83. Defining and Executing Business Strategy with Susan Maly

Brock Briggs  0:00 

Hello and welcome to the Scuttlebutt podcast. I'm your host, Brock Briggs. And each week, I bring you a conversation with a different current or former service member at the top of their craft. These conversations will make you smarter. They'll help you explore new ideas that challenge you personally and professionally and they're sure to make you more money. Today, I'm speaking with Susan Maly. Susan is former Air Force and Booz Allen, now working as a fractional Chief Strategy Officer for small technology companies. From this conversation, expect to learn how to structure your writing and how to speak more eloquently.

Susan was a speechwriter during her time in the Air Force and has several simple ways to get your thoughts down on paper and connecting with your audience. You also learn about what strategy is, why you need it in your business and the steps to implement it. Susan is an expert at translating the big vision you have in your head about what the future ought to look like down into the things you need to be doing in your life and business everyday to achieve those. She gives some helpful frameworks to think through and apply what you do and best practices for aligning your entire business towards one common goal. You can find this episode as well as all other Scuttlebutt episodes, transcripts, the weekly newsletter, YouTube channel, and more to keep learning, all at scuttlebuttpodcast.co. Please enjoy this conversation with Susan Maly.

Brock Briggs

You said that something you're kind of like mentally working for is hashing on this book. Where are you in the process? What is kind of the biggest roadblock to you working on this right now?

Susan Maly  1:44 

I'd say I'm around version three. And it's really finding or creating the space to have enough flow to get ideas on paper. So I find just throughout the day, I have all these ideas and I write them down and I take notes, but it takes me a while to kind of get in it and get writing. And then once I kind of hit that place, then something can distract me. I'm gonna take a call. So I'm trying to kind of block that time to really get to the point where I want to convey everything that I feel like I can share.

Brock Briggs  2:15 

There's an interesting dynamic between understanding your schedule so well because a lot of the creative types are very much like, oh, I need to leave my schedule open for creativity to strike and but that almost doesn't really work that well when you actually have a job that you're maintaining. And allowing creativity to strike doesn't really happen while you're answering emails and like taking calls and stuff like that. So I don't know, some of the more creative people that I feel like I've talked to have, like their every bit of their time is spoken for. And it almost comes from, when you set aside that time maybe the first 10 times that you do it, like nothing happens. But once you put a name to it and be able to say, hey, this is the time where this gets done. Eventually, I feel like something has to kind of spark with that.

Susan Maly  3:08 

That really resonates. And I feel like a lot of my ideas, they come when I'm, you know, exercising or driving from one place or another. So I try to have some type of notebook with me and I just jot down kind of the lead and then, so I don't lose those ideas. Or if I'm gonna go to bed, I can't fall asleep if it's on my mind. So I jot it down. And then it's just really fleshing out those ideas. It's not just like, a couple sentences, but like, what am I really trying to convey here? So when I get in that flow and I'm kind of producing a lot of that, I try to just write so that I'm not, you know, editing and refining. I'm trying to get that first draft down and then I'm going back and making it better as we go.

Brock Briggs  3:46 

Do you have a problem picking up where you left off? Like, let's say that you write down a quick thought that you had and then maybe revisit it in a day or two. Do you struggle to pick up that same line of thinking and get back into that same? Like, what was I trying to get at here?

Susan Maly  4:03 

So it takes me just a little bit of time. I think I've kind of gotta get, I put on classical music, I turn off any tech that I don't need to kind of get back in that line of thinking. So once I'm there, I'm like, oh, yeah, this is where I wanted to go with it. But it just it kind of takes a little time to get to that space.

Brock Briggs  4:24 

I'll share something that has been helpful for me and maybe it will be helpful for you. I have found myself struggling with that in a big way. Like I'll just write down one or two sentences one, because I'm time constrained and two, at the time, I always think it will be obvious. I'll be like how could I not remember this line? Like it seems so just like prescient and like all of this is so important. How could I not understand what I'm talking about in the future? I always forget every single time. One of the things that I've been doing to combat that is use voice notes. And so there's like a voice recording app on your iPhone. I'm assuming you're an iPhone user, Android, I'm sure it's got the same thing.

But we'll just like either go for a walk or even if I'm working out or something, I will just put my phone down, put it on record and just start talking through everything that I'm thinking about. And just talk until the idea is done, like till you have nothing else to say. And then what I do is, I will send that to myself and then have it transcribed, like online using whatever, an online transcription tool, there's a million of them out there. I use one called Otter, but it basically just transcribes the audio and then you actually have something written. And then you can kind of take it and say, okay, like, you know, maybe your ordering of something wasn't really that great. But you can say this will go with this and you actually kind of have a working document to start with and you don't have that, that like blank page problem, either.

Susan Maly  5:59 

Yeah, that's awesome. Something for me to implement.

Brock Briggs  6:02 

So you said you're on version three. When do you think that you will have it completed? I know that that's like a big, amorphous question. And what do you think is your objective with writing the book?

Susan Maly  6:20 

So my goal is to have it within I would say, the next month or so, a really solid draft. So version one was just getting my ideas down on paper and kind of creating the scaffolding. Version two, I was adding more detail. And I find that when I kind of step away from it a little bit, I'm like, oh, I can build out this area. I can pull this thread. And really, my overarching goal is to talk about the transition from big business to small business, what it's like to be an entrepreneur, to create something from the ground up. I've had people ask me what it's like.

And it's also something that I wish that I had read before I started just to kind of, you know, maybe get through some of the hurdles and just have a better understanding for what it looked like to run a business. I also think a lot about just the mindset that's required to, you know, do well in many areas of life, whether you're an athlete or a business owner, just really having a growth mindset of saying, like, I don't know how to do this but I'm gonna figure it out or I'm gonna get the help to figure it out. And it's okay that I'm learning as I go. I don't have to go into it knowing everything. And I feel like, you know, starting the business, part of that was just taking the leap and allowing myself to not being good at something before I started it and to just kind of figure it out on the way.

Brock Briggs  7:33 

Have you, I know that you also write a newsletter and talk about a lot of the same topics there. Do you share excerpts from the book and stuff with that like with your readers?

Susan Maly  7:45 

so I would say I use the newsletter more to help with content for the book. And then most recently, I've been teasing your ideas that have shown up in newsletter articles. I didn't initially set out to write a newsletter, I just thought in the new year, oh, I'm gonna write an article and I saw this button. It was like newsletter. And I thought, I wonder if I can do that. And so you know, just committing to the act of writing weekly and developing something has been really refining for me because it's, you know, reinforces that discipline to actually sit down and write. But I find that the more that I write, the more ideas that I have. And this summer will be my third year in business. And so it's also helping to codify a lot of the things that I just kind of do naturally, but never thought about the process behind them or kind of how to replicate it to be able to share with others. So it's been kind of growth on multiple fronts.

Brock Briggs  8:36 

Do you know who Nathan Barry is?

Susan Maly  8:39 

I'm not familiar. No

Brock Briggs  8:40 

He's another person. I feel like, I'm the one that kind of asking you and learning from you here. And we're going to get to a bunch of that.

Susan Maly 

I’m open to any recommendations I could get.

