The Strategic Gourmand: A Tasty Summer Drink from Across the Pond

When you live in the Pacific Northwest you come to appreciate the summer and the sunny days and long evenings. The maddening damp from late October to mid-April is made tolerable by nearly 18 hours of daylight in summer.

The Brits understand this. That’s why the coming of summer is met with a wonderful drink, the Pimm’s Cup. Altogether unknown in the US (as it the liqueur that fuels it) this is a beverage that will make any summer day just a little sunnier.

Pimm’s is the trademark for a spirit (specifically Pimm’s No. 1 Cup, even though it’s in a bottle) that as best I can figure it out is a spiced brandied gin. By itself it’s a nice aperitif. In the cup, mixed with ginger ale it is a snappy base for the cocktail.

It’s a staple in London pubs and throughout southern England in the summer, think of it as England’s marguerita. It’s easy to mix, easy to drink and it will put you on your behind if you don’t watch out… Pimms is 25% alcohol by volume.

Take a tall glass, fill with ice-cubes. Pour about a 1/3 of a glass Pimms and fill the rest with lemonade or ginger ale. The garnish is important here… lemon and a long stalk of celery are preferred. The adventurous might go for a carrot or asparagus I guess, but the celery adds a clean taste to clear your palate for the next one.

Pimms, by the way, makes an interesting mix with gin. One way or another, drink enough Pimms and you’ll need you sunglasses.

Things I Wish I’d Said and Why

I Wish I’d Said This:

In Carol De Giere’s biography of composer and lyricist, Stephen Schwartz (Godspell, Wicked) on getting started: I tend to follow the “path of least resistance,” rather than trying to write sequentially. When starting the score for a show, I tend to start with the song that seems easiest to me, the one that comes most naturally. Often, it’s trying to get at the emotional or philosophical center of the story… but not always. It’s most important just to open the door and step into the show somewhere. (Defying Gravity, p. 299)

Why?

Schwartz captures an important principle here, planning is hard enough without having to make it harder by taking on the toughest pieces first. What he expresses is a keen sense of priority. Something’s have to be done right away. They are so critical to the organization’s sustained fulfillment of its mission there is no choice. Most of us can figure that one out as priority number one. What next? Finding the “dunk shots,” or “low hanging fruit,” is smart strategic planning. Just getting started is reassuring; getting quick results is motivating (and the perfect antidote to skepticism and cynicism). I look at the easy ones as portals, their early achievement opens the door to getting started on other objectives.

The Facilitator’s Toolbox: An Effective Approach for Solving Problems in Groups

This is a quick and efficient tecnique I use to help groups work through problems. I must have learned it somewhere, but I don’t know where. I call it the accordion technique because it starts “closed,” opens up fully and then comes to a complete close.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to how to do it.

First, clearly define the problem. Be clear about what you are trying to solve. Make sure that everyone agrees and understands what the issue is.

Second, identify the conditions that would not make it a problem. Yes, it’s counter-intuitive, but identify what it is you want as an outcome. Use the desired outcomes to identify criteria for a satisfactory outcome.

Third, consider multiple options. Not just one, at least three: do nothing (that’s always an option), resolution (mediation) and total solution (cure). This is the fully open accordion.

Fourth, compare the options with the criteria, determine the option that best fits. At this stage it is often wise to modify options to fit criteria or to prioritize or add weights to criteria.

Fifth, close the accordion, select the desired modified option, identify strategies for implementation.

The key to making this technique work is in the beginning, making sure there is a clear understanding of what needs to be solved and in the middle, when an array of options needs to be considered. Watch out, groups lose energy the minute any option is identified. Don’t let them stop there; consider multiple options for the best decisions.

Getting More out of Strategic Planning Part 4 (Final Installment)

Along with the unexpected consequences of improved leadership and management, simply doing strategic planning tends to boost employee commitment (and in associations, member involvement). This beneficial outcome occurs because of two things: the manner in which employees and members are engaged in the planning process and from the focus the plan brings to everyday operations.

A correctly facilitated strategic planning process should use a team that engages the whole of an organization, not just executive and board leadership. Not only is the perspective from on the ground needed, involving the folks who will do much of the plan’s implementation assures it actually gets done and with buy-in. As referenced in my last post, it’s easier to get buy-in before the fact than to sell an idea after the fact. I’ve seen disasters averted and shortcuts discovered because an employee or member well down in the hierarchy, by part of the planning team, could see what was going to happen.

