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[music] Penny Crow: I'm Penny Crow and
I am one of the trainers for UT PDC and there's a lot of information
in your folder. And we are not going to try to get through all 16 of those slides.
And thank you for coming today because not everybody would find
strategy an exciting subject. I had to laugh when Jennifer mentioned that about writing
earlier, because I can relate to that. The reason why
I'm so passionate about this subject is that there is a lot of misconception
from companies that believe that strategy is just based on the leadership
and that it is an annual exercise. So what I want you to get out of today
is that strategy is actually part of your daily operations. As an
RHIA, my background originally was in healthcare. And after spending
almost 29 years in healthcare, I was not having fun.
And in 2007, I decided to go back
into I&O Psychology, which is essentially business psychology
and help study why we do things in the workplace that we do. And now I am working on my
doctorate as a result of that. And so a lot of what I teach now for UT PDC
is how to teach others to think strategically.
Because that is not a.. My study, my research is in
that can be acquired skill. There are some people who either they are
strategic or they are not. I believe with some training you can learn how to be strategic
and that's what this particular course is about because what happens
is a lot of times companies will spend a lot of money on consultants.
And if you interview any of your staff, they are going to tell you
I've told my boss the same thing and now you are getting paid as the consultant to do it. Right?
Have you heard that complaint? Okay, so the challenge of strategic thinking is
how do you take those types of issues and make it part of a different view point.
And so what we are going to talk about today, is how to do some
strategic thinking and how to be objective about that. This is a leadership
skill and once you get into leadership, strategy is not something
that can be delegated. Strategic thinking has to be at the leadership
level, whether it's at the CEO level or at a department management level.
Strategy is not something that should be delegated, so keep that in mind as we get through
this today. And the whole idea is that we just want to learn from different perspectives.
So this is how when you normally look up.. if you look up wikipedia
or you look up in webster's, you are going to see that strategic thinking is the 'intentional
and deliberate process of reviewing, evaluating and creating tomorrow's
business.' The way that I define it is
looking from an objective view point. And so all about strategy is
about the whole idea that how can you look at something from a different position.
So whether you are looking at it from your staff's position or from your
customer's position, or from, maybe your boss's, if you are managing up,
position, to be able to look at it differently. And that's what we are going to talk
about today. Talking about power of questions.
In an actual training session, if this was a classroom type
situation where we were going into for UT PDC, we would actually talk about how do you
learn how to ask the right questions. Because that doesn't normally come naturally to
some people. If you think about it, if they are just coming out, if you're dealing
with new young grads, they are told not to even ask questions.
They are used to being told to do what you told them to do, not ask questions.
And so we have to reteach people how to ask questions. So we are going to talk
a little about that today. But there is an entire workshop that can be designed through exercises
of helping people learn how to ask those questions. Okay?
We don't have time to do that today unfortunately. I always start out
with know what the why is of the company. If you have not taken advantage
of the free Ted.com videos, you are missing a lot of free education
there. I love ted.com. I'm a
learning educational junkie, I love to learn. And what Simon Sinek said
is that we talk about what we do as companies, and we talk about
how we do it, but we don't teach our employees why we do what we do
as a company. And so everything that we do in strategy
you want to go back to that why. Or in the fancier words, the business
requirements. Why do you do what you do in this company?
Why did you get into business? And some of the best companies
when you look at their research and why they succeed, the common theme is
they never forgot why they do what they do. And so that's when it comes to
strategy, you got to get back to sometimes what we call the basics.
So what I want to talk to you today is about looking from a different view point. I'm going to use this
chair as an example. What happens is, is that leadership should stay up here.
Okay, the top. But what happens is that a lot of times we
get stuck down here and we are looking at the daily operations
and as leaders, it's important that you always stay in a different perspective.
So you have to raise yourself up. So one of the number one
jobs of a CEO level or a department manager wanting to go up the chain
of command is how to stay in this perspective. And that's what this
particular material is about, is to help you learn how to stay up here
and not get stuck down here. And we all do it at some points in our career
where we start getting back into that daily operations and getting stuck in there.
So, for the 'P' because we are going to talk about standing on a pillar. That's where the
this comes from, we are going to be on a pillar. So the 'p' is what do you want the
outcome to be? What are some of the things that
make us different? And when it comes to timeframe,
you have to remember the timeframe is not the same for everybody. You're
traditional strategist will tell you.. get 3 to 5 years out.
