Happy Tuesday! I pushed this newsletter by one day because of the Memorial Day holiday in the US.
This past week I attended not one, but TWO different conferences.
The first was free, remote, single-day conference focused on AI and automation for accounting and finance teams. I discovered a handful of new tools, but the practical application is still slightly obfuscated. Many of the presenters talked about what is possible, but didn’t get into how to implement it. A couple of the talks focused on cloning yourself - your voice, or your voice and video. I don’t see the point yet. 🤷
The second conference was the annual Operator’s Guild Summit, conveniently held here in Austin, TX.
This was my first OG Summit, and it was great. The event planners understood that a lot of the value comes from meeting other people, so that was heavily incorporated. The entire first evening was dinner and drinks on a hotel rooftop. I talked with CFOs about sneaky deal terms and how they affect valuations, I spoke with several people with a recent business exit wondering what to do next, and I had conversations with future business partners about how we could combine forces. I got into debates on the merits of buying a company versus just building one of your own.
Throughout the week I was able to have many 1-1 and small group conversations. I was able to ask very specific questions of experienced folks, like reviews on ERPs for clients who need a more advanced solution for drop ship order management vs. those who rely more on manufacturing.
I’m glad the organizers made space for this instead of focusing on talks - and I appreciate that the seniority of the OG means everyone you talk to has a high capability!
There was a LOT of AI talk. Less about prompting, more about vibe-coding and operational efficiency. Like the other conference, practical steps were missing, but I think that’s just the state of things right now. If you’ve got a team of technical folks, you can get AI automation done. If you’re a nontechnical team or have few resources, you're more limited.
AI automation services agencies are really busy and really expensive right now, but that’ll come down soon. In light of that, I’m going to do a little more intentional work with custom GPTs and Zapier for clients. You can still have a lot of impact without trying to automate everything.
Have you been able to automate something recently? I’d love to hear your examples. Email me at heykev@kevinnoble.xyz.
Kevin
A Quote
“
No matter what happens to you, a positive attitude comes from within. Your circumstances and your contentment are unrelated.
— John C. Maxell in "Failing Forward"
Three Things
1 - 🎙️ Spotify’s Gustav Söderström on Leadership I loved hearing the organizational architecture behind Spotify from their Chief Product and Technology officer. I was specifically happy to hear about their weekly three hour meeting to stay in sync as a leadership team, and there are two big principles: 1) You can’t “take things offline” (solve it live!), and 2) You can’t bring your direct reports (YOU have to know your business). I wholeheartedly support both of those principles, and I’ve seen what happens when you don’t use them.
2 - 🤖 Cliff Worley’s Curated AI Tool List Cliff spoke at the recent OG conference and shared this page of curated AI tools. He focuses on marketing, so if you’re curious how AI can enable or scale your marketing efforts, check out his list of tools.
3 - 🦭 NYO Games in Alaska You’ve probably never seen sports like these. The Native Youth Olympics are part athletic event, part cultural preservation. Every game has a story, like the high kick, which hunters used to signal across ice sheets. And the “seal hop”? Part burpees, part planking, part bloody knuckles.
(enjoy this 8️⃣ minute read)
Deep Dive on Strategic Planning for the Self
One of the reasons I focus on principles, frameworks, and mental models in this newsletter is their broad applicability. By finding abstractions and principles, we can choose to apply them in numerous scenarios.
Take strategic planning.
It’s a concept typically found in larger organizations to coordinate the efforts of hundreds of people. But that’s not the only place you can use it.
I used strategic planning applied to a team of one - myself - for the past two years. I did this because I wanted to be intentional about creating my future, and corporate strategic planning is a useful framework.
Today I’ll share details of my methods so you can apply it to yourself. If you feel like you could be have a stronger path towards your future, you’ll want to pay attention to this one.
Since this is such a dense topic, I’ll break it up into a two-part series. 1 - (Today) Breaking down a vision into goals. 2 - (Next week) Defining habits, executing, and tracking. Bonus: If you want to read about how to create strategy, read this previous newsletter.
