Creating Value

2007-12-16T11:28:00.000-05:00

Tracking Results Creates Value

My daughter and I go to the pool together for a swim a couple of times per week. She needs the physical exercise (as if I didn't!) and it’s fun to spend some time together where we can just hang-out.

When we go, we often meet a group of people and we play a much stripped down version of volleyball. Actually, we simply take a volleyball-size soft rubber ball, form a circle and tip it to each other. We are seldom able to make more than 5 or 6 touches without a miss.

Sometimes, the other people in the group are not there and my daughter and I will play at this just the two of us. Since she always likes a challenge, we have a habit of counting how many times we can pass the ball without dropping it. Our personal best is 32 consecutive hits!

The other day, we were playing with the group and I suggested that we keep track of how many consecutive hits we could do. After about 5 minutes, we were able to get to 23! This obviously lead to some pretty loud cheering.

This simple example is a perfect illustration of the following management axiom: "What gets measured, gets attention." As we started to keep track of our performance, and that the performance was a group target, we began playing together. As we became better, we tried less and less to fool the other players. The tracking and the cheering did the wonder.

This is a cool illustration of how keeping track of a common target can take a group of individuals to higher performances.

If you have similar experiences of how keeping track can add value to any aspect of our lives, feel free to share them.

2006-10-28T12:04:00.000-04:00

Creating Value Simply by... Walking!

Some times, the simplest of things can make a difference. In previous posts, I wrote about how a simple smile can make a difference; how the words that we chose have an impact on and around us; or how the attitude that we choose to have towards a daily thing like the weather can affect us and those around us.

Walking is one thing that I have been doing for many years is making a big difference in my own life. I also like to believe that it's a small positive contribution to our environment.

My wife and I have decided that we would be living in the city instead of the suburb of Montréal. This in turn enables us to own only one car. We make a point to use this vehicle as efficiently as possible. Not only is it cheaper on gas, but it lowers our emissions of pollutants.

Part of this allows me to walk part of the distance to my work. So, three or four times per week, I walk 40 to 50 minutes to my workplace.

This gives me an opportunity to do a little low-impact exercise and take fresh air as I do my best to walk through some of our city's beautiful parks. But what I appreciate the most of this time is the opportunity to have a few minutes all to myself and reflect on the various situations in my life.

A simple thing that makes a big difference for me and a small contribution to our planet.

Do you have any simple activities that you do that, like my morning walk, can make a difference?

2006-10-27T21:40:00.000-04:00

Good Habits Create Value

Most of us are aware that good habits create value and bad ones destroy it. Here is a very simple example: eating 5 to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables each day will help improve your health; on the other hand, smoking a pack of cigarettes a day will almost inevitably cause serious harm to your health.

A few years ago, my mother was working in a retirement home in my home town of Warwick, Québec, Canada. My father had an uncle who lived there until he was 102! When Pépère Michaud turned 100, my mom asked him what was his secret for having lived such a long and healthy life. Pépère Michaud replied that there was one thing that he had done all his life and another one that he had never done. Mom asked him what those things were and he answered that every day since he had become a young man, he had been taking one shot of Gin. He insisted that he always drank only one and that he consumed it slowly. Then he told my mom about the thing he never did: he never held a grudge against anyone in his life!

Simple, yet apparently, it worked for Pépère Michaud!

Do you have any such stories of good habits that can create value in some one's life?

2006-10-23T22:57:00.000-04:00

Creating Value With Your Smile

Did you ever notice some people; they're constantly smiling. Ever notice that these are the people who light-up a room when they enter it, not when they leave.

Sometimes, the simplest things can make a big difference. A smile costs nothing and can make a difference, for you and for those around you.

A smile creates value first because it's the most inexpensive way to improve your looks. A smile says many things to the world: that you are thankful for all that you were blessed with; that you can appreciate simple things like a bright sunny day; that meeting a friend is enough to make your whole day.

A smile is also a way of saying to the people that you are meeting that you are happy to see them; that they can trust you.

Do you have other such things that cost nothing and can make a difference?

2006-10-20T16:24:00.000-04:00

On the Importance of Leadership - Part II

In a previous post, I made a point about the importance of leadership for the creation of value - read it here. I highlighted the impact that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet were having on thousands of wealthy Americans.

Well, it looks like this type of behaviour is not a 21st century thing. Following is a quote from Henry Ford that says it all:

"The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life."

