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Recommended Resource – Advocacy

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Advocacy: Championing Ideas and Influencing Others
by John Daly

About the Reference

Advocacy by John Daly provides actionable methods to effectively market ideas such that they are acted upon by the organization. Too often, worthwhile initiatives are pushed aside because they do not receive the critical level of support needed to move forward – merit and positive cost-benefit alone are not typically enough to ‘sell’ an idea. Rather, reputation, relationships, timing, and persuasive messaging is needed to garner the attention and buy-in necessary to gain action on one’s proposals.

In Advocacy, John reveals a step-by-step framework of activities to build the critical mass intangibles needed to drive organizational action. These immediately implementable actions are supported by highly illustrative examples and tools/templates – everything needed to create and execute a plan to get action on one’s next proposal.

Benefits of Using this Reference

StrategyDriven Contributors like Advocacy because of its immediately implementable methods for effectively dealing with the organizational politics common to all businesses. While meritorious competition between initiatives tends to best serve the organization, reality dictates that politics, power struggles, and positioning often hinder the progression of top ideas in favor of less deserving ones. Thus, Advocacy provides the crucial real-world tools every leader should practice when putting forward proposals; thereby ensuring more equitable treatment of the body of ideas being considered.

If we had one criticism of Advocacy it would be that John’s examples are a bit too numerous and a bit too long. While we believe the illustrations could be more concise, it is usually better to have too much than too little detail and the extra here is not a significant distraction.

Effectively dealing with office politics, power struggles, and positioning is a matter of life in today’s business world. Advocacy‘s positive promotional methods provide a comprehensive, actionable way of dealing with these influencers with the goal of benefiting the organization; making it a StrategyDriven recommended read.

Budget Management Best Practice 1 – Line Item Awareness

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Budget Management Line Item AwarenessThe primary organizational responsibility of every executive and manager is the diligent management of resources. This oversight is clearly expressed through the effective management of an executive or manager’s assigned budget.
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Marketing and Sales – Some Sales Are Simply Not Worth Making

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Saying no to a saleSome business leaders aggressively pursue every sale believing them to be the ultimate key to corporate success. Sales, however, represent far more than just dollars and cents. In fact, the revenue generated through a sale is just the beginning of the overall financial impact on the business.

Sales say a lot about a company and profoundly impact its culture, reputation, and goals achievement. And while every business must sell a critical mass of products and services to survive and flourish, to whom, what, and how it sells greatly affects long-term success.

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Annual Alignment Review

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Alignment of the key performance indicator systemJust as a well-developed organizational performance measurement system helps align an organization to the efficient achievement of its goals, a misaligned performance measurement system diverts focus and resources toward non-value-adding activities. Over time, existing projects finish and new initiatives begin; requiring performance measures within the system be changed. While these alterations are intended to support continued, effective business operation, they are often performed without a holistic view of the system and may have unintended adverse impacts. Therefore, it is prudent to conduct a holistic performance measurement system evaluation with frequency that is regular enough to minimize the damage misalignment can cause without being so frequent as to become overly burdensome.

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Recommended Resource – Built to Sell

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Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You
by John Warrillow

About the Reference

Built to Sell by John Warrillow highlights the many factors preventing business owners from successfully transitioning away from their companies and how to resolve this situation. All too often, business founders embed themselves within the operational fabric of the company they create; setting it up for failure upon they departure. In his business novel, John defines the business characteristics and operating environment owners must establish in order to later remove themselves from the organization without its subsequent collapse. These include:

  • offering products and services employees or technologies can deliver in the owner’s absence
  • specializing in doing one thing better than anyone else
  • creating a stream of recurring revenue because customers need to repurchase often

Benefits of Using this Reference

StrategyDriven Contributors like Built to Sell because of its actionable insights presented in a easy-to-consume business novel format. Furthermore, we believe John’s principles of creating a successful business apply to enterprises of all sizes, whether public or private.

StrategyDriven Contributors have long warned against the practice of employing ‘working managers.’ (See StrategyDriven Warning Flag – Working Managers.) We feel management is the work of managers and that to focus on other tasks, particularly those that should be performed by subordinates, dilutes the manager’s ability to effectively manage; diminishing overall organizational performance and doing a disservice to both the manager and his/her staff. John’s book, Built to Sell, presents in principle the actions necessary for every manager to remove him/herself from the day-to-day work of the business so to allow him/her to manage. Subsequently, the manager can be replaced. In John’s book, the owner-manager can sell and transition away from the company without its failing. In a corporate setting, the manager can transition via promotion/transfer and the remaining organization continue to operate successfully.

We believe the principles presented in Built to Sell are broadly applicable and the book to be an invaluable read for managers at every organizational level. For its quality and actionable insights, Built to Sell is a StrategyDriven recommended read.