Authenticity on social media can be a challenge. Various online platforms have emerged as powerful tools that influence nearly all aspects of our lives. It has transformed the way we communicate, share information, and engage with others. Not only has this influenced our personal lives but has also had a profound impact on leadership styles.
The Rise of Social Media
Social media platforms have emerged as powerful tools that connect leaders with a vast audience, transcending geographical boundaries and time zones. Through a single post or tweet, leaders can instantly reach millions of individuals, share their vision, and influence public perception. The instantaneous and pervasive nature of social media has reshaped the leadership landscape, presenting both opportunities and challenges.
The Temptation of Image Management
One of the primary challenges brought about by social media is the temptation to meticulously craft and maintain a curated image. In the quest for success, leaders may feel compelled to present an idealized version of themselves, carefully selecting and filtering content to project an image of flawlessness, competence, and achievement. However, this emphasis on image management can potentially undermine authenticity and hinder genuine connections with followers.
The Importance of Authenticity
Authentic leadership, on the other hand, is rooted in genuine values, transparency, and self-awareness. It emphasizes a leader’s ability to be true to themselves, their values, and their principles, even in the face of external pressures. Authentic leaders understand the importance of building trust, fostering employee engagement, and driving organizational success through their genuine interactions and actions.
Navigating the Challenges
While authenticity is crucial, leaders must also be mindful of the potential pitfalls of social media.
Transparency: Strive to maintain transparency in your online presence. Be open about your successes, failures, and lessons learned. Transparency builds trust and demonstrates that you are human.
Consistency: Ensure consistency between your online persona and your actions in the real world. Inconsistencies can erode trust and credibility.
Balancing Personal and Professional: Find the right balance between sharing personal experiences and maintaining professional boundaries. Avoid oversharing or posting content that may compromise your leadership role.
Engagement and Listening: Use social media as a platform for dialogue. Engage with your followers, listen to their feedback, and respond thoughtfully. This demonstrates that you value their opinions and perspectives.
Harnessing the Power of Social Media
Social media, when used strategically, can amplify your leadership impact.
Thought Leadership: Share valuable insights, industry trends, and thought-provoking content to establish yourself as a trusted authority in your field.
Storytelling: Use storytelling to humanize your leadership. Share anecdotes, lessons, and personal experiences that inspire and resonate with your audience.
Mentoring and Coaching: Utilize social media to mentor and coach emerging leaders. Provide guidance, share resources, and foster a supportive online community.
The Future of Leadership in the Digital Age
Social media’s influence on leadership is only expected to grow. As leaders, it is crucial to adapt to the evolving digital landscape while staying true to our authentic selves. By embracing authenticity, maintaining transparency, and leveraging social media strategically, we can effectively navigate the challenges and seize the opportunities presented by the digital era.
Leadership is not about projecting a perfect image but about inspiring others, making a positive impact, and creating meaningful connections.
Nobody likes to feel stuck or uncertain about their future. It can be disheartening and demotivating to work hard without a clear understanding of how to advance within an organization. Unfortunately, without well-defined career progression paths, employees are left to navigate a sea of ambiguity, unsure of what steps to take to reach their desired goals.
At the tactical level, individuals often find themselves representing the organization or brand. However, when there is no overarching strategy or key messaging in place, this becomes an arduous task. In their efforts to save face or represent the brand, they may resort to assumptions or insinuations, which rarely yield resourceful outcomes.
The Power of Clarity
Businesses, therefore, need to recognize the value of articulating a clear strategy and key messages. This not only benefits our organization but also empowers our employees to represent us effectively in various forums. When our people are equipped with the right information, they become our greatest advocates, confidently conveying our purpose and vision.
Staff members seeking clarified information should always be supported and encouraged. The presence of ambiguity can breed frustration and hinder productivity. By addressing their questions and concerns, we create an environment where open communication and shared understanding thrive.
Unleashing Collective Potential
Achieving organizational success requires aligning the business and its staff with a common purpose and messaging. When everyone is on the same page, we become an unstoppable force. Employees who have a clear sense of direction and growth opportunities ahead of them are more likely to be motivated, engaged, and committed to their work.
It is our responsibility as leaders to nurture a culture that promotes growth and provides tangible pathways for career progression. By investing in professional development programs, mentorship initiatives, and skill-building opportunities, we unlock the potential within our workforce.
Rethinking Leadership: The Rise of Servant Leadership
Amidst the discussion of leadership approaches, one model stands out as a potential solution to address the lack of clear career progression paths and growth opportunities: servant leadership. This leadership philosophy focuses on prioritizing the needs of employees, empowering them, and enabling their personal and professional growth.
By adopting a servant leadership mindset, leaders can create an environment that fosters trust, collaboration, and continuous learning. This approach involves actively listening to employees, understanding their aspirations, and providing guidance and support to help them navigate their career journeys.
The Role of Mentorship
Mentorship plays a vital role in providing guidance and support to employees seeking growth opportunities. As leaders, we can establish mentorship programs that pair experienced individuals with those eager to learn and develop. Through mentorship, employees gain valuable insights, expand their networks, and receive personalized guidance that can help them navigate their career paths.
Furthermore, mentorship programs create a sense of community and camaraderie within the organization, as employees feel supported and encouraged in their professional growth. Mentorship also allows for the transfer of knowledge and expertise from seasoned professionals to the next generation of leaders, ensuring the continuity of organizational knowledge and skills.
Building a Learning Culture
In order to address the lack of clear career progression paths and growth opportunities, organizations must foster a culture of continuous learning. Encouraging employees to engage in ongoing education, training programs, and skill development initiatives is essential.
By providing access to relevant resources, such as workshops, online courses, and conferences, we empower employees to expand their knowledge. We also stay abreast of industry trends. Additionally, creating opportunities for employees to share their expertise through internal knowledge-sharing sessions or presentations cultivates a learning culture that benefits everyone.
Conclusion
Leadership in this situation requires a proactive and empathetic approach. By articulating a clear strategy, addressing ambiguity, embracing servant leadership principles, fostering mentorship programs, and building a learning culture, we can unlock the potential within our organization and empower our employees to thrive.
