Sage Partners

The Basic Principals of Good Strategy

Tom Doorley — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 20:36:40 +0000

Chris Zook and Jimmy Allen have just written a book called Repeatability that discusses how to maintain profit growth in the face of great turbulence. Their conclusions around strategy are as important for small and medium-sized businesses as they are for large businesses.

Leading Lasting Change

Sage General — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:58:59 +0000

High impact and lasting change can be fast, effective and fun. First–Create a “vision story” for the future to engage a critical mass of people. It taps into multiple levels of knowledge-emotion-creativity and yields a shared sense of the future that is aspirational, inspirational, logical and exciting.

Then, charter a small, carefully chosen client team to design and conduct a process to gather information and knowledge and to make sense of the issues and conditions at hand. They will translate this learning and insight into potential strategies. The team then delivers events that spread their learning to others in the organization utilizing highly engaging educational and work shop activities.

Finally, teams implement waves of short-duration (60-90 days), high impact projects that move the organization toward the vision. This offers opportunities to bring others into the expanding process of building the future. Recognizable and measurable success in projects yields progress, energy and enthusiasm. These factors combine to yield change that has impact and lasts.

Media’s Cloudy Strategic Future

John E. Conway — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:55:29 +0000

Media consumers no longer plan their days around program schedules developed by TV and radio broadcasters and the whims of their sponsors and advertisers. Time shifting, on-demand streaming and other, emerging channels, coupled with the explosion in media-capable devices and platforms, have changed the game forever.

Behind the scenes of this consumer-driven trend lies an ever-changing, diverse, and complicated collection of moving parts through which media can be created, produced, distributed, viewed…and monetized.

Traditional media firms rightfully feel threatened by the sheer complexity of this techno-menagerie. How can they best develop consumer-centric, infinitely flexible “media-verses” without breaking the bank?

Enter cloud computing.

Virtually all of the functional elements necessary to create and move media from its source to the end user can be found in existing cloud computing archives. Analogous to a box full of assorted Lego blocks, these elements can be assembled an almost infinite variety of ways to address virtually any media delivery situation. In practice, media firms need only identify the appropriate elements and…connect the dots.

Want to move your music video to PC’s, TV’s, Smart phones, and gaming platforms… there’s a collection of elements for that. Need to enable web-TV but restrict viewing to subscribers only? There are elements for that. Seek to create an on-line outlet for new musical performance artists?… Just connect the right dots… in the cloud. Can’t find a key element? Build it yourself to gain strategic advantage… or just wait a while. In much the same way that smart phones have attracted droves of freelance app developers, the cloud provides an environment that will encourage and reward entrepreneurs chomping at the bit to create solutions that meet strategic needs.

In a recent speech, pundit, John Gauntt put it best; “Cloud computing is simply the best single, strategic and tactical platform for exchanging and evolving media for multiple audiences using multiple devices in multiple contexts under multiple business models.”

Media does indeed have a very cloudy and very exciting future.

The First Light Leader

Tom Doorley — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 20:19:43 +0000

In times past, CEOs kept close counsel, sharing their nascent strategic ideas or concerns with a narrow cadre of confidants. Fortunately leading CEOs have rejected this behavior. Now the best share ideas early and often. The goal–to inspire collaboration; to shape and hone these ideas; to improve them.

We call these new century CEOs, “First Light” leaders. That is, as soon as an idea begins to form, the CEO moves it into the organizational dialogue. This works well within the broad leadership team. Not only does it serve the objective of improving ideas through the interaction, it builds commitment to the eventual decision. Involvement in the early stages deepens commitment.

First light dialogue works especially well for a CEO interacting with the Board of Directors. Picture the CEO stepping away from the formal agenda and spending a moment or two on a white board sharing an early strategic initiative, such as a possible acquisition, then discussing the candidate over time as the idea moves from early thought to possibility. Through this process the Board will have challenged, added and even understood the rationale. Typically the Board only has an opportunity to react to a polished presentation with little early dialogue. Such a Board is compromised. Not so when the CEO adopts the first light approach.

