The Next Bubble

"In the end, all bubbles pop. That's what bubbles do."  

--Stanley Bing, Fortune Magazine

Supposedly at the peak of the Dutch tulip mania in 1637 certain bulbs sold for more than 10 times the annual income of a skilled craftsman. The reporting of this so-called "bubble" was first popularized in 1841 by British journalist Charles MacKay in his book, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. 

Recent examinations of MacKay's understanding of the tulip mania question his context of that phenomenon.  Nevertheless, something suddenly happened to change the price/value relationships of tulip bulbs with the consuming public.  (See graphic below)

Source:  Dr. Earl Thompson, UCLA

It's hard to see up close

Whether it's 17th-century tulip bulbs or a 21st-century global housing bust, few buyers or investors seem to have the experience or judgment to sense when bubbles are going to burst.

Why? 

One reason is that bubbles, by their very nature, are difficult to time. Otherwise more people would be on the upside of downturns. Bubbles are best understood in retrospect.

Another is that leaders tend to be wired as optimists.  Who wants to be labeled a "corporate Cassandra?"  

Also, success can be a deceptive state of mind.  If all one knows is up, it's hard to recognize the beginning of a downward slope. Warning signals go off but they're not strong enough at first to get leadership's attention. Besides, no one relishes being at the helm of an organization in decline.

Having a timely recognition of the significant change in the marketplace or regulatory environment is essential.  Transitions, not necessarily change, provide opportunities, if you know where to look. Miss the moment and a business or nonprofit runs the risk of short-circuiting its future. 

What's the next bubble?  

The cotton industry bubble already burst. A year ago it looked as though many households wouldn't be able to afford towels or clothing due to high cotton prices. Twelve months later raw material prices have fallen sharply (even with a drought) mostly due to strong global output, especially in China.   

Maybe it's the manufacturing of commercial airplanes. The head of a European Aeronautic Defense & Space Co. unit recently issued a statement denying his industry was a bubble about to pop. "There is 'no bubble' in airplane production," said Airbus CEO Fabrice Bergier.

A higher education bubble?

If one Google's the above question the search produces around six million web pages on this topic as of this post.

Dr. Mark Perry at the University of Michigan writes about higher education being an unsustainable course. Even with discounting from the "sticker price" and financial aid packages, student indebtedness hovers around a trillion dollars in the U. S. (See graphic below)

Source:  Dr. Mark Perry, University of Michigan

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, says that an education bubble exists for the same reason as the 2007-2009 housing bubble.  

In a recent interview, Professor Reynolds stated, "The government decided that too few people owned homes/went to college, so government money was poured into subsidized and sometimes subprime mortgages/student loans, with the predictable result that housing prices/college tuitions soared and many borrowers went bust."

More attention is being paid to the plight of college students putting higher education on the political agenda of the 2012 American presidential election.

Strong winds are blowing

The driving forces pushing higher education in a different direction include:

• Rising university overhead
• Disruptive technologies
• A 9% unemployment rate for 2011 graduates with a bachelor's degree
• Reduced middle-class income
• Reductions in funding from state governments 

A recent study by Bain Consulting and Sterling Partners shows a deterioration of university balance sheets. Their report indicates that the "build, spend and diversify" strategy has over-leveraged a growing number of schools. Long-term debt is increasing at an average rate of about 12% a year with a corresponding growth in interest expense.  

The findings include top-tier schools such as Harvard, Yale, and Duke. However, it's the second-and third-tier institutions that are most vulnerable, says the study. 

The termination of Teresa Sullivan in June this year as president of the University of Virginia, and reinstatement 16 days later, had to do with her supposed lack of vision to address challenges facing UVA. This was the main charge by the lead trustee, Helen Dragas, who reversed course and voted to keep Ms. Williams.

The about-face comes after a threat by Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell to replace all trustees if they couldn't resolve the matter.

Does anyone want to be a university president?

A new kind of semester

1. Before universities can come to terms with the right course of action there is a need for a "situation assessment."  Out of this analysis would come a presidential voice articulating what the institution is facing and its options.  The process includes an informed and engaged governing board in preparing for the future.
2. This type of presentation could be shared in a series of interactive conversations with faculty, staff, students, alumni, the foundation board, and major donors. All are designed to take advantage of venues on the calendar.  
3. The goal is to build awareness and trust while improving and clarifying a plan of action and its implementation.
4. Immersion in complex matters requires preparation, time, and follow-up. Focus helps avoid a "poverty of attention."   After all, why be distracted by emails and text messages when the school's future may be at stake?   
5. While there are similarities in the predicaments facing colleges, boilerplate solutions don't seem to be a good option.  Whatever is decided, depending on the assessment and resources, should be tailored to the institution as much as possible.