Brock Briggs

I can get that for you with recommendations here. Nathan Barry is a guy who founded ConvertKit, who I know you use. He's the founder of that. And he's written several books, including a book about how to write a book. And one of the things that he really touts is kind of writing it publicly and like kind of getting buy in from readers along the way, even if you kind of end up like sharing the entire book before it comes out. Because you're kind of like you're building fans along the way. And then you're also not launching into a cold audience like you're kind of building it, you know, over time. I would highly recommend you read and consume everything he puts out. He also has a podcast called The Art of Newsletters. And he is probably the most prominent mind and there's probably not another person that alive that thinks more about newsletters than Nathan Barry, so I would highly recommend you check his workout.

Susan Maly  9:52 

Fantastic. I'm taking notes.

Brock Briggs  9:55 

It shouldn't be me taking notes here. That is absolutely true. Susan, I think it would be good to zoom out and get like a big picture on your life and kind of what brings you here. Try to maybe take two or three minutes and encompass just everything that you've ever gotten into two to three minutes. And bring me up to speed with where you are today.

Susan Maly  10:18 

Sure. So I grew up in a military family and we settled in the Virginia area when I was in grade school. I attended the Air Force Academy and was on active duty for six years, then transitioned to big business where I was working at a large management and technology consulting firm for 11 years before launching my small business in 2020.

Brock Briggs  10:41 

Very, very succinct. I like that. Why did you study chemistry?

Susan Maly  10:47 

Great question. So my mom was a chemistry teacher. She taught eighth grade science. And I love chemistry, I love the theory behind it. I love kind of understanding the why. I just have a very analytical mind. So it was very natural that I would go into that area. I think what I didn't realize was just how I like this theory, but I'm not as good in practice. So the joke was that I could always blow things up in the lab, which I tended to do. And, you know, it was that aspect of it that made me think, you know, is this really the path for me?

And it's also really kind of a lonely place where you have the experiment and you might be working with a lab partner. But you know, it's really hard, long work. Experiments aren't always successful, you're coming in and checking on them on the weekends. And it's just one of those things that I thought, I don't know what this is, fueling enough for me for what I think I'm going to do in the future. So I'm super glad that I studied it. I think it gave me the analytical foundation for the frameworks that I use today. But kind of from a personal perspective, I don't think it was the right fit, you know, for my career.

Brock Briggs  11:56 

It's funny, you talk about it being lonely as you'd like, now run a solo consulting business.

Susan Maly

Right, right.

Brock Briggs

Yeah, a lot of irony there. I think that studying the hard sciences and math is so good because it forces you to think. I can't imagine going into a degree in that. But that just not the way that I'm geared, but talk about something that will get you to first principles thinking like you can't operate at B until you have like totally mastered A. Like you have really got to have the foundational, this is what everything is built on. You know, you can't do derivatives unless you understand multiplication. And I'm sure that there's some kind of chemistry analogy. I did so bad in chemistry. So I probably would butcher one.

Susan Maly  12:46 

Yeah, I think for me, I look at something from the 50,000 foot level. Like if I'm given the details right away, it's just it's hard for me to process and I think, okay, I need to step back and say, where does this fit into the big picture? What is our overarching goal before we can actually implement some of these details? So I think one of the things that I have learned through kind of the hard science background is to take a lot of information and to be able to distill it and then categorize it into themes or buckets, whatever you want to call them, to be able to digest that information and then actually be able to act on it.

Brock Briggs  13:23 

You were a speechwriter for part of your time in the Air Force. I'm guessing that you had to really do a lot of that while trying to summarize big concepts and distill them. Can you maybe like, I would love to just kind of talk about what being a speechwriter is. I talked to several of them on the show and have all the questions in the world, but maybe give us kind of the 50,000 foot on being a speech writer for a four star, what that looks like and that process?

Susan Maly  13:56 

So I was stationed in Italy at Aviano and my commander called me into his office and said, you know, how would you like to be a speechwriter and move to Ohio? And you know, I didn't say this out loud, but I'm thinking, I've never written a speech in my life. And I'm looking at the Italian Dolomites. And you're asking me if I want to go to Ohio. But, you know,

Brock Briggs  14:14 

Where do I sign?

Susan Maly  14:16 

You’re right! Exactly. I'm in. So I learned more about it. And I kind of studied how speeches are written. I read a lot of great speeches. I had to write a sample speech for the process for selection. And so the first speech I'd ever written was the one that I wrote for this kind of selection process. And when I was selected and moved to Ohio, it was a great transition. And I absolutely loved my move there. And it was at Wright Patterson. They have a really cool program with Rails to Trails. So I had taken out biking, cycling when I was in Italy and was able to continue that in Ohio. So it was just a great year that I spent there. But learning the art of speech writing, you know, I really approached it from kind of the same lens and the big picture. What are we trying to accomplish with this speech? What is the end goal so that we can frame everything around it to achieving that goal?

So we took a large look at the audience's like, who am I talking to and I wrote everything from speeches to or presentations to a roomful of engineers to the Boy Scouts, popcorn kickoff. You know, he's very much you've got to tailor it to who that audience is, and make those messages accessible. So I like to talk a lot about the five paragraph essay, you know, we learned it in grade school. So that the introduction, what am I going to share with you? What are my three main points? Because no one else can remember more than three. And then how do I wrap it up? And then really, the art of speech writing, I think, is peppering in the style, the flavor. So can I tell a story, it's something you know, that's really informed kind of how I'm reading the book and how I write the newsletter by wrapping and storytelling because people can really connect to that. So how can I tell a story about this? How can I use a statistic or something to kind of pique interest kind of catch attention so that people want to listen to the rest? Because the biggest gift someone can give you is their time and attention. so how can we use that time effectively?

Brock Briggs  16:13 

One of the interesting things that threads that you mentioned there that I want to pull on a little bit, we have a really unique position in business of being able to just target in focus and serve one specific avatar or customer or personality. You don't really get that ability in the speech writing role. How do you think about what is the most important thing like you say, okay, let's tailor it to who it's going to be hearing it. But if you're not in that or you don't know people, if you aren't an engineer or you aren't the fifth grader, the Boy Scouts for the popcorn thing. How do you think about what is important to them when to tailor that?

Susan Maly  17:01 

So there was a lot of research that went into speeches. And so one of the initial things that comes to mind is empathy. How can I put myself in that position to think about what would be important to me, but then kind of drawing on that scientific background of testing those hypotheses. So do I have a chance to talk with a boy scout or someone who was previously a Boy Scout before giving that speech? Can I test the speech or some of this content to see if these ideas resonate with some of the engineers before we go into the full blown presentation with the engineers?

So I don't think there's the expectation that the speech writer has to understand everything kind of initially, but I think there's that research element. There's that testing element. It's going out and reading what is kind of the hot topic, you know, using the engineer example. So what are they working on? What is kind of happening before you're giving that speech? What's happening afterwards? Do you have context for where this speech fits into their daily lives? And then how can you draw those connections?

Brock Briggs  18:08 

Do you think that with enough practice at that, you can do it naturally? I think some of like some really, really talented speakers, you know, it appears to come natural, but in reality, they've just had a lot, a lot of practice. How do you think that going through that speech writing process helped you speak better? How did it help you think more clearly?

