Resources are limited. Time is tight. The list of things you and your organisation could be doing are endless. You have people inside, and outside, your organisation lobbying for what they think is essential. Some believe what they are saying. Some are hustling agendas or simply selling products or services.
You want progress. Traction. Trajectory. Results. You have to make decisions and then and sell your decisions.
You may have to create a direction or change direction. Then you need to persuade people and trigger sustainable change within your business that goes beyond sulky nods. You want to embed and then trigger clear and compelling relevant storytelling skills in your leadership team. You can't do it alone. You need buy in and engagement and action.
Disinterested advice is hard to find - everyone is hustling you. Lobbying. Who is there purely FOR you. Thinking strategically and politically and in a big picture, high altitude way about what is the best for the organisation, best for you and helps you to craft and sell your message. Change management can't be ordered by a Chief Executive... it has to be
engaged with and adopted and become part of the identity of the organisation, the culture and the way it does business.
Simon Sinek and Start with Why
Simon Sinek is now a famous leadership consultant and guru because of a zero-tech speech using a flip-chart, that he gave at TEDx Puget Sound in 2009. Simon Sinek's Start With Why speech has over 10 millions views on the Puget Sound TEDx website, and has now been promoted to the main TED website where it has been viewed over 65 million times - for context, the United Kingdom population is 69 million. Those 18 minutes speaking on stage spawned a hugely successful career, a book of the same name and a series of other leadership books.
Vision, Strategy & Tactics Form a Winning Formula...
Busy doesn't get results. Busy usually just costs money. Focus get things done, even with finite and limited resources. Let's assume your resources are limited and your ambitions are not. The only way to marry these two things and achieve your ambitions with, or despite, the budget, is extreme focus - channeling your resources and limiting your activities to carrying out a well thought out, war-gamed and defined strategy.
This is true whether running a business or managing a campaign. Both deploy limited resources (people and money) to achieve their objectives. They both succeed or fail based on their focus, strategic thinking and tactical execution.
1. Bringing Clarity, and Better Margins, to a Business through Storytelling, Strategy and Tactics
When I took over a group of unionised, manufacturing businesses in Germany, I learned first hand how vocal and loud vested interests can be. I turned around one of the businesses by communicating and implementing my strategy of discarding low-margin and high-headache business units that contributed to the vanity numbers but not the bottom line. In fact, these "busy activities" just distracted and used up valuable resources, time and management headspace.
Hard numbers:
- Year 1: I reduced turnover by 20% and losses by 88%.
- Year 2: We broke even.
- Year 3: We exited all three businesses.
The Goal was simple: protect the mother group of companies by stopping this remote group haemorrhaging money.
2. Bringing Opposing Tribes together with Storytelling, Strategy and Tactics on a National Stage.
The success of the No2AV campaign in the 2011 National Referendum on whether to change the United Kingdom's electoral system, was based on a clear understanding and deployment of strategy and tactics and a laser-like focus on execution. We won, and we won BIG at 69-29, because of the clear internal communication and an almost tunnel-vision focus and adherence to our agreed campaign strategy and tactics. Execution counts, PowerPoint slides don't.
The winning strategy was suggested by me to Matthew Elliott me at a fireside meeting at my home in Sussex. No2AV were lagging behind 30/70 against a "fairer votes campaign" - most people told Matthew it was a lost cause. He is from Yorkshire and an outlier in the field of stubborn. To me it was simple numbers. But the politics wasn't simple at all. (I had, and still have somewhere, a cheap and dirty excel sheet calculation summarising my suggested strategy.)
No2AV needed to get a significant part of the Labour Party to set aside tribal thinking and join the Conservative Party on this campaign. I was then bluntly told by Matthew Elliott that talking about it wasn't enough, I had to deliver it. My role was to get a majority of the Labour Party to campaign together with the Conservative Party. The Labour Party weren't exactly a fan of Matthew.
I delivered. Instead of the three "likely suspects" that the Conservative Party was expecting, I came back to Matthew with 5 "Big Beast" names - Margaret Beckett, John Reid, John Prescott, David Blanket and Charlie Falconer.
John Prescott and William Hague agreeing on something.
We won big because we - you - got Labour on board. Your positive appealing personality was crucial to those negotiations. That was your crucial contribution to the campaign.”
Matthew Elliott, Campaign Director No2AV
But, I was only able to deliver that strategy, because Matthew gave me the space to do my job, and we remained stubbornly focused on the strategy. We won because of that extreme strategic leadership focus and clarity and despite very loud and often very agitated noises from (some) donors, supporters and politicians and extensive and biting media criticism. Our campaign could have easily been derailed by the febrile, volatile and reactive hot air of Westminster.
3. Affecting Change with Storytelling, Strategy and Tactics in the Hot Air of Westminster Politics
Our tiny and under-resourced campaign succeeded in putting the evils of Human Trafficking on the Westminster political agenda. We introduced legislation via a private Member's Bill with cross-party support - both these things hardly ever happen. That legislation made Anti-Slavery Day a fixed day in the calendar - a recurring opportunity for country-wide education and awareness. It also ensured dedicated Human Trafficking resources in every police force in the country. If your company website has a statement on Human Trafficking, it is because of that legislation.
"In the last year Peter has helped me raise the national profile of the evils of Human Trafficking and has put in considerable time and effort - including working with me on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day - to ensure the campaign kept its momentum. His experience and skills have been invaluable to me."
Anthony Steen MP
Then I conceived, setup and inaugurated the Human Trafficking Media Awards. All sides of the media were there.
We were able to do all those things, because understanding, focusing on and deploying the three heroes of storytelling, strategy and tactics. We were a team of four.