There's no shortage of ideas as to what might be done--including the merger option. 

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal by columnist David Wessel looks at a "technology/in-class hybrid" teaching model as a way to cap tuition.  A study by Ithaka S + R, a higher education think tank, and Carnegie Mellon University's Online Learning Initiative found that students who took an online course did just as well as those in the conventional course.

Florida is looking into the possibility of launching an all-online university.  Referred to as, "Online U," it would be the first state in the U. S. to go in this direction.  If Online U becomes reality it will be Florida's 13th university.

Reducing operating costs without losing institutional purpose, values, and for many, residential experience, maybe the immediate concerns facing administrators and trustees.  This is especially true among independent colleges which tend to be tuition-driven with small endowments.

Whether talking about administrative efficiencies, a market correction for higher education, or a tuition bubble, perhaps there is something to learn from William Shakespeare. The English poet and playwright wrote in Hamlet, "If it be not now, yet it will come. Readiness is all."

Strategist.com

© Bredholt & Co.

Gresham’s Law of Strategy: Why Bad Advice Drives Out Good Advice

Milo Jones

Visiting Fellow

Pembroke College

Oxford

Guest Post

Near the end of a seminal essay on strategic surprise, Richard Betts writes:
 
“The intelligence officer may perform most usefully by not offering the answers sought by authorities, but by offering questions, acting as a Socratic agnostic, nagging decision maker into awareness of the full range of uncertainty, and making authorities’ calculations harder rather than easier.”
 
I believe that the same should be true for corporate strategy consultants: often their job is to make long-range calculations harder rather than easier.
 
Why then, is the opposite so often true? In a world in which surprise, disruption, and the unanticipated are rife, why do strategists who promise to make calculations easier rather than harder often succeed?
 
I think a phenomenon that I call “Gresham’s Law of Strategic Advice” is at work.
   
E pluribus unum
 
As my friend Dylan Grice at Société Générale recently reminded us in an issue of Popular Delusions, Gresham’s Law is an economic term that proposes that when two currencies are in circulation side by side, bad currency – that which is debased – tends to drive out sound, pure currency.
 
Dylan summarized why: when two currencies are in circulation together, one stable and the other falling in value, consumers choose to pay for goods and services with the declining currency while hoarding the stable one.
 
Over time, only the depreciating currency is left in circulation: sound money “disappears,” and bad money drives out good.
 
While the law is named for Sir Thomas Gresham, a Tudor banker who witnessed Henry VIII’s debasement of the coinage, the phenomenon was noted as early as the fifth century BCE in Aristophanes’ play The Frogs.
 
The first strategist
 
Similarly, let us imagine two strategists have been invited to present to a Board how they would prepare a long-range (say ten-year) corporate strategy. Our first strategist might open by holding up a copy of a business bestseller from a mere five years ago, The World Is Flat.
 
He could say that when this book came out:
 
“Skype was a typo, Facebooks were paper, Twitter was a sound bird’s make, 4G was a parking spot, and Linkedin was being part of the inner circle. None of these phenomena are even in the index, and this is a book about how technology is going to change business in the future!”
 
This first strategist stresses that even without technology undergoing rapid change, complexity, uncertainty, and surprise will confront the firm in the next decade.
 
They always have.
 
This poor, naïve soul might even point out that in such a world, the firm won’t succeed by applying stale “strategic” frameworks like the BCG Matrix (which dates back to 1968), Porter's Five Forces (created in 1979), or Value Chain Analysis (introduced in 1985).
 
Anyone who has studied or done business in the last 30 years – including the competition – uses these!
 
Like it or not, this strategist might say, your firm is likely to face a world in which an integrated, adaptive, and non-predictive strategy is likely to work best. Such a strategy can be formulated and executed consistently, but the outcomes are hard to determine and impossible to quantify.
 
“At best,” he concludes, “We might use some Monte Carlo simulation tools like @ RISK to specify a range of outcomes.”
 
This strategy consultant has the intellect, experience, and integrity to admit that no amount of PowerPoint can overcome the inherent complexity, uncertainty, and surprises of the future a decade ahead.

