Category Archives: Planning

Are we there yet? The Secret to Keeping your Company on Track

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Road in the rural woods

It’s not how far you have gone, it’s how much further you need to go to get there.

By: Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

Every summer as a kid, my family would pile in the car and drive to beautiful Lake Champlain, Vermont for a week of fun and relaxation.  The car ride itself felt like a quick detour to the 9th circle of a place a little less nice than Lake Champlain.  This was due to my brother and I repeatedly asking my Dad, “Are we there yet?” (Ten minutes into a 6 hour drive).  Sound familiar?  This scenario plays itself out every week at companies all over the world at the dreaded update meeting.

The Problem
You and the team went through the effort to prepare a good plan for charting how you will get to your next milestone.  One day after publishing the plan, it is out of date.  The key here is then updating your plan with new information and then moving on.  When a lot of effort is spent fiddling with the plan and keeping it updated, a lot of time is wasted on  ‘managing the plan’ rather than focusing on getting the things done that are going to move you closer to reaching your goal.  At the end of the day, you really need to know what is left to do more than what you have already done (eg you really want to know how many more miles left to go before getting to the lake than how many you have already travelled).

The Secret
It’s how you ask for progress updates.  The use of Gantt charts, lists and other planning and project management tools can make this seem like an exact science.  You plug in a number and out comes the new finish date.  The problem is that most of us are terrible estimators of how close we are to finishing unless there is a hard metric to provide guidance.  So here is how you ask for feedback that will be the most accurate and will require the least amount of time and effort on everyone including yourself.

Cut and paste these lines into the Request for Updates e-mail that you are sending your team.

  1. What tasks on the list assigned to you are now completed (100% done)?
  2. Which tasks have you started?
  3. Of those tasks that you have started, how many days will you need before it is done?

Sounds simple and it is.  The key here is in the last question.  When asked in this way, a person will have a much better idea of how much time they need rather than the percent complete of the task.  (Professional project management tools will automatically calculate the percent complete when you enter this information – you will find that the percent complete will go up and down over time until this is finished) Each person will automatically factor anything else that they are working on or delays or problems that would affect getting the task completed.  This whole process should take no longer than five to ten minutes of effort from the team including yours to update and send out the updated plan.

Quick Tips:

  1. Cancel all update meetings.
  2. Send out requests for progress updates via e-mail using the 3 lines I suggested above. (Once every 2 weeks or more often as you approach a critical milestone)
  3. Update the plan with progress and send out to the team.

Picture Credit:  © Hamiltongraphics | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos

What You Can Learn from an Orchard about Growing your Business

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Apples

Approach building your company like planting an orchard. Be sure that you know what your customers want today but also a few years down the road as well.

By:  Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

What does growing apples have to do with building a life science company?  It turns out that there are a lot of similarities if you look closely.  A successful orchard requires a huge investment in planning (what variety of trees, how much of each, etc.), effort (a lot of work before the first harvest), finances (cost of land, labor, farm equipment etc.) and time (trees need a number of years to mature before your first harvest) to become successful.  The successful orchard keeper needs to have a good assessment of what types of fruit his customers will want in a few years and also how he can differentiate his own business from other orchards in the area to compete successfully.  The leadership of a strong life science business needs to think in the same terms.  What need will your offering(s) fulfill in the future and why will customers come to you rather than to your competitors?  With an orchard, once you plant the trees, you are now committed to your view of the future market for your products and now everything is about nurturing your trees until you have your first harvest.  With a startup, once you have selected a product and/or service, all of your efforts will be to get it successfully to market.  The orchard keeper cannot rip up trees next year if he thinks that the market for his fruit has changed.  Likewise, most startups do not have the funds (or time) to scrap a product offering once they are working to get it to market.  The lesson here is, make sure to spend enough time to understand your market, your customers and how you will successfully sell and then commit to a laser-like focus for getting that offering to market as soon as possible.

