Two Ways to Overcome the Pipe Dream Problem
Ivory-tower-leaders mastermind their own demise when they craft strategies and plans without considering the talent on the team.
Your dreams are doomed
if the horses in the barn can’t pull the wagon.
In, “Stop Selling Vanilla Ice Cream,” Steve Van Remortel asks,
“Can you name one aspect of your business
that strategy or talent won’t address?”
Organizational challenges can be solved by:
- Improving strategy.
- Optimizing talent.
One without the other, however, is a disaster.
Steve’s Five Fundamentals of Strategy and Talent
- Differentiation. Make your differentiation so clear your customers will choose you over your competition and pay you more when they do. Stop selling vanilla ice cream.
- Tangible value. Don’t just say you’re the best – prove it.
- Talent management. Identify, select, develop, and retain the talent that’s able to execute and deliver your competence and plan.
- Tactical/Department plans. Develop and execute action plans that work “on” the business in each department.
- Plan execution. The journey doesn’t end with the completion of a plan; it’s only the beginning! Create a culture of discipline that focuses on accountability.
Questions:
- What makes us most different from our competition?
- How can we let customers understand and appreciate the value we bring?
- Where can our current talent take us?
- How can we enable talent to create the future?
- What’s the execution plan?
Getting started:
Steve believes the process of improving strategy and optimizing talent begins by building a team that can guide you through current challenges into the future. His book comes with a code to access free online behavioral style assessments to aid formation of strategy making teams.
Follow Steve on twitter: @stopthevanilla
What are the core components of organizational strategy?
How can leaders successfully optimize talent?
Dan,
Thanks for a great post. I’ve been working on my own version of this message in my practice and blog for quite a while. I encourage three things to find what can go right on a project:
1. Balance project management focus on scope, schedule, and budget with equal focus on organizational and personal growth. Include growth in the project scope.
2. Imagine perfect outcomes (like going beyond vanilla in Steve’s words). Consider the outcomes in defining project scope so that the project contributes to where you really want to go.
3. Make the journey as important as the destination. This considers how we build people up as we go rather than exhausting them to achieve project scope within constraints. Achieving the outcomes and growth expected from the investment always goes beyond the project. The journey should be one people want to continue.
Since I’ve been reading your blog the last 8 months or so (and writing mine) you constantly help me clarify my message and give affirmation to what I’m trying to do to help deliver successful projects. Thanks.
Glenn
Hi Glenn,
I’m thankful to see your insightful comments and today’s affirmation.
I’ve often neglected personal growth – working “on” the business – when I dream or create strategy. Such a foolish thing to exclude if we believe talent executes strategy.
YOu also challenge me when you say make the journey as important as the destination… it’s so easy to fixate on goals.
Powerful comment. Thank you
Hi Dan,
Thank’s for a great post. This must be one of the more important issues when it comes to “why good strategies fail”. There are many good strategies that misses out on the capabilities (talents) needed in the organisation in order to execute it, so the strategy falls flat. I have seen this downward “saw tooth” development in companies that say. “Now we’re going to do it!” with agressive budgets attached but does not understand the required competenses the organisation need in order to, actually, get it done.
Best regards
Jonas