Ty Wiggins

One of the frequent comments received by Converge Consulting Co Founders and Principals Ty Wiggins and Wayne Condon from managing directors and company owners is concerning the increasing speed with which businesses need to operate and adapt.  A key driver of this is the shorter life cycle of competitive advantages and the rise in popularity of ‘second to market’ strategies.

“Industry after industry is saying the same thing – being first to market has many significant advantages but being second and benefiting from the experiences of predecessors can be better.  Air Asia wasn’t the first airline and Google wasn’t the first search engine.  What they do have in common is the opportunity to learn from the mistakes and experiences of their pioneering competitors and apply the lessons when they followed them to market”, said Wiggins.

In times past a business could establish a competitive advantage and methodically build and exploit that advantage over a number of years – thus the old practice of 3 and 5 year strategic planning.  In addition, by being the first entrant to market relationships, resources, patents, distribution networks, brand profile, etc can be locked away making it harder and more daunting for the second to market businesses to convince consumers and suppliers to “try us”.

Condon added, “Unfortunately, in business today the notion of a long term sustainable competitive advantage that capitalises on well established deep relationships with customers and suppliers is becoming increasingly limited to heavy capital industries such as mining and manufacturing and necessities such as food”.

“For the majority of industries and business there is no longer the luxury of a sustainable competitive advantage that can be exploited over many years”.

Both Wiggins and Condon affirm that stability can in fact be counterproductive, leading to the creation of internal rigidity and inertia as people adopt routines and habits that inhibit innovation and an inability (or unwillingness) to respond to marketplace changes, rapid shifts in consumer demand and preferences and adoption of new technologies and practices.

Instead more and more businesses in multiple sectors and industries face situations in which their advantage is fleeting with market share and dominance eroded rapidly, products copied quickly, new technologies superseding those of the past, or customers seeking other options and moving on.

These businesses operate in dynamic competitive environments and are characterised by their willingness to pivot and shift when the market dictates that their advantage is no longer one that drives sales.

Today, competition can emerge from anywhere and it’s not necessarily in the form of cut rate product substitutes to target the low-end customers before moving upstream to pick off the high-end A List clients.

Innovative, agile, late marketplace entrants can redefine and reshape the market and in doing so, dominate the sector – a classic example is Apple in the mobile phone sector that was originally pioneered by Motorola.

“The implication for many businesses is that their ability to quickly implement or execute their strategy is vital to generating a return from the advantage.

Our simple advice to business leaders right now says Condon, is twofold, “They need to shorten the planning cycle and have a specific process in place for direct and systemic customer feedback.  Some businesses have moved to quarterly strategic planning in an attempt to both maximise the advantages they build and stay in front in terms of moving with the market”.

“This is blurring the line between strategy design and execution – a process that formerly sat as distinct stages in strategic planning”.

“An organisation’s leadership must also include a sense of urgency around this strategy and incorporate open and honest dialogue between leadership, management and employees so that each individual understands the organisation’s  plan, the imperative for change and the marketplace or economic conditions to which the business is responding”, concluded Wiggins..

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Ty Wiggins

Irrespective of the countless books that are written on the need for businesses to carefully develop and implement their strategic plans, they (the business plans) continue to fail at alarming rates jeopardising the long term operational viability of the enterprises, the financial prospects of the owner and livelihoods their employees said Converge Consulting Co Founders and Principals Ty Wiggins and Wayne Condon at a recent workshop on the subject.

“Understanding the value and need for a strategic business plan is a good place to start but ultimately, it demands a great deal of honesty, foresight and discipline if it is to be successful and achieve its commercial objectives”, said Wiggins.

“However, the real test of the viability of any strategy is its response to the bumps and challenges it will encounter on its journey”.

In their workshops and presentations, Wiggins and Condon relate strategy to its origins that are found in the military.  In fact the term was used in that area long before it was adapted into business and it’s no wonder that strategy in that sense is trying to establish or maintain an advantage over the enemy.

Condon refers to a famous saying that many strategists in the armed forces adhere to and that is that “no strategy survives the first encounter with the enemy” – or like him or loath him former boxing champion Mike Tyson had a point when he said; “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”!

“What military strategists do is plan the strategy and then develop multiple contingency plans as they understand the need to expect the unexpected with potential responses, this emergent strategy provides the guidance, often when it’s needed most”, added Condon.

“Rarely do businesses do this.  They tend to devise, develop and implement the best strategy and then move forward with no thought given to the need for a Plan B”.

