Strategic Planning and Communications in Fly Fishing and Business

Strategic Planning and Communications in Fly Fishing and Business

I love to fly fish.   And I love driving growth in the business world.   If you read my first two writings in my series, you hopefully can see how my experience in the river chasing fish can be transported to truths in the business world.     

Today, I am going to explore the importance of strategic planning, execution excellence, and teamwork prior, during, and after implementation.   

As mentioned before, I have been blessed to be a part of the 90/10 club.   I have friends/mentors that are the 10% of fisherman that catch 90% of the fish.   Today, I will introduce you to Deacon, my Georgia mentor, friend, and teammate in the river.

Deacon has a gift and a passion for researching topography and river conditions, two factors to his success as a fly fisherman.  You see, Deacon is by trade a landscape architect and civil engineer.    If you drive around Atlanta, you will most likely see his work.     What I love about Deacon is his attention to detail, his ability to “know his stuff”, and simply put, is a student of his craft.   He knows what he knows, or takes the time to  learn what he doesn’t.   

So why does this matter in the world of fly fishing?   Prior to going on a fishing excursion, Deacon is my expert on what I will call “foundational research”.  

Foundational Research:   Why it matters in Fly Fishing

Early in the fishing season, Deacon will pick up the phone and call the local division of wildlife to talk to the people that manage specific rivers we think we want to fish.   During this time, he will learn about stocking of the rivers, the rules around public and private water, and any other key insights he can gather from talking to another human being.  

One of the most critical pieces of information he has gathered is the stocking schedule and where the fish are put into the river.  A simple principle that can be applied to either fishing or sales and marketing growth-- fish where the fish are.   

Now that he has this intelligence, it is time for Deacon to do some “field research”.   He will jump in his car and take a short drive to the rivers he has researched.   Deacon will “drive the river”, find the key access points where we can access the river (official parking lots/pull offs on the side of the road), and then put on his hiking boots and start exploring.  

In my opinion, the eye test is important for inspecting a trout stream.    You will want to find streams that have a combination of both fast moving water and deep pools of slow water.   Another attribute of a great trout stream is appearance of rocks, pebbles, and boulders in the riverbed.    Trout love to sit behind larger rocks in a faster moving stream to preserve energy and feed.  

In my experience- when I personally do “field research,” I always come away with insights that a computer simply cannot provide.   In fact, my experience in the business world is just as applicable.   The ideation of some of my most successful business strategies happened when talking to frontline employees and teams “in the field”.   If you are an executive or higher level manager, push away from your desk, and go out and talk to your customers (both internal and external).  

Now, back to the river.    After spending time doing his field research, Deacon researches the water flows and water temperature online.  We typically fish in national forest areas in North Georgia, so Deacon has  access to some great information.   Given that he is both an architect and civil engineer by trade, he is very well versed navigating government websites with topographical information.  

At this point you are probably thinking, what about fly hatches and other insights (as discussed in my prior writing).   This is where I add my value to the team.   I do the online research on the flies and fly hatches.   Additionally, I dig deep into the “story telling” aspect of these rivers.   I seek out people that like to post online via blogs/social media on their fishing success in the North Georgia rivers.    I look to both current and historical information to identify any competitive edge we might be able to gain when we make it out to the river.

You might be thinking, enough already, go fishing!   However, there is one final piece to the puzzle before we head out, and this is probably the most important.  We find about 15 minutes a few days prior to our day of fishing, jump on the phone, and share our collective learnings with one another. 

In short, we communicate, share our learnings, and align on our plan for success.   Since we both have unique insights and bring different perspectives to the table, creating space for this alignment helps us both individually prepare for our day on the river.

Strategic Teamwork and Communication:  In the River

So, you might wonder what does “strategic teamwork” mean with you are in the river fly fishing”?    Let me share. 

First and most importantly, go with a fishing partner (hence the “teamwork”).  For a period in my life, I exclusively went fly fishing by myself.      More times than not, I would not catch a fish, or even have a fish hit my line.   After those days in the river, my mind would become flooded with questions like “did I use the wrong fly?    Was my fly not deep enough in the river?   Was it the wrong size?  Or was the water too warm.”  When you are by yourself, finding answers to these questions can be discouraging.      

However, when you go fishing with a friend, you can make it a team effort.  For Deacon and I, we discuss on the drive up the first few flies we plan to use.    We ensure that we are not duplicating our efforts (such as using the same flies/same colors).    Our logic is simple:   we leverage a “two is better than one” mentality.   We have two people fishing in the river, we test our flies quickly (with a goal of succeed/fail fast), and hopefully find a fly that the fish are willing to go after on that  day.  

This simple concept of teamwork in the river has provided us successful results, so we continue to do it.     

Now that we have our strategic plan in place, we need to ensure we can strategically communicate in the river.   Fly fishing is predominantly done in a solitary environment.   In fact, part of my goal when I am in a river is finding a place where I don’t see anyone else around. 

So, how do you communicate when you are in isolation in a river?   With walkie talkies!

After several trips over the past year with Deacon, we came to the realization that our strategic preparation became ineffective at game time due to communication barriers.   If our (or my) goal is to fish in solitude, how can we share insights, successes, and best practices when we are unable to communicate with one another?  

Now, with the introduction of the walkie talkies, when we find a fly or a spot where the fish are biting, we can quickly share this information with the each other.   In short, there is a role for technology when fly fishing…and in business as well.      

