The One Hour Plan for Growth: How a Single Sheet of Paper Can Take Your Business to The Next Level

Chapter 8. Strategies

What Are the Major Categories of Work to Be Done? (15 minutes)

There is nothing as useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

—Peter Drucker, Father of Modern Management

It's very difficult to lead today when people are not really participating in the decision. You won't be able to attract and retain great people if they don't feel like they are a part of the authorship of the strategy.

—Howard Schultz, Chairman and CEO, Starbucks

Note

Strategies are the high-level choices you make that determine the course your company is going to follow. They answer the question, "How are you going to get from where you are now to realizing your vision?" You may have as many as five strategies.

Serving the Customer Is Always a Winning Strategy

Larry Grill, former vice president of corporate services for Alabama Power, ran an eight-person leadership team that served 65 managers and supervisors, who served the 600-member corporate service staff. These 600 people serve Alabama Power's 6,000 employees, who provide electricity for more than one million residential, commercial, and industrial customers.

Larry explained his leadership philosophy: "The further you go up the corporate chart, the greater your responsibility to serve others. Unfortunately, many leaders lose the ego battle and undermine their own effectiveness. Leadership is best described as servant leadership."

In other words leaders serve employees, who in turn serve customers. Keep this in mind as a ...