The problem Is triggered by the definition of the Mission Statement. If the Mission Statement is an exercise in "what we want to be ... someday when we grow up" then it becomes an exercise in creative writing. It may gain inspiration but it sacrifices focus, which is the reason for a business strategy in the first place.

A good example of the pitfalls of Mission Statement as a creative writing exercise is illustrated in Chip Heath's video clip below. Take a look (and tell me, do you really like J&J's Mission Statement?)

We think it's best to separate the Mission Statement from the Vision Statement. See John's discussion of 5Q/1P in the "OGSP for New Ventures" off the home page. The Vision Statement is about "what we want to be" while the Mission Statement is about "the business we are in today.". The decision is not trivial.

The Mission Statement works well upfront in the OGSP process when it answers the question, "what business are we in?". This gets to the heart of how the business will succeed but also leads to a productive discussion of "is that enough to succeed." It's the classic question for a railroad company, "are we in the railroad business or the transportation business?"

We find that starting the OGSP discussion around "what business are we in?" is more productive than starting with "what do we want to be 10 years from now?"

If you are looking for an example of a good Mission Statement consider Google. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin named the search engine they built "Google," a play on the word "googol," the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros. The name reflects the immense volume of information that exists, and the scope of Google's mission: to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Yes, Google's business model is all about selling ads. However, if they fail at organizing the world's information then no one will use Google and they will be out of business. Their mission, the "business they are in," is information organization, not ad sales.

And never once do they use the word "solutions."

Authors Mike Gordon, Chris Musso, Eric Rebentisch, and Nisheeth Gupta from the consulting firm McKinsey & Company surveyed more than 300 employees at 28 companies across North America and Europe on their new product development practices. 

They found that companies who successfully launched new products did three things different or better than unsuccessful companies. It all about focus, focus and focus.

Focus on Deliverables:

New product success depends on a clear and focused set of project requirements communicated to teams before kickoff.  According to the authors, "teams with a clear understanding of project requirements appeared better able to make trade-offs between product performance and things like cost, time to market, and project risk. Only 19 percent of poor performers said they had the necessary information to make those decisions."

Focus on Priorities:

The top-performing companies make product development a priority. They made more of an effort than the laggards - 39 percent versus 12 percent - to minimize staffing disruptions due to external demands and to staff projects adequately. As the authors conclude, "When people with critical skills become overburdened, they often decide on their own which of their many projects is the most important, a decision best made at the management level."

Focus on the Customer:

The successful innovators kept in close contact with customers throughout the development process. More than 80 percent of the top performers said they periodically tested and validated customer preferences during the development process, compared with just 43 percent of bottom performers. They were also twice as likely as the laggards to research what, exactly, customers wanted. That made them better able to identify and fix design concerns early on, minimizing project delays.

The Results: The teams in the study that practiced this kind of focus were 17 times as likely as the laggards to have projects come in on time, five times as likely to be on budget, and twice as likely to meet their company’s return-on-investment targets.

Aesop, Greek philosopher, 530 BCE

This is certainly true on the subject of "change leadership."  Mountains of books have been written and yet effective organizational change remains one of the most daunting tasks facing a manager. 

After an organization completes the OGSP process, often change is required.  "Desired Change" is a one-page exercise we use as the last step in the OGSP process and it often results in a lot more "saying" than "doing" to borrow from our friend Aesop.

I recently completed a course at Stanford University taught by Rich Shavelson called Human Cognitive Abilities, and it was a life changing experience.  Rich was the previous Dean of the School of Education at Stanford and a world expert in "cognition" or how people think. Understanding how people think is the first step toward understanding how to change the way people think.

After studying the work of cognitive scientists like Robert Sternberg, Richard Nisbett, Howard Gardner and others the inescapable conclusion is that many models of "meta-cognition" exist ... and there is no absolutely one-right way people think.  However, within this survey of approaches to cognition, certain broad areas of influence emerge that provide clues to the key influences on thinking and how best to change thinking styles.

I call my model "CCChange Leadership"  To change the way an organization does work, a leader must change the way an organization collectively thinks. The key levers of change are:

Cognition - Every person brings unique thinking skills to their work.  This is a function of their individual cognitive capabilities and experiences.  The first step toward cognition change is recognizing that we are all unique thinkers and then committing to embracing these differences - growth through diversity of thought. 

This does not mean "intellectual anarchy."  Choices must be made to successfully run any business. Soliciting divergent opinions and evaluating them in a robust manner encourages everyone to think to the best of their ability, which means the organization thinks to the best of its collective ability.

