OS 006 - Hugh’s 5 Pillars of Success

This session today is key. I am going to give you my five pillars of success. Each of these pillars is essential. Leave out one of them, and you are limiting your success by at least 50%. Over the 50 years of working with social entrepreneurs, I have found that there are many gaps. The series “Orchestrating Success” is about identifying those gaps, finding the missing elements that are limiting success for each one of us, and filling those gaps with knowledge, systems, and competent team members. Today, five pillars of success. I am going to give the five in a quick overview, talk about each of the five, and then summarize at the end what to do about it. Here are the five pillars. Number one is strategy, the absolute essential foundation of any organization, any business, any charity, any church. There must be a road map. I call it a solution map. Where do you want to be, and how are you going to get there? Pillar number one is strategy. We will talk more about it later. There was a session on it earlier, and we will go into detail on different elements. Number two is leadership. That is us. That is you; that is me. It won’t happen unless we equip ourselves to make it happen. Transform the idea. Transform the organization. It begins with transforming the self. Three is team. Surrounding yourself with highly competent people and getting out of their way. Four, financial. We must have somebody that understands finances, that is external to the organization or to our brain, somebody whom we pay to watch the dollars. I have seen lots of people raise lots of money and go bankrupt because they didn’t have somebody on the team with this expertise planning, evaluating, and monitoring the financial aspects of what we are doing. The last one is a support system. Every successful businessperson, performer, athlete, every successful person has a coach, a mentor, a support system around them, a combination of those. Let’s get started. Strategy. If you didn’t listen to it earlier, go back and listen to the session on strategy. Strategy is what we are going to do, when we are going to do it. It unlocks the key for team performance. People know when to be engaged when they have a strategy. They know what they are supposed to do when they are supposed to do it and what the result looks like. The strategy is your road map from here to where you want to be. Strategy is a plan that you develop. It’s not a business plan; it’s an operational plan. In my world, a business plan is a financial document that you share with a bank or an investor. That is just a footprint, an overview, a snapshot of what your business looks like. A strategic plan includes strategy; it is an operational plan. There is a quantifiable difference. Understand the difference. Build your strategy. Plan your work, work your plan. That is the only way. Strategy talks about your long-term strategic objectives. That is 3-5 years out. What is your target? Where will you be? Define the future in the present tense. One year, short-term goal. Define the future in present tense. One-month milestones. Those are 12 accomplishments during the year. Weekly to-dos. Everything so far has been defining the future in present tense. The weekly to-dos are tactical. Many leaders start here. Here is the tactical part. We have not got the long-term vision, the mid-term vision, or the short-term vision in place. All we are doing is tactics. We have so many tactics that they ultimately have the risk of cancelling each other out. We duplicate efforts and have to repeat actions because we didn’t do them in order. Sequence is key. These tactics are in sequence. You have a linear plan. The secret sauce for me is DVDs, Daily Value Deliverables. I suggest three goals as the limit for most organizations. Most leaders can manage three. I think there are three areas: financial, operational, and what you are delivering.