Tips for Building a Strong Startup:

  • Plant Trees:  Build your company for strong and steady future business.  Whether you are offering a platform, service or a one-time sale of a large instrument, referrals are the key to efficiently growing profitably.  Winning new customers is costly so getting referrals from happy customers is like harvesting apples in the fall.  The time, effort and investment you put into winning strong early customers will pay off as they share their experience with your future customers.  Building a scalable infrastructure that consistently and efficiently delivers the goods that delight your customers will insure success in the long run.
  • Build a Barrier to Entry:  It takes a while to plant and nurture an orchard.  However, once your trees have matured, you will have happy customers coming on a regular basis.  Building strong relationships with key opinion leaders, establishing preferred vendor status with organizations and establishing your company as a market leader in the technology is a lot like planting new trees.  There is a lot of prep work up front and the rewards are not immediate but once you have done this, this makes it very difficult for competitors to come into the market later.
  • Plant some Pumpkins Too:  As a startup, you need to start generating revenues as soon as possible to prove out your business.  Your team will need to put a lot of focus on getting your first sales and creating happy customers.  Many startups make the mistake of neglecting to build in some time for creating a scalable and profitable business.  You will be planting and harvesting an annual crop like pumpkins to do this. Developing a product road map that contains both near term (pumpkins) and long term (apples) offerings will allow you to get to market faster and get the insights you need to insure a better outcome with your later prospects. However, the key here is using what you have learned about your customers, their wants and needs and enthusiasm for your offering to build an infrastructure that will allow you to maintain the high level of customer satisfaction that will lead to referrals from your customers (See first point – Plant Trees).

Take Home Points:

  • Start building relationships with key opinion leaders and strategic partners early (even before the launch of your first product or service).
  • Use the insights you gain of your customers’ wants and needs from early sales to guide your efforts as you scale the business.  (e.g. if you will start selling using distributors, make sure that you build in an infrastructure (tech support, technical inside sales, social media outreach, etc.) to maintain the level of support and service that your customers valued in the early days).
  • Everything you do and every interaction you have with the public will shape your brand.  A strong positive brand can be a powerful barrier to block your competitors.  Clearly identify the brand identity you would like to have and make sure that you and everyone in the company reinforce this in everything they do and with every interaction with the public.

Picture Credit:  © Sofiaworld | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

Startups: Strategy or Innovation? Three Views

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By:  Michael Kaiser

eyeglasses on an eyechart

Having a clear vision and mission for your startup is not enough. Entrepreneurs with an actionable strategy have the best chance of leading their company to success!

Rather than “reinventing the wheel” I chose the
following three options to the question.

VIEW # 1

In a recent article by Ken Favaro, a Senior Partner at Booz and Company, (How Leaders Mistake Execution for Strategy (and Why That Damages Both)) explains that:

“When discussing strategy, executives often invoke some version of a vision, a mission, a purpose, a plan, or a set of goals. I call these “the corporate five” (see exhibit, below). Each is important in driving execution, no doubt, but none should be mistaken for a strategy. The corporate five may help bring your strategy to life, but they do not give you a strategy to begin with.

Before they get to the corporate five, companies need to address five much more fundamental, and difficult, questions. Let’s call them the “the strategic five:

1. What business or businesses should you be in?
2. How do you add value to your businesses?
3. Who are the target customers for your businesses?
4. What are your value propositions to those target customers?
5. What capabilities are essential to adding value to your businesses and differentiating their value propositions?”

Corporate5

Favaro reaches the following conclusion to the above:

“They can’t answer those questions because often they haven’t asked them in a very long time, if at all. Instead, the corporate five have become a mask for strategy. When that happens, the real substance of strategy—making deliberate and decisive choices about where to play and the way to play—is lost. There is no foundation for decision making and resource allocation. Everything becomes important. Indiscriminate cost-cutting and growth become the order of the day and, sooner or later, with no strategy as a guide, a business drifts”

VIEW # 2

By contrast,here is a recent article by Tania Prive in the Forbes Magazine issue of March 29, 2013 with the title “Top 11 reasons startups succeed”. Here are her titles for those 11 reasons

“1) Vision- 2) Speed -3) Budget Masters – 4) Social Skills – 5) Discipline – 6) Determination -7) Ability to adapt to Change – 8) Fundraising Skills – 9) Unwavering belief – 10) Master of time management -11) Execution”

At the end of the article we read that “…successful startups are always looking for opportunities to do something better by thinking outside the box and constantly questioning the status quo”

Both authors make a good case: Favaro, with a more analytical emphasis on established companies and Prive from fundraising and personal abilities needed in order to lead to a successful outcome. This is not a contest between two authors, but rather a choice that is left to the reader to determine if a startup is purely based on innovation, and thus, why and when should it dovetail with strategic concepts that fit more established companies.

