Cleaning out the Garage
Written by: Dr. Michael Weiss

In the past, we’ve tried to get the situation under permanent control — only to be told by the building management people that, short of resealing windows and plugging holes, there’s little they can do to prevent the invasion.

I’m pleased to report that, thanks to some artful persuasion on the part of our practice administrator, bids are now being gathered for hole plugging and window resealing.

The time has come for us to take on the ladybugs.

The time has come for us to take on other things, too. We’re replacing our operating system, reviewing and renegotiating our vendor contracts, redesigning our employee benefits package, revisiting our performance management procedure, rewording our Yellow Pages ads and redecorating our offices. We’ve even retained a new accounting firm and attorney.

What’s the story behind all those activities that start with the prefix "re"?

Leading an organization is like having a garage. Before you can execute any significant move, you first need to clear out some stuff. This involves picking through the piles and deciding what to retain, what to repair and what to toss, keeping in mind need and the particulars of the space you seek to inhabit next.

Note to building management: Don’t get the wrong idea. We’re not vacating our office space anytime soon, so the ladybug problem still needs fixed.

The move our practice plans isn’t a physical relocation. It’s more like a strategic drive.

We have goals we want to accomplish, business opportunities we want to pursue, relationships we want to build, markets we want to conquer and impressions we want to make. In order to achieve all of the above, we need to have every resource primed and aligned.

Picking through the piles is part of the priming and aligning, so now we’re digging into boxes we haven’t opened in years.

By boxes, I mean our practice’s decisions, systems, processes, procedures, philosophies and networks. The digging involves discerning. What should we keep? What should we fix? What should we pitch? As for the priming and aligning, well, that’s the whole point.

Decisions, systems, processes, procedures, philosophies and networks are rarely neutral. They either support your strategy, or they don’t.

Take our employee benefits package, for example. It needs a serious overhaul if we hope to consistently attract and retain high-quality workers who will help us achieve our newly identified goals. Then, there’s the leasing contract for our photocopiers. When we reviewed it recently, we discovered that we’ve been paying twice as much as we should be, given our actual usage.

The costly photocopier contract represents more than a managerial oversight. It works against our strategy. Before we renegotiated the contract, it sapped financial resources that could have been used to, say, pursue a promising, new opportunity.

The relationship between strategy and actions reminds me of a mathematical function, where the variable y is determined by a constant. Our practice used to put strategy in the place of y, as in x %2B y = 3. We structure the equation differently now. Strategy is the constant. It tells the variables — decisions, systems, processes, etc. — what they will be.

This enlightened reversal explains a lot about our practice today, like why the garage is being cleaned and the ladybugs don’t have a chance.

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