Apex Insights, LLC

"Sustainable" Making Waves on Twitter

Sustainable Stats

As of today, there are over 160 users on Twitter with the word "sustainable" in their name.

WeFollow reports over 313 thousand users following the #sustainable hashtag, and over 919 thousand following #sustainability.

Assuming there's some crossover, that's still close to a million people interested in the topic.  And that's not counting any spillover into #eco, #green, and #enviro. 

A search for "sustainable" in Twitter posts yields 160 in the last hour, which would give us 3,840 tweets per day if we assume a comparable rate.

A search for "sustainability" in Twitter posts yields 54 posts in the last hour, which would yield 1,296 tweets per day at the same rate. 

What does it all mean?

It means the tide is turning, the culture is adapting, and people are paying attention.

As the world wide web continues to level the playing field of information dissemination, more and more people are becoming aware of the need for sustainable living and consuming.

The impact for your business?  It's something to think about sooner rather than later -- from how you operate to how you contribute.

Whether that means incorporating recycling into your operations, streamlining manufacturing processes, lowering or eliminating toxicity, or contributing something that increases sustainability in the market -- people are paying attention. 

Every step counts, and if your organization is authentically driven, you can enjoy the fringe benefit of riding the waves and earning good PR karma.

People aren't just watching anymore.

They're tweeting.

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Ms. Garza publishes this information to help companies and non-profit organizations market more successfully. If you find it helpful, please share.

And if you would like to include this article on your blog as a guest post, we'd be honored. Please write to us here: info AT apexinsights DOT com.

Strategic Business Planning: When To Start?

Back in 1999, I would have said that a good time to start business planning was during your annual company retreat in Aruba. (Mai Tai's optional, of course.)

But as you might have guessed, that's not the case today.  Market volatility and the natural-selection-on-steroids process we're witnessing now simply doesn't allow too much luxury time spent in "planning to plan."

The short answer on when to start planning business strategy is this:  NOW.

No matter how you spend your money or focus your personnel, every single component of planning helps better inform those decisions.  Here are a few big ways in which planning components can play a pivotal role in attaining your business objectives:

• Audience Analysis:  Have you narrowly refined your targets? Applied the 80/20 rule? Developed personas?
• Competitive Landscape:  What should you do that's "me-too?" Where should you break from the pack?
• Executive Roadmap: Is every sales and marketing activity tied to a strategy and overarching business goal?
• Messaging: What is your relevant, values-driven authentic message?  What is your thought leadership platform?
• Integrated Promotions: How will you tie everything together, including social media?

Deep down we know the value of planning, and why the following quote resonates:

“Planning is bringing the future into the present
so that you can do something about it now.”
~Alan Lakein

Despite knowing the positive impact strategic planning has on your organization, we may still encounter some resistance to push through. And sometimes we don't know whether to take it on ourselves or hire out for it. And once we begin, we do need to address the process for operationalizing planning as a discipline.

Although there is a strong business case for starting now -- for competitive and revenue reasons -- in future articles we will be exploring more practical timelines for high-impact milestones such as key events and product or service launches.

Stay tuned...

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Ms. Garza publishes this information to help companies and non-profit organizations market more successfully. If you find it helpful, please share.

And if you would like to include this article on your blog as a guest post, we'd be honored. Please write to us here: info AT apexinsights DOT com.

How to Operationalize Strategic Business Planning

By now you may recognize that planning is an essential component of successful business.  Perhaps you've read the entry "Moving Beyond 'Plan' as a Four-Letter Word."

Perhaps you've even decided as to how you might kick off the process. The previous post "Strategic Business Planning: In-house or Outsource?" covers both options (including pros and cons) in great detail.

Making a Commitment

In order to bring planning to your organization as a discipline, you must commit to operationalizing it. This means making it part and parcel of periodic business operations, just like payroll or inventory audits. While this may seem daunting initially, it will only take a few instances before it becomes a part of business as usual.    

