"Delay only increases the Danger”

 

 

A few weeks ago, I was sharing a walk and a focused “work conversation” with a dear friend.  He has been dealing with an emerging issue among the executive team at his company, and we discussed scenarios, alternatives and action plans as we “got our steps in” that sunny afternoon.   As the conversation progressed, the situation became clearer and more worrisome to me, the “outside observer.”  As I shared some advice (you knew I would have a couple of ideas, ha!) the primary message I was trying to pass along was regardless of scenario… take action NOW and get better prepared to take more action IMMEDIATELY!

 

This need for a heightened “sense of urgency” was clear to both of us as we finished our walk, and my friend headed out to start taking action that same evening.  I won’t divulge any details, but the action steps taken have led to major executive changes, organization realignment and board level communications on the new path forward.   A few days ago, this same friend texted over a quote from that reinforced the situation and the path we discussed…. “Once you know there’s a problem, delay only increases the danger” (David Ricks, Chair and CEO Eli Lily). 

 

 Across my career, I have been struck by how many times we waited too long to deal with things we knew were a problem.  I reflect on individuals who we KNEW weren’t making the grade…. often senior executives whose poor performance not only affected the business but was destructive to the organization/culture broadly.  In hindsight in each circumstance…” delay only increased the danger.”   None of the situations got better with time… quite the opposite, and just like my friend’s recent challenges you must dive in and get prepared Immediately to take action quickly.  It doesn’t just happen on its own…. You must work hard and fast to stop the delay at hand!

 

This whole situation reminded me of a moment when I worked for The Coca-Cola Company in the mid-1990’s.  Business was booming, stock prices rising, and Coke had just been awarded the most admired company two years in a row by Fortune Magazine (1995 & 1996).  As a part of the 1996 annual report, our Chairman Roberto Goizueta included a quote from the German poet/novelist/playwright Goethe in his annual letter ( see below.)  The focus was on taking action and the specific phrase that stayed with me was “Boldness has genius power and magic in it. Begin it now.”  At that moment, in early 1997 there didn’t seem to be any major issues or concerns facing The Coca Cola Company that we couldn’t handle… and in reality, we were on fire!  What none of us knew at that moment was that within 18 months Roberto would have passed away, we would proceed through four CEO’s and executive teams in less than 8 years… the stock price would plummet, major layoffs would begin, and in a very short amount of time we all KNEW there were a lot of problems all across the company!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The message of this essay is all about taking action, and not getting comfortable/complacent with delay.  I worked at Coke for another eleven years post Roberto’s letter above and worked hard on a myriad of areas that needed real help… all things that “delay” only made worse.  I had to work on my own “action orientation” and to be inspired by Goethe’s quote… “begin it now.”  I encourage readers of this essay to let these words…”delay on increases the danger” … to really sink in and work hard TODAY to take action where needed immediately!

When things are “murky”, use your “fog lights”

 

 

Many of you know that a few years ago (back in the summer of 2014) I bought an old car that I very affectionately named “Miss Kitty!”  I picked the car up near downtown LA, and my dear son Bryson and I drove her home, back to Atlanta, on a cross county multi-day road-trip that we still talk about today.  “Miss Kitty” is quite a character, with many unusual quirky features, but as you can see from the picture, she has some pronounced “fog lights” on her front grill. This essay is NOT a deep dive onto my old car’s unusual characteristics, but it was prompted by a recent experience I had driving on a foggy morning.

 

When driving in fog, I remember being taught in drivers-ed class to always use your car’s headlights, but to NEVER use the “high-beams!” If your car had “fog lights,” they were to be utilized in conjunction with your “low-beams” in conditions that were hazy, rainy, murky, or had limited visibility.  It was in just such a situation recently that I was heading to that the Atlanta airport, on a drizzly/foggy morning, when I realized that my old car’s “extra-large fog lights” were really needed to drive safely in the challenging conditions.  While those big yellow fog-lights did the job perfectly, it got me thinking about “murky/unclear” situations in life and in business that I was experiencing today.

 

How many times does your work environment lack clarity or appears hazy/unclear??   How many moments in your life do you face challenging situations and are uncertain of a clear path forward??  At least for me, these challenging situations happen all the time, and I for one often “turn on the high-beams” rather than the “fog lights” often to little avail!  Thinking about good old “Miss Kitty.” I realized that in those murky work/life moments, I needed to ditch the proverbial “high-beams.”  I didn’t need to add MORE intensity of introspection, MORE high analysis, MORE digging for clarity to make the matter clearer… instead I needed to SLOW DOWN and find/utilize the “fog lights” available to me. 

 

This imagery makes logical sense, and I am certain you understand the idea that I am trying to share… but I find the exercise very hard.  All my training and my 38+ years of a business career have been centered extensively on the “high-beam” curriculum!  How to accelerate your tempo, how much data can you connect with and how quicky can you do it?? I am literally writing this essay on a flight heading back to Bakersfield, and I am scheduling calls in 15-minute intervals for my layover in Phoenix…. more “high-beam” action!! 

 

As I look at my personal business landscape, I certainly see challenges and uncertainties that lie ahead.  Much more significantly, I look broadly at the political landscape domestically and internationally and see incredible challenges; illuminated today by the wars in Ukraine and Israel that are just two examples of tragic nightmares with no clear path forward in sight.  Now more than ever I am reaching for my “fog lights” to help navigate to road ahead, and I encourage all readers to be sure to keep them handy and in good working order… the path ahead does not look to be clearing any time soon and I think we will all need to use our “fog lights” regularly!