Many business owners believe that they have ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ plans in place until they encounter a major problem or obstacle and respond by pulling all the first lever available often in vain attempts to correct performance.  In doing so, they waste time, resources and energy – lose marketplace advantage and reputation – and still continue to underperform.

However, a good strategy does not guarantee good results – especially if the business owner is unable to execute the plan.

Wiggins continued, “Within the strategic planning process, a contingency plan serves as a blue print in the background, to provide the direction in cases where a business veers off course and a Plan B can be implemented to lessen the effects of those circumstances, maximise the opportunities and keep a business viable in difficult times”.

Wiggins and Condon maintain that developing two or more strategic contingency plans provides actionable steps to follow.  However, knowing when to enact one plan or another requires additional consideration and planning.

“In order to incorporate timing factors into a contingency plan, business owners must identify specific circumstance or scenario, what are the trigger points and the most appropriate plan / response.

“As contingency plans are based on anticipated challenges or conditions, identifying the timing factors, at specifically what point do we act, are equally important as developing each alternative plan,” concluded Condon.

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Ty Wiggins

Converge Consulting Co Founders and Principals Ty Wiggins and Wayne Condon believe that successful businesses of today and in the future will be those that challenge the age old mantra that ‘The customer is always right’ – and are putting their employees first and the customer second.

Over the past decade, the paradigm of success has transformed away from Product Centricity towards Customer Centricity.  Of course the customer is important to any business, and the Converge’s Wiggins and Condon observe that enterprises make audacious (and to often ineffective) plans to deliver value to them without really understanding that the Strategy to Performance gap often lies with an organisation’s people.

So it’s no surprise that the organisation’s people only want two things from their employer –

1. Specifically what you want them to do
2. And how they are going i.e. measurement

For Wiggins and Condon Customer Centric strategy spring from the management floor like lemmings of a cliff, but where are the links between capability to deliver and the authority and autonomy given to the people with the responsibility to execute the plan?

The Converge Principals often refer to the critical elements of CEO communication of the strategy or plan, and this must transfer all the way through the organisation and includes transferring power to the front line.  Therefore for this to be effective, the key pillars of winning KPI’s, must communicate with absolute clarity what the business needs to occur and why!

The “how am I going” is not some subjective vagary that Bill the manager thinks is appropriate on some idle Tuesday, but specific, preordained, measurements that can be articulated and reported on daily of activities that are critical to the success of the organisation.

Critical success factors (CSF), give the strategy its focus through the eyes of those charged with the responsibility of executing it…its people.

This in turn results in the question being asked “How do you assure your people have the capability and inclination to deliver?”

Much has been written in response to this question, but when maximum satisfaction meets maximum contributions, REAL BUSINESS PRODUCTIVITY OCCURS.

An organisation’s people can be grouped into distinct categories from ‘fully engaged and making massive contribution’ to those ‘having a crack but working on the wrong things’ to the ‘crash and burners’.

Many employers would respond that it’s easy to spot the ‘non engaged’ but both Wiggins and Condon challenge “is it?”  They use the rowing analogy to demonstrate this dilemma.

In a rowing 8, it’s easy to spot the one with the oar in the air, but it’s the one with the oar in the water that isn’t rowing that is causing the real pain in an organisation.

But if an organisation measured the output of every oar, management would be equipped to change / correct / encourage / remove that oarsman before it costs them the race.

Understanding, measuring and managing critical success factors, is increasingly important to ensuring the survival and future prosperity of organisations, in these times of economic uncertainty.  Most businesses know their success factors, however few have:

• worded their success factors appropriately
• segregated out success factors from their strategic objectives
• sifted through the success factors to find their critical ones – their critical success factors
• communicated the critical success factors to staff

It is the CSFs, and the performance measures within them, that link daily activities to the organisation’s strategies.  Knowing the CSFs may be the deciding factor in an organisation’s survival.

Wiggins attests that “If your organisation has not completed a thorough exercise to know its critical success factors performance management cannot possibly function.  Performance measurement, monitoring and reporting will be a random process creating an army of measurers producing numerous numbing reports, full of measures which monitor progress in a direction very remote from the strategic direction of the organisation”.

“Very few, if any, of the measures in these reports could be defined as ‘winning KPIs’ as they have been derived independently from the CSFs”.

Besides focusing on the relevant performance measures, thus significantly reducing the number of performance measures used, knowing ones CSFs will reduce the number of reports that are produced at the end of the month.