Beginning the planning process without commitment from key stakeholders, your organization runs the risk of investing time and money upfront only to find that the process fizzles out.  Remember: it doesn't have to be a major undertaking and clog your productivity with weekly meetings. The frequency and duration should correspond with the objectives.  And depending on how early you start, the process can simply rolled into all the other activities which correspond to your business objectives.

Operationalizing Components

Following are key components you'll need to take into account, with practical notes on each. Please note that these suggestions apply whether you are conducting strictly in-house planning or working with an outside agent or agency.

1. The Planning Team: You may be initially tempted to pull in one person from each major department or discipline. Resist this urge in favor of recruiting people with good general business background and who are known around the office for proposing new ideas. You want visionaries who can think beyond their area of expertise.  Keep it manageable...a small focused team of 3-7 people is ideal.
2. Planning Structure: You want to have a meeting structure in place before you begin your planning.  Try to keep to the same structure each meeting so you get into an efficient groove. A good sample agenda includes: meeting objectives, ideas proposed, discussion, decisions, and next action assignments.
3. Planning Venue: Don't worry...you don't have to go choreograph a full-day retreat. You certainly can, but needn't.  A two-hour in-office getaway is fine, so long as you really do disconnect and give the planning exercises your full attention.
4. Frequency: In order to make it stick, you do need to put planning on the calendar, and the frequency will depend on your planning objectives.  If you are about to have a momentous product or service rollout, or major reorganization, this clearly merits planning sessions at least every two weeks to make adequate traction.  If you have a huge peak season during the year (say, winter holiday), then your planning sessions may only happen in anticipation of the big event by about 6-9 months.
5. Success Metrics: Decide up front how you will measure success for your planning efforts.  This could be as simple as including a venue for all key stakeholders to provide feedback at the end of each planning meeting.  Or, you can get more sophisticated and identify key milestones along the way, such as increased funding, executive-level support, or shortening your go-to-market runway.

The Good News

Integrating planning as part of the organizational processes, indeed even weaving it into the fabric of the corporate culture, is not something that happens overnight. Like a product rollout, a national promotional campaign, or even the web site, it is an evolutionary process, with course correction and improvements along the way.

But starting somewhere is better than postponing indefinitely, so the good news is that you now have some key information on taking that first step, deciding how you will begin planning, and implementing it as a true discipline in your organization.

I leave you with a quote that reminds us just how important it is to plan:

"When you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."

~The Cheshire Cat, Alice in Wonderland

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Ms. Garza publishes this information to help companies and non-profit organizations market more successfully. If you find it helpful, please share.

And if you would like to include this article on your blog as a guest post, we'd be honored. Please write to us here: info AT apexinsights DOT com.

Strategic Business Planning: In-house or Outsource?

You're ready to start proactively planning for your organization's success. There are, of course, many different areas in which to plan: accounting, IT, marketing, advertising, etc.  For the sake of argument let us assume we are addressing general business direction and market planning -- the five components covered in the previous post of "Moving Beyond 'Plan' as a Four-Letter Word."

In this earlier post we cover why strategic planning can be such a challenge but how the most successful organizations and leaders recognize feeling "stuck" and get ready to move past it. Once ready to commit to planning as a serious endeavor, at the most fundamental level you have two options:  do it on your own, or work with an outside agent.

Let's take a closer look at what each of these approaches means to your organization as well as their pros and cons:

In-House: Plan On Your Own

There's nothing quite like starting right here, right now to get going.  Rallying the troops 'round a table and talking about where you want to take the business is an excellent first step. The key thing to keep in mind is fostering real, passionate commitment among key stakeholders.  If the leadership team isn't serious about achieving strategic planning goals in a particular timeframe, it runs the risk of bringing to life the humorous satire of Despair.com's view of planning.

So let's take a look at what we can expect when bringing strategic business planning in-house...

