Raw Transcript
just could you set the pr
[Music] start hold
[Music]
okay so welcome all to this conversation on strategy it’s part of our um strategy roll out for 2025 and we thought as a team would be useful to bring in um someone um from the outside Mr Wade I’ll introduce him after the prayer um to give us a a chat not a lecture on what strategy is all about so with that um let’s get the ball rolling and I’m going to ask um Christopher to start off with a pray dear father as We Gather this morning we ask that you bless each and everyone of us bless this meeting help us to learn to achieve to progress father in your name we give thanks in Jesus Christ name we say Amen thank you so much so um before hand it over to to to to Francis I just want to say a few words so welcome again to the company it’s a real pleasure to see you and um Francis has a wel of knowledge he’s he’s um he’s a young man and I think he writes about um mil still nobody believe that maybe
one corre um I think career started in Telos time yeah factories AT&T factories AT&T factories and you’re part of the IC internal Consulting Group yeah right and um and if I can recall you attended which university again Cornell Cornell okay about University all right good University have a good track team now and then so welcome welcome so here you are we of experience we look forward to this conversation and um thank you over to you great pleasure to be here um Tony also didn’t didn’t mention I moved back to Jamaica in 2005 so I’ve been home for about 20 years and I came back to do this kind of work to have this kind of conversation um our firm specializes in strategy we’ve done about 60 long-term strategic planning Retreats short made and longterm um my partner is unfortunately sick she couldn’t make it she’s my wife and the reason that we’re here is partly because of tiisha tiisha knows my wife from work that we do with an HR Community um I also write for the G if nobody reads the gleno anymore but anyway my articles come out every couple weeks and most of them have to do with strategy um before I get going too far and start to get into why I’m going to say that strategies of philosophy of becoming Philosophy for becoming let me find out who you are little bit and what area of the company you’re with so may I’ll start with young lady who was invited at the last
minute rush not rush that’s not rush and your name is an Anique great okay I’m Christopher I’m trade manager what manager trade maner trade manager yes okay great L bton sales manager sales sales trade yeah production production operation okay sound like a Spanish
speaker oh I’m learning so it hence the hookup it it to two it man one has backup as one good rose leaving FC Rose FC great I think met before years ago all right great tell me oh who’s on I who you have on on
Zoom are they hearing me yeah are they answering I have here are they multitasking yes yeah just go ahead hi Shar and ni
Nicol no all right so I’m going to say something strange to start us off which is that
strategy is a
philosophy for becoming
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oh this r hi Rush hi what area the company are you with I’m marketing marketing yes sales marketing trade all together okay um so that might sound like esoteric and very strange but here’s what it really works out to it’s a what plus a when divided by a
how same thing but easier so the reason Tony asked me to be here is because he tells me that he challenged you as a team to come up with the strategy for the company and as you started to work on it you started to face some uphill struggles as you started to put your thoughts together and as explain the kinds of things you were struggling with it sounded familiar to me which is that managers all managers when asked to think strategically have a difficult time breaking out of the normal way of their regular way of thinking their successful way of thinking which is problem solution problem today solution tomorrow so if somebody were to come in 5 minutes for time and tell us that the oven oven is down the oven the m Brook everybody would know what to do and I imagine by tomorrow you get it up and running again right cuz you know how to respond to those kinds of problems shortterm emergency you know how to work together as a team and you’d pull together your different disciplines in order to fix it strategy doesn’t work like that unfortunately strategy is not about immediate problem solving which is why every executive I have met in our Retreats has a difficult time because they’re used to producing results and they’re measured by the big boss and immediate results so get the Mach get the oven up and running but strategy doesn’t lend itself to immediate results so you have to think in this very different way which I would say is the difference between business as
usual versus strategic thinking
so when we have a retreat we get people to think strategically for two or 3 days and that’s it then they go back to business as usual like fixing ovens which is their job but for a CEO most of his time or her time is spent in strategic thinking but they’re the only person who spends that much time in strategic thinking so they get used to doing it but everyone else is used to the Daily cut and thrust of hitting immediate targets fixing immediate problems so the challenge that you may be facing I’m guessing here because I don’t know you that well is common and it happens with all of our clients so you’re in you’re in facing a problem that is sort of universal in management teams so the question is how do you make that jump so that you can stay over here long enough to produce a strategy now after you’ve done that you can go back to over here because you have to do this because there’s no way you can abandon this work but you need to think strategically for long enough to produce a strategic plan that for example can go up to a board and the board can say all right this is at the right level it’s not in the weeds it’s not about oven it’s not about sales next week it’s about some other kind of perspective so you want to notice that there’s two mindsets and then today I’m going to hold hope hopefully help you into this mindset for at least an hour and then when you get together in your meetings subsequent you want to find a ways to make the shift so that you’re not talking and thinking business as usual you’re thinking strategically you’re thinking in terms of the Future Okay Okay um any questions or comments about what I’ve said so far this is not a lecture right Rose all right good any questions or
