It’s Business, It’s Personal

The idea to write this book came right after I appeared as a guest speaker at a seminar on ‘Vision & Strategies’ at the Marketing Association of Pakistan (MAP), Lahore Chapter. Post seminar I was bombarded with questions by a number of participants to recommend a book, which covered what I had basically just presented. Amazingly I could not think of any! Everything I have learned is from my professional as well as personal experience of nearly three decades of working for P&G and Gillette and from exploring business books and research articles.

There are many books written on vision and as well as on strategies, but I have not yet come across a single book which not only guides its reader to come up with a vision, teaches how to identify strategies but also gives insights on how to drive ‘organizational excellence’. ‘It’s Business, It’s Personal’ covers the A to Z of ‘direction setting’ all the way through to ‘organizational excellence’, without which any vision or business plan is powerless.

This book is divided into two parts and each compliments the other. The following analogy explains the tightly woven relationship between the two parts of the book. For any painting to be classified as a masterpiece, two elements need to be present. The basic outline or sketch of the painting, this I call the ‘direction setting’ process. The color and shades in the painting is what I refer to as ‘organizational excellence’. Without either, the painting will not look or feel the best and will definitely not win against competition and be considered a ‘Masterpiece’.

The outline and sketch of the painting makes up Part I of this book and is all about ‘direction setting’. Part II is focused on ‘organizational excellence’, which as I mentioned before make up the colors and shades in ‘direction setting’ and gives it life.

      Direction Setting                                                           Direction Setting

without Organizational Excellence                            with Organizational Excellence

PART I is all about ‘direction setting’. It starts with the concept of dreamers or visionaries, how they operate and impact the world we live in. The ‘direction setting’ process formally starts with having a mission or as we say reason to exist. This is followed up with a discussion on vision and goals, why are they important, how they are created and how can we make them impactful. Then comes the critical part of defining strategies and tactics; strategies are the action needed to deliver your vision—how does one go about creating strategy, why are they important, what is the difference between strategy and tactics, etc. All this discussion is intermingled with real life examples to help internalize the learning. 

This is followed by the concept of measures and the importance of tracking your vision and strategies. A key aspect of deployment of your vision and strategies is examined in detail as well as watch-outs and pitfalls that you may fall prey to as you work toward delivering your vision. Final discussions in this ‘direction setting’ Part I section are on executional excellence and celebrating success, two critical factors which are necessary to make sure quality and motivation of the teams remain intact throughout the process.

PART II is all about ‘organizational excellence’ which helps bring vision and strategies to life. In this section, we start by introducing organizational or corporate culture and the vital role it plays in driving behavior and attitudes, as well as in setting the ‘smell of the place’. This discussion is followed by another important concept, which acts as the foundation of any culture, the notion of values; how to implement them, how to bring them to life, including examples from renowned companies as well as real life examples.

Other topics reviewed in this section include discussion on leadership, trust as well as some key insights from Jim Collins book Good to Great applied to individual performances and leadership. Particular chapters have been dedicated on how to raise the bar of your personal performance, striving to be the best and the role experiences, intuition and gut feelings play in making you effective. Final chapter of Part II is on embracing change where the theory and its pitfalls are discussed in detail including four case studies which helps to understand how different companies managed change and how that impacted their sustainability and operational excellence. 

By incorporating both ‘direction setting’ and ‘organizational excellence’ you create a masterpiece. Together they create a combination that is lethal and acts as a formidable weapon in today’s highly competitive business environment. Nothing substantial can ever be delivered if either one of them is missing.

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5 B. Strategy is a set of Choices – Where Do We Play Choices?

In the book The Game-Changer by A. G. Lafley (Chairman of the Board, President, and Chief Executive Officer of P&G, originally retired in 2010, he rejoined the Company in May 2013 and again retired in Nov 2015 after streamlining its strategy) and Ram Charan, they describe strategy as: “Strategy is about choices – about deciding which business or businesses a company should be in and not be in.” It is also as Peter Drucker said, “The most fundamental choice every company must make.” It’s a question that demands a continuous, strategic assessment of the company and its core capabilities, and the industry in which a company competes or could compete.”

As mentioned before, making choices is the most critical decision that every company must take at some stage. If you take your team and brainstorm the various actions that need to be taken to deliver the vision, I am sure you will come up with a laundry list of ideas. You cannot put all these ideas into action, due to constraints. These constraints can include the capacity of your teams, financial resources at your disposal, systems potential or organizational capabilities, to name a few. You will have to make choices and select a few hard-hitting strategies that will make the biggest difference in achieving your dreams while operating within the financial and resource constraints.

One way to make these choices is to define where you want to play or which areas you want to focus your activities on (i.e. region, category, channels, tiers, etc.) in order to achieve your vision. Jim Collins while researching for his book Good to Great discovered that “Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice and discipline.”