Client behavior can seem like a mystery. This is because purchases are made on emotion first and rationalized later. With this in mind, how can you approach marketing strategy development to position your brand and message in a way that stands out from the rest?
Marketing strategy development is fundamental to creating and running a successful campaign for your organization. What are the values you stand for? What is it that your audience really wants to hear?
In this seminar, Dan Rowell shares his expert insight for those feeling a little lost in the marketing space. By encouraging you to think about your constraints, delivery methods, and evaluation processes, as well as introducing the AIDA model of building content (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action), viewers will walk away with some new approaches to infuse their marketing strategy development with creativity and purpose.
9:45 – Putting Yourself on the Same Level With Your Customers
12:57 – How to Strategize and Manage Your Resources
18:05 – Simplifying and Clarifying Your Marketing Message
19:40 – Defining the Problem You’re Solving
22:09 – Creating An Emotional Response
27:55 – Habits and Rituals to Tap Into Creativity
45:05 – Closing Points: What Is the Biggest Challenge and Greatest Opportunity for Businesses Right Now?
49:56 – Q&A and Wrap-Up
Company Overview
Eighth Mile Consulting is a leadership training and consulting agency focused on creating and supporting better leaders in all industries. If you are seeking to develop yourself professionally, we have created an online leadership course to help revitalize your marketing strategy development and communication plan.
For more helpful videos to help you grow your people and your organization, subscribe to our YouTube channel.
https://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/marketing.jpg6001200Samantha Pickeringhttps://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/8th-mile-logo-white-ID-0e8d1f36-8698-4694-c814-e4bb5fc4fdc9-2.pngSamantha Pickering2022-12-27 11:50:142023-01-12 11:12:19Marketing Strategy Development to Revitalize Your Brand
The OODA Loop is an acronym for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. It’s also called the Boyd Cycle, named for military strategist U.S. Air Force Colonel John Boyd, who developed this decision-making process. In a nutshell, it is a cybernetic theory of strategic planning in business that can apply to any situation or process. By using these four distinct steps, individuals or organizations learn how to make better decisions faster.
OODA Loop-Related Terminology and Why it’s Important to Strategic Planning in Business
Before we get into the finer points of the OODA loop, how to make decisions faster, and learning to be strategic about planning for your business, there are a few terms you should be familiar with first.
Maneuver warfare is a military strategy of outwitting enemy forces in battle, rendering them vulnerable to attack. Maneuver warfare draws heavily on the principle of acting fast with available resources. It’s the concept from which the OODA loop originated.
Mental models are a way to evaluate your thoughts, which helps you understand how to make decisions faster. They help reveal and overcome any pre-existing assumptions that could prevent you from being strategic in planning for your business.
Situational awareness describes an individual’s knowledge of a situation and how much of that knowledge they receive from sources outside their direct influence. Drawing information from multiple sources is crucial for making better decisions faster rather than relying solely on your own perception.
Reaction time is the time it takes you to react to a stimulus. Tracking reaction time as tasks get added to a process can help planners optimize strategies.
The 4 Steps of OODA
Like other problem-solving methods, the OODA loop is an interactive, iterative process that involves repeating the cycle, observing and measuring results, reviewing and revising the initial decision, and advancing to the next step. While the process is not always simple or linear, the four phases are relatively easy to understand.
Observe: The first step in the OODA Loop is to observe what’s going on in your environment. This step includes taking in as much information as possible from the surrounding environment. This includes gathering intelligence and looking for patterns, signals, and cues that may indicate either a threat or opportunity in your industry.
Orient: The second step of the process is to orient yourself in response to what you’ve observed based on your company’s goals and values. This is an evaluative period of the loop, in which you decide whether your company should respond to a given circumstance and what that response might look like.
Decide: After you have developed a number of potential responses to the situation, the third step is to choose a course of action. Perhaps you choose to engage the “enemy” directly, or perhaps you decide to pursue an alternate route to the same destination. Either way, you must be prepared to fully commit to this single course of action.
Act: Finally, after gathering data and determining the best course of action, the fourth and final phase is to put your chosen plan into effect.
But that’s not the end of the process — it’s called a “loop” for a reason. After you’ve acted, you must return to the beginning to observe how your action has affected the environment and how that will affect your next move.
Only 32% of data available to enterprises is put to work. The remaining 68% is unleveraged.
Use the OODA Loop to Make Faster Decisions in Strategic Business Planning
Military strategies are designed to be effective under chaotic, conflicting scenarios and allow for versatile reactions. In the business world, agility is essential for any company to succeed. Organizations that can adapt or react the fastest are the ones that win. Thus, the OODA loop has seamlessly translated into strategic planning in business.
So how might this look in your business?
Let’s say a competitor has a wildly successful online presence that you’d like to emulate or overtake. You can use the OODA Loop to learn how to make decisions faster and be strategic about planning for your business.
Observe the competitor’s actions online. What do they do? How do they interact with customers? What platforms and strategies are they using?
Orient your company’s online marketing strategy while staying true to your unique business persona and values.
Decide on the online marketing strategy that’s most appropriate and feasible for your company.
Act by putting your strategy into effect.
Startthe cycle again. Observe the response to your new approach and orient/decide/act again. Repeat until you achieve your desired outcome.
You’ll always be in some phase of the loop with your decisions. Maintaining awareness of your position will improve your decision-making skills and the outcome.
Online Leadership Guidance from Eighth Mile
Using the OODA Loop in your business takes more than following a simple series of steps to make decisions faster. It requires self-awareness, honesty, courage, and plenty of practice. The Eighth Mile helps business leaders develop highly effective leadership skills that build dedicated, high-performance teams. Whether you’re an entry-level to mid-career employee, a new manager, or an entrepreneur, our eight-week online leadership course will help you make decisions that make a difference. Get in touch to learn more.
https://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/ooda-loop.jpg6001200Evan Parkerhttps://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/8th-mile-logo-white-ID-0e8d1f36-8698-4694-c814-e4bb5fc4fdc9-2.pngEvan Parker2022-12-16 05:09:362023-01-12 11:14:25How to Use the OODA Loop for Strategic Planning in Business
During my time with the Australian Army, I learned a lot about strategy and tactics with regard to resource management.