Susan Maly  18:36 

So I think from a speaking better perspective, it comes down to practice because, you know, even if I were giving the speeches, I would be reading the speeches aloud. I would be timing them. I'd have notes in there for pauses. So I think a lot of the great speech writers or excuse me, the speakers that we've seen, they have practiced and they have practiced it over and over and over, they're changing the speech up until the last minute they're tweaking it. You know, sometimes they'll read it verbatim. And other times, they'll kind of just use key points or things to kind of indicate topics that they want to talk about. Can you ask the second part again? I think I hit the first part.

Brock Briggs  19:15 

I was curious about how it impacted how you think when putting together a speech.

Susan Maly  19:20 

So I think the structure part, I try to keep it clear, concise and consistent. So it's, what are we going to talk about? What are our three main points and then wrap it up? And I think really having that structure and of course, incorporating all of those different elements, from a style perspective is important. But I think if people don't know where it's headed, they're not really sure what to expect. It's like you're walking them along this journey. So I feel like having that overarching story is really powerful in connecting and having the impact that you want as a speaker.

Brock Briggs  19:57 

You had mentioned a couple things that you can do or that the speech writer/the person giving the speech are doing to kind of prep and get ready for it. I think you mentioned timing, reading it aloud. Are there other heuristics or tools that you use that maybe influence how you even just write a weekly newsletter? I've got listeners that write books or maybe people that also do speeches.

Susan Maly  20:26 

Yeah, so it's a, you know, what's your hook? What is the story? And how can you pull that through? So as I'm writing my book, I'm thinking a lot about how, you know, running a business is like running a race. You know, athletes don't just show up on race day, some do. But they, you know, often results in injury, maybe unfulfilled expectations and so kind of how can you leave us a story or a theme throughout. I think it kind of brings people back to that main point that overarching, why are you writing this in the first place?

I think there's a lot of different stylistic things that you can put in, you know, repetition is something, you know, often I Have a Dream speech is referenced. But you know, it kind of comes back and an anchorage around, you know, I have a dream and then you kind of come back to that. And there's that repetition, you can. Sometimes I've worked on this day in history. So if you're giving a speech on a certain day, you can say, you know, 20 years ago, kind of here, here's where we were and you tie it into your overarching narrative. To give people perspective on, you know, I looked at something and maybe knew it, but I looked at it in a different way.

Brock Briggs  21:31 

I really liked that. I think that those are some good practices and a couple of those I hadn't really considered before. Are there books that you read during the course of being a speechwriter, that you would maybe recommend for people to check out if they want to become a better writer or better speech writer or just writer, in general? And then who would you look to to be learning from outside of books? Are there particular speeches that you really enjoy that the structure is really compelling? And it is seen and how well it was presented?

Susan Maly  22:09 

Yeah. So I'm forgetting the name but I read a tome. And it was just a compilation of, I think it was like 500, great speeches. And you can just, it kind of goes through this, I think, from an American history standpoint. And I don't have enough of the tip of my tongue because it's been a long time since I read it. But I use that as an opportunity to kind of look at how the speeches were structured. What are the tools that they're using? How are they wrapping in whether it's storytelling or repetition or you know, specific idea that they want to pivot around?

And then actually watching those speeches, so more recent ones, you know, I'm thinking about the Kennedy speech as not what you can do for let's see what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. I'm thinking of the MLK speech. I have a dream. President Obama had really great rhetoric and just thinking through like, how can you really captivate and engage an audience around a certain topic. So I kind of would look to probably those three speakers and review any kind of written speeches and then also comparing that with how they're actually delivered.

Brock Briggs  23:22 

It's interesting, I hear a lot of people that work in copywriting talk about how to really learn good copywriting and it's to physically write down, like what other people are writing like Ben Franklin's deal on copywriting just physically writing out the sentences until you kind of get it. And I wonder if there's something to that in terms of writing good speech of going back and printing them out and maybe just writing line by line and until it kind of soaks in and then maybe hearing it and kind of layering all these things on top of each other to form this great speech.

Susan Maly  24:01 

I think that's a really great idea

Brock Briggs  24:03 

So the speech writing was your last role that you had in the Air Force? Correct?

Susan Maly 

Correct

Brock Briggs

Were you having dreams of getting out? Was that something that kind of sealed the deal on you getting out? And how did that kind of play into landing your role at Booz Allen?

Susan Maly  24:21 

I always knew that I wanted to serve for six or seven years. So when you attend a service academy, you can incur a five year commitment. After the Air Force Academy, I studied at Harvard for my masters for two years. So they forced me there as a second lieutenant and I went to Aviano where I was an Operations Officer for a unit of F six teens deployed to Iraq and then had an opportunity to go to Ohio as a speechwriter. So I kind of knew that that was the timeframe of the timeline, it was an interesting time because this was 2008 and 2009. We just had the global financial crisis and so a lot of my family members were saying are you sure you really want to get out at this point? But I just knew that I wanted to pursue a career in business. I wanted to serve.

And it's you know what I did. But I knew that at that point, it was time to move on. I had deployed, my husband had deployed. We knew that if we wanted to live together, the chances of doing so as a dual military couple is going to be challenging. So it was just the right timing, ended up separating shortly after that as well because he was gonna be heading out on another deployment. So it's just, you know, some very heavy deployment cycle. And we just are, you know, our family and our lives and we've served and it's time to kind of do the next thing. So we, let's see, so this was 2009. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I knew it was in this business realm. But I read a book that had, can't recall the title, it had about 700 jobs in it. And I remember thinking, I don't want to do any of these, like, what am I going to do next. And so that last year was great, but also stressful, because I had this very intense speech writing job but then I was also looking for new positions in the evening.

So I felt like I kind of had two jobs. And, you know, it was really good fortune and a blessing that I went to a wedding. I met someone who worked for Booz Allen, who wasn't familiar with Booz Allen, or a lot about management consulting, learned more about the company, interviewed, you know, was accepted. And it was one of those things that this is, I think, a really good fit. And in hindsight, drawing kind of on that scientific background, that analytical background, I think, consulting was a really good first step out of the air force because I was able to use the skills that I've learned along the way, learning consulting skills, but also many of my initial clients were Air Force clients. So I had that cultural background. So it wasn't like this huge, huge leap. Because while I was learning the business side, I kind of got the other side and was able to contribute from day one.

Brock Briggs  27:04 

So you rolled right into their “strategy department” that seemed to be and then kind of held several roles throughout your time there. What exactly does that mean? And because you and I kind of want to like pull back in the air force here for a second because you had mentioned you had this thing written on your LinkedIn that you had authored the first command wide strategic vision. And so I'm starting to kind of see these trends, I'm seeing this word strategy start to pop up which kind of bully plays into what you do now. What is that like command wide strategic vision? And then how did that kind of play out into this role at Booz?