Planning provides a focus that make most people’s work easier… often linking apparently disparate acts into a whole unified by the organization’s mission. People want to feel part of something and the clear mission and compelling vision spelled out in the strategic plan creates the foundation for a community.

To see the Powerpoint presentation I used at NAR follow this link: http://pnwconsult.com/NAR DC 2009 VO.pptx or http://pnwconsult.com/NAR Midyear 2009.ppt

Duke’s Rule #13: It’s Easier to Get Buy-In Before than to Sell it Afterwards.

This is one of the most commonly violated management rules in the book. In the isolation of their office, managers dream up all sorts of ideas which get shared in a memo found in everyone’s mail slot the next morning. Grumbling follows, mistakes get made in implementation and after considerable misgivings, discomfort and passive aggressive comments the manager starts the process of getting influential employees to support the new idea.

All this could be avoided by following the codicil of this rule: if you are going to ask people to do something, find out beforehand what they think of the idea. Many times you’ll learn of an obstacle that needs to be addressed. Even if you encounter resistance you’ll be a step ahead in trying to dissolve it. And by sharing your ideas with others beforehand you’ll get their enthusiastic support later on.

Getting the Most out of Strategic Planning, Part 3

Along with the benefits of better leadership strategic planning’s need for a clear mission and performance measures has a direct, positive, impact on the management of organizations. The focus provided by a strategic plan comes from the clarity found in the organization’s mission… not some flowery, Dilbertesque string of platitudes and bureaujargon, but a simple declarative sentence of what the organization must do and must get for those efforts. It’s no accident that most strategic planning facilitators begin by writing a mission statement, because everything in an organization begins and ends there.

Having worked through dozens of such statements, and sharing the frustration that participants do at the constant word-smithing and hair-splitting consistent with the exercise, I discovered folks were making it too hard. And in the process robbing their organizations of the focus a good mission should provide. I spent some time analyzing mission statements and came to the conclusion that the best ones were nothing more than do-get declarations. I have often cited, although I’ve never found it written anywhere, a mission attributed to Alfred P. Sloan when he became President of General Motors in 1923. Supposedly surveying the diversified GM empire he said, “We bend metal for profit.”

Pretty straightforward stuff: noun, verb, object. The beauty of such clear thinking is that it leads to clear action so that anyone at GM, CEO to the person sweeping out the factory after the shift, gets it: his or her job is to make that mission happen. It worked so well GM was, until recently, the model of the superiorly managed corporation. I know your’re curious. GM’s contemporary mission statement:

G.M. is a multinational corporation engaged in socially responsible operations, worldwide. It is dedicated to provide products and services of such quality that our customers will receive superior value while our employees and business partners will share in our success and our stock-holders will receive a sustained superior return on their investment."

The current mission seems accurate and detailed next to Sloan's, but it lacks a more important property: clarity. Sloan's is a rallying point, what I like to call the "north star" of the organization, a point of reference that instantaneously tells everyone who you are and what you are about. This allows, as Tom Peters once put it, for folks to "stick to the knitting."

A well done mission statement doesn’t have to be as linear as Sloan’s I like the one I did for General Parts, Inc. a few years ago: we distribute and sell auto parts for the benefit of the customer, our employees and our shareholders. Same idea.

Conceived of in this manner, the mission statement lays the foundation for the powerful management device of performance measurement. As a simple proclamation of what an organizations does and what is expected from those efforts the mission provides what, using the technical language of performance measurement, is needed to determine whether efforts produce results, definitions of both outputs and outcomes.

For many organizations this is a huge step forward and a signal effort towards holding an organization accountable… not for just what it does, but for what it achieves. Such thinking leads quickly to the idea of an organizational report card or, as Kaplan and Norton put it, a balanced scorecard. To their thinking any organization really has four bottom lines to attend to: financial outcomes, customer satisfaction, organizational capacity (internal business practices) and the adequacy of its knowledge base (this latter equating with organizational intelligence).

An organization that can measure, monitor and manage itself with these four general performance standards in mind is going to be strong… rooted in its commitment to meet customer needs, cognizant of financial imperatives for sustainability and profit, aware of a need to grow, improve and to learn.

The unfortunate thing is the development of performance measures is often skipped in the strategic planning process. Identifying them is difficult and, for the uninitiated, time-consuming especially when there are a lot of other things to do. Over-looking this step, however, compromises the plan and assures confusion as to where an organization is going and whether it ever gets there. The sad truth is that most CEOs have cars in the corporate parking lot with more instruments on the dashboard than they have performance measures in the board room.

