Organizational Development Strategy

The basic concepts that lie behind being an entrepreneur.

You're creating something out of nothing, you should build a team around you that will support your goals and vision who also have the capabilities to help you expand. They should be creative, smart innovators, like you and have some diverse backgrounds to bring skills to the table you may not have.

Hiring a team for a startup is different than hiring for an older business. For the latter situation, you should be looking for organized, experienced people who are also comfortable with being leaders. They need to reliable and have high ethical standards. And don't forget, good communicators!

What about when you are expanding beyond an initial or leadership team? You should have some protocol in place that touches on expectations for employees, meetings and compensation practices. This will make it easier to bring new people into the mix. The other consideration, anticipating a change in communication. More people means more diversity regarding personality type and communication preferences. Getting a system in place that will make sure you're facilitating positive communication will be essential.

Let's talk about some common mistakes entrepreneurs make formulating a company, product and culture. Often times, these can occur in the hiring process, it's easy to hire people who look great on paper but aren't committed to your mission. Unfortunately, their lack of motivation can unravel projects quickly.

Don't hold on to control too tightly. Learn to let go. If you trust the people you've hired, at some point, taking your hand off the back of the tricycle is a must. They should continue moving forward as you stop and watch them go - freeing up your time to think strategically about growing your baby (company). And be understanding of mistakes, they happen to everyone from time to time.

Most important, accept and embrace your identity as an entrepreneur. Take your passion and communicate it clearly to investors and employees. Use these facts about what it means to be a leader and what it takes to succeed to develop an organizational development strategy, marketing communication strategy strategic HR plan that will give your passion a blueprint.

You are completely responsible for building the new world as your company will be part of it.

I am actually in the process of ordering both books by Dan and Chip Heath, Made to Stick and Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. The brothers, both business professors by trade who jointly write a regular column in Entrepreneur magazine are experts in what they teach as well as human psychology. Essentially, a great read for leaders to understand what their roles demand and what those they lead want from them.

In a recent interview the brothers shared insight into how to introduce your organizations to change - a difficult pill for the average person to swallow. If you're preparing to introduce different protocol, new employees or something far more drastic - understanding ways to facilitate widespread acceptance will go a long way.

Some of my favorite insights are below.

In reference to getting employees to accept change...
"One of the main mistakes is when leaders come up with a new vision but never translate that broad analytical vision into something people on the frontlines can actually execute. I was talking to an entrepreneur who wanted his employees to have a "mindset of customer service." But if you're an employee, when you hear that, all you hear is buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, jargon, jargon, jargon."

What about stubborn people...
"You can try to find the feeling that's going to make them empathize with customers. For instance, Microsoft had some very stubborn programmers who thought they were writing brilliant software. But six out of 10 customers Microsoft surveyed couldn't figure out how to use the new feature. When they told the programmers this, their response was, "Where did you find six dumb people?" Microsoft brought the programmers into a usability-testing lab and put them behind a two-way mirror. When the programmers watched a real customer struggle with the software they designed, the programmers immediately started thinking about ways of changing it. Don't try to argue with a stubborn employee. That appeals to the dark side of the analytical parts of ourselves."

Using the bad economy to motivate...
We commonly think that fear is a good motivator, but fear works for only a short time. And this recession has gone on for a couple of years in some parts of the country. So when we try to motivate people, we need to find feelings of hope and optimism.

Figuring out what motivates people, including clients, customers and employees is going to position you for success. Once you understand how people make decisions, you can tailor your services or management style to get the results you desire.

A strategic HR plan is just as essential as an in-depth marketing strategy plan. Establishing a communication style for your organizational development strategy will please both you and your employees allowing both parties to welcome change.

One project I have been tackling as of late is developing Milestone Advisors' social media strategy. It's not as simple as one might think. Yes, we've determined we need to be committed to blogging, we've claimed a Twitter handle and we're organizing our LinkedIn company and employee profiles. But as I have delved deeper into these efforts, spending countless hours reading the insane amount of information available online addressing 'best practices', I have realized that hand in hand with the strategy must go a policy to govern the company's use of social media.

It's really no different from putting together a strategic business plan or organizational development strategy. First, identify your intended audience with each medium (customers in the business sense). Then tackle the why, what are you hoping to achieve by connecting them through social media? Now comes the how and you've got to be specific here. Identify methods and practices as well as specific tools you'll employ to achieve your desired outcomes.

What comes next? The policy. Every plan needs an enforcer, a document to look to for direction or to answer questions. For example, our policy addresses such issues as which Milestone employees are expected to participate, how often they are to do so and set parameters for all participants.

Any new program needs a strategic plan first and an accompanying policy to ensure that, to put it simply, it works.

In one of his more recent posts, the always opinionated columnist for Fortune starts out discussing sleep patterns. He reminisces about when he was a young professional just starting out, he firmly believed he required a full eight hours of sleep in order to function well on the job. If he didn't get it, he just knew deep down his productivity was going to suffer.

Now he points out that his job requires him to consistently switch living, functioning and yes, working, between two timezones. Therefore, he has learned to work effectively and produce desired results without the famed and restful eight hours. He then makes this assertion:

"I may be wrong here, but I think most of senior management, in corporations and governments alike, function on something like this very same sleep schedule. Work all day. Stay up late. Get up early. I wonder what it does to our decision-making processes. Actually, I don’t have to wonder. I know what it does. It makes people a little bit grouchy, more impatient, more solution-oriented, with shorter attention spans and a greater need for visual, auditory and sensory stimulation. We are never tired. We are always tired. And if we stop moving forward, we sink in the water, like sharks. They don’t sleep much either, do they. Maybe that’s why they’re one of the few species to survive while so many others have fallen to the wayside. And why they pretty much run any corner of the ocean they choose to inhabit, come to think of it."

I think he's right and I like the analogy here. That's why entrepreneurs succeed. They're the people whose passion burns so hot, they can't sleep at night and instead are up working on a global marketing strategy for a product launch plan that details a new brand no one has ever heard of. These are also the people who drive the economy and why America as a whole can be the global competitor it is - we can't concentrate on tonight's Leno when we know there's an organizational development strategy that needs to be laid out. During Sunday's sermon we're running through our company's numbers and reminding ourselves that a new finance model needs to be created. The wheels are always turning, the desire to achieve is a constant.

So yea Stanley, I like it. We're sharks.

It's that time of year again, business owners everywhere are spending late night examining operations, reconciling accounts and figuring out what can be done better next year. Don't let all of that analysis go to waste - use it to set a new year’s resolution, particularly one for your business to improve / upgrade the financial reporting and forecasting capabilities within your organization. 

Here are some ideas I find are often the most beneficial for small business owners to consider:

Budget  – Establish a detailed departmental budget for the new year.  You will be surprised by the cost savings that you will be able to achieve simply by developing a detailed budget and reporting against it on a monthly basis.

Executive dashboard – Identify the five or six things that are most critical to the success of your business and put them in a dashboard format that gets updated on a regular basis.

Financial model – Don’t spend all of your time looking in the rear view mirror.  It is equally important to look ahead by developing a three year financial projection model that will help you better understand where your business is headed and the resources required to help you reach your goals.

The above tips are small, basic insights but should be be considered while restructuring your business's organizational development strategy and then incorporated into an overall business plan that has a clear financial model and accounting practices.

I’m a big believer in the old saying that “what gets measured, gets managed”.  I’ve seen many companies make significant improvements in operational efficiency and overall profitability by changing and improving the way that they look at the  business.