The Nine Principles of Business War

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culled from:ceoonline.com

Greg Langston is the President of The Langston Group, which offers a comprehensive 100 Day Leadership and Success system called the Integrated Helix System™. The Integrated Helix System™ helps individuals discover their unique strengths (Distinct Natural Abilities™), core values, and lifetime goals, all with a focus on maximizing potential and work-life balance. The Langston Group's Integrated Helix System™ is offered to executives, professionals and students. The Langston Group also offers the Wisdom Project
Visit www.thelangstongroup.com/wisdom, where you can read their collection of the best of the web, updated daily. You can find articles on Health, Wealth, Wisdom, and Relationships - plus a host of articles on technology, interviews with top CEO's, and the most thought-provoking, leading-edge ideas around. Visit www.Coachingresourcesnetwork.com for additional information.
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How you can maximize and retain the best and the brightest?
Did you know that up to 38% of your managers, supervisors, and team leaders are about to leave? Monster (the premiere online job search company) has seen a 44% increase in new resume postings in the first quarter of 2004. In particular, "confidential" postings from job-seekers hiding the search from their bosses are up 13%.
Do you know who they are?
The Problem
Exit interviews by JWT Specialized Communication show that manager - employee relationships and weak communications are the top reasons for voluntary departure. When there is a gap in alignment between employees, supervisors, and the corporation, you will experience a rise in costs, lowered shareholder value, and increased turnover.
CEOs tell us:
•    I'm concerned about losing good people.
•    I don't have the time to mentor.
•    My key talent is getting burned out.
•    How can I help my key talent prepare for an uncertain future?
•    What is the benefit of ensuring the personal success of my employees?
"Leadership development is about helping people grow, and if I can get people as individuals growing, then I've got a company that grows."
James McNerney, 3M CEO of the Year, Industry Week Magazine
Through McNerney's leadership, 3M has certainly become a company that grows. Just imagine what you and your company could accomplish if your key talent knew what their unique strengths, core values, and lifetime goals were!
Are your employees' goals and strengths aligned with the corporation? Do you know what their goals and strengths are?
Consequences of Inaction
James McNerney and 3M are on to something here. By not addressing the personal growth of your employees, the consequences could be:
•    People may "resign" but not quit;
•    If you do not recruit your employees continuously, someone else will;
•    You will lose the excitement of your employees' first days on the job;
•    Potential loss of market reputation;
•    Loss of shareholder value!
So how can you eliminate unwanted turnover and engage your key talent?
The Roadmap to Domination
True success relies on a clear path, consistency, and innovation. And the roadmap to success can come from unusual - and sometimes forgotten - sources. Take the field manual below, for example.
So what does an army field manual have to do with anything, you ask? Plenty. Business is war. It is a battle to reach your objectives. It is a battle to keep your key talent from leaving and "upgrading" your competitors. Above all, it is a battle to dominate your competition.
We have taken this old field manual and put it in a fresh perspective for the modern business leader.
Army Field Manual 100-5
Blueprint for the Air-Land Battle
The Nine Principles of War
One: Objective
Direct every military operation towards a clearly defined, decisive, and attainable objective.
Two: Offensive
Seize, retain, and exploit the initiative.
Three: Mass
Concentrate minimum essential combat power to secondary efforts.
Four: Economy of Force
Allocate minimum essential combat power to secondary efforts.
Five: Maneuver
Place the enemy in a position of disadvantage through flexible application of combat power.
Six: Unity of Command
For every objective, ensure unity of command under one responsible commander.
Seven: Security
Never permit the enemy to acquire an unexpected advantage.
Eight: Surprise
Strike at a time or place, on in a manner, for which the enemy is unprepared.
Nine: Simplicity
Prepare clear, uncomplicated plans and clear, concise orders to ensure thorough understanding.
The Nine Principles of Business War
Principle One: Objective
Direct all actions towards a clearly defined, decisive, and attainable objective. Real leadership begins at the beginning. To engage your employees, you must communicate precisely what the objectives are. This is a war you cannot win alone.
Principle Two: Take the Offensive
Seize, retain, and exploit the initiative. Once you have determined your objectives (and you have clearly communicated them to your employees), you will have a ready team to seize the opportunities that arise in your market.
Principle Three: Be Effective
Identify your priorities and concentrate minimum essential resources to lower priorities. For this you must identify your priorities and establish the details of your objectives. By minimum essential resources we mean that the focus of time and money must be on the primary objectives without neglecting the small details and lower priorities.
Principle Four: Be Efficient
Determine the most efficient use of your employees. This is where personal growth comes into play. To know precisely who to assign to what, you need a system to determine the unique strengths and goals of your employees. Determine your innovators, brainstormers, organizers, communicators - find the employees with the strengths to match each objective.
Principle Five: Adapt, Improvise, and Overcome
Place your competitors in a position of disadvantage through a flexible application of your resources. With the right person in the right place, your company will be able to maximize each and every opportunity. Take the time to communicate the company's objectives and to discover the strengths and goals of your employees. By doing this, you will have shown them that you believe in them, and they will be engaged when and where you need them.