You need to know what your company is going to do in 3 to 5 years. Well if your company can't think more than
90 days in advance, at least have a plan for those 90 days.
An example I use a lot for that is, I spent 5 years in New Mexico.
And I learned there that tomorrow does not mean
that manana does not mean tomorrow. It means not today, probably not tomorrow, I'll get back
with you when I feel like doing it. Okay? So what I learned from that
experience was that manana, tomorrow, that time becomes a personal thing.
So when you are thinking strategically and you're thinking from up here, from the top of the
pillar, you've got to know what time frame you are talking about. And your employees
need to know what that time frame is. One of things about strategic thinking
is that you do have the answers. Now this is different than a lot of, you know, if you got
those consultants coming in, they tell you what to do. Okay.
The view point that I have taken is that you have the answers, you work for that company.
A lot of times, you helped create that company. And this way you know
what the answers are. But we forget to ask the questions.
And that's why we get stuck in the daily operation minutiae
instead of up above, because we've stopped asking the questions that we had the answers
to. And so in the strategic thinking that we are imposing
here is that you get back to asking the basics. Get back to asking
the questions. And I saw that this is also on the next trainer's
material, too, about being intentional. In the research that we've done on
strategy, we know that you can either be intentional and deliberate or
you're going to be a victim, it can't be both. You are either one way or the
other with how you lead your company. And strategy has a lot to do
with that. And so you want to look at the intention of people, processes and technology
and then I want to show you these two words, creative and reactive. Does anybody know
notice anything about those two words?
They have all the same letters. They are an anagram. Okay?
And so as an anagram, you can choose in the way that you strategically think
are you going to be creative or reactive? You can't be
creative if you are down here in the daily minutiae. And so I challenge you
if you haven't got on your calendar a daily strategy session with yourself,
start out with 10, 15 minutes and work up to an hour everyday.
After awhile, if you are so busy, you may have to just go to once a month.
I have mine on the 5th of every month, it doesn't matter what day of the week it is. You know,
what day it falls on. The 5th of every month, I have to look back and I look to see where
have we been, where do I want to go? But you've got to be able to
be intentional and deliberate about it. If we are not intentional and deliberate with how we spend that
time that we talked about, somebody is going to take it from you. I promise you
they will fill it in. You're nodding your heads, you get
it. Here we talk about leadership,
and a lot of times when you go into a training session, you'll have people who
have the big leaders, the CEO, the COO, the CFO
if it's a hospital healthcare setting, you might have the Chief Nursing Officer.
I'm talking about anybody who has leadership.
You need to look in your organization and identify who are your informal leaders.
Trust me they're there. These are the people that when
organizations make a decision, the employees look to see
what this person is going to do before they act. It doesn't matter
what the CEO or the big boss said, what's this person going to do. So you want address
your informal and informal. You want to walk and talk the why.
As leaders, if we don't know what the why is, your employees
don't know why they are doing what they are doing. So you've got to stay in focus on that.
Going to keep you with an objective view point, and remember that's how we define strategic thinking
is how do you remove yourself up and above so you can always be from an objective view
point. Okay? Language.
A while ago, Marsha talked about the different language, or the different
communication styles that are used. In this particular example, I use
a lot, do ya'll remember that comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes?
Before I had kids, I thought that was hilarious. And then after
my son came along, I decided that comic strip just isn't all the funny.
Okay? My definition changed.
The language that you have to use has to stay something that's standing.
I also use the example a lot, in the healthcare setting, because I do a lot of training in healthcare, too,
in that, if you have words that, in your
industry that can shift over time, you don't want to use those words.
And I'll give you an example in the healthcare world. We used to say
the patient is sleeping. And then the attorney's would have us on the witness stand
and they'd say, well, how do you know the patient is sleeping?
So we would change our language to say, the patient is resting quietly
with their eyes closed. And so a few years later, the attorney's would say
you don't know if your patients are sleeping? Okay?
So we responded by letting the attorneys tell us what language
we were going to use. So you got to make sure that when you are using a language that it's
consistent. The other thing is that you want to use language that is timeless.
So in the Calvin and Hobbes example, what was funny back then twenty
four years ago, isn't so funny now. Same type thing, okay?
