I’m on vacation this week.  But Happy Holidays to one and all.

Many of you are thinking about planning for next year.  so here’s my one thought for you:

• Be clear on why you are planning.  How you plan should be driven by the questions you are trying to answer.

Small and large companies do planning with radically different approaches.  Here are some of casual observations about the type of work I see in the planning of different size organizations:

Large companies have major issues that are unique to scale.  While setting direction is important, it tends to occur in closed rooms with top leadership and perhaps the help of a few strategic planning staff.   Although  the amount of energy put into planning across a large organization adds up to a significant amount (I recently worked with a $10B U.S. retailer who estimated that it cost $5mm to develop the annual operating plan), the vast bulk of the time is on administrative vs. creative activities.

Small companies, when they plan, spend a great deal of energy on identifying specific, tactical issues and solutions.  Little time is spent on analysis and research.  Virtually no time is needed for scale related issues of communication, coordination, etc.

Note in both large and small enterprises, time does not allow for a great deal of creative thinking around direction setting and solving broader problems.  Tactical solutions tend to evolve out of ongoing management so the planning gap is much more around ‘are we doing the rights things in the best way possible’.  More on this in the next post.

In the past year, almost every client and prospect I’ve gained has been through perfectly random events. One came as the result of my being quoted in the local newspaper in a negative article about a decision a non-profit Board of Trustees made. A Board I sit on. An old acquaintance saw the article and gave me a call about an opportunity. Another came when a driver in the school car pool that my daughter is in made an offhand comment that she is starting a business on the way to school one day. My daughter mentioned that I help people start businesses and walla, another client. I could keep going here but in almost every serious prospect this year, the opportunity came as a result of activity in my life and being OUT THERE. Not as a direct result of planned marketing of my business.

In working with clients, especially in startups, I notice that the thing they often do least is get out there into the wild. These people are passionate, they have a wonderful and creative idea, and they spend oodles of time figuring out how to make it, and they talk with friends. Friends are wonderful. Positive. Validating. Comfortable. They rarely tell you that you are all wet. They are not comfortable challenging you. Get your product in front of a buyer. Then, you find out the truth. You learn and can correct course. Or commit harder. But importantly … do this before you think you have it all figured out.

For new companies with new ideas, you can think you know the market but until you are out there tripping, falling, stumbling about, you won’t learn enough and get enough exposure to win. Be a bowling pin. Knock blindly around and you’ll still score some points.

I was  in  NYC last month and, well, this was hard to miss on the side of a bus.

“Come and celebrate Black History Month with a Heineken”.

Forgot to post this until my return and now find that Colbert noticed the same ad.

Does this come under the theory that there is no bad publicity?

I’ve always found that many of the most astounding people I’ve had the opportunity to work with are inordinately critical of their own work.  I’ve also found that an amazing number of the least effective workers and leaders that I’ve seen have little outward self doubt.  I’ve always attributed the discrepancy to the notion of self awareness.  Those who are able to see their own faults and the areas their work can improve in take action to learn and improve.

Then I stumble across this from Peter Bregman: How to escape perfectionism.  Simple version: it’s doing that counts, you do what you have confidence in, perfectionism get’s in the way of doing.  Ergo: self doubt is unproductive.

I think there is a large difference between perfectionism and self doubt.  I’ll agree that perfectionism can sometimes get in the way … but the ability to ask hard questions about one’s own performance is a quality I’ll continue to seek and value in those I work with.

Three years ago I worked in the IT organization of Starbucks and was increasingly amazed at the amount of formalized planning it took to make progress, build teams, start initiatives, get investment approved, etc..     Lately, I’ve found myself working with a number of smaller, start up companies and am equally amazed at the lack of disciplined planning and follow through, even on the smaller initiatives.

These are all smart, experienced, professional folks with great product or service ideas who are working hard to build their organizations and are generally good team folks.  What I’m seeing is a mix of:

• Willingness to build a plan for execution but virtually no reference to the plans once created
• Willingness to build a tactical plan but no time on the strategic
• Agreement that a plan should be built followed by no follow through

Small organizations activities tend to be cut to the chase, get to action quickly.  Small organizations are good at that.  They  need to be nimble, adaptable, willing to adjust.    In addition, leaders of small organizations are generally very connected to the work on the ground and the customer.  They know from their direct hands on knowledge,  where the pain points and opportunities are.  Small teams communicate regularly, directly, and have a trust in each other and that they are in sync.

So what’s the problem?  Only that I see the predictable results of poor planning: lack of alignment amongst team members, slipping milestones, inaccurate execution, etc.  Followed by another round of the same planning/no planning combined with a ‘yes, we need to plan more’.

There are multiple reasons for this:

1. What’s easiest to see is that small businesses are often buried by the need to solve the next problem.  NOW!  House on fire always trumps planning
2. People who have new business ideas and are willing to take a leap of faith into a new business world are rarely great project leaders or even project members.  Creativity and salesmanship are not project or business planning mastery.
3. Small and new organizations are action oriented.  Teams and organizations form but do not take the time to build teams and relationships.  Action trumps relationships.
4. Teams take the time to set direction quickly.  Simple plans replace well considered direction across critical business areas.  Bullet point alignment is not common understanding.
5. Opportunities, newest information from trusted advisors, customer feedback, all conspire to take small organizations off course as they chase the next idea.  Moths to a flame.