Once measures are identified it is possible to track organizational performance over time. The first year of measurement establishes a baseline against which every succeeding year can be compared. Similarly, performance can be benchmarked against other organizations. These are effective ways of determining whether goals are being achieved as well as allowing for analyses of “gaps” to set future performance goals.

The fundamental impact of the introduction of performance measurement as a management tool is to shift the organization’s analysis and thinking from opinion and myth to data and fact. While care needs to be taken to assure the validity of these measurements and their application, their use to inform management decisions can be transformative.

To see the Powerpoint presentation I used at NAR follow these links: http://pnwconsult.com/NAR DC 2009 VO.pptx or http://pnwconsult.com/NAR Midyear 2009.ppt

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You Can Look it Up: Some Thoughts on Baseball

There's just no way I can talk over any period of time and not get around to baseball. It has been a passion since I was 8 and today still represents a major interest… all of it, the game, the history, the statistics, the physical activity. Tom Boswell used to speak of the "flash of the green," that first glimpse of the field seen as you enter a stadium tunnel: so full of promise, so inviting. Baseball has been a pastime, both active and passive, and a metaphor for a lot of things in my life. Not a day passes, at least from the start of spring training in February to World Series' final out, that doesn't find me thinking about it.

I grew up a Dodger fan. They abandoned Brooklyn but liberated southern California when I was in the 8^th grade. Somehow I'd already become addicted to the game, following from the west coast the exploits of the Cincinnati Reds and my hero Ted Kluszewski starting a couple of years earlier. The arrival of the Dodgers three years later was truly a dream come true.

June 28, 1959 (exactly 14 years to the day my son Matt was born) marks the moment of the first major league baseball game I'd ever seen. By then, an aging Big Klu had been traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates. Although he didn't play that day (another poor managerial decision by skipper Danny Murtaugh) I did see him hit a ball out during BP. I failed to get his autograph after the game; he rebuffed me with a "get away, kid" and boarded the team bus. He wore a shiny green silk suit and clamped the biggest cigar I have ever seen in his mouth. My mother never forgave him, but he remained a God in my mind.

Later, now residing in the Pacific Northwest, my allegiance… suffering allegiance I should say… shifted to the Seattle Mariners. The one-year wonder Pilots preceded them and I may belong to a very small club of people who have attended every opening day of major league baseball in Seattle, starting with the Pilots in 1969, then picking up again with the Ms in 1977. Sicks Stadium to the Kingdome to Safeco… with a few notable exceptions I've seen a lot of mediocre baseball.

If I'm not mistaken, the Mariners are the oldest franchise to never make a World Series appearance and several that came into existence with or after them have: Toronto, Florida and, most recently, Tampa. Perhaps not as long-suffering as the Red Sox fans were or the Cub fans are, but still pretty sufferable. But like all dedicated Mariner followers, I'll always have 1995 and 2001… soooo close.

Today the Ms are still in recovery. The loss of Lou Pinella as manager and the unproductive reign of Bill Bavasi as General Manager brought us to where we are today: a slightly less than .500 club. Don Wakamatsu, the new manager and the new GM Jack Zduriencik have made some good moves, but the years of neglect have dulled the need to win and the failed the instill the hatred of loss that propelled the Pinella teams.

As much as I find little to support my dreams in this current Mariner teams, unlike many, I'm not in despair about the game in general. The discovery of widespread use of steroids over the last 20 years certainly taints the records and character of many of the players. But I never held baseball players on a particularly high moral pedestal anyway… at least not after being shoved aside by Kluszewski.

Baseball players were among the first professional athletes, an accomplishment regretted by many purists at the time when amateur athletics was looked at as a virtue. No one under the age of 50 can remember what a non-commercialized and subsidized Olympics looked like, but there was really a time when we glorified those who competed for the love of the game. Baseball players were already tainted when the game became an industry in the late 19^th century. They were money-grubbing, hard-drinking, tobacco-spitting, rough and tumble players. The Black Sox scandal on 1919 was an unsurprising result of many seasons of dirty baseball and marginal on-the-field ethics. It was, is and probably always will be a game of cheaters.