Susan Maly  27:47 

So a lot of it was I was doing a lot of mission briefs and we would have people coming in. And we're explaining about, here's what the command does. And so part of that was, you know, how can we talk about our top three priorities? So a lot of the content was there. But I think I was able to present it in a way that ideally kind of mobilize people and kind of get behind it. And so I've always been thinking about, okay, well, here the buckets, here are the details, but like, how do we pull this up to the big picture about what we're really trying to achieve? So it's something that I drafted, kind of worked with the commander and then was kind of was pushed out within the command. But I don't know if at that point that I knew I would be here today. It was just kind of like how my brain is programmed and kind of what I've tried to do in each job kind of moving forward.

So when I landed in the, I actually landed in an analytics group when I first got to the exam using a lot of kind of the facilitation in the strategy that I had done previously. And it was a really great opportunity to learn the art of consulting to learn how to ask the right questions to structure an engagement, you know, a lot of it is okay, well, we want x well, how are we going to get from here to there? How can we break that down into bite sized? sections that are doable and are manageable? So a lot of that is just kind of like, it sounds as simple as structuring a project plan. But it's like, well, do we want it to be three phases? And what has to happen in phase one? And how do we get the information so that we can synthesize it so that we can refine it so that we can finalize it? So that was really a lot of kind of the early work that I was doing. And a lot of it was around Network Development and Analytical Methodologies for various clients. And then I had an opportunity to move into the commercial team within Booz Allen.

And at that time, it was quite small. So it's kind of like being in a small business as part of a larger business. And that's really where the seeds for small business are planted, about what it's like to kind of work in a more fast paced entrepreneurial environment. And then the work that I was doing was strategy focused, creating new cybersecurity businesses across automotive and retail and oil and gas and cybersecurity, product vendors. And so I was structuring new cybersecurity organizations, which is effectively creating a small business. So it was just kind of like, all of these things were starting to align. And I started thinking, you know, I think I would like to do this on my own at some point. Fast forward five years later is when I, you know, when I launched and then that last part of it was going internal. So kind of the analytics, then the cybersecurity strategy and then the transformation arc that was going internal to the company to bring a lot of the tools and methodologies that we've used externally with clients to improve the company within.

Brock Briggs  30:34 

We're going to talk a lot about strategy for the rest of this conversation here, it probably would be good to get a feel for what does that word mean? And kind of, or maybe at least your interpretation of it. And then I'd love to kind of pull back the curtain on consulting jobs and businesses as a whole because it's kind of they play in like this dark corner behind all of these businesses that we know. And I think they are kind of, in some ways, the adults in the room when it comes to business because they're holding the hand and saying, hey, this is what you should do. This is your strategy, which we're going to talk about. But yeah, let's start with what strategy, I guess, means to you?

Susan Maly  31:21 

So I think it's a great question. And that's why my focus is to make strategy made simple. Because I think there's often this kind of mystique around strategy, like, what do we mean? And what does it look like? And can you give me a sample strategy? Well, no, because that's, you know, giving away everything. And so it's really figuring out the future that you want to create and then determining the steps to get there and then doing those steps. And so a lot of times, you'll see or you'll hear reference to a strategy pyramid. And there's no one perfect way to do strategy. But essentially, it's creating your vision, mission and values. So it is what is the overarching vision, again, that future that you're going to create, your mission. What do you do? What is going to actually propel you to create that future? Your values? What do you believe in?

So for me, for my current business, I've really brought forward the legacy of my air force values, which is integrity, first service before self excellence, and all we do. So it's basically saying, you know, these are the fundamentals that I'm committed to, then as you work down that strategy pyramid, it's looking at my priorities, looking at my goals, I can't do all of that at the same time. So I'm going to have to sequence them, I'm going to have to prioritize them. And then that last part is how I'm going to measure it. How do I know if I'm actually successful? And then what are the specific activities? So it's great to say, no, using the running analogy, I want to run a 5k. Okay, well, what does that look like? That looks like on Monday, I'm going to get up and I'm going to do a long, slow distance run.

On Tuesday, I'm going to get up and I'm going to lift on Wednesday, I'm going to do sprint work on Thursday, I'm gonna do yoga Friday, I'm going to rest, you know, how do we sequence it? How do we prioritize it to actually follow through, and then that last part is actually doing it. And I think this is where sometimes strategy can get a bad rap, because it's like, oh, I created this amazing plan, and it's sitting on the shelf or we're not using it. But it's really a lot of the work that I tried to do is how do we embed strategy into operations? How do we have the leadership team aligned around it? Do we have a visual mechanism or a dashboard to measure and manage our progress? Are there clear lines of accountability? Are there roles and responsibilities? So everyone knows who's on first?

It doesn't mean that other people can't do similar things. But there has to be someone who's in charge, because if everyone is meeting it, the new ones leading it, so there's got to be that accountability. And then again, that follow through so it's like, do we have a weekly meeting where we sync on something? Do we have a quarterly touch base? How are we reviewing this every year? If not quarterly, which is usually ideal to make sure that it's embedded in the culture and that we're incentivizing the kinds of behaviors to create the change that we wanna see.

Brock Briggs  34:11 

Do you think it's possible to succeed in business without everything that you just described?

Susan Maly  34:18 

You know, I think that the people who are intentional about growth will have the strategy or their businesses that have done it and winged it. Sure, I bet. But I think especially as you scale, having that understanding and that consistency is going to create a better experience internally and externally. So that say, you're scaling from, you know, 2 to 15 million, you're bringing on 15 extra employees. If people aren't aligned around that vision, that mission, those goals and really those values, are you going to be creating the kind of business that you want? If you look out and everyone is kind of on board and they just get it, then maybe you can do without it. But I think from a lot of what I've seen is that to align people around this common vision, then mobilize them and give them the processes and the tools to create that consistent experience is really important. So I would say that's the long answer. The short is, more often than not, I think it's really necessary. And that's what I'm doing. And you know, where I'm seeing impact most of my clients.

Brock Briggs  35:25 

This answer is probably different for you now that you're operating on your own and probably serve much smaller types of businesses rather than these major consulting companies. From the large company like the Booz or something similar perspective, where are they stepping in, to kind of implement everything that you're talking about? Were in like, the business lifecycle? Who are the people that are needing this? And I guess, like, what kind of the stakeholders that are involved? And what is the process look like for seeing that through? Obviously, you just described this kind of very large, very, I can imagine that being a very long timeline to, you know, we're talking about, hey, this is where we're trying to go in the future that could be 10 years from now. So you can maybe talk about how the consulting company embeds itself into whatever organization that they're trying to assist and the process that they go about implementing them?

Susan Maly  36:29 

Sure. So I think a good example would be with one of my early Air Force clients, you know, you're just, again, some you're working at the top level, but you could be creating a strategy for a specific capability or a specific division. So let's take it more at maybe kind of the colonel level. So you sit down and you meet the colonel and you say, you know, what are your What are your initial thoughts? You know, what is the scope of this? What are we trying to accomplish here? Maybe they're trying to roll out a new program or a new capability. You know, how can we help you think through that? So it's gauging, like, what is the actual ask? What is the requirement and then thinking through how you can apply a certain framework to that to say, who are the right stakeholders that need to be involved and that's going to be different for every engagement. So it could be, you definitely want leadership involved because people see that and they see the importance that is attributed to a certain initiative kind of based on who is involved in it.

