360 Feedback Process The idea that “Feedback is the Breakfast of Champions” applies as much to leadership performance and growth as it does to improving cash flow, reducing receivables, increasing the sales close rate or decreasing service delivery cycle times. If we truly want to improve leadership performance, we must assess it and provide feedback about it in the same way we measure the more objective aspects of organizational performance.  Unfortunately, most organizations don’t measure leadership performance and, hence, rarely provide the quality feedback leaders need to grow and excel. In fact, leaders may get the worst feedback about their performance as leaders of any people inside organizations.  Why?  The people in the best position to provide feedback about the leader’s performance as a leader are the people being led.  Unfortunately, that creates a couple substantial barriers to providing leaders feedback: Most companies never ask them for their feedback and thoughts. They have a built in bias against providing frank, open, honest feedback – they don’t want to risk upsetting their bosses who control vital aspects of their work lives such as compensation, access to career opportunities and goal assignments.  Even if they have a great relationship, most people would prefer to not rock the boat.  If the relationship is negative to begin with…fuhgetaboutit!  For the sake of career preservation, few employees will provide even mild criticism to help their leaders improve. This creates an interesting dilemma for many organizations: Everyone believes outstanding leadership is critical. Developing outstanding leadership requires that leaders get timely, accurate feedback about their performance as leaders. But, because of the inherent barriers, leaders may get little quality, actionable feedback. The result can be inconsistent, highly variable leadership.  Some leaders naturally are very effective at what they do.  Some leaders are successful in some situations, but don’t know what contributes to that success.  When the situation changes, their effectiveness disappears yet they don’t know why.  Other leaders, many with great potential, just whither without the feedback needed to improve.Fortunately, the challenge can be resolved.  An effective, 360-degree feedback process can provide leaders with timely, accurate actionable data.  Further, the data can be anonymously gathered from the perspective of those being led. We have been helping clients build 360-degree feedback processes since 1990 (long before most people had even heard of, or thought about, collecting such feedback).  We have standard, off-the-shelf, well-tested survey instruments.  We also help our clients develop custom surveys to fit their specific needs.  If you’re interested in 360 Feedback for yourself or for your organization, contact us . We can provide you samples of our survey instruments, feedback reports and feedback guide.  Then, we can talk about your specific needs. Intrigued by what you’re reading? Download our white paper on converting strategy into execution and learn more about us by visiting our website . WhiteWater International Consulting, Inc. helps organizations understand the challenges they face and helps enterprises achieve and sustain outstanding performance through unleashing the passion and capabilities of its people. Because an organization is only as good at the people who power it.

The Business Challenge: Navigating Perpetual Whitewater All organizations today are in a state of perpetual whitewater. Change is constant. New Challenges lurk around every bend in the river. These challenges include: Rapidly changing customer and consumer preferences; A competitive landscape which can change almost daily and may often come from an organization’s own suppliers and customers; Technology changes which can completely alter the sources of competitive advantage overnight; Seemingly conflicting needs to radically improve the value provided customers –through better service, more rapid turnaround, higher quality, mass customization of products and services – while stripping out every possible cost; The need to have a highly productive, highly skilled, constantly improving mobility workforce, while carefully managing compensation costs and maintaining flexibility in employment levels; Providing ever faster response times to customers while eliminating the costs of inventory; and The challenge of acquiring and developing the depth of leadership talent necessary to guide the boat through the rapids. The most severe rapids can quickly swamp even the best positioned organization.Companies that are unprepared for the challenges are perpetually at risk in this environment. Even when organizations think they are not in the rapids, conditions can change quickly. And, the river is infinitely long. What seems certain and secure today will almost definitely be turbulent and threatening tomorrow. So, who survives and prospers? The factors that drive success in the business world are the same factors which drive success on a whitewater expedition. Organizations that prosper and sustain themselves in this climate of perpetual whitewater share several common key factors: A clear understanding of where they are (their strengths and weaknesses bothinternally and externally) in the competitive environment. A clear vision of both how they must compete strategically and how they must shape their internal organization to be successful; The skills and capabilities to execute the journey. And the ability to grow new skills and take existing skills to higher levels to meet challenges as the journey progresses. The ability to identify necessary changes in systems, structures, processes and key business and people practices to move quickly from the current state to the future estate; and Leadership — The ability to engage people in their organization in the effort. Adaptability – the ability to make quick turns and decisive moves when encountering new rapids, while staying focused on the ultimate long-term goals. The one compelling difference is huge: On a whitewater expedition, almost every precaution is taken to ensure the safety of the participants. Rapids are scouted. Safety Lines are deployed. In the business world, there is no safety line. If we’re not prepared, if we don’t have an understanding of where we are and where we want to go, if we don’t have the necessary leadership or take the time to develop the talent necessary of success, failure is certain. No one is waiting at the bottom of the rapids with a throw rope to pull us out if we make a major mistake. So ultimate success and sustainability requires constant effort to chart the right course, get everyone aligned and build the capabilities necessary to navigate the rapids. Intrigued by what you’re reading? Download our white paper on converting strategy into execution and learn more about us by visiting our website . WhiteWater International Consulting, Inc. helps organizations understand the challenges they face and helps enterprises achieve and sustain outstanding performance through unleashing the passion and capabilities of its people. Because an organization is only as good at the people who power it.