In my opinion, whether you like Henry Ford or not, this sentence represents the very essence of capitalism. I'm all for people aiming at achieving and reaching their best. It's just that I believe that it cannot be done for the sole purpose of fulfilling narcistic needs.

How many Porsches 911 can one drive?

2006-10-19T22:53:00.000-04:00

Industrial Designer Offers Perfect Example of The Power of Imagination

This post is simply to invite you to MocoLoco.com, one of my favorite blog, where you can read an interesting interview with Sebastian Bergne, an impressive industrial designer. A very strong illustration of the awesome power of imagination as a tool for creating value.

Do you have other examples of people who create value through their work?

2006-10-17T22:02:00.000-04:00

Imagination: One of The First Keys to Creating Value

Since my initial training was in graphic design, which is one part technical and one part art, I have become acquainted with the creative process and the key role that imagination plays in the creation of value. Most designers are problem solvers and use imagination to do so. Over the years, I have come to appreciate the value of certain solutions to a given problem. In the charitable sector, some people stand out of the crowd as they have come up with simple and efficient solutions to some pretty big social issues.

In the province of Quebec, there is a significant number of children who go to school every day without having eaten breakfast. This is probably also true for other areas of the developed world, not to mention developing countries. Nevertheless, children trying to learn to read have a much harder time focusing on the task at hand on an empty stomach.

Noticing this problem, Daniel Germain developed an organisation whose sole mission is to make sure that children have something to eat before starting school in the morning. Following is an excerpt from their Web site:

The Quebec Breakfast Club opened its doors in 1994 at the Lionel-Groulx elementary school, located in an underprivileged Longueuil neighbourhood. The Club's founder, Daniel Germain, wished to offer all the children the chance to have a nutritious breakfast before going to class.

The project had such a positive effect on the children's academic achievement that, soon, other schools were knocking at the Breakfast Club's door.

Since 1994, thanks to the support of a growing number of partners from both private and public sectors, the Breakfast Club has been able to set up kitchen facilities in 199 elementary and high schools throughout the province of Quebec.

Daniel Germain is a perfect example of one my favorite quotes from Albert Einstein: "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

Do you have stories like this one about people using imagination to come-up with creative solutions to social problems and make a difference?

2006-10-16T16:50:00.000-04:00

Creating Value to... Your Spouse?

Why did I write this post? Well, basically, making a difference in this world is all very nice, and I think we should all strive towards this according to our own values.

However, abnegation can only go up to a certain point. What's the point of doing volunteer work and the whole nine yards if you are in such a bad shape that your health is at risk?

What's the point of striving to reach the top of the corporate ladder if you're going to sacrefice those closest to you in the process?

Any reactions?

2006-10-14T23:26:00.000-04:00

Creating Value for Your Spouse

How many of us have ever heard some one speaking badly about their wife or husband; usually when the spouse isn't there? We often hear people talk about their supposedly loved one in terms such as: “He is such a pig!” “She is a real idiot.” We’ve all heard it. Some of us are even guilty to have done it!

Whenever I witness such behavior, I make a point of asking the person doing it the following questions: "What would be the most important decision you have made in your life?" Choosing a mate, along with choosing one's profession, are probably among the most important decision we make in our life. I then make the person realize that if his or her spouse is such an idiot, why is it that she or he would have made such a bad decision by choosing them?!!

One of the worst thing we can do is to de-edify our spouse in front of our children. What this does is it gives our children (or for that matter anybody else) permission to do the same with our spouse or with us. Since familiarity usually breeds contempt, when we have been with a spouse for a number of years, we kind of know him or her too much, almost to the point where they have stopped being special.

Do you feel that you could use better words to speak to or about your spouse?

2006-10-14T14:19:00.000-04:00

Please, Thank You and You're Welcome

Like many parents, my wife and I make it a point to teach our children the importance of using Please, Thank You and You're Welcome when they want, receive or give something. I believe that these seemingly innocent words are at the base of most successful human relationships.

Why am I making such a fuss over such a trivial thing as saying Please, Thank You and You're Welcome? Because when you say "Please", you are also saying to the person from whom you are asking "I respect you. I do not take what you have and can give for granted. I bow before you to ask that which I want from you." It is a form of giving recognition and respect.

