Ready Aim Fire

What is your Company’s Culture?

Some years ago, I participated in a company team building event. It was a timed event that allowed us the opportunity to assemble a puzzle as a team. The outcome was interesting and spoke to the nature of our organization. We were termed as a FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! company as a management team. No time to get ready, and we had better have used a shot gun, because we didn’t aim. Think about it, yes we got our target, but was it the optimal approach?

If we agree that Ready, Aim, Fire is the optimal structure for preparing and targeting an objective prior to execution, then we will look at a couple of other company culture styles and the pitfalls related to each approach.

Ready

Is you company a planning organization? Do you gather the facts and analyze the numbers when making a decision. Do you move on at that point or do you want more and more information in order to reach a “perfect” decision?

Reality Check: there are no perfect decisions because there is no perfect information required to make that decision.  One company I worked for called this “getting ready to get ready”! Or in the parlance of this discussion, this is a Ready, Ready, Ready company culture. This culture makes it difficult to get a simple decision made. And if it is a major decision, forget about it.

Don’t get me wrong, planning, gathering facts and running numbers are a critical first step, but must lead to the next, not become the end game.

This can be overcome by setting traps for the management team, assigning responsibilities and deadlines for a decision. Still waffling? Then the leader needs to call the question and lead the group to the next step, AIM. And if the leader is the problem? They must recognize that no decision is a decision. Do you really want to operate by default?

AIM

OK what is the target? My last blog was on Goal Clarity, and that is in large part how we establish the target. This is the point where we assess risk and return. Can we really reach the objective, and what happens if we miss? Do we have one shot to get it right? If so, we need to take careful aim. What is our strategy, a shot gun or a rifle? This too affects how carefully we must be in taking Aim.

Interestingly enough, there are few companies that I have seen that get hung up in this phase. So companies typically don’t go Aim, Aim, Aim or Ready, Aim, Aim, though perhaps some may go Ready, Aim, Ready.

FIRE

Fire is the execution phase. Our company mentioned earlier had significant strength in its ability to execute operationally. We were focused on the customer and serviced the entire telephone moves, adds and changes for the Eastern U.S. branches of a major bank. The head of the group we even nicknamed “The General” for his ability to get things done. All strengths!

However, the organization needed to move toward a planning organization. What worked when we were smaller became less effective as we grew. Further, a command and control operation may work well in the military as well as emergencies, but in modern companies, this management style must be tempered. A one approach fits all circumstances just did not meet the long term company objectives and our ability to grow the organization would become limited if we did not get better at planning. Further, we needed to clearly identify our objective and strategy before pulling the trigger. So FIRE, FIRE, FIRE needed to become READY, AIM, FIRE.

Changing a company’s culture to an organization that plans, targets and executes effectively is the utopia all companies try to achieve. Getting a company there is the topic for a future blog, but suffice it to say, if it were easy, all companies would be good at it!

Happy Hunting.