Skyrocket Your Business with Strategic Prioritization

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Skyrocket Your Business with Strategic Prioritization

Skyrocket Your Business with Strategic Prioritization

As a business owner, it’s difficult to do the right work AND guide your company toward its next big initiative.

With Red Direction Business Base Camp, learn how to implement and handle processes to meet your business’s specific needs and better understand your market.

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Starting the conversation:

Your success comes from your ability to sustain growth over time by ensuring alignment of today’s actions with your long-term goals. It can be hard, and preparation is a word that brings lackluster response at best; yet without preparation, you don’t really know how the resources being used today can influence the outcomes you want to achieve. Jess Dewell, Strategic Growth Consultant at Red Direction and your host of the BOLD Business Podcast, discusses how you can achieve growth and face the ambiguity of big business problems at the same time.

Foundationally, there are three things that create sustainable business growth. First, what are nonnegotiables? When two things have equal importance, one is always put first. Not only is that the priority, but also it indicates the way work is really done. Second, protected time dedicated to strategy every week. Specifically, at least two consecutive hours in a row. Third, adaptability is a competitive advantage. More than what people can do to adapt, it is how the team responds and adapts individually and together.

In this program you will hear that growth strategy is defining a direction for a company to maintain market relevance in the future; three main concepts of a growth strategy; and the key component crucial to navigate change and challenge. Jess Dewell, Strategic Growth Consultant at Red Direction and your host of the BOLD Business Podcast, discusses how you can define your business’s core to achieve sustainable growth.

Host: Jess Dewell

What You Will Hear:

Not every consultant and coach specializes in growth strategy.

  • Growth strategy is about staying relevant in the future.
  • A future point to work backward from to know what the right work right now is.
  • Know your nonnegoatiables.
  • Provides a foundation to work from, and more value to your customers.
  • A path to stay adaptable as a company.

Business Owners and Entrepreneurs are worried about the same things today as a decade ago.

  • How to stay relevant?
  • How to adapt to quickly changing situations (technology, lifestyle, supply chain, people)?
  • How to face uncertainty?
  • How to discern the information needed to survive and thrive right now?

There is potential to be realized in your competitive advantage.

  • Step 1, remove competing priorities so all effort moves in the same direction.
  • Step 2, stay focused on the goal even when “opportunities” present themselves.
  • Step 3, clearly understand what you are saying no to (it might surprise you when you’ve said yes to something else).
  • Elements and data necessary and to accomplish steps 1-3.
  • Discover and prioritize gaps in process, goals, culture, and what you can control.
  • Understand the risk you take by doing (or not doing) something.

You weave value into your business with every intentional decision.

  • The future of your business depends on how you make decisions and what you prioritize.
  • Sometimes what we think we are doing to strengthen business strengths, grow, and optimize may not be where the potential for growth is.

The 2-Hour Growth Hack: How Present Retreats Can Revolutionize Your Business

  • Protected and dedicated time to engage with your growth strategy.
  • Safe to accept the reality of what is happening in the business and what you’d like to adjust.
  • Clarity around prioritizing work to move the business forward.
  • Make it a routine, just like your morning/evening, mindfulness, and exercise.
  • Forward-looking.

It is BOLD to interact with your growth strategy to navigate uncertainty with more confidence.

Skyrocket Your Business with Strategic Prioritization - Jess Dewell

Resources

Transcript

Jess Dewell
Every single time I have a conversation, I take away something that I want to share with 25 people. I know when you’re listening to this podcast, you’re also listening for that and will have something that you want to share. In the comments, I would like for you to engage with us. What is that thing that you want to tell 25 people from this program?

Here’s why it’s important. It’s important because, yeah, there are going to be how-to’s. Yes, there are going to be steps. Yes, you’re going to be like, Oh, I love this. I wish I wrote that down. I wish I wasn’t doing this, and I could actually take action on that right now. But guess what, you’re not. So engage right now, because that one thing you want to share with others will be the thing that you can figure out how to incorporate in your business, in your workflow, in your style, tomorrow.

I get asked all the time. Jess, you’re not quite a business coach, but you do business coaching things. Jess, you’re not a business therapist, but you do business therapist things. So what exactly are you doing? Well, I’m looking at growth strategy. So, What Red Direction was set up to be is to work with organizations and leadership teams that are clearly ready to define a growth strategy, and that’s the direction a company, your company, identifies with to ensure market relevance in the future.

This is very different than the day-to-day activities that we’re doing today, right? We hear about coaches and consultants that want to optimize, to increase revenues, to help with the sales funnel, or the supply chain, or leadership development. All those are right now. What sits on top of that, and helps make sure every single one of those activities is lined up to future relevance, is your growth strategy.

There are three things that a growth strategy is made up of. The first is your nonnegotiables. The second is the way work is done in your organization. And the third is discerning the right work to do and the right time to do it. The thing is, we live in a world of instant gratification, and we think we see results fairly quickly.

Both of them are true. When it comes to business, though, We’re looking at the activities we’re doing today to solve a problem today with a pulse on what’s outside of our control, with a pulse on what we want in the future, with a desire to find out how can we leverage what’s coming our way based off of trends in our industry, in our economy, in the new things our customers might start talking about or thinking about.

And that takes time. We can’t wait for the future to arrive, otherwise we’re just more in the day-to-day, and we’re optimizing what’s right in front of us. Which means we’re limiting our future direction. Which means when we’re not taking care of the future, when we’re not stopping to think about the future, we are setting ourselves up to limit the longevity of what we’re actually doing.

