Strategy for the Impatient

I recently sat down with fellow author Dan Roche to discuss his book, The Total Beginner's Handbook for Doing Business with the Government. We talk about the book at a high level and then zero in on chapter 12, a really, really simple model for designing your business strategy. Dan calls this strategy for the impatient. It's based on four P's: Purpose, Problem, Parameters, and Punch list. If you are struggling with your strategy, this is a very simple approach that should help you get moving in the right direction.

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Read Transcript Here:

Mike: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Mike LeJeune here with Game Changers for Government Contractors. I have a fun guest on the show today. Not that we don't always, but I have a really fun guest on there because it's a fellow author. Dan Roche is on here with me. And I'm going to talk about his book as we go through here.

We're going to specifically talk about one of his chapters. But before we get into that, Dan, why don't you take a minute, tell everybody a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Dan: Michael, thank you so much for having me on. I'm really enjoying this thoroughly. My name is Dan Roche and I've been in government contracting for about 21 years and counting.

The reason I'm here today was roughly a year ago, I wanted to create a guide to our business that would explain a bit of the nuances of why working with the government is different, what it entails, and something that'll basically help people like me either today, 10 years ago, 20 years ago frankly, skip some of the dues paying that many of us have had to go through to kind of make our way and to explain things in a very, very simple, concise form.

So as a result, what I ended up creating was a book which we'll discuss here today called the Total [00:01:00] Beginner's Handbook for Doing Business with the Government. Which is meant to be, and hopefully succeeds as, a quick yet thorough somewhat enjoyable guide

Mike: mm-hmm

Dan: to our business that helps people, uh, do better work and frankly encourages people to get involved in the all important work of government contracting.

Mike: I would say you succeeded. I was talking to you before the show about all the government contracting books I read, because I read a lot of them. And I rarely enjoy any of them. it's just one of those things, as an author, as somebody who's in the field, you know, you write your own books and so you look at somebody else's and you're like, I don't really like this. But I really, really enjoyed yours.

I appreciate you sending it to me. As I've got it here, the thing I liked about it was how quick it is to read. So it was very, very quick and easy to read. It is very simple for somebody that is new. I think you explained it really, really well. The whole concept of like the lemonade stand that you use, that's a business that I think most people can grasp very easily and understand. I really enjoyed it.

?As I was going through, I was kind of like, does it cover everything? I found like it covered almost every area that I could think of. There wasn't [00:02:00] anything that I looked at that was glaringly obviously missing or anything like that. You even talked about pricing and stuff like that, which I hate to talk about pricing.

?It's one of those books that I would recommend if you're a listener or you're watching this on YouTube or wherever it is, it's a great book to go pick up. I got through it very, very quick and I'm not a fast reader. I'm the slow reader. I'm thinking about the things as I'm reading them. A lot of people might have read it faster than me. But anyway, I just, I really like the book and I really appreciate that. Today we're going to talk a little bit about what you called the Strategy for the Impatient.

?And that was, you know, the simplest model for building a federal sales strategy. As I was going through, I was like, this is kind of like the four P's is

Dan: yes

Mike: is what I looked at. Why don't you give us an overview on what those four P's are and the strategy and then we'll talk a little bit more about it.

Dan: Happily. And Michael, thank you so much for those kudos. And that was my goal, to make something that was easy, fun to read, not intimidating. But I really appreciate your kind of words there. Anyway, one of the chapters in there is on strategy, and that was born of the observance that I made in my career that it's [00:03:00] easy to get strategy wrong for all the right reasons.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Dan: A strategy is something that for most businesses, it's an important part of their business plan, but it's easy to mess it up by accident. And one of the most common problems that I see, or the most common pitfalls I see, is people make it too complicated.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Dan: They make it too ambitious and they ended up simply losing interest or their teams never quite glom onto why it exists. I often compare it to working out. If you want to get in shape, you shouldn't, on day one try to replicate Ivan Drago's Rocky four workout. But it's simply a matter of, okay, what makes sense from today to tomorrow, the next day. What I tried to do in this one chapter is have a model for strategy that's very, very simple and very concise, but yet can apply to any business, be it in the government or elsewhere.

And I call it, well, I will borrow Michael's terminology, four Ps. Easy to remember: purpose, problems, parameters, punch list. And that's something which should be as a rule, understandable by anybody in the business. I'll go through them one by one.

