Discover how to enhance decision-making in your organization by focusing on three crucial areas: solving the right problem, gathering all the available information, and understanding the intent. Learn to empower your team, foster a purpose-driven culture, and improve organizational clarity for better decision-making.
Lessons I Learned from Waterskiing that Apply to Business
A champion skier once shared three valuable insights that can be applied to the world of business strategy, systems, and sustainable competitive advantage.
- Slalom skiing appears effortless but requires mastery of each step, namely, operations.
- A ski boat’s V8 engine will always win a tug of war, highlighting the importance of knowing your strengths, namely, sustainable competitive advantage.
- Your eyes dictate where your body will go, emphasizing the need to focus on your end goal, namely, strategy.
How do these principles relate to business?
Mastering Repeatable Processes
Success in business often relies on mastering repeatable processes. Steve Jobs, for example, captivated audiences with seemingly effortless presentations because he practiced each performance relentlessly. Businesses should follow suit, refining core processes until they become second nature. This allows employees to focus on market trends and strategic opportunities, rather than getting bogged down in day-to-day tasks.
Furthermore, it’s essential to master all steps of a process. A weak link can undermine the entire chain, as demonstrated by a company with an excellent M&A due diligence team but a weak integration process, resulting in unrealized benefits from deals. In today’s business environment, employees are often overwhelmed, leaving little time for strategic thinking. Mastering repeatable processes can help alleviate this issue and position a company for future success.
Choosing the Right Battles
In skiing, attempting to beat a ski boat in a tug-of-war is futile. Similarly, in business, it’s crucial to understand what variables can be influenced and focus on those. If a competitor has an unbeatable production process, it’s wiser to develop a sustainable competitive advantage that takes price out of the equation. For example, a wealth management firm that differentiates itself by tying financial goals to life goals can outperform competitors by removing financial performance as a deciding factor.
Focusing on the End Goal
In both sports and business, it’s essential to keep your eyes on the end goal. When facing important decisions, businesses should consider the following:
- Does the decision impact the company’s sustainable competitive advantage (SCA)?
- Will clients care about its resolution?
- What impact will it have on the company’s goals or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)?
By prioritizing these factors, businesses can maintain focus on the end goal and avoid getting distracted by daily issues.
Conclusion
To maximize business success, practice and refine core processes, understand your strengths and weaknesses, and maintain focus on the end goal. Engaging with a peer group, like Vistage, can provide additional insights and help ensure your business remains on track toward achieving its objectives.
© 2010 Marc Borrelli All Rights Reserved
Recent Posts
Boosting Common Sense Decision-Making in Your Organization
Do You Understand Your Costs to Ensure Profitability?
You can only determine profitability when you know your costs. I’ve discussed before that you should price according to value, not hours. However, you still need to know your costs to understand the minimum pricing and how it is performing. Do you consider each jobs’ profitability when you price new jobs? Do you know what you should be charging to ensure you hit your profit targets? These discussions about a company’s profitability, and what measure drives profit, are critical for your organization.
Sunk Costs Are Just That, Sunk!
If you were starting your business today, what would you do differently? This thought-provoking question is a valuable exercise, especially when it brings up the idea of “sunk costs” and how they limit us. A sunk cost is a payment or investment that has already been made. Since it is unrecoverable no matter what, a sunk cost shouldn’t be factored into any future decisions. However, we’re all familiar with the sunk cost fallacy: behavior driven by a past expenditure that isn’t recoupable, regardless of future actions.
Do You REALLY Know Your Business Model?
Bringing clarity to your organization is a common theme on The Disruption! blog. Defining your business model is a worthwhile exercise for any leadership team. But how do you even begin to bring clarity into your operations? If you’re looking for a place to start, Josh Kaufman’s “Five Parts of Every Business” offers an excellent framework. Kaufman defines five parts of every business model that all flow into the next, breaking it down into Value Creation, Marketing, Sales, Value Delivery, and Finance.
Ideation! Harder Than It Sounds
Bringing in new ideas, thoughts, understanding, and logic is key as your organization faces the challenges of a changing environment. But when you do an ideation session in your organization… how does it go? For so many organizations, many times, after a few ideas have been thrown out and rejected, the thought process slows down very quickly, and a form of hopelessness takes over. How does your organization have better ideation? I’ve come across a new approach with a few teams lately.
Recruit, Recruit, Recruit!
An uptick in business has begun this quarter, and companies are rushing to hire to meet this surge in demand. What amazes me is how many are so unprepared to hire. Continual recruiting is key to the survival of a company. It isn’t the same thing as hiring—continuous recruiting is building a pipeline of people that you would hire if you needed to fill a position, or “A players” you would hire if they were available.
We All Need Clarity
If your organization is focused on obscurity over clarity, whether intentionally or not, your “A” player employees are vulnerable. There is a looming talent crunch. As we start to emerge from COVID, demand is increasing, and many are scrambling to fill positions to meet that demand. Headhunters and recruiters are soon going to be calling your key “A” employees. Have you been giving them a reason to stay?
Not Another **** Meeting
As Leonard Bernstein put it so well, “To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.” Your meetings can be shorter, more fruitful, and engaging, with better outcomes for the organization, employees, and managers. It’s time to examine your meeting rhythms and how you set meeting agendas. This week, I break down daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual, and individual meeting rhythms, with sample agendas for each.
Is Your Company Scalable?
Let’s start here: Why should your company be scalable at all? If your business is scalable, you have business freedom–freedom with time, money, and options. Many business leaders get stuck in the “owner’s trap”, where you need to do everything yourself. Sound familiar? If you want a scalable business that gives you freedom, you need to be intentional about what you sell, and how.
Are you ready for the Talent Crunch?
Companies are gearing up to hire. Unfortunately, many are competing within the same talent pool. Some experts are currently predicting a strong economic recovery starting in May or June. But as the economy booms, there is going to be fierce competition for talent. How will you fare in the looming talent crisis? Your organization should be creating a plan, now, so you can attract the talent you need in the year ahead.