The book that is changing the way I think about business strategy
As you may remember, I regularly meet with an executive coach (whom I’ve written about a few times before). One of the biggest things he helps me do is focus on my responsibility as a leader to make sure that our organization is moving forward and working toward something bigger than us.
In a recent meeting, he asked me, “What do the next 5 to 10 years look like for your company?”
I’ve always had a hard time answering this question. I think the reason is that I’m not someone who lives life according to a plan. Whenever possible, I follow my passion and go where my heart and inspiration tell me to go.
When I think 5 to 10 years into the future, I quickly get overwhelmed because I struggle with focus as a leader. I’m passionate about so many things, so I get stuck trying to figure out what to focus on first. In general, I would much rather think about the short-term because I can see that so much more clearly.
So back to the meeting with my coach (which included Monique, our Chief of Growth and my thought partner). We were talking about how it finally feels to me like the Student Maid transition has fully settled, and I’m ready to think about our long-term future and where our business is headed. After my coach posed his question about the future, he challenged us to start to crystallize our 5- to 10-year strategy and our overarching mission as a company.
Luckily, around the same time as our meeting, I stumbled across a new book called Be 2.0 by Jim Collins (author of one of my faves, Good to Great). Collins wrote a version of this book decades ago with his mentor, Jim Lazier, called Beyond Entrepreneurship. When Lazier passed away, Collins decided to update and expand their work together. The new version includes new chapters and research, but the purpose of the book remains the same: It’s about how to turn a small or midsize business into a great, enduring company.
Right off the bat, Monique and I realized that one of our biggest roadblocks to coming up with a 5- to 10-year strategy (and, therefore, a “great, enduring company”) was that she and I didn’t have enough time scheduled to dive into strategy. It’s hard to do this kind of work in 30-minute or one-hour meetings, and for me, my mindset has to be in a creative place in order to make these meetings effective. It’s hard for me to do that when I have other things scheduled right before and right after, and the same is true for Monique. As a result, Monique and I committed to scheduling one 90-minute strategy session per week, and we’ve decided to turn them into dinner meetings: We both order food and eat while we meet on Zoom, and it feels like we have the creative space to think about the future.
We’ve been going strong for more than a month now. The way that it has worked so far is that I read a chapter of Be 2.0 every week, and each time we meet, we talk about that chapter and unpack the themes and how they apply to our business.
Though I haven’t yet finished the book, I’ve already found it so inspiring and so helpful. Each week, I have more clarity about our future than the week before, and I can totally see how this kind of work can be a complete game-changer for an organization.
Perhaps you and your organization are considering what the future holds for you, too. If that’s the case, I want to share my six biggest takeaways from Be 2.0 so far in case they spark something for you like they have for us!
Here they are:
1. Values, purpose, and mission. According to Be 2.0, any organization that wants to be an enduring company needs to have clear values, purpose, and mission. Your values are your core beliefs. They don’t change, and they guide all decision-making. (Our values are very clear to us: Courage and Compassion.) The second ingredient is a company’s purpose, which is essentially its North Star. It’s something that you will work toward for the next 100 years. The purpose will be a constant in your organization, and it should be what you’re always striving for. (We are still working on ours, but we believe it’s something around developing human leaders and making the world better for those who come after us). The mission, on the other hand, is your “BHAG” (another Jim Collins-ism, from Good to Great: It stands for “Big, hairy, audacious goal). The mission is the goal that will help you get closer to your purpose. Here’s what has surprised me most about the mission: Collins says it should guide you for 10 to 25 years. We’ve been setting BHAGs for ourselves for a long time, but they’ve always been short-term—a year or two, at most. Defining a 10- to 25-year goal is causing us to think really big—bigger than we’ve ever thought—so we’re still working to identify what it is. What I’ve learned is that in some ways, going after your purpose is like climbing a mountain. The top of the mountain is where you’re trying to go (your purpose), but you can’t climb all that way at once. So you need to set up basecamps (BHAGs) along the way. And once you reach your BHAG, it’s important to set a new one and keep your eyes on your next basecamp.