And so you want that leadership out front. So that would be using some of those speech writing skills to draft you know, that initial communication, saying we're embarking on this six month effort to look at XY and Z so that people know what's going on, that's coming from the mouth of the leader. There can be background support, kind of helping that, we're going to do it across these three phases. We would really like your help in this initial phase, to provide as much information to help you know, then this team to get spun up. So usually, the first phase is a lot of research, it's a lot of called the Environmental Scan, your understanding the organization, you're understanding what already exists, you don't want to reinvent the wheel, you want to people have already put hard work into a lot of documents into a lot of processes, understanding that baseline.

And then maybe that second part is you got more, you're doing focus groups, you're doing interviews, you could be doing surveys to gather additional information. And then a lot of that kind of second part is the analysis. So how can we synthesize this into actionable kind of themes or ideas or recommendations? And then that third part is what does this look like for implementation? So I come with this three phase approach. It's not a cookie cutter approach and it doesn't apply to everything. But I think it's an instructive example about how you walk people along the process. And then, you know, at the end, it's like, hey, here's shiny document, you know, that's not the end goal. So what does this mean for daily change for the systems? What does this mean for daily change in processes? So we're looking at people, we're looking at process, we're looking at technology, so that we can embed these ideas into the culture so that it changes people's daily habits, their actions, and impacts their work.

Brock Briggs  39:08 

Everything that you just described, seems very, like it's not rocket science. But obviously, there's a need for it like a very large need. There's a reason there's these huge multibillion dollar management, consulting, McKinsey, Bain, all these other big companies that do this. It makes me wonder and this is something that I've seen in my own life, all of the smartest people that I've ever met have worked in management consulting. Why is that? And what is the difference? Or like why do those people not go and work in business first? Because if I'm trying to understand why this need exists for all of these consulting companies and maybe it just is like I don't know all the smart people who go and do that. It is just that I'm trying to understand why that kind of structure exists and probably will continue to exist forever.

Susan Maly  40:13 

So that's a great question. So if you're so good at it, why not go launch your own business and do it? Like, as well. So I think part of it is, what is your end goal? So some people like just the act of working on a hard problem and ideating a solution. And so, you know, maybe, you know, for myself, you know, do I want to have the next unicorn? Like, it falls in my lap, great, but I love what I'm doing. It's like, it's what I feel like I was created to do and I'm helping other companies that you know, might grow and be acquired and be sold. And I'm okay with that. Because I'm living the lifestyle and doing the kind of work that I want to do.

I think from a need perspective, there's a couple different things. I think it's finding time or creating the space to go through this process. So whether you're working in a big company or you know, some of the smaller businesses that I'm supporting, there's a lot going on just in daily operations to deliver to the current client or customer base. And so I think it's having someone to actually take the time to structure the engagement, to do the research, to synthesize the themes, to come up with recommendations. That's a lift. And so if you're, could you technically do that internally? Yes. And I think some people do, but I think who's going to do that? And are you taking them away from billable or other kinds of work?

I think I think the second thing is it helps sometimes to have that third party, kind of that neutral party and outside advisor to kind of look at some of these things who's not entrenched in the daily operations of the business is looking at it from kind of like, a third party perspective to say, you know, why are you doing it this way? Many people were in the business. I've done it this way for so long. And that might be the best way and it might not be the best way. I think it's asking the right questions. And the more that I've done this, I think, the more I've honed my ability to try to ask the right questions to try to get to the real crux of the issue. Well, if A is not working in these kind of so, so, what is the real problem here? And how can we address that root cause?

Brock Briggs  42:22 

I'm probably going to ask this question again, when we talk about what you do now, when you were serving these much larger clients and especially if you were servicing DoD related, like you mentioned, kind of the Air Force as a client, these are very large organizations extremely reluctant to change. And, you know, it's kind of turned into a whole ship around going a different way. What was the largest barrier to these large organizations implementing change, like in those steps, as you just kind of described of creating this vision, measuring, doing it? What was the big roadblock that they had?

Susan Maly  43:08 

It's always the follow through. Everyone can get excited about the initial step or at least the poor team that's working on it, I think, especially in a bigger organization, you've got to have it coming from the top, people have to really feel like leadership has bought in. And this isn't just kind of an exercise that we're going through because we want to reorg or we need to change. It's again, embedding that strategy into operations. So how does that change what I do on a day to day basis because in a larger organization, you're doing this smaller engagement that most people don't know about. So how do you communicate that?

So that's where I mentioned that email up front of this is where, you know, we're embarking upon this journey, then giving people updates along the way and walking people through the process. It can be an update at a town hall or cascading that through what are called Change ambassadors within the organization. So you have kind of your change champions, people who are on board with where this is headed. They understand what is called the burning platform or the why this needs to happen. And then they can help communicate that throughout the business. Because while the leader can be the person at the top saying, this needs to happen, here's the why, here's what's going to happen. You need that next level and then in an even larger organization that will next level down to be able to get that to frontline employees. So that there's an understanding of why what is actually going to happen, when is it going to happen?

And so there's a large aspect of change management that is around the strategic communications, of communicating all those elements in a consistent way. Not at the end of the process. Like here's what we're doing, here's where we are, here's where we're headed. Here's what we've done and just continue throughout so that people feel like it's not a surprise and that they were possible have had their perspectives included along the way. And I think that's also a really huge factor of, again, and a huge organization, it's hard to get everybody. But particularly with the smaller ones that I'm working with, how can we make sure we've got the right voices in the room from the front from the beginning. So that, you know, we didn't get to the end and say, oh, I forgot to talk to A, B, and C. And so maybe this isn't the way that we necessarily need to go.

Brock Briggs  45:30 

Are there any examples off the top of your head of a really, really good example, or really, really bad example of where things just completely broke down? And the organization that you're trying to help is not doing the things that you guys are asking? And what you learned from that specifically?

Susan Maly  45:52 

Really good example, you're thinking mostly for a larger organization?

Brock Briggs  45:57 

Yeah, well, yeah, let's talk about large organizations. And as we kind of talk into what you do, now we can, I would love to hear some more smaller examples.

Susan Maly  46:08 

So I think one of the probably the good examples. So part of the work that I did kind of in that second arc at Booz Allen was helping to create new cybersecurity organizations. And so really, you had to get the buy in from an oil and gas from the super majors in automotive from your top automakers. So, you know, this was creating something new, they saw a need. So these organizations, you know, while the members are competitors in the marketplace, they're also facing a lot of similar cybersecurity threats. And so there is value in sharing nonproprietary Cybersecurity Information for their collective defense. And I think there was an understanding, you know, from many of the initial kind of founding members of that, that kind of getting the word out across like the broader community, whether you're looking at retail or automotive or oil and gas, to actually make this organization work.

Because the organization is successful based upon the information that is shared and information is shared based off of the trust that is built between the members. And remember, these are competitors in the marketplace. But they have certain, again, similar threats and vulnerabilities that while sharing this information in a non proprietary manner, can further protect them. And so recognizing that having that top leadership, in that case maybe the chief information officer or the Chief Information Systems officer cascading down through the organization, so analyst A is saying, okay, it's okay, that I'm talking to analysts and B from this other company.