 

The “order” of things matter… remember “PEMDAS”

 

I remember the moment so distinctly… our son Bryson was in 5^th grade (now 12+ years ago) and he came home from school with a significant insight about Math.  He explained to Jennie and me that Math was based on a set of rules called “PEMDAS” that were “made up” or arbitrary (my word) and if you followed a different set of rules, like maybe “MEPDAS”, you would generate completely different answers.  While at that moment I realized I needed to brush up on my core math principles, I also knew that Bryson was a very smart boy who was able at a very young age to think about some funky abstract ideas.

 

Let’s take a step back and refresh ourselves on “The order of operations in mathematics.”

 

Definition:  In math, order of operations are the rules that state the sequence in which the multiple operations in an expression should be solved. 

A way to remember the order of the operations is PEMDAS, where in each letter stands for a mathematical operation.

The PEMDAS rules that state the order in which the operations in an expression should be solved, are:

1. Parentheses - They take precedence over all other operators. The first step is to solve all the operations within the parentheses. Work out all groupings from inside to out. (Whatever is in parentheses is a grouping)

2. Exponents - Work out all the exponential expressions. 

3. Multiplication and Division - Next, moving from left to right, multiply and/or divide whichever comes first.

4. Addition and Subtraction - Lastly, moving from left to right, add and/or subtract whichever comes first.

 

Let’s look at an example:

 

4x (5+3) = 4X8= 32… following “PEMDAS”

 

4X (5+3) = 20+3=23…following Bryson’s suggestion, “MEPDAS”

 

As you can plainly see, the order of operations is fundamental to successful math operations and a reminder to all of us that the “order of things” matter in many facets of business and life,

 

This lesson from Bryson’s 5^th grade math class has been on my mind recently, as I have been working with a team at Bolthouse Farms that is working on its processes and business “rhythms.”  I shares in a work session recently that I follow a very strict and consistent “order” to my weekly leadership/business routines, a method that I refer to as our “Performance Management Discipline.”  Daily I count on the “Daily Sales Report” to be published so I can track Net Revenue for the company as a whole and broken out by product and by customer.  Every Monday I take that specific Daily Sales Report and build out my Weekly Sales Report that highlights that net revenue trend for the past week, month, quarter and year to date.  I share that report with my leadership team Monday afternoon and EVERY Tuesday I hold a live leadership mtg (or zoom) with that weekly report as its central data document.  On Fridays of every week, I receive a forecast for the sales orders for the week ahead and calibrate where that will take us vis a vis our budgets and our production plans.  

This weekly cadence is complemented with monthly, quarterly and annual “Performance Management Routines” that directly connects to that daily sales report and to our top and bottom-line performance vs budget through the fiscal year along with connecting to the multi-year strategic planning process and the annual budget cycle.  This interconnected process needs to follow its own “order of operations” …. Its own “PEMDAS,” in order for the organization as a whole to stay on track.  Regardless of function or department, having a set “Performance Management Discipline” and staying true to following it is fundamental to success in business.  I encourage all of you to remember Bryson’s lesson of “PEMDAS” and ensure that you and your organization are staying true to your core “order of operations!” 

 

D=>K=>I=>A/A/A…. A foundational “formula” for success!

 

 

As a guy that does gravitate to formulas, processes and repeatable management disciplines, this essay has been brewing for a while.  A few weeks ago, I had a great conversation with a young friend Meg, who was interviewing for a number of very different roles.  In that conversation, we focused in on the fact that while the roles were very different (one in a small non-profit, one in a large ad agency), the actual “foundational work” of the roles had some clear similarities and those common ideas triggered this essay.  Regardless of your role, or nature of the organization where you work, these simple ideas or process steps are incredibly common and deeply important in order to drive successful sustainable results.

 

The foundational formula/process/discipline is made up of a set of actions that are done in sequence, and follow the path of: 

 

Data->Knowledge->Insights-> Action/Assess/Apply

 

D: Data

 

Noun: facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis:

 

The first step is always to dig into the data…. and never get tired or bored, it always worth it!  I for example pull together a weekly performance dashboard for my leadership team, and rather than have someone in IT or finance pull it for me, I take an hour every Monday digging into last weeks results and building the dashboard myself.  I find that weekly process so helpful and EVERY WEEK I find little nuggets of trends, aberrations and surprises that allow me to understand where we are as a business and what actions we need to take going forward.  This first step, all about the data, is a step EVERYONE should do!  Don't let a fear of Math, or a lack of formal “data analytics training” stop you from diving in…. a vital and REQUIRED first step in this “foundational formula!”

 

K: Knowledge

 

Noun: facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject

 

By taking the step above and consistently digging into the data, we can gain knowledge and a deeper “understanding of a subject.”  Data on its’ own is relatively inert.  The purpose of the data dig “experience” is to gain understanding and build knowledge over time so you “convert” the data into actionable insights.

 

I: Insights

 

Noun: a deep understanding of a person or thing

 

Having a “deep understanding” of the work at hand is the big part of finding success.  While this evolves over time, the process steps reviewed above allow you to always be updating YOUR “deep understanding” of the business and will push you to take those thoughts/ideas and translate them into action!

 

 

A/A/A: 

 

A: Action

 

Noun: the fact or process of doing something, typically to achieve an aim

 

Take action, its time to have an impact!  Don't let the D->K->I phase lull you into passivity or inactivity.  This whole “foundational formula/process” is about taking thoughtful action in the marketplace and the “first A” is vital.  This step takes insights (mentioned above) AND COURAGE.  Step out there, make your recommendation be heard and drive to action!

