Sherpa Alliance

Enhancing Strategic Productivity.

Our productivity at a strategic level depends upon using an integrated framework and set of tools, to avoid overwhelm and formulate a progressive work product. The test of good strategic tools is how quickly we can pick up the conversation next time from where we left off last time.

The new Rules-of-the-Road:

• These days, our strategic productivity is as crucial as our  operational productivity and, when we distill it down to its essence, strategy is conversation -  i.e. if we don’t have much conversation we probably don’t have much strategy. Actions are a part of the conversation with reality, which is talking to us with plenty of feedback, about what’s-working, what’s-not-working or what’s-missing - the only question is, are we listening, with sufficient intention, attention and responsibility-for-results?
• We must be strategically productive in navigating a journey-oriented continuum of:
  • Thinking, questions, decisions and actions
  • The past, the present and the future
  • The outer world (of such things as products, clients, markets and many other) and the inner world (of such things as team-work, culture, core-values and many other);
  • Beliefs, behaviors and results
  • Learning, aplying and achieving in parallel
  • Enroling and engaging the whole team, top-down and bottom-up, creating alignment and buy-in (Buy-in vs Alignment - which is the key?)
  • Planning-backwards-from-the-future and forwards-from-the-present
• Linking and accumulating individual thoughts, questions, decisions and actions, working in the business and on the business at the same time.

What creates Wheel-spin?

• Strategy sessions/conversations which are:
  • Too open-loop (not enough follow-on action steps and clarity of who’s doing what by when) or too closed-loop (not enough room for coloring outside the lines)
  • Too full (of diverse presentations and data) or too empty (of preparation, stimulus and dialog)
  • Too repetitive (of covering the same old ground) or too disjointed (in creating continuity with previous sessions and future sessions)
  • Too overwhelming in addressing all the different parts of our business or too under-whelming in addressing the whole of the business
  • Too "touchy-feely" (more akin to "team-building") or too "nuts and bolts" (more akin to "process-reengineering)
  • Too long-range (dreaming big and audacious) or too short-range (this year’s goals and incremental)
  • Too long-hand in transposing notes from reams and reams of flip-charts into minutes-of-meetings and spreadsheets of action lists or too short-hand in capturing the value of the conversation and commitments created
• Strategy sessions/conversations which veer off track (Dangerous Detours and Mindsets to Avoid Them):
  • Being Half-Brained (left or right)
  • Simplicity this Side of Complexity
  • Giving into the Pressure of Premature Closure
  • "Either/Or" Propositions
  • Talking Ourselves out of Planning
• Strategy sessions/conversations which don’t tap into the collective wisdom and psyche of our executive team, in an interactive and stimualating way, such that they look forward to the next session as a continuing opportunity to develop a progressive work product which is making a real difference to our prospects in the future and our organizational agility in the present.  Instead of relishing the next session as a valuable investment of their time and part of the solution to their day-to-day challenges, they dread the next session as a waste of their time and part of the problem of their day-to-day challenges.  This usually gets exhibited clearly in their preparation - are they exhibiting pride-of-ownership or are they just going through the motions?.

What creates Traction?

• An integrated framework to sustain the right mindsets and avoid dangerous detours (Dangerous Detours and Mindsets to Avoid Them), navigating a middle road of:
  • Not too tight and not too loose
  • Not too structured and not too unstructured
  • Not too pushing too much and not pushing too little
• A set of visual tools which can capture:
  • The group memory of where the conversation is upto and who agreed to do what by when, such that we can easily pick up the conversation next time from where we left off this time
  • The parts and the whole at the same time, so we can keep our heads around the macro and the micro, able to zoom-in and zoom-out without losing track
  • The detail complexity and dynamic complexity of our journey challenge with elegant simplicity
• An overall process which is developmental, as part of which the executives feel thay are learning and growing:
  • Deleoping new business acumen and strengths as individual executives
  • Developing new rapport, relationships and rigor as a team
  • Developing new capacities and capabilities as an organization and a business

The Breeakthrough Leadership Challenge

• Navigating the balance of all of the above criteria on an ongoing, sustaining and disciplined basis.
• Plodding along, loving the plateau and waging war against the anti-mastery assault from dabblers,obsessive and hackers (Dabbler, Obsessive, Hacker or Master?) - it typically takes anbout 3 annual cycles for an executive team to master taking their strategic productivity to an all-new level.
• Having the courage of our convictions that our strategic productivity helps our organizational agility in the present, which is often counter-intuitive for our team (Luck is Where Preparation Meets Opportunity) and leveraging day-to-day examples of that for it to beome progressively more intuitive for all.