History has shown that the outcome of almost every major military effort comes down to differences in strategic approach. Essentially, one approach works, and one fails. After I left the service and became a management consultant, I found this to be relatively similar in the corporate world. While organizations can co-exist in the same industry, their actions still affect one another, especially if they are locked in a contest for market share. In that contest, as in military action, one strategy will succeed, and one will not. Yet even with that knowledge, many company leaders refuse to change their strategy, often to their own detriment.
Conversely, those organizations that are willing to entertain new approaches often end up leaving their competitors in the dust. Regardless of size or industry, companies that seem to glide toward their goals are able to answer one fundamental question:
How do we best allocate our resources to achieve our goals?
When it comes to resource management, you can apply many different military methodologies to a corporate and commercial context.
Attrition Resource Management
Attrition warfare involves wearing down the enemy to the point of collapse. The World Wars were prime examples. During these campaigns, one side would bring as much force to bear on the enemy as possible until they fell apart.
Attrition warfare unequivocally favors the more significant force and requires less imagination and agility than other strategies. The resource cost is immense, but if conducted in the right context, it can result in decisive victories where the enemy is incapacitated in one fell swoop. However, if a decisive victory is not achieved, wars of attrition can drag on for years as each side becomes more entrenched and, therefore, more difficult to dislodge.
In the corporate context, examples of attrition warfare tactics as they related to resource management might include:
Paying for premium ad space that may be unreachable for competitors (such as a Super Bowl commercial)
Sponsoring major industry events
Taking legal actions against competitors (such as copyright or trademark infringement lawsuits)
Poaching high-end staff with the promise of better pay and benefits
Attrition as a practical commercial strategy is only practical for those with a large number of resources on hand. Corporations that already control a massive share of the market will do the best with attrition resource management as there is no practical way for smaller organizations to compete with them.
Maneuver Resource Management
Maneuver warfare is a strategy aimed at unbalancing or unhinging the enemy. It identifies the root purpose of the enemy campaign (such as taking control of a certain landmark) and finds different ways to do the same thing. Essentially, it targets an enemy’s “center of gravity,” or the ineffable “something” that gives them the will or the ability to fight.
Throughout the course of history, militaries have used maneuver warfare through the following avenues:
Physical Dislocation: Removing the key assets or logistics that enable the enemy to operate.
Temporal Dislocation: Moving faster when achieving important terrain, milestones, or assets.
Moral Dislocation: Attacking the enemy’s will to fight. This often includes a significant effort to get into the minds of the key decision-makers and shape their decisions.
These methods can run simultaneously, and all of them emphasize the elements of surprise and speed.
For resource management, maneuver warfare shines brightest in organizations that are adept in prioritization and channeling their efforts towards the outcomes that will have maximum impact for minimum input. These organizations know their strengths and weaknesses inside and out and magnify their results exponentially by focusing their precious resources on two or three outcomes instead of a dozen.
Maneuver warfare for resource management not only allows medium-sized organizations to start capturing market share from bigger competitors, but it also ensures a more tailored market share.
Guerrilla Resource Management
The concept of guerrilla-style tactics was heavily publicized by Sun Tzu, who suggested in The Art of War that a small force could win against a much larger competitor if it made use of every available resource with the utmost haste.
Guerrilla warfare is based on the idea that smaller teams can create significant issues for their enemies providing they stay under the detection threshold. They almost always have few to no resources, and therefore rely heavily on unorthodox methods (such as ambushes, raids, or sabotage) and a loyal support network.
In the corporate or commercial context, smaller, more agile organizations can achieve proportionately huge impacts if they are agile, dynamic, and able to rally passionate support for their cause. It also means that smaller boutique agencies can provide highly tailored services to those with simpler, more focused needs.
In many ways, this approach to resource management has been one of the founding successes of The Eighth Mile Consulting. We endeavor to support areas of the market that remain undetected by the larger players in the industry. With support from partner organizations, we can seize opportunities quickly, provide valuable services, and maintain our support network.
In Conclusion
This might seem counter-intuitive given what’s been discussed thus far, but these resource management strategies do not have to be adopted in an overtly aggressive manner. They may be more useful at guiding your team’s operations than they are at destroying your competitors.
In addition to a competitive edge, consider what a resource management strategy can help you achieve:
Prioritizing your efforts toward specific outcomes
Focusing the scope of operations on what will be the most impactful
Highlighting strengths and weaknesses
Identifying paths of least resistance in the marketplace and promoting early action
Incentivizing creating thinking instead of reinventing the wheel
As you can see, the real enemy is not your competitors, but the conditions in which you operate. Through proper and appropriate resource management, you arm yourself with the weapons you need to reinvent, endure, and ultimately succeed.
At The Eighth Mile, our organizational values and ethos are clear:
Service: Client-tailored training
Initiative: Find the needs and fill them
Integrity: Deliver on every promise
Accountability: Personal investment in every outcome
Manage and lead your team to victory through our 8-week online leadership courses or private consulting for unique business strategies. Get in touch with our team to discuss your company’s needs.
https://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/war.jpg6001200Evan Parkerhttps://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/8th-mile-logo-white-ID-0e8d1f36-8698-4694-c814-e4bb5fc4fdc9-2.pngEvan Parker2022-11-30 09:50:492023-01-12 11:28:24Preparing for War: Resource Management in the Modern Marketplace
I recently posted a number of content pieces that explained ‘The Principles Of War’, a set of broad and overarching guidelines that acted as a filtering system for the operational and strategic efforts we conducted within the Military. In response to these posts many asked me to collate the information in a central source so that they might apply more reasonably to their businesses and teams.
There is no point in providing a set of principles, guidelines or considerations unless we build a context behind them that establishes relevance. This is my shot at doing that for the Principles of War in a corporate context.
The Principles of War are a set of guiding principles that act as considerations for military planning and strategy. It has become apparent that there is some utility in using them in the corporate environment. In this article, we look at the analysis and interpretation of the principles with that concept in mind.
Simply put, the principles exist to help frame ‘how’ to think and not ‘what’ to think. This means that we are free to explore whatever is needed to solve the problem. However, we must be careful to balance our priorities and resources to enable the best possible outcome.
These are the principles in order but not in importance. Each plan or initiative will see a different prioritisation of each of these principles in order to achieve a different effects or outcome.
