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There is a yellow ball rolling to the right. No, wait! It is a squirrel and he's turning left!

We know how hard it is to be a business leader that has lots of good ideas.

Many of our clients struggle with how to balance their goals and their successes with pivots and opportunities. It is hard to know where to put limited resources. It is hard to prioritize. And in COVID-19, the risk management perspective adds additional challenges.

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When we poke fun at ourselves we call it, 'yellow ball syndrome' or 'chasing squirrels'. It is like all strengths and weaknesses. The optimism and opportunistic view of business is what makes a business leader unique. For those that take that passion and put a leap of faith into entrepreneurial ventures it is that risk tolerance that keeps them going. But it is also the demise of many great businesses, leaders and ideas.

Strategy

The solution to chasing yellow balls or squirrel friends?

Hold up!

First, let's start with what makes this a strength. In times like these the ability to pivot is key. Businesses that can take core compentencies and figure out short-term revenue and cashflow are thriving. Businesses that can keep themselves relevant with their communities are doing the best. Leaders that can motivate teams and maintain culture amoung the stresses of quarantines, health and safety risks, regulations, and other unknowns are going to come out ahead.

Like we said, it is the same coin. There are incredible pros to these characteristics. Don't you just hate it when your excitement is not shared and someone steps all over your vision? It can feel like someone is dimming your light when they play challenger or devil's advocate. Especially if they are bullying or mean spirited.

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That is not what we are about at Amplify! We get it. Our client experience is about people and growth. It's in our name.

Now the Solution?

You guessed it, strategy. What is strategy? We've all heard the sayings.

• Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without straegy is the noise before defeat. - Sun Tzu
• Building a visionary company requires 1% vision & 99% alignment. - Jim Collins
• Strategy is figuring out what not to do. - Steve Jobs
• A statisfied customer is the best business strategy of all. - Michael LeBoeuf
• Strategy without patience can be caustic. Patience without strategy can become anemic. Having both, strategy and patience, is a rare gift. - Brannon Marshall
• Strategy is about setting yourself apart from the competition. It's not a matter of being better at what you do - it's a matter of being different at what you do. - Michael Porter
• Hope is not a strategy.

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Strategy allows you to know when you are winning. It is a window to look at new opportunities (AKA yellow balls or squirrels). It is a way to keep you focused and to grind your revenue sources. By grind, we mean scale and amplify.

So How Do You Know If You Are Strategic?

Here are some characteristics of strategic business leaders:

• Written strategy for your department or the company that you lead. And yes, that includes you Finance Leaders! A finance and accounting function needs a strategy too. Of course, departmental and function strategies are subsets of the corporate strategy. If you want your team to align with the corporate strategy and know where they fit in it, you need to dissect that for them!
• Key Performance Indicators that cascade from your strategy and that you can measure. But the most important part of KPIs? The discussion, accountability and action that results. KPIs that exist but don't make it on to agendas aren't all that useful. KPIs that drive bonuses and only pop up during performance management chats are the worst!? Right??
• A shared vocabulary. The language of your team should be aligned with your values. Your values, your winning aspirations, your brand promise, your messaging and all the components that make up your strategy can't just collect dust on a shelf or be words on a wall! After all, in COVID no one can access that shelf or see that wall!! It has to be absorbed instead into the actions and mindsets of your team.

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Like you, we are troubled by teams that don't understand the strategy of their leaders or don't know where they fit.

How do we tackle that? Our clients and Amplify use Playing to Win.

Amplify's team has invested in Harvard Business Review's Toolkit. We use it on a number of our client engagements as well as internally. Amplify focuses on scaling growing business.

We run educational workshops that focuses on strategy and succession planning that will allow your management and ownership teams to be aligned with your

• winning aspiration
• where you play
• how you win
• what capabilities are required
• the management systems & measurements that are needed

Every quarter, Amplify's senior management team meets to review our strategy. The agenda includes a walk-through of our SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats), our scoreboard, and our Playing to Win documentation. And then it gets spicy. If you want to hear about that you'll have to connect!

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Next Steps?

1. Is there a chance you are guilty of a love for shiny rolling round things or furry tree animals?
2. If so, do you need to dust off the strategy that you've got and still holds true?
3. If yes, that's easy! Book a day or at least half a day and review your strategy with your team. Ask yourself what has changed with COVID-19? Ask yourself if your customers or clients or the other departments you serve have changed? Re-align your team and kick off a new you!
4. If your strategy is no longer true for you then you need to carve out some time to create a new one. There's never a good time to do this but that can't continue to be an excuse. Many of our clients struggle to take time away from the day to day and invest in themselves, but none regret it once they take the plunge.

At Amplify, we know you want to be a confident business leader able to articulate a problem and provide a clear path forward. In order to do that, you need a consultant on your side to offer clarity and solutions for complex business challenges.

Trying to make sense of the processes, people, and automations within your business is a daunting task. You're constricted. You feel held back because your business isn't set up for scale and you're too stretched to solve the problem.

The burden of identifying complex business challenges and offering solutions shouldn't fall on your shoulders, alone. We know that building a successful team is a joint effort. With a consultant from Amplify, you'll gain an instant partner to help research, recommend, and implement improvements for efficiency.

We're leading experts in the field of finance and accounting, using proven methodologies customized to your business. We're proud to make global consulting best practices accessible and affordable to you and your mid-market venture.

Before we leave you, we've had a few requests to share more favs of our team. Here's this week's feature:

If you didn't get a chance to sign up for Aha with Amplify, do it now so you are the first to know when we present on strategy. Its on the new year's agenda! Featuring our very own Jesse Ferguson!