It’s been more than 35 years since organizations began to embrace SMART goals. A SMART goal, which traces back to a 1981 Management Review article by George Duran, is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-Focused and Time-bound. SMART goals gained currency as part of the popularity of the management-by-objectives concept created by consultant and author Peter Drucker. They became popular for good reason. SMART is a useful way to think about the goals you create for your organization. But there’s a better, simpler approach. In this post, we’ll discuss some of the drawbacks to SMART goals. In the next, I’ll offer you an alternative. The main drawbacks to SMART goals involve the S and the A. Let’s take them one at a time. Is S for Specific or Stifling? Goals do need to be specific. The problem is…what does specific mean? What’s specific enough to guide one person, may leave another person confused and flailing. Or, it might be stifling for another. We do an exercise occasionally in our leadership training sessions. We give everyone in the group 20 minutes to go out and come back with a rock and present it to the group. When they return, we make a point of rejecting each offering. This one’s too sharp. That one’s too smooth. This one’s too shiny. We send them out again, and reject every rock on the second try. It doesn’t take long before most of the group is frustrated. What’s wrong with these rocks? You haven’t told us exactly what makes one rock good and another bad. How are we supposed to know what you want if you don’t tell us? Exactly. The problem is this: The same specific goal that provides critical guidance to the new employee is demotivating micromanagement for a veteran top performer. One size doesn’t fit all. Imagine telling your 20-year-old son, on leave from the army, “Clean your room.” That’s all the instruction he needs. He’s been professionally trained to maintain a neat bedroom. Now, go tell his 10-year-old brother, “Clean your room,” with no further instruction. Good luck with that. So, a specific goal is helpful, but it’s only the start. You need to provide the right level of detail for each member of your team. You Can’t Transform with Attainable Goals The other aspect of SMART goals we’ll take on here is Attainable. As with Specific, there’s nothing on the surface to object to. What’s the point in having a goal if you can’t attain it? The problem is that sometimes attainable goals lead to the wrong result. Sometimes, the only way to compete is to set a stretch goal that’s very difficult to attain. In fact, it’s impossible to attain, unless you fundamentally rethink what you’re doing. In the pager market of the late 1980s, Motorola was at a huge competitive disadvantage. Japanese pager manufactures enjoyed dramatically lower costs due to their significantly better production quality. At the time, Motorola measured manufacturing quality in percent (defects per hundred), while its Japanese competitors were measuring quality in defects per million. Motorola couldn’t afford to typical attainable goals of 10% improvement – it would never have caught up to its competitors. Instead, it set stretch targets to improve quality by 10 times every two to three years. At the surface, these goals were NOT attainable. The impact of these stretch goals was dramatic. Motorola had to change every system, structure and process involved in pager production and completely re-skill their team members to achieve these goals. Had they set “Attainable” goals, they would not have been able to transform the organization sufficiently enough to be successful. Setting stretch goals requires organizations to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. They demolish current thinking, motivate action and challenge everyone to change everything except the organization’s core values and principles. Because they’re so radical, they’re best used in a mix with more conventional, incremental goals. But an organization that focuses too much on making its goals attainable might miss a critical chance to transform itself. Next: If SMART goals are out, what should take their place? Intrigued by what you’re reading? Download our white paper on converting strategy into execution and learn more about us by visiting our website . WhiteWater International Consulting, Inc. helps organizations understand the challenges they face and helps enterprises achieve and sustain outstanding performance through unleashing the passion and capabilities of its people. Because an organization is only as good at the people who power it.

Leading Through Uncertainty Takes Caring & Connection With the ongoing pandemic, the war in Ukraine, an inflationary economy, the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and an uneven job market where some employers can’t find talent and others are announcing mass layoffs, the first quarter of 2023 has been rough. Leading through this uncertainty is daunting regardless of your industry or sector. But there are ways to build resilient teams and remain competitive in these challenging times. Here are some things you can do today. Hire slow, lay off slower Inflation, rising interest rates, supply chain woes and other economic pressures have some companies feeling the pinch and looking to trim costs. Cutting staff is one of the first places many will look. Not so fast. Before you embark on knee-jerk layoffs, take a beat to explore the alternatives. What other expenses can you forego before cutting human resources, which are so much more than just another line item in your budget? The costs of cutting staff go far beyond finances: it’s people’s livelihoods on the line. Treat them accordingly: with great care. Instead of showing people the door, get creative about staffing. Could you offer early retirement to people close to the end of their careers? Is there an opportunity to shift some roles to part-time work or job sharing? Restructuring pay and compensation is another option. One option is to align it more closely with results. If the company succeeds, everyone wins; if it’s struggling, everyone makes less–but at least they've got jobs. Staffing is an area where long-term thinking and a cool head pay off, and yet so much of hiring, firing, and layoffs is reactive. We saw many organizations rush to staff up coming out of the pandemic. Why should their team members suffer the consequences of management's short-sighted decisions? Every time you hire, ask yourself: am I thinking far enough into the future that I won’t have to lay people off when things get tight? If you can't forecast that far ahead, consider staffing up with temporary or contract workers or offering overtime to your existing employees. There are serious short and long-term impacts to chopping your staff to cut costs. Along with the labour loss, there’s the inevitable dent in morale among those remaining that can have profound ripple effects on your organization’s culture and productivity. Engagement is critical There’s a stat I cite all the time, and it hasn’t changed in years: only 15 to 30% of workers are fully engaged in their work. So, what about that other 70-85%? What’s the disconnect? Usually, these people feel like factors of production in indifferent organizations where they’re just trading time for money. And who can blame them? Why commit to an organization that will lay you off when times get tough? “If you're not going to be loyal to me, why should I commit to you?” goes the thinking. Why go above and beyond for an employer who won’t reciprocate with care in return? But the inverse is also true. The more committed you are as a leader and employer, the deeper the engagement will be from your team, especially in a pinch. Of course, not every company is looking at layoffs. At the other end of the spectrum are many companies that can’t find the talent they need to win. Recruitment and retention are more important than ever, especially in highly competitive labor markets. Quiet quitting, job hopping, and the so-called great resignation are all signs of discontent on the work front. The pandemic prompted people to think more deeply about what matters, and many decided work is not the No. 1 thing in their lives. Now, more than ever, employees are looking for more–including more meaning. They want to feel valued, and that their work and roles matter. Communication, caring build connection Being a leader isn't just about making prudent business decisions and undertaking management functions: it's also about relationships. When you take the time to build a bond with your colleagues and employees, you show them that they matter and are part of something bigger than themselves. Leaders are essential in creating an environment where people feel connected and engaged with their work. You can do this by providing feedback and recognition, encouraging open communication between team members, and creating opportunities for collaboration. Communication is crucial to this sense of connection. But too often, in times of stress, leaders clam up. They communicate less because they don't want to be wrong. They make the mistake of thinking that communicating simply means transmitting correct information to their teams. Communication is every touchpoint with your team, from emails and memos to town halls, meetings, and impromptu water-cooler chats. It’s less about being right and more about being present, sharing and caring. And it needs to be a two-way street. As a leader, you must create a respectful atmosphere where communication is encouraged and people feel seen and heard. When your team can safely ask questions, challenge each other, and share ideas, it fosters trust, which increases engagement, which in turn builds commitment. You see how this works? All of this is premised on a foundation of caring–truly caring–about people. Caring is your leadership superpower. It is the key ingredient for forming strong relationships, fostering trust, and creating an atmosphere of respect, empathy, and acceptance within your organization. To remain competitive in uncertain times, you need to build strong teams that are committed and engaged with their work. Follow these guidelines above, and your leadership can weather any storms that come your way in 2023–and beyond.

