Track news, trends, direction, and new concepts.
Thursday, January 12, 2012 - Posted by: strategicplanning
Gravity can be a wonderful thing. It is an irresistible force that keeps us grounded on this big, beautiful, floating blue marble. It is even applicable to organizations in the form of organizational gravity. For example, I worked with an organization that coined a catch phrase for a challenge beyond its scope of control, deeming the situation a "gravity issue." They explained that "the situation is out of our control, much like gravity - you can't do anything about it."
Sadly, this mentality represents the culture in many organizations. Whether it's the culture, the hierarchy, the bureaucracy or the processes, organizational gravity seems to grow ever stronger as an organization matures. Sure, organizational gravity keeps the organization grounded and focused. It may also contribute to a passion for continuous improvement at a very tactical, discreet level. But, it also narrows that focus at the expense of innovation and adaptability, two of the most critical abilities of successful organizations. So how do we defy organizational gravity?
Continuous Improvement Planning
Every company or organization begins as a plan. Never forget that! Continuous improvement planning is the key to defying organizational gravity. It's easy to think of everything we do in our working lives as "processes." For instance, your organization probably has a hiring process. However, this is the wrong way to look at it. Instead of viewing it as a hiring process, think of it as a hiring "framework." Of course you plan for each and every position that you must fill, as every new hire has different strengths and weaknesses. However, many organizations still call this a "process," which evokes the image of a manufacturing line.
What about a new project? Any continuous improvement planning in that? Sure there is. Large scale projects are unique, even if there are a number of processes involved, because in a sense, these projects have never been performed before. If you are an entrepreneur pursuing a new business idea, you begin with a plan. That plan may be a formal business plan or it may just be an idea sketched out on the back of an envelope. Ultimately, with success, those plans transform into processes, the sustaining framework of the business -- and that is where organizational gravity begins to tighten its grip. As our ideas coalesce into plans and the plans further coalesce into concrete processes, organizational gravity strengthens and holds the organization together.
It is this necessary and proper transformation from plan to process that, for good and ill, perpetuates the relentless assault of organizational gravity. As a positive force, we might call it focus. However, the cons of organizational gravity include stagnation and paralyzing bureaucracy. How do we balance the need to "break the surly bonds of earth" to adapt and innovate in a constantly changing environment with the grounded focus of organizational gravity?
Three Tasks to Defy Organizational Gravity
Freeing ourselves from the constraints of organizational gravity while anchoring ourselves safely in the terra firma of our proven processes takes a constant commitment to accomplish three tasks: Always state a clear objective, always align every objective to your purpose, and always plan over the process.
Have a Clear Objective
The objective is everything! I often observe individuals and teams charging forward to execute a task or project without a clear objective in mind. They get caught up in doing without thinking, and if you stop these individuals to ask what the main objective is, they would have a very difficult time articulating what it is they are attempting to achieve. However, if you ask them to think clearly about their objective, they often realize that their approach is flawed or even wrong.
Always have a defined objective for even the most routine tasks. This will help you think freshly in terms of the continuous improvement process. Consider how you will achieve the objective and question whether a given process or approach is really sufficient, effective, or relevant.
The Big Picture Objective: Differentiate the "Why" from "What"
Align to the big picture objective -- the big picture objective refers to your purpose, mission, strategy and long-range goals. Simon Sinek, author of "Start with Why," makes this compelling point: Aligning to the big picture purpose, or as Sinek puts it, the "why you do it," is what separates Apple from companies that make computers. Making something or providing a service is just the "what," and the "what" may change as the environment or market changes. However, the "why" never changes. The "why" helps us look beyond our terrestrial existence and the organizational gravity, helping you to re-align to the fundamental reasons why we and our organizations get up every morning. When you constantly remind yourself of the "why" and align your actions to the big picture, you simultaneously free yourself from constraints of process-thinking while grounding yourself in the fundamentals of the organization.