Yes, we can share this information. We have the right processes and protocols in place. We have the right kind of information sharing framework so that everyone is protected and we're doing this in the proper way. You know, there was a large change effort in that, to communicate it, you know, first getting kind of that initial group on board, then spreading it more broadly. And then, you know, continuing to bring members on in each of those organizations still exists today. And I think it's because of the strong framework that was created, the structure and the strategy, the processes and protocols, the technology, what sharing would look like, et cetera to be successful. So does that help? Is that a good one for you? Or is that hitting what you're asking for?

Brock Briggs  48:29 

Yeah, that's absolutely good. It kind of makes it a little bit more tangible and an example of hey, here's how this is implemented. Because I try to, especially with topics like this, try to bring it home of like, okay, what exactly does that mean, especially throwing around words, like strategy, as we talked about, I said, right from the beginning, I was like, let's define our terms here and figure out what we're talking about.

And then I think it just becomes easier to assign that to actions, trying to really look for actionable items for people, whether they work in a corporate job, whether they work in their own business, look for those things to kind of follow in the good footsteps or in the bad example, like look for things to avoid. So now you do this for yourself. You are a fractional Chief Strategy Officer. You've been doing that for a couple of years. You're writing this book. What is your vision for what your kind of perfect future ought to look like? And how you're impacting small businesses in your space by doing this and delivering those same services yourself?

Susan Maly  49:42 

Yeah. So my vision for my business is to fuel small business dreams. I love partnering with other small businesses who are looking to scale and grow and get to the next level and to make strategy simple because again, what is strategy? What do we mean by it? It's kind of like this mysterious shroud around it, but really at the end of the day, there is a process that you can walk through. And there's many ways to do it, no way is perfect. But it's creating that ultimate vision of what it looks like and how to get there. So for me personally, you know, it's having, you know, a strong client base to be able to support, you know, in this process and, you know, it can be longer term engagements. It can be a shorter term engagement, where I'm helping them create that strategy and they want to implement it themselves.

And then I have other clients where I'm walking alongside them and helping them through that implementation and kind of being part of their C suite team on a fractional basis, where I'm kind of helping them with that embedding the strategy into operations. And that's really, in my mind, were the differences between purely being a strategy advisory and actually being a fractional Chief Strategy Officer, where you're walking with your organization through implementation. I can do it where I say, here's the deliverable and some just want to implement it and that's fine. But I also love, excuse me, walking through that implementation,because you start to see the impact. And I think a good example, there is one client recently, we looked at some of the offerings, and there's a little bit of a restructuring of that and you know, it's helped. They're already seeing revenue improvements. And for me, you know, it's like, how do you measure success?

Well, it's one step, it's a quick win, if you will, in the larger goal, getting to their overarching kind of revenue goal. For me, I'd like to keep this going where I can, again, have that steady client base where I can share my knowledge through the book, where I can create the life that I like for my family. And for me, and that was, you know, one of the reasons that I set this up, I had the seeds planted a small business when I had my first daughter in 2015. And now brought it to reality. So I dropped them off to the bus. I picked them up at the bus, you know, there are heavier workloads, there's lighter workloads, but it's something where I've been able to kind of weave it into the fabric of our lives. And I'm really thankful for that. So entrepreneurship has a lot of benefits. It also has a lot of challenges and it's just balancing those. But for me, it's the right path.

Brock Briggs  52:13 

You're exactly right. There is a lot of pros, a lot of cons and it certainly is not for everybody. It sounds very attractive to be able to kind of be have a more present role in your kids lives especially. But man, when you're having to eat what you kill, so to speak,\ and you don't have any clients that kind of really lights. Some people need that, though, they need that kind of fire lit under them to get them motivated, not a bed in the morning. Can you maybe talk about when the right time to use? Like, let's say that I'm a small business looking to hire you, what is the right time for me to come in and ask for your services? Because obviously, it sounds like the earlier the better.

We're talking about the foundation and core of the company. But I'd imagine that there's a lot of people that, you know, like you mentioned earlier, talked about restructuring. Some kind of massive shift in the business is happening. And then all of a sudden, we don't know, maybe it's a spin off of the business, maybe co-founder left, maybe some kind of disruption happened. Can you maybe talk to some of the right times that you step in to do this and maybe differences in what you were just talking about of whether you have them implement it and whether or not you stay on and the outcomes behind those?

Susan Maly  53:39 

You know, I do think earlier is better just because you're laying that foundation, but I recognize that new businesses also need resources, and you've got to figure out where you're going to place those resources. So, you know, I generally say usually 1 to 20 million, you know, kind of looking to get to that next level, you know, I have worked with businesses that have less, absolutely. But the implementation might look different as well, where they're doing more of the heavy lifting versus having someone who can kind of embed and do some of that as well. So, you know, one might be where you have two co founders who are looking to clarify roles kind of moving forward. You can have one where maybe you're looking to bring on additional employees, like what are they going to do? What is their specific role going to be?

One might be clarifying roles and responsibilities with everyone within the company. One might be, we really want to grow from 1 million to 5 million over the next five years. How do we do that? One might be how do we structure our product and our service offering or right now we only offer services. We want to create a product to go along with that or we create a product and we want to have some services revenue. I think that's kind of at the, you know, some of the smaller stages for when you're going for maybe small to medium sized business, especially that, so maybe you're at 20 million and you want to scale it 50 million, that's going to require some different infrastructure.

Definitely quantifying your processes and new ways, like what I call your recipes for success. So when you bring on all of these staff, are they going to know how to do what your kind of your core methodologies are? And maybe they do it, but it's in a different way. So how do you systematize that? Those are kind of some of the ones off the top of my head. I mean, I've some who are looking to go from seed funding to Series A. How do we get to that next step? We've got some who are growing small business and they want it to be acquired? What does that look like? So kind of helping them through this process and getting it on paper.

Brock Briggs  55:47 

Have you seen differences in outcomes when you leave the implementation up to the company as opposed to you been in their C suite and maybe more involved in the maybe not day to day, but like, on a fractional level?

Susan Maly  56:04 

I have and some have implemented it very well, like we talked about it. And then the next time we touch base and make touch base with them quarterly, they've done it, like we said, we're gonna do it and they follow through. But oftentimes, they are just so bogged down with other daily responsibilities that X, Y and Z didn't get done. So I think, you know, the benefit, especially when you're trying to gain momentum and have those processes in place because you can have some of that support upfront. Once you have the scaffolding, it's a lot easier to implement than trying to create that from the beginning. So it really just depends on the business and on the capacity for how well they're able to implement. They have the ability. I think it's not a will versus skill thing they have and it's definitely in the air, it's more of a time consideration.

Brock Briggs  56:57 

Well, and as you mentioned earlier, that it highlights the benefit of that third party coming in. And you know, when you can be the one that's going and you're not just giving them homework. No founder or business owner needs more things to be doing. They're already probably doing too much. And so probably having that third party to come in and hey, you go implement this and I'll kind of keep the day to day lights on. Can you maybe give us a good example with a large company? Do you have an example without naming any names of maybe a smaller company that you've individually advised that was a really something bad happened either like the execution wasn't there, the company didn't go and implement what you provided and kind of coached them to and it kind of led to a bad outcome. And then, I guess kind of the next level up from that is like, how do we then avoid that?