WhiteWater International Consulting named as Top Emerging Leadership Development Company Recognition underscores WhiteWater International’s end-to-end capabilities and sustained success in creating value for clients by driving real-world results. SAINT JOHN, NB, March 1, 2023 – WhiteWater International Consulting, a consulting firm that helps organizations better leverage their leaders to thrive amidst perpetual change, has been named as the 2022 Top Emerging Leadership Development Company by HR Magazine . The award was given to WhiteWater International as it has proven itself to be a scalable and high-performing solution that can effectively support the ever-evolving complexities of enterprise-level organizations. “Our mission is to build leaders who can help their firms survive and thrive in this world of perpetual white water,” said Sean Ryan, founder and president, WhiteWater International Consulting. “Thanks to the skill and hard work of our diverse and talented team at WhiteWater International, we’re able to continue to attract industry leading clients and partners - we’re excited to build on this momentum into 2023.” "Businesses run on Strategy-Execution-Results. WhiteWater International brings all of those together, helping leaders to make informed decisions with the most up-to-date information available. For companies that require a scalable strategy for competing in a highly changeable environment, WhiteWater International is meeting that need," said Rich Gonzales, ManageHR Magazine. Organizations have always needed leaders who are good at recognizing emerging challenges and inspiring organizational responses. That need is intensifying today as leaders confront, among other things, digitization, the surging power of data as a competitive weapon, and the ability of artificial intelligence to automate the workplace and enhance business performance. These technology-driven shifts create an imperative for most organizations to change, which in turn demands more and better leaders up and down the line. - 30 - About WhiteWater International Consulting With more than 30 years experience in helping organizations understand the challenges they face and then guiding them through the turbulence, WWICI helps enterprise organizations to achieve and sustain outstanding performance through unleashing the passion and capabilities of its people. Because an organization is only as good at the people who power it. Unleash your passion. Empower your team. Get in Gear! Media Contact Vanessa Burley VP, Communications vanessa@wwici.com

How to keep on course when everything’s fighting for your attention  Watching the U.S. Open earlier this month, I was struck, again and again, by the players’ intense focus, particularly how their eyes followed the ball through their entire shot. Slow down the footage, and you can see their attention doesn’t leave that bright yellow streak until it’s off their racquet.  There’s a lesson here for business, I thought.  Too often, we take our eyes off the proverbial ball. I’ve been doing a lot of strategy  work with clients lately, and this is a recurring issue. I keep hearing from leaders how torn their attention feels and how overwhelmed they feel by the many competing priorities coming at them. In sports, we lift our gaze (I’m notorious for this on the golf course) because our mind has already finished the shot before our club or racket has hit the ball. I think that's what happens on the (often long) path from strategy to goals to execution, too: our brain has finished the shot, and our attention’s gone on to other projects or priorities. I don’t mean this as a criticism: it’s understandable, especially in an age of instant gratification, super-accelerated expectations and complex demands.   But if you can develop the ability and systems to resist the very understandable diversions and detours that assail you daily and engage and align your team with the most critical tasks to get you to your goals, you’ll exponentially increase your odds of achieving them. And, hey, if you’ve strayed from the path from strategy to execution to results, don’t worry. Fall is the perfect time to refocus.  Strategy’s messy middle Strategy is vital. It gives organizations direction, focus, and a shared vision and goals. And it might also be one of the most misunderstood and mismanaged elements of business.  I’ve written extensively about how the first step, crafting a rigorous strategic thinking session , tends to get the bulk of the attention. And why not? Holding aspirational conversations about a desired future state is inspiring and exciting. With this momentum, the early execution of the work to move toward the goals tends to get off to a hot start.  But then months go by and the gap between strategy, execution and results starts to show. I’ll bet you’ve experienced this. The strategy binder goes on the shelf. Once in a while, you dust it off and go, “Oh, crap! We haven't done any of this stuff!” That’s a classic case of the strategy to execution to results gap.  Work and life happen, and 101 things are fighting for your attention, dragging your focus away, and, before you know it, you’re off-track. Or maybe you haven't seen much in the way of results, people are getting restless, or you just want to do something else. It’s tempting to lift your head. But that messy middle is precisely the time when it’s most important to stay the course and keep going.  Remember: results take time In our super-accelerated world, instant gratification has become practically the norm. That affects our expectations for everything, including strategies. We want to have a plan and then have it work, like, tomorrow. Remember five-year strategic plans? They’re practically unheard of now due to the incredibly brisk rate of change that makes this kind of long-term planning seem old-fashioned. Today, even a three-year plan can seem far-fetched. But of course, some goals need multiple months, quarters, and even years to be realized.  And it’s human nature, I think, to get bored if a goal is too big or too distant. It’s shiny, like a star, but how will you get to that far-off place? I often see a tendency to want to fill the gap between strategy and results… with more strategy! But what’s needed is a little patience and some mechanisms to stay on track, like guardrails on a busy highway.  Set milestones and guideposts  The key to successful execution isn’t a mystery; it’s mostly about maintaining a commitment to the things most likely to get you to your goals. This sounds easy but is very hard to execute due to the competing priorities constantly vying for your time and attention.  Breaking down those big goals into bite-sized pieces can help maintain focus. It’s the classic retort to the question, “How do you eat an elephant?”  