StrategyDriven

StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag posts on the StrategyDriven website.

Special Edition 7a - An Interview with John Leonetti, author of Exiting Your Business, Protecting Your Wealth, part 1 of 2 examines how exit planning helps business owners preserve their illiquid business wealth and achieve their post business ownership goals. During our discussion, John Leonetti, author of Exiting Your Business, Protecting Your Wealth: A Strategic Guide for Owners and Their Advisors and owner of Pinnacle Equity Solutions, shares with us his insights regarding…

• what exit planning is
• the five exit options
• identification of the best exit option given the business owner’s personal and financial readiness and goals
• the impact of taxes on exit option selection

Additional Information

Complimenting the tremendous insights John shares in Exiting Your Business, Protecting Your Wealth and this special edition podcast are the additional resources accessible from his website (www.ExitingYourBusiness.com). John’s book, Exiting Your Business, Protecting Your Wealth, can be purchased by clicking here.

Final Request…

The strength of our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. Please consider voting for us on Podcast Alley by clicking here. Casting your vote for the StrategyDriven Podcast improves our ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, helps us grow our community.

Thank you again for listening to the StrategyDriven Podcast !

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John Leonetti, author of Exiting Your Business, Protecting Your Wealth, is the owner of Pinnacle Equity Solutions, an exit strategies firm specializing in exit strategy design and execution services for advisors and their privately held business owner clients. He previously served as a Financial Advisor with Smith Barney and was an adjunct professor at Suffolk University where he taught Private Finance to MBA students as well as Certified Financial Planning courses to undergraduates. To read John’s full biography, click here.

Nathan A. Ives is a Strategy & Operations Manager at Deloitte Consulting LLP, a StrategyDriven contributor, and co-Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over fifteen years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at numerous Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Popularity: 13% [?]

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Some pictures are truly worth more than a thousand words…

At StrategyDriven, our goal is to provide you with actionable strategic business planning and tactical execution tools that support achievement of the next level of business success. We recognize, however, that some concepts are more easily understood if they are seen rather than simply heard or read.

And so, coming soon in 2009, StrategyDriven contributors will launch the StrategyDriven Podcast - Video Edition.

 
Like our articles and audio podcasts, these videos illustrate the best practices that help create a clear, forward-looking business strategy translatable to the day-to-day activities of all organization members. Through the power of video, StrategyDriven Podcast - Video Edition episodes will go one step further; bringing together several best practice concepts to paint a complete picture optimized business processes and practices.

So, stay tuned for the StrategyDriven Podcast - Video Edition, coming soon in 2009!

Popularity: 27% [?]

All too often, strategic planning coordinators are frustrated by an inability to coordinate critical meetings such that all required individuals are able to attend. While strategic planning should be a high priority for all executives and senior managers, so are a great number of other tasks. To ensure the needed executives and managers are available, thereby making the most effective use of their time, it is important to schedule these critical meetings far in advance. By using strategic planning calendars, coordinators will have the prerequisite insight to schedule meetings far enough in advance to avoid conflict with other priority gatherings.

Strategic planning calendars often exist for long-range, annual, and quarterly/monthly meetings. Meetings occurring weekly or more frequently should be set up on a recurring basis, often at the same time each week, for optimal planning purposes. Activities associated with the three strategic planning calendars include such items as:

• Long-Range: vision and mission validation, long-range objective goal setting, strategic resource and long-range budget projection development, long-range plan development/renewal
• Annual: annual executive offsite retreat, annual goal setting, resourcing, and budget development, ongoing initiative validation and new initiative development, annual plan development, Board of Directors meeting (plan approval), annual shareholders meeting
• Quarterly/Monthly: initiative progress/status reporting, state of the business reviews, market and competitor updates (may be part of the more routine meetings depending on the organization’s completive landscape), Board of Directors and committee meetings/updates

These calendars should exist at each level of the organization conducting business planning activities. Scheduled meetings should be coordinated between organizational levels such that subordinate groups meet first and report results to associated senior groups at their subsequent corresponding meeting.