 

A: Assess

 

Noun: evaluate or estimate the nature, ability, or quality of

 

With the “Action” step fully in-place, lets make sure we are ready to “evaluate” and learn from the “Action” deployed.  We can never learn enough, but too many skip this step entirely.  The amount of work to get the “Action” deployed is often so significant, many “run out of gas” at this step and lose energy to “evaluate” the impact/costs/ROI/etc. of the “Action” and fail to glean very available and much needed additional “Data” to help this process strengthen over time.  Many of you have read my essay on the “Curbside Debrief” https://fylegacy.blogspot.com/2014/02/selling-curbside-debrief.html

This tool is a handy way to ALWAYS take a step to “Assess” or learn after every significant “Action.”

A: Apply

 

Noun: give one's full attention to a task; work hard, administer

 

This final step as another call to turn learnings into “Action.”  If you have “Assessed” the impact of “Action,” once again don't get passive!  Turn those ideas or approaches into immediate improvement plans and deploy…. No need to wait and start the process again, dive in and “Apply” those learnings and drive success!

 

 

Well there you go, the simple ( and vital) D->K->I->A/A/A model.  I hope you can use it in your work, whatever the organization / industry and let it have a positive impact of the challenges of the moment, and help you be more successful with your challenges/opportunities over time!

A “Virtuous Cycle” in the Pivot to Growth

 

 

Like so many companies and organizations, this past year has been incredibly challenging. Leading a company through the reality of Covid has been so intense and difficult, certainly the most difficult challenge of my 35 year career!  Here we are as we enter May, we are finishing up our on-site vaccination clinics over the next few weeks, finishing up our return-to-work planning and prep activities and starting to look at easing some of our Covid policies (e.g. outdoor mask policy, etc.).  Along with these policy/readiness adjustments, we are dealing with the difficult (and wonderful in many ways) challenge of a booming business, growing very quickly, that is pushing our capabilities and capacities across our system.  We are clearly in a big “Pivot to Growth” moment and I have refreshed myself on some lessons that will help us and may help you as well.

 

Virtuous Cycle

 

I want to emphasize the first word here, “Virtuous!”  When businesses are dramatically beating budget and forecast, and outstripping existing capabilities/capacities, it is very easy to devolve into a “Destructive Cycle” of anger/blame/finger-pointing/etc.  Do your best as a leader to stay calm, remind everyone that we are in this together, and that in so many ways we are lucky to have the problems of a high growth business.  Remind yourself that “anger/blame & finger pointing” are rarely highlighted and key leadership tools for progressive/successful leaders in good times or bad.  Stay calm, keep your cool, keep your team together and work the problem at hand!

 

Work the Problem

 

At least for our company in this Pivot to Growth, there are multiple problems all occurring at once.  That dynamic is actually not surprising and should not be allowed to cause confusion.  Look at the landscape, idea the problems and help the team to break them down into bite-sized chunks.  Remember “Aunt Lorraine’s Law”????  “Take small bites and chew thoroughly”!  

That lesson is so true now… help your team on this and get everyone focused on THE problem at hand and have other teams working on ANOTHER problem at hand but be careful to have one group working on many problems at once….. usually a situation that causes confusion and limited progress!

 

Search for Root Causes

 

As teams get into problem solving, we can find ourselves actually fixing a problem at hand and being tempted to quickly move on to the next issue at hand.  As a leader help your team to slow down enough to try to identify the “root causes” to the problem so we might possible not just fix the problem at hand but identify and solve the deeper “root causes” of the problem to we don't face this challenge again.  A technique that I learned many years ago is the “ask “why” five times” rule.  Once a problem/issue is clearly identified, force yourself and your team to go five layers deep…. Ask, “Why did this issue occur”??? then when that answer is clarified, ask “why” did that occur??? and keep that routine going for five layers of asking “whys?”

 

Deploy solutions and measure success

 

The best part of problem solving is actually fixing the problems/challenges at hand…. duh!  No brilliant insight there but again we are so often tempted to fix it and move on; not good enough!  Use the measurement tools at hand or build the measurement tools to assess just how much or how well we have actually fixed the problem and improved performance.  We only really learn true performance improvement through measuring our success and continuously improving on that improved performance.

 

Work the problem

 

Repeat the “Virtuous Cycle!”

 

 

I hope that this simple “cycle” can be helpful as you and your organization begin your pivot to growth post Covid!  There will be challenges ahead (there always are) but none so daunting as the challenges we all faced this past year.  We can work our way through the challenges of growth by keeping our cool, reminding the team that we are all in this together and working the “Virtuous Cycle” above….. those will be key ingredients for solving the growth problems that lie ahead!

Work the process & work ON the process!

 

It’s been a wild ride over these past 20 months since we bought Bolthouse Farms back from Campbell’s.  The challenges of turning around a business in steep decline, executing a “carve-out” of a business that had been integrated into a bigger entity, rebuilding a team across all functions/levels … and then Covid hit! In the midst of these significant challenges, the business is growing, the team stronger than ever, and we have learned so much and become stronger through facing and overcoming challenges in our way.  A great lesson was shared last week in a “zoom call,” that I want to pass along today.

