Here’s How to Successfully Transform a Business

June 20, 2022

Good morning!

Happy June the Teenth!  Some are calling this a 2nd United States Independence Day.

But, just like July 4, 1776, a declaration means very little without an enormous amount of work added to it — and sustained.

Whatever happened to the declaration of insuring domestic tranquility?  Insuring it?

And, Happy Feast of Holy Fathers.

May you always strive to be worthy of the title.

Like the Mothers always say, “It’s Fathers’ Day everyday,” and mostly that’s true.

Oh, and it’s the first day of astronomical summer if you prefer it to the now more popular meteorological summer.

• I got a chuckle out of reading this from Cowen’s and Gross’s; new book, Talent:
  • “… finding acceptable candidates capable of commanding consensus by being decent, but most of all sufficiently unobjectionable.”
  • It’s a new low bar:  Sufficiently unobjectionable.  I love it; I’ll steal it, but give credit.

Here’s How to Successfully Transform a Business

• Time for transformation; here’s how to do it well:
  • Shared Vision
    • (Vision is the epicenter of our business = Without a Vision the people perish = believe it — and then DO something about it.)
  • Don’t neglect soft skills
  • Focus on ‘how’, not ‘what’
  • Servant leadership
  • Bold targets (McKinsey, 2022)
• I’ve been waiting for someone to do the math — and now they have; thank you, New York Times.
  • Adjusted for CPI (inflation), we paid more for gas in 2008 than we are right now — and we paid more throughout much of the first half of the 2010s.
  • Many won’t believe it because of the incessant doomsday headlines, but it’s true.  Funny thing about math.

• Culture drives results — always — much more than your Master Plan — which hopefully addresses culture.
  • Culture starts with leaders;
  • If leaders prioritize culture, team members will gladly give the best version of themselves daily;
  • When immediate results aren’t realized, people default to their old ways of behaving;
  • Defining core values isn’t nearly as important as exercising (doing) them;
  • Instead of passing judgment on team members who struggle to perform, get curious and start coaching. (Eades, 2022)
• It all adds up.  Years of your life are being wasted on pointless activities at work.  (The Economist, 2022)
  • Correcting typos takes up an average of 20 minutes of every white-collar worker’s day, the equivalent of 180 days, or half a year, from a 45-year career.
  • Deleting e-mail takes up about six weeks from that same career.
  • 145 days are spent logging into things — or presumably, out of them throughout those 45 years.
    • Do not despair… what would you rather be doing?