Check your processes The best way to overcome this risk of distraction is by implementing operating mechanisms and developing a structure to adhere to your highest priorities. I think back on Deming’s total quality management (TQM), a set of management practices to increase quality and productivity, in which 80% of failures come from systems, structures and processes. They are failures of execution. But often, we blame people or even the strategy itself when it doesn’t seem to work.  Check in often Regular strategy reviews are a vital part of your MO. I can’t stress how important it is to have consistent, frequent times on your schedule, either for meetings or personal thinking time, to assess your strategy, check progress and alignment and make adjustments as needed. Here at Whitewater, we call this “ follow-up, follow-through ,” a process of intentional, ongoing communication linked to action, keeping execution on track. Be flexible Staying the course when the course isn’t working is foolish. But so is abandoning the ship when you’re not necessarily on the rocks. It’s a bit of a balancing act between staying committed and knowing when to shift. It’s about  staying agile: Be open to adapting strategies when necessary, but avoid chasing every new trend or idea.And make sure you’ve got the right metrics in place to assess how things are going. This data will help guide your course and tell you when it might be time to adjust.   Reconnect with your vision Sometimes, we need to lift our gaze, just not in the middle of the game. One of the best ways to get out of the weeds is to step back, look at the big picture, and ask (and ask often): What was your original vision for your organization and your strategy? Reinforcing your big “why?” reminds everyone of why these small steps or tasks connect to the overall plan.  ​​

Design & Execute Your Best Strategic Thinking Session Ever It’s go time! You’ve done your pre-planning and preparation . Your participants have done their pre-work. You’ve conducted customer interviews and market research. Let’s take all those valuable inputs from the prep phase and put them towards the creation phase of your strategic thinking process. And, yes, we use the term “thinking,” not “planning.” That’s because we can't really plan for the future, we can only prepare for it. In a rapidly changing world, we have no idea what's coming next or what new challenges might arise. Plans might change, but flexible and adaptable strategic priorities can pivot as circumstances shift and opportunities arise. Who to include You need the right mix of people in the room for a great strategic thinking session. Make sure everyone who was involved in pre-planning is involved. And ensure the key people responsible for executing and measuring the strategy moving forward are there, too. Who do you need to engage to create commitment and increase the likelihood of follow-through when implementing? Don’t keep the guest list confined to your leadership team. Go for a diagonal cross-section of your organization that cuts across departments and units and encompasses various levels of management right down to your frontline staff. It’s messier, but ultimately, this diversity will result in better strategy, more buy-in, and higher ownership in the final output. If you’ve got a large group, break out into small groups that report back to the whole, so everybody is a part of the conversation. If the group gets too big, it will feel too much like public speaking, and some people will stay silent. Make sure it feels like a conversation, not a public address. Session structure Strategic thinking is hard, tiring work. It’s essential to design your sessions with people’s energy levels in mind to maximize their input and not drain their batteries. We find partial day sessions (roughly 6 hours) provide enough time for rich discussion without depleting everyone. Along with ensuring you get the best out of your participants, it’s enough to build in some unstructured social time before and after the official schedule for participants to connect and share ideas. (When we lead virtual strategy creation conversations, we typically break the process into even smaller, bite-sized sessions of 2-3 hours.) Set the scene Kick things off with a review of your current state. This is where you share your people’s SWOT responses, customer interview intel, and market research. This foundational information will inform the conversations to come. Define Your Purpose A purpose-driven strategy allows people to think more broadly about the value you deliver, to keep the focus high-level and even aspirational. Spend some time near the beginning of your strategy thinking session discussing what your organization truly provides. For instance, if you're a steel maker, instead of getting locked into the idea that “we make steel,” encourage participants to think about the real value you deliver, such as “we provide the resources people need to make things.” Diverge From here, invite participants to start to share their impressions from the research. Some general questions to kick off the discussion: What markets are growing, and which are shrinking? Where are our growth opportunities? What differentiates us? What target markets do we want to be in? Where should we consider reinvesting? Initially, you want to be as open as possible (don’t worry, you’ll converge later). These wide-ranging, divergent conversations make space for big ideas to bubble up. Converge Once you’ve got a lot of great ideas generated, it’s time to focus. Ultimately, your aspirations and the opportunities you’ll pursue must align with your resources. If there’s a huge opportunity you can't take advantage of because you just don't have the human or financial capital to access it, it’s not strategic, it’s just wishful thinking. To keep the discussion broad yet focused, remind participants to consider a few key questions: How can we create unique value? Do we have, or can we develop the right competencies? Is this the best use of our capital? (Intellectual, human, financial, etc.) Encourage dissent Universal head-nodding is the worst thing you can see at a strategic thinking session. There should be a lot of different opinions. Don’t shy away from respectful conflict. You want to have the most open, wide-ranging conversation possible to get at the deep work of making choices and articulating priorities. The biggest mistake most organizations make in strategic thinking is not challenging the assumptions, beliefs, and perceptions that made them successful and underlay their current strategy. In Stall Points , Matthew S. Olson and Derek van Bever write, “you must continually articulate and stress-test the assumptions underlying your strategy because it is the assumptions that you believe the most deeply or that you have held as true for the longest time that are likely to prove your undoing.” Pivot to execution Now, it’s time to talk about how to get from strategy to results, to connect the dots between where you are and where you want to go. Based on the discussions you’ve had so far, list the top three to five strategic goals that have emerged. These should be specific. They might relate to things like market share, profitability, total revenue, product development, or service levels. Next, ask yourselves: what are we going to do to attain these? List five to seven broad actions to drive those strategic goals. For each, you’ll need a scorecard. What indicators will you want to track to know if you’re effectively executing your strategy? From each of those five seven actions, list three to five projects, creating a portfolio of potential initiatives. Prioritize and sequence the projects, whittling the list down to the highest impact projects you'll undertake. Congratulations! You’ve now got a solid strategy to drive your organization forward. Next up in our Stages of Strategic Thinking series, we will be sharing posts on: Execute: Actioning your strategy to make it real Measure: Calibrating results against projected goals Top tools: A roundup of our favorite strategic thinking tools