 

Late last week, we had our weekly S&OP (sales & operations planning) call and one of our excellent, long-term Bolthouse veterans John (no last names on the blog!) was on the call early when I signed in.  He and I had a couple of minutes to catch up and were talking about our fast growing beverage business and how hard it was to get the right flavors, in the right size, in the right level of inventory, to the right customer …etc!  We were talking about how hard it was to run a tight S&OP process in a high growth business and John shared a powerful insight….” You know Bill, we have to work the process and work ON the process at the same time!”

 

That simple phrase really hit home in this moment/situation, but is so true broadly.  Too often we don't even do the first part very well; we often don't even have a consistent business process and if we do have one we don't execute it in a consistent, disciplined fashion.  Knowing this, the idea that we have to always “work ON the process,” identifying ways to improve WHAT we do and HOW we do it was the deep insight of John’s comment.  

 

Even though our business is booming, and so many good things are happening, we need to push ourselves to improve our processes broadly.  To often companies wait for things to go bad to start thinking about changes, the trick is to dive into this work when things are going well… that's the perfect time to work and work ON your processes!

 

A few helpful tips:

 

Ø  Think about your business/enterprise/organization and identify the key operational processes that are required to get the work done, and insure you have a structured, disciplined process in place.

Ø  Once those core processes are set, don't get bored with them!  Execute and lead those processes with intensity and efficiency and insure the broader organization knows that those process steps are key to the organization’s success.

Ø  Look for the processes and that need improvement and work ON those processes very publicly.  Identify and implement improvement steps and you will insure that your processes will continue to improve over time!

 

The accelerating “Trajectory” of talent

 

 

 

The simplest way to start this essay is an old lesson, one that I learned years ago from some un-named boss or mentor, that is captured in the simple line….“Yesterday’s A+ is tomorrow’s B-!”  the idea being that in a business that is growing, thriving, and dynamically responding to a changing competitive landscape the exceptional performance that drove exceptional results last year will actually look pretty “un-exceptional” when faced with the expanded and accelerated results expected in years to come.

 

It’s always good to remind us what this “looks” like mathematically on the chart to the right. Y=mX+b is the age-old formula for the line and when “m” or the slope of the line is positive, we have a line showing positive growth….. whether it’s depicting net revenue, gross margin, or EBITDA, the “m” being positive and in growth mode is what’s key!

 

At the center of this concept is a belief that an organization, and the key individuals that make up that organization, needs to keep learning and growing their individual and team skills/capacities in order to generate expanding results expected in future fiscal quarters/years.  It also assumes that a stagnant organization, a group of individuals not building their skills and capacities over time won’t be able to generate and create growth oriented results for very long.

 

This “lesson” is very present for me in my current role at Bolthouse Farms.  As I mentioned in earlier essays, coming back to Bolthouse Farms has been an incredible opportunity to have a “2^ndchance to work on your legacy” and I am trying to take full advantage of that chance. In that spirit we have rebuilt the team and have accelerated the business dramatically over the past 16 months since we bought the company back from Campbell’s.  It is in this context that I am thinking so much about this idea about “trajectory.”

 

As our business grows and changes, so do the needs and demands that are required from our team. Getting the business stabilized and back on its feet was job #1 ….LAST YEAR …. but now our focus is on building a platform for growth for the years to come and to build an organizational strength and depth to drive and sustain that growth for years to come as well!

 

This is the crux of the idea that as a business changes and grows, so the demands on and the expectations of its key executives change and grow correspondingly. What’s really interesting ( and very challenging) is when the growth itself accelerates….. e.g., when a business grew 10% last quarter, 15% this quarter and is planning on growing 25 % next quarter the reality is that the business is not just growing, but the growth rate is actually growing.  For those math nerds reading this essay, we are talking about a curve with a positive derivative as seen in this chart ….

 

In these business circumstances, it is very important to work to stay active in building the skills and capacities of your team.  Insure that you have a team ( and that you are modeling) which is focused on delivering the required results today AND in building their abilities to drive much greater results in the future.  Being a leader who is both an active learner and an active teacher is a key element of this “equation” working well.  As a leader be open to show all the new things that you are learning and working on…. Be open with what you have to learn to be great next quarter/next year/ etc. Too many leaders think about this as some sort of weakness…. nothing could be further from the truth! Equally have a “teachable point of view” and be active and patient as a teacher to your direct reports and your team.  Leaders that can combine both of these traits ( active learner and active teacher)  are positioned well to build organizations that can accelerate their capabilities and thus drive accelerating growth!

 

2020... A year of action, not intentions!

At times it seems amazing to me to reflect that we are beginning the second decade of the 21st century!  As a child of the 60's ( yes, the 1960's) and someone who started his business career in the mid-80's, I feel VERY fortunate to begin 2020 fully engaged in a wonderful business, working with a great team, and looking to the year ahead filled with optimism and energy.  Sure there are challenges and obstacles ahead, some that we can see clearly and others that I know are waiting around some dark corner, but regardless of that truth, I am certainly energized for the road ahead in the new year!

As I think about the year ahead, 2020 seems so pivotal as I think about the broader context.  It will certainly be a pivotal year for our business at Bolthouse Farms, where we are focused on "stabilizing the business to rebuild a platform for growth."  That strategic "mantra" has been our focus since we bought the business in June, and we will see that "return to growth" in 2020 without question!  While certainly a pivotal business year, 2020 is filled with great portent for our country and the world broadly.  We have a huge election in ten months that will dramatically affect the future of our country and the challenges ( and opportunities) facing our planet as we start the new year have never been more dramatic or more pressing!  Its within this context that I have thought about this essay, and am really struck by the need for action across the board ... action on the issues and opportunities ahead, not just good intentions, clever words,  and platitudinal inaction!

