Focus Your Strategy for Success

Copyright (c) 2011 Willie Horton

I was once a banker! Something akin to being a leper as far as many people are concerned these days. But, in fact, I was headhunted by a bank because I knew nothing about banking! What I did know was how to energize and transform businesses. And the bank in question needed transformation – it had done the same thing for over six decades and, on the basis that nothing stands still, it was sliding backwards into the abyss... and fast. My task was to change the way the bank behaved, broaden its market focus, transform the way it viewed the whole idea of profitability, make it profitable and sell it. My approach was simple – too simple for the Board. I presented them with a document that painted a picture of the bank they wanted and I deliberately excluded financial projections! “What kind of plan has no five year projections?” they enquired exasperated. “The kind of plan that focuses the mind!” was my reply.

A great deal has been written on how great businesses move forward on gut instinct and how so many bad business decisions are borne out of over analysis. Think about this. Take a close look at the word 'analyse'. The first four letters are a giveaway! This is the part of their anatomy that accountants talk and look through! Don't worry, it's a joke - I started life as a practicing accountant - but I'm getting over it!

Seriously, seventy years research in psychology has determined that the normal mind is all over the place, is almost incapable of achieving focus. And fifty years psychological research in the field of team dynamics proves that the senior management teams of almost all organizations are dysfunctional. This should come as no surprise if the majority of the team players are normally-minded. It's really simple in the end. It's simply not possible to get anything new out of normally-minded people unless and until they're excited and turned on by a real live feeling and vision of what it would be like for the business to be a spectacular success. The normal mind needs an abnormal amount of focus to achieve anything worth talking about.

Let me give you two contrasting examples of how two very different companies went about turning their people on. I got a 'phone call from a bank - not the other one! - a few weeks ago. For reasons that are about to become obvious, it's probably better if I don't name them. I was told by the bank's Director of Strategy that the bank was haemorrhaging customers to its competition because "there is no concept of customer service here at all". The caller informed me that the Bank's Board had developed a mission that put customer service at the centre of the bank's strategy - but this 'customer service culture', as it was described to me, simply wasn't happening. When I investigated what encouragement the Board had given the organization to behave in a new way, I discovered that the Board's efforts all boiled down to a mission statement that said - and I quote - "we will exceed our customers' expectations, by providing a delightful and memorable service experience." What's the point in saying something like that to a group of people who don't give a damn in the first place?

Contrast that with a small fledgling company that was trying to establish itself, some years ago, in a highly competitive and already crowded market. This small company only had one mission - to crush the then market leader. Do you think that such a challenging goal might focus the mind? Is it possible that this small team of people were on a mission - as compared to simply physically turning up for work? The market leader as Adidas - the fledgling was Nike!

The subconscious needs to be turned on. The subconsious mind, at its most powerful, is open, excited, focused and determined - just like a young childlike mind. And children are most focused by exciting things. The normal state of the adult mind, however, lack's focus, lack's get up and go, lack's excitement. If you want to achieve the spectacular in and for your business, you're going to have to give everyone an idea, a mission, a goal that they can actually get excited about. Otherwise, forget it. Your business might be successful - of course you'll be comparing your success to the pathetic performance of all the normal crazy competitors that think that they're a success - remember, they're mad. So don't give yourself an Oscar for that kind of performance.

You must be different, extravegant, outrageous. A few weeks back, a group of business leaders asked me how you'd recognize the difference between true gut feeling and what could be described as conventional wisdom (which is, by the way, a contradiction in terms!). Real gut instinct is swashbuckling, brave, outrageous, bold, daring. Throw away the management manuals - if the last few years of economic turmoil have proved anything, they've proved that the old way of managing is broken. Forget your MBA courses - it's impossible to become extraordinarily successful when you've been taught by normal crazy people in a lecture room.

Sit yourself down and consider what it would be like to have arrived, to have achieved your strategic goal. Consider how you and your key players would feel. What would they be driving? What exotic location would you go to for holidays? What sort of special celebratory corporate event would you organize - what would it look, feel and sound like - to reward everyone for a job spectacularly done? What would people come up and say to you at business conferences? How would your friends in the tennis club look at you? How would you feel about yourself?

These are the things that excite the subconscious mind. And if you don't manage to focus your subconscious mind's attention, you will never achieve anything beyond the norm.

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