December 11, 2010
December 2010 Company Communication
Colleagues,
Its been a few weeks since my last communication. This one focuses around the following:
Growth, RED, Crown Camp, Culture, Delivery, Fish Tank, and the Website.
Growth: In November 2010, we officially doubled our sales of 2009 (and we still have December)! It is also officially our largest year ever in sales (surpassing 2007). This is in large part due to the bigger programs we’re taking to market, built on top of our Whale Hunting strides over the last 2 years. No small feat given the struggles our competition is going through. I know I use it a lot, but Tom Peter’s quote “if you dislike change, you’ll like irrelevance even less” is playing out in a big way for our competition of old. I can’t think of a sales call anybody is going on at Crown by themselves anymore. We’re officially launching boats filled with Shaman, Harpooners, etc to sell. Look for more communication in this area at Crown Camp and into 2011.
RED: Rapid Enterprise Development. The agile development methodology of business strategy. Set your strategic focus and 12 month initiatives and evolve them every 90 days. RED is the second major initiative in the last 2 years that we’ve embarked on and it’s benefiting us with increasing momentum. We’re about to get together again this coming week in Indy to keep the momentum going with our RED strategy reset for Q4 with Keith McFarland. I look forward to revisiting our initiatives and continue the evolution of our strategy as a team. I want to plant a seed here that I hope you’ll think about. It’s about “strengths based management”. Think applying resources with the appropriate strengths towards our 90 day initiatives and evolving them both every 90 days. It fly’s in the face of organizational based management (which sets an organizational structure, defines roles and responsibilities, and maintains them annually). We introduced the idea of evolving the org chart every 90 days along with the RED initiative evolution at a previous Crown Town Hall. If this concept intrigues you, here is a video from Marcus Buckingham to take it a few steps farther: http://www.tmbc.com/case/video. Here are a few quotes from Marcus to further intrigue you: “There are no such thing as great companies. There are great teams and not so great teams. The experience of the team trumps the experience of the company.”
Crown Camp: I’m so excited we’re in a position to bring back Crown Camp. We used to do this annually as a business and stopped it in 2008 and 2009. Well, its back and after planning out the agenda, I more excited now that ever before. We’ll get the chance to be together for 48 plus hours as an entire company to celebrate, learn, communicate, socialize, plan, discuss, evolve, and progress as a group. To be sure, it is a big expense for the company (we’ll spend well over $100,000 putting this on). I’m confident this investment (like Whale Hunting and RED) will be well worth it as an additional spring board into 2011.
Culture: I’ve said this before. Culture is the sum total of the norms, thoughts and actions of the PAST. It isn’t something we can dictate (it is the past, after all). But it is something we can cultivate in the present. Crown Camp is a step in that direction. DRIVE (Dedication, Relevance, Integrity, Vigilant and Evolve) are the values we’re identifying as important to our firm. We’re going to spend quite a bit of time at Crown Camp discussing our current culture, and more importantly, the desired culture. We’ve admittedly ignored this over the last 2 years. No more.
Delivery: We’re nearing that point where we’re all fully utilized (and in some cases over utilized). The paradox of a consulting business: Feast or famine. I’m hearing more of the things that were top of mind in 2007 like “Quality, methodology, discipline, etc” trumping conversations. Let’s not forget our past and the need to focus on these items. I believe that over time it will be easier to focus on these areas because of our longer term programs with clients. This will enable us to standardize even more to the point where we’re even more repeatable in delivery. Repeatability will enable us to strengthen our quality and methodology to the point of true competitive advantage. Don’t allow frustration get in the way of the opportunity we have to move these areas forward.
Fish Tank: For those of you who have made it into the Dayton office recently you will notice a very large, salt water aquarium. Just as the “Crown” in Crown Partners is a reminder of why we started this company (while sitting in the Delta Crown room in Cincinnati airport in 2000, vowing on building a company “to last”), the Fish Tank is meant to serve as a reminder of the transition we’ve gone through as a company. We purchased it from PetSolutions, a company we’re helping to transform and “drive digital advantage” at a programmatic level. It already has a first round of fish. In a couple more weeks, we’ll have another batch, with a final batch in early January. Its presence should serve as a reminder for us all of the good things we’re doing for our clients, and the transformation we’ve gone through ourselves as a company.
Website: The new http://www.CrownPartners.com is live! Wow! That was fast. Our website is finally catching up to our go to market strategy. It reflects our current market position and does a nice job of tying in the Crown practices at the same time. This is not the final step, but the first of several iterations. Look for another evolution in Q1. Thank you Kathryn, Mike and Kyle and all the other folks that put effort into making this happen in such short order.
I thought about signing off without a quote, but just couldn’t (but, you knew that). Thinking back to a communication I sent out at the end of the year in 2009 (almost exactly 12 months ago this week) I’d like to build on that communication. 12 months ago, we were at a tipping point. We had been working very hard to transform our business, in the face of uncertainty. At the bottom of that communication, I asked you to “Believe”. To believe in the positive signs, believe in your team and believe in yourself ( http://ceo.crownpartners.com/2010/10/2009-end-of-year-communcation-12162009.html). So in that spirit, I leave you with a quote to ponder...
“What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve”.