A Brief Explanation of Strategic Planning
The term Strategic Planning marries strategy (figuring out how to solve a problem) and planning (listing out the things you’re going to do).
This term is usually encountered in larger businesses. When you’ve got hundreds of employees and multiple layers of management, this is a natural byproduct. Managers want to list out all the things that’ll happen so they can hold people accountable for it being done.
I like Roger Martin’s perspective on this (video below). Essentially, strategic planning, as encountered in most businesses, is heavy on planning, and light on actual strategy.
Despite a lack of strategy in most corporate uses, the general idea of strategic planning is a really effective way to think through breaking down goals into a list of things you’re going to do. It provides structure.
Let’s steal the useful parts and apply them to ourselves. I’ll show you how.
Vocabulary Overview
You should know a few key terms before diving into the details. Even if you’ve done this a million times before, let’s make sure we’re on the same page.
Strategy: A focused set of coherent actions, in service of surmounting a challenge, that you’re capable of executing.
Planning: An activity that creates a list of things you are going to do.
Vision: A statement of what the future you’re trying to build looks like. NOT MARKETING SPEAK. This should resonate with you.
BHAG: Big Hairy Audacious Goal. A huge stretch goal. It should scare you a little.
Goals: A set of metrics and the target you want to hit. I usually use OKRs from John Doerr for this.
Habits: The things in your control you can do consistently.
And if you want to do independent reading to improve your skill in this, here are ten books you should read.
Book recommendations.
Creating a Vision
I hate those marketing vision statements you read on company websites. They’re so worthless that I resisted creating visions for anything I did for a very long time. Why bother?
Eventually I came to realize their power, but only if done right. How do you know where you want to go if you don’t articulate it? How can you rally people to your cause if you can’t explain where you’re going?
When we’re creating a vision for ourselves, it needs to be compelling in the truest sense; you should feel compelled to get there. It should make the hair on your neck stand up a little bit. It should be something you’d love to be true.
Oooh, this guy just imagined a compelling vision.
There are many ways to define a vision, but really you just have to sit down and think about it. What does the future look like? What are you doing? Who are you with? What do you feel in this future?
Brainstorm. Do a stream of consciousness, and don’t filter yourself.
Once you’ve exhausted everything you can think of, then you can go back and revisit it. Can you condense it? Are there parts you want to throw away?
Refine it to a simple statement.
I’m a little hesitant to share my own because it was never intended for external consumption, but at the same time I feel like an example would help. So, with a little nervousness, here’s what I wrote for myself in the beginning of 2024:
Living a life of freedom. Free to decide what to do next. Free to follow my passions. Free to spend time with family. Free to explore the world. The work I do doesn’t feel like work; I can sustain the effort for long periods.
That’s a future I want to be in. It resonates for me.
By the way, you’re allowed to change your vision! Get something down that resonates, but if in the future it stops resonating, that’s okay. Don’t stress. Just adjust it and start driving toward your new vision.
You can also have more than one vision depending on the boundary you’re defining. For example, the vision I shared earlier represents how I’m thinking about my transition out of corporate life. If I were writing one specifically about my personal life and family, it would sound different. If I were writing one about Group 18, my business, it would also sound different.
Play around with visions. The only point is to create a statement of a future you want to drive toward.
The vision will be a guiding light for all the subsequent work.
Setting a BHAG
Visions are fun, but I’m a systems and math guy, so I need to quantify something. That’s where a BHAG comes in.
Not everyone sets a BHAG, but I like it! You can choose whether this works for you or not.
Since my vision centers around freedom, what would give me freedom in the future?
Money.
If I had a certain amount of money, I’d be able to live that life of freedom.
But how much? What would scare me?
In early 2024 I set a BHAG of $2M per year in income. 😬
I don’t need that much, but it certainly would force me to think differently about my work!
I’d never hit that goal by trading my time for money; I’d have to think about selling products, and I’d have to think about equity.