This growth strategy, Goodness, it does not prevent nor avoid the need to reinvent. It allows the opportunities for reinvention to become part of the process so that it’s never really felt. So that navigation between here and there and where we’re trying to go and what we’re doing today. Line up to the best of our abilities, the strengths that we have, the time and the money that we have to do the work, the right work right now.

With an eye on, well what’s that right work now that sets the right stones in place so we’re building to the To the future to where we want to go. You see, the outcome of this is all about resilience. A good growth strategy builds a resilient organization because it does generate innovation. It does help you reach new markets and it does create.

Greater value for your customers. I think that’s really important to remember. Growth strategy is about our future, not today. Growth strategy is about how we take our market relevance of the work that we’re doing today and make it sustainable and even change for the more. Whatever more is for your organization in the future.

It’s the direction you have decided to go. It’s really important to think about growth strategy and what it means specifically because all we can do is influence it. There is no way we can control it. And the only reason I can tell you this is over 20 years of doing this work, this looking forward, the strategic work because two-thirds of small business owners, Medium-sized business owners together.

They are personally responsible for more than three areas of business, three areas of business. That’s three hats. And when there’s more than one of you, three, seven, 11, 15 leadership people in your organization, and you’re all wearing, sometimes you’re sharing different hats. That growth strategy becomes paramount to know, remember what’s your nonnegotiable.

What is the way that your work is done and are you discerning the right work to do? Right now. And that’s what a growth strategy is. Keeping the pulse on Competitive advantage is so multifaceted. We’re only covering a few elements and ways to think about it in regards to our growth strategy. And this is just the beginning because one of the things that I have found is that the more we practice strategic thinking, the more we make space for the thinking that we must do to know and Where we’re going and to survive into that future to stay relevant Always has to be part of what we’re doing, but just like anything we might feel like we’re not doing it Well, so let’s add the word yet to that.

I’m not doing it Well yet or this is still new to me and I’m glad to be building this muscle the strategic thinking this competitive advantage processing To ensure that we are relevant now and in the future, that’s growth strategy. And that’s the work. That’s the effort that must go into that growth strategy.

I’m not sure if you know this, but the worries that business owners are facing today are the same ones that have been around for over a decade. I can’t believe it. I said that five years ago. So it’s actually so much more than a decade where we’re still looking at the same things. That really impact our ability to be competitive, to stay relevant, that influence and directly contribute to the success of our growth strategy.

And the first one is development, development of you, me, the people in your organization, how things go, what are we keeping track of? And it’s really interesting because we hear more about purpose. We hear more about purpose. What our own goals are and how we bring that into our organization. And sometimes that’s different, uh, and difficult for CEOs and business owners.

Because we are not the business. Our purpose is not the business. Even if we’re leading the business, even if we’ve started the business. Or own the business right now. And I think that’s an important thing that we forget to understand. Who are we and who is the business or who are we and what is the business?

Because that is a muscle of distinction that allows you to reduce the chances of burnout that allows you to be more open and aware of the ideas and the thoughts of all of the people that are choosing to. Walk in and work with you in your business to serve your customers every single day. There’s so much uncertainty in the world, not only because of change happening quickly, but also globally that may impact us directly and indirectly in our business.

So how does that show up to our own purpose, to the work that we’re doing within our company, to the change that we want to see, to the problems that we want to solve and to empower those working with us? to also do the same. Taking time to learn that muscle is incredibly important, and it requires focus, and focus requires practice consistently.

I’m not sure about you. There’s so much information out there, it’s easy for me to get overwhelmed every day with the amount of stuff. To be looked at, to keep track of in the news, in my industry publications, whatever the case may be, right? It’s coming in. It’s coming. It’s coming in and being able to distill that and knowing what is important to your business now and what is important to your business in the future and what might be interesting.

Yet, has zero impact on what you’re attempting to do in your purpose and in your mission. And when we can do that, we can distill so much out that we’re working with a much smaller subset of information. That smaller subset of information allows us to really prioritize what are the things That will move the needle and move our company, our objectives, and each of our individual developments forward.

Being able to stay flexible is a big key to this. And that, all of the skills, consistency. And I’m, I tell you what, I am horrible at learning and integrating more than one new thing at a time. Sometimes, I’m horrible, I’m not at all at just integrating one new thing, but I’m willing. And that right there takes a lot of courage.

And I know you’ve been there too. You have a lot of courage to work on the pieces that are important. So pick one. I’m thinking about this whole program today. I’m thinking about all the things we’re discussing. Pick one. One thing that you can do to make sure that you’re more aware of where you’re at in the world competitively as a company.

And what you want to be keeping the pulse on with that piece of information so that you can make change. Small incremental change is all that’s necessary. Because with all that information out there, we have to zero in and it takes time to zero in and have a single message that can be. Shared and understood and received not only well, but correctly in relationship to all the work that’s being done around us and together within our organizations.

You know, it makes me think of, of companies that get so stuck in something. Maybe it’s processes. We’re going to process everything so that we are as efficient as possible, which has a cascading effect. In some cases of lack of ability to creatively problem solve, which takes away somebody’s ability to be creative or feel like they can develop.

It erodes some of the hard work that was put into place where those structures and those processes began. So maybe competitiveness is where are we to Um, where are we too restrictive? Where have our constraints started to hold us back? Another place would be maybe it’s all about getting the right information out of the way.