The [00:04:00] main question I'd ask anybody either in their personal career or in their business is, why does your business exist?

Why are you different? Why do you get up in the morning? It needn't be flowery or ambitious or read like poetry, but okay, so your business exists. Why? What is it you want to do? What do you care about? Why didn't you just join the big integrator down the block?

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Dan: Why do you exist? it could be different for everyone and it needn't be unique or special or flowery. But just if you had to answer a question as to why should people get up every single day and work in your space, that answers it.

For most businesses, they have a purpose. They have a unique differentiator. But my main advice would be to keep it as simple as possible. Be very concise because everyone in your organization should know it and frankly believe in it. Because if they don't, which is often the case, then the question is why does it exist and how honest or how true is it really in reflecting what you do and who you are?

Narrator: Did you [00:05:00] know we have our own community for government contractors? It's called Federal Access. Just visit federal access.com/game changers and you can get 50% off your first month. This thing is packed full of all kinds of resources, templates, documents, strategy guides. Everything you need to be a government contractor.

And it gets you in our inner circle where you have direct access to myself and my partner, Josh Frank. So go check it out today federal-access.com/gamechangers. Now let's get back into this episode.

Mike: I'd like to talk about each one of

Dan: -please

Mike: individually as we go through here. I think purpose is one of the hardest things for a lot of people. I've coached a lot of people in my years. When people get somewhere in that 45 ish age range to 50 age range, maybe even 55, they start asking a lot of purpose driven questions. I can't tell you how many times I've been around somebody that says I don't know what my purpose is in life. It translates right into their business. They're like, I, I have a business, but I don't really know why we [00:06:00] exist other than to not have a job or, or whatever. And what I really liked about what you just said was how it doesn't have to be unique or different.

You could exist for the same reason that another company exists. And that's not a bad thing. Because I think really smart people struggle the most at this always trying to think, Hey, well somebody else exists to fill in the blank and I can't do that because they've already taken that.

Dan: Exactly.

Mike: Like you said, they overthink it. And they're looking for something unique. And they're really just kind of out in the desert searching and never finding anything. And so they're running around purposeless, you know, of sticking to something really simple that people can catch onto.

Dan: Well, thank you. And I think we do tend to have this need towards being original which is great in many ways, but we're in a big business. Whatever your idea is, someone probably already has it somewhere.

Mike: Yeah.

Dan: Does that mean quit? No. It means whatever matters to you, what's important is does it drive you?

Mike: Hmm

Dan: Doesn't matter if you have competition or you're alone in an island. Just does it matter to you? Full stop. [00:07:00] And what your purpose might be, that might change. It should change and evolve. And especially what you were saying about, you know, people at our career stage. We are at a zone now, or we should be where listen, you can track your progress earlier in your career by title, whatever else, but at some point in time you want to do something that you believe in.

Mike: Mm-hmm

Dan: And what's important is not if it's unique or special, but does it drive you and make you care more and encourage you to be your best?

Mike: Yeah

Dan: And that's personal and frankly, organizational.

Mike: That's a big deal. And you start thinking about legacy and different things like that. But yeah, you know, does it drive, does it make you want to do it or does it make you want to avoid it? Can you communicate it to anyone? That's, that's the thing that I'm always looking for with simplicity, is can you even communicate? if you sit here and say, well, it's kind of complicated.

Like if that's where you start, then that's a bad place to start. If you can't really understand it, then none of your team can. If it can't translate internally, it's not going to translate externally either. So your customers are going to just be scratching their heads. That's like, you're another company that's [00:08:00] just doing what you're doing without any rhyme or reason or anything like that.

Dan: And I'm always impressed too, just to say one more thing on that, simplicity counts for a lot. A lot of companies use a lot of flowery language. That's unnecessary.

Mike: Yes.

Dan: If what you do is to help people live longer, great. Wrap it up. It needn't be a big poetic buzzword filled latent manifesto. Just say what matters to you and then move on.

Mike: I, I really like that. You probably heard that phrase, I think it's Zig Ziglar, the one that says, maybe it's him I don't know, help enough people get what you want to get what you want. You know, that sort of thing. That used to be a huge driver for me. It's like, help enough people get what they want and you'll get what you want. In fact, I just wrote this on LinkedIn. Over time, I just kept shortening that phrase until it wound up with just one word and it's just help. You know, it's, it's gone from help people get what they want to now it's just help. It really doesn't matter what it is, but it's like that long phrase was what, like, oh, I'm helping them get what they want so I can get something. And I was like, I don't really care about that anymore. You know, and I just want to help in whatever it means.