Principle Six: Unity of Leadership
For every challenge and objective, ensure synergy among all leadership. In essence, this means two things: (1) You now know exactly who should be in a position of leadership for each objective and (2) you communicate your collective goals throughout the company. In one word, alignment. By engaging your employees through invested and unified leadership, you can align your employees with the objectives and goals of the company.
Principle Seven: Retain the Best and Maximize the Rest
Never permit the competition to acquire an unexpected advantage. If you do not actively recruit your key talent, somebody else will. By addressing the personal growth of your employees, the greenest grass will be in your company. Knowing the unique strengths and goals of your employees has another benefit - you will have a clearer picture of those employees who are actively disengaged (or whose strengths are not matched to their job). The real benefit from this will be reduced unwanted turnover, where the costs can add up to more than 150% of the former employee's salary.
Principle Eight: Innovate
Strike at a time or place, or in a manner, for which the competition is unprepared. This principle cannot be properly done if you do not know the unique strengths of your key talent. With the alignment of strength to action, you can maximize the hidden opportunities that arise in your market.
Principle Nine: Simplicity
Prepare clear, uncomplicated plans and clear, concise orders to ensure thorough understanding. By aligning your employees' goals to the company's goals, they will be engaged and ready to act. You must communicate clearly and constantly the mission, values, and objectives of your company.
How can you put all of this into action?
Dominating the market does not come easily. You need a system to determine the unique strengths of your employees and address their personal growth. This insight will let you match ability with action. Are your innovators organizing? Are your organizers innovating? "The right tool for the right job" isn't just for carpenters and mechanics.
Engage your workforce. Help them achieve personal success. This will transform your company into a highly profitable and aligned organization.
Why Family Business Succession Plans Fail & What to Do About It
Jeff Harris is dedicated to empowering families with the skills, tools and resources needed to preserve their timeless values, protect their true wealth and create treasured lives of significance for themselves and their loved ones.
Take Jeff’s Free Family Business Succession Quiz at www.familyfl.com/thequiz.html.
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Many scholarly researchers have concluded that a staggering 90% percent of family businesses fail by the third generation. This sobering statistic becomes more perplexing when you consider the army of attorneys and CPAs available to assist families with cutting edge business succession planning strategies. However my own research reveals a glaring omission in almost every family business succession plan: matters of the heart.
What Do Values, Morals, and Matters of the Heart Have to Do With Successful Business Succession Planning ?
Those few business families that manage the s uccession process successfully have knowingly or unknowingly managed to pass on their values, morals, and positive family heritage. If you talk long enough to any thriving second or third generation business family you'll find they have, to a large degree:
•    Embraced their grandparents' and parents' positive heritage
•    Recognized the positive threads that run through their family that has led to their personal and business success.
•    Realized how they too can benefit from these family traits that they've caught over the years.
How to Successfully Preserve Your Timeless Values, True Wealth & Your Family Business
1. Recognize your family’s core values
Unless you know what's important to you and your family, you can't make sound business decisions that will impact future generations.
Here are some questions to ask yourself when considering your family’s core values:
•    Who was the most influential person in your life between ages 10-15 and why ?
•    What challenges have you faced, and what traits helped you overcome these obstacles ?
•    What does an abundant life mean to you ?
When you uncover what has impacted you in the past and envision your future, you can see emerging patterns that can help guide your business succession planning process.
2. Create your family’s vision statement and family history video
Once you've determined what's important to your family, create your family's vision statement. This four to five-page document is specifically designed to unify and preserve your family. To successfully create your vision statement you must articulate what's most important to you.
Think of your vision statement as a guiding light for your children, grandchildren, and future generations. Help them understand their unique family heritage. Positively influence them to live fulfilling, meaningful lives.
Then create a video of the family history, where each parent and/or grandparent tells their story.
3. Hold a Family Meeting
No matter how well you articulate your family vision statement, it can't do its job if it isn't properly presented to family members. Guide your heirs to self-discover the power and value of the family vision statement by asking them a series of highly targeted questions, such as:
•    If you received a check from your parents for $100,000 today, what would you do with it ?
•    How have you seen your parents demonstrate the values described in the vision statement ?
4. Create a Family Council
The Family Council is a powerful tool to help build family unity and cohesiveness through a shared vision of the family's purpose. Family members are given specific duties and responsibilities, such as :-
•    Investigating how to invest family money together
•    Identifying charities and causes that best align with the family's values
•    Setting up future family council meetings
•    Establishing a budget and agenda
5. Get Your Team Involved
Now that you know what matters most to your family and everyone is on the same page, you need to keep your attorney, CPA, stockbroker, insurance agent, and anyone else assisting with your family business succession plan abreast of your desires. Armed with a copy of your family vision statement, these various professionals can help turn your desires into reality by using their unique skills to create strategies, tactics, and tools designed to bring your vision statement to life.
Plan Today for a Successful Family Business Succession Tomorrow
At this point, it would be normal to think you're okay and your family succession plan will work just fine. That may be the case. But as you age your influence will wane. Sons-in-law and daughters-in-law may not hold the same values and morals dear that have served your family well.
As your influence declines, their influence will grow. That is, unless you have a process in place designed to preserve your values, pass on your wealth and help your family have lives of significance working in a thriving family business. It could mean the difference between a thriving business that continues to bless you and your family or a sad statistical footnote.