Take action in business: We certainly have a lot to do at Bolthouse Farms to get the business back on a track of growth for the exciting future that lies ahead.  Regardless of the department, role or function, there is a lot to do!  While at moments like this it can seem intimidating with the extent of  action that is required, the great thing to remember is to just dive in and begin!  Take action on the projects that lie ahead, take small steps and dig into the work that is needed, encourage your team- mates to dig into the work, not "talk" about the work!  Too often we swirl around issues, problems and opportunities "talking" a good game, but never "plowing forward" into the work required.  Whatever the business situation you are facing, my encouragement is to prioritize your "actions" on the projects that lie ahead in 2020 and stay focused on making a difference with the results of your "action filled" work!

Take action personally: This is a perfect time of year to take stock of where we all are personally, either as leaders, as parents, spouses or friends and decide what actions we can take this year to get better at the things that are important to us.  I am not a big fan of grandiose new years "resolutions;" too often a set of words and ideas that sound great but never actually happen or don't happen for very long.  As for me, now that I am working every week in California, I am focused on sleep and exercise... and my plan is to walk EVERY day and insure that I can get at least 7 1/2 hrs of sleep EVERY night.  I know it doesn't seem very inspiring, but for me to be effective, for me to be my "best self" in 2020, those two "every day" actions will be critical for a successful year ahead!

Take action in your communities:  We live and work in the context of communities that span the globe, and its too easy for us to live in our bubbles, listen only to our "echo chambers" of self curated news and information and forget the wider landscape of humanity we live within.  Get involved in food banks, food pantries, homeless shelters, etc. where you can give some of your time, and resources to those more in need.  Find ways to give back globally and locally to help strengthen communities that matter to you.  Finally insure that you are registered to vote and take action on election day in November! Our right to vote is precious and a foundation for our country and too many people blow it!  Get out there in the primaries and at the general election and cast your vote, take action for our democracy!


This headset on actions vs intentions is not new in my essays.  Over the past ten years I have covered this topic and idea from a few angles and for those looking for some "extra readings" in this area, check out the following essays:

"Our actions betray our intent"
https://fylegacy.blogspot.com/2017/06/our-actions-betray-our-intent.html

"Act with intent : Redux"
https://fylegacy.blogspot.com/2009/08/act-with-intent-redux.html

"Good ideas executed brilliantly"
https://fylegacy.blogspot.com/2017/04/good-ideas-executed-brilliantly.html


I want to wish everyone a very happy and healthy new year and I am confident and that 2020 will be a year to remember because of the actions we take in our businesses, our families and our communities!!

"A Militant Commitment to the Basics"

Recently I had the pleasure to have one of my Bolthouse Farms leadership team partners ( and good friend) Zak spend some time with me in Atlanta!  We have been "working our brains out" since well before we closed on buying back the company from Campbell's last June and it was a real treat to have him stop by and stay at my house and for us to work together from my home office a few weeks ago.  He was routing through Atlanta, coming from one of our customer's annual conferences and shared a number of headlines from his time there.  One theme came from the main stage presentation of the conference when the speaker commented that to be successful, one needed to have ...." A militant commitment to the basics!"  This phrase has really stuck with me over the past few weeks.  It is highly pertinent to the situation that I find myself in today in my work at Bolthouse Farms and it rings VERY true as I reflect on my career over the past 30+ years.  I want to take a few moments today to dig into this concept, and do a bit of exegesis as we explore its elements.


Militant: adj.  "Aggressively active, (as in a cause)

So many businesses need 100% attention, focus and energy and the business we bought last June is a perfect example.  The previous management team was focused on "selling the business", not "running the business" and the the recent business results tell the tale!  NO business nor organization runs on auto pilot and ALL businesses and organizations need intense, active focus.  The concept of being "militant" or "aggressively active" feels so apt and appropriate... we as leaders should not aspire to JUST be active, we need to work on being "aggressively active" in our work and actions!

Commitment: noun.  "an act of committing to a charge or trust"

At any level in an organization, we are NOT taking a role to only partially commit to the work required.  If we are in a role, and this is especially true for leaders, we need to be 110% INTO the role and the work required.  Especially when times are tough, or when business results are challenged (both ringing true for me today,) we need to check ourselves and insure that we are 110% "committed" to the role/work/team/budget/challenges that lie ahead.  We can't control so many things in the landscape of our work, but we CAN control our own levels of "commitment!"

Basics: noun.  "something that is foundational or fundamental"

It is so easy, especially when things are troubled or challenging in business to look for a new approach or strategy to change trends and drive future success.  While certainly needed and appropriate at times, it is ALWAYS appropriate to dig or grind into the fundamentals or foundational elements of a business.  I have found that after being away from Bolthouse Farms for over 4 years, I have needed to dig back into the "basics" of the business to really understand where we are and where we need to go!

I am very appreciative that Zak shared this message from the customer convention and I am very appreciative and committed to our partnership along with the other leaders at Bolthouse Farms!  All of us would do well to dig into these words and this theme and to push ourselves to bring them alive every day.  I hope that you leaders reading this essay can find an idea or an approach to bring alive in your organizations and i am confident that taking a "militant commitment to the basics" will serve you well on the challenges that lie ahead!

