General Electric he says if you can't clearly explain the top three things you're working on and you're not leading well and that's what we do with our clients as well we say what are the top three things that you're going to need to do over the next three to five years that are going to lead to you being successful in your industry based on the analysis that you've just done and we capture those items you know on our one page strategic Plan and there's one little test that I do just to Once clients come to me with their decisions I say take a look at each each strategic move that you come up with and I I say I'm going to put it through my sniff test now and I for each move that you have captured I'm I'm going to ask you could you do the exact opposite of that and would that also be valid if doing the opposite of what you've just said would be stupid or nonsensical then it's not really a strategic move at all there's no trade-off there it's just simply a a table Stakes requirement for doing business and it's likely to be something that your competitors will do as well a strategic move should be something that will help you establish a competitive Advantage it should help you establish a a category or a niche in your industry where you can genuinely claim a position of leadership a genuinely claim a meaningful point of difference a strategic move should make it really clear what you are going to do and also what you're not going to do and this is see where I see many companies fail at their strategic planning their strategies are often generic fluff like we're going to provide best-in class customer service and I say well so the opposite of that would be to provide terrible customer service would that be a valid strategy as well and they go no well it's it's not really a strategic move it's just common sense it's it's it's not a strategy yeah I like I like very much your last point because um a strategic move means something that you it's basically an aha moment after my research after my Discovery we need to move South we need to start doing the service you know like I've seen a lot of companies going from service to product product to service going into new Niche only fol zooming into a certain industry that means a strategic move you know just carrying just more items or stuff like that are just the given that's how business is done on a daily basis absolutely agree yeah bigger B faster stronger better service they are not strategies that you know it's it's it's getting clear on what are we going to do differently cool what are the trade-offs we're prepared to make in order to do that and I've got some sort of best practices there that I I I suggest to help clients uh you know I guess come up with the right three to five year strategic moves get out there and do some research among customers who are early adopters subscribe to thought leaders who who are commenting on your industry go to conferences learn from networks like you're doing now where you're getting together with other business owners and and learning from each other do this analysis once every year the questions remain the same but their answers keep changing and remember a strategy requires a trade-off what are he not going to do and needs to pass the sniff test would doing the opposite also be valid if not then it's not really a strategy at all and I also I recommend take a look at these things every quarter and say does it still make sense based on what I see happening out there now like I said what I did ask now was a scal down version of one section of the onepage Strategic plan a scaled down Workshop where you know you click on the section of the workshop a little video comes up it takes you through the exercise if you want to learn and a more in-depth approach in terms of understanding the methodology that I use you can read about it here but ultimately when you've when you've chosen your long-term strategy you need to get clear on well what do we need to do right now in terms of our current strategic projects some companies call them okrs what do we need to do in terms of our our performance measures our key performance measures and that's where we use a to which we've developed at results.com to help our clients track their strategic decisions to track their key numbers and to align and engage their people in what it is that the company needs to do in order to pursue its strategy and I thought i' pause here for a second because uh you know Minnie was going to to talk briefly uh about what it is that we we proposed to offer sure so so obviously um there's a lot of questions coming in and keep keep them coming and we going to um after and we're take a few minutes you know where I know it's a little late we'll take a few minutes to answer some of the questions but I could tell you that you know results.com was a sponsor at our um recent LTB um Summit and and we were very impressed with uh the software and a lot of free content that that results.com has to offer on the website that's why we invited Stephen to to share some of this um with us today um this is something that does not take an hour takes a lot of time so I do recommend going to results.com LTB um figure out from a demo to the software which they have a software helps you actually on a regular basis managing this on a daily basis but more importantly just even just for the free content there's a ton of content on that site which goes through videos tutorials spreadsheets and stuff because they are focused zooming in and helping people create that strategy and ultimately um um manage that strategy so I would highly recommend everybody to visit results.com LTB to sign sign up for you know free of charge the signing up on seeing what's what's happening on their side and and seeing what else value you could get out of the system um so um do we have some time to go through some q&as absolutely and just to add to what you said many yes you can absolutely access that online onepage strategic plan you can access all those video workshops for free if you can also get a demonstration of our results.com software which is a management dashboard to help you track your projects track your key performance indicators align and