Once identified, each strategic planning meeting should be assessed to ensure only the participants required to ensure an efficient, successful outcome are invited. These meetings should then be scheduled far enough in advance to avoid significant conflict with or the need to work around other important prescheduled events. Using strategic planning calendars in this way will help ensure the right people are available for the organization’s important strategic planning meetings.

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Nathan A. Ives is a Strategy & Operations Manager at Deloitte Consulting LLP, a StrategyDriven contributor, and co-Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over fifteen years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at numerous Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Popularity: 34% [?]

“Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.”

Thomas Jefferson
President of the United States of America (1801 - 1809)

Conflict in the workplace is a fact of life. We are all human and, whether it is intentional or unintentional, conflicts with others will arise. How you handle conflict says a lot about you. A person who keeps their cool is more likely to be respected than one who looses it when wronged by another.

Reacting to conflict by turning defensive, raising your voice or being condescending or insulting in any way, will project the image that you cannot rationally handle difficult situations. Think of handling a conflict with an individual the same as you would handle a drop in sales, loss of production on the assembly line or a costly engineering defect. The way you conduct yourself in a personal conflict is a reflection of how you will conduct yourself in any one of these other situations. Your potential for advancement may be affected as will the respect of your peers and subordinates.

So how do you avoid this pitfall? There are four basic rules of conflict management that will keep you from reacting to conflict in a way that will only hurt you in the long run. They are:

• Pause to analyze the situation
• Consider whom you need to convince
• Weigh the outcome of your action or inaction
• Make a smart decision

An Illustration

The application of these rules may be best illustrated by the following story:

Larry, a consultant at a widget manufacturing plant was given the task of documenting the widget making process from beginning to end. He finished his first draft of the material and sent it off to Kiel, the floor supervisor, to review and sign off on the documentation.

A week had passed and Larry had not received a response from Kiel, so he sent a polite e-mail to remind Kiel that the document needed to be reviewed and the due date was approaching. Just a minute later, Kiel sent Larry an e-mail that made no reference to the previous two Larry sent, but simply stated that there had been a change in procedure so that step 3 had been eliminated. Realizing that Kiel could not have reviewed the original material in the minute that had elapsed between his and Kiel’s e-mail, Larry replied by saying, “I will eliminate step 3 just as you said. Please review the rest of the material that I sent you and let me know if there are any other changes you would like made.”

After a few more days had passed with no reply from Kiel, Larry followed up with an e-mail stating, “I have made the change you requested by eliminating step 3. Are there any other changes you would like me to make before finalizing this document?”

The next day, Larry received an e-mail from his manager which read: “Kiel said that he told you to eliminate step 3 in your document and you did not. The material he forwarded to me still includes this step. Please explain.”

Larry felt the urge to call his manager and explain to her that Kiel was an idiot who didn’t read his e-mail. He even thought of telling Kiel this directly, but instead he decided to apply the four basic rules of conflict management.

Pause to Analyze the Situation

It was apparent that Kiel did not read the e-mails Larry had sent (at least not very carefully). If he had, he would have known that Larry did eliminate step 3 and requested a review of the rest of the material before finalizing it. When Kiel finally looked at the documentation, it still contained step 3 because it was the first draft of the material.

What was worse than not reading the e-mails was Kiel’s action of e-mailing Larry’s manager directly. Mistakes happen and e-mails get overlooked, but by going over Larry’s head, Kiel had damaged the relationship they had and future projects would be negatively impacted. This could have been avoided if Kiel had simply called or e-mailed Larry and asked about the update, eliminating step 3.

Consider Whom You Need to Convince

While Larry still needed the rest of the document to be reviewed by Kiel, it was his relationship with his manager that was most important in this situation. Larry needed to reassure his manager he was not in the wrong. He also wanted to let her know he was mature enough to handle this situation in the most professional manner possible.