How do we, how do we get the information out of the way so we have less noise with which to work? Because I’ll tell you the more things we juggle the more confusing it is to know which is the right one to do What is the most important? Well, when they’re all important and all ideas are welcomed or whatever subset of ideas are welcomed They still compete for time and that is something that we must be always cognizant of so distill a message Understand that, understand that focus and purpose.

What are we doing and how are we showing up so that we can get rid of what we don’t need right now. Interesting, useful, potentially trending for later so that we can stay on track so that we can keep our priorities in place. And the other thing too, right? The third thing, the first one was the first thing we talked about was confidence in our own leadership and the leadership of those around us.

The second was staying focused amidst all the noise and continuing to prioritize well and clearly. The third one is actually getting out of your own way. I’m going to hold up the mirror first, just so you know, how do we get out of our own way? There are so many different ways to do that. And I will tell you, one of the things that I find most interesting is that it’s usually some behavior that I have that precludes something.

And I’ll tell you, for me, what I’m noticing over the last six months, uh, as I was doing my, you know, as I was doing a six-month review, I look six months back and I go out six months and I look farther into the future. So my six months back was, Oh, Oh. I’ve prioritized all of the unexpected things that show up in life all around.

And that has actually created a secondary detriment to our business deliverables. It’s been harder for us to meet the expectations that we have set with our customers. It is harder to ensure that we are meeting our own deadlines internally for those very key, important handoffs that have dates associated with them.

So that we can have whatever needs to be completed, completed without anybody rushing. With everybody having the opportunity to have space, to be creative, to solve problems that come up. So, when I found that reflection, I’m like, oh look, I’m in my own way. I have said, through my behaviors and actions, what is okay, unintentionally.

Because life happens to all of us. And if more than one of us in an organization, especially a small organization like Red Direction, if we’re competing with each other, Unexpected things. And there’s more than one of us that’s having expected craziness of some capacity and some level in our world. We want to be accommodating.

We want to say, yes, whatever you deal with is really important. And we also want to say, yes, our work here is important. And unfortunately I lost that balance. So there’s a little self-reflection of straight up. It happens to the best of us in terms of getting in our own way. So what are we saying yes to?

What are we saying no to? Where are we accidentally creating erosion? Erosion in the way we think. Erosion in what we’re doing. Erosion, uh, in our value set. Which creates confusion. Which can also create a loss of trust. And Also, then we’re like, what do we do? What is the priority? So thinking about that, and it happens in small companies, it happens in large companies.

We know that to be true, going back to what I was going to say before. So knowing that and thinking about that, this is one of those areas where maybe it’s one thing, maybe it’s one thing you’re going to take away. And that would be my suggestion so that you can practice it. So you, something you feel that is a weakness right now, I, or we are not good at that yet, because that’s where your focus is going to lie and the issues that you’re facing on that strategic scale.

of what’s going on and the issues that are happening in businesses are things that have been happening for over a decade. Competitive advantage is important to understand specifically in relationship to the longevity of your company, specifically related to the type of service and the changing needs of your customers.

So the resulting changes of your service over time when we know our competitive advantage today, we will know. Because there will be cues and information in data and conversations and senses with which we can ask questions around and dig a little deeper to suss out opportunities and threats. Well, what does that mean for today?

You know, we think of, we think of growth in a lot of different ways. And I know, uh, depending on where you’re at in growth, you might define it differently. And in fact, the entire body of work that is the bold business podcast and the conversations that we have about growth, you will hear many different variations of what growth is and what it means to individuals as well as the companies themselves.

And so as unique as what your competitive advantage is to you, that is what to tap into and find out and have it be a nonnegotiable. And when you’re committed to that, you now have a stake in the ground with which other decisions can occur, which cascading results can be thought out to find out, do we like this path?

Do we not like this path? Is there opportunity here? How much? And make thoughtful. Purposeful decisions. You see, in the end, our competitive advantage is a strength. If we don’t claim that strength, we’re leaving so much on the table. And that’s actually something that I think that is so important to recognize.

So there’s a little bit of work to be done here. And this is reflective work. You, as a founder, As an executive, as a leadership team member, what are your strengths and weaknesses? And what are the company’s strengths and weaknesses? And each person in that leadership team also needs to know that about themselves and the company.

Because when we know our own strengths and weaknesses, we know when to ask for help. We know when somebody else likes a topic more than we do. We know where we can get a second set of eyes to make sure. We are not accidentally avoiding or forgetting something important to continue to create each step with intention, knowing that what we’ve created for 12 months out, 24 months out, is something we’re laying the foundation for every single day with every single piece of work we choose to do.

So, growth has this wide range of meanings, which, by the way, could also be a strength or a weakness of your business, if everybody looks at that differently. Hint, hint. The clearer everybody understands what the competitive advantage is of your organization, the clearer how each person’s strengths add to the whole.

The clearer gaps within the organization that need to be filled to achieve a goal become. We don’t have to cover everything. We just have to cover the things that help us get to where we’re going. And when we’re unclear, the options are endless. The things that we run through in our head to go through, if then then this, if then then this.

But what about how this fits in? Each one of those things takes up time. There is something to be said for optimization. There is something to be said for easy. The thing is, adaptability is intentional. It may feel easy. Operations, processes, systems, systems. Make it easier, but the actual real work of relating the work we’re doing today to the right work so that we’re laying the bricks for four tomorrow for our strategic growth plan, for the way that we want to grow, to stay in tune with what’s going on, and uncover opportunities and threats along the way matter.