The selection and maintenance of the aim
Concentration of force
Cooperation
Economy of effort
Security
Offensive action
Surprise
Flexibility
Sustainment
Maintenance of morale
The situation will see each principle being utilised differently and should be weighted depending on the circumstances, what needs to be achieved and the priorities set out by the planner. As an example, when developing a concept for client focused service (aim) we may need to bring in another organisation to cover an identified need (cooperation) which we could only build ourselves at a much higher cost (economy of effort). This joint venture may necessitate an exchange of restricted information (security) to ensure the team is established, trust is built, and we can be demonstrating our ability to adjust to our client’s needs (flexibility/aim).
For this scenario, the client focused service has primacy. It may look something like this.
Note – ‘the doctrine’ comments are excerpts from Land Warfare Doctrine 1 – The Fundamentals of Land Power 2014 – The Principles of War
THE SELECTION AND MAINTENANCE OF THE AIM
The doctrine – Once the aim has been decided, all effort must continually be directed towards its attainment so long as this is possible, and every plan or action must be tested by its bearing on the aim.
“ Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future ” – Walt Disney
In broad terms, it means to keep the object/ end in mind at every level of the operation. The creation of the aim (end state/ outcome) takes time, energy, and some serious thought. This is true for military and corporate action.
When selecting and maintaining the aim:
Ensure it aligns with your values
Communicate it simply and effectively to those involved
Reinforce the aim at all levels
Resist the urge to ad hoc stray from the aim
Maintain open lines of communication with key stakeholders
Test any changes against its impact on the overall aim
Bring subject matter experts in for objectivity
Know where you are heading before you start. It allows you and your team to align to a common outcome and make decisions as well as maintain momentum in your absence. From CEO to a jobseeker, selecting and maintaining your aim provides the purpose to make sound decisions.
CONCENTRATION OF FORCE
The doctrine – Concentration of force is the ability to apply decisive military force at the right place, at the right time and in such a way as to achieve a decisive result.
“ The talent of the strategist is to identify the decisive point and to concentrate everything on it, removing forces from secondary fronts and ignoring lesser objectives. ” – Carl von Clausewitz
To be successful we need to be able to concentrate our capabilities, at the appropriate time and place, to achieve success. This means knowing what we have, what it can do and where it is going to have the most impact. Then doing it. This principle is about be deliberate and even more so, decisive.
In a corporate context this would mean:
Having the funding to support a new project or capitalise on an opportunity
Aligning staff, capital and messaging at a key point to achieve and outcome
Defining areas that are irrelevant for expenditure
Having a surge capability to reinforce success
Knowing the strategy and communicating key locations and times for action
Making decisions within the time to be effective
Building alignment, momentum and energy to decisive points in the plan
We cannot spend everything on anything. Prioritise those actions that will have the highest impact and align to the strategy. Then build up the required resources, staff and capital to seize an opportunity. This is a deliberate and defined process.
COOPERATION
The doctrine – Cooperation within joint combined arms interagency teams, allies and coalition partners is vital for success. Only in this way can the resources and energies of each be harnessed so as to achieve success.
” It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) that those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. ” – Charles Darwin
Vital to success is the ability to bring together multiple agencies to achieve an overall effect. What this means in a practical sense is to build teams that cover each other’s gaps. We cannot know or be great at everything, so we join forces with others to create something better than our own individual capability.
What cooperation looks like:
Admitting that you are not strong in an area
Aligning with a team that is
Leaving your ego at the door and being prepared to be led depending on the priority
Acknowledging a greater purpose
Sharing information freely and in a timely fashion
Synchronising the efforts in space, time, and priority to create the best impact
Putting the team needs first
Protecting each other and representing them in areas where they don’t represent themselves
Combining efforts takes a great deal of trust, authenticity, and respect. It may be for a short period or an enduring strategic partnership. The vulnerabilities of your joined team must be protected at all costs.
ECONOMY OF EFFORT
The doctrine – Economy of effort is the prudent allocation and application of resources to achieve the desired results.
“ The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency. ” – Bill Gates
Economy of effort. This principle deals with ‘playing smart’ and making the full use of available resources. It is in this space that we create a balance in priorities and what we can realistically achieve and sustain. Appropriate allocation must be nested with the strategy as they are finite. Priority allocation must go to the main effort that and supporting efforts will be created to enable it.
In a corporate setting this might look like:
Priority resourcing to finding new opportunities
Supporting effort in retaining and consolidated current projects
Reserve resources segregated for identified contingencies
A changing environment requires adaptability and if the main effort/ supporting efforts evolve then the priority of resourcing will change. At all times maintaining your economy of effort must be nested with the other principles like sustainment. Appropriate allocation of effort can mean the difference between success and failure.
SECURITY
The doctrine – Security is concerned with measures taken by a command to protect itself from espionage, sabotage, subversion, observation, or surprise. It is of basic concern during any campaign or operation. Security is required to operate effectively with minimal interference from the enemy.
“ Protection and security are only valuable if they do not cramp life excessively. ” – Carl Jung
To be able to continue to operate and/ or obtain opportunities we must first ensure that our own capabilities are as secure as required by the strategy. Now in times of need, sacrificing security for speed may be that strategy but it must be a planned, deliberate, and precise decision. Offensive strategies can also be a method of security as we stay mobile, maintain momentum and aren’t targetable.
In a corporate context, this could mean:
Securing your information, strategies and plans from your competitors
Ensuring you have consolidated resources to mitigate uncertainties
Future proof your employee relevance by developing them
Maintain quick and deliberate decision-making cycles to stay ahead of the competition
Securing financial viability by maintaining cashflow
Diversifying to create redundancy to secure operational viability
Mitigating priority risks to reduce critical events
Security of our businesses in physical, financial, strategic, operational and resource-based decisions is important to enable us to operate effectively with minimal disturbance. This principle allows us to analyse risk and mitigate it before crisis occurs.
OFFENSIVE ACTION
The doctrine – Military forces take offensive action to gain and retain the initiative. This has often taken the form of building momentum and fueling it to snowball the opposition. In most circumstances, such action is essential to the achievement of victory.