2. Productive paranoia. In this part of the book, Jim Collins says that leaders and organizations that are able to thrive through challenging times, uncertainty, and chaos have what he calls “productive paranoia.” I immediately recognized this because it’s something I do all the time, but I’ve always been self-conscious about it. My brain naturally goes to, “What if the worst thing happens?” For example, I’ve been thinking about the possibility of the next recession for a long time. Somehow, I’ve trained myself to think that imagining the worst-case scenario—and what I would do about it—is a bad thing. Why does my mind go there? I think. I should think more optimistically, right? But Collins says that thinking through the bad things that could happen, the conditions that could change, and the obstacles that could be in the way is what helps organizations remain adaptable and able to thrive. I now appreciate this part of my mindset. Plus, I know that every time I have a worst-case scenario thought, I don’t need to bring it to the whole team. Instead, I can bring it to Monique—my thought partner—who can help me talk through it and flesh out what we should plan for in order to set us up for success if this scenario were to happen.
3. “We have arrived” syndrome. This resonated with me so much. It’s about what happens when organizations have extreme growth. It can be easy to think, “We have arrived!” and then become complacent, which actually causes a decline. One reason I think I haven’t been laser-focused on what the next 5 to 10 years look like is that right now, we’re having the most growth we’ve ever had in our 15 years as a company. Since we made the Student Maid transition, our growth rate has been off the charts. I have a tendency to think, “Well, because we have all this growth, we must be on the right path,” and it removes the urgency from making a 5- or 10-year strategic growth plan. What I’m recognizing is that in times of growth, it’s even more important to have a strategy because if you don’t, you can grow in ways you don’t want to grow. We need to be very intentional about how we’re growing so that we end up where we want to be.
4. Strategy must descend from the mission. I’ve always thought about strategy as this big, complicated thing. But Jim Collins says that strategy should be simple: When you write it down, it should be no longer than three pages. You take your mission—your 10- to 25-year BHAG—and break it down into the 3- to 5-year strategy that will help you reach that BHAG. Then, every year, you reevaluate your strategy and make necessary changes. What I’ve realized is that, without this strategy, you don’t have a way of knowing which things to go after or what goals to set. Collins says a strategy can include: products or things you’re creating; your customers and how you’re going to position yourself; your financial strategy; your people/culture strategy; and your infrastructure strategy. We’re very strong in our financial strategy, but in some of these other areas, we’ve just gone with the flow. As we come up with our 3- to 5-year strategy, Monique and I want to be more intentional about them.
5. Hedgehog concept. The hedgehog concept is a way to describe an organization’s sweet spot. For our people, we describe the “sweet spot” as the place where your talents and motivations meet. For organizations, the sweet spot is the intersection of the answers to these questions: What are you deeply passionate about? What can you be the best in the world at? What drives your economic engine as an organization? This is the kind of focus that can help an organization get to the next level. If activities or initiatives don’t fall into the sweet spot, it likely doesn’t make sense to put time and energy there. The hedgehog concept will be our filter as we make our strategy.
6. My number one job as a leader. This has been my biggest realization of all from Be 2.0 so far. Collins says that your number one job as a leader is to cast the vision for your company. My role in our company is Chief of Vision, but when I’ve talked about vision in the past, it’s always been aspirational. I’ve never said, “Here’s exactly where we are going and here is the exact strategy for how we are going to get there.” I recognize that without that very clear, strategic vision, I am limiting us. We need that clarity, that path, in order to reach our potential in our roles and in our organization, and it’s my job to provide that clarity. But this isn’t just a box I can check. As the leader, I need to constantly think about these things. My weekly meetings with Monique are precious because it’s my time to think, strategize, and hold myself accountable to thinking about what comes next. Even after we create this new strategy, our intention is to continue these meetings and always reevaluate what we’re doing to make sure the vision is as crystal-clear as possible for ourselves and for our team.
And there we have it! My six biggest takeaways so far.
If you’re the leader of an organization or you notice your organization is lacking clarity, this might be a great book for you to read with your team and do what Monique and I are doing: Read a chapter, talk about it, take what resonates, and then apply it to your team and organization for more focus and clarity.
As Brené Brown says . . . Clear is kind!
Here’s to big hugs and bigger visions,