Customer Interviews are Strategy Goldmines One of the greatest risks of strategy work is myopia. It makes sense. For most companies, it’s a chance to turn inward and chart a collective vision and path forward. But if your strategy creation is only an internal exercise, you’re not getting input from the group most important to your success: your customers. Your customers will draw you a map: here’s where you’re at, here’s where we want you to be. Note the gap. That’s your opportunity to create a competitive advantage in the marketplace. The real home runs come when you discover an unmet need your competitors don't even know about that you can fulfill. And yet, it’s very common for companies to make a lot of assumptions about their customers or take an all-things-to-all-people approach, which is about the least strategic thing you can do. When we ask our clients when they last had in-depth conversations with their customers, almost none have. That means they often don’t know who their most profitable clients are, never mind those that are breaking even or, worse, losing them money. In most organizations, there’s received wisdom about customer choice, and it’s almost always wrong. Often, customer interviews are not part of an organization’s workflow or processes. But there are other reasons, too. There may be a reluctance to “bother” customers. “I don’t want to waste their time,” they say. “They’re busy. I don't want to annoy them.” In my team’s extensive experience with customer interviews, not only will the vast majority not resent it, they’ll welcome the chance to share their feedback. Whenever I’ve done customer interviews on behalf of clients, the No. 1 thing I hear is, “Wow, thank you for asking! Nobody else ever has.” I can’t overstate how much people value being heard, especially if they've been frustrated in the past. Top 10 Tips for Customer Interviews Not a sales call. Do not try to sell anything; this is not the time for promotion. This is all about listening, getting their perspective on their relationship with your organization, and the choice factors they most value. We’ve found that customers will open up and share stuff they never would in a sales call. The less it feels like one, the more likely they are to feel relaxed, valued, and open. Don’t squander that by going into pitch mode. Don’t argue. If your customer says something you want to correct, resist the urge to refute it. This is not the time to overcome objections. It’s time to listen. Suspend judgment. Don’t be defensive or try to set anyone right. Listen. Hard. For the majority of the conversation, you’re going to be listening. If you find you are talking anywhere near as much as your customer, you’re not listening enough. Ask one simple question (see below for a list of sample questions), then listen. Listen deeply and empathetically to their actual answers and actively listen for non-literal cues, including tone, hesitations, and word choice. Consider Outsourcing. There are benefits to hiring an outside firm to conduct customer interviews with you. Sometimes, the customer might tell us things they won't share with your internal people. Conversely, there are things that they'll say to you directly that they won't to outsiders. A combination of internal and consultant-led interviews often works best. Record it. Focusing on an interview is tough if you’re madly taking notes. Record it using voice transcription software, the voice memo app on your phone or computer, or the recording function on your video conferencing. Of course, ask your customer for permission to record. And assure them that it is only for internal use and will not be shared. They need to feel comfortable sharing their thoughts openly knowing their comments won’t be made public. Look for themes. Once you’ve done a few customer interviews, you’ll probably notice specific scenarios, patterns, problems, and even words cropping up repeatedly. Pay attention to these; they are gold. Talk to former and potential customers . Don’t limit yourself to existing customers. If you’ve lost a customer, find out what caused them to go to somebody else. If they’re a potential customer, who is their current provider? Why do they buy from the competition and not you? What might change that? Articulate your goal. What do you want to learn from your customers? It’s good to have a general focus. It may be a new product or service or ways to streamline or improve existing client-facing processes. Shape your goal and line of questions around the priorities emerging from your strategy pre-planning work . Prepare a list of questions. Don’t wing it. A list of 10 good questions will get you started. Use open-ended questions, as opposed to those that can be answered with a single yes/no. Ask for permission to follow up. Your interviews will inevitably raise new questions. Leave the door open to come back to your subjects with additional queries. Below are some sample questions for customer interviews. Tweak or add to them based on your business goals and early strategy work. Ten Standard Customer Interview Questions What problem were you trying to solve when you bought/chose our product/service? What does that look like in your business? Can you give me an example of how that was showing up in your day-to-day operations? What are the impacts or costs of this problem? What risks does it pose to your business? What factors were most important in choosing a product/service to address your problem? Could you list 1-3 in order of priority? How did you make your selection? Who was involved? What other products or services were you considering? What other products or services have you tried in the past? What was your experience with them? What do other suppliers do that you value highly? If you didn’t choose our product/service, what would you have done? What else would you value that no one is doing today? And finally, ask if there is anything else they’d like to share. It’s amazing how often this final question yields surprising answers. I’d love to hear about your customer interview experience. Let me know how the conversations are helping you create a stronger strategy.

