Fire! Ready! Aim!
In preparing for a series of presentations to small groups of CEOs, I realized that, strategically, I had a problem. Each of the groups is composed of CEOs with whom I want to discuss strategy while at the same time sending them home with some action items for the day after our discussion. That seems doable until you consider that many, many CEOs are entirely booked for the next three or four weeks, let alone tomorrow. Giving them homework to do might be a stretch. What to do?
Since I can't really expect a CEO to drop what she is doing to quickly implement homework from a speech, I needed a work around. So let's go with what we've got. One simple question comes to mind, "What are you doing tomorrow?" Let have a look. My bet is that, if we follow the Pareto Principal, we'll find that eighty per cent of that CEO's productivity comes from twenty per cent of her activities. There may be a strategic implication that is useful: there may be some things you don't have to do tomorrow. If you didn't do them, would you have more time to do something else, maybe even something strategic?
The "Fire! Ready! Aim!" mantra comes to mind. This next day action plan is really a "Fire!" plan. You already know what you are going to have to do, so you have to go ahead and do it. My only request? Carve out some time to do something strategic in your busy day. How? Don't do something - one of those eighty per centers, maybe - so you are able to give some thought to how to proceed strategically.
Let's have another look at the three words in the mantra. Next comes "Ready!" and "Aim!" If you give yourself some time, getting ready for planning is a very good thing to do. If you've never done planning, what comes first? Pick a team to work with you. Meet with them. Decide together what to do next. Just make sure the dialog is strategic, not just an eighty per cent activity.