comments questions comments all right great okay so I said before that it’s about a what plus a when and a divided by a how so the easiest way that we help people to think about the when and the what which is above is to think 10 15 20 30 years in the future now that may sound very strange to you because you probably have not done that before you know who thinks that way nobody right you have immediate problems to solve you have books to balance you have it infrastructure to put in by next week who thinks 30 years in the future well maybe you did when you were about 10 somebody ask you what you want to do when you grow up and you said I want to be a fireman and I nurse and a doctor and a lawyer and a and you had a whole list of things you wanted to do because you were skilled at Imagining the future now unfortunately what happens is that we lose that skill we go to school even if even if we say we want to be something like a
doctor the idea of thinking for the long term sort of gets trained out of us and we stop dreaming that way but we also stop planning for the future now unfortunately when you don’t plan for the future you lose the ability to think strategically but if you allow yourself to plan for the future then you can do some interesting things so for example this is not foreign to us as a people but familiar with Jamaica Vision 2030
one man two man so Vision 2030 was 2 invented in 2009 and it was meant to be a 21 year Vision was first 2020 Vision 2013 no it was 23 I mean yeah we had 2020 initially anyway that’s probably true if you were in the you in the design meetings right right you were in at the beginning right right right right that would have been too short yeah right but Grace Kennedy so anyone know about GK 2020 have you you know there’s only one man Noah so what happened in 1995 was that Grace Kennedy was losing its shortt they were in a bunch of businesses which weren’t making any money even the Core Business which was high low and so forth was facing severe competition from other companies and the reason they were losing so badly was because they didn’t have a source of fign exchange so if you talk to Doan or anybody who was around at the time they came up with a 205 year strategy it ended in 2020 and it allowed Grace Kennedy to be what it became it never had a financial arm at the time they created a financial arm because they looked to the Future and they said this is what we want
so companies that are able to look over the horizon to see what they want at the end of the game are able to beat out compete other companies that only look at the shortterm how many of you remember when digitell came in ah Steven J remember too young yeah so what happened was if if you remember if you’re old enough to remember to get a cell phone you remember you had to apply for a cell phone and it took like weeks there was one guy in liy who you had to go to and him sit on sit on at him desk after waiting for a while and didn’t just hangle you away and him say all right come back he said when and said about 2 weeks time and the phones were big and fat and you had to leave your phone there and they would program your phone Russ looking at me like what am I talk about you have to leave your cell phone with cable and wireless and when you come back the second time to get your phone it wasn’t wasn’t ready and you’d have to wait for the guy one guy at one desk tell boy that phone ready come back again he said come back when another two weeks and that’s what it was like to get a cell phone in Jamaica W and then man in Ireland who raised raised some cash from a sale of a telecom that he was he owned he envisioned opening a mobile phone company in a developing country and he went shopping for the right situation and he found Jamaica so that was Dennis Orban I you’re Board of digel yeah and um he stood all the way over in Ireland and imagined a successful Telephone Company here in mobile phone company here in Jamaica I don’t think he thought region at the time but at least Jamaica right so as he was making the plans and he bought the license to come to Jamaica there was someone here in Jamaica working for cable on wireless who saw this coming so I’ve interviewed the fellow it’s actually on it’s online a podcast interview and he tells the story of how he went to his Management in Jamaica he went to the management in Miami he went to the management in England Senior Management of cable and wireless to tell them this is terrible they’re going to clean us out they’re going to take over our Network Jamaicans are going to switch their behavior and all the thinking that we’ve been doing is wrong cuz the thinking back then was that only rich people wanted cell phones it sound crazy right but that really was they accepted was so expensive that only you have to have plenty money to have a cell phone so digitell came nobody took this guy on this hell came and they open on a Friday and by the Sunday what happened