“Alacrity”… a critical word and idea for leaders…

It has been eight weeks since we closed on the purchase of Bolthouse Farms, and what a wild ride it has been!  The business is in rough shape and needs a lot of work.  The organization is in flux, and has been through a lot over the past few years, and the team and our culture needs a lot of nurturing.  I think across the board there is a feeling of excitement and a recognition that there is a ton changing in every aspect of our company; so when I say its been a wild ride I do think it's a bit of an understatement!!

Immediately in week one, I “re-instituted” my “weekly performance management calls”, where we review the metrics of the business (every Tuesday) and review the key issues and focus points for the company broadly, and key themes by department. This is a process/discipline that I have written about in a number of essays (https://fylegacy.blogspot.com/2014/09/beating-cadence-drumbeat-of-performance.html) and an approach that worked very well for me in my last “stint” at Bolthouse Farms, 2009-2015!  This process/discipline may seem boring or monotonous to some, but “beating the drumbeat” of a business with regular reviews of performance, and a regular “refocusing” on the key issues is ALWAYS productive and will ALWAYS be part of my playbook!

  It was on one of these weekly calls that I was reviewing the every growing list of important & urgent priorities on our action list when I shared the concept of “alacrity” with the team with little pre-planning.  We have so much on our plates right now and while energizing, it is really hard work and as a sample of one I am working the hardest that I can remember across my career!  It seemed critical to me to try to bring energy and positivity to the work at hand for me personally and I wanted to share to the team broadly how we all had to dive in with a positive and energetic spirit.  A number of team members on the call looked up the word to insure that I wasn't taking too many liberties with its application to our circumstances and indeed, I was pretty close in my usage!!

Alacrity: noun

cheerful readiness, promptness, or willingness:We accepted the invitation with alacrity.

liveliness; briskness.

After the call was finished I had some team members suggest that the message was appropriate for a broader audience in the company (not just the folks on the weekly call) and we crafted an email to share later that week, summarizing some key themes and sharing the idea of “alacrity” as a key idea/attitude/approach that I was trying to adopt in this “wild” time!  A wonderful surprise was the hilarious picture below, which was put together by two members of my team ( AJ & Pam !!) who wanted to “illuminate” the idea in an easy to remember image!  There is no doubt that “Buddy the Elf” is filled with many things but he certainly dives into the challenges he faces filled with “Alacrity!!”

"It's really hard to be late when you are 8 minutes early...."

To start, this essay is not a rant, nor a tirade on the lack of punctuality broadly in professional environments across America.  In fact, inspired by a coffee "meeting" this morning, it is a reminder of the power and impact of timliness and punctuality in our everyday personal and professional lives.

Earlier today, I had scheduled to meet a friend of my son Bryson's ( a fellow Bruin and Ultimate player, Michale P.) at a great coffee place in Westwood near the UCLA campus.  While originally the plan was to meet at 7:30am, I needed to move it back to 8 am due to some early conference calls on my end and Michael was super flexible to make the change.  Having "advanced my position," ( see     https://fylegacy.blogspot.com/2013/03/advance-your-position.html   for more on that topic)  I actually did the calls from outside the coffee shop and was finished with twenty minutes to spare and who walks up to say good morning twenty minutes early but Michael !  With no reference or context I blurted out a phrase that my family and most everyone who has ever worked with/for me have heard me say hundreds of times that "its really hard to be late when you are 8 minutes early!"  While it sounds a bit wacky, I deeply believe that being on-time is MOST of the time a choice, an outgrowth of our choices, and MOST of the time deeply in our control.


This approach work on being a bit early to things stems form my early childhood.  My dad was a Navy veteran and the ships he served on worked on a timetable and a set of "watches" that were rigorously upheld with little variance.  As kids the idea that we might be late for Church, or god forbid a flight, was beyond comprehension!  When I was 10 or 11 I took over my brothers paper route  (The Pittsburgh Press, evenings through the week and Sunday mornings) and if those papers weren't delivered by 5 pm Mon-Sat and by 8 am on Sundays, there was hell to pay from my paper route customers!  Later in high school I worked in a 24 hr. diner  in my hometown and while it never closed ( in those days it only closed on Christmas day), every shift had its duties and after school each day I needed to bring up ( from the store rooms in the basement) the flour , sugar, yeast, pie fillings, etc. every day so the night bakers could bake the pies and rolls EVERY night.... always like clockwork!

This deeply ingrained approach was really put to the test in college when I was getting set to take the GMAT's ( the entrance exam for MBA programs) and needed to drive over to a university that was fielding the exam close by to my undergraduate college ( Kent State University was 47 miles from The College of Wooster where I earned my BA.)  Now this was back in 1982, well before any google maps/ I-Phones/Internet/etc. and while I knew how to get to Kent State University ( where I saw the Clash during their "London Calling tour", maybe more on that in an upcoming essay,) I had no idea how to find the building where the GMAT was being given..... long story short, I was on campus in plenty of time but ultimately 25 minutes late to the actual exam room and ultimately bombed the exam!  The good news is that I had time to take it again that winter, and did a lot better the second time around ( arriving 30 min early!!) and ultimately was accepted into Vanderbilt's MBA program and the rest is history, but at that moment the consequences of not being "8 minutes early" seems immense and life changing!

I share all of this background as a reminder that I learned early in my life that being on time ( or maybe even a few minutes early) really matters and that the consequences of being late can be dramatic.  Triggered by Michael's early arrival today, I was reminded on how taking action to arrive early all the time, whether for an early morning coffee or to a major presentation is always a good idea!  It is our choices and actions that will guide whether we are "25 minutes late" to a key event that lies ahead or if we can count on being "8 minutes early" to insure that we are there with plenty of time to make the impact that we desire and intend!