If you run a company long enough, then [00:09:00] your purpose, your vision, your whatever, will start to go from that whole paragraph describing what you do to like three or four words. That's a,

Dan: That's perfect.

Mike: Really, really good advice. Talk to me a little bit about the problem side of things. Let's dig into that one.

Dan: Oh, this is my favorite actually. So the one thing about strategy is, not everyone, but a lot of strategies are tainted by what I call toxic positivity. We all want to think in terms of our dreams and hopes and ambition. We want to talk about how awesome we are.

But the truth of the matter is every business has problems. If we didn't, we wouldn't need a strategy. If we didn't, our success would be self-evident and you move on and you just succeed and blossom. The one thing I would push a lot is saying, whatever you want to do, let's turn things around.

What problems do you have? It could be internal, could be external. It could be a matter of the work that you want to do, but can't. It could be the level of impact you want to have, but can't yet. And I would say call it out. List them, itemize them. Because if [00:10:00] you don't, I found it's very easy to get stuck in this endless loop of simply repackaging your purpose again and again, and again, and again, and again.

Mike: Hmm

Dan: Which is great, but there is a limit to it. I use the example of say, lemonade stands. Like, I have big dreams of lemonade. I want to sell it in every corner. Great, but now I can't. Why? What obstacle do I have to eliminate or mountain do I have to climb next to get closer to my ultimate goal? Or to be able to rethink whether or not that goal is still applicable?

So I would say upfront: okay, before you get too far, what are your problems? Whenever people say, we haven't got any. Well, I don't believe that. If you do, then you can fire me. I mean, Microsoft, Apple, I don't care who you are, you have problems.

Mike: Mm-hmm

Dan: And being able to state your goals as problems, I think is key. And it helps hone and articulate the way forward in ways that you can avoid doing if you're stuck in the flowery purpose and ambition trap.

Mike: Mm

Dan: for lack of a better term.

Mike: So gimme a good example of that because I, I like that being able to state your goals as problems. What's [00:11:00] a good example of that one?

Dan: Well, a good example, a lot of it in the government contracting space is there is a lot of organizations out there whose purpose is to do public good a lot. And it's for a lot of good reasons. And you want to help people live longer, for example. But okay, so why aren't you taking down all the new NIH, FDA, public health contracts?

There are reasons why. Maybe aren't big enough. Maybe the problem is we lack the size and scale to compete and have the impact we want to have. That's a problem. Maybe we lack the vehicle access it would take to be relevant in the markets we want to play in. That's a problem. We haven't got the expertise and the depth on staff yet to do what we want to do.

That's a problem. You can go on and on. But every business will have certain things which keep them from that next step. And it can be uncomfortable. It can be awkward. It can take some self-esteem. But every business should have a list of things they want to do better or get past.

Mike: Mm-hmm

Dan: And being able to state it in a [00:12:00] negative sense will help you assess your true needs in terms of to make the next leap. So a lot of what I talk about in the book about say pricing. Maybe you haven't got a sense of how you can price yet. Or you haven't got the client intimacy. Or you haven't got the past performance qualifications. You can go on and on and on. But it's important to list and be aware of, just so you can get a better sense of what will actually help you.

Mike: I really like that. You know, out of all four of the P's there, the next one may be my favorite. I can't tell you how often I run into people who have no parameters. There's no type of parameter on anything they do. It's like they will chase every bright shiny object as far as they can. They'll get a mile down the road and find a new bright shiny object and start chasing that. Next thing you know, the journey that started off going from New York to Florida. Now they wind up somewhere out in Idaho and they have no idea how they got there, what they're doing or anything like that. Talk to me a little bit about the parameters side of strategy.

Dan: Well, this is also one thing: in terms of whatever you [00:13:00] do, it's important to at some point define what you will do, but also will not do. If you have good intents, but you have no boundaries. I'm looking for the Kurt Vonnegut quote: there's no fair tennis without a net or something like that. Having some constraints on what you look at will help you focus, but also avoid the endless trap of distraction. Our business government contracting is massive. If you want to do good things for the public, and this is good news, you can go in a million different directions.

And you can get distracted and you waste all your time and never make in-roads in any one area. It's important to upfront, if just to keep you honest, have a sense of what you will do, but also what you will not do.