Susan Maly  57:52 

Yeah, you know, I have been really blessed that the clients that I've worked with, I can't off the top of my head, think of something that is really bad that has happened. I think some things take longer. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. But I can't say that there's something that's gone off the rails. They didn't implement it. I have really strong relationships with them and they have fallen through. You know, I hit three years this summer. I recognize that may not, you know, kind of continue in perpetuity, but I'm pausing to think

Brock Briggs  58:30 

You can humble brag, it's okay. Like, my clients are rock stars. That's

Susan Maly  58:36 

I’m probably gonna say, so amazing it’s because they are, you know, I'm saying like they have followed through.

Brock Briggs  58:41 

Well, and I think that you may have even just mentioned something that is like contributed to that as the relationship aspect if you can come in and get as involved as possible. And when you're coming in, maybe not as like a complete friend, but somebody who's got some individual buy in and rapport with these people. It's not just they hop on a zoom call and you tell them what to do for an hour and then you hang up, there's kind of that rapport going on. And I would imagine that that would lead to them having more buy in into what you're telling and on top of that they're paying for it. So hopefully, they would be, they don't want to waste money.

Susan Maly  59:20 

And definitely in my big business experience, I've seen people pay, you know, a pretty penny for something that sits on the shelf. And I think some of that is. you know, especially in the military realm, you have a change in leadership where you finish your right when someone's about to PCS and then there's not someone to kind of carry through with it or they have a different vision. And so that happens for different reasons. But I've been, you know, really, really blessed to work with companies that are very invested in it and they want to follow through.

I really work hard especially upfront in trying to understand their business and what the real issues are. I think I'm also in a unique position because I am a small business owner and I've had to learn, you know, it's like, I came into this because I've got, you know, I feel like strong strategy skills. But along the way, I've also had to learn a little bit more about IT and a little more about finance and you know, all these things that go into running a business. So I feel like I'm speaking the same language. Yeah and I think just one of the things that I tried to do is okay, well, when's the next time that we can follow up? And I think having that next call, even if it's like, 30 minutes to touch base, gives some accountability. I know it does for me, on my end, if I know I'm going to be held accountable to kind of talk through something and I think that it doesn't have to be a huge lift. But you know that check in is helpful.

Brock Briggs  1:00:50 

One of the last things that I want to go over with you today is these five steps of like creating a strategy and putting it into your business is something that you have on your available on your website. So people can go check that out and download this if they're interested. But I'd love to kind of just take the step by step and maybe we can do like a talk a little bit about each one. What does each look like? How to, just add some more words to each each step to it. The first one that you have is Northstar, your foundation, vision, mission and values and near long term picture, go to market plan differentiators and obstacles. So this is something that you've been talking about a lot here. How is it that we ought to go about creating that? Why is a Northstar important? And if people don't have one, how can they get one?

Susan Maly  1:01:46 

Yeah. Well, I think it's addressing each one of those elements. And so I think kind of taken together this is your overarching strategy. But that Northstar, it's really your why, like, why am I doing this in the first place? And the runner who signed up for the race? Did I do this for a healthier lifestyle that I run for charity? Did I do this to just complete my first 5k. So I feel like coming back to the Northstar because you can have like a one year strategy or whatever it's going to look like. But you always come back to that Northstar to say, you know, what is my overarching vision and my goals. So you identify that vision, you identify your mission and your values, and there are exercises that you can go through to do this.

So from a vision perspective, one of the ones that I can do is, you know, imagine yourself receiving an award five or whatever the timeframe is 10 years from now, what is that award for? What are people saying about that, you know, for your company, what are your employees say? So kind of culture? Do you want to create? You know, what kind of stand out for you for basically what that success looks like? You know, I really think that the go to market strategy and the differentiator so what makes you different? What sets you apart? So if we look at like a lemonade stand analogy, you know, I get my lemons from Sicily, like, why should I buy your lemonade from someone else's lemonade. So being able to articulate why someone should buy from you, I think is really helpful, and then being very clear on what you sell.

So I think, especially for small businesses who are like I can do this, and I can do this, and I can do this, it's like what are three things we want to focus on not to say that we are always limited to that. But it gives clarity for where we're going to focus our time and attention? What are those products and services, what sets them apart? What makes them unique? You know, a lot of this kind of teasing it out through conversation, I was facilitating this when I call a strategy intensive to kind of pull this information out because a lot of it is in people's heads. And then if you have multiple people, whether it's co founders, or you have multiple people on the leadership team, they may not be aligned with what this looks like. So having that clarity for, here's what we want to do. Here's what we believe in, here's how we're going to do it. Here's what we sell, here's what makes us different.

And then okay, well, if we want to do that, what does that look like over the next and I use a three year timeframe. If you're looking to scale from, you know, seed to series A and sell within five years, maybe we make it a two year timeframe. So it's whatever that defined timeframe is? What are the priorities? So do we need to look at marketing and sales? Do we need to look at products and services? Do we need to look at talent like what kind of talent do you need to bring on board to execute what you say that you want to do? And then, you know, what are some of the obstacles going back to the lemonade stand like there's some type of supply chain shortage, I can't get my lemons, I can't make my product. So being able to think through what that looks like if you run into those challenges.

And then you know, how do we define that success and so a lot of times when you define your priorities and your goals, you can easily choose out what those metrics look like. But for some it might be you know, scale and get acquired by a year X or might be 10 million in revenue and X percent profit by year y. So looking at what that overarching goal is and then layering the strategy Deep beneath that, that says, okay, here's what I'm going to do over the next three years from a product and service perspective. Here's what I'm going to do from a talent perspective. And then that next level down says, okay, well, what are my, excuse me, going to do this year? And then what am I going to do in the next 90 days? And so we've kind of gotten into some of the other ones, I think on the tools that you're looking at that Northstar frames everything for the discussion to be able to generate that detail.

Brock Briggs  1:05:27 

Yeah, that's really great. Well, I think that having it written down does so much for you, especially if you're able to revisit it, not just putting it on the shelf and forgetting about it. But you know, when something comes up, or maybe not waiting for a problem to come up, but if one does come up, you can go back to this written down document that says all of these things. And you know, if the problem is not on your North Star part of this maybe you misunderstood the problem and that it warrants reevaluation of the potential obstacles, or, you know, maybe you're presented with a new opportunity and saying, hey, oh, we could go in this other direction and start this new product line, look, there's already sales or whatever, you know, does that actually align with where we're trying to get to? And then forcing yourself to say, hey, no, we're actually not going to do that, the vision is still this or if it really is that good? Maybe you need to realign that it because I could see how you could really easily get off track. And because things just pop up good and bad.

Susan Maly  1:06:31 

Yeah. And it's one slide. It's not a document. It's not 10 slides, it's one slide. We go back to our Northstar, bam, is it on there? No, why? Why not? Do we want to move in that direction? And it doesn't mean that you can't adapt and grow over time. But if you're doing that all the time, I think you're not giving things runtime to see whether they're going to be successful. And especially as something grows, you're going to potentially confuse and frustrate people because they're moving in one direction and then they're moving in another direction. And so this is really trying to align for optimal momentum.