Plan Over the Process
Third, always plan over the process. The Blue Angels, the U.S. Navy's world famous flight demonstration squadron, fly the same show on every performance, but the location changes. Do you think that the Blue Angels fly a process? No, they fly a continuous improvement plan that they adapt to every different location, situation and changing weather condition. Unless you are manufacturing the same widget day in and day out, you need to plan over the process. And I guarantee that you won't manufacture that widget the same way for too many years. Change always happens -- like organizational gravity, it's relentless.
One can plan over the process by taking the standard process, clarifying the present objective, aligning that objective to the big picture objectives and fundamental "why" of the organization, and then asking a few questions. First, ask what stands in your way - what threatens the successful accomplishment of your objective? Second, ask what resources are needed to accomplish this objective. Existing processes fool us into making assumptions about threats and resources - that they remain the same day-in and day-out. Never assume that a process may be followed blindly without considering what may have changed in the current context. Instead, plan over the process - never assume a process is sufficient in every given scenario. Always perform fresh continuous improvement planning by considering new threats and resources and then develop a new course of action appropriate to the present context.
Balancing the benefits and limiting tendencies of organizational gravity comes down to maintaining a clarity of purpose, approaching every task, every project, and every day as an opportunity to conduct continuous improvement planning.
About the Author
James D. Murphy, the founder and CEO of Afterburner, Inc., has a unique, powerful mix of leadership skills in both the military and business worlds. After graduating from the University of Kentucky, Murphy joined the U.S. Air Force where he learned to fly the F-15. He has logged over 1,200 hours as an instructor pilot in the F-15 and has accumulated over 3,200 hours of flight time in other high-performance jet aircraft. Murphy, Afterburner's leadership keynote speaker, has helped top business leaders transform strategy into action, demonstrating how the concepts of the Flawless Execution(SM) strategic planning model could be applied to business process improvement and engaging the proven model - "Plan. Brief. Execute. Debrief." Through his leadership, Afterburner has landed on Inc. Magazine's "Inc. 500 List" twice. Murphy has been featured in a variety of prestigious publications and has appeared on CNN, Fox News, and Bloomberg News to name a few. For more information on Afterburner, Inc., please call 877-765-5607 or visit www.afterburnerconsulting.com.
Monday, December 19, 2011 - Posted by: strategicplanning
In today's management environment, new forms of and tools for corporate leadership development programs have emerged. One of the most popular development tools is executive coaching. The number of executive coaches has more than doubled in the past decade and corporate leadership development programs are utilizing their services more frequently. However, the fundamentals of executive coaching have actually been around for many years in the form of debriefing.
In the U.S. Air Force, debriefing after every flight was an essential process in my training and development as an F-15 fighter pilot. My instructor pilot debriefed with me after every training flight. Later, when I became an instructor pilot and squadron training officer, I did the same with my young pilots. After leaving the Air Force, I used the basic tenets of the debriefing process I had learned, adapted the process to a sales force I led in a civilian company, and further refined that process over the next 16 years.
I was recently reminded just how broadly applicable the debriefing framework is as an executive coaching tool when a professor approached me at the end of a lecture to a healthcare team, thanking me for explaining the process of debriefing to the team. She told me, "You've given me the means to have a difficult conversation with a student, allowing her see what, in herself, needs to change in order for her to be successful."
Corporate leadership development programs require both executive coaching and debriefing practices, processes that utilize complex discussions and deep analyses that resist oversimplification. Executive coaches help their clients to see themselves more accurately, allowing clients to establish actionable objectives for personal change. Likewise, debriefing helps individuals and teams more accurately analyze the work that they have done in order to make efforts to improve upon their past initiatives. While executive coaching focuses upon the individual, proper debriefing is effective in both individual and team development. The principles are the same, but for the debriefing process, the approach is more direct, objective, and simple.