The Three Stages of Results-Driven Strategy Creation I have a slide I’ve used for more than 30 years. My team calls it the “cloud model” because there’s a squiggly cloud graphic in the lower left-hand side labeled “current state” and another in the upper right-hand corner labeled “future state.” What connects them is your strategy. Sounds simple, right? Well….it can be. But it takes a lot of planning, focus, and the proper follow-through to make it real. A rigorous strategic thinking process has three stages: pre-planning, creation, and execution. But in our experience, most strategy projects focus on the middle section, resulting in snazzy reports that don’t generate actual results. Here at WhiteWater, we use the acronym ACE’M to outline the stages of impactful strategies: Assess : Pre-planning to ensure your strategy rests on a rock-solid foundation Create : The deep work of making choices and articulating priorities Execute : Actioning your strategy to make it real Measure : Reviewing your actual results against your projected goals After all, if there’s no change in the end, what was all that effort for? In this post, we break down the first stage of the process, pre-planning, so you can start to prepare for your most effective, impactful strategic thinking process yet. But first! Ask, who? Before you dig in, spend a little time thinking about the key participants in your strategy process. There are a couple of key groups to consider: who should be involved in the strategy creation process, and who will be needed to drive the strategy forward? Everybody involved in pre-planning should be involved in the actual strategy creation process. We like to see a diagonal slice of the organization represented to ensure not just your management but also mid-level and frontline people are there. It’s essential to have the people responsible for execution involved. Who do you need to engage to create commitment and increase the likelihood of follow-through? Step One: Pre-Planning This foundational stage lays the essential groundwork for the project, so don’t skimp on it. This research phase is the time to gather the inputs and intel that will shape your strategy creation. 1. Start with SWOTs To begin, have everyone who’s going to be involved in the creation process independently complete SWOT analyses to get an internal inventory of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Do the SWOTs from several perspectives, starting with your customers and markets: how are you performing in their eyes? Next, assess your operational performance. Third, look at your financial performance. Once the SWOT analyses are complete, get everyone together to review the collective results and discuss different perspectives. It’s a prime opportunity to get alignment but also get different perspectives out on the table. It’s also a time to push back, to ask of each statement, how do we know this to be true? Pre-planning stage is a time to take off the rose-colored glasses, to see the world as it is, not as you wish it would be . You want there to be arm wrestling, for the conversation to feel a little prickly. It shouldn’t be easy. Creating effective strategy often fails because organizations are unwilling to challenge their own existing thinking…the mental models, assumptions, beliefs, and perceptions that underlie their current and emerging strategy. This brings me to the second part of pre-planning: 2. Get your customer’s view. It’s essential to look outside of your organization to create your strategy. Remember how I said myopia was one of the most significant risks? There’s an easy way to protect against it being a big navel-gazing exercise: talk to your customers. After all, this is the most crucial group to your success. And yet, when we ask our clients when they’d last held an in-depth conversation with their customers about something other than a specific transaction, sale or project, almost none have. This is risky because, in most organizations, there’s perceived received wisdom about customer choice, and it’s almost always wrong. Your customers will draw you a map: here’s where you’re at, here’s what I need you to be. Note the gap. That’s your positioning in the marketplace. The real home runs come when your customers have an unmet need that you can fulfill. 3. Do a market scan. The third leg of the pre-planning phase is a broad-based market analysis. Look at the markets in which you currently sell and those you are considering entering. It may be new verticals or geographic areas, or new product lines. It may be a new customer group. Explore the data around potential opportunities for specific target audiences or new demographics. What markets are growing? Which ones are stable or shrinking? What’s your market share or share of wallet? What’s possible? Good market data sources include industry publications and reports or even news stories from reputable media. Economic development agencies can be very helpful. And many state, provincial, and even federal governments have valuable data. While the market analysis will vary based on your location, your company size, and your sector, in general, you’ll want to look for trends and potential growth areas. Next Steps Giving your team six to eight weeks for pre-planning is sufficient for most small to medium-sized businesses. Invest in this foundational stage to set a rock-solid foundation for strategy creation work In our next post: I dig into step 2 of the process, creating the strategy. I’ll cover who needs to be in the room, how to structure your sessions, what you can DIY, and when to bring in outside support.