H sold out they were sold out what great yes and what else they had so much traffic that they brought down cable and Wireless’s Network and they now have 70% Market here mobile phone so that was a long-term Vision that Denis Soban had so cable and wireless was all short-term oriented they couldn’t even see what was happening in front of them but that’s not uncommon there’s many stories like that of other Netflix versus Blockbuster if you’ve heard of that there’s many companies that because of their shortterm myopia and their lack of strategic thinking they got stuck in business as usual and Along came a company that was able to look over the horizon to a future they took a stand for the future implemented it when it was only a vision and eventually led to their domination and they’re taking over the industry and wiping out companies like cable and wireless is still they became lime and flow and thing and Ray and T and today they’re a small bit of what they used to be there’s other examples in Jamaica that as well but internationally there’s plenty of them companies with a superior strategy are able to beat the competitors incorporate new technology like Netflix so I I I had Netflix when I lived in the states Netflix was something that you got in the mail they used to send out DVDs ridicul it was better than blackbuster because at least you could get what you wanted and had dial up connection he still had dial up this was this was crazy timeses right and they were calling themselves Netflix but because they had a vision of streaming but there was no technology to support the vision so they were there sending out DVDs by mail and today Blockbuster no longer exist and Netflix is everywhere it’s a it’s a giant so it’s not luck these things don’t happen by buckup they don’t happen by sticking to what you’re doing and optimizing and fixing local problems it means stepping out to the Future and creating from there now what happens when you create from there is is that you have a different win that nobody else has you also have a different what cuz you’re looking at the longer term you’re not just looking at the long term and saying what’s happening out there 30 years you’re doing this thing called backcasting familiar with it backcasting y I just wanted to say something since you talk about your strategic thinking and um had some color to your story s stories um and just because it because of um one of the things when they started dig because of all that high traffic guess what happened he had some problems with B if they didn’t have enough working capital the scramble not not the scramble perform really in fact yeah it was they didn’t have no to finance so um so so because they were so successful they grew much faster than expected
so but people will know they just so luckily there’s a connection um and somebody helped us to um find working capital yeah and said there was some injection and suppli support right but the truth is the young man at the time um Dennis was just stuck under where he’s going you know so thought he was c yeah and um nobody believed him when it came here I remember in the government speak really yes so because deal with was not a company institution it used to be government it’s government at one pointment so therefore you’re challenging the government right it was like civil servants you were dealing with when you went there it was that bad nobody in the private sector speak to them nobody right they thought these guys were crazy right so um know what right right there’s a lot of but it’s sto his vision right so you need both absolutely yeah but he stopped his vision which kept it going and then the the took care of itself in an awkward way in an awkward way it did right right so people ask you know how can you look so far in the future don’t you get lost somewhere out there but that’s because there’s this tool that you could use called backcasting
and back casting allows you to pick any point in the future and then work your way back so you start at 25
20 and then you can go 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 So the plan that you create is actually short medium and longterm all at the same time time backcasting so you’re not just coming up with crazy stuff out there and saying yeah man we want this and want that want be a lawyer want be a doctor want be no it’s like if if you had your own version of a 30-year future if you only to say that you would say things like want to build on Costco and twio all Mar and B price M buy coming up with these as operations is a good starting point but when you start to Back cast and come back to the present is when you ground your aspirations in some engineering so then it’s not just a matter of wanting big things it’s well what’s feasible and what’s workable and what if it take make conservative assumptions what will actually be supported by doing that so your what and your when so your when can be as far out as you want sometimes you may find that you have to compress it so we worked with a company um here in Jamaica we asked them this was a a money a financial institution we asked them when will Jamaicans finally switch over to wanting online services and I’m said long time long time whole a time this was before Co 20 years and we said well how many many years how many exactly cuz we were doing backcasting right how many years exactly will it take so they had a whole conversation about it and they said all right 8 years we said okay so we build the plans so that they would 50% of Jamaicans would want online service by year eight but the next year Co lck and guess what happened to the 8y year plan yeah it became a onee plan month’s plan but they had done the thinking beforehand so what happens when you follow the rigor of doing backcasting and you pick a point in the future of vision and it’s detailed enough and your plan makes some sense you can always compress it especially if new technology becomes available you know I could see Javan calling up Tony and saying Mr CH they have a whole new thing we could use in