So we have to own our strengths and our competitive advantage is also rooted. In, what are we doing unique to our company? Our unique selling proposition. Even more so, what is the way we do our work here? Every organization has a way that we do our work here. And guess what? That’s your culture. So, don’t like the way work is being done?

Probably means you’re also experiencing some of the telltale signs that occur when culture is weak. And I know we rely on processes. We all are. I know because they help us with ROI. They help us go, cool, we did this, and we have that. Or, we’re going to, we’re taking a risk, and here is our risk, here is the reward, and here are the steps along the way, so we can see how right we were.

I’m going to talk a little bit more about that in just a moment, but I want you to think about that as we go along. Are we doing the right work? Was it the right work to be done? Is it truly the opportunity we thought and did it result in whatever kind of growth we wanted? So while that’s important, that’s only part of it.

While strengths and weaknesses are important, that’s only part of it. While your unique way of doing business Is important. It’s only part of it. So one of the things that we do is we shortcut, we optimize, we create a new process. We have some steps so that we can keep doing what we’re doing. And that’s great.

It’s so great. In fact, that other people may start copying what your company is doing in that process. And then the whole industry might pick up on that. And now you have. Best practices. The truth about best practices really is everybody’s made the assumption that they’re the best things to do, and guess what?

When everybody does them, there is no competitive advantage. There is no opportunity for uniqueness. Everything becomes mediocre and the same. With that in mind, we must continue to work toward keeping our competitive advantage by understanding the assumptions we’re making, by understanding the norms we have decided to work with, and really, Be aware of when our industry or we, we are joining industry norms or the norms that we have created are becoming common in the industry.

That’s a Q. Competitive advantage is at risk. So, time, it comes back to, what are we doing now, makes us last in the future. What are we doing now that allows us to build the right steps forward so that our business is here 5, 15, 20 years from now, if that’s what we want. I know most of us want that. We want to continue to adapt and grow with our clients.

We want to continue to provide a service. We want to have a succession plan so that the work that is being done can continue as long as it’s necessary and helpful and useful and profitable. So remember ROI matters. Remember best practices are a great way to find assumptions. Remember strengths and weaknesses are the key.

Remember the way work is done is here for you. And it’s how you use it. That determines your competitive advantage over time and how adaptable you can be. If everything is leveraged and something changes or must change right away, there’s actually not a lot of flex, which means there’s very little adaptability.

So another way to look at adaptability here is capacity. We want to be using the right levers to optimize, to get the most for our effort and our money. What we don’t want to do is have it so stretched that one small issue, one small bump in the road could derail everything. And so where is that balance?

That’s adaptability. The capacity for you to change in the moment because the moment has arisen. And only when you’re clear in your competitive advantage can you start thinking about capacity to be able to adapt. and how leveraged you are when the need arises to flex and adapt quickly. So there’s this element of value that comes into adaptability and your competitive advantage, how that relates to your growth strategy really is this it’s the more you’re looking for value along the way.

The ways you choose to provide value, obtain value, mine for value, intentionally foster value elements into the business is how you’re weaving it in. It ties into the way the work is done. You’re nonnegotiables, the decision-making process. And that’s an important thing to consider and keep in mind. One of the things I’ve learned over time is that businesses that have and use a clearly outlined plan are 12 percent more profitable.

Yeah. The thing is though, to be 12 percent more profitable with a clearly outlined plan means you gotta use it. And that everybody’s using it the same way. There’s a shared vision. Everybody’s missions, everybody’s goals when it comes to the work being done are aligned. So one of the things that we have to come back to always, always, always are non negotiables and our culture, the way that work is done.

So We need to look at some of the assumptions that we might have about how our values actually fit into the organization. And at some point when a company is growing, it switches from the founder’s values to the actual company’s values. Sometimes. There’s a differentiator, a differentiation at the beginning of that, but most of the time it’s what does the founder-owner want and as it’s growing and the more people that are becoming involved, then we have more values and then it’s like, Oh, what do these values actually mean?

You see, every value has a value. A purpose. It has a purpose in the way that we think about it, the way that we feel about it, and the way that we respond to it. And that’s an interesting thing to keep in mind because when I say something is important to me, you may think it’s important for a very different reason.

That’s got to be clarified and making sure that yes, it’s important for both reasons and viewpoints. How is it important to the work being done? And can we agree? On that work being done and the importance of how we’re doing it here together, because that allows us to prioritize, it allows us to prioritize things that are aligned to what we’re doing in the values that we are creating and the value we are providing in the culture that we are operating within, but it’s also allowing us to.

Understand that this is something that if we’re not careful, can accidentally erode or sabotage the progress that we’re making in our organization. Decisions do have a value component. It could be to the success, it could be to the growth goal, it could be to the development of the organization, it could be to move into a different direction based off of whatever the strategic plan is, whatever that high level far looking strategy is 12, 24 months, maybe even 60 months down the road, the longer a company has been in business, there is momentum there that can be leveraged.

And that’s important because Our whole goal is to help businesses that want to be in business, stay that way. So we can only grow with what we know and an outside set of eyes and the way we think about things and the cadence with which we do our present retreats, with which we focus, with which we evaluate our competitive advantage and the ability of our capacity to adapt to the unknown.