engage your people if you like the software and you want to pursue the software we're offering a 25% discount for LTB community members absolutely and we'll be sending out an email um to to the audience as well with the offer but again as I said um it's a very important thing you know the reason why we invited you today is because in our company we have done it the last few years as we were getting more you know obviously a company grows and we always say and in in in my terms I always say it's very easy to grow a business it's very hard to manage the growth and when you manage the growth when the company gets the level there's multiple people and you need and you have a lot going on having the right strategy in place and understanding where you're focus and where you're going that's where it really um comes comes into play stuff like what we saying the one page strategy and and I like the concept of one page strategy because you know sometimes you you go to courses and it becomes very overwhelming and everything becomes such a big rock to turn that the business owner is just not capable of actually doing it if you have a strategic one pager you're able to to play around with it and and just get you know get a version you know I always say version one is better than version none just get something going and then you could quarterly review it and and and perfect it as you go along so it doesn't have to be a perfect version as you start doing it um so so yes check out results.com LTB um let me get to a couple of questions um some some great questions I apologize we will not get to all of the questions but uh um we'll we'll pick some of them that are pertaining to everybody one uh question that came in in multiple ways from different reader and different listeners is um is how how much is is this a business owner doing it himself is this the business owner doing it with his key employees is this a business owner doing it with outside consultant what are your best practices dealing with so many business owners what is the best approach to go about it yeah I recommend engaging a a core group of people around you where you you've got your the people whose input you would value into the Strategic decision-making process and you can sit down you know and go through these workshops as workbooks as well uh discuss the questions and Concepts that are put to you and and come up with your own decisions and and align to those decisions and you can Cascade those decisions down to the wider organization if you want a consultant to to challenge those decisions that's great but but you can you can absolutely do it yourself but I recommend don't do it alone involve your your key decision makers with you okay and I want to touch a little bit on the kpis because that was something that I feel very important obviously we didn't get to it on this call which kpi stands for who on the call is key performance indicators meaning to say is when you create a strategy just to explain actually explain Stephen to the audience um where does the key key performance indicators come into play when you have a strategy yeah in fact I could have done a whole workshop on key performance indicators alone but key performance indicators are the the the the the key things that you measure that that drive the execution of your strategy that that drive your current operating model you know it's like yes results are important we want to track and measure results but what are the activities that drive those results what are the effectiveness measures that drive those results and as identifying those numbers and and tracking and measuring them and and looking at them daily or weekly discussing them every week discussing them every month making sure that these numbers are where they need to be and taking action if not cool and another question that that came in is um how much you know sometimes you have a company a company that's just not doing that well and you know strategy we never had a strategy and therefore it's not doing well are you you would suggest a company to to pause totally operation and rest strategize or you would say continue continue doing what you're doing and in the sidelines start doing the strategy you know the the planning process great question yeah you've got an operating model right now which which may or may not be working as well as you'd like but you know obviously you need to you know to to pay the bills and and and keep things going so you know continue doing what you're doing I say but work on your strategy in parallel what we would do is carve out a little bit of time so that we can get clear on what the future looks like you know get clear on what your vision for for what your company to become looks like and then strategize what we're going to do to get there but we would do that in parallel you've absolutely got to keep you know keep paying the bills and keep doing what you need to do in the meantime to keep your operating model alive okay and this question is more of a challenging if the business world is changing so fast as you mentioned Is it feasible to to project for seven years from now i' ask J biz on that and um you know he's for willing to go for forego profits in the short term in order to become you know globally dominant in the long term and you know I guess the the Trap most of us fall into as Business Leaders is is just trying to do more of what we're doing better now that's that's good that's important but that's just optimizing what is as many said earlier we need to carve out some space to think about well what do we need to become in order to be successful in the future and and balancing those two concepts in mind at the same time it's like I I most of my time is spent improving what is but I'm going to carve out some time to create what I know we're going to need to become in order to be successful in the future based on my analysis based on what I think my industry is going to look like cool now another question is a as a key employee of a company not being the the business owner um what what is it that they could do to push some forward is that something which you could see a key employee doing or is it is it has to be from the top as the