Now the second strategist comes in

This fellow also makes the decade ahead sound dangerous. He also talks about complexity, uncertainty, and surprise.
 
But then, using the tempo and rhetorical tricks of a revival preacher, he lays out a clever, clear chain of cause and effect-based actions the Board can take that will carry the firm’s profits along a steady Newtonian “trajectory” to new heights.
 
Risks are not merely acknowledged, they are even quantified (each Risk gets a bubble on a grid whose size and position indicate some combination of likelihood and impact).
 
This fellow shows the Board hell, but then offers a clear strategic path to corporate salvation: “Use this part of the Value Chain to pull yourself into this part of the Matrix, and by 2023 you’ll be the master of all Five Forces - hallelujah!”
 
Now the board isn’t dumb.
 
The second strategist, however, has made their job easy, neat, and tidy. The company is publicly traded, and the CEO has a conference call with analysts tomorrow.
 
She knows which story she’d rather tell. And there are structural factors at work – big organizations need forecasts, even when they’re known to be wrong.
 
Kenneth Arrow, the Nobel laureate in Economics, worked as a statistician during the Second World War. When he discovered that the Army’s month-long weather forecasts were worthless, he tried to warn his superiors.
 
In response, he was told, “The Commanding General is well aware the forecasts are no good. However, he needs them for planning purposes.”
 
Look into my crystal ball--see what the future holds for you

Given a choice, the analyst or consultant promising illusory certainty is likely to carry the day with most Boards.
 
If you understand the basic techniques of Cold Reading, you’ll find them used by many strategists and prediction services who offer long-range strategies and forecasts; some substitute the Internet for a crystal ball, but the game is the same.

Dylan quoted Cicero, and so will I: “Human nature being what it is, all men prefer a false promise to a flat refusal.”
 
That is why I propose “Gresham’s Law of Strategic Advice:”
  
In a world of complexity, uncertainty, and surprise, you can bet that most of the time, bad strategic advice (predicated on clear predictions) will drive out good (non-predictive) strategic advice.

Reposted with permission.
   

Strategist.com

    

© Bredholt & Co.

Part 2: How to Give and Receive Feedback

Guest Post

Dr. Edgar Schein, Professor Emeritus, MIT 

Author of Helping: How to Offer, Give and Receive Help

When we give or receive feedback several things can go wrong because of a fundamental misunderstanding of what feedback is all about in a relationship. We have all been in a situation where someone asked us for feedback, and we offered advice only to discover that this is not what the person wanted.

We have all been in a situation where a friend said “Let me give you some feedback” and we discovered that we either could not really hear what he or she was trying to tell us or we didn’t like what we heard. Yet we firmly believe that relationships and job performance cannot be improved without feedback. And feedback is indeed necessary for any learning to occur.

So why does it sometimes not work? Because we mix up feedback with advice, suggestions, general comments, and various other conversational behaviors. I propose in this short post to give a more precise definition of feedback and some principles of how to give it and, more important, how to receive it.

Feedback Defined

From the point of view of the receiver, feedback is information that tells you whether or not you are on track with respect to your own goals. So if the person telling you something is not connecting with your own goals you will not hear it or pay attention or even be offended.

Point No. 1

If you want useful feedback, you must let the giver know what your goals are so that the information will be relevant. If you are the giver, if you want to get something across to your subordinate, for example, you should find out what he or she is trying to do before giving them information or advice.

Point No. 2

Information will only be useful if it is specific enough for you to be able to apply it. So if you are seeking feedback give the person concrete examples of your goals rather than asking vague questions like “How am I doing?” If you are the giver of feedback try to be specific with behavioral examples.

If you want to tell your subordinate “you need to be more assertive” what you might say: “In contact with your customers I see you backing off; you should stand your ground more.”

Point No. 3

Feedback works best when it is timely when it is given soon after an event when it is clear to both givers and receivers what the goal was and how it might have been accomplished better. That is when the receiver is most likely to be open to hearing what the giver has to say and when concrete examples can be given.

Point No. 4

Finally, feedback works best, i.e. is most helpful, if it is descriptive rather than evaluative.

“You should have been more aggressive when John challenged you at that meeting” might be more helpful if it was stated as “When I saw John challenge you at the meeting, I noticed that you became silent…”

That opens the door for the receiver to explain or absorb the implication. It also focuses on what the giver of feedback observed which might or might not agree with what others observed.