In our last post, we pointed out a couple of drawbacks to the SMART goal setting formula that organizations have been following for more than 35 years. For people who have adopted our Strategy-To-Execution (S2X™) framework, our SET Goals approach provides a simple, more effective approach. Let’s set the stage: The first problem with goals in many organizations is that they just don’t exist. People perform the activities they think they are supposed to do and have no understanding of what those activities contribute to. Or, we find that the goals they do have are not connected to the organization’s strategy in any way. When they do have goals, we often find that those goals are written in terms of the activities people perform, instead of what they are supposed to achieve. For example, does setting a goal for a salesperson to “make 50 sales calls per week” really help a company? The goal says nothing about what the salesperson should achieve with those 50 calls, or how the company should benefit from them. So, organizations develop all kinds of SMART goals that don’t lead to actual results…which doesn’t seem so smart after all. Result-Oriented Goals Setting goals within the S2X framework changes the game. First, all goals are connected back to the organization’s strategy or key priorities. If the performer and the leader can’t see a direct line of sight to how the organization benefits from the goal, then the goal has to be changed. Second, setting Result-oriented Goals define first what the performers must accomplish rather than the activities they must perform. Once the goals are defined in terms of end results, the performer can identify the high-impact activities that accomplish them. So, the actions they take have a crisp, clear purpose: hit the goals. We have also found it more productive to focus on three common elements that result-oriented goals share, using the acronym S-E-T: S is for the Starting Point E is for the Ending Point T is for the Time Frame. That’s it. Where are we now, where do we want to be and how long do we have to get there? If you set every goal with these three elements in mind, your organization will benefit. Strong leaders zero in on these elements. They identify and articulate the gaps between where an organization is and where it needs to be. Then they figure out how to close the gap. Time Frame Focuses Energy and Attention The time element is critical, for several reasons. There is no such thing as a goal without a time frame. If you set a goal without one, there is still an implicit time frame: Whenever you get around to it…which effectively means, “The deadline for this goal is NEVER.” When you set a deadline, you focus your team’s energy and attention. Whether or not it’s spelled out in detail, your employees feel the progress toward achieving the goal. If the goal is to cut defects by 25% in three months, and two months in, defects are down only 8%, everyone knows you’re behind schedule – and they better pick it up. There’s a subtler point: The time frame will often establish the priorities and scope for the project. The time frame guides the triage between your existing priorities and the new ones you just added with this goal. SETting Result-oriented Goals can have a profound effect on the level of ownership team members take in accomplishing their goals. They place responsibility on the performer to achieve the end-results without mindlessly carrying out activities that don’t contribute to success. We’ve seen literally hundreds of cases across the whole gamut of organizations in which team members have taken the ownership to streamline their activities once they were clearly focused on Result-oriented Goals. One production team slimmed a 27-step process down to 8 essential steps and produced better quality. Countless sales people have dramatically altered their behaviors to focus on the most productive activities to boost sales and profits once they were clear on their goals. Heck, we recently talked to the executive of an extensive multi-location business where he said they had recently “clarified,” in SET terms, the financial goals of their company. It had been under-performing for years. When they shared where the company had been and where they needed to get to, the whole focus and sense of urgency of their leadership team changed. SET goals can be both simpler and smarter than SMART goals. Part of any great leader’s role is to define the gap between where your group is and where you want the group to be and then get the group to join you in the journey to close the gap(s). SET goals make the gap simple, tangible and easy to see. And, they give team members both the responsibility and freedom to channel their efforts to the most effective actions. That seems pretty smart! Intrigued by what you’re reading? Download our white paper on converting strategy into execution and learn more about us by visiting our website . WhiteWater International Consulting, Inc. helps organizations understand the challenges they face and helps enterprises achieve and sustain outstanding performance through unleashing the passion and capabilities of its people. Because an organization is only as good at the people who power it.

Leader as Organizational Architect, Part 1 It’s impossible for an organization to orchestrate the actions of each individual, as the situation “on the ground” changes monthly, weekly or even hourly. Impossible, and not even desirable. The organization’s supervisors and front-line workers want and need to make their own decisions in ways that they interpret to be best for the organization. To create alignment, leaders need to play a role as the organizational architect. So how do you, as a leader in the organization, ensure that those thousands of micro-decisions, taken as a whole, move the organization in the right direction? You make sure your systems, structures, processes and culture are all in alignment. They all support your strategic intent. When they do, something beautiful happens, which we’ll talk about in the next post. For this post, let’s talk about misalignment. Misalignment is often easier to recognize, in part because, unfortunately, it’s far more common than alignment. Misaligned Organizational Architecture Slows Execution As competitive strategy evolves at an ever-faster pace in response to faster-changing business environments, organizations often find their systems, structures, processes and culture aligned to an old, out-of-date strategy. Those systems, structures, processes and culture are the “nature” of the organization. As our good friend and colleague, Rick Tate , once said, “Nature bats last.” When the architecture is misaligned, people tend to default to old habits. There’s too much friction in the organization. People do what they are rewarded for, or avoid doing behaviors that are punished, even if those actions are misaligned with the strategy. As a result, their work isn’t as productive as it should be. The nature of the organization trumps its strategic intent. As a result, execution of the strategy is inconsistent, slow and unresponsive to rapid changes in the competitive environment. It’s easier to see the symptoms of misalignment than it is to identify exactly what is misaligned. For example: A supervisor in a factory resisted a change to his production line. Everyone else in the organization understood and supported the change, yet it took several months for the supervisor’s line to fully integrate the change. Why? Because, even though the company was much better off, the supervisor was concerned his bonus what going to be negatively impacted by the change – so he resisted as long as he could. A general manager in another company we worked with was asked to integrate more effectively with a sister division. He fully understood it was the right thing to do. And his bonus incentives rewarded him for doing it. “But,” he told us, “My boss has told me that I keep my job is based on how my operation performs.” Sales and service reps in another company we worked with were paid based 100% on their individual performance. The strategy of the company, once focused on simply acquiring as many customers as possible, evolved into delivering superior service to its customers. This change required those reps to coordinate with each other. But their compensation unequivocally rewarded individual accomplishment. Until the compensation changed, the behavior wouldn’t change. Why Leaders Struggle with Aligning the Architecture In each of these cases, the companies suffered from organizational friction. In each case, they tried to live with it rather than fix it, until the friction became almost unbearable. That’s understandable. Fixing misalignment often requires a fundamental shake-up in how an organization goes about its business. That’s difficult for any number of reasons: Sometimes, leaders don’t even see the friction that’s created by misalignment in the organizational architecture; Other times we’ve seen leaders who implicitly accept the systems, structures and processes that exist, not recognizing the role they could or should play in changing them. It’s a little like living next to the train tracks…you don’t hear the sound of the train anymore; yet, anyone who visits can’t miss the sound; and It can be frightening to start meddling with the systems, structures, processes and, especially the culture. As a leader, it’s hard to feel confident about a change that by its nature is unfamiliar to everyone in the organization. The benefits occur in the future while the discomfort of change will be felt today. (Another one of the short-term/long-term trade-offs we’ve discussed before.) And yet, when you are the organizational architect and align a system, structures, processes or culture that had been out of whack, the results can be as immediate and dramatic. It’s like the alignment you feel that stops your car from pulling to the left the moment you leave the repair shop. Execution of your strategy just begins to flow when your systems, structures, processes and culture are aligned to it. Intrigued by what you’re reading? Download our white paper on converting strategy into execution and learn more about us by visiting our website . WhiteWater International Consulting, Inc. helps organizations understand the challenges they face and helps enterprises achieve and sustain outstanding performance through unleashing the passion and capabilities of its people. Because an organization is only as good at the people who power it.

