FROM THE BLOG

I Want to do for Strategy what Chip and Joanna Gaines did for Shiplap

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that six years ago, you had no idea what shiplap was. Neither did I. But thanks to Chip and Joanna Gaines and their hit HGTV show FixerUpper, shiplap is now part of the national consciousness. Everyone wants at least an accent wall’s worth of six-inch, horizontal wood goodness in their home.

Even though shiplap has been around for decades, it took someone to champion it – to sing its praises to a new generation of homeowners. I want to do for strategy what Chip and Joanna Gaines did for shiplap.

I love strategy –

Truthful evaluation, thoughtful options and deliberate actions to move an organization from the current state to the desired state.

Leaders in every organization feel the tension of the gap between where they are and where they want to be. That tension is supposed to be there. It’s one of the things that gets us to the office, shop, kitchen or factory every morning. But tragically, many leaders feel the pressure to close the gap but lack the tools to make it happen. Leaders randomly marshal the resources of traditional functional areas like marketing, production, finance and HR to transform the organization and close the gap, but in the absence of an overarching discipline that coordinates the objectives and work of these functional areas, the transformation is uneven and short-lived and the organization reverts back to business as usual. Businesses of 6, 8 or 10 people need the same overarching discipline, just like businesses of 6, 8 or 10 thousand.

That’s why I love strategy. It’s the neglected discipline – the one that, when employed, spurs conversation, creates collaboration and generates a singular focus for the organization. It’s the discipline that deliberately and methodically moves the organization to where it wants to be and, in the process, engages and builds up everyone involved.

Just like every homeowner who says, “I’ve got to have some shiplap in my house”, if I can get a business owner or manager, no matter the size of their enterprise, to say, “I have to incorporate strategic planning into my organization”, I’ve done my job. And if I have the privilege of helping them in that process, that’s a bonus.

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