Monthly Archives: September 2011

September 27, 2011 · 3:29 pm

The Challenge of Managing Your Bandwidth ~ Moving Beyond Your First Plateau

Key Concept ~ When you’re just starting out, you’ll find yourself scrambling for market traction.  Once business starts coming in, however, you’ll be faced with another challenge; managing your functional bandwidth.  Understanding this upfront can help you move beyond your first revenue plateau.

For any of us starting a business, our primary focus out of the gate is cash flow.  While cash flow is king, you may also find yourself faced with another constraint as you begin to secure market traction…managing your operational bandwidth.  Once you’re busy with today’s customers, it is easy to focus so much time, energy, and resources on delivery that you begin to lose focus on the activities that secured those customers in the first place.  I’ve seen this many times, upon landing the whale, the whale consumes you.  In effect, your small business becomes a de facto operational unit of the client.  This represents your first inflection point, the point in time and effort where you either move beyond simply delivering value to a scaleable organization that can create value on an ongoing basis.

Depending on your business and marketplace, this doesn’t simply happen by accident.  In the medical device arena, I’ve witnessed multi-nationals that like what they see in a small vendor and consume their product or service on such a high level that they, in effect, buy the company’s capabilities without actually buying the company.  The vendor becomes so dependent on the one customer they begin to adopt their culture, organize themselves to meet that one customer’s demand, and eventually find themselves in a dictatorial relationship.

Years ago, when I was with my first startup, the company’s president shared with me what he used to do for a living at one point in time.  He was a sales consultant for small consultancies.  He explained that when sole entrepreneurs or really small consultancies secured a client they ceased their sales activities that would bring in the next customer.  They oscillated from delivery to sales to delivery to sales, over and over again.  As you can well imagine, their revenues followed suit, from peak to trough, to peak from trough.  From a cash flow perspective, this was crippling and stunted their ability to scale past the first revenue plateau.  That’s where this gentleman came in.  He would handle their sales efforts for a percentage of the revenue he helped generate.  It was a nice little business model that leveraged his core competencies and help smooth out the feast or famine nature of early stage companies.

No matter what route you take, there’s going to be some of this occurring early on, it is nearly inevitable.  Yet, we can anticipate it, and do some things that help us scale beyond this bandwidth constraint.  First, create a Conduit Organizational Structure for your business.  This enables you to build a delivery throttle into your business model.  When you need additional bandwidth, you can ramp up quickly and deliver on your commitments.  Second, take the time to create Standard Operating Procedures for every value creating activity in your business, including sales.  This will give you visibility of your time distribution alignment with value generating activities.  This will help you plan critical activities weeks in advance, avoiding the last minute disruptions that can consume your bandwidth and disrupt your sales trajectory.  Third, find incremental value in everything you do.  Ask yourself, how does my doing this today help me accomplish that tomorrow.  These three thoughts will help you plant the seeds for scaleability in your business and help you move past your first revenue plateau.

© 2011, Terry Murray

 

Leave a Comment

Filed under Productivity, Sales

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 23, 2011 · 5:11 pm

Entrepreneurship and Community Service ~ Aligning Vision and Intention with Action

Key Concepts ~ In this blog, I frequently discuss the critical nature of aligning one’s Vision with their Intention. Doing this with authenticity resonates in others and differentiates your firm in these noisy, fast-paced times. Being a Transformational Entrepreneur means we are leading from a perspective of service with the desire to deliver positive, adaptive change for those around us.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve had the privilege of meeting some remarkable Social Entrepreneurs. Truly authentic people that are driven, each and every day, to serve their community. To step up and do what needs to be done, selflessly investing their time, energy and resources to create positive change. Great things can emerge in remarkably short order when visionary leaders act from a place of positive intention. I encourage you all to visit http://palmariecommunity.org to see a shining example of Authentic Vision and Intention coming to fruition!

© 2011, Terry Murray.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Getting Started, Leadership, Strategic Planning

Tagged as , , , , , ,

September 22, 2011 · 3:05 pm

Does the Old Adage, “If You’re Not Growing, You’re Dying” Still Apply?

Key Concept ~ For decades, it was drilled into our collective, corporate consciousness that if we weren’t growing we were dying.  Yet today, we live and work in a world of rapidly shifting tides and seemingly endless uncertainty.  What’s critical for continued success in this world is adaptability.  Perhaps the new adage should be, “If you’re not evolving, your fading away.”