“ A little deed done very well is better than a mighty plan kept on paper, undone. Wishes don’t change the world; it’s actions that do this business! ” – Israelmore Ayivor
We need an offensive action (read, a bias for action in this case) to either regain or maintain initiative, or in a corporate context; maintain your competitive advantage, be first to market, launch on a project or create and seize opportunities. This action must be deliberate and decisive and must be driven towards achieving the established aim.
To effectively implement offensive actions, we should:
Empower people who have a bias for action (as long the strategy supports it)
Consolidate and make use of adequate resources
Ensure the action is sustainable to the end
Be linked to other key stakeholders to support
Use an element of surprise
Make effective use of available resources
Be deliberate and decisive
Be oriented towards the overarching aim or strategy
Be balanced with security of our own capabilities
In a military context this may necessitate combat however, it can also be the use of information actions and achieving influence as well. Overall, it is important to understand the importance of having a bias for action as it creates momentum, speed in decision making and advantage over your competitors. This bias will ultimately allow you to create opportunities not just be reactive to them.
SURPRISE
The doctrine – Surprise can produce results out of all proportion to the effort expended and is closely related to security.
“ In conflict, straightforward actions generally lead to engagement, surprising actions generally lead to victory ” – Sun Tzu
In a military term this might require deception or simply being able to disperse and concentrate rapidly, concealing your activity, appearing weak when you are strong etc. The idea is to be where you are unexpected or where you are expected at a time when you are not, in forces that weren’t planned for. In a corporate context, this may mean the release of a new strategy, software, market entry, product release in a time and manner that is not expected so that your competitors can’t mimic or get the inside track.
To achieve successful surprise:
Be where you are not expected to be
Appear vulnerable when you are in fact strong
Appear strong when you are weak
Approach markets from different methods
Create strong allies who enable you to scale and disperse rapidly
Know your environment in detail
Understand the importance of timing
Have a strategy and a plan
Show the minimum amount of activity in an area people are expecting so that they don’t know what your actual aim is. It is called a feint.
Be adaptable and ready to respond to your changing environment
This list is ultimately endless but, in a nutshell, utilising surprise not only keeps you and your team excited about new plans, it also enables you to capitalise on opportunities before others know you are even looking at them.
FLEXIBILITY
The doctrine – Flexibility is the capacity to adapt plans to take account of unforeseen circumstances to ensure success in the face of friction, unexpected resistance, or setbacks, or to capitalise on unexpected opportunities.
“ It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is most adaptable to change. ” – Charles Darwin
This is your ability to adapt to an ever-changing environment (your AQ). I would also include your resilience to setbacks, ability to deal with friction, chaos and complexity and to make decisions in uncertainty. The aim of flexibility is to maintain dynamic decision making across multiple lines of operation and still be synchronised.
To build flexibility:
Identify and communicate the overall aim
Understand your environment
Build a redundancy or reserve of resources
Empower decision making at the lowest level
Simplify communication
Provide realistic and relevant boundaries
Create an environment of innovation
Absorb risk, friction and anxiety for your team
Giving your team and organisation the confidence and capability to accept risk and seize opportunities is a deliberate process. As leaders we have a responsibility to create the environment and set the conditions for success. Build and train your teams to be able to understand intent and feel confident to take risks knowing that you have their backs. Ultimately, gaps and opportunities will be found by them. If they feel confident and capable, you will be able to pivot early and often.
SUSTAINMENT
The doctrine – Sustainment refers to the support arrangements necessary to implement strategies and operational plans.
“ You won’t find it difficult to prove that battles, campaigns, and even wars have been won or lost primarily because of logistics ” – General Dwight. D. Eisenhower
The new executive with the grand ideas will often forget about the sustainability of a project or strategy. Logistics and sustainability don’t just happen and can underpin an entire campaign.
Deliberate planning of time and resources for both offensive and defensive strategies should be a priority if you want an enduring impact. The sustainability or logistical elements of are also those things that are easily targetable by a competitor who can bring more support to the game.
To be sustainable we must:
Accurately plan the requirements of our missions
Have a redundancy
Identify the needs and requirements of our teams
Be prepared to do more with less (should not be the ‘go to’ move)
Be creative and use initiative
Allocate resources to those areas with the greatest impact
Prioritise resources (especially time and energy)
Have a strategy and a plan
Sustainability of our initiatives is the life blood of enduring impact. In change management, fatigue and obstruction are the result. In projects, loss of capability occurs or a failure to meet scope.
Be clinical and decisive in your application of resources.
MAINTENANCE OF MORALE
The doctrine – Morale is an essential element of combat power. High morale engenders courage, energy, cohesion, endurance, steadfastness, determination and a bold, offensive spirit.
“ An army’s effectiveness depends on its size, training, experience, and morale, and morale is worth more than any of the other factors combined. ” – Napoleon Bonaparte
For those that know and understand the power of good morale, it is understood that this can be the power that turns the tide and make the unachievable…achievable.
Teams with high morale based on being highly trained, determined people with a shared value set, cohesion and trust will outperform even the best ‘qualified’ teams (on paper) with low morale. This is the secret force multiplier that changes the game.
Morale is built on:
Trust
Shared experience
Open communication
Success (short/long term) and performance
Influential leadership (at all levels)
A shared purpose and identity
Commitment and conviction to succeed
A genuine and authentic care for each other and the team
Culture and a feeling of belonging
A willingness to put the team above yourself
If you have worked in a team with high morale, you will understand the power and addictive nature of it. You feel indestructible and associate the impossible as the possible. However, it takes work and commitment to being a part of something bigger than yourself.
SUMMARY
The principles of war have been developed over the years as a set of factors and considerations for successful planning and implementation of strategy.
Depending on the environment, the adversary, experience, available time and any other amount of identifiable conditions will determine what weight is applied to each principle. We cannot achieve every principle perfectly every time. Sometimes we may have to sacrifice one to achieve another as a priority of circumstance. That means that careful consideration and analysis must be applied to each strategy and plan. The consideration itself will lead to a better plan than had it not been done at all.
