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Breaking the Mould

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New Year Resolutions - For Companies!

Planning to Plan

A Seller's Market

Back from Holidays

Spiralling Up

Re: Avoiding the Cover of FORTUNE

Appreciation

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Re: Too busy to do the important

The "B" word - the one we swore on bumper stickers we would not screw up if it came around again - is being whispered. Of course, by the time we're talking about it, it's a fact.

With heightened activity comes the other "B" word - busy.

When the good times come, it’s easy to get too busy to do the important things, to plan and make the moves that allow us to make the most of these times. Check me on this, but I think what we all want from this extra lift is to be launched into the orbit of true prosperity. So, how are we going to make sure to achieve escape velocity this time?

Good - smart - planning is about carving time out of the urgent for the important, as Steven Covey would term it.

So what's important? The conventional answer is making hay while the sun shines. But where will only doing that leave you?

What about building the resilient future – the one that doesn’t go away as the tide recedes?

Too many businesses are running hot right now. They might be leaking oil, blowing smoke, running on bald tires – but don’t dare stop lest they lose momentum. We all know what happens if you keep driving when your oil light comes on. Is yours on?

What we do in planning is take time apart from rush, time to priorize and budget the focus, money and attention for two purposes –

• Maintenance - to make sure we don’t end up on the side of road cursing the car and
• Positioning – putting the enterprise on the right road to reach the next level

In planning, we pry time and focus away from the urgent everyday to build the company or career that runs strongly into the future!!!!

Our own – Catalyst’s – investments are really bearing fruit these days. What have we been tuning our car with?

• Value Creation. Business creates value one conversation at a time. The Conversant technology ensures that
• you always know where you are in the hot flow of the business interchange exchange,
• you can take the discussion where it most powerfully should go next and
• those exchanges consistently generate impact – high value impact
• 8 months of investment by us – big returns for you in our work.
  
• Succession – many organizations are caught with an entrepreneur at the head who is, - gasp! – aging! There may be no apparent next generation to carry on. The Leadership Pipeline [Ram Charon et al] provides an illuminating framework we work to develop and bring those people on line. Who will drive the business on? Will they be equipped with the Values, the Time Focus and Skills they need to perform? This scheme identifies the appropriate values, time focus and skills at each higher level – and how each transition can be constructively navigated.

• Porter on Strategy – sophisticated Harvard work – unexpected plusses for mid-market businesses.

What is important for you? What will generate the next leap when the steam runs out of this boom?

How about:

• Levering up your communication impact to achieve alignment and kill slippage.
• Positioning your enterprise for the future. As sure as this cycle has spun up, it will spin down. Will you prosper?
• Growing the next generation. Who will take the reins when you’re ready to move on? Who will pay you out? Our cohort of founding entrepreneurs in the West is moving on. How will your company stay ahead of the demographic curve?
• Becoming sharp on strategy and processes – even if you have to pause to focus down. The result? You will at the very least identify leaking profit from wasted effort that will compensate royally.

So what will it be this time - another case of sitting in the smoking wreck after it's all over - burnt out and no further ahead on the big road? Or sharper and stronger – more resilient? Or maybe the boom won’t end and we’ll just burn out trying to keep pace.

Hey we're busy too, hence that tardiness of this letter. Great work, helping two substantial organizations carve out a future from the present. They know what will happen if they don't do it – NOTHING NEW.

We're investing and the companies we're working with are investing too. Are you?

Doug Bouey

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