up whole new thing just came out just I found it on the Internet it’s going to change the way we do baking as a species human beings and as your team you get together you look at your plan and you say well we thought that kind of thing would be available out here it’s actually available in 5 years so that causes us to rethink our strategy because there’s no new technology that allows us to change our assumptions and therefore change what we’re doing today so the fact that this comes all the way back to year one means that we’re talking about immediate changes in service of a future so this is not just about what’s going to happen way down the pike and then you forget about it Tenisha has to hire different people if you’re going to have the workforce you need 3 years from now so that you can implement the plant that you need 6 years from now so that you can produce the products that you want 7 years from now so that you can so there’s things that immediately need to happen to implement the what and the
when and that’s the whole so it used to be in the past so Vision 2030 Jamaica is a good example they talked about the what the way they didn’t talk about the how and that’s why it hasn’t accomplished a whole lot that’s why nobody knows what it is it’s so part of the whole that they didn’t do was to tell people what it is that part didn’t happen but also they didn’t do the backcasting they didn’t figure out how much of this plan is actually feasible cuz the big thing that’s happened in our today’s strategic planning is that instead of talking about just big things that you want like I want to be a doctor a lawyer like a kid is that when you follow this process you’re talking about a vision of for the
future that is
credible
feasible and you’ve already made tradeoffs
because you can’t have
everything so the conversations that you would need to have as a team are once you’ve picked your target year and then start to describe the details of that is what are the trade-offs that we need to make cuz we can’t do
everything can’t have it all now that leads to not necessarily contentious conversation but it it it leads to negotiations because Rush might very well want so and so for marketing but rose rose says we’ll never be able to afford marketing like that no matter what we do and she said you have to think big and your FC says yeah but remember what the guy said you have to think realistic Ally when you do this process so we actually have to have budgets to implement everything we need to do and there’s no budget in the world that would allow for us to advertise in North America be on Netflix and that kind of thing so you have to have these conversations in which you trade off different things that you want so that at the end the vision that you have doesn’t look like does not look like Vision 2030 Jamaica which was Vision 2030 Jamaica unfortunately was a wish list so what do we know about wish lists like it’s Christmas time what do we know yeah yeah can I don’t didn’t really to work out you know instead the new way of thinking about it is that no more wish list instead have credible plans which are limited which involve tradeoffs that you need to make take that vision and then work it back to the present and as you work it back you’ll find that there are parts of it that will just fall apart by the way so for example speaking of Spanish speaking I worked with a company in Trinidad and their aspiration was to enter Latin America in a big way and they said yeah man we could have the we need to whole some huge amount of people in the company to speak Spanish as well so if we start now 20 years time we should have a bilingual
Workforce no anybody here trying to learn another language you’re already there but it takes a long time to learn language I started learning Spanish when I was in prep school and S here still a struggle struggle struggle 50 years later probably so when I did the back casting they found that they could not have a bilingual company in any decent frame of time so they had to abandon the goal and that’s what happens when you try to make your vision as you make your vision more realistic as you make tradeoffs you realize that you cannot have everything so the what needs to involve these
tradeoffs hard
decisions you’ll find yourself abandoning abandoning things that you thought could never be abandoned what Purity not make bread no more where the world I come to well it could be that you went out 20 years time and you weren making bread in 20 years time the only question is when do you stop making the bread
and if you had a plan like that for example optimizing the bread that you have today becomes a business’s usual problem it’s not a strategic problem so n Netflix yeah Netflix had this problem so when Netflix made a switch from DVDs to
streaming the technology finally caught up to the original Vision the D division was making all the money because there was no other division but they were now saying look the technology is coming we can actually see put a year to it we dial up it was a joke but now we have fast internet all over the world Broadband is penetrating we can now do it so they said all right set up the strategic planning meetings for the future of the company and they said to the DVD guys by the way you’re not invited so now why would they say that to the DVD
people hology they were in the