Brock Briggs  1:07:05 

Those next two were the three year strategy and like the 90 day roadmap. I interpret what you're saying. It's like, how do we get this big vision into the tangible steps that we will be able to measure by for the next three months and then kind of doing that every quarter or so as it kind of lines up with your three year plan?

Susan Maly  1:07:28 

Absolutely. So when you think about kind of your next slide, it's your three year strategy. So there's some, I like to have that firm foundation of vision and mission and values of each one. But then it's saying, okay, well, we set our priorities, again, our marketing and sales, recruiting, getting our tech stack in place, optimizing our processes, we're just documenting them. So this is what this look, these are our priorities over the next, you know, however many years you're trying timeframe and then having specific goals beneath that. And the goals are very measurable. So in the case of we'll go back to the running analogy, run a 5k in under 21 minutes in the next six months. So it makes it really easy to define your metric based off of that and the next six months that are run a 5k in under 21 minutes. And then you can use those to measure success over time.

Brock Briggs  1:08:19 

And then the fourth item dashboard, visual tool to manage measure and mature strategy reviewed quarterly.

Susan Maly  1:08:26 

Yes, so I am a big proponent of visual management. One slide, you'll kind of hear that theme of like just one site. I feel like it's harder to make something simple than it is to make it you know, just throw everything out there and kind of have, you know, 10 slides, etc. So a lot of the early work that I did at Booz Allen was around metrics creation and dashboard creation. And it's how do you measure something? So when I look at it, can I visually? Are there visual indicators to see if there's an issue? Or am I making the progress that I need to make? You can use something as simple as a red yellow green stoplight? Which doesn't? That's we're talking about not rocket science. But it's really powerful to align. Like we said, we want to do this, are we actually doing it? And how are we doing it? How well are we doing it? How far along are we, you know, maybe I'm yellow? Well, are there some roadblocks? Are there some obstacles?

It helps with cross department communication if you have a little bit of a smaller or bigger small business or even just aligned folks who are working on different issues, even if it's a smaller leadership team, being able to identify and clearly articulate those issues, figure out the game plan to fix them. And then look at that the next quarter and say, well, how did we do? So I think there's room for kind of that quarterly dashboard. Then we also have, you know, every week touching base with the leadership team saying, how many opportunity calls have we had? What's in our pipeline? What is kind of the projected revenue? Have we had customer success? Like, have we had customer complaints? What is that state of the business? So from a dashboard perspective, I'm bringing that back to the strategy. But I do think that there's room and a need for what are your top 10 things like cash flow accounts receivable that you're looking at across the business on a weekly basis, just to make sure that the business is in good health.

Brock Briggs  1:10:15 

So would you say that the whole point of this metric is like this is a quantitative way to verify that you are pursuing your Northstar?

Susan Maly  1:10:27 

Yes, but I also think that there's room for qualitative. So if you say you're going to document your processes, I guess you could make it quantitative and say I've documented 75 of 100%. Or you could say it's in progress. You've not started in progress complete because in progress is kind of nebulous. Like, is it 20% of progress? Is it 80% in progress?

Brock Briggs

But I've opened it.

Susan Maly

Yeah, exactly. But I've also worked with different clients who, you know, just getting the dashboard in place is a win. So like, yes, maybe the quantitative is going to be “better”. But you gotta take baby steps and start with what you can always improve over time. Just having something there is really powerful. The lines people.

Brock Briggs  1:11:11 

Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I think that he made a good point there too, earlier talking about what metric it is. It doesn't really matter what it is because everybody's kind of optimizing for different things. You may not have a sales goal, like another company does. But the point is that you have something that is informed by what your mission, vision and values are. Your Northstar is there like whether it be quantitative or not some kind of way to verify that you are moving towards that.

Susan Maly

Yup

Brock Briggs

Last thing is key activities, program management tool to drive accountability and progress reviewed weekly. So I see we're getting more like granular here. I'd like you know, we're talking big picture. And we're getting really skinny. I'm like, oh, if we're doing something weekly, like this is obviously important.

Susan Maly  1:12:00 

And this is embedding strategy into operations. And the key word there is accountability. So we have our 90 day plan, you know, our 190 roadmap, what's going to happen over the next 90 day plan. So what does that mean that I've got to do this week? You know, if it's going back to the recruiting analogy, do I need to read a job req? Do I need to post it? You know, what are the specific activities? And I always get the question of how detailed does it have to be and this is where I come back and say, this has to be beneficial. I mean, sometimes you can put so much detail in there that it just is onerous. And that's not the goal. The goal is to say, you know, here are the five things that I need to do over the next week. Did they actually get done to kind of move us towards our 90 day plan?

That can be everything from, you know, Excel, you can track your action items in PowerPoint, you need some mechanism, some place to hold it. You can have an online tool to do it. You know, there's no perfect technology for it. But there's got to be something that if I missed the meeting, I can come back and say, well, where are we like in work, not in work. And the goal isn't to create a huge overhead burden in it. But it's really to create the culture and spur the conversation and the accountability that's going to drive you towards your goals. And so that tool looks different for each client that I work with. Some need and really want that detail. Some are like, that's just too much. We've got what we need, but they have something in place so that their strategy just isn't this high level 50,000. But it's actually actionable.

Brock Briggs  1:13:41 

Yeah, I'm tracking. Yeah, this is really good. I liked this kind of method for thinking about it. And I liked your more deeper dive description of each of these. I'm gonna be sure to include a link to this in the show notes so people can go and look at it. So I think that this even drives the point home even further. And yeah, I really liked this framework for thinking about it. Susan, I've really enjoyed learning from you today. I've enjoyed this conversation. I've got two final questions for you. If we were to take away one thing from this conversation and implement it in our lives today, what would that be?

Susan Maly  1:14:20 

Think about what you really want, create a plan to achieve it and then follow through.

Brock Briggs  1:14:26 

When you put it that way, it makes it sound so simple. That's all you gotta do.

Susan Maly 

That's the goal.

Brock Briggs

I love it. It's something that it's easy to talk about that you do but for some reason, much more difficult to actually write something down, a lot of power and writing it down and then following through with that kind of helps makes you follow through with it once you put pen to paper. The last question that I have is what can myself and or the listeners do to be useful to you?

Susan Maly  1:14:57 

It's a good question. I am always learning and want to grow as well. So I love community building community and interacting with folks. And you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm Susan Maly. If you have suggestions, ways to say or to make anything that I said better and there's always room to improve, I'd love to hear it. Yeah, and if there's things that you think that I can benefit from reading or learning about, send it my way.

Brock Briggs  1:15:26 

Fantastic. Is that the best place for people to reach out to you if they are interested in bringing you on as a chief strategy officer as well?

Susan Maly  1:15:38 

Yeah, so it's a LinkedIn or you can also reach out through my website, which is www.malystrategies.com.

Brock Briggs  1:15:45 

Excellent. Thank you so much, Susan. I'll keep those links in the show notes so people can check those out. I appreciate your time.

Susan Maly 

Thank you! Have a great day, Brock. I appreciate it.