All of those things are incredibly important. And that cadence, something that is occurring, is so necessary. Because, just because you have a strategic plan doesn’t mean it gets executed. In fact, if you’re one of those companies, you’re in good company with 70 percent of organizations out there. They get lost in a drawer or left on a shelf.

You see though, that’s where That number at the beginning, that 12 percent of profitable businesses are doing the work. They’re engaging with what is important and the way that they’re making decisions. So when I’m talking to small businesses, the things that show up when we’re talking about value or lack or growth or lack thereof, it’s, I wasn’t prepared and the economy changed.

Something happened to my, to my cost basis or my cash flow, or all of a sudden everything got really expensive. Another one might be the sales process, right? All of a sudden, sales are stopping. All of a sudden, clients don’t want what we have anymore. There’s another one that’s really common. We keep trying new things and nothing works.

And another one I see commonly, we’re trying to grow, yet we keep ending up exactly where we are. All these things are indicative of lack of clarity. Do I have my nonnegotiables? How are we making decisions? What is the unique way we’re working here? And even though that list is actually a lot longer than what I just shared, the thing is, when we know what we’re attempting to do, and that we can be clear about it, and Everybody can hitch their goals to ours and we’re clear on the way we are thinking, feeling, and responding to everything in front of us.

And we’re able to do it in an effort and in essence, as a group, we can understand. How to prioritize and we can understand that the words we’re using matter for the way that we’re working here and we’re removing multiple definitions because we remove multiple definitions. It means when we talk about being here and we want to go here, that allows us to all get on board.

Yep. I see this reality of where we are. Positive, negative, neutral. Yep. This is where we’re going. Here’s what that might look like. Positive, negative, neutral. So that is the trajectory that you’re on. The path you take is probably not going to be a straight line. And that’s good because that means adapting along the way, leaning into the strengths and the weaknesses, the growth strategy that you have set in your business.

Is all about the longevity and sustainability of the business to come in the future to five, 10 years from now. So the skills you have, the competitive advantage that you have, the way that you’re creating the values, the nonnegotiables of how are we working here? What do these things mean? Reducing confusion.

And being able to quickly recognize when we’re not experiencing something of the way that we’re doing work here quickly, easily, and making those adjustments together. That’s how we know we have a strong culture. That we’re supportive, we expand, and we’re dedicated to clear communication. And we’re dedicated to taking time to find what that is.

And by doing that, we can actually take a look at and see what is so important, what in my failures might actually work here, what in my successes is actually repeatable. That is where we get to weave value. That is where we get to make these decisions day in, day out with intention to lay each step to move us toward.

Our biggest vision and our strategic plan to have competitive advantage in our future. 48 percent of business owners, entrepreneurs, and executives spend less than one hour per month on their strategic plan and on their strategic plan. In this case means engagement with checking in. What are the things that to be aware of?

Where are the obstacles? What are the opportunities and how do we prioritize them amidst everything else already going on? It’s interesting because one of the things that I have found over the years is we want to have time and we must claim the time to make it happen. And in a present retreat, which is what we’re going to talk about in this segment, um, It’s protected time in your calendar that belongs to you.

And it starts out with two hours, a two-hour continuous block. Mine is six hours. Some take eight hours, um, but it’s protected time and people know there are very few things that occur that cannot wait two hours to get to. Now on the occasion, there is the one. Okay, fine. Okay. We’re talking about in general, committing to two hours to think strategically and do deep work is something that is underutilized.

And it is the biggest game changer I have seen for lasting, taking a business that’s in a, uh, stuck in a bad situation. Growth plateau to break through that a business that is floundering because of leadership burnout and moving through that into whatever’s next. And most importantly, just making time.

So we understand what the heck is going on and we with more clarity in a world of ambiguity when it comes to running a business and leading people and showing up in the world, the ability. to have confidence in what we have access to right now, so that all the stuff that we don’t know, which is a lot, can be handled with a little more grace.

And it is less sharp or jaggy or crunchy along the way. So a present retreat, two hours, has a preparation. And the preparation are all of the reports that show the results of the work being done. We, whatever tracking you do, the general business metrics plus what makes you you, are necessary to have prepared and ready to go before you begin your present retreat.

The next piece of this is all of the ideas and opportunities that come up at any point in time, they’ve been being collected and they are pulled out or pulled up or however you’re keeping them. And they are also part of this present retreat. And the third piece that is really important for prep is that it’s actually in your calendar as a two-hour block of time that you commit to showing up to.

You might even put in drive time before and after the calendar event so that you have space to move into the deep work and then move out of the deep work without having to switch gears super fast. Deep work is a whole different kind of brain power. It’s a whole different way to show up. It’s quite fun when we get into it.

And we get to a place where it really matters. It matters because we see it making a difference. So, here’s how I do my present retreats. I told you the prerequisite. All that stuff is there and I’ve got that gathered and ready to go. And then in my present retreat block, I have an open and I have a close.

And I do the, they’re the same thing. And the reason they’re the same thing is because it’s like turning on your computer or opening up your email program Or checking the mail, even. Something that has that thing. And then you can do it at the end, right? You can close your email. You can put whatever mail you have made in the day that’s not digital into the mailbox, right?

