What Are You Doing for the Next 4 Months?

Labor Day Weekend has come and gone. The Summer is over, and now the mad dash to the end of the year begins.

How is your strategic plan for 2014 doing? Have you met many of your goals? Set new ones? Better yet, what is your primary goal for the last 4 months of the year? Be specific.

What is mine, you ask? To actively engage at least four new clients for Dawn Gannon Consulting; in real terms, one per month. While it is good to have goals, they are just goals if you don't have a strategic plan to reach them.

Since it is now September, just about every business leader is in the process of reviewing their strategic plan and making changes for 2015 to better meet the needs of their business and the community it serves. But what about the final months of 2014?

As the outgoing Chair of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine's (ASRM) Women's Council, I am leading the strategic plan review for the Council's next few years. However, we cannot effectively plan for 2015, 2016, and beyond without reviewing where we have been, where we are now, and re-evaluating where we want to be.

In the interest of increasing my knowledge, and that of those who read this post, I ask you:

1. What are the most important considerations in your strategic planning process?
2. Who (what positions or management levels) do you include on your strategic planning committee?
3. What is the one thing anyone devising - or revising - a strategic plan cannot do if they want the plan to be effective?

I thank you in advance for the discussion!

Photo Credit: Bing Images.

Editor’s Note: This post also appears on LinkedIn.

Before founding her own consulting firm, Dawn Gannon served as a respected project management and administrative operations professional in the military, higher education, and healthcare fields for 25 years. As a Lean/Six Sigma Green Belt, Dawn’s commitment and personal mission to improve the lives of others through service to the community focuses on providing administrative and volunteer management, consumer education, public outreach, event planning, relationship-building efforts, and strategic planning. She is a contributor on LinkedIn, the author of the Management in Motion blog, and has written a number of articles for RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association on the topic of childfree living.

If I Had To Do It All Over Again

What if you had an opportunity to go back 10, 20, or 30 years to start your career or build your business again? What words of wisdom and lessons you have learned over the ensuing years would you hope someone would share with you as you got started?

It's the age-old question of "wouldn't it be great to be 20 or 30 again," if you could do so with the wisdom, knowledge, and perspective that you have now at 40 or 50.

What I wouldn't give to let my 25-year-old self a good kick in the pants so that I could see what my actions - or more accurately, my inaction, would cost in terms of opportunities down the road.

Would I have chosen a different path (or many paths) if, as a 25-year-old, I could see the opportunities presented to me with my half-century-old eyes and knowledge?

However, with age also comes the recognition and understanding that all of life's experiences, both good and bad, contribute to the person you are today, and set the stage for tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year.

Without going too in-depth, I would remind my younger self that education is vitally important, and opens many unexpected doors of opportunity for personal growth and the ability to positively affect the lives of others.

There are other things I would tell my younger self, but I would really like to hear from you. If you had to do it all over again, what would you tell your younger self?

Editor’s Note: This post also appears on LinkedIn.

Before founding her own consulting firm, Dawn Gannon served as a respected project management and administrative operations professional in the military, higher education, and healthcare fields for 25 years. As a Lean/Six Sigma Green Belt, Dawn’s commitment and personal mission to improve the lives of others through service to the community focuses on providing administrative and volunteer management, consumer education, public outreach, event planning, relationship-building efforts, and strategic planning. She is a contributor on LinkedIn, the author of the Management in Motion blog, and has written a number of articles for RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association on the topic of childfree living.

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

Question: Why did the chicken cross the road? 

Answer: To get to the other side of the road, of course.

It’s an old joke that just about everyone had heard, told or modified in some way.

Just recently I was standing on the porch, talking with my sister when suddenly I saw a chicken crossing the road; really, no kidding. It was a real live chicken crossing the road in a small town in Kentucky, but it was a chicken nonetheless.

My sister said I made the oddest facial expression, and then calmly asked her if indeed it was a chicken crossing the road.

I’m sure you can imagine the hilarity that followed, when everyone in the house was brought out to: #1) hear the story, #2) see the chicken, and 3) to send the tweens down the street to take a photo of him. We are so easily amused…

Although this is funny, and I truly enjoy laughing at myself and with others, the experience also allowed me to consider why I make the decisions I do, both personally and in business.

We all know that good decisions are based on accurate information, and used as strategic stepping stones toward the completion of a goal.