Advantages:

• No additional financial investment; time only
• Can begin ASAP
• Great outlet and motivation for "idea people" on the team
• An opportunity to find and cultivate the "big thinkers" in the group
• Pre-existing deep knowledge of organization and what is/is not possible

Disadvantages:

• May be limited by existing traditions and paradigms
• Innovation may suffer in catering to existing hierarchy and roles/titles
• Existing group dynamics and politics may skew planning in a specific direction or result in stalemates
• In-house team likely not subject experts in planning methodologies and frameworks...may experience inefficiency

Outsource: Work With a Consultant or Agency

Leaders can tell when their organization has hit a point of stagnation. Smart leaders proactively address it.  Exceptional leaders are willing to look at solutions from all angles, and recognize that sometimes the best way to maximize your current talent pool is by injecting new life into it from time to time. If your organization has never worked with an outside agent for strategic business planning, here is a general idea of what you can expect...

Advantages:

• An outside perspective brings the power to see into organizational blind spots
• Ability to mediate politics and hierarchy to level the playing field of contribution
• Unbiased research brings new market insights into the planning process
• Subject matter expertise in strategic planning as a discipline 
• Only invest when needed...can work with the same outside party over a long period of time with the financial efficiency of increasing or decreasing engagement as needed

Disadvantages:

• Additional financial investment
• Time invested in selecting the right agent or agency
• Initial ramp time to get to know the organization for maximum contribution

Key Deciding Factors
In addition to the pros and cons listed above, the three key factors that will help you make your decision are really very simple, and should come as no surprise:

1. Time
2. Money
3. Goals

Not coincidentally, this ties into the reliable business "Rule of Two" relating to "Fast, Cheap, and Good."  The rule is simple: you can have any two. If it's fast and cheap, don't expect it to be good.  If it's fast and good, don't expect it to be cheap. You get the idea. 

So the key question to ask is: what is driving your strategic planning needs? If you are facing a competitive threat (e.g. a competitive product release which may compromise your own market impact), strategic planning may need to happen quickly and you're best off bringing outside help for maximum efficiency. If you are planning proactively and have the luxury of a long lead time and time for course correction, in-house may be the way to go. 

Whatever your organization decides, it's a good idea to look at the three key criteria and have a frank discussion about goals as well as the advantages and disadvantages described above.  Next week we'll be covering a related and very important topic for bringing these concepts to fruition: "How to Operationalize Strategic Business Planning."

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Ms. Garza publishes this information to help companies and non-profit organizations market more successfully. If you find it helpful, please share.

And if you would like to include this article on your blog as a guest post, we'd be honored. Please write to us here: info AT apexinsights DOT com.

Moving Beyond "Plan" as a Four-Letter Word

Have you noticed how much productivity experts are in demand these days?

How popular blogs like zenhabits.com have become?

That everyone is trying to do more with less?

The Challenge

It's because we are all experiencing information and activity overwhelm on both personal and professional levels. And if you are a small or medium-size business owner, you can pretty safely take the average rate of overwhelm and double it.  Between business development, marketing, minding the financials, and managing employee satisfaction and productivity there are really never enough hours in the day. There are always issues that need attention, and periods of relative "quiet" are fleeting at best. Hence the popular saying: "You are your own worst client."

Amidst day-to-day customer and operational issues, it's challenging to carve out time to stop (a luxury), reflect (what?), and yes...plan (gasp!). Yet it needs to be done. 

Stephen Covey points out that we spend most of our time addressing "Urgent but not Important" tasks, e.g. phone calls, e-mail, little time-sensitive issues. And not nearly enough time on "Important but not Urgent" issues. That is...the stuff that really matters.  What taking your business to the next level really means, and how you're going to set about doing it.