Mike: Mm-hmm

Dan: We're always going to be able to be entertained or pulled away by a new opportunity or beat or meeting or RFP or bid that looks great and is shiny and attractive and smells awesome, but will not actually help us achieve addressing [00:14:00] our problems and meeting our goals. it's important to have a culture of focus.

Mike: Mm

Dan: To be able to have the fortitude to avoid getting distracted or spread too thin and to concentrate on the practice area, or what have you, that you've decided is important to you. Now, can that change? Yes. But I want every team to basically learn to be very wary of that shiny object chasing habit that can become so overwhelming.

Mike: What people don't realize, especially leaders at the top, is how people don't do what you say: they do what you do. When you are leading at the top and you have that bright shiny object syndrome, even though you're telling your people to focus, they start catching that disease too. It's just the way it is.

I've always heard that. I was at a conference one time and somebody said that. And I'm like, even if you're doing it in secret, somehow it gets out that you don't do what you're supposed to, or you're doing something opposite of what you're telling your people. Because they can see the results. We're not [00:15:00] stupid.

People can see results. And they understand when those results are not happening. And when those results are happening that you either eat your own dog food or not. I worked with this one guy, Paul, and it was back in the day and he was doing a lot of network marketing stuff. And he was trying to pull me into this one network marketing company. And I went and had breakfast with Paul somewhere and I watched that guy recruit 10 people while we were having breakfast. And from the waiters, to the people at tables next to us. The guy had a gift. He would see something on somebody's table, and it wasn't like a salesy thing. He'd say, oh, hey, I see you're reading whatever magazine. Did you know? And he'd have some little thing and he'd start a conversation. And he'd say, so what are you doing here on a Tuesday morning at 11 o'clock? You know, when everybody else is working. Ah, I work for myself. You know, would you be interested? He would just go down this rabbit hole. And if people followed him, they saw he ate his own dog food, right? He was following the strategy that he was telling everybody to do. And then you'd have other people that say, this is how [00:16:00] you do it. But they never do it.

It boils over into the parameter side of things. I'll hear somebody say the words, we could do that work. Instead of, this is right up our alley. Like we could do that. It almost sounds just like that. And I'm like, you could, but should you do that work?

Like why are we talking about this janitorial RFP when you guys are a cybersecurity company? Why are we having that conversation? That culture piece, that is what I, what I caught on when you said that of: you just bleed that culture over into your people. And then before you know it, you've infected them with this disease that you can't get rid of. Because it came from the top. You know, you started the culture. And so you've almost got to hit a hard reset to say Hey, We're going to stop doing this. We're going to focus. And it starts with me, because I was the problem, type of thing. I really appreciate the parameter side. Maybe more than anything else. I just love that one.

Dan: And I think one thing about parameters, it needn't be punitive. I mean, if you're a company full of smart people, you will see things that you could do all day long. [00:17:00] You will be excited about things because smart people, good people are excited by

Mike: mm-hmm

Dan: by what's possible.

Mike: That's right.

Dan: And if you're a leader, the answer is not to say, you know, shame on you. Hush. I'd say, listen, we could do a lot of things. I have a lot of power in us, but our strategy is to focus on these three areas.

Mike: Mm-hmm

Dan: So I would like us to focus here, here, and here.

Mike: Yeah. Let's get creative in those three areas.

Dan: Exactly. Let's try and focus on this. And a lot of times it's not a matter of shutting down creativity or brainstorming even, but just keeping with the right level of

Mike: mm-hmm

Dan: polish and aplomb keeping focused in the right areas.

Mike: Yeah. No, that's a really important point because I, I think you can burn out really smart people by always harshly saying, no. And we don't want to do that. We want the creativity, but we want it channeled in this particular area. And then if somebody all of a sudden is working on something and they have this brilliant idea. And you're like man, that's a billion dollar idea, we should chase that, then maybe the company changes. But you've got to know what to chase and what not to chase. So talk to me about the last P here, and then there's one more question I have about this

Dan: please

Mike: [00:18:00] about the chapter here. But talk to me about the last P- the punch list. To me, this is like our action items that we've got to do, right?

Dan: Well, I mean, everyone knows about action items. I think the whole idea with punch list is basically: one of the hardest things to do in a strategy is the dreaded roadmap.