business owner uh we I'll use our own company as an example there we see lots of our employees you know sharing links to articles that they've read which they think may be of interest to the rest of the of the company you know perhaps it's some research they've read or something from The Economist or you know the Harvard Business review or or some other magazine but they're constantly sharing information with with with all of us so that we're all learning from each other and benefiting from what everyone else is reading and trying to understand well what does that mean you know does that mean anything for us and you know do we need to to take in action as a result of what we've just read and this one is also an important question I've spoken to so many business owners about it is um when you have actually you know basically let's say you did this strategic planning and you have you could go three different ways you know you know let's take the you know the Costco versus the whole food you know the the cheap model versus the expensive model whatever it is um what drives you to make a decision where I'm going with my company meaning to say you know technology okay let's say you know your threats you know the competition you know all the different things that what we shared and what we didn't share which was just so robust But ultimately is it a underlying passion that a business owner has to say I connect more to this versus that or is only what the future predicts oh yeah that's a tough one I mean ultimately you you it's you're placing a strategic bit you're placing a bit on what you think your industry is going to look like in the future and yes you've got to be passionate about what you do if you're not passionate about it it's going to be very hard to see it through so your passion is absolutely important but you know based on your analysis you you should be able to say yep I can see that this is the the the way we need to go we'll review this decision but we're going to commit to this decision and we're going to align you know everyone's activities to to carrying this decision out cool and another another question that came in is which basically what you started off that strategy planning is not goal setting and we all know that goal setting is also key important part how does goal setting play a role part of the strategy yeah I mean let's just say we we we got clear on the on the big moves we need to make over the next few years in order to be successful it's like well well what could we do in the in in the coming three months or the coming six months to you know to start moving in that direction let's set a goal around that perhaps we can you know start a project now that's going to move us you know partway on that Journey so the goal setting comes out of getting clear on your strategy first then you can create goals to start executing that strategy cool so a lot of more question but I think I'll I'll finish with the last one um Stephen when we have so much on our plate to do it is really important to carve out time to do strategy so that's a question that came in you you you need it's a discipline you just need to do it you need to say hey once a quarter we're going to stop for a day and we're going to you know review and discuss our short-term strategy and and and our progress to date once a year we're going to stop for a day maybe even two days and actually think about the future and what it is that we need to become and you just need to schedule those things in the calendar and and make them happen uh and those companies that have the discipline to do that they are the ones that are the most successful in my experience correct and what I will end is that we do a lot of strategy in in our companies in the different in the different um companies that I'm involved with and like I said it's it's carving out time where you focus only on priorities and only on strategy and it's also what I would say for business owners not everybody has the capacity to do strategy but if you really look good you look inside your your organization some of you will find the right person that could rise up the leadership position where you could bring him into your circle and say you know what I need I have this project we going to start focusing on strategy and do you want to help me lead this this process lead me this process and then all of a sudden you become like a team where you could focus time out of the office in the office or whatever it is and start doing the the exercise and I think it's for us internally you know and I've seen companies really really shift course come up with Innovation come up with 3D strategy and exe in know different fronts only because those conversations happened you know if it if you don't do it nothing will will will happen by its own but if you start doing it you know just do it and and like I said version none version one is better than version none or or what in a different word say don't let Perfection get in the way from progress you know it doesn't have to be a perfect perfect strategy but get going find out what's going what's happening around you and then you will be able to to start making progress in your company and before I let you go before I I conclude over here um any any final thoughts Stephen oh oh sorry yeah for me no I just wanted to say thank you Minnie and and the LTB Community for for hosting me today it's been a privilege to speak with you and do feel free to reach me directly if if if you have any questions that that I can answer I'm I'm here to help sure um I appreciate it and what I I I will finishes uh thank you very much Stephen for sharing the value of information with our listeners um I have learned a lot hopefully our listeners learned a lot as well take advantage of results.com LTB where you can download for free the one page strategic plan work it yourself try to find your team members to work with you and and you'll be able to get map out your goals and strategy for your company and hopefully um be able to grow once again this is a LTB webinar we look forward to seeing you soon on any of our upcoming webinars and in in the until next time onward and upward thank you again have a good day for