Involve your team. Coming from the SEAL team tradition as I do, we actually are very aggressive in including all levels of the organization. Not just the senior people, for instance, but including someone from the tactical operational level and then someone from the strategic level, so we have a nice mix of strategy and tactical operational daily expertise involved in all the decisions that we make.
There’s oftentimes a misperception that too much of the brain power and expertise resides at the very top. A lot of decisions, probably too many decisions, get made by the top two or three people in the company when oftentimes there’s great ideas, better ideas, than you may have up in the executive suite coming from the folks that are interfacing the customer each day.
(Finding the right person for the conversation is) the function of the best fit for that particular job and the availability. There is the reality of not everybody is available all the time. We try to build some redundancy of capability in each of our departments so there’s usually not just one person who is perfect for that decision opportunity, there’s usually a few that will contribute equally well.
And I’m a big believer in giving the younger members of an organization opportunity to succeed and to stumble and learn from it. Then, they’re better for the experience.
Sit and strategize. The way this would generally work is myself or one of the other senior leadership members would frame up the issue at the start of the meeting. We’d make sure there is cross-functional representation in the meeting with people who have the authority to speak for their functions.
We’d outline the key issues, throw up a few alternative solutions that might be under consideration to get the discussion started, have a quick discussion — we try and keep all of our meetings under an hour.
Then, (release) the hounds to debate it and do some quick scenario modeling and then come out with a couple of good alternatives.
One of them might emerge as the clear solution. In the case that there’s not and there’s differing opinions, then that’s where the executives get paid to make the tough decisions. You pick one and put it into action and go forward.
Be willing to adjust. You’ve got to be willing to admit when you’re wrong and make an adjustment to the plan.
You can’t be dogmatic, or as we say in the SEALs, ‘You can only spend so much time trying to clear a bad parachute before you cut it away and go to your reserve.’ If you wait too long to make that decision, you’re going to have a mouth full of dirt.
In general, No. 1, try to be quick to claim mistakes and slower to claim credit. My guys know that, at the end of the day, I’m the one who is ultimately responsible for the outcomes. They know that they have my faith and confidence to go forth and experiment. If something doesn’t work, then we pull back, we figure out what went wrong and we figure out what we should do to make it right.
This is an early-stage, rapid-growth business, where we are moving very fast and with always a scarcity of information — that’s just the environment in which we live.
It’s a forgone conclusion that some of the time we’re going to get it wrong or we’re just not going to get it as right as we wish we’d had.
How to reach: Fitness Anywhere Inc., (888) 878-5348 or www.fitnessanywhere.com