Ultimately, having a set of principles that can help aid in planning and decision making helps you to create better outcomes. The principles of war are one such set.
https://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/The-principles-of-war-1.jpeg302536Jonathan Clarkhttps://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/8th-mile-logo-white-ID-0e8d1f36-8698-4694-c814-e4bb5fc4fdc9-2.pngJonathan Clark2020-10-28 14:43:522020-10-28 17:03:40The Principles of War - A Corporate Translation
One of the most distinctive memories from my early days within the Army was one of my respected Sergeants suddenly and abruptly correcting one of my trainee peers.
My mate had mentioned the unmentionable…
We were discussing what we should do if we encounter an enemy that was larger or more dangerous than we had originally predicted, and someone mentioned the word ‘retreat’. The response from my sergeant was immediate, ‘Australians DO NOT retreat!’. He went on to explain that we might withdraw in the interest of finding a terrain that was more conducive and favourable for us, but we do not retreat.
This is a statement that has stuck with me since that time. It speaks of the importance of always moving forward and regaining the initiative. Of remaining focused and deliberate in everything we do. It accepts that at times we might have to take a step back, but this should only be done to regain our footing in which to be able to take more steps moving forward. Over the years this phrase has spread its utility into most aspects of my life such as:
But here is the catch, it is predisposed on an assumption that we know what direction we should be heading. What point is there moving forward if it is entirely the wrong direction?
This is why having a strategy is so incredibly important. A strategy is a framework which sanity tests our decisions in short time, in order to allow us to stay focused on heading in the right cardinal direction. I have seen so many people get this wrong at their detriment.
We need to ask ourselves does our strategy (personal or professional):
Detail what we are seeking to achieve (Mission)?
Explain what it looks like when we achieve it (Vision)?
Include a sequence of how we might actually transit there (Goals, pillars, objectives, measures of success)?
Contain an acknowledgement of what we are willing to invest (or give up) in order to achieve it (resource allocations)?
It is an area that is too often paid lip service, but it is this defining feature that separates good teams from the absolute best.
A strategy allows a team to make quicker decisions, allocate precious resources towards those efforts with the highest impact and effect, as well ignore those shiny distractions which enticingly seduce people off of the centre line of their success.
Stopping the rot
‘Moving forward’ all the time is extremely difficult. It requires consistency, dedication and focus. Traits that can be increasingly hard to come by these days.
Our world is full of ever-increasing distractions and information that act as ‘white noise’ to our concentration. This white noise can incrementally increase for some people to the point where it becomes debilitating to their decision-making abilities. Some teams can become so confused by the pressures associated with these distractions that they reactively overcompensate by creating more and more high priorities. Leaders become withdrawn as the idea of moving forward appears less and less tenable.
For these teams, a ‘circuit breaker’ is required. Something that can stop the spiralling confusion and provide some level of clarity. This often requires a combination of the following:
Strong leaders & managers with clear roles and responsibilities. Kotter once described the distinction between Leadership and Management, explaining that leaders coordinate ‘change’ and managers coordinate ‘complexity’. I particularly like this description as it is a simple reference for teams to make in order to refocus and distribute their team’s efforts. It is a common observation that the teams that are drowning have not clearly identified the distinction in roles and responsibilities between key roles. Everyone is trying to do everything, and no one is doing it well.
Objectivity. Sometimes people are so saturated in their problems that they cannot see the overall context. They are literally living minute by minute and the idea of popping their head about the parapet in order to refocus their direction is unimaginable. This is where objectivity is so key. A third set of eyes, from someone who is not so absorbed in the problem, can be invaluable in asking the right questions and assisting in resetting the focus.
Horsepower. Some teams are under-resourced and under-supported – plain and simple. These teams have often been heading in the right direction but just do not have the horsepower or workforce to get their project over the line. They have been doing ‘more with less’ for so long that they have reached culmination, and they just need reinforcement. Jonathan Clark once said to me, ‘sometimes you don’t need more people standing around the hole telling you how to dig better, you just need them to jump in and help dig’.
Prioritisation. It is common to see teams that have a massive list of ‘what to do’ they have forgotten to detail what they ‘do not need to do’. The list of what is not required is often more important than what need to do. It stops people being lured down the enticing trip falls we eluded to earlier…
Some of the readers might resonate with some of these observations. If you have, I would love to hear your comments, case studies, and ideas.
The Eighth Mile Consulting team has founded a reputation for helping teams navigate through this confusion. There is an amazing feeling of elation as a team steps over the line of success when things months prior looked dire and unachievable.
For those slugging their way through problems at this very time, remember:
We don’t retreat, we withdraw to more favourable conditions
We ensure the actions we are doing are working to an overarching strategy or design.
https://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/british-library-8US1_1QMHi0-unsplash-scaled.jpg25601984David Nealhttps://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/8th-mile-logo-white-ID-0e8d1f36-8698-4694-c814-e4bb5fc4fdc9-2.pngDavid Neal2020-08-03 20:05:212020-08-07 14:05:57We Do Not Retreat
John Kiriakakis from The Eighth Mile Consulting asks Anand Tamboli what we need to consider before implementing Artificial Intelligence within a business.
There are a number of areas within operating expenses for a business where cost reductions can be found with the implementation of these new technologies. We touch on some of these expenses that may raise questions for your own strategy development.
Some of the myths surrounding AI that we cover
It is too expensive
There is too much complexity involved
You will attract a bad reputation for automating
Automating will solve all of your problems
We also break down the levels of AI and provide case studies on what this may look like in your business from
Data-driven decision making
Shared roles between bots and humans
Complete automation of functions
In this video, we explain how implementing AI within your business can increase your efficiency, giving your employees more time to deliver higher quality and improve your overall client experience.
With all of this in mind, what are the next steps?
Before you begin the implementation phase of your AI project, consider these points;
Look for the small wins
Pick a clear outcome
Do not get stuck in a money drain
Set defined boundaries for the project
Find a low risk, low cost, stepping stone to use as a sample test
Let us know – What are some challenges in your business that you think AI might be able to resolve?
For more helpful videos to help you grow your people and your organisation subscribe to our YouTube channel.
https://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/high-angle-photo-of-robot-2599244-scaled.jpg17072560Samantha Pickeringhttps://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/8th-mile-logo-white-ID-0e8d1f36-8698-4694-c814-e4bb5fc4fdc9-2.pngSamantha Pickering2020-07-09 17:59:172020-07-10 13:08:20Where Does Artificial Intelligence Sit in Your Strategy?