“Vision without execution is hallucination …. Skill without imagination is barren”

For regular readers of this blog, you know that I have focused on the power of execution and the importance of “acting with intent” across multiple essays.  Across the 30+ years of my business career, I have been stunned by the lack of focus on execution discipline/regimens vs. the pursuit of groundbreaking innovation.  Whether in food or beverage companies where I held senior operating executive roles or in my consulting assignments spanning technology startups and global bio-pharma companies, this dynamic tension between executional focus and market changing innovation has been a common denominator of my professional experiences.  Even last week in a discussion with senior executives of a current client I had a division president say that “execution is all well and good, but when are we going to get a “game changer” to sell???”  Once again another data point of this “dynamic tension” dance!

The title above, and the inspiration for this essay, once again comes from an unlikely source. Walter Isaacson’s recent biography of Leonardo da Vinci is stunning and the stories of this painter, architect, sculptor, engineer, etc., are beyond inspiring!  In an early chapter Isaacson comments on Leonardo’s ability to “blur the line between reality and fantasy” and “knew how to marry observation and imagination, which made him history’s consummate innovator.”  This paragraph really got me thinking.   While clearly working to describe and explain this genius of the renaissance, I was struck by how applicable these ideas are and how helpful each element is to business challenges in the 21^stcentury!  Lets decompose this balancing act and dig into each element and look for helpful connection points to our challenges today:

“Vision without execution is hallucination”

This first of Isaacson’s admonitions rings deeply true to me personally.  I have had the pleasure to lead large sales and marketing organizations across my career and I have often been charged with bringing new ideas to life across a number of roles and companies.   My best and most successful experiences came when we took good to very good ideas and executed them brilliantly.  Deeply planning out the executional requirements and driving executional discipline, “beating a cadence of performance management discipline” is my phrase for not just “planning” the executional requirements of a innovation launch, but staying on top of the daily reality of execution vagaries and course correcting immediately to insure market place success.  Unfortunately I have been party to a number of innovation experiences that failed, at times because of lack of vision, but most often by a failure in the executional protocol somewhere across the landscape.

“Skill without Imagination is barren”

This second component of Isaacson’s thinking is deeply vital and an important challenge to my background and orientation.  I have to continually remind myself that executional rigor on it own is not enough; it will ultimately run out of gas!  Markets change and ideas, insights and imagination are the fuel for change and success.  I remember a meeting I attended as a young brand manager in the late 80’s at the offices of Maxwell House Coffee.  A upstart Seattle based coffee company (yes, you guessed it, Starbucks) had just opened it’s 50^thstore and the V. P of Marketing for Maxwell House opined that American would NEVER pay $1.00 for a cup of coffee, especially not one with a burned roast flavor!!!   To say that he was wrong is an understatement, to say that he had a lack of “imagination” of what “might be” is probably more to the point!! (Just a note, Starbucks has over 27,000 stores worldwide as of mid-2018!)

As I close I want to be reminded and inspired by the amazing balancing act of Leonardo! We should work and be reminded that “Imagination” is a vital requirement to create innovation and change, yet untethered from “Execution” it will come to nothing more than a set of professional “hallucinations.”

Contingency Planning: work the "backup to the backup" plan!

Over the course of the 175+ essays on this blog, I have often commented on the importance of executional excellence in achieving success in business.  I have been so focused on this idea that I have captured a subset of 48 essays (this will be #49) in my "topic archive" (found on the left side of this blog's homepage) that is themed "Performance Management and Execution."  Rather than being inspired by a current client challenge, or a historic business experience, today's essay was inspired by the birth of a friend's first child.

My good friend Cory and his wife Spenser celebrated the birth of their son Eliot in the past week or so and the pictures brought back all of my memories of the birth of our son Bryson almost 20 years ago.  We were living in Baltimore at the time and living on the northern edge of the city.  Jennie had a great relationship with a local doctor who was all set to deliver young Bryson.  We had attended all the "pre-natal" classes, and had not only practiced our route to GBMC (Greater Baltimore Medical Center), but had figured out a backup route in case of traffic.  I thought we were all set .... little did I know!

Jennie's pregnancy was going along well, but towards the third trimester (in mid June) it became clear that Bryson was positioned "transverse", and that unless something really changed we were probably heading to a planned c-section when he came to term in mid July.  After a regular appointment, Jennie's doctor let us know that she was heading out of town for a week or so on vacation, and introduced Jennie to her backup doctor "just in case."  All seemed set and we left that appointment thinking that we would probably see the doctor again in about a month for the planned c-section that was discussed .... again, little did I know!

Just a few days later (thank goodness I was in town!!) Jennie called my car phone (this was 1998, the early days of mobile phones) and said that her had water broken, that she was going into labor, and that I needed to get home immediately!!  I was right around the corner so I pulled into the driveway in just a few minutes and found Jennie VERY upset.  Not only was our doctor out of town on vacation, the backup doctor was nowhere to be found, and we were being connected with the "backup to the backup" doctor who practiced at a different hospital in a different part of Baltimore.  A total freakout! My wife was going into labor and were were heading to meet this "backup to the backup" doctor for the first time at a hospital that we had never visited (Mt. Sinai Hospital on Northern Parkway) ... to say the least this was not what was planned!

