Uncommon Clarity, Inc.
April 2010

Greetings!

Welcome to the Clear Thoughts™ newsletter from Uncommon Clarity

In This Issue
  • Can We Help You?
  • Strategic Thoughts - Top Twelve Perils
  • People Thoughts - Hire Warnings
  • Parting Thoughts - The Golden Rule in the Age of Diversity

  • Strategic Thoughts - Top Twelve Perils

    Which best describes your strategic predicament and attendant risk?

    1. You offer compelling value to a rapidly growing market

    Biggest Risk: You aim too low and succeed - while others swoop in and capture the lion's share of the opportunity
    2. You see dwindling demand for your products and services
    Biggest Risk: You wait too long to take a sharp right turn toward new opportunities while cash, leverage, resources, and opportunities dwindle as well

    3. You have many, many ideas

    Biggest Risk: You spread resources thinly or wallow in indecision, both of which ensure you move nothing of significance forward
    4. You are headed on a new or greatly expanded trajectory
    Biggest Risk: Your current organization is the wrong organization for your new goals and is simply not up to the new challenges

    5. You are ambitious and always ahead of the curve

    Biggest Risk: The organization never catches up to the vision and fails to deliver the expected quality on time
    6. You are risk averse or content with the status quo
    Biggest Risk: Change continues, as it is wont to do, and success fades while you keep doing the same old thing

    7. You do strategic planning regularly and have a fat binder to prove it

    Biggest Risk: The fat binder collects dust and you do what you would have done if you hadn't done any strategic planning at all
    8. Your operations are truly excellent or will be soon
    Biggest Risk: Your focus on operations detracts from your ability to be strategic or to make internal concerns secondary to external realities

    9. You have a sound opportunity but struggle to translate your vision into realistic plans and profitable results

    Biggest Risk: You spend big money, make a gallant effort, but experience little success
    10. You are highly competent, proud, always learning, and making steady progress on all your initiatives
    Biggest Risk: You are too competent, capable, and proud to see the ways in which you are holding yourself back, slowing progress, or missing opportunities

    11. You have the coolest new invention since sliced bread

    Biggest Risk: It's cool but there is no market for it, at least not at a price and volume that would make it profitable
    12. You are too consumed by the daily grind to think strategically
    Biggest Risk: You burn-out while someone else eats your lunch

    13. You are wondering why I am providing a thirteenth item when the title is Twelve Perils

    Biggest Risk: You are too concerned with details and consistency to see the big picture, shift your perspective, find new opportunities, and leap the chasms leaders must leap

    Identifying potential problems is the first step in preventing and eliminating them. What can you do to minimize your strategic risks?

    Contact us at 413-527-3737 if you would like to discuss your predicament, perils, and possibilities.


    People Thoughts - Hire Warnings

    Many businesses are gearing up to meet recovering demand. This is important to you whether you are hiring or not.

    If you are hiring:

    • Don't let loyalty drive you to re-hire an under- performer unless providing opportunities for under-performers is part of your mission.
    • Rethink your needs before simply filling the same old positions using the same old criteria.
    • Hire talent over skill and experience. Skill and experience can be acquired, talent can not. (For more about talent, read Talent Is Not Overrated, Nor Is It What You Think.)
    If you are hiring, now is a great time to sign some top talent. Careful sifting is as important as ever, of course, and likely more difficult because of the sheer numbers of potential applicants.

    If you aren't hiring:

    • Don't forget that others are.
    • Don't let those "exceptional recession actions," such as salary and benefit cuts and responsibility increases, become the "new normal."
    • Demonstrate a win-win attitude in all employee relationships.
    If times have been tough at your company, especially if you have treated your employees as if they were lucky to have a job at all, it may be too late to prevent a mass exodus as hiring picks up. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try!

    Give us a call at 800-527-0087 if you would like to talk about the likelihood of an exodus at your company and what you can do about it.


    Parting Thoughts - The Golden Rule in the Age of Diversity

    Do onto others as you would have others do onto you, but keep in mind the possibility they don't appreciate the same things you appreciate!


    Best regards,


    Ann's Signature



    Ann Latham

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    � 2010 Ann Latham. All rights reserved.


    Can We Help You?
    Ann Latham

    Coming Soon:

    Meeting Mastery - How to Cut Meetings in Half or Cancel Them Altogether, a new audio seminar by Ann Latham.

    Interested in bringing the Meeting Mastery workshop to your company so you can save time and money and get better results? Call now to schedule before we get booked up!

    Other things on your mind? Give us a call at 413-527- 3737 and let's talk about how we can help you get better results faster.

    Media Sightings:

    Inc. quotes Ann in How to Manage Multiple Locations

    Training Magazine quotes Ann in Extreme Training

    Human Service Net quotes Ann in Focus on Job Descriptions, Not Job Titles

    Project Manager Planet quotes Ann in Natural Born Project Managers: Myth or Reality?

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