Similarly, when we say "Thank you", we expressing gratitude, thus acknowledging the other person's generosity towards us. Again, when we are saying "You're Welcome", we are returning the gratitude by acknowledging it.

When we teach Please, Thank You and You're Welcome to our children, we are teaching them the most basic form of respect. We are also continuing a tradition of respect than goes back to the very beginning of humanity; all though I have no historical proof of this!

What does this have to do with creating value? Everything! When you express respect to the other person by saying Please, Thank You and You're Welcome, you are valuing this person, and adding value to a person is an important part of creating value around us!

If you agree or if you don't, please let me know! Thank you!

2006-10-13T18:02:00.000-04:00

Deciding to Have a Positive Attitude

Last night, I was lying awake in my bed in the middle of the night. I was not a happy camper. Certain events at work had me worried and I was loosing sleep over it. In my mind I was continuing my complaining about the situation.

At a certain point, I made a conscious decision that I was going to change my attitude to a positive one and I began focusing on what I had control over.

In a matter of a few minutes, I began to think about possible solutions that I could implement the following morning (today!). Of course, I got up from bed, went to my Franklin planner and noted these ideas.

With these new solutions, I began feeling much better and went to sleep a few minutes later. It was like if I had begun pointing the nose of my plane above the horizon!

Without being oversimplistic, this goes to show that in most situations, we don't always choose the contexts that we're in, but we always have a choice of our attitude.

Do you have situations that you've experienced when you decided to choose to have a positive attitude?

What difference did it make for you?

2006-10-12T10:47:00.000-04:00

On the Importance of Leadership for Value Creation

One of my firmest beliefs is that leadership is a foundational element of creating value. Leaders, whether good or bad, can have an astounding multiplying effect. The news regularly brings to us stories about bad leaders that create downward spirals for their fellow citizens. And history books are filled with such sad examples.

In the past few months, a few visionary leaders, namely Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, have made bold moves towards creating social value, leveraging a good chunk of the wealth that they have both accumulated over the years.

Their example is having a ripple effect that has been recorded by a research project on the philanthropic behaviours of America's wealthiest. You can also read this previous post.

Do you have any other examples of such positive, value creating moves?

2006-10-11T23:36:00.000-04:00

Doing What You Love or Doing Something With Passion

I just finished a great conversation with a dear friend about doing something that stirs your passion. Here are some thought about how passion creates value.

I think that doing what is close to our true values is a key to creating value. Passion is a spark. A fire within, and when we are doing what we truly love, we do it with passion. Doing it with passion means that we can do it 24/7 without being bothered one bit.

When we are passionate, we have endurance. Doing what needs to be done becomes a non-issue! I would be curious to know how many people are working at jobs that they hate? I'm pretty sure that there even could be a correlation between passion and longevity... unless you have a passion for dare-devil activities!

Does anyone have any statistics on this?

Does anyone have stories, either your own or someone else's, of someone doing something with passion?

2006-10-04T21:36:00.000-04:00

Because a Friend on Mine Got His Life Saved Thanks to Blood Transfusions, I Now Give Blood Regularly

When I was in my twenties, I gave blood three times. Very sporadically. In Québec, the Red Cross was then responsible for managing blood collection and the provincial blood bank.

Then the "Blood Scandal" pushed me away from giving blood. Eventually, the Red Cross lost this role within our health care system. But this is not what I want to write about.

A few years ago, a friend of mine got a very aggressive form of cancer. We were not close friends, but we knew each other from university. I found out that he had been away due to sickness when I called at his work. I finally got a hold of him and we met over a coffee. He told me his story; how he had gone from 180 pounds down to 123; how the doctor told him that he had a one percent chance of getting through this alive; how, thanks to over three hundred blood transfusions, he had survived. Eventually, he became involved with Hema-Québec. His story made me start giving blood again. It's that simple.

Since then, I have given blood thirty-one times. And each time I can go back, I go. My goal is to give blood one hundred times before I'm sixty. I figure that I'm lucky to be healthy; I might as well share this.

I went today and I can go back again in fifty seven days, which means November 29.

Do you have stories like this one, involving a relative or a friend, that got you to decide to take action and make a difference?

2006-09-30T23:50:00.000-04:00

Retire and Expire?

A few months back, I was having a discussion with an uncle. He told me, with the most resignation I've seen in my life: "You know, once you get to retirement, apart from golf, there isn't much to do." At the time, I responded something polite and pointed to the sadness of his attitude.