This article was originally shared by Ian Mathews onForbes
David Neal spoke with Ian Mathews about his transition from his career in the military into founding his own consultancy alongside his partner Jonathan Clark.
David shares with Ian the considerations he and Jonathan explored when establishing The Eighth Mile Consulting strategy development.
They also covered these points in their conversation which can be seen in this short 8-minute video posted to Linked In.
The costs of not acting on instinct
The lesson on letting your ego impact your leadership
Why do we fall into the trap of micromanaging?
How much time do you invest in developing people who have not yet met their mark?
From Active Duty To Startup Founder: An Interview With David Neal
If you interview an executive and a military leader, many aspects of the conversation will sound remarkably similar. Both are responsible for adapting to change, leading people, thinking strategically and delivering results.
But several times during the conversation, you are reminded of just how different the stakes can be for the military leader. An executive might recall delaying the removal of a poor performer, resulting in a disruption in business. The military leader provides a similar example but with much graver consequences.
I recently met with David Neal, CEO of The Eighth Mile Consulting, to discuss his journey from the Australian Army to founding a successful business. David spent 13 years with the armed forces before leaving to build a company that helps private enterprises with change and project management, strategy and leadership consulting.
What was your first experience in business? When I was 14, I worked in a liquor store. Sweeping, stacking shelves and all that sort of stuff. I learned the value of talking to people and building rapport, particularly at a young age, because a lot of the customers were rough around the edges.
Your focus now is on leadership. What were your early influences? In my adolescence, I did Shotokan karate and worked my way up from a very young age, competing in the World Championships. That drew a lot of my time throughout my younger years. I was coached predominantly by my dad and spent time on the national team.
You mention your father as a coach. What other examples did your parents set for you? My parents worked in the tax office. That’s an interesting story by itself because my mom and dad come from pretty rough stock, a suburb called Elizabeth in Adelaide, which for many years was the highest crime rate suburb in the whole country. My dad scored a scholarship by randomly attending a school hall once. He went into the air-conditioned school hall on a very, hot Australian summer day. To stay in the air conditioning, he had to take an aptitude and IQ test. He is a brilliant man and his scores landed him an accounting scholarship funded by the government. He created a career there with my mom, working shoulder to shoulder on many of the same projects. It’s a pretty cool story when you think back to how they pulled themselves out of tough times through education.
What was your first leadership role with the military? I went to two institutes: The Australian Defence Force Academy and The Royal Military College – Duntroon, where they designate army leadership officer training. It’s a very competitive environment and you get used to being uncomfortable. I also did some infantry-specific training and deployed immediately to Afghanistan. Straight out of military school, I spent 10.5 months on combat operations in Afghanistan, as a 22-year-old in charge of up to 27 soldiers at any time.
What was that like? That was very gritty work. My role was as part of an Australian force that could support the Afghan National Army and make sure that our soldiers were getting back alive. Wherever there was trouble, we got dragged in and would get our hands dirty. That’s where I developed my close affiliation with the U.S. because we supported each other during some tough times.
What was an early observation in that role that stuck with you? One of the things I observed was a difference between the U.S. and Australian forces in style and approach. I used to talk to my soldiers on a first name basis, regardless of what rank they were, and they’d be like, “Yeah, boss,” and walk off. I had a US lieutenant struck by the casual approach to the way that we deal with our soldiers. And he was like, “How can you do that? This is your rank, and this is their rank, and we’ve got to maintain discipline.” I learned not to rely on my position because the Australian Army is less structured in our hierarchies. And so what works for one military did not necessarily work for the other. We both have the same tactics on the battlefield, but the way that we communicate with our teams is drastically different. He thought they were insulting me by calling me boss, but in our world, that was a sign of respect. If they started calling me sir, I knew I’d stuffed up.
Does that lesson apply in business? There’s a level of respect in assuming that the people who work with you can poke fun at you. It shows that we trust your ability to deal with it. And if we don’t talk to that person or we don’t want to offend them or whatever, then that’s probably a more concerning sign in our culture.
Tell me about a mistake you made as a new leader in the field. I did not make the hard decisions early enough. An example of that, I had someone in mid-level leadership that was in charge of other people. I was easily influenced and didn’t want to break up the team just before we deployed. I thought that I could change or educate that person in time, and I was wrong. We had a gunfight, and this person froze at a time that I needed them not to freeze. And I now look back and know I could’ve done something about that.
Why didn’t you act on your gut sense? I didn’t want to ruffle feathers, and I didn’t want to upset the status quo. I paid the price for that at the gritty end. If I had groomed someone else, I wouldn’t have risked people’s lives. So for me, have those hard discussions early and be willing to justify the reasoning behind that.
I went through the same thing as a new leader. My naive way of thinking was, “I can change everybody.” It was my ego saying, “I’m a good enough leader to overcome this.” Absolutely. The lead up to that, we’ve gone through four years of relatively intense training where everything is graded, marked and assessed. You’re compared against your peers. The day you graduate, you’re rated from one to whoever is left in the class. You know where you sit in terms of your cohort, your peers, and these are arguably the best leaders in the country. And you’re getting rated against those people. I mean, that’s always in the back of your mind. There’s a competition about who is the best. I’ve got to be the fastest, and I can’t be the weakest — all these really kind of misaligned perceptions.
How did those rankings impact your judgment? I didn’t want to be the one with the weaker team. I didn’t want to cause problems for my headquarters. I didn’t want to be that guy. I wanted to be the guy with solutions. I’ll fix it. And really what I was doing was slapping more band-aids on the problem but not curing the infection underneath. And ultimately, I paid the price for that. And then I had to endure the rest of the tour with that individual. And it hurt me. I had to micromanage to make sure that my soldiers were safe and this came at the expense of the overall operation. With a few hard discussions early, we could have fixed that entire thing.
What were the consequences as you got dragged down to a lower pay grade? The soldiers see that, and they’re like, “Well, why is the boss mucking around at our level? Why is this, why is that?” And I’m trying to work behind the scenes to make sure that everyone’s safe and we all get back alive. That weighs heavy on your conscience. You’re trying to make sure that we’re all going to get back. The other thing I learned, and I think it relates to corporate, military, and personal life is the value of context.
