“…and we decided to eat our own dog food…” -Adrienne Guerrero
Rather than having a guest this week, we decided to record the co-founders of this community having a conversation using the Strategic Networking Guide. The strategy guide is the first module in our Strategic Leadership Series. Download your copy here. If we are not already connected, you’ll be automatically subscribed to become part of our community to whom we bring the expertise of leaders as well as insights on optimizing your leadership excellence.
Your Strategic Networking Guide is comprised of a series of generative questions that help you focus your networking activities according to your values, style, and goals.
We are preparing to initiate a research project to discern the greatest challenges that leaders are facing in strategy, execution, and all points between. We will focus our outreach for participants within our own networks, rather than a broad solicitation to the masses.
We desire to get beneath the buzzwords (Great Resignation, Quiet Quitting, you know them) to the day-to-day, real-world challenges on the messy runway of leadership execution. Our intention is to harness this research to tailor services that support addressing the most pressing leadership needs.
Speaking of the runway! Adrienne and Tom are easily inspired by big ideas. And, like each of you, we are juggling competing priorities. The tension between the inspiration of a potentially game-changing differentiator and our already full plates had resulted in a bit of old-fashioned procrastination. We’re betting most of you recognize this pattern. 😊
Going through the Strategic Networking Guide together added enthusiasm to our intention. We did not complete a plan in 30 minutes. We did formulate a strategy and became clear on the next bite-size actions to give us direction and get us moving – and focus our inspiration!
Here are a few observations that we discovered while “eating our own dog food” and using the Guide:
- Reminders of the “why” make the “how” more manageable.
- Although hiring research experts would be quicker and easier, we are reminded that we are a community, and our launching pad is through our relationships.
- Affirmation that we can add value to the leadership challenge.
- Our intention is to support leaders, and yet, learning with and from the people we talk to gain insights is nourishment for the soul in and of itself.
- Agreeing to blocked time to keep the initiative moving.
We hope by hearing our example of this guide in action inspires you to try it for yourself. We invite you to play around with the Strategic Networking Guide and we welcome thoughts on your experience.
Stay tuned for more on our Leadership research initiative.
Tom & Adrienne
Recent Comments