By making a judgment of what you should have done, you are putting yourself into a superior role. By making a descriptive observation, you open the door to learning by exploring why the receiver did what he or she did.

We want feedback to be helpful but it is only helpful if it is solicited, specific, timely, and non-evaluative.

Reposted with permission.

Strategist.com

© Bredholt & Co.

 

 

 

Keeping NASCAR On Track

Do you know your customers or clients?  Or do you just know about them?

When it comes to understanding customers, or fans, maybe something can be learned from NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Racing), even if you haven't been to the track for a while.

According to news reports, "NASCAR's popularity has stalled." In addition to dealing with phase 3 of a product lifecycle (starting, growing, maturing, declining, and dying),
NASCAR was severely impacted by the recent recession as fans pulled back from spending money to attend its races, including the signature Daytona 500 held each February. 

To try and get out in front of this problem and keep itself on the right track, NASCAR commissioned a $5 million study to find out what's going on inside the minds and lifestyles of a generation it does not know but must have for its future. 

What did NASCAR discover?

In a meeting held in Charlotte, North Carolina in 2011, which included Roger Penske, Jack Roush, and other racing team owners, NASCAR chairman, Brian France, presented a wake-up call, not just bullet points.  The comprehensive research found that:

• Drivers, the lifeblood of the sport, were too predictable
• Race teams and NASCAR were slow to embrace social media
• Track owners were not doing enough to make attending races easier
• Not enough was being done to attract Hispanics and urban youths to offset the decline of older fans

A break in the pattern

As commentator Frank Deford, wrote, "A whole cohort of our young boys--and girls--have been growing up without any interest in messing around--tinkering--with cars."   What NASCAR discovered, Deford added, is that "nobody wants to do that anymore."

It's hard to believe young adults would give up their parents' and grandparents' historic love affair with the automobile in exchange for the latest mobile phone app, yet evidently, that is the case.

"Things that can't go on forever don't," said the late Nobel Laureate, Herbert Stein.  Does this include having a dependable customer base? 

Acting

Out of this year-long exhaustive research, which included 64 hours of focus groups, and observing how fans navigate racetracks, came a decision to hire Kim Brink from General Motors as head of the NASCAR brand and consumer marketing group. Brink was part of a team involved in the turnaround of Chevrolet and Cadillac, increasing retail sales in the U.S. by 40% over the past several years.  

NASCAR is already acting on a five-year strategic plan from the Taylor Strategy study focusing on:

1. Growing the youth and Hispanic fan base
2. Reaching the next generation of NASCAR fans
3. Developing a wide-reaching digital and social media strategy
4. Building driver star power
5. Improving the at-track experience for fans

Maybe establishing customer loyalty is implied in this list but should it be explicit? 

What about your business?

NASCAR does not face an uncertain future alone. 

Changing demographics, aging customers, dissimilar values, poor service, and technology are upending businesses as diverse as retailing, dining, medical, legal, and financial services.

How people make their purchases is also part of the drama.  Just ask Best Buy whose big box design is being undone by the Internet.

While the 55+ crowd is financially worth pursuing, isn't this the time to be thinking about new market opportunities? 

Where to begin?

The "skein of thread" or clue for working through a digital labyrinth is first knowing your core values which provide an inner sense of direction. What is it you believe? What is it you stand for? What is it you're all about? 

In assessing this new external environment, begin with the marketplace, not technology.  Here are some questions from the Peter Drucker Assessment Tool to help get you started. It was Drucker who once defined the essence of marketing as "knowing what is valuable to the consumer:"

Who is our customer?

How will our customers change?

What does the customer value?

What knowledge do we need to gain from our customers?

How will I participate in gaining this knowledge?

How do we go about this process?

Something to think about 

In a highly competitive marketplace, how does a company or nonprofit find new households whose values are a close match with theirs--without a seven-figure NASCAR research
budget to inform the process? 

To stay on the right track in an electronic world, how will new customers find you?   

Strategist.com

(C) Bredholt & Co. 

Becoming An Inquiring Leader

Those who succeed in top management do so in part by knowing how to ask the right questions. This discipline is often associated with strategy development, problem-solving, product launches, and competitive analysis.  

Asking probing questions, with purpose, is a habit acquired through practice, and the formulation of questions is more art than science.  

Getting started

Inquiries begin with a two-part question:  What do we need to know, and why? 

