Get Out of The Weeds
Vince Marsh Educates Us On How Senior Teams Can Be More Successful In Their Strategic Thinking
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In This Episode
Do you sit down every year with your senior team and make a strategic plan? Maybe you have big plans of how you are going to grow, add more initiatives and keep building towards your next big goal. It’s great, you’re energized and excited, but as the year goes on, you find yourself slowly over time getting pulled into daily, practical tasks that need to get done. Soon, you can’t even remember your strategic goals, let alone know how you’ll achieve them. The new year hits and you repeat the same cycle again and again. Are you feeling stuck? Well, our guest today can help you Get Out Of The Weeds.
Vince Marsh has 15 years of experience helping leaders of senior teams become capable of handling any problem in a strategic way that keeps them from getting pulled too much into the weeds. He speaks to us about the common issues he has seen senior teams run into, what some solutions can be to those and share his experience in writing his book, Get Out of The Weeds. This episode is a great listen for anyone who is struggling with carving out strategic time for themselves or their leadership team.
Episode Breakdown
First 10 Minutes
We hear about Greg and Dave’s adventures of getting haircuts before they get out of the weeds to introduce our guest Vince Marsh. We learn about Vince’s background and what brought him to writing his book “Getting Out of the Weeds”. Dave asks Vince what the challenges are of staying strategic and not getting too tactical. Vince highlights that it may be because the shift and disruptions in business nowadays mean planning strategy can no longer be a yearly event and needs to be done more often. Vince highlights a few other elements like short-term performance metrics and demands from the teams they lead that can prevent strategic planning time. Greg highlights the changes that have happened at his own company since COVID like daily meetings and opening lines of communication.
10 Minutes – 20 Minutes
Vince highlights that if the executive team gets into the weeds, they push their teams further into the weeds causing the Death Spiral that is very hard to climb out of. Dave asks Vince about having external people come in and advise people. Vince explains that senior teams should focus on the highest level and complex problems and senior teams should bring in the experience they need. Dave highlights that it is helpful to have someone hold you accountable for achieving the strategic vision instead of just getting the practical steps done right away. Vince talks about the difference in how people think about strategic thinking and how that cognitive ability needs to develop if it’s not a skill they have built. Vince talks about how to learn those types of skills.
20 Minutes – 30 Minutes
The group talks through the issue of not being able to delegate responsibilities to the direct reports of the senior team so they can have the time to think more strategically. Vince talks about how there is increased CEO turnover, how senior teams need to evaluate the skills of their direct reports and how to develop skill sets in those positions. Dave brings up the fact that moving up levels of the organizations is about learning different ways to think. Vince agrees and highlights steps that people can take to start thinking more strategically by always having at least one strategic project.
30 Minutes – 40 Minutes
Dave asked about what advice Vince has for writing a book. Vince recommends hiring someone for your first book to help you with the process, especially if you are planning to self-publish. He recommends carving out time daily. The group talks about what they do daily to maintain their time.
Vince Marsh
Canadian Management Consultant, Coach, Speaker, Person Behind Senior Team Advisory
According to the dictionary, an advisory is: a) a warning about bad conditions, i.e. a weather advisory; and/or b) a recommendation for how to take appropriate actions. For almost 15 years, Vince has been helping the leaders of senior teams anticipate and prepare for bad weather – the turbulence caused by technological and competitive disruption – by advising them on the development of their most critical survival tool: a high-performing senior team that’s capable of solving their highest-level, strategic problems.
Vince specializes in working with organizations that must ‘restart’ – incumbents who for one reason or another must make significant strategic and operational transitions if they’re to successfully navigate disruption. This new way of operating can’t be achieved without an equally significant shift in how the CEO and their senior team think and function – the organization can’t shift before the senior team does. I help the CEO build the individual and collective capabilities the senior team needs to make this shift successfully.
Vince only works with senior teams and his proposition is simple: a) over the years he’s developed the unique capabilities needed to inspire change in senior teams; b) his methods are practical and proven; and c) he’s supported by a truly world-class network of thought leaders and practitioners capable of providing unique/specific expertise and man-power as needed in a wide variety of disciplines.