The Opportunity

The good news is that recognizing you'd like to implement planning as part of your overall business operations regimen is the foundation you need for getting started. In strategic planning, you generally re-group a core team of contributors to identify what you offer the market, who your market is, and what your value proposition to that market is.  There are many ways to set about planning, but here is a simple framework:

1. Set organizational vision and goals
2. Conduct a standard SWOT analysis
3. Conduct a gap analysis between current and ideal states
4. Agree on organizational priorities
5. Develop planning success metrics

There are enough approaches to fill a book so we won't discuss particulars here, but rather focus on the importance of keeping planning on the radar in order to stay competitive and evolve as an organization.

"Successful organizations plan for innovation and allocate resources to it."

~Paul Sloane, author and expert on leadership and creative thinking~

Most leading-edge organizations, like most leading-edge individuals, set aside time to plan for the future.  And it needn't be an overproduced affair.  You can start small...the important thing is to start once you recognize that you do have a desire to plan the evolution of your business. 

That's not the tricky part, though.  The tricky part is deciding how to start and then sticking with it. In my experience there are two basic approaches to strategic business planning: doing it in-house or outsourcing to a professional.

We'll explore all the detail and practical applications in the next post: "Strategic Business Planning: In-house or Outsource?"

Subsequently we will also address the next critical step: "How to Operationalize Strategic Business Planning."

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Ms. Garza publishes this information to help companies and non-profit organizations market more successfully. If you find it helpful, please share.

And if you would like to include this article on your blog as a guest post, we'd be honored. Please write to us here: info AT apexinsights DOT com.

What is Conscious Capitalism? Whole Foods CEO John Mackey Responds

There is no question that we are changing how we do business -- just watch for proof.

And for anyone who would look skeptically askance at the viability of conscious capitalism, let's remember the sundry environmental indicators that the way we have been running the planet is simply not sustainable and a better way is no longer a luxury but necessity. So let's explore what that means.

In this video, John Mackey shares his two key principles for Conscious Capitalism, and I'd like to add my comments to them here:

Purpose Beyond Profit

While every business must profit in order to survive, purpose is what elevates it to thrive. Mackey draws an effective, no-nonsense analogy where he equivocates profit to sustenance, and which I'd like to emphasize by adding in the comparison to Maslow's hierarchy. 

Just because we need food, safety, and shelter does not mean that we have realized our full potential as human beings (self-actualization). Those basic needs are at the foundation of the hierarchy, and so too with business.  But it would seem that many businesses today remain fixated on the basic profit need. Yet in order to self-actualize, the organization (like the individual) must aspire to a greater purpose -- reaching its full potential as an organization that serves shareholders, employees, customers, and community.

Which brings us to his next point...

Business is Not a Machine, it is an Ecosystem

The steam engine and assembly line helped make some very wealthy Industrial Age pioneers, but in today's environment we need a new conceptual model. One that reflects our evolution into the Information Age. One that benefits all stakeholders.

Naturally, it is the ecosystem. Curiously, you needn't look any further than our physical world to see how we've disrupted the environmental ecosystem, yet it is also in a socio-cultural respect where the "humans as a resource" models of the Industrial Age turned people into metaphorical cogs in the Big Business Wheel.

And thus, by necessity and in the name of hope, we must move consciously to a model where everyone involved is taken into consideration: from the shareholders to the foreign trade partners to the community.

And lastly...

I'd like to point out that Mackey closes by quoting Joseph Campbell's famous imperative that you "Follow your bliss." Imagine for just a moment how out of place the concept of each employee working according to their best and most joyful aptitudes would have seemed in the business environment a century ago.

But times very clearly have changed.

The new model is at hand, and the idea of everyone connecting with their natural aptitudes and passions has a positive ripple effect on colleagues, family, friends, and family.

For my part, observing how business visionaries are helping popularize conscious capitalism brings its own bliss.

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Ms. Garza publishes this information to help companies and non-profit organizations market more successfully. If you find it helpful, please share.

And if you would like to include this article on your blog as a guest post, we'd be honored. Please write to us here: info AT apexinsights DOT com.