Cognition, Conation and Context - three areas of high leverage which can lead to substantial change for an organization. And as Winston Churchill put it:

Habit #2 - Begin with the end in mind      As Covey's website puts it ...

Good advice for planning your life.  Not such good advice for developing a Strategy.

Consider this Non-Sequitur cartoon from February 28, 2009:

Deciding on the answer before you do the research makes for bad science and bad strategy.  Yes, sometimes you will be guided by activities which you know "must be done" but if this drive strategy you will never step back and take a broad view of the options and opportunities.

Strategy is about "How to Win" and often this demands a different approach to solving the problems than what has been tried (and failed) in the past.  In OGSP, beginning with the end in mind (the Plans) can only lead to more of the same.

In particular, I'm interested in how technical minds (lets call them "engineers") think differently than non-technical minds (lets call them "business managers").  This fundamental difference show up in many places, mostly in areas where these two types of people get together to do something, like launch a new product.  Engineers and Business Managers sit down at the table coming from very different perspectives.

How do Engineers and Business Managers think differently?  I posed the question to a friend, Chris DeMarco who is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin. He thought for a moment then offered that engineers are problem solvers at heart and value single-point problem solving (the very best, single answer) while business managers are market-solvers (the best range of answers given a particular situation).

It may be the classic dichotomy of deductive versus inductive thinking.  Deductive thinking is often referred to as "top down" thinking, starting with theory > hypothesis > observation > confirmation - the last step being important because it provides specific assurance.

Inductive thinking is "bottom up" starting with observation > pattern > hypothesis > theory - the last step being a possible larger explanation.

It may seem that deductive reasoning is the stronger skill because of its definitive end point.  However, deductive reasoning is a contained argument, bounded by the limits of the original theory.  Consider ... what is the best pattern for arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?  Deductive thinking can arrive at a specific and very wrong conclusion.

The correct answer is, of course ... both.  Situations where thinking can easily range from inductive thinking to deductive back to inductive then deductive probably produces the best results and this might make some very interesting PhD research. The problem may be "easily range."  People acquire success in life using specific skills - engineers solving problems, business managers catching trends.  They favor one skill set over the other and may not easily switch, particularly mid-task.

My sense is that awareness of differences is probably the first step.  How would this connect to the OGSP process?  Vision/Inductive, Mission/Deductive, Objective/Inductive, Goals/Deductive, Strategy/Inductive, Plans/Deductive? 

What do you think?

At the meeting we spent time reviewing a recent Fast Company article on collaboration at Cisco Systems.  In 2000, I had invited John Chambers to talk to the management of P&G, at the peak if the internet bubble when Cisco had a bigger market cap than P&G.  The best word to describe the experience was hubris.  Then the bubble burst and Cisco hit bottom.  They came back by building a new culture of collaboration.  The story was both relevant and timely for this engagement.

The management team got the parallel to their situation but they were a little confused as to the specific steps they should take to build a collaborative work culture.

We introduced them to the "Journey Toward Collaboration" ... a four step process from Cordiality to Collaboration.  The first stage is Cordiality, then Communication, then Cooperation and finally, Collaboration.  It's all described in the attached worksheet.

As with Drucker's advice on teams, not everything and everybody has to exhibit the nth degree of collaboration.  For some issues, its OK to be cordial or to simply communicate.  However, for opportunities with a bigger payoff, true collaboration is the goal.

We presented a series of issues, which had been pre-identified by management, and the group decided at what stage they needed to be cordial to collaborative.  For the issues which would benefit from collaboration, the group broke into smaller groups and developed a working plan to achieve collaboration by taking specific steps.  The recommendations ranged from developing consistent titles across the regions, to sharing inventory, co-marketing and even CEO pay linked to collaboration - just as with Cisco.

The meeting ended with a specific action plan, dates and owners and agreement to review all of this when they get together in six months.  The economy isn't helping and there are plenty of distractions, but they came away with a handful of opportunities where collaboration will make the difference between success and failure.

My first question is, "what kind of team do you want?"  Rarely, does anyone think about the kind of team they want beyond, "effective" or "productive" or "happy."  These are not the benchmarks I look for.

There are all kinds of teams, which match the business challenge they are trying to solve.  Teams are definitely not a one size fits all.  I learned this from Peter Drucker.