It was always a comment that somewhat perplexed me…if we’re not growing, we’re dying.  I heard it in pretty much every business setting.  It made sense to me in nascent startups, struggling to capture initial traction in the marketplace.  We were burning cash and running as fast and as hard as we could to become cash-flow positive…it truly was a matter of survival.

I also heard it in billion dollar corporations.  Often at a higher decibel level and with more frequency from executive management.  That’s where I would scratch my head at times, and wonder, “how much is enough”?  Of course, the fact that a major portion of executive compensation had shifted to stock options combined with the waning of stocks that payed dividends necessitated a constantly growing price per share in the open marketplace to reflect company valuation.  And, believe it or not, long before supercomputers were running algorithms once reserved for Department of Defense programs and auto-trading stocks in milliseconds, a company’s performance actually had a correlation to stock price.  As executive wealth creation was tied to performance incentives through stock options, perhaps a more genuine comment from management would have been, “If we’re not growing, I’m dying!”

Please don’t misunderstand me.  Revenue growth is a fantastic thing to experience.  It can cure many ills in a young organization.  What I am speaking to is the fact that revenue growth in today’s economy, especially for entrepreneurial companies, may not follow the same, straight line trajectory it has in the past.  With the challenges of today’s marketplace it is imperative that we understand the underlying drivers of growth, not only so we can leverage them, but so we can anticipate how they will inevitably change.

There are some lessons from the high tech world that shed some light on this perspective.  High tech companies often speak of cannibalizing current technology revenues through the introduction of the next technological innovation.  They are forced to evolve and continue to move forward by competition and Moore’s Law.  The fact is, it can depress sales in the short term (i.e. I hear there’s a new iPhone5 coming out in a couple of months, so I’ll wait to replace my StarTac), but if the evolutionary value proposition is significant, revenue growth will follow.

We saw a similar challenge in the Medical Device arena.  We would have to introduce new technology to the opinion leaders for validation of efficacy prior to full market launch, which inevitably would become common knowledge and the “let’s wait for the new one” mentality would set in, cannibalizing today’s sales for tomorrow’s launch.  We walked a tightrope, trying to minimize the old product fade on one hand and promote the hell out of the coming wave of technology on the other.  But the tightrope was a straight line.  One that doesn’t necessarily exist anymore.  That’s the challenge we face today….that next step you’re about to take may not have the tightrope beneath it!

So how do we continuously adapt and evolve on an ever-shifting playing field?  Mindfully.  I’m not trying to be flippant.  There’s a great line used by the late, great comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell, “To become transparent to the transcendent.”  In business today, we must become transparent to the transformative.  In other words, we must be capable of seeing through our current value proposition to fully understand how we are adding value to our customers.  In fact, we’re best served by having our customers’ value propositions become transparent to the transformative forces that will inevitably shape their strategies.  In doing so, we can develop contingencies and processes that enable us to shift rapidly and successfully from a well structured, disciplined position.

We’ll talk more about how to cultivate a climate and culture of adaptive strategic thinking in the weeks to come.

© 2011, Terry Murray.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Marketing, Productivity, Sales

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 19, 2011 · 9:03 pm

The Sustenance of the Human Spirit in Entrepreneurship

Key Concept ~ It has always been challenging to start a new business.  Even in the best of times, it takes perseverance, vision, creativity, adaptability, and an unflinching sense of purposefulness. In today’s environment, these attributes are more important than ever for aspiring entrepreneurs.  Aligning with the power of our human spirit can help pull us through the tough times and discover opportunities where others only see obstacles.

I was recently asked to write an article for a publication on the importance and power of the human spirit in entrepreneurship.  Having published a comprehensive book on the multi-faceted nature of this subject, I sat down to distill some of the key points of my work in this field.  Taking some 45,000 words down to less than a several hundred requires a bit of reflection.  Less is so often more, especially in today’s busy, cacophonous market environment.  What I came away with was two critical aspects of my message.  I’d like to share them with you today…

First, we need to recognize that our spirit is a natural part of what comes together to make us human beings.  We, as humans, are layered beings.  We are physical, cognitive, emotional, psychological, and spiritual by nature.  We’ve evolved and been wired to act and react using all of these attributes…attributes that I refer to as the human continuum.  But it is our spirit that is the source of our strength, creativity, and adaptability.  Remember, Darwin’s theories were not based upon “survival of the fittest”, they were constructed around “survival of those most adaptable to changing conditions”.  There’s a big difference there, and one we often overlook.  Our spirit provides the spark of intuitive insights that leads us onward to discovery, enables us to sustain seemingly unbearable circumstances, and provides the clarity we need to see our way through highly volatile times.

