StratTalk eNews — Issue 1, April 2008

Welcome to StratTalk eNews

Welcome to our debut issue of StratTalk eNews, a monthly newsletter dedicated to providing pithy tips and tricks based on our innovative 60 Minute Strategic Plan (www.60msp.com) process aimed at helping you make better decisions faster. Each month we will deliver right to your email box an exciting and useful wealth of information to help you benefit from our tried‑and‑true planning and problem‑solving solution.

Every issue will feature a relevant and newsworthy topic to help strategic planners across the nation become more effective and successful at their jobs. We’re excited to share our insight based on our innovative 60 Minute Strategic Plan that provides planning and problem solving for the real world. We understand what strategic planners face every day as they try to effectively inspire, define, and direct their respective organizations through the maze of challenges and obstacles businesses commonly face. We want to be your guide through that strategic planning maze so that you come out the other end feeling excited and inspired to take your newfound knowledge and apply it on the job.

We also hope that after you’ve come to value our insight, StratTalk eNews becomes your #1 source for all things strategic planning. So, please sit back and enjoy! And if you like this newsletter we encourage you to forward it to a friend to sign up.

John E. Johnson, CEO
Anne Marie Smith, President

Culture Champion

Anyone who suggests that a corporate culture doesn’t matter doesn’t understand the value or importance to a company’s overall success. Corporate culture defines and governs the way a business and its employees think about their jobs and the environment they work in. Many of you have probably seen surveys like The Best Places to Work and maybe felt a pang of jealousy that you don’t work for the company voted number #1.

A positive corporate culture attracts the very best candidates to work for your company. Welcoming, warm, and friendly corporate cultures that provide outstanding management, great pay, and exceptional benefits engender committed, loyal, long‑term employees who love their jobs and their places of work. Negative, back‑stabbing, and overly competitive cultures demoralize, demean, and negate employees, producing rapid turnover and loss of important institutional and proprietary knowledge. Of those two corporate cultures, which one do you think enjoys wealth and success?

It’s not as easy as it may sound to create an atmosphere that gets voted the number #1 best place to work. The reality is that a positive corporate culture that supports its employees can shift and change in either direction at almost any time. The instant a CEO, senior‑level executive, or manager hires a new person, the culture can immediately flux by the introduction of a new personality—and if this person happens to hold a position of power, it can turn into a make‑or‑break situation. Your chosen leader sets the tone for an entire work group or team. A great leader inspires and supports. A poor leader creates conflict and struggle and, ultimately, demoralized, unhappy employees who regularly scour the want ads for a new job when all they really want is a new boss.

Well‑meaning leaders take note. Your greatest challenge won’t be to become the best personality in the place. Your job will be to navigate the difficulties of managing an exponentially growing and fluidly changing corporate culture. But here is where the math gets challenging. Let’s say the owner is gifted with an IQ of 150 and works 70 hours a week. A workforce of 10 normal people with an average IQ of 100 x 10 = 1000 IQ, working 40 hrs/wk x 10 = 400 hours. Internal relationships are 10 to the power of 10; i.e., each person has nine individual relationships with other employees plus the owner. So there you have it: 150 vs. 1000, 70 vs. 400, and 100 relationships to deal with. Owners are outnumbered and mathematically challenged.

What can you do to help deal with the literally hundreds of relationship to ensure your corporate culture creates a winning environment?

Strat Tip #1: When you write your company’s mission statement, make sure it reflects your values. Your mission statement sets the tone for your organization. Make sure it’s the kind of tone you want established. Don’t say “we value honesty” and then lie to your customer right in front of your employees. Which segues to a personal tip…

Strat Tip #2: Have you ever heard the expression, “Do as I say not as I do?” Want to create instant resentment among your staff? Practice that principle. In other words, don’t tell your staff they can’t telecommute and then telecommute. Or don’t tell your staff there is a pay freeze and show up the next day in brand new Mercedes. Instead, earn your staff’s respect by creating an even playing field. Practice what you preach.

Help Us Start a Sacramento Chapter of the Association of Strategic Planning

60 Minute Strategic Plan invites regional Sacramento business people to help us start a chapter of the Association of Strategic Planning (ASP) (http://www.strategyplus.org/startachapter.shtml), the only not-for-profit professional association dedicated to advancing thought and practice in strategy development and deployment for business, non‑profit, and government organizations. We only need five paid members to launch our own chapter for the greater Sacramento region. By participating in the creation of the chapter from the ground floor, you will have an opportunity to shape the forum and content of our discussion to help you become a more effective strategic planner.

ASP provides opportunities to explore cutting‑edge strategic planning principles and practices that enhance organizational success and advance members’ and organizations’ knowledge, capability, capacity for innovation, and professionalism. Come meet us and network with your fellow strategic planning professionals. For more information, contact John E. Johnson at JohnE57@aol.com.

Blog, Blog, Blog

The new StratTalk Blog has arrived. We are excited to provide weekly posts about ongoing strategic planning issues, ideas and suggestions. We started the blog to create an interactive forum where our CEO John E. Johnson can interact with members of strategic planning community in a positive and effective way. We welcome all of our readers to join in the ongoing discussion. If you have any questions, we want to hear from you. Please send Johnson an email at JohnE57@aol.com.

Upcoming Workshops

Following are events where members of the 60MSP staff will be speaking or holding workshops:

• May 27, 2008: Financial Planning Association NorCal Conference in San Francisco, CA
• July 8–10: Vistage International in St. Louis, MO
• August 27, 2008: Northern California Human Resources Association in San Francisco, CA
• August 27–28: Vistage International in Las Vegas, NV
• October 16: Vistage International in Portland, OR

About 60 Minute Strategic Plan

60MSP is an effective planning and problem‑solving solution introduced in 1997 by CEO John E. Johnson. This innovative, cost‑effective, and field‑tested strategic planning process simplifies complexities so anyone can solve a problem with a plan. Hundreds of companies in many different industries have simplified and processed thousands of issues through the 60 Minute Strategic Plan with financial benefits ranging from thousands to millions of dollars. The 60 Minute Strategic Plan turns problems into progress with rapid‑fire change that results in savings and increased revenue. For more information, visit our website at www.60msp.com.