February 2010
 |
| Learn the purpose behind the chart and the Blackberry. |
Ah-Ha! Moment – This month showed the truth of the quote (attributed to film producer and movie studio executive Samuel Goldwyn), "The harder I work, the luckier I get." In December 2009, my Director of Business Development and I identified a few clients which had large projects several years ago, but nothing major since then. We decided to offer a free "Lunch 'n Learn" session to their staff at their offices – something which could definitely add value to both clients and their personnel. As things turned out, the client who took us up on our offer was well into a strategic planning project – and thus was very interested in my discussion of linking strategy to implementation and measurement for business results in our "Implementing the Big Picture" seminar.
We heard nothing for 6 weeks following the seminar ... until late January 2010 when I received a call from the Controller, requesting a meeting to discuss ways we could help implement a key portion of the strategic plan – a data warehouse and dashboard, to help executives and managers better analyze and assess a variety of measurements tracking both operational and strategic objectives. We met with our client, understood what they wanted to achieve, ensured we could meet their objectives (we could), and proposed a project – which was quickly accepted and begun in early March!
While some may say I got lucky on this project, I attribute my "luck" to both analysis and intuition to identify clients who might have current unmet needs.