A BHAG doesn’t have to be practical, and you don’t need a plan. The precise numerical value of the goal isn’t really all that important for a BHAG.
Its purpose is to shake you out of your linear thinking, and make you think differently.
$2M per year does that for me. What would do that for you?
Setting an Annual Objective
At this stage of the process you’ve got a compelling vision, and a really scary goal. Both are fun, but neither is tactical. That’s where annual goals come in. Now we’re going to get real. You’re going to give yourself a year to get somewhere new.
As with any framework, remember that it’s not gospel. You don’t have to use them precisely as prescribed. Use what works for you in your circumstance. Even John Doerr, credited with popularizing OKRs, says this! Just get started as opposed to worrying whether you’re doing it “right.”
For our purposes, we’re going to set a single objective, and then a set of 3-5 key results.
For the objective, reference your vision and BHAG, then come up with a statement for the next year. You can think of it like filling in this sentence: “This year, my objective is to…”
Again, nervously, I’ll share mine for this year:
Exceed my former full-time salary by validating and scaling high-value business offerings.
That works because, if achieved, it would push me closer to my vision and my BHAG.
Whereas the BHAG should scare you to shake you out of your current thinking, the Annual Objective should be a little more down to Earth. It should still feel like a stretch, but has a glimmer of possibility in it.
My own objective is quite a stretch! I’m giving myself 10 months to start a business and exceed my former corporate salary 🤣
It’s not worth debating endlessly with yourself on an ideal objective; that’s how years pass without progress. The point of this is to give you a direction. It’s better to get something written down so you can act, than to delay for perfection with no progress.
For example, everything I’m sharing with you in this two part newsletter series I did in a four hour session on my whiteboard in my office.
It’s not perfect, and it doesn’t need to be. I gave myself a direction, and even if I miss my goal, I’m moving in the right direction.
Setting Key Results
Key Results (KRs) are where you get mathematical, like you did with the BHAG, and create a series of metrics and targets.
The objective isn’t a separate thing you're doing in addition to the KRs; doing the KRs should mean you accomplished your objective.
There is an element of strategy here. You’ll need to make decisions about what to do to hit your goal, and what you’re not going to do.
I chose a set of five KRs. Mine are interrelated, and if achieved, would mean I’ve hit my objective.
Directionally, my KRs look like the following: 1 - Take an owner’s draw from my business of x amount 2 - Reduce client concentration 3 - Establish new distribution channels 4 - Hire and build a delivery team within Group 18 5 - Secure new clients
In my operating plan in Obsidian, each of these has a specific measurement associated with it, and timeline in which it needs to be done.
Going back to the definition of strategy, your actions need to be something you’re capable of executing on. If I chose too many KRs, or chose five completely unrelated ones, experience tells me that I’m less likely to achieve them.
You want your KRs to be things you can achieve. The deeper we get into this stack, from vision down to KRs, the more pragmatic we’re being. The closer the time horizon you’re planning against, the more precise you need to be.
It’s okay for your vision to be in the clouds, but you want concrete KRs to drive toward.
Concrete Key Results.
Do you know what the problem is in our work so far?
The vision, the BHAG, the objective, and the key results all have one thing in common.
THEY ARE NOT IN YOUR CONTROL!
You may want all of those things, but you don’t control them. Many things may conspire to prevent you from getting them, including the natural randomness of the universe.
That leads us into one last crucial piece of work. Habits.
Habits are where you determine the behaviors and actions you can consistently perform to move you closer to your goals.
I’ll cover this in next week’s newsletter, alongside closed loops and tracking. See you then!
Call to Action
This week start with your vision. Do you know where you’re going? What does it look like?
Find time to brainstorm this week. Do it on your commute, or while sitting quietly with your morning beverage. You can journal, or you can speak to an AI to have it summarize for you.
Keep working on it until you find a statement that resonates with you. One that makes the hair on your neck or arms stand up. Something that excites you!
If you’re comfortable, I’d love you to share your vision with me, just like I shared mine with you. Email me at heykev@kevinnoble.xyz and let me know where you’re headed.