VIEW #3

The answer and/or solution to such a conundrum may be found in an article authored by Uzi Shmilovici in Techcrunch (‘Strategy For Startups: The Innovator’s Dilemma’). Here are some excerpts:

“Strategy. Unfortunately, it suffers from a bad reputation among startups. It is associated with consultants who are paid millions of dollars only to come back with a two-by-two matrix of animals. Not that there is anything wrong with it. Some of my best friends are consultants.

However, strategy is crucial for startup success. Startups usually operate in an environment of constrained resources while competing with strong incumbents. Hence, the right strategy can be a matter of life and death…

The first concept we’ll look at is the “Innovator’s dilemma”, a term coined by Clayton Christensen from the HarvardBusinessSchool. The innovator’s dilemma discusses a situation in which there are established incumbents in a specific market who are investing in sustainable innovations — these are incremental improvements to an existing product. Usually, they are doing that to support the incremental needs of their customers

They are then faced with a new entrant to the market that introduces a disruptive innovation. The new entrant attacks only a small part of the incumbents’ business, usually the one in which the margins are very low. At this point, the incumbent decides not to compete in this business anymore because they don’t want to invest in defending their least profitable business and/or are afraid of cannibalizing their main business. As a result, the new entrant is then able to capture a significant market share in that specific segment… it is important to understand the types of disruptive innovation that exist. There are four: a new product, a new technology to produce a product, a new way to distribute a product and a new way to provide services. The entrant can introduce a disruptive innovation along one or more of these dimensions.”

And last but not least:
What do you, the reader/analyst of the above views, believe to be the one that more closely reflects your opinion?

Picture Credit:  © Webking | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

Is Planning a Waste of Time? Debunking the Myths, Planning for Success

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Plans in wooden house beams

Whether you are building a house or growing your business, having a good plan will keep you on track!

By: Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

Planning done badly is a horrible waste of time.  However, not having a plan at all is even worse. Many of the following myths have contributed to the bad reputation that planning and effective project management has sometimes unfairly received.

            • “There is no value in planning. I know what needs to be done.”
              -A good plan will help you to identify and mitigate any risks that could cost you serious schedule delays, wasted money and unhappy stakeholders (eg investors, customers, team members).  By setting some time aside to create a plan, you will be forced to critically think about each step of the effort that needs to be completed to successfully achieve your goal.  In the process, you may discover additional needs or risks that may have an impact on your success.  This process allows you to essentially simulate how you would wish things to go before you have committed yourself, the team and your money.
      • “We have already started so it’s too late to start planning now.”
        -In an ideal world, you would first develop the perfect plan and then implement it.  This almost never happens.  Don’t just stop everything to develop your plan.  Take some time and work on this while you continue with your day-to-day activities.  The fact that you have already started will provide you with better insights about what needs to be done, and the true effort and costs that will be incurred
  • “There is no point in planning since there are too many unknowns.”
    -The purpose of a good plan is not to predict the future but to highlight the connections and inter-dependencies between all of the things you need to get done.   If your R&D team encounters some technical issues that you had not foreseen, how will this affect your product launch (ie how long will the delay be?)  Knowing the impact of both lucky breaks and frustrating delays will allow you to make reasonable changes to the plan to mitigate the effects of the unknown.  Letting your customers or investors know about a delay before it happens is much better than missing your deadlines.

Never be late or over budget again!
With a good plan, you will be able to see any missed deadlines or additional costs well before they happen.  As changes to the original plan occur (you should keep updating on a regular basis) you will be able to see any conflicts well before they happen.  This gives you the chance to find other solutions to keep things on track or if this is not possible, to let your stakeholders know about what is coming.  In this way, you can come to a new agreement on the budget and time required to get things done right.  You are not late or over budget, you are in control!