Today we look at the exploits of Ty Cobb or the excesses of Babe Ruth as though they are examples of a by-gone, gladly departed age. Nope. A-rod and Clemens are born of the same lineage and they and many of their peers will do just about anything to win. While Alex Rodriguez closes in on Aaron's all time home-run record (the pursuit abandoned by Barry Bonds as he struggles with his own performance-enhanced shame) I have to be fair. I have a pretty good idea what chemical fueled his taters. I have a suspicion Babe Ruth had his own enhancers and maybe even the mythical Aaron did, too. Maybe Babe's beer and hot dogs, while legal, kept him loose enough to hit them out of the intentionally designed short porch of right field in Yankee Stadium. As honorable as Aaron is, I can't believe that he didn't make use of the pharmacy of pain-killers and cortisone discovered and freely prescribed in the 1950s and 60s, which while legal, helped him keep playing until he was 42.

What the 19^th century purists detested about professional sports has pretty much come to pass. They could never have imagined the greed, addiction, cheating and debauchery that came with a paycheck, but they had an idea that sport itself would be transformed in some undesirable way.

I'm not turning a blind eye here. I never attached heroic status to the players and owners. But the sheer beauty of the game, the brilliance of skill required to play it and the inherent drama of two evenly matched players, pitcher and batter, is as compelling to me today as it was to me as a kid.

I was reminded of this last night. My 7-year old grand-daughter Larkin is playing her first season of baseball. Yesterday was team photo night for the Fircrest Giants. She's got a good hitting eye and is a real ball hawk. She's getting the game inside of her. The real game. She has no idea who A-rod is and couldn't care less.

While the kids were playing catch and running around I heard the unmistakable sound any baseball fan loves: solid contact of a bat on ball. I looked over. A local beer league softball team was practicing and the guy at the plate had power. He was really ripping ball. Long looping fly balls and screaming line drives. There was no sophistication in his hitting at all. He was strong with good reflexes… a righty - everything he hit was pulled to left field. His cut-off sleeves brought by memories of Klu.

And oh how that ball rose in the twilight. It looked like it would go on forever.

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Taking Strategic Planning to the Next Level, Part 2

In my comments to the folks attending the National Association of REALTORS(r) Midyear Conference last Friday, I tried to elevate thinking about strategic planning. I wanted to get beyond the usual recitations of the cookbook techniques (or to my credit, I think) a pitch for my services. My aim was to shed light on some of the more nuanced benefits that come from planning.

The first “unexpected outcome” I talked about was the impact the planning process has on the continuity and consistency of leadership. This issue is of particularly relevance to associations, most of which have a unique governance structure not found in business or government. The leadership of associations is generally based on a partnership between an elected President who, as a member, volunteers to serve and a professional association executive who is hired to manage.

It is most common for the elected leadership to change annually, although most REALTOR® associations ask a three year commitment as the elected leader “works through the chairs", first vice president, president-elect to president. Associations execs (AEs or EOs) continue in their roles as long as the association board allows.

There is a kind of majesty and lunacy to this model. Elected leadership changes frequently, guaranteeing fresh ideas and a sense of urgency to the roles… strong associations are good examples of representative democracy. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the constant turn-over in leadership can results in a series of disconnected and unrelated presidential initiatives… at worst, flights of ego-driven fancy reminiscent of Roman emperors.

In most cases what presidents want to achieve in their year of leadership is consistent with what the association is trying to accomplish in the long run. But more often than I would like, well-intentioned presidential goals distract from the strategic plan or, occasionally, actually subvert the association’s long term goals.

AEs walk a narrow tightrope trying to strike just the right balance between honoring this year’s presidential passion with the on-going strategic initiatives. A well done strategic planning process can do much to generate consistency and continuity in the tumultuous world of association governance.

The idea is pretty simple: use the plan to channel presidential interest. If the plan focuses on a sustained effort to involve new members, wed the incoming President’s interest in education to an objective to start a new or revised member orientation program. Plan focuses on cutting costs? Tap the new President’s passion for the affiliate members to look at ways to develop strategic financial alliances. If the plan focuses on improving the profession’s public image, use the President’s interest in getting a foundation started is a perfect way to link those two ideas.

Done correctly, annual Presidential initiatives flow into and reinforce the association’s three year plan. Even better, leadership teams have an ability to support and advance each others annual agenda long after a President is out of office.

If the association is organized along a set of progressive chairs – usually First VP, President-Elect, President and Past President – it is possible to create a span of seven years. It works like this: assume the current President started as First VP in 2006. In the system I describe in 2006 she would have been introduced to the initiative promoted by the Past President three years earlier in 2003. By the time she becomes Past President in 2010, she’ll get to know the 2010 First VP who will pursue his Presidential agenda in 2012. Sorry for the numbing numbers, but add it up… there is a direct link between 2003 and 2102.