Adhere to Basic Principles for Venture Success

John E. Conway — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 18:46:56 +0000

Books on venture development advice could fill an entire library. While many of these capture one or more of the important lessons, they often take thousands of words and circuitous paths to describe what most successful entrepreneurs could describe in a single paragraph.

Starbucks entrepreneur and current (re-turning) CEO, Howard Schultz, recently summarized his years of venture experience is one such paragraph. To wit:

Grow with discipline. Balance intuition with rigor. Innovate around the core. Don’t embrace the status quo. Find new ways to see. Never expect a silver bullet. Get your hands dirty. Listen with empathy and over-communicate with transparency. Tell your story, refusing to let others define you. Use authentic experiences to inspire. Stick to your values, they are your foundation. Hold people accountable but give them the tools to succeed. Make the tough choices; it’s how you execute that counts. Be decisive in times of crisis. Be nimble. Find truth in trials and lessons in mistakes. Be responsible for what you see, hear, and do. Believe.”

In our experience, adherence to these basic principles, coupled with a sprinkle of luck, will increase the odds of success of any venture, dramatically.

Decision-Making in Crisis

Tom Doorley — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 13:42:49 +0000

Working with Simon Gifford, CEO of the Genesis Management Consulting Group of Spain, and nearly a dozen other business leaders, Sage Partners is working to develop a framework and process to assist organizations deal with the impact of the geo-politcal and economic crisis we face. Given that the participants are scattered around the globe, the collaboration is being conducted through a series of web conferences. As the work of our group gets codified we will share it with our community.

Rich Schneider at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management

Tom Doorley — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 18:21:11 +0000

Rich serves as visiting lecturer at the School and has been teaching in the MBA program for four years. His courses focus on strategy and the consulting profession, actively coaching teams working with external clients. In addition he is in his second four year term on the school’s Advisory Council. Rich and his other Sage Partners use academic relationships to both pass on our experience and expertise and to stay current with new and evolving management concepts.

Larry Bennigson to oversee MIT Sloan’s Office of Communications

Tom Doorley — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:34:27 +0000

As Larry has migrated from his role at the Harvard Business School he is keeping his hand in the academic side of the business world. During Sloan’s search for a leader for its newly constituted Office of Communications, Larry will act to set the strategic focus of the office and develop its management processes. Larry brings deep expertise in both the private sector (Sloan’s core clients) and higher education (its role in the world) to his new role.

Ted West CEO of PhoneTell

Tom Doorley — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:28:48 +0000

Consistent with Sage Partners’ business model which balances ongoing commitment to Sage with career flexibility, Ted West has once again taken the reins as an entrepreneurial company CEO. In this case his charter is to bring PhoneTell from its early stages (founded in 2009) to capture its full market potential. PhoneTell, “Let your phone tell you”, is completely rethinking and reworking the mobile phone user experience. The company is backed by many of Silicon Valley’s most respected business and financial entrepreneurs.

Unleashing Potential

Sage General — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 16:51:59 +0000

Some claim manufacturing is dead in America—costs are too high, capabilities too few. But this claim is far off the mark. Company after company is discovering that enormous potential exists and can be unleashed to create sustainable competitive performance. Rather than giving in, they are achieving long term success.

It’s not easy of course. Without an effective process the attempted improvement will fall short of targets. To be successful, three key principles must be followed by leaders and their teams:

Leadership—There can be no substitute for strong, committed leaders who are willing to stake their careers on ratcheting up performance. That includes the executive champions and project team leaders.
Abandoning Assumptions—Too often the search for improvement is constrained by “well-accepted” assumptions of how fast a machine can turn out its product or the level of output a plant can produce in a day. The leader must move the team beyond such assumptions and instead start with considering the high bar of theoretical performance targets–that is, targets set from a “Zero Based” concept. By starting here radical, yet achievable, enhancement opportunities will be found. Once the scope of inquiry is widened possibilities abound.
Lead with Results—Building from this theoretical basis the team takes actions to generate results early, to demonstrate progress and to build commitment and confidence. Most studies estimate programs designed to change behavior yield a paltry 20% success rate. Why? Largely because the focus in on the change process itself rather than on results. The successful teams concentrate on delivering results early and often.

Unleashing potential is possible and necessary for success. To learn more visit Stroud Consulting at www.stroudconsulting.com.