Second, we need to have available to us a simple-to-use approach to staying in contact with our spirit.  Practices that not only bring our spirit closer to the surface of our physical, economic, and emotional reality, but empowers us to hold the space that keeps it close to the surface of our everyday lives.  This is especially challenging today, as we live in what I’ve dubbed, “The Age of Disengagement”.  Over the past several years I have come to realize that our path to spiritual intelligence is illuminated by our emotional intelligence.  Buy cultivating our Self Awareness, Self Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management skills we can begin to quiet our ego-driven mind and conditioned behaviors and discover our authentic selves.  By developing Self Mastery, we can be fully engaged with our emotions, develop a new perspective towards the emotional landscape that surrounds us, and leverage these realities to simultaneously quiet our minds, improve biochemical function physiologically and psychologically, and engage and cultivate authentic relationships that serve everyone.

What’s most challenging today, is moving through one’s marketplace to find the prospects in which this authenticity resonates.  Perhaps the best advice comes from author Don Miguel Ruiz, from his book, “The Four Agreements”…don’t take it personally!  When your attempts at building authentic relationships doesn’t resonate with others, it is usually not about you.  The fact of the matter is, we all carry around a lot of stuff; fears, insecurities, emotional scars that can shade how we react to others, especially if we’re operating from a place of low Self Awareness.  If you’ve done your homework, prepared a mindful strategic plan, and maintain your authentic course, success will eventually unfold before you.  Hang in there…and keep fighting the good fight!  When you’re feeling worn down by the seemingly lack of consciousness in our world, step back, take a breath, and check back in with your spirit.  I’ll bet it is waiting there to soothe and encourage you to stay the course.

© 2011, Terry Murray.

 

Leave a Comment

Filed under Leadership, Productivity

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 15, 2011 · 5:23 pm

The Critical Nature of Aligning Leadership, Strategy, and Culture ~ Especially in Early Stage Startups

Key Concept ~ Here’s part two of my interview from Land O’ Lakes, Wisconsin where I have the opportunity to speak about the short and long-term competitive advantage of cultivating and aligning Leadership Skills, Strategic Planning, and Organizational Culture in early stage companies.

© 2011, Terry Murray.

1 Comment

Filed under Getting Started, Leadership, Media & Interviews, Strategic Planning

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 14, 2011 · 4:05 am

Thoughts Worth Considering…

It is rare that I do this, but I wanted to share Jim Stengel’s (the former CMO at P&G) interview from Forbes.com discussing what it takes to be a successful Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) today. Mr. Stengal shares his interesting perspective and has lessons worthy of thoughtful consideration for entrepreneurs. It is really worth a look.

http://www.forbes.com/video/embed/embed.html?show=94&format=frame&height=496&width=336&video=fvn/cmo/jim_stengel&mode=render

Leave a Comment

Filed under Associate Engagement, Customer Engagement, Leadership, Marketing

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 13, 2011 · 3:03 pm

Thinking of Making the Jump? What to Consider Before Migrating from Employee to Self-Employed

Key Concepts ~ Migrating from a w-2 mindset to a 1099 mindset is more than a transition, it sparks a transformation in perspective.  Of one’s self, and the world around them.  Here are a few key things to consider in preparation for making even a negative transition into a remarkable transformation.

Some recent surveys were just released indicating nearly half of workers in the U.S. are actively searching for another job.  It is apparent that, in far too many circumstances, employers have placed an undue weight upon the shoulders of their employees to weather the recession.  Americans are a resilient and remarkable bunch when they’re faced with a common enemy…work harder, or work for less, take on additional responsibilities, or face the common enemy of unemployment.  A recent study by the Pew Research Center(1) confirms 55% of Americans faced at least one of these, or similar negative work issues, during the Great Recession, yet they rallied to do more for less to keep the firm healthy.  As the recession rescinded, profits soared in lockstep with executive compensation, but not much else has changed, leaving a workforce that is exhausted, disengaged, and disgruntled.

With such numbers scouring the country-side for fresh horizons other concerns are emerging.  Am I about to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire?  Is moving from one corporation to another actually going to improve my lot, or will I end up in a similar culture, or one that is even worse?  Would I be better off to go out on my own?  The following slides may shed some light on the state of affairs in corporate leadership and what we may expect going forward.