But the event keeps ringing back in my mind as I read and hear stories after stories of people in their prime years who suffer from burn-out due to their work. Or is it the work that's to blame?

Tonight, I hosted a group of employees who came to serve a meal at the homeless shelter that I do fund raising for. My bet is that these people will have something to keep them busy and create some meaning in their life when they retire.

What do you do to create social value in your work?

2006-09-30T22:22:00.000-04:00

Creating Value Through a Positive Mental Attitude

Last June, I was doing some research on the relationship between attitude and a positive mental attitude. I firmly believe that having a positive mental attitude is a powerful determinant of a person's altitude in all aspects of life. I had heard that the attitude of an airplane was the orientation of the plane's nose in relation to the horizon.

My simplistic understanding of this concept was as follows: if the aircraft's nose points above the horizon,. the plane has a positive attitude, and is flying upward. If the airplane's nose was pointing below the horizon, the craft had a negative attitude and was flying downward. In my mind, this was an interesting metaphor.

However, I needed to validate whether or not the image I had created in my mind was true to a specialist. So, I asked the people at Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum. All though my interpretation was not too far from the truth, the answer that was given to me by Jill Bagdasarian holds more nuances than I was expecting. Jill's response goes like this:

" Aircraft attitude is used to mean two closely related aspects of the situation of an aircraft in flight.

In the simplest use it is the orientation of an aircraft with respect to the horizon. This is a function of two angles: pitch and roll. The pitch angle specifies the orientation of the aircraft's longitudinal axis. That is, whether the nose is pointing upwards, is level to the horizon, or is pointing downwards. The roll angle specifies whether the aircraft is banked left or right, or whether its wings are parallel to the horizon. The pilot adjusts the controls (the stick or the yoke) to adjust the aircraft attitude in order to keep the aircraft on course or turn or change
altitude.

Aircraft attitude is used to describe the more complex relation of an aircraft to its surroundings, particularly airflow and gravity. This takes into account the settings of other flight controls such as the rudder, engine power, flaps or slats and also airflow. Thus an aircraft can be described as being in a climb attitude or a spin attitude, which implies more than simply nose up or nose down. "

Despite the fact that Jill's answer was richer in nuances than I would have liked, I am thankful that she took the time to send it and I'm glad to give it to you today.

If you do a google on the word attitude, you get 148 million results. Do it on Amazon.com's book section and you get 296,084 results. On Amazon.ca, you get 1,446.

Do you agree that our attitude is important for creating value?

2006-09-29T22:03:00.000-04:00

Creating Value All Around Us

Creating value every day can be done within a very limited circle of people around us and a on a larger scale.

Creating value for people around us naturally flows from the habits that we have that create value to ourselfes. By simple choices in our attitude towards others, we can all add value to them.

This occurs both subtly and in more meaningful ways, but it does happen. When we make room for other people in our life. When we make them feel important and become interested in them, we add value to people.

Simple things such as smiling, looking at them in the eyes and listening to them when they speak are all ways by which we can make people feel important. And when they feel important, they have increased in value in their own eyes.

Asking if and how we can help is another very simple way by which we can create value. Learning skills that are aimed at helping others instead of yourself is also a way to create value for others. What's most interesting is these situations is that by doing this, we also create value for ourselves!

That's what companies that systematically engage in employee recognition do: they create value. For their owners and for the individuals working for them. In his very simple, yet profound book Whale Done, seasoned management guru Ken Blanchard presents a very interesting illustration of this principle. Read the book, it's worth it. Really.

In the company you work for, are people systematically recognized for their effort or their performance?

2006-09-29T20:10:00.000-04:00

Is Creating Value Important?

A search for the word "value" on blogger gives 9,146,189 results. On Google: 1.1 billions! Not bad. I've now been thinking about creating value for a short while and I'm coming to the realisation that it's kind of the essence of life.

Having children, raising them, starting businesses, earning a living, growing a garden, building a house, etc. Kind of the universal pretext for most human endeavour.

Creating value is pretty much everything we do, isn't it? Any thoughts?

(Boy, I can't wait to have a bit of traffic on this site. Just to feel I'm not alone in this blog thing! I feel like I'm the only person interested in creating value.)

2006-09-28T21:27:00.000-04:00

The Power of Nice

Opportunities for creating value are everywhere. People creating value and helping us do so are all over. Go check this book out: The Power of Nice. Try the NiceQ Test and see how you score!

