A Clear Chance to Exceed Goals!
I was recently honored to facilitate the Senior Credit Officer Roundtable for the Cincinnati chapter of the RMA – Risk Management Association. Joe Scaglione, US Bank Senior Credit Officer, Mike Bauer, WesBanco Senior Credit Officer, and Nick Yett, Federal Reserve Banking Officer shared their insights on the current and expected challenges and opportunities for commercial business borrowers and lenders. This insightful discussion was provided to approximately 45 banking professionals in attendance.
A key business or banking success strategy is ensuring that you have a clear perspective on where you’re at, where you want to go, and what challenges and opportunities are evident between those two points. This program provided significant information that will assist those in attendance to develop operational strategies that lead to a successful 2024.
Establishing this clarity for your organization is just as critical for your success. But what is Clarity in business and why is it so difficult to define? Business clarity is about gaining an honest comprehensive understanding of where your business is at versus operating with a general perspective, that may or may not be accurate or complete. The difficulty in obtaining true clarity lies in the multitude of factors that need to be considered. To facilitate an efficient process of obtaining clarity it makes sense to engage a third-party business coach. A business coach will bring an outsider’s perspective and provide guidance on identifying the relevant factors, their priority of importance and insights on methods to ensure accurate perspectives.
Through thought leadership they will work with business owners and management to identify the right factors that may impact performance. Don’t be surprised if they start by discussing things you may think are obvious, like, your Vision, Mission, Values, business purpose or “why”, the role of your company within its industry, or your business definition (What problem do you solve?). Making sure that these are current and well understood provides a base upon which all strategic business decisions should be made. It’s likely the most important part of obtaining Clarity.
These topics will lead to a discussion around external factors such as the company’s detailed market definition and a comprehensive description of the products and services offered, coupled with what problems each of them solves. Knowing this will then assist in obtaining clarity around the ideal client or customer for each product or service offering. And let’s not forget about the competition. In my discussions with business owners, it’s surprisingly common that they have a general overview or perspective of their competition, lack a comprehensive understanding of where they fit into the market compared to the competition, and struggle to provide a detailed description of their true competitive advantage. Just reading this may make you realize the level of importance of understanding these factors.
At this point conversations should turn to an internal perspective and start with messaging. Messaging is a component of clarity that often gets overlooked but is vitally important. Every business owner should be very tuned in to the internal messaging throughout the organization. Poor messaging leads to poor understanding, poor understanding leads to poor performance. Messaging also has a direct impact on company culture. And as we all know “culture eats strategy for breakfast”. If the messaging in the company is having a neutralizing or negative effect on motivation and production, it will become part of the culture.
External messaging defines the way your customers, competitors, and the market perceive your company. These perceptions drive their actions, whether those include purchasing, competing, supporting, or referring customers to your company. One of the strongest marketing impacts for your company is word of mouth. Poor messaging leads to poor perceptions which lead to less than positive word of mouth conversations. When thinking about your messaging, internal or external, answer the questions who, what, when, where, why, and how the messaging is deployed and received.
A deep understanding of your team is also important. Everyone behaves and communicates differently and their level of understanding of how these characteristics differ and impact the team will determine team effectiveness. Using tools such as DISC Profile assessments allow for an understanding of each team member and how best to interact with them to achieve results. In addition, you should be discussing each team member’s abilities, strengths, and challenges to ensure the most productive alignment and appropriate team improvement initiatives.
The team should also be well versed and in agreement on the company’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This can be achieved through a team activity that identifies each of these characteristics.
Now you’ve covered the big rocks, and your coach should be guiding you through the details of understanding the Status, Position, and Trends in your financials. This evaluation should include your sales cycles, cash flow, liquidity, profitability, costs, margins, and capital. Just running the numbers isn’t enough. My first job in banking included the analysis of business customer financials and as my first boss and mentor in banking said, “I know what the numbers are, I want you to tell me what they mean.” Your coach should be doing the same thing. If they aren’t doing this on a regular basis, find a better coach.
All of these definitions and understandings lead to a crystal-clear perspective of where your company is at. You and your coach should now be better equipped to discuss where you want the company to be at certain milestones and with that there should be an ability to define the best aligned Goals, Strategies, Measures, and Monitoring systems.
The Clarity process is best when it is completed in the fourth quarter in advance of the upcoming annual plan. If it doesn’t get done in the fourth quarter, it becomes all the more important that it be completed as early as possible in the first quarter of the year. For every day that goes by without the benefit of Clarity the company underperforms.
Through Strategic Orientation I work with business owners and CEOs to ensure they have clarity of position, well-defined goals, and a clear path to accelerating and achieving success. If it’s time to take your company to the next level of success, let’s talk. It’s much easier to exceed your goals with a clear plan and guided execution. Connect and Follow me at https://linkedin/in/RichardBarbercheck or on my website at https://StrategicOrientation.com where you can get more valuable business information.
