R3: Team Leaders On The Front Lines…

Now that you and your team have finished the mission strategy planning for 2022, how might you simplify this for those on the front line who work outside the building?

When you really understand what the product/solution does and you truly believe the benefit of someone using it, now what?

Your team may know the strategy and the “Why now”, yet will you still be wondering where all of the budget allocations have gone, after the first six months of your budget cycle?

What if you focused on a small part of your team, who you might name your company “Operators”. 

You know, the people who are eager to get out the door everyday to go see and solve problems for themselves. The people that will be responsible for the implementation of the product, the tool, and the solution on the customers premises in their environment.

"The team of “Operators” in your organization who are actually accountable for the final results."

Hopefully your organization has at least a 3:1 ratio of “Operators” to “Bean Counters”.

3-Operators to 1-Bean Counter, just might give you a chance of making your mission strategy work.

In our global world of business these days, the relationships are your Ground Zero.

Without effective relationships that exist and are continuously building rapidly across your intended target zones, you will have a much longer wait for your positive and smiley face of EBITDA.

Developing and growing “Relationships” is perhaps one of your greatest Operational Risks ahead of you, as the Leader of your particular team.

Having learned a simple yet “Never Forget” acronym from a few very wise business instructors (Randy & Wendy) many years ago, consider this:

R3 = Relationships >>> Results >>> Revenue.

Guess what? It is something the “Operators” will actually understand and since you have 3 times more of these people on your front line team, they must have their own business strategy acronym that they will be able to remember and execute on:

1. Operators that are developing meaningful and effective Relationships are your way to mission accomplishment.
   
2. Operators who realize how to produce tangible Results that can be measured are your way to mission accomplishment with end users, customers and clients.
3. Operators will see Revenue if #1 and #2 are successful.

R3 is your execution layer on top of the “Bean Counters” PEST, STEER, SWOT or any other planning acronym they might use in the “God Pod” upstairs or down a long corridor of the outside view offices in the E-ring.

In order for you as the field Team Leader, to truly better understand how to improve the “Revenue” and mitigate the Operational Risks in your business entity, you have got to get out on the front lines with your Operators.

To see and experience the real “Relationships” and the actual “Results”.

Where will your next “Senior Leader” tour of duty take you in the field of your Area of Responsibility (AOR)…

DEF2019: Far Beyond Innovation in U.S. National Security...

"The creativity and talent of the American warfighter is our greatest enduring strength, and one we do not take for granted."  --Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy

Walking away from the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum #DEF2019 Annual National Conference today in Washington, DC, produces so many simultaneous thoughts and emotions.  Being together with other colleagues and "Quiet Professionals" for an entire weekend in a small yet beautiful space, reminds us why we exist and where we are continuously navigating.

The people.  Organizations don't innovate.  Your people do the thinking and have the "Neurodiverstiy" to produce outcomes from their own TrustDecisions.  Most organizations think culture is a set of values, that you have spelled out as bullets on your web site, or the wall in your lobby.

A Decision to Act.  A Decision to Pause.  A Decision to Stop.  A Decision to Deliver.  They are all decisions, that are based upon your ability to process information and utilize your unique talents as a human being.

Culture is a management system, with passion for the mission.  Most organizations run on norms.  It's time to "Break the expletive Filter".

What kind of rebel are you?

Do you complain or do you create?

Are you "Me Focused" or are you "Mission Focused"?

What about the rules.  Do you break them or do you change them?

Do you "Alienate" or do you "Attract"?

Do you "Doubt" or do you "Believe"?

Are you "Energy Sapping" or "Energy Generating"?

Do you exemplify Anger or Passion?

From James "Hondo" Geurts - Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development & Acquistions- DEF2019 Presentation

Priority is a singular noun and your structure is your culture.  The truth is, the culture of your particular business enterprise, government agency, startup or team, is a direct manifestation of your own peoples creative spirit and their abilities to adapt and deliver outcomes, with a dynamic set of decisions in your environment.

Signing off now.  It is time to go "Deliver"...

Intelligence Factor: A Decisive Risk Element...

In this John Keegan book review by Thomas Powers of Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda ; Mr. Powers captures the essence of the decisive risk element of local information:

"The real challenge in the war on terror is one we got right in the war against Nazi Germany and failed badly at in the war in Vietnam -- helping the locals do what they want to do on their own. The free French, the partisans in Yugoslavia, the Poles and the Czechs all desperately wanted the United States to win because our enemy was their enemy. In Vietnam, our locals were defeated by their locals, who just wanted us to leave.