What to do here?

1. Persistence.  Planning leaders and those responsible for direction setting and tracking need to stick with it.  And stick with it.  And stick with it.
2. Communication: Figure out how to keep everyone engaged with planning or tracking and always follow through.
3. Quick wins: Find some areas that are ‘hottest’ issues and use planning/follow through to help guide the problem to resolution.  Use these wins as demonstration cases.
4. Keep it simple.  Less is more.  Throw out your PMI certification and MBA.  Know that you must address the essence of planning in concrete, simple, meaningful, easy to digest chunks.
5. Focus on the most critical only.  Don’t plan everything.  Plan what’s front and center or most critical only.  Not all tasks and activities and business issues are equal.

My family just came back from a long trip to Japan. Along the way, we were helped by an infinite number of Japanese people from hotel staff to random interactions in train stations and on street corners. Our experience was that Japanese people do not just answer your specific question but take accountability for your success. If they are not absolutely convinced that their response is enough, they just keep on helping. Examples included walking several blocks with us, getting on a subway and traveling a few stops with us, and finding others who spoke better English to help us as out. Whatever it took.
We were not only helped but made to feel as though they were genuinely pleased to be able to assist us. Never once were we made to feel as though we were burdensome, rude for not speaking Japanese, or ignorant for having stupid questions. Staff, sales people .. everyone .. made us feel welcome and that they were so pleased that we cared enough to visit their country or their store or their Ryokan.
I can only contrast this with the type of customer service often, if not typically offered by U.S. firms. Personal recent experiences:
• My wife spent 2 ½ hours on the phone with a variety of Adobe simply trying to understand what product version she needed for an upgrade and subsequently, how to get a refund that everyone agreed was due her. No-one seemed to care and no-one had any authority. [Update: received e-mail from Adobe saying her case is now being reviwed and if approved she would see a refund in 1-2 months].
• I spent over 10 hours of time over six months with Qwest service staff trying to get a billing problem straightened out (can someone please talk to their product managers about how to offer simple pricing that isn’t unique by every marketing promotion they can dream up?)
• Classmates.com makes it, as far as I know, impossible to remove yourself from their incessant e-mail haranguing (why, oh why, did I give them my e-mail address to start with?). Finally, after diving deep into their website (rather like searching for a contact lens in an ice filled swimming pool), I found a form that seemed to be what was needed. Needless to say, I’m still receiving their e-mails. Do they really think that after years of irritating me, that I’ll actually buy something from them or even visit their site?
We will stop being customers of these companies as soon as we can. Now .. if we’d had a Japan like customer experience? I begin to understand why Amazon paid $900M for Zappos.

Their reaction? To unbrand a store in Seattle to be a local coffee shop that is ‘inspired by Starbucks’ (Starbucks unbranded store explanation). My brain needs a beer summit to contemplate the epistemology of this. By unbranding and naming it after the street it is on, they are hoping to regain neighborhood feel and authenticity. If this works, they say they will roll this model out globally. Ouch.  Somehow, Starbucks has confused global consistency of brand and experience with independent coffee house values.

Recently, I’ve been lending a hand to BAN, one of the world’s leading NGO’s advocating for the appropriate disposal of electronic waste.  E-waste is ugly, poisonous stuff that constitutes 70% of the toxic waste entering U.S. landfills and the regulatory environment in the U.S. is the most permissive in the industrialized world regarding it’s disposition.  Much of our waste ends up overseas in 3rd world countries where it is burned, dumped, ripped apart by hand, and poisons entire landscapes.

The immediate focus of BAN is on properly disposing of e-waste and driving the cost of disposal upstream towards producers.  However, this will eventually result in companies being motivated to design products from ground up to be greener, with re-usable components, last longer, and be easily recycled.  In other words, while currently focusing on a negative (large quantities of poisonous waste), the long term effect will be higher quality products  that use less toxic materials in their production.

BAN is led by Jim Puckett, who is perhaps the person most responsible for bringing the issue to the attention of policy makers around the world and driving regulatory change.  His imprint is everywhere in law, Sixty Minutes exposees, court cases, and international treaty.  BAN is a three person organization, operating on a shoestring.  And they are changing the world.

The power of the NGO activist organization is that they operate without constraint in terms of their ability to focus on an issue and do whatever it takes to get vested interests committed to addressing it … even knowing it will be painful.  Are you open to the power of activism in your company? A company who is would see the following:

• Small grassroots groups who stridently call out the leadership on an ethical or business issue will be listened to and a thoughtful response provided with feedback solicited (‘did we address your concern’)
• Leaders communicate about people’s ability to drive change in the company beyond their job description with not just your words but your actions such as thank you’s, recognition, and compensation for ideas.
• There are products, services, and recent changes in company direction (big or small) directly due to grassroots people or groups … and everyone knows it.