Pasty they were so they were so but I don’t know what the word is but they were so clear and kind of cut and dry black and white about it that they said having the DVD guys there would just slow them down so then said boy DVD guys we just want you to keep making money look it sound bad right we we want you to keep making money as long as you can because we need your money to survive we need cash flow to fund our future efforts but we don’t want you there to defend your thinking because you are in a industry instead we need the people who are going to think differently I’m not saying you guys should do that and run people out of meetings and things but the point is when you’re doing strategic thinking it’s only strategic thinking it’s beyond the realm of just business as usual and it’s hard to think this way it’s hard to create a picture using just words it’s hard to get a hold of it and grab a you know put it in one place and keep it there long enough to motivate you it’s hard to do these
steps but it’s worth it it’s worth it it’s the only way to bring about a new world for your company your customers your shareholders your suppliers your vendors you know they all they all want the new Purity to emerge and you’re the only ones who can make it come from a vision in the future and to come into being but you do need to pay attention to these things the what the when and the how because thinking strategically is not it’s a different kind of thinking than you do for business as usual which is mostly problem solving so I started off by saying strategies as a philosophy for becoming it’s a fancy word but it is saying that in order for us to become we need to think in a particular way and plan in a particular way and allow our mindset to be like streaming versus DVD for Netflix and to stay in that world long enough and then we can go back to the DVD world and keep making DVDs because we we still need to make money yes but while you’re in this world you need to be purely in that world so that what you invent and you create can actually be inspirational you know that was the idea we had in Vision 2013 was that it would be inspiring now that hasn’t happened for various reasons but if you were to read it and look at it it was it’s everything we want it’s too many things that we want it have everything in the kitchen sink unfortunately if you go too broad you end up not inspiring anymore it sound like I want to be a lawyer a doctor and an Indian chief when I grow up people say yeah there’s nowhere we’re going to get that cuz it doesn’t sound reasonable today you need to be credible and balanced and somewhat conservative make your tradeoffs and then you can inspire people to say you know I think I want to stay here at at Purity I think I want to a sim a sim a Sim future here you know because for stay here and this strategy that we’ve created really comes to pass I could see us doing some important things that are worth staying around for some things that will really exciting that my my kids could say daddy you involved in in putting out the new Purity and the new stuff that they have and you say yeah yeah yeah you’re retired at this point nursing home but
as you eating your porridge but they’re saying boy Daddy I’m I’m so glad I’m so you know you did a good job you did a good we love the products amazing you know imagine what people how people think about digitell and how did save Jamaica from monopo say say all kinds of ways Monopoly bad technology being stale and digitell you know you know moved us into the a whole different world in which we could compete with other countries and c m was not getting there anytime soon they were really happy drawing them 15% profit they were very comfortable monopolizing the situation but to bring about new worlds it takes courage it takes a willingness to think differently not the whole time but at least part of the time so questions comments this is like I said not a lecture but questions comments or what about no man that work way
objections question
the is it that you create for each interval or interval yeah detail detail don’t mean overd detailed so you you ask ask in the right question because if if you get too detailed out here you end up with things that are going to change too much they’re more detailed in the earlier years with intervals are smaller and then you stretch them out as you go out you get less detail as you go yeah you get less so you allow for more flexibility and also you don’t want to be over precise because you get over precise you end up having to do too much work that’s going to change so you do you’re doing just the minimum if I could think of it that way you’re you’re being stingy and say we’re putting in just just enough details so that this is feasible just enough and no more because you know it’s going to change but that’s all right better to change a plan that you have than not have a plan what I’m saying but closer go ahead so the first five what seven years the first seven years that’s where the bulk of the work and the change exactly me and then you’re basically just maintaining and adjust when the Milestones get bigger adjust not necessarily because you could build build a mega Factory in 15 years old so these are bigger accomplishments but they build on the things you need to do in the beginning to right yeah year 1 to is setting the foundation and making those big changes to prepare you for not necessarily big cuz the usually aren’t that big in the beginning they they’re big to you because you know the Runnings like for example you may decide T don’t want to hire no more bers what what do you mean because in your plan you see that you’re not going to be doing that kind of baking I’m screwing up the example
but automated with for example but so for instance you have it for 20 so over the other you make grad
changes right half the plant could be technologists and technicians and it types aut