Like the question about the chicken, what about the goals? Why did I (or you) choose those particular goals, or set the bar so high (or low)?

Generally, goals are set to achieve a specific end, often in conjunction with one or more others as well. I think the goals we set for ourselves are formed by our personal experiences and perspectives.

Each of us has a slightly different perspective on life, even if we grew up in the same house and shared the same experiences. However, often times those different perspectives between individuals give rise to differing ultimate goals, automatic responses in similar situations, and sometimes drive a wedge of misunderstanding between parties.

This is life. As human beings, it is inevitable that we will disagree with someone on a daily basis; some minor and others as big as an immovable boulder.

In business, you may have personality conflicts with a co-worker, peer, partner, or that very annoying customer that everyone passes off to someone else.

This doesn't mean that you are an awful person. You just have to try a little bit harder to work cohesively with your team and those around you.

Then, like the chicken, you have to decide if you want to stay on that side of the road or walk across it seeking another opportunity.

If you want to stay, then seek a mentor to help you with workplace challenges such as personality conflicts.

If you want to move on, then do so, thereby ensuring that you benefit from a new opportunity to build on your success somewhere else, and the company you leave has an opportunity to hire someone who can better help them fulfill their mission or reach their strategic goals.

So, tell me. Why did your chicken cross the road, and where was it going?

Editor’s Note: This post also appears on LinkedIn.

Before founding her own consulting firm, Dawn Gannon served as a respected project management and administrative operations professional in the military, higher education, and healthcare fields for 25 years. As a Lean/Six Sigma Green Belt, Dawn’s commitment and personal mission to improve the lives of others through service to the community focuses on providing administrative and volunteer management, consumer education, public outreach, event planning, relationship-building efforts, and strategic planning. She is a contributor on LinkedIn, the author of the Management in Motion blog, and has written a number of articles for RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association on the topic of childfree living.

Missed Opportunities

Editor's Note: This blog post also appears on LinkedIn.

Conversation Overheard Between 2 Friends in December 1992

Bob: “I’m buying some stock in the Snapple Company. The company is doing really well, and I think it’s going to take over the market. Want to spend that $5,000 you have on $15 a share and join me?”

George: “I think the beverage market is really over-crowded, so I think I’ll pass. Thanks for thinking of me and asking though.”

Fast Forward to 2014

Today, the stock purchased for $5,000 in 1992 would have split several times and now be worth over $40,000. What a huge missed opportunity!

Many times over my life I have been presented with an opportunity and passed for one reason or another. Some decisions proved to be the right one, while others were later identified as a true missed opportunity.

Common business sense suggests significant research and data to support the options considered. After all, intelligent business decisions are made based on data, right?

What about gut feelings or intuition? Several times over my career, data suggested one action while my intuition suggested a totally different – and way out there – action. For the most part, the data-based decisions provided the expected results, but every once in a while, my gut reaction proved to be the better path instead.

So, how do you tell which opportunities are worth the effort and which ones aren’t? What if there is no data to support your intuition? As a business leader you have to make that call, taking both the credit if it works and the responsibility if it fails.

What happens if you don’t make a decision? Well, that’s a decision in and of itself.

There are several common reasons leaders choose to not make a decision or to do nothing about an opportunity:

• We don’t have enough capital right now
• There’s too much going on in the company/market place right now
• We don’t have the right people in place
• I’m the only one who wants to do it

What commonality do you see in each of those reasons?

They are all simply excuses for not leading.

So you don’t have the capital – get it. There’s too much going on – great! Your competition won’t expect you to do anything and you’ll gain a competitive edge. Don’t have the right people? Get them or hire contractors.

Last, but not least, no one else wants to do it. Really? Then refine the message of your vision and actively share that vision with your team. 

Just like Bob and his friend George above, perhaps they aren't buying the opportunity because you haven’t sold it well.

Before founding her own consulting firm, Dawn Gannon served as a respected project management and administrative operations professional in the military, higher education, and healthcare fields for 25 years. As a Lean/Six Sigma Green Belt, Dawn’s commitment and personal mission to improve the lives of others through service to the community focuses on providing administrative and volunteer management, consumer education, public outreach, event planning, relationship-building efforts, and strategic planning. She is a contributor on LinkedIn, the author of the Management in Motion blog, and has written a number of articles for RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association on the topic of childfree living.