Monthly Archives: June 2010

Last night my wife and I were in a skybox owned by the Boston NBC affiliate watching the Red Sox play Tampa Bay. These boxes are stocked with food throughout the game, air conditioned with a wide-screen TV and leather furniture inside, and have 20 tiered seats outside, where you can take your food and watch things al fresco. We had a great view on the third base line midway to home plate.

The stadium was packed, as was the suite, and my wife’s comments (example: she found the players looked sloppy and unprofessional with their pants hanging over their shoes, and that David Ortiz looked out of shape and fat) drew astonished stares from the suite’s usual habitués.

In any case, the game was a scoreless tie in the fifth, when Boston managed to get runners on second and third with two out, and who walks to the plate but Ortiz, who’s the designated hitter (my wife is not inaccurate) and batting about .250. The crowd goes wild and Tampa Bay does what opposing teams do in trouble—they call time out, at which point the manager and every infielder converge on the mound. There are seven people there, which are six more than it takes to write Hamlet, compose music for The Lady Is A Tramp, or fly a billion dollar jet fighter.

Everyone in the ballpark knows the strategy being discussed: First base is open with two out. Throw Ortiz four awful pitches. If he swings, which he’s been known to do, fine. If he walks, who cares, because then you have a force at any base and Ortiz isn’t going to hurt you hunched over first base.

The umpire finally breaks up the convention, everyone returns to their places, and the pitcher winds up and throws the baseball. Ortiz promptly hits it 400 feet into the right field stands. The right fielder is lucky he wasn’t able to catch it, because it probably would have killed him, it was hit that hard. Red Sox 3, Tampa Bay 0 (the Sox would go on to win 8-5).

Strategy is useless without proper implementation. You can talk all day, draw fancy charts, create color-coded, 3-ring binders, invent funny acronyms, cite “vision” and “mission” and “goals” and “objectives” until the cows come home.

Nothing helps unless the people who didn’t set the strategy are able and willing to implement what the strategy requires.

That’s why consultants are even MORE valuable in assisting with implementation post-strategy, why so many strategies fail, and why anything looking out more than two years might as well be a horoscope. Make sure you include these arguments—and value—in your options and your fees.

Because no matter how good the right fielder is, he can’t catch anything screaming ten feet over his head at 100 miles an hour.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

I was sitting in the truck whiling away my time as my wife shopped for flowers to plant. We have six acres, and we’re running out of planting room. But that’s another story.

It was too hot for the dogs to be with us, so I was taking in the surroundings, and became fascinated, as usual by the strange equipment and vehicles the nursery had on hand. (My son and I once laid plans to steal an asphalt reclamation machine at night and drive it for a hundred feet, and I’m constantly offering the fire chief here a chance to drive the Bentley if I can drive the pumper or aerial truck, so far to no avail.)

One of the nursery’s gorgeously gorgonesque machines was ingenious. It was a loader (technically a New Holland skid steer loader, which my technical genius team should be reproducing here somewhere) designed to operate in tiny spaces. The only way to get the front shovel to lift high enough was to put the other end of the mechanism all the way in the rear, and place the driver up front just behind the shovel! The action was right in front of the driver, but the power was way behind, with the driver in the midst of the action.

This innovative design struck me as wondrous, and I began to think of how it could be applied to my work, and what I teach, and how I coach. And then it hit me.

Many of you have trouble coordinating projects. Some of you actually tell me that you have too much work (no discretionary time, hence, no real wealth). Others have (GASP!!) turned down business.

So here’s the remedy for your healthy work loads: Work from the front. Have the client do a lot of the heavy lifting from the rear, before you even lift the shovel. In other words, set up your projects so that they are officially underway while the client sets the stage and the culture, and you don’t have to show up until much later, when your schedule permits. Examples of what the client can do early while paying you:

• Create schedules for interventions such as focus groups.
• Assemble a steering committee or stakeholder team.
• Develop documentation and historical information.
• Perform an internal survey.
• Request client’s customers’ approval of their involvement.
• Choose a pilot or starting area.
• Inform and involve key employees, management, board.
• Create liaison and involvement with unions.
• Have your subcontractors visit and observe.

After this work has begun and produced results, you can begin your direct involvement, site visits, or whatever. There’s no reason why you have to be available and on site from the time the proposal is signed.

Keep the power behind you. You do the steering.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.