Differences Between Executive Coaching and Debriefing Practices
Although corporate leadership development programs draw from both executive coaching and debriefing practices, there is a significant difference between the two processes: First, executive coaching practices struggle to get to the actionable objectives for change. This is where the highly subjective talent and skill of the coach comes in to play. Second, coaching is less process-driven than proper debriefing. Successful executive coaching is dependent upon the individual style and skill of the coach and the character traits of their client. Successful debriefing, however, is driven by a repeatable, structured process.
Let us examine some of the elements of a good debriefing process and compare them to an executive coaching practice. The first of those elements is what we call "tone." In the debriefing practice, setting the right tone is critical. The right tone is nameless and rankless, which gives everyone an equal footing. Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, has labeled such a tone "psychologically safe." In executive coaching, a coach will take care to establish a trusting and psychologically safe tone much like a professional therapist or physician would for a patient. This tone is essential in order to achieve the honesty and truthfulness necessary to identify objectives for change. In debriefing, the proper tone is critical to uncovering mistakes and isolating successes.
Corporate leadership development programs also require the correct tone. With the right tone, debriefing and executive coaching practices can enable teams and individuals to find the truth. In the executive coaching practice, obtaining the truth of how others see or perceive the client can be a tough process, which is typical of the analysis of any complex issue. This is the same in the debriefing practice. Whether we're debriefing a team or an individual's performance, we have to be prepared to dig deep into the root causes of both successes and errors. In order to do this, we only use the debriefing practice for clear and measurable objectives. One cannot debrief in any truly successful and meaningful way without specific and quantifiable objectives.
Utilizing Clear and Measurable Objectives
In our corporate leadership development programs, we emphasize the importance of stating clear objectives in both executive coaching and debriefing practices. Clear objectives allow the debriefing process to take two procedural steps in order to discover the root causes. First, we take a look at how well we executed toward our stated objectives - did we do what we said we were going to do? Did we execute this process in the way that we said we were going to do it? Take a look at each of the tasks we had to perform in order to meet our objective(s). Was each of these steps effective? From this inquisitive process, we are able to create a short list of successes and errors that form the basis of our next step: analyzing the execution.
We analyze the execution by taking each of our results – the successes and errors – and subject each to a series of "why's" until we get to the root cause. We continually ask "why" until we get to the fundamental root cause: Why did that happen? What really failed? Did we just get lucky? We can't fix something, replicate a success, identify a near miss, or address a personal shortcoming until we know exactly what needs to change and why.
The Importance of Actionable Feedback
As soon as we know what that root cause is, we can get to the real point of debriefing and executive coaching - taking corrective action. We need actionable feedback in order to improve ourselves. Corporate leadership development programs help to continuously improve teams and organizations by requiring actionable feedback. Research demonstrates that feedback that is not actionable can actually result in negative behaviors. The product of debriefing and executive coaching must focus upon what can be done to address the root causes. Without a specific course of action, reflective activities will be a waste of time at best, and can potentially trigger negative behaviors at worst.
An effective debriefing process develops an actionable lesson learned that addresses each of the identified results - each success or error. A lesson learned is a set of steps intended to resolve the error or replicate the success of each of the root causes. It is an objective and clear set of instructions or actions necessary to improve personal, team and organizational performance in the future. Furthermore, in the context of team debriefing, it assigns a single accountable individual to take that set of actions or to properly store the learning for future use.
Such are the basic processes, utilized by corporate leadership development programs, for both debriefing and executive coaching. However, there is one final secret to successfully using these practices. In our corporate leadership development programs, we recommend performing these processes frequently and in small, achievable portions. Successful executive coaches help clients to tackle personal goals a little at a time, meeting with individuals to assess incremental progress relatively frequently, typically every two weeks. The debriefing frequency should also follow this timeline. If debriefing occurs less frequently than once per month, the individual or the team is likely to "choke on the elephant." It is hard to change, especially when you are attempting a great amount of change in a short period of time. Aim to change slowly, a little at a time. This is the same philosophy behind successful change methodologies.