Drucker wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal in 1992, at a time when the modern emphasis on teams was just beginning, and Drucker was not impressed. He criticized management, as only he could, for the lack of understanding teams before launching them as the answer to all problems.

He divided teams into three kinds:

Fixed Position Team - This is the classic surgical team, and Henry Ford's original concept of the assembly line where members work on a team but not as a team. Members have their job and they do it - anesthesiologist anesthetize, welders weld, designers design, airline pilots pilot. Team members complete their job and pass it along to the next team member.  Baseball teams are the sports analogy.

Drucker points out that these teams have fallen out of favor recently.  Yet this kind of team can be very productive ... clear, specific goals, easy to measure ... and do you want the flight attendant landing the plane?  Fixed position teams are a great place to start team work. it just may not match the work.

Parallel Team - This kind of team requires team members to be more flexible in their roles.  Team members work toward commonly understood goals, coordinating where effective, flexing where needed.  Drucker considers a symphony orchestra as the model for a parallel team.  There is an music score which guides the group, a conductor to oversee the process, yet each musician can be flexible within limits - fast, slower, louder, softer.  Still, the oboe never comes to the rescue of the violin - it just wouldn't work.

Parallel teams describe most of the work in Corporate America.  The right questions to ask include ... does everyone have the same goal,  the same incentive to be successful, is there a clear, accountable leader, can people flex in their role within limits?

Innovative Team - This team shows the greatest extent of member flexibility regarding their role.  They can fully cover for a team member to meet the changing demands of a specific task.  Jazz ensembles and Navy SEAL teams are good examples of this kind of team.  These kinds of teams are rarely found in Corporate America because they require redundancy - the enemy of efficiency.  Drucker says these are the smallest teams in number (5-7 max), take the longest to train and only the team "performs"; individuals "contribute".

The answer to "how to make teams more effective" begins with a decision about what type of team is in play.  The type of team depends on the work. Match the team to the work, to achieve real teamwork.

Recently, a colleague, Dr. Bill Cockayne sent me an article by Peter Drucker written in 1985 for the Harvard Business review called The Discipline of Innovation. In five concise pages, Drucker not only tells you all you need to know about innovation, he describes how to pursue innovation.

It all begins with his definition of innovation ... "the conscious search for opportunity."  Innovation is all about opportunity, which is entirely consistent with our working definition for innovation -  "invention that sells."

Drucker then concisely explains how to pursue innovation. This includes:

1. the search - for new opportunities, 
2. the process - look, ask and listen in a “whole brain” manner,
3. knowing it when you find it - innovations are simple and focused, and
4. encouragement - innovation is work rather than genius

He also provides a great list of "thought starters", places to begin the search for innovation opportunity.

• unexpected occurrences
• incongruities
• process needs
• industry and market changes
• demographic changes
• changes in perception
• new knowledge

Drucker is also a believer that anyone can be innovative, that innovation does not require a special talent or an intellectual gift. All it takes is the right focus and hard work. He was on to say that “innovation is the responsibility of every executive”, rather than the job of some corporate specialist. I can only imagine all the corporate staff geeks who shivered when they read that!

This is a must read article for anyone with a "innovation strategy" in their OGSP.

Special Note:  I once had the privilege of meeting Peter Drucker.  AG Lafley (CEO of P&G), Bob Johansen (Distinguished Fellow at IFTF) and I went to visit Peter Drucker in July 2001. Peter had asked to meet AG, who had recently been named CEO. The picture above is that of AG and Peter outside of Peter's home in Claremont, CA. At the time, Peter was 92 years old. He was "sharp as a tack," and knew all about the latest P&G news, our competitors and the marketplace in general. In many ways, this meeting was my motivation to make learning and personal growth a lifelong opportunity.

OK, maybe this cartoon is right on the money.  Or maybe it's hopelessly cynical.  You be the judge:

We operate on the principle that when it comes to strategy, deep down inside, most folks know the right thing to do.  They face several problems ...

• Choosing - Often there may be several right things to do ... or several things competing with the right thing to do.  Sorting through that mess isn't easy, particularly from the myopia of within.

• Facilitation - It is often hard for a leader within an organization to lead a group with objectivity.  And its even hard for a "company facilitator" to do the same.  A knowledgeable outsider is often the best alternative.

• Follow-up - Strategy work is easy to let pass, in preference to doing the work of today.  An outside resource who's only job is to help the organization think of the future can provide the necessary spark or catalyst to get the job done.

Or Dogbert is right ... it's all about the money.  WOO-HOO, CHA-CHING!