Weigh the Outcome of Your Action or Inaction

Occasionally a conflict will arise that can simply be overlooked. You bump into a co-worker in the hallway and they scream at you to watch where you’re going. Or your manager, clearly frustrated, asks why you haven’t delivered the monthly report yet and you reply that it was turned in two days ago, (and she discovers it under a stack of papers on her desk). In these situations, inaction is the best response. Otherwise you may either make the situation worse or appear condescending. If the situation will blow over quickly and there are no negative repercussions, it is usually best to “let it go.”

However, Larry’s situation required action. Again he needed to mend his image with his manager and he still needed Kiel to review the document. The question was, what action should he take to accomplish these goals without over-reacting.

Make a Smart Decision

This step will vary widely, based on your particular situation. Suffice it to say, if you have followed the first three rules, you have allowed yourself some time to calm down and come to a more rational decision.

In Larry’s case, he forwarded the e-mail chain to his manager with the following statements:

“I believe there has been a miscommunication. I have eliminated step 3 as requested and asked Kiel for his review of the rest of the material before finalizing it. Once the remainder of the material is reviewed and the document finalized this project will be complete.”

“On a personal note, this situation seemed to cause some tension with Kiel. Communication being key to the success of our business, I would like to ask your advice. Is there anything you would have done differently, had you been in my position, to avoid this tension?”

While Larry hadn’t done anything wrong, he was open to the possibility that there may have been a better way to communicate with Kiel in this situation. Even if there wasn’t a better way, his approach had several positive effects.

1. Larry’s manager could see very clearly from the e-mail chain that Kiel was in the wrong. However, by not pointing fingers, Larry demonstrated that he is interested in getting the job done, and not in placing blame.
2. Larry also demonstrated to his manager a desire to learn from difficult situations and he showed his ability to act calmly and rationally in such situations. Larry demonstrated that he was mature and professional, even when others were not.

The Outcome

Larry’s manager assured him that he acted correctly and that this “miscommunication” on Kiel’s behalf would be resolved.

Kiel finished the review and never went over Larry’s head again, (probably for fear of looking foolish). From that point on, whenever Kiel had a question or misunderstanding he called Larry and they always worked it out to their mutual benefit.

The moral of this story is: if you take the time to apply the four basic rules of conflict management before reacting to a conflict, you are more likely to resolve the situation and you will better your standing in the long term as well.

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Lucas D. Ives is a training consultant at Verizon Wireless and a StrategyDriven contributor. A dynamic facilitator, he excels at creating and delivering captivating training focused on the business professional. To read Lucas’s complete biography, click here.

Popularity: 37% [?]

StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve better results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag posts found on the StrategyDriven website.

Episode 25 - Frame of Mind Coaching: Journaling for Success explores the personal performance improvement process of journaling. Kim Ades, President of Frame of Mind Coaching, introduces her process of journaling; during which ones limiting thought patterns are identified and replaced with a new way of thinking that ignites significant personal and professional change. This discussion…

• reveals the impact of ones thoughts on results achieved
• examines how journaling uncovers limiting thoughts
• introduces the process of ‘trading up’ for more empowering thoughts
• identifies the added benefits of guided journaling

Additional Information

Complimenting the invaluable insights Kim shares with us in this podcast are the additional Frame of Mind Coaching materials and resources found on her website, Frame of Mind Coaching (www.FOM52.com).

Final Request…

The strength of our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. Please consider voting for us on Podcast Alley by clicking here. Casting your vote for the StrategyDriven Podcast improves our ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, helps us grow our community.

Thank you again for listening to the StrategyDriven Podcast !

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Kim Ades is President of Frame of Mind Coaching and one of North America’s foremost experts on performance through thought management. For over ten years, Kim has helped business professionals achieve exceptional results. By using her unique process of coaching through journaling, she works with clients to unveil and switch their thought patterns to ignite significant change and life transformation. To read Kim’s full biography, click here.

Nathan A. Ives is a Strategy & Operations Manager at Deloitte Consulting LLP, a StrategyDriven contributor, and co-Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over fifteen years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at numerous Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Popularity: 51% [?]