Conclusion
There is a deep, meaningful correlation between the debriefing and executive coaching processes. James Hunt and Joseph Weintraub, Babson College of Management professors, argue that facilitated learning, such as executive coaching, is leveraged to extraordinary results through forms including the U.S. Army's After Action Review (AAR) and the U.S. Air Force's debriefing process. Both executive coaching and debriefing are forms of facilitated learning, and both are utilized in successful corporate leadership development programs. However, in executive coaching, a third party facilitates the learning for one member of an organization. But the debriefing process allows the team to facilitate learning for individual team members and the organization as a whole.
About the Author
James D. Murphy, the founder and CEO of Afterburner, Inc., has a unique, powerful mix of leadership skills in both the military and business worlds. After graduating from the University of Kentucky, Murphy joined the U.S. Air Force where he learned to fly the F-15. He has logged over 1,200 hours as an instructor pilot in the F-15 and has accumulated over 3,200 hours of flight time in other high-performance jet aircraft. Murphy, Afterburner's leadership keynote speaker, has helped top business leaders transform strategy into action, demonstrating how the concepts of the Flawless Execution(SM) strategic planning model could be applied to business process improvement and engaging the proven model - "Plan. Brief. Execute. Debrief." Through his leadership, Afterburner has landed on Inc. Magazine's "Inc. 500 List" twice. Murphy has been featured in a variety of prestigious publications and has appeared on CNN, Fox News, and Bloomberg News to name a few. For more information on Afterburner, Inc., please call 877-765-5607 or visit www.afterburnerconsulting.com.
Friday, November 11, 2011 - Posted by: strategicplanning
The May 1, 2011 mission to find Osama Bin Laden has become one of the most celebrated military mission planning successes in recent memory due to the utilization of a little-known and seldom-used practice called the Red Team.
The mission was a daring raid executed by the courageous members of the U.S. Navy SEAL DEVGRU, also known as SEAL Team Six, especially when considering the potentially disastrous political and diplomatic consequences that would have occurred had the mission failed. In spite of the dangers, the odds, and the loss of one of the two Blackhawk helicopters that delivered the SEALs to the target, the mission to get Bin Laden was an extraordinary mission planning success that continues to inspire awe. The Bin Laden mission was executed by some of the finest warriors that history has ever known. However, aside from skill in the profession of arms, it was the overall tactical planning process that went into the mission that provides an important lesson for planners in all fields - in military, business, or in everyday life.
The Overconfidence Bias
We fall in love with the plans we make. Mission planning is much like giving birth to a child. When the plan is complete, whether developed by an individual or a collaborative team, the planners can step back and congratulate themselves on the genius of the plan that they have created -- such overconfidence is one of many cognitive biases we humans fall prey to.
This is why the practice of utilizing a Red Team is necessary. A Red Team is a simple means to overcome the overconfidence bias and the theory of "groupthink," the need for groups to seek conformity and unanimity in planning and decision making. The mission planning effort that went into the Bin Laden mission was the detailed product of many different planners, but that alone was not enough to ensure success. The tactical planning process had to be subjected to a Red Team.
The Role of the Red Team
For the Bin Laden mission, military planners invited an outside group of experts who were previously unaware of the plan and had not taken part in the mission planning process to comprise what we call a Red Team. A Red Team examines a plan and offers frank criticism of the plan without bias. The Red Team's purpose is to expose flaws or weaknesses in the tactical planning process - to test the plan with dispassionate reason and respectfully offer detailed criticism. However, the planners must accept the criticism humbly, without commenting or defending the plan. It is vital that the planners involved are able to accept and incorporate this criticism, or the practice of utilizing a Red Team will be rendered moot.
Historical Examples of Mission Planning Using Red Teams
The Red Team is not a new concept. In 1962, faced with the threat of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, President John F. Kennedy utilized a form of the Red Team to great success. He had suffered a terrible and embarrassing debacle in the botched Bay of Pigs Invasion and Kennedy was not going to allow such an error in mission planning to happen again. He began by dividing his Executive Committee in half and tasked each of the two groups to argue for one of two primary options to deal with the threat. One group argued for a naval blockade and the other for an air strike. Kennedy then had the groups switch positions and critique the other group's proposal. The last step in Kennedy's tactical planning process was to ask his brother, Robert Kennedy, and one of his close counsels, Ted Sorenson, to act as a Red Team on each group's proposal. The result was one of the most masterfully played moves during the Cold War - a naval blockade that forced Soviet withdrawal of nuclear missiles from Cuba.