Whatever it is, there’s a beginning and an end. And having that same action bookend the whole session is a cue. This is my deep work. This is my present retreat. And then in the middle, the first thing I do is I evaluate all of the reports. Where are we? Is it what I expected? Is it what’s planned? And what are the obstacles and issues that have come up that are preventing us from making forward progress or pushing current projects out into the future?

past their deadlines, whatever it might be, what are those obstacles? And then I’m also looking at the opportunities and I actually assess everything that comes in during the present retreat in this first part of my present retreat, which is Is it relevant right now to what we’re doing, yes or no? And if it’s yes, cool, I’ll keep it close by.

If it’s not, I organize it and out of it. So now, when I get done with that, I have the reality of what is, and I have all of the opportunities and ideas that align with the work we’re doing right now for our goal and to use the momentum that might be available. Everything else, I look at idea-wise, opportunity-wise, and I’m saying, okay.

Uh, we got two piles. It’s now in the future. It’s it’s in the future because it aligns with our goals. It aligns with our mission or it’s a really cool idea. It’s just, I don’t know how it fits or it doesn’t fit. And those we let go. And I quickly tell after every present retreat session, anybody’s ideas that have come to me that we let go, they know right away.

And I can tell them why it doesn’t align with our mission right now. It would take up too many resources compared to what we actually have for this set of projects. And when we get done with this, it’s not going to match up to what we’re doing next. So I’m very clear about what doesn’t fit in the ideas and opportunities and we let them go.

So coming back to our pieces, the way things are, the obstacles we’ve got to address and the, and the ideas and opportunities that have come up that align with our work right now. And these are all the right things right now. They’re really important. And so how do we work through those? So obstacles. The kind of obstacle, what kind of messaging, what additional resources do we need, who do needs to be talked to, what other questions do we need to ask so that we can work through those?

Because an obstacle, a challenge or a problem doesn’t have to be negative all the time. It could be neutral and it can even be a positive problem until we sit down and recognize it. What is making it frictiony? What is making it difficult right now? And is it the right time to address it? Then our ideas.

We’ve said these are good ideas based off of all of the relevance of the problems we’re working through. Here’s how much time we have left for new ideas or here’s some things that actually make our current projects more exciting or add more value or make a bigger difference. And how does this all fit together?

Because by the end of the present retreat, not only have I I have identified this. I have identified these other things. Now I have to figure out how to talk about it to the team. And when I’m talking about it to the team, there usually is some sort of a adjustment that’s going to happen. Hey, this problem is taking up more time.

We’re going to reallocate, uh, other things across the rest of us so that we can get the work done and be timely or meet our deadline. Or, uh, it could be something like, Oh, this person has this. this deliverable and their primary, their point on it. Yet we just had this new idea that I said, Ooh, this is really great.

Uh, and they need to be point on that too. Well, we have a choice as a company, right? I have a choice as the decision maker of the company, the, the torchbearer. Do I hand this person who is already on a deadline, big project, a brand new one, that’s going to take a lot of energy, Is there a way to shape it?

What else could happen? Maybe it is not the right time when I look at the midst of everything else. When we’re looking at our resources. When we’re looking at our capacity with which to work. Because the thing that our strategic time, this present retreat, provides is is more time for everybody when we know the problems and we’ve said no to all the things that don’t align and we’re saying yes to this we can understand what our capacity is and have realistic expectations because the first thing that we get asked when we say here’s what’s going to happen is well which is more important this project or this project uh huh and they are unequal and it is up to you me, the torchbearer, to decide which is more important and be able to say it with confidence.

And that’s hard because we want things to all be equal. We want to keep things, and we just want to add on. Time doesn’t work that way. It could work that way. But our effort, our brain power, our heart power, our interest, all of that varies project to project, idea to idea, piece of work to piece of work. Is it a task-oriented project?

Is it a deep work project? So we have to be thinking about all of those and they’re not equal. It may be hard to prioritize them. We need to be able to say, Oh yeah, thanks for telling me you’re seeing this as equal. It actually looks like this, or thanks for telling me it’s equal. It actually looks like this.

And that empowers our team to be able to Make decisions and know, okay, this is the most important, so everything I’m doing is going to be around that. And then my, everything else cascades from that, which creates great dialogue each week between my present retreats. Hey, because this is more important and we decided, and that has been decided, here’s where we’ve got some struggles.

Well, if we have space. I might work on it in my present retreat. If we don’t, we’ll ask some questions and figure it out because being able to act in the moment from the decision of prioritization makes all the difference in the world. Now, another piece of that, making more time, is that not only do we know what problems to solve in the moment because we know the priorities and we know where we’re going and we’ve been clear in communicating it.

So that’s a cascading effect that we can have more time because we don’t have to think about it. We know the priorities. It’s easy to say yes to the right things and the right work right now. Then all the new ideas that come up in a week, calls appear here. Take on this client, do this speaking engagement, a client that is requesting something else, or new, whatever it might be, maybe it’s a collaboration, maybe it’s a panel discussion participation, whatever it is, we can decide, most likely we can decide to say, cool, I will think about it, and I will get back to you next week.

On this day. So if your present retreat is always in that same time, you know, you will address it and you will be able to do your followup and be consistent and do that work and make that priority and be thoughtful about it in a short period of time and being true to what your biggest goals are looking.

24 months or more out. It’s interesting to think about that. Um, and people are really cognizant of that. Oh, okay. You’re not ready to make a decision today. No problem. Because especially when I can say, Oh, my present retreat, um, I, I will think about this and other opportunities I have like yours on Monday.