Many of these ‘monthly’ reports are not related to the CSFs, and are reporting progress too late, well after the ‘horse has bolted’ so the question has to be asked “Why do we have them?”  Pareto’s 80/20 rule most certainly applies with reporting, with 80% of management’s need being met by 20% of the reports prepared.

Condon contends that the ones needed to deliver this helping new people develop, great people be recognised, and people at risk being identified…makes sense.

“If your financial objectives are to be reached, your customer problems have to be solved, and it’s your people who are going to solve them,” said Condon.

“We have found by assisting organisations, coaching the leadership team on not only communicating the plan more effectively but understanding that real sustainable customer experience excellence results comes from understanding your people first.”

Both Wiggins and Condon affirm that often the first step to better leadership is to understand your people and the current situation.  However it’s not enough to simply do a profile, businesses must link the people with the plan.

“The guiding principle of many successful enterprises is the satisfied individual customer.  Measurements around that customer satisfaction, is critical, and a sustainable profit is one of the results.  However we are seeing that the businesses that are flourishing in today’s environment are the organisations that link critical success factors with the daily activities of its people,” concluded Wiggins and Condon.

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“Formulating the strategy is often regarded as the easy component of the process with the execution and implementation extremely difficult to execute well and effectively.  There are many reasons for this failure, but ultimately it simply comes down to a lack of buy in, engagement and a sustained commitment over time by all stakeholders within the organisation, with employees topping the list,” claims Wiggins.

Condon maintains that the true test of strategic engagement is ultimately measured by how an employee understands, relates to, translates and can apply the overarching business strategy to their role, client interactions and day-to-day tasks.

Employees are so often starved of adequate information related to strategy.  They are inundated with messages from their company but rarely does this information relate directly to the strategy or strategic development within the business.  As a result they are often frustrated in their inability to select actions in line with the strategy.

Converge research has revealed that in far too many instances, employees, even those one or two levels down from the CEO, have little knowledge about the strategy, or what they can do to help with its successful execution.  Employee surveys in this situation consistently reveal a common group of underlying factors that include –

• No shared belief in the business goal
• No understanding of the importance of the goal
• No sense of ownership or responsibility
• No sense of belonging or being part of team
• No appreciation of the benefit the goal will deliver for the business

Wiggins continued, “The essence of a high level of strategic engagement is the ability of employees to translate the strategy into meaningful real time decisions that they can make daily in their role, confident that their decisions are not only aligned with the company’s strategy but are helping to move the business forward.  Ultimately, the impact and success of strategic engagement comes down to communication.”

Converge research has identified the following key drivers of an organisation having a low level of strategic engagement –

• Lack of a strategy  Lack of awareness of the strategy
• Lack of understanding
• Lack of application Lack of agreement
• Misaligned Culture

Therefore, for a strategy to be effective and successful, it must combine the vision, structure, resources and culture supported by a detailed action plan that articulates allocation of responsibilities and delivery timetable.

Both Wiggins and Condon stress that there is no one size fits all solution that is applicable to every business and circumstance across Australia, but they do offer the following key ingredients needed to facilitate a successful strategy engagement.

Top of the list is Remuneration as an organisation must acknowledge, reward and support the behaviours, decisions and actions that fit with the strategy.

Induction and Training is next as an organisation that fosters a high level of strategic engagement has a supporting culture would make it a key part of the induction process to say, “Here at company X when we use the terms mission, vision and strategy this is what we mean and our mission/vision/strategy is…”  This not only creates a high level of understanding but also communicates what it is.

Regular Review & Consistent Communication follows as the days of the annual strategy planning process are gone.  The business environment moves too fast for businesses to just look at their strategy once a year.

Converge maintains that strategy should be reviewed at least quarterly and part of maintaining a high level of strategic engagement would be for the business to reaffirm the strategy at every meeting and organisational get together.  In addition, the management team should make the strategy part of the agenda on every monthly or quarterly meeting and they in turn should do likewise with their staff.

Finally, the importance of Graphic Representation cannot be underestimated and once structured around a measurement tool could be represented by asking – is this relevant, is it just good communication or good execution by another name?

Many argue that the frontline staff don’t need to know the overarching strategy, they just need to know what they need to do.  It could also be argued that similar to military operations, you don’t involve every soldier in the strategy discussions; you simply give them their specific instructions which they follow.

Converge contends that whilst this may be the case, the soldiers at least know who they are fighting and what they should do when they encounter them.  Wiggins and Condon believe that many employees don’t even know this much!

