Journal Entry 1, 9/16/2011

"There is nothing wrong with pursing a vision of greatness", says Jim Collins in his book, Good to Great, location 1319/6341, IPad e-book.However, in the same paragraph, he states that "the good-to-great companies continually refined the path to greatness with the brutal facts of reality".The context of this quote references what many companies seek to achieve or establish early on: their vision. Vision is a vital element that contributes to the strategy; but as Collins points out, it's not the strategy itself. Vision with data-driven strategy is key. I see this in my profession as a salesman. 

Too often, I see colleagues and managers getting riled up in the "hoorah" of hype, but believe that the vision itself is the strategy; that somehow, without a logical checklist, we can will our way to amazing sales. Case in Point: This past summer, I was one of the top salesman for Vivint in the Oklahoma City office; furthermore, I was part of a company-wide competition, in which the top five-veteran salesmen competed against one another, from office to office. Thus the top five of Oklahoma City, my office, competed against the top five salesmen of St. Louis, for example. 

Our team was doing great; we absolutely steam-rolled our way through the competition; as teams eliminated teams, the point in the competition is reached when steam-rolling changes to winning by a nose, as only the very elite are left. My team was matched up against Nashville; we were behind. My manager and friend, Scott Brown, proposed a city, 2 hours away, to target for our team. The idea was that if we could individually have outstanding performances for the next two-days, we could make-up the lag and achieve victory over Nashville. I ran the data on the city he proposed, Altus, Oklahoma. I found disturbing evidence: (1) less crime than Provo, UT, which for alarm/home automation sales, that's a big problem; (2) military town, and military recently suffered significant pay and benefit reductions; (3) competing company had been there two months earlier, harder to find interested prospects; (4) median income was fairly low. I presented these facts to the team, and suggested we find a new target location. The response was mainly negative, blaming me for bringing the team down for presenting the facts. I was shocked! I merely presented data to enhance our decision-making prowess, how would this bring the team down. The fact was the team didn't want to go against Scott, for fear of offending the manager who proposed the strategy, and also they wanted to ignore the reality of current events and demographics on Altus. So to Altus we went.

The result was disaster, as the data indicated it would be. Many people, including a heavy portion of non-military, stated that they were not spending money in light of pay cuts for the military. The military for obvious reasons, the locals because the military made-up the majority spending on their small business. Furthermore, those who decided to purchase were already customers of our competition. Others said that they had lived for decades without any incidents of crime and believed our services unnecessary. 

Reflecting back on this event, while reading Good to Great, has made me a believer in what Collins teaches, or rather what he found in his research. Vision is not strategy, and strategy is not vision; you must have both elements in place to be great, and to ignore either element will result poorly in your favor.