Mike: Mm

Dan: So we all have a world where we want to put our goals on a calendar and say, I want to achieve X, Y, and Z, this size by this date. That's an important practice. But one of the hardest things I've seen for companies often to do is to take those first steps.

Mike: Mm-hmm

Dan: So the question is: what other steps you can take right now: given your current staff, given your current funding, given what you know now, to address your problems in the moment?

Mike: Hmm.

Dan: So, without getting ahead of yourself, how can you keep your team moving right now on concrete steps that will address the problems you have? And I'm not by any means saying that road mapping beyond that is unnecessary or negative. But don't fall in [00:19:00] the trap once again of letting six months a year from now distract the next steps.

Mike: Mm-hmm

Dan: A lot of times, I know from experience, it can be fun doing long-term roadmapping. You can think ambitiously, you can get creative, but a lot of times what falls down is the now. And it could be that if you're a young company, planning ahead could be kind of a crapshoot.

Mike: Yeah

Dan: You may rediscover in the short term, that your purpose was in fact the wrong purpose. You may have fall in love with something different. You may change directions. You may change your parameters. But first things first. What do you do right now to move down the field?

Mike: Hmm

Dan: And again, it's not so much a magical plan, but it's more of a cultural focus on being able to not let planning get in the way of tactical next steps.

Mike: Hmm. I like that. I think too many times people can be either a planning person or a next steps person, and not have both. So, as the leader of your company, you do have to be both. And you have to be focused on: this is where we're [00:20:00] going. But right now, today, this week, this month, these are the things that have to be done in order to get there. And I'll give you the next page in the playbook once we knock those out, you know?

Dan: Yeah.

Mike: Just be patient. That's really good. So as we wrap up here, I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the zombie strategy piece in

Dan: Excellent

Mike: your book here, because I think that is one of the things that I see wrong with a lot of companies. They have these zombie strategies. So, what are zombie strategies and how do you deal with that in, in a company when you're working on strategy?

Dan: That's a great question. It was a fun chapter, right? So here's the thing with zombie strategies. Your strategy should work for you, not visa versa. Your strategy should exist to push you along, clarify your purpose, keep you moving down the field. Your purpose today, and this is personal or organizational: your goals much the same way that are valid for you today may not be valid in a year or two or even six months for a bunch of reasons.

The market may change. The industry could change. What you care [00:21:00] about on a personal level may shift, and it often does because we're humans. But just because you've gone on the whiteboard last month, six months ago and defined a purpose, if it's not relevant to you or your organization as you proceed, don't be afraid to change it. And more importantly, don't let the tail wag the dog. One of the reasons I keep strategies so very simple is: if they get too ambitious or too complicated, at some point, teams don't want to break them.

Mike: Hmm

Dan: They don't want to disrupt them. They don't want to revisit them because they were so expensive. They were so complicated. They were so fancy. if Ivan Drago's workout routine in Rocky IV isn't getting you in shape and you're better off jump roping in your bedroom, then you should have the will to change what you do and to kill what I call zombie strategies. A good litmus test is: whenever you can tell that a strategy is either meaningless to your team, or worse [00:22:00] yet comes off as homework.

Mike: Hmm

Dan: Whenever what you've defined a year or two ago has become either part of the background noise of life or worse has become a source of frustration or cynicism, then's the time to go back, change it up. If so, destroy it. Redefine

Mike: kill the zombie

Dan: what matters. Exactly. Kill the zombie. Preferable bullet to the head. Quick and easy.

Mike: Yeah.

Dan: Redefine what matters to you and your team today, going forward. And I think part of the reason that I've kept that chapter very, very simple is: again, strategy should be simple, understandable by everybody and meaningful. But they should never be too dear to not be ripe for destruction and rewrites however often they need to be.

Mike: I really appreciate that. For all of our listeners, the book is The Total Beginner's Handbook for Doing Business with the Government. It's a super short, quick, great read. I highly recommend it. So go grab a copy of it. We've got copies of it here on the video if you're watching on the podcast there. Dan, thank you for writing the book. Thank you for coming on today. I'll have all your [00:23:00] contact info on the website so if people have questions or anything like that, they can catch you there. But thank you again. I really appreciate you coming on today and talking.

Dan: Thank you very much. Have a very good time. Thank you.

Narrator: I really hope you enjoyed this episode of Game Changers. If you did, please go like and share this episode on your social media as well as rate and review the episode. That helps other government contractors find out about the podcast and benefit just like you. We'll see you next time.