Click Image to Enlarge
Click Image to Enlarge
Click Image to Enlarge

If you are thinking about making the transition from corporate employee to entrepreneur or the ranks of the self-employed, there are some simple things you can do now, while you’re still contemplating the move, that can greatly enhance your chances for success.

First, know that’s there’s no magic bullet, hidden recipe, recently discovered formula, mind-trick, tapping technique, or social networking secret that will guarantee success.  There is, however, lots of research on what contributes to failure, and familiarizing yourself with these evidence-based pitfalls can dramatically improve your opportunities for success.

The Small Business Administration identified the top nine reasons startup businesses fail.  The first eight can all be traced back to the lack of a mindful strategic planning process; the ninth reason is lack of good business planning.  The SBA also reports that less than half of nascent entrepreneurs start a business plan.  It doesn’t report on how many of them complete one nor do they offer any information on the quality of the plans new entrepreneurs complete.  Other research indicates more than two thirds of early stage business failures are do to poor performance by management.  They either don’t know what they’re doing, don’t know why they’re doing it, or simply doing the wrong things at the wrong time.  What delivers clarity in such instances?  A contemplative strategic planning process.

From my experience of working with investor-driven startups and entrepreneurs for the past ten years I must concur with the findings of the research.  You’d be amazed at how many promising technologies I’ve seen, whose management team was seeking funding, that didn’t have a sound, well validated strategic plan for taking the technology to market!  This is the key failure point for the vast majority of early stage businesses.

We live in an age of remarkable specialization.  Technology, the growing sophistication of global markets, and our traditional approach to higher education all support the creation of technical specialists.  Most first-time entrepreneurs are just that, technical specialists.  I think you’ll find most successful entrepreneurs have grown into generalists.  But this takes a transformation in order for it to occur.  And that transformation begins with engaging in a well structured strategic planning process.

Why is this?  The first steps involve a self-assessment process that demands you challenge your assumptions as to your strengths, weaknesses, and core competencies.  It is a sobering look into the mirror when done with authenticity and self-honesty.  It informs you as to where you are today at the outset of your journey.  As important as the old saying “Physician, heal thyself” may be, an even more poignant one might be, “Entrepreneur, know thyself”.  This is one of the cornerstones of the building that will be your business.

Once you’ve looked inward, it is time to look outward, into the marketplace.  This is the single greatest stumbling block I’ve seen over the years.  First time entrepreneurs struggle to conduct insightful market assessments that are well validated.  There’s just so much information to sort through it can seem daunting at first.  This is the dropout point in the planning process for most first timers, which may be an early indicator of a lack of patience and perseverance they will inevitably need to succeed.

Stepping out on your own will change everything, one way or another.  You will learn more about yourself than you could ever imagine…it is truly an opportunity for self growth and fulfillment on an entirely new plane.  But plan for it now, while your still in the incubation stage of thoughtfulness.  And the emphasis must be on the planning process itself.  The questions you ask are often more important than the answers you discover.  This is why templates are poor substitutes for working with an experienced team.  Find a mentor, someone you can trust, to push you beyond your current mindset and perspectives; and set your plan down on paper, so you have a roadmap to your future.  Not one etched in stone, but a working document that can help you engage, measure, and calibrate your efforts along the way.

Beginning in this manner will place you a leg up on more than half of the nascent entrepreneurs dreaming of success!

1 “How the Great Recession Has Changed Life in America”, Pew Research Center, A Social & Demographic Trends Report, June 30, 2010.

© 2011, Terry Murray.

1 Comment

Filed under Getting Started, Strategic Planning

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 12, 2011 · 1:26 pm

Performance Transformation Announces the Launch of The Transformational Entrepreneur Process℠

We’re very pleased to announce the formal launch of our innovative program to accelerate entrepreneurial success:  The Transformational Entrepreneur Process℠.  After working with investor-driven startups and entrepreneurs for more than a decade, we’ve grown to deeply understand the common missteps, obstacles, and challenges early stage companies encounter.  The customized program is designed to position the entrepreneur for early and sustainable success in their particular marketplace.  The fact of the matter is, I’ve never seen a startup fail due to the technology failing.  And the SBA research on startup failure all points the the same thing: a lack of mindful strategic planning.

