The first third of 2015 has been a solid year in business and now we’re looking into the front edge of summer. If you’ve been following this blog, you may have used this post to help structure your Q1 operations review, giving you a nice concise set of actions that your team is executing on.
Along with summer, we’re also at the front edge of strategy season, which calls for you to mentally step up higher than runway level and think about where you are steering the plane.
Combining some strategic thinking with the natural energy of the seasons is a powerful way to move you and your team forward.
Spring provides a natural time to harness growth and energy of the renewal season and is the perfect set up to some stimulating and contemplative time this summer.
The Four Quadrants of Growth
Interestingly, I find that people usually struggle with strategy due to lack of constraint. When we are presented with infinite opportunity, many people find it overwhelming and need some structure to make progress. For today, let’s use my Growth Zone methodology to provide some boxes for your thought work, as well as to give you and the team some common vocabulary to have a productive dialogue.
Quadrant I is your existing operations – those activities that are the lifeblood of the firm. This is the portion of the organization that will provide time, talent and funding to allow work to proceed in the other three quadrants, so it must be carefully tuned to the current product and market realities. A couple of good directional questions to ask yourself here are:
- What do I need to do to lock in the gains that I have made since the first of the year?
- What immediate actions would a successor take regarding the core operation?
- What does the data show about how things are working that your historical bias might be hiding?
- Who seems to be struggling with the growth in pace or scope?
Action: Set up a coffee session with a trusted advisor outside your industry (that will do more than pat you on the back) to spend a few minutes going over your current operations plan and results.
Quadrant II is growth represented by doing something in a more specific way for a subset of your existing customers. What you are looking for here is an early trend discovery that allows you to double down on an emerging opportunity. For an example of this, look at Fleet Fit™ by Michelin that sells tire service by the mile.
As calendars get a bit of slack in them, summer is a great time to focus in on some of the surprise niches that you discovered during your operations review. Setting up some “windshield time” with key account leaders/channel partners and getting their firsthand inputs is very valuable for setting up the planning work that will need to be done this fall.
Once on site with your key customer-facing teams, ask things like:
- What early programs are happening that we have not felt yet in the supply chain?
- Who has been hiring the most new talent?
- Which senior teams have recently experienced change?
- Who is building? Consolidating? Outsourcing?
Action: Make a physical trip to each region to talk with an account manager and key customer.
Quadrant III are those adjacent spaces that could use your products and services, but that you don’t have distribution and application support in place for yet. Examples here include things like application-specific location services for recreational vehicles.
This is a space where you can take advantage of summer by getting up close to some areas and applications that you haven’t had time for yet. A couple of thought starters to start your work here:
- Sit down with your customer service leader and ask about any strange or anomalous application requests they have received lately.
- Go to a physical library and walk the magazine aisles. Be especially watchful for new titles that represent new or emergent market niches that you could help.
- Call up an editor or two of trade publications in your space. After they get up from falling off their chair (smile), offer an editorial piece and ask them what adjacencies they have seen.
Action: Make a plan to visit one conference or trade show that represents an interesting adjacency. Walk the show floor and attend sessions personally to look for points of attachment.
Quadrant IV is for areas where you have neither a current offering or distribution base, but are attracted to because of their similarity to something you currently do, or because it signals a completely new zone (blue ocean) with unlimited potential. One example is the quickly growing business space of consulting shops that allow Baby Boomers to do a “pre-tirement” through firms like Patina and YourEncore.
To find those that fit your business, let me suggest a three-pronged approach:
- Improve your scanning technique by reading a book that will give you a new thought framework. Two good places to start include Peter Thiel’s – Zero to One and Cecily Sommer’s How to Think Like a Futurist.
- Have a new experience by indulging a latent interest: take a cooking or art class, vacation to a new part of the world or go to the wilderness if you live in an urban setting (or visa versa).
- Find a service project and put yourself in a position of service that opens your mind to new thinking. Great places abound: Habitat for Humanity, Feed My Starving Children and Heifer International, for starters.
Action: Keep a small Moleskine notebook and jot down thoughts as they occur. Keep a summary of the fresh ones on the back page – you’ll be surprised.
If you take the opportunity to light up your brain with these suggestions, planning time this fall will be a rich experience indeed.
If you’d like to work together, I do have a couple of slots available this summer, which I reserve for private, executive coaching relationships with C-level leaders and subject matter experts. If you’d like to learn more about how I can help you guide your organization to clarity, action and growth, please schedule a 20-minute introductory session.