If you read it, let me know what you think.

2006-09-28T17:00:00.000-04:00

Why is Value Creation Important?

As I made my initial steps in the blog world, I began by refering to Michael Porter's model of value creation in the enterprise. As this was a humble begining, I added a few elements, some more general, others more specific. As I was walking back home after serving the meal to some of Montreal's homeless people, I was wondering why is it that people create businesses or charitable organisations?

Obviously, there are as many reasons for starting a business as there are entrepreneurs, but to make our life easier, let's say that it's to make a living, or get rich. In the case of a charitable organisations, most of the time it is to help your fellow man or woman of child. Or to save the environment.

But this did not satisfy me much. So I tried to get 30,000 miles in space to gain a broared perspective. Bear with me for a moment.

Since nature, when left unatended, has a "natural" tendency to return to chaos, value creation is the result of the human struggle to fight chaos and create order. Don't you love this kind of deep thinking?!

For example, take a trail into the woods. Leave it unatended for 20 years. Don't even hike it. Chances are that the trail will have disappeared, unless it has been adopted by deers. You may say that this not a good example as walking the trail is only a means to get somewhere. OK. But why do you want to get to this "somewhere"? Go visit a neighbour? OK. Why? Trade your onions for a chicken? Created value. Just say hello? Created value. Not always commercial, but still value!

All human interactions are based on the search for and exchange of value. When value is created for both parties, the relationship might last longer. If the relationship is win-loose, the relationship might not last very long. Makes sense, no?

Now let's take Dell's (or any other corporasion's) customer service. If the customer service ends-up creating a win-loose value exchange, in the end, everybody looses, even Dell's shareholders, in the end.

Coming back to the "human fight against chaos". An individual seeking to create value for another (or for the entire planet for that matter), whether through the creation of a business, making a donation to a charitable organisation or getting involved with GreenPeace to help stop deforestation in Northern Québec, this individual is creating value as a consequence of his or her fight against chaos. Allthough the fight against chaos is not the primary motivating factor, of course.

Am I making any sense here? Any thoughts?

2006-09-27T20:37:00.000-04:00

Creating Value by Giving

I had a special experience tonight. I work for Montreal's largest homeless shelter. Each night, we serve dinner for our city's destitute and after the 15th of the month, we open our dining hall to every hungry person who comes to us. Why after the 15th of the month? Well, these people receive their social welfare cheques the first of the month, and for most of them, the money has ran out in about two weeks. So we allow them to come for a hot meal.

Tonight was the first time that I had the opportunity to serve a dinner. It's a pretty well oiled operation as we served three seatings of around 100 people. Sometimes we serve up to seven seatings! Each seating takes roughly 20-30 minutes, everything included: preparing the tables, allowing the people in, serving them a hot plate, desert and coffee, cleaning-up and preparing the tables forthe next group.

I was part of a group of generous Montrealers who do this every month. These people create value for our city's destitutes by paying for and serving dinners each month.

Do you have examples of generous activities that you could share?

2006-09-26T21:57:00.000-04:00

How a mis-informed service agent can kill your company – or another way for diminishing value, fast!

I purchased a Dell desk-top computer a few months ago. Good little machine. Affordable. Delivered on time. And to this day, quite reliable.

Now, in Canada, Dell has a deal with Sympatico, one of the country’s largest Internet providers, and owned by Bell Canada. This deal offers three months of free high-speed Internet access upon purchase of a Dell computer. I took the deal.

One night, I ran into a problem and called Sympatico’s customer service. Upon hearing the description of my situation, the agent asked which brand of computer I was using. When he heard that I was using a Dell PC, he simply told me to put the “thing” back in the box and return it to the manufacturer immediately! I was stunned.

Obviously, I kept the computer, but couldn't help wonder what had gone through this fellow's mind. He was either having a bad day and was retaliating to his boss or the company, or he had simply been poorly briefed by the marketing people who put the Dell deal together.

Maybe I'm exagerating by saying that this fellow was "killing the company", but he sure was causing damage to his employer.

This is going to sound like a question which will trigger millions of comments (hopefully!), but I'm taking the chance: Have you ever had a bad customer service experience?

What the question is leading to is that great customer service of good communication between departments can create value in a significant way, making customer experience richer, more positive.