-- Napolean Hill ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Hill).
Its been a few weeks since my last communication. This one focuses around the following:
Growth, RED, Crown Camp, Culture, Delivery, Fish Tank, and the Website.
Growth: In November 2010, we officially doubled our sales of 2009 (and we still have December)! It is also officially our largest year ever in sales (surpassing 2007). This is in large part due to the bigger programs we’re taking to market, built on top of our Whale Hunting strides over the last 2 years. No small feat given the struggles our competition is going through. I know I use it a lot, but Tom Peter’s quote “if you dislike change, you’ll like irrelevance even less” is playing out in a big way for our competition of old. I can’t think of a sales call anybody is going on at Crown by themselves anymore. We’re officially launching boats filled with Shaman, Harpooners, etc to sell. Look for more communication in this area at Crown Camp and into 2011.
RED: Rapid Enterprise Development. The agile development methodology of business strategy. Set your strategic focus and 12 month initiatives and evolve them every 90 days. RED is the second major initiative in the last 2 years that we’ve embarked on and it’s benefiting us with increasing momentum. We’re about to get together again this coming week in Indy to keep the momentum going with our RED strategy reset for Q4 with Keith McFarland. I look forward to revisiting our initiatives and continue the evolution of our strategy as a team. I want to plant a seed here that I hope you’ll think about. It’s about “strengths based management”. Think applying resources with the appropriate strengths towards our 90 day initiatives and evolving them both every 90 days. It fly’s in the face of organizational based management (which sets an organizational structure, defines roles and responsibilities, and maintains them annually). We introduced the idea of evolving the org chart every 90 days along with the RED initiative evolution at a previous Crown Town Hall. If this concept intrigues you, here is a video from Marcus Buckingham to take it a few steps farther: http://www.tmbc.com/case/video. Here are a few quotes from Marcus to further intrigue you: “There are no such thing as great companies. There are great teams and not so great teams. The experience of the team trumps the experience of the company.”
Crown Camp: I’m so excited we’re in a position to bring back Crown Camp. We used to do this annually as a business and stopped it in 2008 and 2009. Well, its back and after planning out the agenda, I more excited now that ever before. We’ll get the chance to be together for 48 plus hours as an entire company to celebrate, learn, communicate, socialize, plan, discuss, evolve, and progress as a group. To be sure, it is a big expense for the company (we’ll spend well over $100,000 putting this on). I’m confident this investment (like Whale Hunting and RED) will be well worth it as an additional spring board into 2011.
Culture: I’ve said this before. Culture is the sum total of the norms, thoughts and actions of the PAST. It isn’t something we can dictate (it is the past, after all). But it is something we can cultivate in the present. Crown Camp is a step in that direction. DRIVE (Dedication, Relevance, Integrity, Vigilant and Evolve) are the values we’re identifying as important to our firm. We’re going to spend quite a bit of time at Crown Camp discussing our current culture, and more importantly, the desired culture. We’ve admittedly ignored this over the last 2 years. No more.
Delivery: We’re nearing that point where we’re all fully utilized (and in some cases over utilized). The paradox of a consulting business: Feast or famine. I’m hearing more of the things that were top of mind in 2007 like “Quality, methodology, discipline, etc” trumping conversations. Let’s not forget our past and the need to focus on these items. I believe that over time it will be easier to focus on these areas because of our longer term programs with clients. This will enable us to standardize even more to the point where we’re even more repeatable in delivery. Repeatability will enable us to strengthen our quality and methodology to the point of true competitive advantage. Don’t allow frustration get in the way of the opportunity we have to move these areas forward.
Fish Tank: For those of you who have made it into the Dayton office recently you will notice a very large, salt water aquarium. Just as the “Crown” in Crown Partners is a reminder of why we started this company (while sitting in the Delta Crown room in Cincinnati airport in 2000, vowing on building a company “to last”), the Fish Tank is meant to serve as a reminder of the transition we’ve gone through as a company. We purchased it from PetSolutions, a company we’re helping to transform and “drive digital advantage” at a programmatic level. It already has a first round of fish. In a couple more weeks, we’ll have another batch, with a final batch in early January. Its presence should serve as a reminder for us all of the good things we’re doing for our clients, and the transformation we’ve gone through ourselves as a company.
Website: The new http://www.CrownPartners.com is live! Wow! That was fast. Our website is finally catching up to our go to market strategy. It reflects our current market position and does a nice job of tying in the Crown practices at the same time. This is not the final step, but the first of several iterations. Look for another evolution in Q1. Thank you Kathryn, Mike and Kyle and all the other folks that put effort into making this happen in such short order.
I thought about signing off without a quote, but just couldn’t (but, you knew that). Thinking back to a communication I sent out at the end of the year in 2009 (almost exactly 12 months ago this week) I’d like to build on that communication. 12 months ago, we were at a tipping point. We had been working very hard to transform our business, in the face of uncertainty. At the bottom of that communication, I asked you to “Believe”. To believe in the positive signs, believe in your team and believe in yourself ( http://ceo.crownpartners.com/2010/10/2009-end-of-year-communcation-12162009.html). So in that spirit, I leave you with a quote to ponder...
“What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve”.
-- Napolean Hill ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Hill).