Who's On First
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Us planners like to plunge right in. Values goes first, then Vision, Mission, Objectives, Strategies, and, finally, tactics.
Yes - and, no. That's a pretty good scheme for planning. But it doesn't go first. Collins (41) makes the best case. Pick your team - very carefully - before you embark on growing your company, or beginning your planning process. You have some duds. Cull them. You have some stars. Make sure they are team players. If they are, nurture them. What if you need new team members?
First point: it takes longer than you think. Wells Fargo began building a team in the early 70s. The growth occurred starting in 1983 (Collins, 42). They hired the best they were able and kept them around long enough to see if they were keepers.
Lots of HR managers claim that employee screening is the key. Use some sort of test like the Meyers Briggs, and you are able to predict behavior. Some people swear by it. I'm still looking for the perfect bullet.
Lewis writes about a professional baseball team. The whole book is about how to get the right folks on board. His key? It's all in the statistics. Everybody says it is batting percentage that is the best predictor. Lewis says nuts to that. It's on-base percentage and slugging percentage he watches. And, oh, yes, college players are better to draft than high school players because you have more statistics on them (Lewis, 101).
There's only one flaw to his work. It takes statistics to know how your team members are going to perform. If you don't have performance statistics - and who has performance statistics for new hires - you don't really know how things are going to work out.
The message? Start keeping statistics. All the tactical statistics make sense. Cold calls. Closed calls. Proposals delivered. You name it. Probably only one or two of the statistics make sense to your organization. Start keeping lots of different statistics, whittle them down to the crucial few and track the results. It works in sales. It works in operations. It works at the C-level as well.
One last comment. Bill Belichick got the right people on the field at the right time, yes. He also trained them far in advance of the need. For him, training included strength and endurance training, team work training, and strategizing for each opponent. Try it out.
Reference
Collins, Jim. Good to Great. Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Don't. Harper Business. 2001.
Halberstam, David. The Education of a Coach. Wheeler Publishing. 2005.
Lewis, Michael. Moneyball. The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. W. W. Norton & Company. 2003.