The times when my staff were most frustrated with me were when they didn’t know how or why we were doing something.
If I could talk to a younger version of me, I would say spend that extra 60 seconds on every engagement you have with people to explain the context about how and why you’re doing something. If you can cover both of those things, it will prevent 90% of the problems before they start.
What happens when a leader isn’t transparent enough? It always creeps out anyway. Whatever you say to one person will get back to the original person. It builds strong rapport and trust when you go up to another human and say, “I have a lot of respect for you, and I’m not going to talk behind your back. I’m going to say these things to your face because I believe that you can deal with it.” If you can frame conversations in that way, people will take it positively. One thing that took me a long time to figure out is that the more vulnerable I am, the stronger I am.
Can you elaborate on the importance of being vulnerable? It is counter-intuitive for someone trained to protect their reputation. The more I share about my vulnerabilities, the stronger the rapport I have with people. And I am able to leverage my network to achieve a disproportionate impact.
I find that the most productive people simply have more people willing to do them a favour. Absolutely. And what that looked like was, “Hey Bill, could I borrow some of your trucks? Could you give me a drop 20 km down the road with your helicopter, Harry? Because that would be a great asset for us not to walk that far.” These were favours, not orders or demands. This was over a mobile phone going, “Hook a brother up, and I’ll do you a favour later.”
How do you share vulnerability in a business context? When we meet someone, we tell them how bad we are at some things. We put those knives on the table before we start. We approached two-star generals with, “Hey look, this is where we’ve personally let you down. Let me explain where we’re weak. We haven’t hit the mark on this particular project.” The more we did that, the more those people protected us because they were like, “I can trust this person. I don’t need to hunt for the negative things. They just tell it to me straight away.”
As you approached the end of your term, how did you decide to start this company? I had no intention of creating a business. I jumped into a project manager role in a large not-for-profit organization to roll out an enterprise project. It was similar to some of the projects I worked on within defence. But while I was in that organization, I observed what I thought were Leadership 101 problems. It was a toxic environment, and I was like, “How can this business run when leaders can’t even talk to their staff? They can’t say one thing without bullying them.
So, you saw a problem first-hand and decided to build a solution? Yes. I started taking notes in the background with my friend Jonathan, as we were working on this project together. We got to the end of our contracts, and I said, “Do you think there’s merit in us starting a business where we can help people based on our lessons learned?” We got so comfortable working in high-performing teams, and there seems to be a complete vacuum of it. And working with high-performing teams is addictive. It’s an amazing feeling when you’re on a humming team, and everyone knows their place, and everyone’s getting stuff done. I thought, “Why don’t we start a business helping companies create great teams?”
Your company’s motto is, “Good people helping good people.” What does that mean to you? We look at projects and change initiatives holistically, but with a lens of, “How do you engage with people?” Because so many problems are disguised as something else. Most of what we deal with is people. What looks like a technical problem is often one person won’t talk to another because they don’t like them, and the company is trying to patch it with a new system that costs a million dollars. We ask why they don’t get the two talking to each other or get rid of the offender.
You started Eighth Mile Consulting with your longtime friend, Jonathan Clark. How important has it been for you to start this business with a partner? It’s massive. We made a deliberate choice that we would fulfil two roles, as we have two different styles. Behind the scenes, we do very different things. I’ve adopted the part of the gap-finder, forward-leaner, opportunity-finder, relationship-builder. Jonathan has adopted the systems, processes, structure, design, organization, management and operational side. Knowing your place in the team and defining it is crucial. We hold each other accountable, and I think our team thrives on that.
How did you think about positioning for Eighth Mile? In true military fashion, the first thing we did was purchase a whiteboard and a big marker. Jonathan and I sat there over bourbon and wrote about where you might not see two knuckle-dragging ex-infantry consultants. Where can we be a point of difference? And we focused on not-for-profits, clinical care, medical and education. We’re going to lean into these areas where we are a point of difference.
What was your marketing plan? We tried LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter with different messaging. I aimed at these various industries to see where we might provide value. LinkedIn quickly rose to the top, and I developed a few tactile skills on that platform. So we started building our personal brands concurrently while we were making the company brand. Our messaging slowly switched to, “Well, if you like me as a human, you should see the rest of my team, because they’re incredible.” Since our business has been running, we’ve spent less than $500 on advertising.
What advice would you give to someone starting a company today? In the small business world, you do everything for a while. You don’t have the capital, and you don’t have the revenue coming in. Your margins might be small. Write down your strategy. It’s a contract with yourself and that should incorporate a linkage to your personal life. Do not commit to starting a new enterprise or a new business if you think that it will not affect your home life.
https://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dave-and-Jono-e1589448674500.jpg730881Samantha Pickeringhttps://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/8th-mile-logo-white-ID-0e8d1f36-8698-4694-c814-e4bb5fc4fdc9-2.pngSamantha Pickering2020-05-14 19:30:002020-05-15 15:47:41From Active Duty to Start Up Founder - My Interview with Forbes Contributor Ian Mathews
In this 50-minute workshop, we discuss the relationship between offensive and defensive business strategies.
Topics We Discussed In this workshop
Personalities, biases and decision making
Running concurrent offensive and defensive initiatives
Understanding the relationship between strategy and risk
Leadership considerations
SMART BUSINESS REQUIRES SMART STRATEGY
Strategy development is fundamental to creating and running your organisation. Where do you want your business to be in five years? Where are you now? How big is the gap between where you are now, and where you want to be? The Eighth Mile Consulting can help you build a strategic outlook and implementation plan to deliver business and people outcomes.
For more helpful videos to help you grow your people and your organisation subscribe to our YouTube channel.
What are your thoughts or learnings when it comes to deploying the right strategy in business? Are you leaning towards an offensive business strategy or a more defensive one? Let us know in the comments below!
https://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/business-strategy-offensive-defensive.jpg7661200David Nealhttps://learning.eighthmile.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/8th-mile-logo-white-ID-0e8d1f36-8698-4694-c814-e4bb5fc4fdc9-2.pngDavid Neal2020-04-17 17:23:532020-04-17 17:47:41Choosing Between Offensive vs Defensive Business Strategies
