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Intentional Leadership — D5, W2, M10 — Strategy

Another week gone by…the air is crisp in the mornings, soft in the evenings, and the leaves are turning amazingly beautiful colors. I love this time of year! I hope wherever you are on this Friday morning, you are surrounded by beauty as well.

It’s been a full week for me, with several coaching and mentoring sessions, working on developing some meeting/workshop agendas and materials, and planning for some lessons I will teach next week around self-awareness, intentionality, influence, connection, communication, personal styles, conflict resolution, and relationship building.

I will spend time over the weekend continuing to prepare for those upcoming lessons/workshops, as well as having fun with my family attending a local annual festival. In addition, I need to read John Maxwell’s newest book: Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn. John will officially launch this new book next Thursday, October 10, via two live webcasts (one at 4 PM EDT and one at 9 PM EDT), accompanied by special guests, Dave Ramsey and Nick Vujicic. You are welcome to attend; you don’t want to miss it! Here’s the link (webcast.johnmaxwell.com).

I will be following up on the webcast by offering a Mastermind Group (facilitated in-depth study) on the book, so if you’re interested in joining us, connect with me via comment, email, phone, or Facebook.

Further, my weekend will include some time and focus invested in the three areas of discipline I’ve committed to work on through the Maxwell Plan for Growth: exercise – yoga at least three times per week; writing – a minimum of 15 minutes a day, in addition to this blog; and getting more intentional about budgeting.

What are you doing with your weekend?

Whom do you need to connect with, nurture, spend time with?

What do you need to do to nurture yourself?

What can you do to prepare yourself for a great start to next week?

What can you do to set yourself up for success in the coming weeks and months?

Enjoy your weekend; I hope however you choose to spend it, you’re intentional about it.

“See” you Monday!

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Intentional Leadership — D4, W2, M10 — Strategy

I first heard this story during the Chick-fil-A Leadercast in May 2012, and find it, again, in the Intentional Leadership booklet we are following, developed by Giant Impact.

It’s the story of Andy Grove, long-time CEO at Intel (by the way, Andy has a fascinating personal story; if you aren’t familiar with it, I encourage you to do a little research on him). There was a point in time when Andy asked these questions:

If a new leader walked into your role today with a fresh perspective and a full mandate to make changes, what strategic shifts would he or she make? What insights would be gained as he or she talked to your customers, employees, suppliers, and consultants?

It’s an interesting exercise and you may be quite surprised at what you come up with — and the freedom you feel when you give yourself permission to step outside your normal mode of operation and look at your world from a different perspective.

As you ask yourself these questions, and imagine the answers, note the responses in your journal.

Then, explore what might be keeping you from making the necessary changes? Would it be actual barriers, self-imposed constraints, or self-limiting beliefs?

What steps do you now need to take to ensure you are really listening to your employees, customers, suppliers, and consultants? How can you maintain that listening posture and incorporate what you hear into your planning.

Choose one change to start with, and move forward.

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Intentional Leadership — D3, W2, M10 — Strategy

I recently looked at a book called Essential Questions. It’s focused on school-aged children, and how we can teach them the essential questions that drive them to do deeper exploration of ideas, concepts, and lessons; the questions that get them in the critical thinking mode. I appreciate this approach, as I believe one of the best things we can do for our children is teach them how to think and to understand that there are many ways of arriving at a workable solution for any given problem. I think we do them a disservice when we teach them there is only one path to an answer and only one way to solve a problem. I think we fail them when we teach them to merely memorize material, as opposed to seeking a fuller understanding of the context, the issues, the players involved.

So it is with strategy and running a business. Asking the right questions can be critical to the success of an endeavor. Good questions cause us to think. Good questions hold us accountable, as they don’t allow us to take the path of least resistance. Good questions feed effective strategic planning.

Today, I encourage you to spend some time developing a dozen or so key questions you can you in strategic planning to help your team / organization stay focused and in alignment with your vision and goals. When you have them written down, share them with a few respected colleagues and ask them to edit or add to your work. Then, use them the next time you do any strategic planning.

Here are some examples to help you get started:

What are we trying to accomplish?

Are our current efforts allowing us to achieve the results we desire?

How would our replacements approach our future?

Who (or what organization) is achieving the results we want? What are they doing that is driving them to success?

What ideas / actions will move us closer to our vision?

What are our core competencies and how do we master them?

Use any or all of these as your base, or develop an entirely unique set, specific to your business. As you do your strategic planning over the next couple of years, continue to fine-tune your list, keeping the ones that work well and eliminating the ones that are not helpful, then add new questions that will better serve you?

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