next so if you stop hiring the people that you you won’t need in the future and instead you hire a bunch of UT tech people who you teach to do baking enough baking just enough so that they can know what’s going on and can be you then over time they do less of the packaging sorry they do less packaging and they do more automation but they would have learned the business can you see there’s a strategy in how she would hire them given a strategy like that so it so Tena it’s not it’s not about big or small because you may see it as big in your team because you know that this thing is important but when you break it down into increments they don’t seem that big like well so what they’re not hiring packaging people anymore so what but when you know the where it’s headed and the reason why you’re not hiring any more packaging people then it has big ramifications it’s just that from the outside they won’t understand it they want to appreciate why are you doing that instead I don’t know what do they idiot like K thought that they was a bunch of idiots and they not going remember all the analysts at said that cell phone in Jamaica will not make money smart analyst told them that coming to Jama they wouldn’t make any money really yeah interesting H and the vision the vision beat the analysis that they even they did which is why I guess they were underfunded for so long and why they broke down the network and why they were them frighten when them see the lines out the door and they had that huge they round of phones they didn’t even imagine that the the demand was there I said something about um then Rush
sorry ask when you go closer to the more mat after if you get more details as you go into those other years these years
so get more deta right right because it’s it’s by you you would you probably have to revise it anyway yeah because there’s some assumptions that you have to make as you line up this whole plan it looks like a spreadsheet by the way with a it looks like a Gant top sorry looks like a set of milestones at the top and a Gant chart below and the two of them are synced together okay so I didn’t bring a picture of it but I can send a picture of it but there’s a lot of assumptions that go into it yeah which is why like for example people ask me how do you go into a company you don’t even know the business and write their strategic plan and I have to correct them and say them days of doing that done because as an outsider there’s no way I can do the strategy for them the best I can do is to help them to follow a particular framework to do it for themselves because the number of assumptions that go into a plan of this nature require every man Jack around this table and and Zoo to bring their insights and understanding and subtleties and things that only tenan knows about HR in
the I was going to say the baking industry but don’t let me insult but in the baking industry the things that she knows that only people who have held her job would know so when she says I can’t find that kind of person I can’t train that kind of person then you incorporate it into the plan so she brings that level of expertise so it’s really a bunch of experts who put together something like this inside experts not an outsider
like Tony yeah you know I just wanted to give some examples of St plan in action the same company speaking about believe in right this is did yeah but but but anybody work with him clearly understood where he’s going and religion was because you know the practice the philosophy and approach was was keep just new because all the things we did but let me say something one of the things he said to it’s true and I very fast disc pricing he said you no this is about value he want to create value for for the so his approach was Center mon people so I was involved because my he got me because I wanted something
J speak J not just to make so his whole thing was creating value for the consumers staff Etc the time he said that he had fa
yeah things so one of the things he said value is important to him so when he priced we’re actually more expensive than but we gave value and and price was a value proposition not only
hard so the pentri thing was important I remember he call I would do something so you went sat on a bunch of table with a bunch of Jamaica you have this with me I said I went you so we handed out we handed out some um some incentives uhhuh to folks and those folks became instant Millionaires and these were people that their humble and they only because the guys have help us we wanted to do it so I remember never forgot that thing we sat on a table came in there I had and said
time I will call they’ve done very well for themselves they said t this is what it’s all about yes I need to make some returns of divid but it has to be focused on the yeah so he had that back in his mind so my point is sometimes you know you come in there you want vision statement and stuff which is important but the vision was not articulated was actually a vision and action people just could feel and he was the embodiment of it yeah but but it’s interesting that you mention that CU When when we when when I describe this process to folks like you I tend to talk about the value to the company because you understand that readily but really there’s like a sneaky agenda that I have here which is that when you when you go this far
out who’s the youngest person here Javon brush probably me brush you’re the youngest personably
you win great so when you looking this far out Tony dead long time you know exactly or nursing home with parriage maybe if he’s lucky parriage con part but it’s not for him so it gets interesting because the reason we go this far out one of the reasons is that we try to help teams think beyond their own immediate fortunes and their own bottom line and their own bonuses and the way to do that is by looking far out enough that it’s about the Next Generation and when you look out far enough to the Next Generation then it becomes very people oriented so we don’t say that and we don’t advertise it cuz it happens by itself we don’t have to say anything when you look Beyond yourself and your own needs you start to think about the next generation of managers your customers in the future people who would be able to find nutritious products and afford them regardless of circumstances now you’re doing country service you’re doing World Service actually you’re able to contribute to the to net 050 20 2050 and not cause climate change to ruin the whole planet because you can accomplish those things once you’re thinking far out enough to make your contribution to it so one of the things that you may ask yourself is how many of you see problems in the company that you wish a a a team like this had solved 30 years