Post Execution Recap:   The Drive Home

Now that our day in the river is over, Deacon and I make sure we spend a portion of our drive home recapping the day.   This takes the form of a simple three-pronged formula:

1.      We celebrate our successes.

2.      We discuss what did/did not work (and other insights we may have picked up along the way).

3.      We start planning our next trip out on the river.

As a fisherman, there is nothing better than a great “fishing story”.   Whether we caught fish or not, Deacon and I always appreciate the fact that we were able to escape our day-to-day responsibilities and be out in nature.   And if we happen to catch if fish, that is a bonus.   Our mindset- each day in the river is a success!

We also “compare notes” on what we experienced in the river.  As mentioned before, much of our time in the river is in solitude, so we are constantly in “data collection” mode.   We sometimes encounter other people in the river, and usually pick up new insights from them along the way.  Because we are a team, we want to ensure we have the best available information for out next adventure out into the river.

And about that next trip…we start talking about our next adventure immediately on the drive home.   We both love to fly fish.   And, we both are incredibly busy people.  For accountability purposes, we start discussing at a high level when our schedules might open up for another trip to the river.  In our stages of life, we need to take a disciplined approach to find time for our passion of fly fishing.  

Connecting the dots between Fly Fishing and Business  

Now, lets get down to business and focus on how our approach to a day in the river applies to business.

1.      Build a data driven strategy based off insights    

When there is a problem in business, we must fight the urge for a knee jerk reaction.   I have seen more dollars wasted when leaders react vs. respond.       

This is not to say don’t move fast, but we need to develop the discipline to do the following:

·        Define the business problem you are trying to solve.

·        Leverage internal and external data, define key insights from the data,  and supplement with “in the field” research.

·        Build a data-driven actionable strategy with specific definitions for success.  

I want to quickly double click on the term “actionable strategy”.    As you go thru your strategy building process, communicate with your teams that will be executing your strategy on your behalf.    By providing upfront awareness, you can gain buy-in from that team (which will help you later).   Additionally, by keeping them tied into the development process of your strategy, you will be able to mitigate issues at the time of execution (aka- the “this won’t work” on the day a program or strategy launches).  

This engagement will also ensure that your strategy makes it out of models and slides, and into market driving results.   

2.      Trust your strategy, communicate with your team,  and execute your plan

I cringe writing this, but it is time for tough love for me.   Below are some experiences that I either personally exhibited (aka- I did some of these), experienced, or observed in my 19+ years of corporate life.

·        Within a week or two of the date of implementation, a leader steps in and completely redirects the program without budging on the deliverable date.

·        Your team that is executing the strategy (on your behalf) does not follow thru, does not meet the expected deadlines, or does not execute the strategy as planned.

·        The strategy is launched, however no one is monitoring the program to ensure execution excellence or monitoring early results.

Now I am happy to say, there are solutions to mitigate the above:   Executive Sponsorship, Project Management, and Accountability measurements.    I won’t dive into these elements at this time, but having a disciplined strategy to execution process (with clear communication pre, during, and post execution phase) will increase your success rate of your programs.

If you are the strategy lead, your role in driving engagement, oversight, and accountability through all phases is critical.    This includes managing up, lateral, and down throughout the process.      This is not to say be a micro-manager, but be an an owner of your strategy.

I once had an amazing leader summarize this section very eloquently:   Plan the Work, Work the Plan.  

3.      Evaluate, Celebrate, and Adapt

This is important.    You (or your team)  just invested time, energy, and expense to build a strategy.   You now have your team executing this strategy (potentially with some sort of incremental capital/media investment).    The question is:  is it working?    Does it need to be adapted?   

A few quick thoughts on this:

·        Evaluate:   In the build the strategy section,  I mentioned to identify “definitions of success”. Now it is time to read out what you are learning.   In fact, I would encourage you that once you define the definitions of success in the strategy “phase”, assign a team member responsibility for the analysis and readouts, and predetermine the frequency.   Once you get these readouts, monitor your results.   Ask questions of the findings.    In short, learn.

·        Celebrate your Success:   Whether your program is executing as expected, or there are some implementation “hiccups,” take a moment and thank your team for their hard work.    It takes a lot of work to go from identifying the business problem, building your strategy, project managing the implementation of the strategy, and finally “execution”.   Thank your team.   Let them leave early on a Friday.   Do something!     And if you are getting the results you expected (or over-performing), do some sort of recognition to the team.   They deserve it.

·        Adapt:  I come from a school of thought that there is always room for improvement.   Identify those small (or big) things you need to do, and take a disciplined approach to implement and improve your performance.   In some cases, this might mean taking a simple test and scaling it to your entire market.   In other cases, this could mean adapting your plans in a larger way and instituting change management to drive improvement.

Being agile in this current business environment is critical to meeting your customer needs and driving growth.   I understand how easy it can be to react when change is needed to adjust your performance trajectory to meet your monthly, quarterly, and annual goals.   However, taking the time to thoughtfully build a strategic plan (data driven approach), launching your strategy with an eye towards execution excellence, and evaluating your performance (and adapting where necessary) will provide success for you and your team.  

I hope you enjoyed this journey into the river with me in Northern Georgia.  For my  final installment of this series, we will be out in a river in eastern Oregon to explore how timing in business can produce exponential success.  

If you feel compelled by what you just read, I encourage you to share/repost this blog with your colleagues, friends, and fellow anglers.   Until then, happy fishing!