The key here is to honor both the passion of the association President with the focus of the association plan. It can be done with results that reinforce and supplement the strategic plan.

To see the Powerpoint presentation I used at NAR follow this link: http://pnwconsult.com/NAR DC 2009 VO.pptx or http://pnwconsult.com/NAR Midyear 2009.ppt

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A Belated Valentine to REALTORS(r)

Of the many conventions and meetings I attend each year, I especially enjoy the National Association of REALTORS® Midyear gathering in Washington DC each May. It is smaller than their annual meeting and the focus on leadership, policy and legislative issues adds a degree of political brio lacking at most professional convocations.

It is for me a reunion. Working with REALTOR® associations across the nation, the Midyear Conference brings me into contact with friends and clients I haven’t seen for awhile. It is an undeniable truth that real estate professionals are among the most gregarious and hospitable folks you’ll ever meet and these sessions are productive, informative and fun.

An amazing unpredictable quirk of fate brought me into the multi-dimensioned REALTOR® world… a chance event, totally beyond my knowledge or control 22 years ago truly changed my life. I had started a few years before a consulting business as a supplement to my life as a professor of sociology at a small liberal arts college. I was getting my practice on the ground. Operating in a state capitol my initial clients were mostly state agencies, boards and commissions.

I could have never predicted that Marilyn Watson, the wife of the director of the Washington State Energy office would be lunching with her close friend, the political affairs directors of the Washington Association of REALTOR®. She mentioned to Marilyn an organizational problem vexing WAR and Marilyn, to her never-ending credit and my enduring appreciation, uttered twelve momentous words: “You should talk to the guy who is working with my husband.” Later that day, just as we were leaving to attend our son’s graduation from middle school, WAR’s EO Steve Hyer called. And nothing has been the same since,

As much as I've pondered this fortuitous shift in fate, I've puzzled even more over the great compatibility I share with my REALTOR® friends. I feel it viscerally. I can walk into a room of complete strangers and, if they’re REALTORS®, feel instantly at home. Did I in some prior life sell houses or cut deals for office buildings? I don’t know, but I do know that of the dozens of professionals I've worked with from engineers and museum curators to foresters and legislators there is none better, for me, than REALTORS® (okay, maybe appraisers).

In my years of work with them I've come to find many possess admirable traits worthy of some praise. They are obsessive about their code of ethics and exhibit at every level, commercial and residential practitioners alike, a marked dedication to self improvement and professionalism.

I recognize I have been exposed to a sample of elite REALTORS®, those who become involved in leadership roles through the local, state and national associations. But if they are the visible spokespeople for their industry, they do a great job projecting and exemplifying honesty, hard-work and ingenuity.

Two things really strike me about REALTORS®. The first is their willingness to take on community leadership roles. They recognize their centrality in the culture and commerce of their communities and it’s a sure bet that a REALTOR® active in her or his local board will be found as a volunteer on a half-dozen other local associations and committees. Of course, such activity and visibility is good for business, but I've known enough folks like Mike Flynn in Tacoma or Sylvia Miller in Lakeland or Randy Scheidt in Indianapolis to comprehend how much they care about their neighbors. They are leaders of the highest order.

The other trait is optimism. Maybe too many dead weekends in the office or sparsely attended open-houses generate a way of finding the silver lining, but even in the worst of times, like, well, now maybe, they exhibit a healthy attitude about the future. Maybe that’s why they are so good at strategic planning and readily take to my approach. They truly believe that through their efforts they can make the world a better place.

I was reminded of the power of this positive thinking when I ran into a friend I hadn't seen for nearly a year, yesterday, Lee Odems, a broker in northern Virginia (Buyer's Advantage Real Estate in Woodbridge, VA). After sharing quick updates on our common interest in politics and national affairs, I asked the salient question these days, “how’s business?”

His reply is worth quoting verbatim: “You know, Duke, I realized something a few months ago. There are two economies. There’s the national economy and there’s nothing I can do about that. And then there’s my economy, Lee’s economy, and I can do a lot about that. And, I’ll tell you, since I started working on my economy things have been going much better.”

I find that kind of thinking very motivating. All my belief in planning is based on the wisdom in Lee’s statement, be it the economy or education or environment, the most effective mechanism for change is a single person with a desire to do something, anything, to make things better. Get a bunch of those people in a room and you've just come upon a committee of REALTORS®

This is, I guess, a belated Valentine to REALTORS®. Thanks for being such good friends. I can’t wait to catch up again at the Omni Shoreham in May, 2010!

