Plan B Mindset

I’ve just past the first year anniversary of writing this blog (truth be told, when I started this entry, I was just coming up on the date, which leads me to this topic). It started with an invitation to some trusted friends and colleagues to tell me if I was crazy for wanting to write some of these ideas down. With some encouragement, it continued. While I have realized that having a day job seems to get in the way of writing and marketing these thoughts (see early point), I have come to find it a respite from some of the other challenges of professional life. Which brings me to the point for today – as I think about the idea of Plan B Philosophy that I have been writing about, sometimes it seems that things are just that easy. Adapt, change, make due and move on. Plan B. Slam dunk. Of course life is not that easy. Even in times when things are going well we have challenges. In fact, many times there are real and significant challenges when we are growing the fastest. Volume outs

It is what it is. How many times have we each heard that said with the intent of convincing us to just accept the facts, reality or status quo of a situation? However, I love an addition to this line made by Pat Summitt, the legendary coach of the University of Tennessee women’s basketball program. She recently announced that she had been diagnosed with early stage Alzheimer’s but that she would continue coaching, with help from her assistant coaches. While people were wondering how she and her team would react, I listened to an interview with one of her friends. She asserted that the team would use the circumstance as a way to come together because of what Coach Summitt often said: It is what it is, but it becomes what you make of it. Isn’t that a great phrase? I have been struck by this phrase during the past few weeks – I can’t get it out of my mind. It takes a passive, almost helpless state – there is nothing I can do, because it is what it is – and turns it in to a ch

Today’s marketplace is more competitive than ever. Increasingly the time for your competition to adapt to your new innovations is growing shorter and shorter. Yet some companies are finding ways to continue to stand out and draw in consumers. It is worth asking why? I believe the companies that have a truly defendable competitive advantage are those that understand where they create value. One of the key principles of Plan B Philosophy is to understand where you create value for your customer and be relentless in pursuing that proposition, even as tactics in delivering that value must continually change in the market. Yet there are key features and functionality that our competitors are offering every day. They, too, adapt to changing information and find new ways to create value. Let’s be honest, the guys on the other side are usually pretty smart as well. To stay ahead, we must continually adapt in providing more value to our customers. As we all face new features, new competit

Like many pursuits in life, when I get into something, I like to really understand it. For awhile now (more than 15 years), I have been “into” wine. Lisa and I had a chance to spend some time together in Sonoma this past week, I had a chance to reflect on customer service, particularly through the eyes of a wine taster. For those of you who have not had a chance to visit the wine country, we are fans of the Sonoma side. A bit more laid back, a bit less like Disneyland (Napa). While Napa has some great wines, it’s just not our speed. The Sonoma side still has some agriculture feel left to it and particularly when you find a smaller winery where the family is involved. While we were there, I experienced some things that are transferrable to any business – whether you’re in the paint business or financial services. A personal touch matters. We visited about 15 wineries this past week. Some are the sort that you walk in the door and they ask, “So are you here for tasting today?” (No, ac

For those of you that know me personally, you know that a significant portion of my spring and summer are spent on the baseball diamond coaching youth baseball for my sons, Ben (10) and Alex (8). I believe that sports moments are often great analogies for business. There is a true scoreboard in sports, which we don’t often have in business. Leadership, performance, teamwork and inspiration are all a part of winning the game. But during the past two weeks I was given the gift of two great lessons coaching baseball that I thought I would share. I have a philosophy on youth sports that sometimes does not make Type A parents of my players happy. When I start a season, I try to remind the parents that of all of the kids in Little League, at all ages and levels, it is likely only one or two will play college baseball and, statistically, none will make it to the major leagues. I would love to be wrong and would happily eat that crow, but the numbers are what they are. Therefore, we need t

As a part of the strategic focus of our companies, we are continuing to evolve from an organization that has traditionally focused exclusively on business-to-business marketing to becoming more of a consumer marketing company. That is, while we serve consumers through our business clients (mostly financial institutions), we need to design our products, services and customer experience around the end consumer need. In the competitive financial services marketplace, there is no other choice – if you are not meeting the current and future needs of consumers, you are toast in the long-term.   Through a connection of the marketing director at TMG, we were able to have Tina Murray, a regional marketing director from Chick-Fil-A, spend the majority of the day with us this past Wednesday. Chick-Fil-A is a unique company, in that they have created a brand that has true raving fans, as well as their focus on an internal corporate culture of quality food and outstanding service.   While you wil

There has been quite a bit of buzz in the media and social networking sites about the potential for the world ending this coming Saturday. I am curious what time, because I have a really busy day! If it going to end at breakfast, there are a whole lot of things I won’t do on Friday. That being said, the world ending brings up connotations of the afterlife – heaven and hell. This reminded me of one of my least favorite sayings, “The Devil’s Advocate.” Usually this advocate is brought out in the middle of a conversation regarding a new initiative or a product/service that someone wants to launch. A person will say authoritatively, “Well, let me be the devil’s advocate here.” What they really mean to say is, “If you don’t mind, I am going to take the license to totally trash everything you just said and let you know how stupid you really are.” Of course we are all too polite to actually say that, so we wrap ourselves in this role of being an objective questioner and looking at the downs

“Enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius.” This quote comes from a Nightline broadcast more than 10 years ago on the design firm IDEO ( Link to Video ). I have seen the video many times which documents their process of designing something truly different and unique. But when I saw the video again a few weeks ago, this quote struck me more significantly than it has in the past. Many times we spend countless hours crafting our message, building our plans and designing our strategies. Much like an annual report, which is said to be a document that is read more before it is published than after, our business plans and strategy documents are revised and refined to “perfection.” Yet when we go to the market, our tactics are often worthless. As Dwight D. Eisenhower said, "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." Our competitors, the market, our customers and even the government are all