A basis for engaging in this form of communication comes from a curious mind--which may explain why so few initiate these types of discussions.  It's easier to "tell" than to "ask," even though at certain times telling or explaining a point of view is the appropriate thing to do.

In going through our library recently, I came across the book, Leadership Is An Art, by Max DePree.  Mr. DePree, a son of the founder of the office furniture company, Herman Miller, D. J. DePree, is also a former CEO of the company and served as a board member until 1995.  

I heard Mr. DePree speak at a conference.  His skillful approach to mentoring direct reports, and teaching them how to learn, grow, and change is simple yet profound. What's his secret?  Some of it has to do with asking thoughtful questions.

His best-selling book is the source of the oft-quoted line, "The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality." To complete the thought, here is the rest of DePree's thesis: "The last is to say thank you. The leader must become a servant and debtor between the two. That sums up the progress of an artful leader."

Like most who find their way to the top, Max DePree, discovered early on that communication was essential to the task of leadership. Toward the end of his signature book, DePree underscores the idea of two-way communication by listing questions asked of Herman Miller's senior managers. 

I took the liberty of clustering his "need to know" in the following outline:

Opening

• Who are you?  How do you see yourself personally, professionally, and organizationally?

Personal

• What do you want to do (to be)? What are you planning to do about it?
• What have you abandoned?
• What significant areas are there in the company where you feel you can make a difference but cannot get a hearing?
• Do you have any feelings of failure in any particular area?
• What will you do in the coming year to develop your three highest-potential persons (and who are they)?
• In the past year, what, from the perspective of integrity, most affected you personally, professionally, and organizationally?

Corporate

• What are a few of the things that you expect most and need most from the CEO?
• What two things should we do to work toward becoming a great company?
• What significant areas are there in the company where you feel you can make a difference but cannot get a hearing?
• Does Herman Miller (insert your company) need you?
• Do you need Herman Miller (insert your company)?
• If you were "in my shoes (CEO)," what would you focus on?

Future

• What are three signals of impending entropy (disorder in the system) you see at Herman Miller?  What are you doing about it?
• What are three examples of budding synergy in your area and how can we capitalize on them?

Is inquiry a part of your team-building efforts?  Do you know your people and what they're thinking?

Perhaps we could add to the Ancient Greek aphorism, "know thyself," the importance of making time to know others as Max DePree did during his successful career.  

After all, results depend on who your associates are as well as what they do.  

Strategist.com

© Bredholt & Co.  

The Feedback Dilemma

"Planes are safer when the least experienced pilot is flying because it means the second pilot isn't going to be afraid to speak up."   

--Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers

Does your organization emphasize the importance of clear and open communication (which includes listening) as much as it does being on a "team?" Probably not. And yet clarity in ideas, conversations, and interactions are sources of oxygen allowing systems to breathe appropriately--which is a sign of a healthy team. 

Problems at the office or factory are often rooted in a lack of mutual understanding about expectations, goals, deadlines, procedures, and who the customer really is. A readily available tool of management to address this situation is the proper use of feedback--or "feedforward" as our friend, Marshall Goldsmith, likes to say.  

How is the feedback used?

Some examples:

• Employees need to know what their supervisors are thinking in terms of job performance, and not just during formal reviews
• Management is helped by getting real-time information from those around them--even if it's something they don't want to hear
• Workers require candid conversations from colleagues for instruction, to gauge how things are going, and to achieve mutual goals
• Businesses should hear from customers in order to know how they are doing, what not to change and where improvements should be made

Holding Back

Why are associates reluctant to explain how they feel about something? It could be from past experience. Speaking up may have been taken the wrong way so employees learn to be silent. Unfortunately, this means valuable information remains hidden from those who might need it most.  

Thus the dilemma.

According to the organizational psychologist, Dr. Michael Woodward, two factors that influence how individuals communicate in group settings, such as staff meetings, are "personality and position." 

Thoughts are eventually shared because employees have to talk--often with a trusted peer or spouse. Some of the more useful internal focus groups take place at lunch.

Studies also show the hesitancy to candidly convey how we feel has cultural roots as described in the Outliers chapter about air safety and the "theory of ethnicity." 

Improvements in Aviation

Recent news stories confirm a reversal of deadly crashes in the airline industry over the past several years.  The conclusion:  Air travel in the U.S., at least, has never been safer. It has been a decade since passengers died in a crash involving more than 100 people.

This is a dramatic turnaround from the 1990s when, as someone observed, "planes were falling out of the sky."