2006-09-25T20:56:00.000-04:00

Thank God, I only Lost My Job!

If you ask the question, chances are that most of us remember where we were on that dreadful morning of September 11, 2001. That year, I was working as a product manager for Canada's largest Web portal. Back then, Web advertising revenues were not at the same level as they are now. The business model was fine, it just needed a little bit more time to kick-in the profits.

So, on September 8, 2001, my boss called me into his office to announce me that I, along with a few dozen other employees, was no longer employed in their company. Now, the world changing events that occured the following days had the impact of freezing the job market for the next four months.

At the time, my wife and I had two young children and she was a stay-at-home mom. I ended-up finding work six months after being fired, but this period of time had many effects on me. I remember one event in particular with strong emotions.

Around January, I came across a former co-worker. We were not close friends, but knew eachother well enough to carry a conversation that made some sense. When I asked how he was doing, he told me that one year earlier, his nine years old son had been hit by an automobile. He also told me that his son, who was a beautiful and bright child, was now undergoing rehabilitation, and learning to eat by himself.

From this day forward, I never complained again for such events. I lost my job two more times over the following four years, and we had a third child during that period. Every time my attitude was getting lower, I reminded myself of my friend and kept saying to myself: “Thank God, I only lost my job!”

This works for me. Whenever we feel our attitude going down, we must always remember that some one is always having it worse that us.

If you ever had a similar key learning moment happen to you, feel free to share it!

2006-09-24T22:02:00.000-04:00

Creating Value Begins With the Way We Think

This will sound like I'm stating the obvious, but bear with me here. Thinking is the way us humans can add the most value in any thing that we do. Thinking allows you to understand where you are in life and ponder on where you want to go. Thinking will allow you to develop and adjust the plan to get there. Thinking is the way we get ourselves out of tricky situations.

“If we want to get out of our current situation, we will need to think differently that the way we thought when we got ourselves in this situation.” – Albert Einstein

One of the best books I've had the chance to read recently about thinking is John Maxwell's "Thinking for a Change".

Another book which has had a profound impact on the way I think is "The Power of Impossible Thinking", by Wind and Crook.

I invite you to get these books and give me your comments, or let me know which books you've read that helped you with your thinking.

2006-09-24T11:45:00.000-04:00

Ah! The Weather…

The weather is among the things that we have no control over. You got up this morning and had plans to go hiking, or some fun activity that you like to do either alone or with people that you love. Oh no! It’s raining. Now, what are you going to do?

First, you should look at your options: you can stay home and relax, read a good book, go get a movie. You can also go hiking any way, which will be a totally new way to experience this great activity.

“Have the serenity to accept the things which I cannot change, the courage to change the stings that I can change and the wisdom to know the difference between the two.”

More often that we think, we have the freedom to choose between positive or negative. That freedom is the space of freedom between a stimulus and the response that we choose to adopt. And this is one of the things that separate humans from animals!

Deciding to have a positive mental attitude no mater what is the most important decision we can ever make. By making this decision and reviving it every morning, we enter a world we all have access to, but that too few of us are willing to walk in. Because it increases our hope for the future, this simple decision enables us to develop discipline and mental toughness, which lead to perseverance.

Yes, I know, it's the old half-full-half-empty-glass thing, but when we want to create value, it's pretty much where we have to begin.

If anyone has found a better way, feel free to post your comments!

2006-09-23T21:56:00.000-04:00

What is Your Context?

As I mentioned in a previous posting, there are two sides to the analysis part of strategic planning: internal and external. In the internal analysis, you want to understand what are your strengths and your weaknesses. This is particularly important because if you want to provide decent performance while reducing your stress, you want to seek opportunities that allow you to play in your area of strength.

In a recent job that I had, I was heading a humanitarian services organisation which had lost $1.1 millions the previous year on a $2.7 millions budget. My mandate was to bring this organisation in the black again. The organisation was in such a dire situation that the best person to lead it should have been someone with an accounting background. So, for one year, with my strengths in marketing, I struggled to make the thing work.

This experience taught me the importance of operating in your area of strength as opposed to your area of weakness. You can see when an employee is in his or her area of weakness: they will have a tendency to procrastinate and their work will be either/or late or of poor quality.

Threats and Opportunities

When looking to gain a better understanding of your context, you want to take them separately and take the time to understand what forces in the environment could cause you to fail (threats) and what this same environment offers you in terms of possibilities.