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Taking Strategic Planning to the Next Level, Part 1

Today I will be making two presentations to the Leadership Express series at the Midyear meetings of the National Association of REALTORS®. As I have for the last few years I will speak to the benefits of planning in hopes of encouraging, in this case, association leaders and managers to think and act strategically.

I’m using this appearance to take a bold step. For years my comments on planning have touched on the basics: what is planning, how do you do it, what is gained from it. I think I’ve taken some basic nuts and bolts material and distilled out some powerful insights: planning is not about process, it is about results; sustaining an organization’s mission is paramountly strategic, even more than vision; ultimately this is an extraordinary tool for achieving continued organizational improvement.

In today’s presentation I’m taking the discussion to a new level, what Tim Galwey years ago referred to as the “inner game.” Galwey realized that conventional coaching in tennis and golf often got in the way of both mastery and enjoyment of the games. I never met him, but I consider him to be a mentor and both his books occupy prominent spots in my bookcase.

For NAR’s leaders I hope to show the real value to be derived from planning: consistent and continuous leadership, more accountable and effective management and, a big deal for volunteer associations, better service to and involvement with members. These are big claims and, to be truthful, 300 plans ago when I started, I couldn’t have made these assertions with confidence. I have, however, seen it happen again and again… the very act of planning, quite independent of the plan’s goals and objectives, has a beneficial aspect on all aspect of the organization’s operations.

I first discovered this when I had the good fortune to work with school board members (directors) through the Washington State School Directors’ Association (WSSDA). Governing a public school district is a tough job and directors have to work through really difficult policy decisions in the most basic of legislative formats, a five-person school board. Chuck Namit, a friend and mentor, devised a great program to get good counsel to those boards and their directors. In working with boards I noticed a change in the directors, both individually and as a legislative body, as they worked through the strategic planning process in their districts. They actually got smarter.

The planning process’s emphasis on getting answers to questions did two things: it replaced opinion and myth with fact and it created an appreciation for data. And they did, in fact, get smarter. They learned a lot about their districts through the scanning process… realizing that the district’s many constituencies and stakeholders often had quite different opinions on a given issue and that it was the board’s responsibility to ask the questions and to listen to the answers.

The plan itself, of course, contributed to a broader perspective: a more strategic way of thinking and talking about district issues. Board members who had been part of the planning process started to pay close attention to the district’s mission, vision and values, thus creating a strategic context for discussion of problems. You could hear this new, broader perspective in the language they used.

I was surprised when I first saw this. I have, over the years, done lot of leadership development training and education. In all the hours of class and training room work I’d never seen people make such significant changes, not just in thought but in action. I watched these directors become better leaders. This realization was the inspiration for the thoughts I shared with the REALTORS® today. There are great, unexpected benefits to be gained from strategic planning. In my next posting, Monday, I’ll give more detail about the “inner game” of planning and share the reaction I received from NAR members.

To see the Powerpoint presentation I used at NAR follow these links: http://pnwconsult.com/NAR DC 2009 VO.pptx or http://pnwconsult.com/NAR Midyear 2009.ppt

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WELCOME TO MY BLOG!

The internet has been good to me. I would never have gotten to know all of you nor been able to transact business from London to Guam without a global computer connection. Until now I've used my website www.pnwconsult.com and an occasionally published e-newsletter to communicate with my friends and clients.

I've come to the conclusion that both of those methods are too passive and slow to get my ideas into the flow of the decisions you need to make everyday. So I'm taking a big leap here. I will continue to maintain my website and to send out my newsletters, but I am going to open this blog as my main portal to you.

It's a big undertaking, because I plan to update it two or three times during the business week. To maintain the highest quality of service to my clients, whose leadership responsibilities challenge them on a daily basis, my information and counsel needs to be out there every day, too.

I'm choosing to officially launch this blog on Thursday, May 14. Tomorrow I will be in Washington DC attending the National Association of REALTORS(r) annual Midyear Conference. I have been invited to make a presentation to NAR's leaders from boards across the country. The topic is my favorite: strategic planning.

I'm going to try to do something different today, for them and for you. By now most people understand what planning is and have an idea of its utility and process. What I plan to share is the hidden power of planning, the impacts that go well beyond setting long term goals... strengthened leadership teams, powerful bonds of commitment among everyone who is part of an organization, more effective and accountable management and unprecedented levels of achievement.