I will get back in touch with you Tuesday or Wednesday and more often than not. Cool. I have that, or this is actually a last minute thing for whatever reason, and could you? Well, then in that case, I can make a decision because I have enough present retreats under my belt. I have enough experience with what’s going on and a sense now of what’s going forward before I ever get to my present retreat that I could make that decision.

I don’t have to, and I usually choose not to. I usually choose to wait and take the time because We don’t know what else is going to, to come up, or how it actually might fit, and thinking strategically about it in the flow is actually a brain change, and we lose There’s, there’s a cost of switching activity to activity, especially in the work that we’re doing into deep work or into strategic work or into something that might be happening next year in terms of overall flow of marketing and presentation and, and work that’s coming in.

So it gets easier. Thank you. And I’m gonna tell you my, I’ll tell you my story. I started out two hours a day, uh, two hours a week. I’ve always done Mondays, and my two hours on Mondays, um, you see my closet back here? I, uh, not this closet, but a closet in my office at the time. I opened, my, my first two present retreats were organizing the closet.

Partly because I’m an act to plan person and it helped generate, um, activity. Partly because I didn’t know, I had put this whole thing together, but I showed up to it and I didn’t really understand or feel confident about it. So I did stuff during that time because I kept it, right? I kept the time very protected, very just for this work.

And then after I got done with Closet, uh, my email. Was very clean. I had then, then from that, I started to find all kinds of ideas. So I’m like, cool. So I used the protected time to get into the habit of having it be on my schedule and showing up to it, to just get through the things and understand where all the places I had put these ideas.

Um, Going through all of the different things and, and some of my notes to understand, is it now? Is it near? Right? Like in the next year? Or is it in the future? Two plus years, or can I just let it go right now? That I did. I did all of that. Even though I prepared my reports every week, even though I started to organize new ideas that were coming in every week, I did those two things.

I guess that was three things. Time on the calendar, collecting the ideas and getting all my reports ready. After about 12 weeks, I started to see a change at week 14. Give or take, it might have been 16, weeks of doing this. It clicked. It clicked. And I went, Oh, this is great. And I’ve been doing this for years and years and years.

And at some point. And I realized, Oh, this strategic work, this present retreat of where we’re actually at. What are the obstacles we’re doing? What are the opportunities? How is this going? This is, this is my pulse, not only on the business, it’s the pulse in my industry. It’s the pulse of people in my organization, clients that we serve and want to serve.

Um, our networks, all of these things have important power and I have a better pulse of what’s going on because realistically, what are we doing? We’re dealing with ambiguity, right? What’s going to happen? How’s it going to happen? When it’s going to happen? We’re dealing with rapid change. We’re dealing with what we think is supposed to work versus what we actually have available to us to make the right work done.

And present retreats help us do that. We prioritize the problems. We have the ability to say no more. We empower our people to say, now that we know the priority, what are the things that they can do? And we have deeper conversations. They’re more fruitful. Ideas are, are explored and shaped faster to rule them in or out when they do make it to the present retreat, and they are prioritized out for work to the team.

And now. All these years later, my present retreat is six hours because what I do is I have all this good work time, but the last two hours of the day then, right, because there’s still two hours left in my day, I may take a walk. Most of the time it’s what are the immediate things that I can do right now to set up the rest of the week.

If there are things that I am saying no to. I use that two hours to just get them off my plate. If there are things that I can follow up to and say yes to, that’s the time I do that. Then I also use that time for calls and requests of my team that have come in during that six hours. Team, clients, community, right?

I will return phone calls. I will answer email. I will do all of that so that I can continue to be accessible and that’s how it’s worked for me. I know you’ll find your own path along the way. And I do have, um, a structure and some questions to start. If you like in the show notes, it’s called 10 questions for accountability and it’s the structure of this present retreat.

And I strongly recommend that you try it and stick with it. Up to 16 weeks to give it a good go to see what it could do for you. Two hours of that protected time, commit to it. Let everybody adjust to it. Let yourself adjust to it and have some fun because engaging with our. Strategy is what creates longevity.

Engaging with our strategy ensures that we keep going in the direction, in general, the direction that we want to go. And taking advantage of all of the opportunities that show up now that could be serendipitous that might be outside of our plan might still be the right work right now and to not get in our own way by having The right work to do right now and clarity about saying yes to the right things because we can make a good impact and saying no.

So we have time to do the right work coming back to growth strategy as the direction your company is identifying to decide what work to be done. To ensure market relevance and the business’s future. I think this is incredibly important to remember because as we’ve talked about through this entire program, all the different sections that you’ve been watching, it comes down to adaptability.

It is the truest competitive advantage that you have. What is, uh, your actual uniqueness in the way that you do your work, the work you’re doing, but then your ability to show up and shift and flex and To the unexpected, both good, neutral, and negative. Actually, it should be probably not both. It should be all the neutral, negative, or positive outcomes.

Because we know circumstances can change overnight. Sometimes. Somebody on the leadership team has a situation and they must go quickly to take care of that. Sometimes we’ve had a slow decline in a burnout and when it hits us, we have to take quick action to shift what’s actually going on to create the right momentum again, to ensure the success of the business and its goals.

You see, our circumstances can change overnight. So how can you, your leadership team, face those things that were unexpected? Even if the writing was on the wall, just don’t worry about that. We wasn’t expecting, woke up one morning, stuff changed. How do we deal with that? Could be a storm. Could be something in the economy.