The Red Team has been utilized with great success in the U.S. military. During the Gulf War mission planning effort, planners employed this practice, asking Red Team members to defeat a proposed plan. Planners then took the weaknesses exposed by the Red Team and improved the tactical planning process, making plans tighter and nearly foolproof. The result was a successful war fought on foreign soil to expel invaders in just five weeks - a mission accomplished with minimal loss of life and destruction of property. Like the Bin Laden mission, the Gulf War met with success through the use of a tactical planning process that included Red Teams.
Eliminate the Fear of Personal Attacks When Using a Red Team
One might think that it takes courage to employ a Red Team. It is hard to expose your "baby" to such criticism, as we naturally view critiques as a personal attack. However, when performed correctly, a Red Team need not invoke fear of personal attack. The secret to successfully incorporating this practice into the mission planning process is to diffuse resistance to personal criticism before the Red Team critique takes place. Individuals must incorporate the idea that "it is not 'me' that is being assaulted by critics, it is 'us.'"
To further ameliorate the sense of offense and fear that the Red Team may create, this part of the tactical planning process should take a simple, disciplined and respectful structure. Invite the Red Team to sit down while someone from the mission planning team briefs the plan to the room. After the plan has been detailed, the Red Team should then have an opportunity to ask clarifying questions. After all questions have been asked, the Red Team should offer criticisms of the mission planning process in a round-robin fashion until all concerns have been voiced.
Offering and accepting criticism is much easier when it is communicated correctly. All members of the Red Team should begin their critical remarks with a statement such as, "Have you considered..." Furthermore, all responses to Red Team criticisms should be grateful, beginning with statements such as, "Thank you for your input." There should not be discussion or defense. The mission planning team will have a natural tendency to want to argue with the Red Team about their tactical planning process and will have to avoid the urge to defend the plan and learn to respond with gratitude.
Because the Red Team has no prior knowledge of the tactical planning process and also lacks knowledge of the considerations that were part of the mission planning effort, beginning each comment and criticism with the aforementioned "Have you considered..." statement is vital. This relieves the mission planning team of the need to respond and also relieves the Red Team from concern that a comment or criticism will not be valid. After pointing out the flaws and weaknesses in the tactical planning process, the Red Team should depart and the mission planning team should begin incorporating the newfound criticism to better the plan as a whole.
The Red Team utilized during the Bin Laden mission provided invaluable input as a critical component of the mission planning process. This practice can improve any plan, in any context and in any company. The best part is that utilizing the practice does not take much time, as a Red Team requires a minimum of only three or four members to discuss the tactical planning process. The meeting is also short, at approximately 30 - 60 minutes - and the results can make a world of difference.
About the Author
James D. Murphy, the founder and CEO of Afterburner, Inc., has a unique, powerful mix of leadership skills in both the military and business worlds. After graduating from the University of Kentucky, Murphy joined the U.S. Air Force where he learned to fly the F-15. He has logged over 1,200 hours as an instructor pilot in the F-15 and has accumulated over 3,200 hours of flight time in other high-performance jet aircraft. Murphy, Afterburner's leadership keynote speaker, has helped top business leaders transform strategy into action, demonstrating how the concepts of the Flawless Execution(SM) strategic planning model could be applied to business process improvement and engaging the proven model - "Plan. Brief. Execute. Debrief." Through his leadership, Afterburner has landed on Inc. Magazine's "Inc. 500 List" twice. Murphy has been featured in a variety of prestigious publications and has appeared on CNN, Fox News, and Bloomberg News to name a few. For more information on Afterburner, Inc., please call 877-765-5607 or visit www.afterburnerconsulting.com.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - Posted by: strategicplanning
All plans are not good plans. In fact, even good plans can fail. We cannot predict the future – we can only imagine it imperfectly. In our companies and organizations, effective planning is a social activity. Deciding on a strategic planning process as a group, rather than as an individual, adds even greater complexity to an already complex task. Collaborative and effective planning techniques, then, require 13 essential elements.