ago all all day long right because that’s the nature of that’s just life right but I want you to imagine that 30 years from now is only Russ and Javan in the room who remember this process that you’re going through and when the young ones come to them and say what was it like to be in the strategic planning of 2025 2024 to 5 then could say them never do nothing that’s why we have all the problems that we have today so that could be one story of ignoring problems that you should have solved that instead you just kept to the short term and just stuck with what you couldn’t see in front of you and we don’t want do more none of that that is that is Mr CH job this is my job that’s his job my job his job and I just want to focus on what we have today and she could tell them you know that we were selfish we didn’t we didn’t even bother we knew we we’re creating problems for you you guys but we didn’t or when they come to her and say what was it like she could start to get tears in her eyes and say you know he was amazing he was
amazing because they decided to set aside their own immediate benefit and to benefit generations to come so they made decisions that were for us today 30 years later as opposed to for them and they had to make sacrifices and they had to work really hard they had to do this kind of weird thinking and planning but the reason why Purity is where it is today and trust me these conversations are happening in places like Grace Kennedy because they actually did it so when they call up Doug Arena and bring him back you know there are people who know what he did back in 1995 to save the company and he had all kind of opposition and thing but he did it but you guys are in the same position you know as you go into your planning cycle will you do something that’s memorable will you do something that’s courageous something that moves the needle something that’s future Generations will look back and be happy that you did or will Them Say Bo them should have do it yes but them never do it who who get tired who who get lazy who who want more money who who migrate [Music] so you have a choice in front of you will you be blue pillar or red pill the courageous group or the Cowardly group the long-term group or the short-term group so you have a choice questions comments before you run me out of here and say we have we have ovens to go fix
I think this is very um inspiring I’ve strategy the way um you it I mean I’ve listened to a lot of people talk about strategy and honestly I think it’s inspiring makes you want to go and write a strategy out right now and you know and do some broadcasting um and it also gives you I think um I think it’s like the method in terms of Storytelling and I think also translative strategy somewhat amount of Storytelling in terms of you know what our story will be you know 30 years from now because of decisions that we made today so it’s it’s narrative building which you know all about yeah it’s it’s just not narrative building about a product it’s narrative building about the future of your company but it’s the same it’s actually the same yeah yeah it’s the same method just applying it to a different cause narrative building
you involved in you know you you’re paused on doing something great you know I I can’t tell you what it is what the hell do I know but it’s you could be why
not why not other questions comments before you run me Chas me
off one question was very you can speak in
spish I would understand I
would Javier what jaier um Javon what you think javel sorry this is jav sorry sorry sorry all right so all right I since come here
I think Mr speaking with to actually create strateg plan but um some things I realize that um might have action but it’s not exec not have so you that you’re an expert in the Strategic Building Systems coming into this meeting what what exactly you are expecting for us to take option um I’ll tell you the steps that I recommend you follow right so one is to come to agreement about where the company is right now so there’s a right there’s a because you you’re you’re in different disciplines right now know you see you’re seeing you’re all seeing the company from your perspectives so you sort of need to create this joined up perspective so that when you and this could be a couple of couple of exercise where are we right now part of the reason is so that everyone understands the company in the same way so it’s not just that HR has its view but HR could also appreciate finances view that’s not the regular meetings that you normally have where you solve problems you have a weekly meeting I guess an operations meeting no I’m talking about a an overview of where you’re at uh we call it a snapshot in my work but here’s where we’re at then the next step is to pick a year in the future to plan around so that’s the by the way my website has all kinds of stuff on this if you want to really if you want to really study this stuff and it’s also in my it’s also in my um articles in the gleer longterm strategy
doino so they pick a pick a planning year and the planning year needs to be not too far out and not too close up so don’t don’t pick 200 and don’t pick two but somewhere in the middle somewhere in there there’s your sweet spot so you pick the planning year then around the planning year you do some brainstorming of different Alternatives so alternative one could be sell the business and let’s get into let’s give money to the employees and Let’s Escape because there’s no future for what we’re doing that’s a possible plan plan two alternative two could be we merged with honey B and hdb and element op and we