The war on terror is something of an afterthought in Keegan's book, added because he believes intelligence is likely to be the decisive weapon. He is surely right about that. But victory won't come from big intelligence, the kind Americans are best at -- gathering so much information and acting on it in so timely a manner that the terrorists will be nailed as soon as they step out the door. Winning this contest requires an older kind of intelligence: the kind that grows out of deep knowledge of place, language, culture and people, and then getting the basic question right -- knowing what the locals want to do on their own and putting that first."

Operational Risk Management (ORM) in your particular Area of Responsibility or Enterprise, is about the mitigation of attacks on your assets and eliminating potential hazards, in order to be a more resilient foe, or competitor on the corporate battlefield. Intelligence is information. Only information at the right time and from the right source, can give you the edge to fend off the latest barrage of share holder law suits, denial of service attacks on your corporate web site or the smoldering fire in the janitors closet.

Whether that intelligence (information) is being gathered by sensors detecting smoke, packets on the network, or the late night cleaning crew; you will not have a chance of acting in time without the human element. The human factor is still the last fail safe for determination whether a "False Positive" or "True Negative" is at hand.

Human Intelligence is being gathered every hour of every day humans are talking to each other, writing to each other or walking around using other signals to communicate. The eyes and ears of your organization are what will ultimately determine whether you win or lose the risk mitigation battle you are fighting.

Managing risks to your operations requires a network of human intelligence from the front desk to the loading dock. Intelligence is being gathered on every sales call and each customer service call to the 800 number. However, it is not until you act on what you are learning, that all of this information is converted to something productive or protective.

Look around you. How many sensors and repositories of intelligence are walking around your organization today without anyway or anyone, to convert all of that raw information into a mechanism for effective Operational Risk Management?

The organization who truly understands how to capitalize on the collection of organizational intelligence and act on it without hesitation, will be the most resilient operators and the most formidable competitors on our global asymmetric business landscape...

Remember His Name: The Long War Ahead...

"Edward Wilson believed in America, and he would sacrifice everything he loved to protect it."

In "The Good Shepard" Matt Damon's character, Edward Wilson, is partly based upon the founder of the CIA's counterintelligence operations, James Jesus Angelton. As we look back over the past year, one can only wonder what Mr. Angelton would have to say, if he were alive today.

This September 11, 2018, brings all kinds of thoughts and emotions thinking about what our world has become since the days after World War II. Edward Wilson and Jim Angelton were both focused on the risks of finding out the truth.

Getting answers to questions that few others would even contemplate to ask. For the love of their country alone.

We are reminded of other professionals with the same mission. On September 11th, 2006 on the cover of Sports Illustrated Magazine, sits another patriot in a tree near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. His name is Pat Tillman.

And as the SI cover story title says: "Remember His Name." Journalist Gary Smith captures the essence of what it means to walk in the shoes of men like Pat Tillman, who seek answers even more than life itself.

Everybody who thought he'd enlisted purely out of patriotism, they missed reality by a half mile. Sure, he loved America and felt compelled to fight for it after more than 2,600 people at the World Trade Center were turned to dust. But his decision sprang from soil so much richer than that. The foisting of all the dirty work onto people less fortunate than an NFL safety clawed at his ethics.

He had uncles and grandfathers on both sides who'd fought in World War II and the Korean War, one who'd taken a bullet in his chest, another who'd lost a finger and one who'd been the last to leap out of a plane shot from the sky. On a level deeper than almost any other American, he'd reaped the reward of those sacrifices: the chance his country afforded him to be himself, all of himself.

He yearned to have a voice one day that would carry, possibly in politics, and he was far from the sort of man who could send others into a fire that he had skirted. His relentless curiosity, his determination to live his life as if it were a book that would hold its reader to the last word, pushed him into the flames as well. The history of man is war, he told a family member, so how, without sampling it, could he ever know man or himself completely?

The Operational Risks we choose to face as professionals, keeps us focused on the fears that haunt us most. Someday, we hope that the fear will disappear, if we face it long enough and often enough. And then it dawns on us, that this will never happen. The "Long War" ahead will not have an end point.

Nor will it's end, ever be celebrated with a ticker tape parade in New York City.

The long war ahead, requires leaders who understand what Jim Angleton and Pat Tillman both have in common. It begins with a renewed hope for conquering the fears ahead...