1. Effective and Strategic Planning Process
First, effective planning requires a process, and that strategic planning process should include the remaining 12 elements of good planning. In collaborative team planning, that process must be structured and disciplined in order to be efficient and thorough. Without a process, your planning techniques will be awkward, inefficient and often insufficient.
2. Effective Planning Techniques: An Envisioned Future / Objective
When we envision the future, we must describe it clearly and provide specific measurements in order to judge our success. To this end, the objective of our effective planning techniques is the goal we envision attaining in the future. Objectives must be clear to all involved. They must also have a scope that is commensurate with the span of control of those involved with the effective planning process. An objective that is not achievable by those tasked with developing a plan is, obviously, doomed to failure. Objectives must also be measurable. Without measurements of success, there is no means of establishing whether or not the objective was achieved, and your strategic planning process will be flawed.
3. Dynamic, Adaptable Planning
In terms of effective planning, "dynamic" means that plans are adaptable, in two ways. First, the act of effective planning considers the current and predicted environment and adapts the plan accordingly. Second, in the strategic planning process, plans must be devised in such a way so that they are not overly detailed. Effective planning ensures that your plans can adapt to changes that occur while the plan is being executed.
4. Iterative Improvements
Effective planning at your organization will also be iterative. By "iterative," we mean that a plan will improve continuously from one iteration, or version, to another before it is executed in the strategic planning process. The iterative nature of planning supports its adaptive or dynamic nature. Iteration can be sped up by an effective planning technique known as "Red Teaming." In Red Teaming, a group of individuals outside the planning effort are invited to criticize the plan or expose its weaknesses, acting as a form of rapid iteration and improvement.
5. Effective Planning Requires that You Learn from Experience
A complex and rapidly changing environment demands the ability to rapidly learn from the changes in that environment. Even the most well-educated and trained organization will soon become obsolescent as changes in the environment eventually overwhelm it. Good organizational planning requires sophisticated and effective planning techniques that the organization learns continually, through interaction with its environment and the execution of its plans.
6. Means to Achieve / Course of Action
The central element of all effective planning techniques is the Course of Action (COA). These are the actual tasks that must be completed, whether in parallel, in series, or a combination of both, to achieve the goal. For the most part, in a strategic planning process, the Course of Action, for simple plans, is intuitive or even obvious. However, for most organizations, plans may require great detail. Therefore, an effective planning process must be flexible enough to handle both simple and detailed plans. Effective planning processes should have the ability to repeat the planning process at successively lower levels in the organization, while supporting the objectives of the overall plan.
7. Decentralized Effective Planning
Another effective planning technique is the decentralization of plans, closely related to the flexible and successively repeatable nature of the Course of Action. Effective planning teams should not plan beyond their scope or expertise. In other words, the executive team of a large corporation should not develop the details of a strategic planning process to replace a main server in their IT infrastructure. Such a task is both out of their scope and, most likely, their expertise.
8. Individual Accountability
The scope and detail of effective planning is concluded when each task within a Course of Action is assigned to a single individual, not a team, to complete. Without individual accountability to each task and each plan, there is a significant risk of miscommunication, misunderstanding, and ultimately, failure.
9. Effective Planning Techniques Support Initiative and Good Judgment
General George S. Patton said that plans "[...] should be made by those who are going to execute them." Decentralization and accountability go far in supporting the success of effective planning techniques. However, when a strategic planning process is developed by the team responsible for accomplishing the plan's objective, the overall quality and likelihood of creating a successful plan improves exponentially.