I will eventually come back to the aspect of personal attitude, but I feel it’s particularly important to point out that some times, some people see an opportunity where another will feel that there is a threat. This is normal as two persons are the same and have the same strengths.

The Trip Analogy

I like to use the analogy or a trip when discussing strategic planning. Your current position is your current position (!), meaning where you are, in which condition (tired, etc.). Your strengths and weaknesses could be the amount of money or time you have to undertake the trip, the vehicle that you have, etc.

Your goal (here is another epiphany) is your destination. That’s why in goal setting, you want to make them as specific as possible (more on goal setting in a future posting). And your plan is the road, the vehicle, the time required to travel.

I invite you to write me your comments if you have other analogies that you use for strategic planning.

2006-09-23T10:48:00.000-04:00

Who Are You?

The number of books aimed at helping individuals to better understand themselves cannot be counted, and any attempt to present to you even an overview of this literature would be both futile and not credible one single bit.

Our occidental education system has evolved to an entity whose most important purpose is to train workers for employers: businesses and other organisations aimed at maintaining or increasing our level of life. This system is usually quite performing. As a proof, there is a direct correlation between a given country’s economic indicators, such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the level of education of its population.

In fact, all though the education system is supposed to add value to individuals throughout the process, it often fails to help individuals to know basic, yet essential information about them. What I mean by this is that if you ask one hundred individuals to name five of their strengths, you might not be able to encounter ten who can do this. The same might be true about knowing one’s weaknesses.

The sad thing about this occurs when an individual enters the work force or begins making a living for themselves as an entrepreneur. Since neither the education system not the work environment seem to favour individuals to tap on their strengths, its purpose of creating value is not entirely achieve. So, when evaluation time comes for an employee, he or she is told by their superior that they have to develop certain skills that they most frequently do not posses.

In the work environment, many individuals operate too frequently in areas of weaknesses, which forces them to perform below their capacity, thus making their organisation create less value that they potentially could.

What's worse, as most employees receive little positive reinforcement for their achievements, they keep wondering what is wrong with them. As you seek to develop new habits for creating value in your life and in other people’s lives, it is very important to know what your strengths are. Also, you need to seek activities that allow you to operate in your areas of strengths.

Take time management for example. Some individuals are very well organized and use their time very efficiently, while others do not posses that strength. In their evaluation, the people whose strength is not time management will be encouraged to take training to improve on this skill. No matter how much training they go through in time management, it is unlikely that this will never become one of their strengths. At best, they will become average at this particular skill.

It’s as if a parent fails to recognize one of their children’s fundamental personality traits. How they are wired. If a child is introverted and has an interest for processes and tasks, you cannot expect this child to behave or react to the same to certain situations as another child who is extroverted and has a bias towards people.

One of the best methods to get to know what your strengths are has been developed by Marcus Buckingham and Marcus O. Clifton. It is very well presented in their book “Now, Discover your Strengths”. That's actually where I took the time management example from.

With the StrengthFinder tool that they have developed, you can identify what your five dominant strengths are, and from this, understand better how you can maximize your own value and that of the people around you.

According to Buckingham and Clifton, you can have a hint of your strengths by paying attention to those things in your life that way you spontaneously react in a given situation. Also, a yearning to do certain things may reveal the presence of your particular talents. So does the speed at which you learn certain things and the satisfaction that you derive from some activities.

Can you identify and clearly express five of your strengths right now?

2006-09-22T21:42:00.000-04:00

Understand Where You Start From

Most strategy development is fundamentally fairly simple. Whether you develop a strategy for a multi-national company or for going to buy something at the corner store, you will follow more or less the same basic steps.

First, you must begin by getting as clear an understanding of your current situation. This will involve what is referred to as an “internal analysis” and an “external” assessment. An outcome of this step often takes the form of a S.W.O.T. analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunity and Threats). From this, you will identify a problem that must be solved.

Second, you need to get some sort of an idea of the destination that you want or must reach. This is where you establish vision, mission, goals and objectives, for long, medium and short term.

Third, you will develop a strategy and a plan of action.

And finally, you will establish a certain evaluation mechanism, which will allow you to know if you are achieving your goals at different milestones.