“Strategy lessons from the military give good evidence of what happens when the people at the frontline are unclear about the strategy – lives are lost.  Yet in many businesses employees work every day with this lack of awareness and understanding of the overall strategy – and worse, it is regarded as an acceptable practice.

“The real value and effectiveness of a high level of strategic engagement is the building of trust which in turn underpins engagement and engaged employees take ownership and understand what needs to happen in order to make a difference for the business, “ concluded Wiggins and Condon.

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Ty Wiggins

The inability to communicate an organisation’s strategy and vision for the future continues to challenge many Australian CEOs and is driving home the reality for shareholders and owners that in scores of companies the senior people charged with executing strategy do not have a ‘clear line of sight’ in terms of understanding how to do their jobs and deliver the corporate plan said Converge Consulting’s (Converge) Co Founders and Principals Wayne Condon and Ty Wiggins.

“If the CEO can’t succinctly articulate the business strategy in terms that are exciting and positive, then how can line managers and staff be expected to commit with enthusiasm and dedication to the realisation of the company’s long term goals and aspirations?” challenged Ty Wiggins.

Condon added, “In these challenging economic times the greatest test to their (CEOs) leadership and management skills is the ability bridge the gap between strategy, vision and results.  Bridging this gap and then aligning the organisation to the strategic direction are ultimately the key factors that determine the CEO’s success or failure.”

Time is another critical factor that CEOs must contend with as the modern dynamic internationally competitive commercial environment requires that that they rapidly build rapport and management confidence and expertise to deliver on the business vision and strategy

Vision and Mission are important, they need to be clear and relevant, but the true differentiation for a company is the strategy statement, what’s the plan! – This is what sets companies apart.  Regrettably, too often executives assume that the fiscal business direction described in voluminous documentation . . . will ensure corporate and competitive success.

CEOs then go on to lament that ‘their’ vision and strategy should be clearly understood and that the problem lies with the business units failing to understand the direction and objectives.

Wiggins goes on to argue, “A well-understood statement of strategy aligns behaviour and creates a guiding light for performance; and when the plan is clear, then the decision-making by teams and areas within the company is so much easier and effective.”

In their roles as consultants, main platform and workshop presenters, Wiggins and Condon describe an organisation as a collection of 10,000 iron filings sitting on a sheet of paper and each one represents a process, a system or an employee function or action.  Scoop them up and drop them and the filings will inevitably be pointing in every direction.

The result grinding non productivity at best, chaos at worst: no different to 10,000 smart people working hard and making what they think are the right decisions for the company—but with the net result of confusion.

Engineers in the R&D department are creating a product with ‘must have’ features for which (as the marketing group could have told them) customers will not pay; the sales force is selling customers on quick turnaround times and customised offerings even though the manufacturing group has just invested in equipment designed for long production runs; and so on.

Back to the iron fillings, Wiggins and Condon, then ask “If you pass a magnet under those filings, what happens?  They line up!”

Similarly, a well prepared, relevant, clearly delivered and most importantly well-understood statement of strategy aligns behaviour within the business.  It allows everyone in the organisation to make individual choices that reinforce one another, rendering those 10,000 employees exponentially more effective.

But therein is the problem says Wayne Condon as he summed up the dilemma for CEOs.  “Far too many CEOs and senior managers in business are not achieving a fundamental goal of having their plans understood and yet most agree that it’s essential for the success of the business.  Without clear understanding and articulation of the business strategy it is impossible to achieve the results the CEO and organisation are capable of delivering across financial and cultural measures.”

Since Converge Consulting commenced operations in January 2012, Wayne Condon and Ty Wiggins have worked with businesses large and small to help build their strategic statement and then to effectively communicate it to the key stakeholders so that there is successful execution.

Currently the Converge team are focussing their endeavours on crafting an intensive Strategic Planning Seminar specifically for CEOs to be conducted in Sydney before the start of the 2014-15 financial year.  The purpose of the Seminar will be to assist CEOs to start the new fiscal year with a clearer vision, sharper focus, better strategy, tighter accountability and tools for comprehensive execution.

“One of the greatest management challenges of the 21^st century is to increase productivity with existing resources, deliver on customer and shareholder expectations; this can’t be done without the iron fillings lining up.  The best and most effective CEOs are the ones that understand and appreciate that their role is to get every employee to identify with and focus their efforts on the attainment of the individual and collective business goal” says Wiggins.

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