Could be some regulation in your industry. It happened. How do you respond? And that’s the thing. Being able to take care of your company’s needs today and setting yourself up for success. And I’m going to talk a little bit more about that in just a moment, but I want you to think What decisions have I made that are my nonnegotiables?

And when I’ve got my nonnegotiables and the way that we’re doing our work, it allows us to know what that goal is. And the importance of that goal is so that every decision we’re making, how close or far from that goal are we? Are we really on the path, or are we really taking the long, scenic route to get to where we’re going?

Both are great journeys to have. The decision is yours. Are you ready for it, and are you going with your eyes wide open? The right priorities matter, and that’s where you’re going. When your eyes are wide open, and you have this, you can navigate any difficulty that comes up, because of all the previous work.

So if something really weird and crazy happened, and you’re like, I can’t believe this happened, and I’m not ready for it, I challenge you to look again. I challenge you. to take a closer look at the adaptability that you already have. Because every business becomes easier when you know what is nonnegotiable.

Those tricky situations may feel horrible. They may actually be detrimental. And yet, when we know what’s nonnegotiable, we know right away. Our uniqueness matters, our nonnegotiables matter, and so we’re set, and we can evaluate what’s happening around us. And that comes down to our framework. The framework we’re working with matters.

It must be strong. It must be clear. And that’s really the purpose of our program today. The competitive advantage being adaptable. It’s because a strong, flexible framework allows for adaptability. Leverage just the right amount. And I know some of us are thinking, Oh, we want to be gigantic. And that’s cool.

Make sure that your priorities and your work and your unique selling proposition and the commitment that everybody has and the strengths that you’re bringing line up to that. And if you’re not creating something big, That’s great too, because all the same things matter. How do we do our work? What makes us unique?

The way that we work here is going to help us out. What levers we’re using to create efficiency, and how we’re delivering our unique solution. So that. When uncertainty, when change, when unexpected comes, we are ready to navigate it because we’re solid in that. One of the things that is also really important to remember is who matters to listen to.

I was recently participating in a conversation and it was about information and ideas can come from anywhere. And I’m in complete agreement with that. I’ll be real with you. Uh, it can and it can also be overwhelming. So discerning whose voice matters right now. Is there an expert? Is there somebody in your team on your team that is has spent their whole life in this area?

Is it in another situation? It might be the customers matter most. And what are the common things that they’re saying in another case that might be, where are you in some, in your, in your customer’s budget line? And if you’re expendable in their budget line, what are you going to do when they feel like they have to tighten their belts and spend a little less?

So. Information and ideas and data can come from everywhere and your key piece is to listen to who matters about that decision and spending the time in design work, envisioning work with your executive team on your growth strategy that matters to more questions will be asked more information about where we can clarify the data we’re getting.

That can happen as well. And it’s necessary. That cadence of the way that deep work is done matters because then the people who have things to say that matter around our decisions become easier to find in all of the information that’s always coming at us. And you might be thinking, well, I’m not having a problem.

So why do I have to think about adaptability and competitive advantage right now? That’s the best time to. When you don’t need to know how adaptable you are, you’re building the ability to have adaptability. I think that that’s something that we overlook a lot. We think, ooh, everything is good, so we’re going to keep leaning into that.

Well, it could be something as, I, all I can think of are house projects right now. So, so, the related thing might be, well, in the summertime when it’s nice, it’s a little too late to put in a shaded pergola or gazebo. So, Or new deck that what you want that to be done before it’s nice out so that you can enjoy it while it’s nice The opposite is that’s a positive.

That is a positive experience. The opposite is also true. When we know what our levers are, when we know how much flex we have, when we know the gap between what we’re doing and the available resources, when something is unknown, we’ll, that might crop up that knowledge is power. So you’re taking something that actually could be very detrimental or negative and maybe moving it into neutral and starting from a place of Not, holy cow, what is actually going on here?

But, oh, okay, this happened, and here are the resources we have to work with that. How might we proceed today? Because we don’t, we can think about it, we can look forward to it, we can plan for things, but until the thing happens, we don’t get to really test it out. So planning and spending the time when it’s unnecessary allows the ability for you to work deeply within Your business and adapt and flex easily, or how about more easily along the way.

So go out there, be bold, understand what’s adaptive in your company, understand the strengths and the weaknesses that you have, understand your nonnegotiables so that the growth strategy you have set for the longevity of your company in the future can be put into place today. And you understand the place where you’re at and what you have available to adapt with to navigate the unknown along the way.

Every single time I have a conversation, I take away something that I want to share with 25 people. I know when you’re listening to this podcast, you’re also listening for that and will have something that you want to share. In the comments, I would like for you to engage with us.

What is that thing that you want to tell 25 people from this program? Here’s why it’s important. It’s important because, yeah, there are going to be how-tos. Yes, there are going to be steps. Yes, you’re going to be like, Oh! Oh, I wish I wrote that down. I wish I wasn’t doing this, and I could actually take action on that right now.

But guess what, you’re not. So engage right now, because that one thing you want to share with others will be the thing that you can figure out how to incorporate in your business, in your workflow, in your style, tomorrow.

ANNOUNCER 54:40
Jess hosts the Bold Business Podcast to provide insights for building a resilient, profitable business by deeply understanding your growth strategy, ensuring market relevance and your company’s future. It is bold to deeply understand your growth strategy with your host Jess Dewell. Get more information about how to drive solutions and reset your growth mindset at Reddirection.com.