I remember vaguely a business statistics course where the teacher demonstrated to us how we can calculate the cost of pure and perfect information. Today, I could not remember any of the intricate calculations presented by the professor. However, I remember understanding a very important fact brought about by this demonstration: in most business contexts as in life, pure and perfect information does not exist. And if it does, it comes at a cost so high that its actual worth is pointless.

Many people often fall in a paradigm called analysis paralysis, in which they spend so much time analysing a particular situation or opportunity that by the time they are through their evaluation, is they ever do, the opportunity has lost its value. They have missed the boat.

I particularly appreciate the strategic planning model used in business because it is simple and efficient.

Creating Value - Brief Intro

2006-09-21T21:47:00.000-04:00

Creating value or adding value. What does this mean exactly? These are terms that we hear or read about all the time. Like most of you, during most of my adult life, I heard about added value, either through various readings or through the media. And I was first introduced to the theoretical notion of “added value” during my graduate studies in marketing.

Then, as I occupied various positions as a marketing specialist and after this as a fund raiser, I was able to observe and ponder on how, in every day life, value is created. More interestingly, over the course of my professional career, I have worked for several organisations and have been able to observe how value is destroyed by actions undertaken either strategically by the leaders and managers of the corporation or by day-to-day behaviour of individuals working for these companies.

Following is a very brief, non-in-depth history of the academic origins of the concept. In 1985, Dr. Michael porter, a brilliant Harvard Business School professor introduced a model that allowed managers and business strategists to understand how value is added within corporations.[1] Rest assured, the aim of this text is not to go into a deep analysis on the model proposed by Dr. Porter. Most brilliant people have the ability to take the complex and make it simple. And that’s exactly what Dr. Porter did. (By the way, this is a form of creating value!)

Dr. Porter's work is used mostly by scholars and business strategists and when it was first published, he presented a whole new way of understanding what a firm does to create value. By breaking the company into the different “activities” that a product or a service goes through in any business, Dr. Porter describes how value is added. This is how companies build their competitive advantage.

And this is just how far I will be going about Dr. Porter’s brilliant work. Also, I'm not going to refer to the economical meaning of “added value”. What I want to do is present it so that you can create value in your own life. And once value has been added into your life, you might find it worthwhile to create some into the lives of other and into the organisations that you are a part of.

I will also bring your attention to some observations made through my experience as a parent, which I believe is the single most important task any individual can be given. Rearing children to become responsible adults has been so far one of the single most challenging, yet rewarding endeavour I have ever undertaken. Those of you who have not had the chance or having children can tranfer these notions into your personal relationships or even work life.

Creating value implies choosing the right attitude towards yourself and other people. The right attitude will lead you to say the right words. The right adjectives, if adjectives at all. For example, there are several levels between the following sentences:

- This is Bill.
- This is my friend Bill.
- This is my good friend Bill.
- This is my great friend Bill.
- This is Bill, my best friend.
- This is Bill, my best friend in the whole world.
- This is Bill, the God father of our oldest daughter.
- Etc.

By reading them, you develop a clearer and clearer sense of my appreciation of Bill as well as the type of relationship that we have.

From the foundational positive mental attitude, adding value also demands that we choose the right actions. To fulfill your own destiny and to help others reach their own objectives.
In an attempt to understand how individual attitude and behaviour affects the fait of theses individuals and the organisations they are part of, I have made several observations. I want to share these with you in this blog.

We will begin by offering you a framework used by business strategists to assess situations, establish objectives, develop strategies and evaluate whether or not your strategies have produced the expected results. From there, we will spend some time helping you understand the importance of knowing the direction you are going to and the results you are choosing to achieve.

Other texts will focus on the ways by which we can add value: first how we can create value to ourselves, as without first feeling secure in your own value, we cannot move to the next level and add value to individuals around us and organisations that we are part of. This last section is particularly dear to me as it is the very reason why I decided to start this blog.

I now invite you to look around you. The house you live in, the chair you are sitting in right now, the automobile that you drive or the bus that you take to commute to and from work. Remember the words from Peter Gabriel's "Mercy Street" song:

"All of the buildings, all of the cars were once just a dream in somebody's head."

I hope that reading this blog helps you to understand a few of the things that I came to understand myself. Being totally new to blogging, I understand that comments are whar make blogging what blogging is.

Actually, I bagan blogging upon the recommendation of a dear friend. His name is Harry Wakefield and his blog is www.mocoloco.com . It's worth a visit!

[1] PORTER, Michael, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, 1985