create option three could be that we um trans or Miss bery on steroids everything is like Miss birdie level where it’s all highend and high I’m guessing Okay I just like this birdie by the way this birdie is I’m a fan I’m a real I wish it were there all the time but anyway so you move from low end to high end high margin High whatever and you create a demand for it and you have it available to the diaspora so you create some Alternatives like that and then you choose between the Alternatives mix and match and then you say okay that’s the alternative for 2050 say that’s the one that we’ve chosen you create some details for 2050 convert that into numbers and I’m going fast but I don’t have another way to and I’m recording this so you you can go over it if you want so you convert the vision for 2050 into numbers you go from words to numbers and with the numbers you do your back casting and with the back casting you would have a number of line items that all have M stones in particular years and then a set of [Music] projects which Drive these numbers so you here a
project and here you have
milestones and you end up with one chart that describes the future that you’re heading towards we also recommend that you bite off the first three years and create a strategy map to guide you in the immediate for the immediate future so this this this really sits in the background and then you do these things in the first three years and you create projects for the first three years you assign them to people and it gets the ball rolling so you’re it’s weird you’re you’re doing something shortterm some things shortterm but they have a long-term impact because you’re you know what they’re going to do for the future you’re also going to stop doing some things like stop investing in DVDs because you know that DVDs given the strategy DVD is done so you’re going to stop doing some things that you’re currently doing you’re going to kill certain projects you’re going to you know take away certain Investments and then you’ll have a shortterm plan if you use a strategy map technique it looks like a diagram but it’s it’s that’s that’s that’s what I want that’s that’s what I recommend to everyone who who’s interested in the following this this
process that’s it for me that’s it for you any others
OS Tony this is very useful and I’m glad I’m glad we brought you in at this moment intervention is timely that’s five you know we have challenges we look up Don’t Look Down I think we’re gu correctly so I want to thank you for the blessing us and you know you know one takeway have obviously technique is good but the back is veryimportant that’s a very good technique and we do have our vision back proper and um I can tell a hint I I don’t business the way we are in 10 years you know we’re going need a brand business brand yeah that is where we taking the business and you know got to create that vision and that purpose behind it so but really truly I wanted to learn
something
yes
life you know you I I love to be an example rest of the companies in Jamaica yeah you can create Centric organization that’s a
different I
know um but I won’t get into the the point is that my little experience and I don’t think I know everything but I learned one thing I think that
the yes to bring it yes yes but thank you this has been a good blessing for all of us I think
keep I am inspired by what but also I think I feel more confident in my part of the vision and I’m seeing it clearer I really appreciate it excellent ex you you have each other you know this is the business as usual conversations and discussions the meetings that you have about the ovens and the people who don’t come to work and the marketing and the packaging and cash flow you know those things they’re they’re absolutely critical and important and you know you have each other to solve those problems as you do on a weekly basis and what I hear you saying you also have each other to hold a vision at the same time the same way Dennis O’Brien you know he he he did all the business as usual stuff and he held this vision of people being at the center you’re you have each other to be able to do something as great and as impactful as that said it’s not just about most companies in Jamaica will say we want make a money and as fast as possible you you know I talk to to them and that’s what they say and but you have each other to be able to accomplish more than just that it’s just that you you need to hold both spaces at the same time and teams it’s not easy to hold both spaces but we need to support each other right right right every step of the way supporting each other it it does come down to how well you can be with each other to accomplish accomplish both sides of the equation so I’m very optimistic after this conversation I’m going to reach out to you and then we can plan some next steps but is very good very good
so thank you everybody thanks thanks thank you so you have a great you have a great have a great um Vibe yeah team
a Vibes
bar oh really like a candy bar kind of
thing kind of okay
healthy I like those
that was her her idea for The Vibes bar she doesn’t know Vibes bar has VI I’m not what color is the packaging can’t remember seeing it white it’s white white box it is so exclusive it’s it’s rare like a Miss thing it’s kind of high so not for the like me more higher level no no it’s developing it developing it’s going EXC you know Vision 26 27 excellent excellent excellent the the right word Vibes Vibes
important happy Christmas I can see you’re you’re holding the Christmas [Music] Vibe okay so get this make sure follow no man I’ve never seen yeah want the white box the white box