For many years I participated in the Jensen Consulting Executive Roundtables . The Roundtables are a peer group of senior executives who worked in a confidential environment discussing issues in their business and offering outside input to other members. One of our Roundtable participants owned a manufacturing facility. He had a great perspective on many things but the one that sticks with me is a comment he made as we were discussing an issue regarding one individual's company. He said, “When you are standing in the shower in the morning, are you thinking about problems or opportunities? If you are thinking about problems, take care of them and then start thinking about the opportunities.” There are two lessons I took from this notion: You have make time and space to find those creative thoughts. If you don’t, mostly you’ll be focused on the problems in your world and can easily fall into “playing work” (see previous blog). You will never know the true costs of the opportuniti

While I usually do not participate in April Fools' Day capers, I always remember the Sports Illustrated article about Sidd Finch, the Mets phenom pitcher who was deciding between a life as a pitcher or as a French horn player. If you read the story - check out the first letter of the opening and what it spells ("He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yoga - and his future in baseball."). Likely one of the best April Fools' pranks of all time (the SI issue was published on 4/1). All the better because it lasted through the April 15 edition when they finally announced it was a hoax - after announcing on 4/8 that Finch was retiring. http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1119283/index.htm I laugh about the story as I think back to me as a young boy reading this and wondering what a buddlist pitcher who learned throwing in the Himalayas was really like. But then I

No one likes losing their job, even less getting fired. But I have to say getting fired was probably the best thing ever to happen to me. Thankfully, this happened nearly 30 years ago, not today! I think the story is worth telling to think about how we work in our business and with our customers in the “real world.” When I was in 5th grade I really wanted a new red 10-speed Schwinn bicycle. For a variety of reasons, most of them economic, some of them to motivate me, my parents said that the only way I was going to get the bike was if I earned the money to buy it. So I went off around the neighborhood selling my lawn-mowing services, with an average price of $5 per lawn. The venture was successful, and soon I had 5-10 lawns that I mowed on a weekly basis. At the end of the first summer, I was able to buy the bicycle. And I continued on mowing lawns. One of my most profitable customers was Mr. Pancake, who lived on the street behind us. He was older and was connected to an oxygen tan

Sorry for my absence during the past couple of weeks (have you missed me?) It's amazing what happens when our professional lives get busy and then you look up and realize you've missed your last two scheduled posts! Thought I would share my blog post for the Credit Union Times after the big credit union Governmental Affairs Conference that happened in late February / early March. Embedded in this blog are my thoughts on how the credit union industry needs to keep moving forward and do something today. There's a message even for those not in the credit union or financial services industry. Like many businesses, it's easy for us to hope things get back to normal in financial services. The reality from my perspective is that we are in the new normal and our ability to succeed is dependent on our ability to navigate the waters of change while keeping our focus on the vision. http://www.cutimes.com/2011/03/15/again-now-is-the-time-to-re-evaluate-product-poten Happy rea

You get up in the morning and put on the suit and tie. Grab a cup of coffee on the way to the office. Settle into your desk chair, fire up your computer, check your regular websites and answer email. The 9 am status meeting comes next, followed by back-to-back project meetings. Answer a bit more email and then it’s time for lunch. After a bite to eat, it's back to the desk to answer some emails, review a proposal for the new project, update the business case spreadsheet, hit the 3 pm staff meeting and then wind down the day. When you get home, you loosen the tie and say, “Wow, what a busy day!” We’ve all had days like this. When meetings string into other meetings and your email inbox looks like the backup of planes at O’Hare Airport. At the end of the day, you’re not really sure what you accomplished, but it sure was busy. I call this phenomenon Playing Work. Just like my 4 year-old daughter Meredith likes to dress up and play house or have a tea party, we can all fall into the

I received a number of comments of new readers that hadn't seen the first post from October 2010. I thought I would put it back out there to provide a framework for how Plan B Philosophy came to be. This is the original post. - Jeff I live in a Craftsman bungalow built in 1919. The family we bought the house from about 10 years ago had lived there since the early 1940s. Needless to say it needed a bit of work. It turns out that I enjoy doing this type of remodeling, although I had never tackled a challenge like this. My first project was the bathroom – I had remodeled a bathroom before, so I felt confident that it was within my skill set. Lisa and I picked out the tile, the fixtures and determined the floor plan. Then I tore into the walls. That was surprise number one – in addition to the plaster that I expected, the exterior wall was pure brick, the ceiling was layers of particle board and after my demolition I had a huge pile of rubble on the ground. And I was distraught. T

In reading a WSJ article  a week ago from Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, I was struck by his concept of the “Bad Version.” This is a technique used in screenwriting to help come up with new concepts. His essay was on ways to tax the rich and make them feel good about it. (It is pretty funny, but don’t click over until you finish this post!) Adams’ words on the Bad Version: “I spent some time working in the television industry, and I learned a technique that writers use. It's called ‘the bad version.’ When you feel that a plot solution exists, but you can't yet imagine it, you describe instead a bad version that has no purpose other than stimulating the other writers to imagine a better version. For example, if your character is stuck on an island, the bad version of his escape might involve monkeys crafting a helicopter out of palm fronds and coconuts. That story idea is obviously bad, but it might stimulate you to think in terms of other engineering solutions, or other m