While a crazy ride, it all worked out ok in the end, Bryson was born the next day (an emergency c-section after all)  and mom and baby were both fine ... a bit freaked out but fine!  This memory stays with me as a reminder of how I had missed planning for the "backup to the backup" plan!  I should have taken contingency planning to the next level!

 Think how rarely we take the time or have the discipline to work a contingency plan in business, none the less take it to the "next level."  The next time that you are in planning/work session and you do some work on a "backup plan," take a few minutes and ask yourself "what if the backup plan blows up, what then??"  While it might be a freakout, ask yourself, how would I get to Mt. Sinai hospital ( or your "backup to the backup") if the chips are down?  These few minutes of work may seem like overkill, but I can assure you that in hindsight I wished I had asked some of those questions 20 years ago, and try to ask them now in business situations that I face today!

Three "Common Denominators"

As I touched on in a recent post, I have the chance in my consulting practice to work with a wide variety of clients and companies.  Ranging from food and technology startups, to billion dollar produce and engineering companies, to a massive global bio-technology organization the breadth of companies and verticals is significant and humbling.  What is interesting across all of my experiences/engagements is that while the companies and industries vary greatly, there continues to be a small set of common issues/challenges/opportunities... or "common denominators"... that are the center of my work across assignments.  Today I want to reflect on the three "common denominators" that I keep bumping into most often.


The Impact of Personal Leadership

Leaders matter and have a real impact on an organization and so often these individuals lose track of the importance of their roles, their work, their actions, and their impact.  Think about times in your career where there has been a leadership change and that moment signaled a real change in the business and company culture, good or bad.  I think back to a leadership change that i witnessed very closely where I left a key leadership role and watched an organization really struggle both in its marketplace performance metrics and its employee engagement and company culture.  In my consulting work, I often work with leaders who underestimate their impact and are candidly not prepared for the leadership roles they occupy.  This idea of nurturing/building future leaders has come up as a priority that I am taking into many of my client assignments today.  How can we help the future leaders of tomorrow get ready, build skills, and maybe even practice a bit in their roles today??
I have written a number of essays on leadership, two that are among the most read essays on this blog and may be worth reading (or maybe re-reading) to amplify this topic:

> "A Teachable Point of View"; https://fylegacy.blogspot.com/2009/05/teachable-point-of-view.html

> "The Three Impact Points of Leadership"; https://fylegacy.blogspot.com/2009/03/three-impact-points-of-leadership.html


"Execution" is a/the strategy

In assignment after assignment I keep running into the dynamic where good or even great ideas are executed poorly in the marketplace and performance metrics suffer.  Execution matters and this idea of focusing on the "how" not just the "what" is a big deal and is becoming a major focus in my consulting practice.  Maybe it just doesn't seem "sexy" or intellectually sophisticated to "sweat the details" and work on an execution/implementation plan for a project but as I continue on in my 30+ year business career it seems more important than ever.  Recently I wrapped up a project for a large client who has really struggled in their market over the past few years and lost a significant amount of market share.  They wanted to understand the key actions/strategies of their primary competitors, trying to understand how they took so much share over the past five years.  After digging into the data, it became clear that there was no magic equation or unique insight that the competitors brought to market, they just "out-executed" my client at every turn, across a number of years and the marketplace impact had been dramatic.  Here are a few essays on this topic that maybe helpful to review:

> "Plan the "How", not just the "What""; https://fylegacy.blogspot.com/2017/12/plan-how-not-just-what.html

> "Good ideas executed brilliantly"; https://fylegacy.blogspot.com/2017/04/good-ideas-executed-brilliantly.html


"Focus" is key for all, do fewer things better

We live and work in a time when the tempo of business has never been faster and the need to balance and handle a wide variety of topics,priorities, and projects is a day to day reality.  Its hard to remember that I started my business career in the mid eighties, with no cell phones, no internet, just the beginning of PC's and the technology today lets us do so much more than I could have ever imagined 30+ years ago!  It's in this context that I have seen the need to improve our "focus" and actually work hard on doing "fewer things better."  Just because we can "pull off" a project or a meeting doesn't mean we should do that if we can't do it well.  There are so many examples of this dynamic to review but a recent one brought a smile to my face.  I was sitting at the Raleigh airport, waiting for my flight back to Atlanta, and my gate just happened to be at the base of the escalators coming from security.  I watched a young man, trying to put on his belt, carry a backpack and a coat, and pull his roller-bag while texting or emailing on his phone as he stepped onto the escalator.  It was almost comic to watch, but while thankfully no one was hurt, he dropped his roller bag which fell down the escalator and somehow lost track of his belt (I am still not sure where the belt ended up) and the calamity at the bottom of the escalators was astounding.  'Do fewer things better" immediately came to mind in that moment as it often does in my client engagements today.  I often work to "take things off" my clients' plates, so we can actually focus in on fewer priorities and work hard to  execute them well.  Again, the following are a few essays that bring this idea more to life:

> "Inflection points of a business, focus on fewer things to insure success" ; https://fylegacy.blogspot.com/2017/11/inflection-points-of-business-focus-on.html

> "Myopia, a strategy for sales, business, and life" : https://fylegacy.blogspot.com/2015/10/myopia-strategy-for-sales-business-and.html


These three "common denominators" continue to surface across my business landscape today and may be present in yours.  Take a few minutes and reflect on some of the linked essays and see how you might be able to share these ideas with your teams and put them into practice in your assignments today!