Our approach places state-of-the-market thinking from a perspective of two decades of strategic planning experience into your hands through a highly structured, three month process at a remarkably affordable price. For details on how this approach can help your business endeavors, please drop us a line to schedule a complementary assessment call.  Or tab over to our Entrepreneur Services page to learn more.

© 2011, Terry Murray

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a Comment

Filed under Getting Started, Leadership, Marketing, Strategic Planning

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 8, 2011 · 3:22 pm

Are You Prepared for Adaptive Change?

I read an interesting article today written by Angus Loten on WSJ.com entitled, “When Cost Cuts Fail…Drastic Measures”.  It explored how a series of small businesses re-invented themselves on the fly in order to address major, adaptive challenges they were facing in their markets.  While troublesome on some levels, these small organizations were on the brink, and thus had little choice of action left to them in order to survive, it also pointed to powerful examples of mindful leadership, insightful strategic calibration, and a demonstration of what adaptive teams can do in a crisis.  None of the solutions that saved these organizations hinged upon social media, the internet, or many of the other techno-gimmicks that are awash in the media today.  They turned to their fundamentals.  Fundamentals that drive and sustain business even in the most volatile of times.

I often speak about the fundamental drivers of breakthrough performance.  Sparking breakthrough (or in this case, turnaround) performance is like lighting a fire.  A fire requires heat, fuel, and oxygen in order to burn.  In business leadership provides the heat, strategy the fuel, and culture is the oxygen.  When these three elements are authentically aligned, a cumulative force of commerce emerges and creates a momentum, seemingly all of its own.

Adaptive challenges, as first introduced in Heifetz and Linsky’s book, “Leadership On The Line”, Harvard Business School Press, 2002, point to situations in which we do not have all the answers.  Challenges we’ve yet to face before in our careers and business lives.  Most of us grew up during times of technical challenges, straight forward problems in which we did have the answers because they tended to be re-occuring challenges that followed the normal business cycle of expansion and contraction.  Who would have ever thought we would have longed for the good ole’ days of a nice, 1980′s style recession?  The halcyon days of business as usual seem to be a fading memory.

This is why these three, critical elements must be consciously tended and continuously cultivated today.  Leadership must operate from a level of greater awareness; not only of one’s self, but of the firm and the market conditions ahead.  Strategy must be mindfully structured, challenged, and continuously tested and re-validated against the shifting tides.  Culture must foster creativity, teamwork, and a strong sense of “we’re all in this together”.  It is only from that level of cohesion that dramatic, adaptive change can occur and quickly and efficiently secure traction.

The other thing to keep in mind, something that came to the fore while reading this article, is the adaptive changes these companies successfully executed were relationship driven.  They went out and connected, engaged, and motivated new customer segments through their physical presence and persistence.  No magic bullet, no social media, perhaps a bit of online marketing and communication to their target prospects to maintain visibility, but these examples pointed to addressing the fundamental principles of business.  Good for them!

© 2011, Terry Murray

Leave a Comment

Filed under Leadership, Sales, Strategic Planning

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 6, 2011 · 6:32 pm

Terry Murray Discusses the Importance of The Mind, Heart, & Spirit in Business with Mary Jane Popp on KAHI AM950 Sacramento

We’re finally back home from our grand tour of summer workshops and developmental meetings that brought us to Wisconsin, Montana, and Colorado.  It was a remarkably successful trip that once again reinforced the power of personal engagement over social networking and technology-driven personal and professional development programs.  We’ll be announcing several new partnerships and an exciting, new entrepreneurial development program in the coming days and weeks as a result.

A special thanks to Pat and Steve Sawert, Mike Kennedy, Shari Montana, and Dr. Amy Kelsall for their gracious hospitality!

I’m very pleased our message and presence in the media continues to grow.  Just last week we ended up on Forbes.com.  Earlier today, I had the pleasure to speak with Mary Jane Popp on KAHI AM950 in Sacramento, California.  We spoke about the importance the human spirit plays in developing and commercializing creative ideas in today’s global marketplace.  You can listen to a podcast of the interview on the player below:

Thanks to all of you that continue to follow our blog.  We’ll be getting back to our normal blogging schedule of informative and helpful tips for entrepreneurs this week!

© 2011, Mary Jane Popp/KAHI AM950.

© 2011, Terry Murray.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Associate Engagement, Customer Engagement, Leadership, Media & Interviews, Strategic Planning

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,