10. Consider Resources
Effective planning means not committing to or wasting resources unnecessarily. In a strategic planning process, planners must determine the appropriate targets or objectives and focus resources upon those objectives. Because resources are often limited, prioritizing and planning successive phases of implementation may be necessary.
11. Assess Risk: Leadership Responsibility
Resources are considered carefully at every level of effective planning. Furthermore, the assessment of objectives, threats and resources are critical steps in every strategic planning process that, when taken together, form the basic risk assessment for any plan. Without the necessary resources to either avoid or mitigate the threats to accomplishing an objective, the risks in undertaking that plan should be given due consideration by the leadership within the organization. Because risk is often necessary, the final decision to execute the plan is left to its leaders, not the planning team.
12. Participatory and Cognitively Diverse
Isolating effective planning in a single individual or a group of individuals without the benefit of field experience and a diversity of knowledge, skills, and abilities is a recipe for failure. The world we live in is increasingly complex. Problem-solving in our complex world requires teams of cognitively diverse individuals contributing their unique knowledge to form a combination of effective planning techniques. If effective planning is conducted by a single individual or by groups of people with similar knowledge, skills and abilities, the qualities necessary to solve complex problems and to create an innovative strategic planning process will be absent.
13. The Most Effective Plans are Simple
The more complex a plan, the more likely it will fail. As Statistical Process Control and Six Sigma methodologies instruct, the greater the number of steps in a process, the greater the potential for a defect. That is why it is critical that the effective planning process remains simple. Simplicity is not just about minimizing the number of tasks, it's about making sure that each task is clearly defined through answering some simple questions: "who will do what and when."
There is a paradox at work in effective planning. It is simply this: that our human tendency is to implement plans rigidly while the purpose of a plan, in light of the complexity and constant change in the world, is to define objectives and establish a point of departure to react to change. The paradox of the strategic planning process is that effective planning does not involve merely creating a list of sequenced tasks, but establishing a constantly evolving problem-solving process that adapts and thrives in the environment.
About the Author
James D. Murphy, the founder and CEO of Afterburner, Inc., has a unique, powerful mix of leadership skills in both the military and business worlds. After graduating from the University of Kentucky, Murphy joined the U.S. Air Force where he learned to fly the F-15. He has logged over 1,200 hours as an instructor pilot in the F-15 and has accumulated over 3,200 hours of flight time in other high-performance jet aircraft. Murphy, Afterburner's leadership keynote speaker, has helped top business leaders transform strategy into action, demonstrating how the concepts of the Flawless Execution(SM) strategic planning model could be applied to business process improvement and engaging the proven model - "Plan. Brief. Execute. Debrief." Through his leadership, Afterburner has landed on Inc. Magazine's "Inc. 500 List" twice. Murphy has been featured in a variety of prestigious publications and has appeared on CNN, Fox News, and Bloomberg News to name a few. For more information on Afterburner, Inc., please call 877-765-5607 or visit www.afterburnerconsulting.com.
Thursday, February 12, 2009 - Posted by: socialnetworking
One of the key concepts to creating an authority site on the internet is to build credibility for search engines as well as readers. Generating links from other web sites is like creating votes for your cause. In addition to writing great, relevant content, attracting references to pages and the home page indicates popularity.
Popular content surfaces to the top of search engines for particular keywords. Sites and pages are ranked based on providing the best response to readers.
ProSPOTLIGHT is one resource for professionals to drive traffic to their existing websites. Consider using tools to drive traffic by generating great content and links.
Monday, January 5, 2009 - Posted by: socialnetworking
An article on Internetnews indicated that in a tough economy CRM activities will be integrated into social networking. Business/customer relations will be focused on high-value activities.
"It is not enough to ensure business value in new projects; enterprises will begin focusing on customer retention instead of customer acquisition to stay afloat, Forrester predicts. 'During an economic recession, sustaining revenue growth - or forestalling revenue erosion - becomes even more critical,' the company wrote."
Companies will focus on a great customer experience which will benefit all involved.