And then you want to make sure that you have the same terminology. Especially since there are some
languages, or some .. I'll never forget the first time I used
I heard the word bad, meaning good, and I showed my age
because I didn't know that's what that meant. I think my son said,
Hey mom, Derrick said we had a really bad stereo. And I said, 'well,
that's all we have'. And the look on his face was priceless, like
are you okay? Because I didn't catch that word. So you got to make sure
language says what it needs to say for clarity. Okay?
Action. Execution and accountability and
self reflection is what action is. What happens a lot of times is that companies will
start from this perspective down here directly
at action. They don't know where they are going, they are not intentional.
They don't have all the leaders that need to be involved. Informal and informal,
and they don't have the same language. They go straight to
action, and then they wonder why it didn't work. Okay? So,
part of strategic thinking is being able to identify all those things
and then you move. I kind of use that old,.. you know how you used to say
measure twice, cut once. I say spend that time getting your
pillars in place and then take action. So that you know what you want to do
there. Resources.
Now anybody who teaches project management would also have this same slide in sometimes
but the point is that you need to be able to identify from a strategic view, how
does it affect everything from your people, your processes, technology
budget and time. And I challenge companies all the time to identify
when it comes down to budget, they'll say well, we don't have the budget for that.
There are some things that you can do that take absolutely no money.
It may take time. But people automatically think because of
outside or that's the way we always did it, it's going to take money. Where as
if you look at if from a strategic view point, you might see something different that
you can just shift a few resources around, and it never impacts your bottom line.
I challenge people to do that all the time, especially in non-profits.
You'd be surprised. They're at first, ..oh we don't have the money for that. And then we can start
finding holes. They didn't need a consultant to come in there and tell
them that. They would be able to lift up and be able to see that.
So we're going to look at sustainability. The whole idea about any company
wanting to try strategy or have it as part of their daily operation
is that they need it to make the company go for the long haul.
So a lot of times we'll talk about in the workshop session
about how does that effect it enviromentally, how does your idea effect operations?
And that includes your people, processes, technology.
From a social standpoint, corporate social responsibility has become a
bigger and bigger thing, especially with the younger groups. And so
how does that all affect everything that you do from a strategy standpoint.
If you are stuck down here in the daily minutae, you are going to have a really hard time
seeing this from the long haul. So you want to step back and be able to see it.
So, that's a quick overloop
of strategic thinking or objectivity. PILLARS is a
concept that just makes people think differently about strategy because again you want to lift
yourself up, right? Don't forget the power of questions.
This is a very powerful time that you can identify
even if it's to start out for yourself, to practice, who, what, when, where, why
how. Okay. Now, when you actually do a workshop to learn the
power of questions, you would actually go into a much more complex
exercise to be able to do that. But to start out somewhere, get back
to asking questions. You know, when you first got into your job, you asked questions
all the time. That's what made you fresh and with a different perspective.
Right? So that's what the power of questions is all about. And then go back if you
haven't watched the TEDtalk on Simon Sinek, I
encourage you to go back and look that up. Because the golden circle is a concept about
just don't get caught up in what you do and how you do it, why do you
do what you do as an organization? Because your strategy is going to feed into that.
Right? So let's talk about,
some of the things that UT PDC can offer organizations
about strategy. We can host facilitated sessions, where is if you have your
organization there, with your leadership including some of the employees, we can come
in and help facilitate that. The whole idea is that once
we model the process for you, that you can take it and run with it.
Okay, again, consultants hate coming to hear me talk because they hate
that I am telling people how to do things without the consultants. But I was a
CEO for many years, and I know how valuable those dollars are that you're
spending on consultants. So this is a way to be able to take some of that
outside external thought process and use it among yourselves.
Strategy training. If that's a person that's not used to thinking
differently, looking at things more objectively, this is a session
that would help them be able to do that in a practice, closed setting.
Kind of safe, the strategy workshops, the same type of thing.
Strategy training is more of a day long leadership style, the workshops
are on-site for a few hours at a time. Strategy assessments
where we can actually come in and help you, rate yourself. How are you guys
doing with strategic thinking in your organization? And how do you get it pushed down from the
top down to the bottom? And then the corporate brainstorm sessions. It's a 90 minute session
where we go in and help the C levels to think that through.
But the whole idea about strategy is to think differently
not get caught up into those.. annual strategic
planning session, or planning the retreat, okay? Strategy should
be a daily part of operations. Any questions on strategy or UT PDC?
Thank you
very much. [audience applause]