Leverage Your Company’s Small Size for Huge Talent Advantages Part 2 in WhiteWater’s Small to Medium-Sized Business Success Series. Big companies can sometimes feel like corporate vacuums, sucking up all the talent and resources, leaving the crumbs for small to medium-sized businesses. But in the wake of the Great Resignation, and in a very tight labor market where the talent competition is intense, savvy SMBs can use your relatively smaller size to attract and retain the best. There’s a ton of research showing how low engagement is, with most studies placing it at just 15-30% of employees in most organizations. SMBs have a terrific opportunity to lead in a way that truly engages people and attracts talent. It just takes a little focus and effort to leverage your natural advantages to shape and nurture a culture that builds employee satisfaction and engagement. It goes beyond pay. A recent Pew Research Center survey found money isn’t the only consideration for job-seekers. While 63% of workers who quit a job in 2021 cited low pay (63%) as a top reason, this was tied with a lack of opportunities for advancement. And, at 57%, feeling disrespected at work (57%) was a close third. Respondents who quit and are now working elsewhere were more likely than not to say their current job has better pay, more opportunities for advancement, and more work-life balance and flexibility. While large companies can often offer more money, better benefits, or the prestige of a blue-chip organization, a new generation of workers, and indeed many senior people who’ve become disenfranchised working for big business, are looking for something different, something more. They're looking for meaning. They want to do work that matters, to be part of a company where they can grow, and feel respected and seen. For SMBs, this is a golden opportunity to become an employer of choice. Entrenched policies and practices often encumber large companies. The large size that makes them great can also make workers feel lost and disconnected. The bigger a company gets, the greater the potential for slippage in the culture and inconsistent, even inconsiderate, treatment of its team members. Small to medium-sized companies have a much better opportunity to get it right. As Lessons on Resilience for Small and Midsize Businesses , a 2021 piece in Harvard Business Review, notes, this is an area where SMBs can shine. “With fewer layers between leadership and frontline workers and fewer corporate policies, it should be possible for managers to find tailored approaches for their teams.” Define your purpose. The pandemic made us all reflect upon what matters most, causing us to consider our values and choices. It made us painfully aware of life’s precariousness and prompted us to want to live more fully, including in our work. “Customers and consumers want to be associated with companies that are making a positive difference,” notes McKinsey’s 100th COVID-19 briefing note , from April 13. “Companies can accelerate inclusivity and sustainability by having real awareness, committing to change, rewarding the change, and providing coaching and development to make the change happen.” In Just Lead Dammit! , our proprietary leadership development program that’s based on decades of experience with hundreds of SMBs, one of the top seven factors that must align to create a motivating, engaging environment is having a cause worthy of commitment. What’s your purpose-driven ethos? Be caring. Caring is at the absolute core of what it takes to attract, retain and unleash the full capabilities of your team. It is far easier and more effective to align people to the cause when you know you care about them and their success. It allows for more effective dialogue and ever tougher conversations when they know your full intent is about helping them and your organization to be the best they can be. Further, the emotional toll of the pandemic resulted in more emotional openness, and an increased understanding of the importance of de-stigmatizing and supporting mental health. A recent story in Inc. cites a Monster survey that found that 90% of college grads think it's important that they feel comfortable discussing mental wellness at work. And 84% say companies should invest more in mental wellness resources. Create a caring culture with space for mental health conversations and resources to provide mental health care when your team members are struggling. Prioritize diversity. That Inc. article also lists diversity as a top concern for recent grads, with 33% saying they wouldn’t take a job at a company that lacked a diverse workforce, and 26% reporting they wouldn’t go to a company without women and members of other minorities in their leadership. For SMBs that want to build resilient, sustainable organizations with an engaged, fulfilled staff, you need to be intentional about articulating your values and culture. You also need to spend some time creating the systems that will make it real. Be flexible. In the move to remote work and the semi-return to the office of new hybrid models, it’s become clear that most employees value flexibility. They want to be treated like adults, not monitored like children. Flexibility correlates positively to engagement and productivity as well as retention. As the HBR piece notes, “up to 30% of office workers say that they would consider leaving their current job if not given the opportunity to work from home at least some of the time.” Invest in the technology and develop the processes, including mechanisms for communication and connection, to make flexibility a core part of your employee value proposition. Nurture your talent. As the Pew Center research and McKinsey briefing note I cited above both indicate, engaged employees want the chance to grow and advance. As a medium-sized business, effectively developing and retaining talent can ease many other challenges beyond turnover, including maintaining institutional knowledge and succession planning. You need to create systemized ways to grow your people and their careers. Build in upskilling, reskilling, and professional development. Make progress plans and check-ins part of business as usual. Not only is it a strategic way to increase your internal resources, but it also makes your team members feel valued and more connected. Giving people the tools and resources to perform and a significant role in the show are so important, they are pillars in our Just Lead, Dammit! methodology. (Along with those mentioned above, the others are shared values, responsibility and the freedom to act, accountability and, finally, passion, optimism, pride and energy.) What is your SMB doing to position itself positively to attract the talent you need to succeed? Drop a note to let us know what’s working and what you’re struggling with, and if there are other topics or challenges you’d like us to tackle in future posts.