One of several reasons for this improvement in safety has to do with pilot training. The history of aviation has shown a strong, if not a dictatorial role for the captain, causing co-pilots to not speak when necessary or speak but not be heard--often with deadly results.  An example of this is the 1982 Air Florida crash in Washington, D. C.

Captains are now trained to solicit input from all members of the flight crew.

For their own health and safety, businesses and nonprofits could learn something about improving the free flow of information from changes in aviation practices. 

A Definition Of Terms

How do we begin improving this essential part of our professional relationships? In addition to cultural issues, we can start by understanding the different kinds of feedback and improving the quality of our exchanges. 

In his practical book, Getting It Done (Harper), author Roger Fisher offers enlightenment on a largely undefined process. In addition to aviation-type "warnings" mentioned above, corporate feedback, says Fisher, has three key parts:

Appreciation

To encourage and improve morale. This is an expression of gratitude or approval of another’s effort. It is an expression of emotion, designed to meet an emotional need.

Advice

To help individuals improve their skills. Advice consists of suggestions about a particular behavior that should be repeated or changed. It focuses on the performance, rather than on judging the person.

Evaluation

This relates to making wise decisions about personnel and their assignments. An effective way to do this is by ranking the subject’s performance in relation to that of others or against an explicit or implicit set of standards.

Why does feedback go awry:

• We fail to understand there are different types of feedback
• We co-mingle the types (doing two things at one time—sending mixed signals)
• We use one type (appreciation) when we should have used another (evaluation)

Think for a moment about the last time you gave or received feedback. Was it clear?   Appropriate for the circumstances? Or did you get (or give) appreciation when you should have received (or given) advice?   

In a future post, we will share "tips" on giving feedback from the book, Helping, by Dr. Edgar Schein.

Properly used, feedback can be a positive force for your organization. 

Strategist.com

(C) Bredholt & Co.

Eleven Minutes of Football

During the tenure of then CEO Jack Welch, Business Week did a piece entitled, "How Welch Manages GE."  It highlighted leadership "rhythms and rituals" over 12 months showing in detail how one man dealt with an enormous task--that of managing a company whose 1998 revenue (the year the article appeared) was $90.8 billion, with $8 billion in profits, and 276,000 employees worldwide.

The story is a case study in personal and time management--and points up the importance of having a top-notch executive assistant like Rosanne Badowski who managed Mr. Welch as he was managing GE.

The article gives an inside look at Welch's leadership agenda, focusing on those things belonging to a CEO that cannot be delegated to anyone else.   It's also a reminder of how a calendar can be a steering mechanism for any organization.

Playing the Game

Is Super Bowl XLVI (46) a teachable moment for executives?  What could be learned about managing the corporate clock from the American version of football?  

Two years ago "The Wall Street Journal" commissioned a study of the National Football League to see how much time was actually spent playing the game during a typical broadcast.  

The results:

"According to the Journal's study of four recent broadcasts, and similar estimates by researchers, the average amount of time the ball is in play on the field during an NFL game is about 11 minutes."

The writer of the story, David Biderman, concludes, "if you tally up everything that happens between the time the ball is snapped and the play is whistled dead by the officials, there's barely enough time to prepare a hard-boiled egg."  

The balance of the broadcast, excluding commercials, goes to the following:

• Three seconds of cheerleaders
• Seventeen minutes of replays
• Sixty-seven minutes of everyone standing around

Allocation of Time

If you did a study of your business or nonprofit, what would it find?

-How much time is given to cheerleading?

-How much time is given to replaying the past?

-How much time is given to standing around?

-How much time is given to the few things that are likely to make the biggest difference?

Your Calendar

As the leader what is it only you can do?  In the coming year, what could you get rid of and never miss?

But old habits die hard.  As Mark Twain once observed:

"Habit is a habit and not to be flung out the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time."

It could be the most important thing to do in 2012 is carefully examine your calendar and goals to see if there is a good match between the two.  

What should be the relationships between time for thinking; time for rest; time for self-renewal; time for family; and time for business?  Finding the right combination among these competing, yet complementary values are in everyone's best interests.

What are the "rhythms and rituals" of your schedule?  Are they moving the business closer to its goals?  Do the old rituals need modifying or are new ones in order?

As it was with Jack Welch, and his successor at GE, Jeff Immelt, there are only 24 hours in a day.

In your leadership role, where is the highest and best use of your time?

Strategist.com

(C)  Bredholt & Co.