Picture Credit:  © Blueice69caddy | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos

5 Easy Steps to Effective Brainstorming

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By Andrew Johnson, Ph.D.

Brainstorming is a little like crowdsourcing today, getting as many opinions and inputs from a group of people to solve an issue. When done poorly this turns into a creative waste if time.  But if done correctly, this can be a transformative force for change resulting in not only new ideas but actionable steps toward achieving your goal.

Step 1:
Create and send an agenda that clearly states what you expect to achieve and how the meeting will be conducted to participants.  The following is an example of what you should include:

Example Agenda for First Meeting:

  • This meeting will be to discuss how we will … (e.g. boost sales by 20%, solve technical problem A, identify the next killer application, etc.)
  • Introduction of issue – 5 min (You)
  • Brainstorming session – 40 min (All)
  • Identifying next steps and meeting wrap up – 15 min (You)

Note:  By sending out the goal of the brainstorming session prior to the meeting, the participants will have a chance to think about this on their own prior to the meeting which improves the quality of the ideas.

Step 2:
Start the meeting by writing the identified goal on a large piece of paper or in the center of a large whiteboard or PowerPoint slide and circle it. Be sure to let everyone know that the meeting minutes will be used to begin formulating an action plan and to set priorities for any follow-up brainstorming meetings (there should be at least one more) and that the final fifteen minutes of the meeting will be used to identify actions to be taken.

Step 3:
Lead the brainstorming session by asking for major areas that need to be considered. Write these topics around the central circled goal and circle them as well.  Then ask for what should be done at each of these focus areas by asking for 3 or more and for each of the sub-categories.  This should be linked to each of the subcategories.

Note:  Make sure that you ask someone else to take minutes for the meeting including the names of all attendees.  The meeting leader should be moderating the session, updating the figure on the board/screen and keeping the team on track and on time.

Network diagram after first brainstorming meeting showing concept relationships

Sample brainstorm meeting graphic after first meeting. Identified goal in center white circle, first level major areas in blue and second level details in yellow.

Step 4:
Take a picture of the diagrammed feedback from the brainstorming session and send this along with the meeting minutes to all participants.  Ask each of them to select the top 3 subcategories that they think would have the best chance of achieving the circled goal in the center of the figure.

Note:  This is a critical step since not everyone is comfortable speaking out in a group setting and this will allow you to get unbiased feedback from the quieter participants.

Step 5:
Take the top two or three highest priority sub-categories to use for a follow-up meeting to build the plan.  This meeting should only include those team members that will be important to completing the goals of each of the sub-categories identified from the first meeting.
This meeting will start with a slide with a subcategory on the top of each.  Under that will be each of the 3 or more actions that the team identified from the last meeting.

Example Agenda for Second Meeting:

  • This meeting will be to identify everything that needs to be done to achieve the goals in the subcategories we identified at our last meeting. – 5 min (You)
  • Cycle through each of the actions for categories and identify all tasks and actions that will need to be done to insure success. – 40 -45 min. (All)

Use the feedback from the second meeting to create a plan to solve the original problem.  Creating an actionable plan will insure that you and the team will get the most out of this exercise.

This method will allow a team leader to garner the best thinking from their team on a given issue while keeping this from devolving into a useless diversion.  By keeping the agendas clear and with the group and individual inputs to this exercise in place, you will be able to get better, more thorough input and ideas for moving things along.  By breaking this process into two meetings, you will get the widest number of opinions at the first one and end up with a focused and prioritized plan of action from the second one.

Network diagram showing connections between topic, tactics and tasks

Sample brainstorm meeting graphic after second meeting. Feedback from the first meeting indicated that Tech Support was the highest priority and this branch was selected for the second meeting. Identified goal in center white circle, first level major areas in blue and second level details in yellow. Actions needed to achieve the second level details (yellow) are shown in red.

Taking This to the Next Level
There are professional software tools to facilitate brainstorming. (Brainstorming Software Review) These tools make the visual diagramming process fast and easy  and often allow direct conversion of the ‘mind map’ to lists in Excel, Gantt charts and meeting notes.

Picture Credits: © Andrew Johnson | UpStart Life Sciences