Strategic Acceleration is a leadership methodology developed by Tony Jeary that combines awareness, operational practices, and powerful informational resources  designed to produce Strategic Speed, and superior results within time frames that exceed traditional expectations.

Strategic Acceleration is also a leadership mindset that approaches old issues in new ways.  Empowered by proven tools and processes, the Strategic Acceleration mindset transforms old practices into new initiatives of excellence that produce unprecedented results.  Strategic Acceleration is capable of solving even the most difficult challenges through clarity and focus concerning the hardest of facts.  The Strategic Acceleration Mindset is driven and supported by one simple concept:  “Always Give value, Do more than is Expected!”

Strategic Acceleration begins with awareness.  To have clarity, there must be an understanding of the issues.  People must understand that leadership is about getting results and that results depend on execution. Strategic Acceleration allows these truths to become a part of the organizational belief window (how people perceive everything).  Elevating awareness concerning the strategic issues of speed and results is the catalyst for Strategic Acceleration.

When awareness has been achieved the next issue engages operational practices as they relate to communication.  These practices touch every area of an organization: how leaders communicate to their employees, how peers communicate with each other, how the Business Development Team communicates with customers, and how the value of the enterprise is perceived by the world.  There is no strategy or objective that does not rely upon effective organizational practices to produce success.  Strategic Acceleration produces the tools, processes and practices needed to generate this kind of business capability.

The final piece of Strategic Acceleration is an information arsenal that is accessible by all who need to use it.  It is the sum of the intellectual capital of the enterprise in every operational business segment.  It is organized through cutting edge technology and placed at the fingertips of the people who need to use it.  It is a repository of best practices and wisdom from a wide variety of sources – all organized in a way that it may be captured and deployed.  This asset is a powerful strategic resource that comes together in a dynamic tactical tool known as The Strategic Acceleration Studio.

In recent weeks I have been absolutely overwhelmed by friends and associates telling me I need to be involved in Twitter and FaceBook and countless other internet sites that supposedly contribute to marketing success. They reportedly present boundless benefits for those who master the subtle strategies related to those sites. I know I am going against the popular trend here, but I have given the issue of social media a lot of thought and am convinced it is a huge distraction machine that most people should avoid! Personally and professionally, I have decided to opt out of ‘Twitting” and the other “cutting edge” social networking sites! I just don’t have the time or the interest to Twit.

One of my foundational beliefs is that success pivots on having the ability to concentrate on doing the things that really matter and filtering out what doesn’t! Have you ever attended an NBA basketball game? In the final minutes of close games, the team that is behind usually resorts to a strategy of committing intentional fouls on the other team. When a player is fouled, the game clock is stopped to allow the fouled player to attempt one or more free throws. What the free throw shooter sees is the basket against a backdrop of several thousand frenzied, lunatic fans waving towels, tassels, pom-poms, or anything else they have been able to bring into the arena to distract the shooter from making the free throw. The fans scream, yell, blast air-horns, and do anything they can do to break the concentration of the shooter. To be successful, the shooter has to block all of this mayhem from his mind and focus on the basket. If the shooter can’t block out the distractions, the shot will be missed!

Most people don’t think of focus as a strategic skill, and most people haven’t really spent much time factually examining how well they focus. Focus is a subject that gets a lot of lip service, but it usually doesn’t get the respect it deserves. When you don’t treat focus as a strategic issue, minimizing its importance is easy, and soon you’re ignoring it altogether. Most people approach focus as a time management issue or as an organizational challenge. Typical solutions to improve focus may include obtaining a better time management system, or doing something to better organize the work environment. These are valid considerations, but those kinds of solutions don’t address the heart of the focus issue, which is distraction! Distraction is a natural occurrence in the life of every person. You can be the most organized person on earth with a great time management system, and still become routinely distracted.

Information and input are the raw materials for human creativity, opportunity recognition, and problem solving. That’s the good news. Unfortunately, distraction is the direct result of the same brain function. That’s the bad news. You become distracted whenever you allow something to enter your mind that takes you away from doing what you should be doing in the present moment. In fact, distraction is the path of least resistance because the most natural activity for your mind is to take in information. Unfortunately, that is all you need to latch onto things that can remove you from the moment and disrupt whatever focus you had for the immediate task at hand. In other words, distraction is a natural result of thinking! Your ability to overcome distraction and elevate your focusing skill depends on your ability to learn how to think in ways that will counteract what comes so naturally.

One of the challenges of living in the information age is the extraordinary number of opportunities you have to become distracted. The very things that are meant to be powerful tools to help you be more effective are potential sources of distraction. The Internet, e-mail, and cell phones all introduce unexpected intrusions into our minds, and every intrusion creates the possibility of disrupting your ability to focus on what you should be really be doing at the moment. Focus is about establishing priorities and keeping the main things in front of you. To do that effectively, you have to be able to control the distractive influences that bombard your mind. Your ability to do that depends on how you think about the present moment, because focus is always found in the present.

This brings us to the issue of Twitting and FaceBooking and all of the other social networking sites that claim to be so beneficial. I know people who spend hours everyday twitting their every thought to hundreds of followers. I’ve yet to see the real benefit of that kind of time investment. The same is true for Facebook and other sites. If you want entertainment, then these sites are great. If you want results, I suggest you invest your time elsewhere. You need to get focused on your “high-leverage activities” that can really move your results needle. That’s only possible when you are really clear about what you want and focus on the things that matter!

The speed of life is a global condition that presents a strategic challenge for everyone. The speed of life combines excessive amounts of unrefined information with a glut of choices and opportunities and presents itself in the form of confusion and distraction! How well we function within this constant condition determines value, competitive advantage and the ability to create results that will convert a vision or a dream into reality. These issues are always important but in tough economic times they are absolutely critical to success.

The speed of life can’t be stopped but it can be understood and leveraged in a positive way. It is a fact that knowledge and information have always been a cornerstone of power, influence and achievement! However, the speed of life generates so much information it creates distractions that unwittingly lead people into well-intentioned busyness. It is a form of busyness that marginalizes results. The solution is to identify and deploy high leverage activities that harness the right information at the right time and focus on action that will move the results needle!

The only thing certain about the speed of life is uncertainty. It is impossible to accurately forecast future conditions over a long period of time, and an approach based on the principle of “going as far as you can see – so that you can see farther” is needed. Such a strategy is created by concentrating on the three strategic issues that matter most: Clarity, Focus, and Execution.

Clarity

If you have no cohesive vision there is little chance of achieving sustained success in a bad economy. Think about this: Most organizations have adopted vision and mission statements; however, many within those organizations find it difficult to articulate the vision or mission, without reading it. This condition is typical and may be evidence that there is no real clarity about the vision and how to achieve it. Unless there is clarity regarding a vision – there is no vision!

When businesses have clarity concerning their vision it lives! It also creates zeal and passion for the commitment and determination needed to execute the vision. The vision itself becomes able to pull everyone forward. The pulling effect is created because clarity impacts people at the level of belief and produces voluntary change in attitudes and behavior.

Clarity is achieved when we have an unfettered view of our vision and understand what we really want, why we want it, the value of doing it and the highest purpose for doing it!

Focus

Focus is the opposite of distraction! At the speed of life, success hinges on the ability to cut through the clutter and focus on the high leverage activities that directly impact results. Focus is not something that comes naturally for most people, and that is why it is a skill that must be learned, polished, and practiced. Specifically, focus is a thinking skill that is acquired as a result of mental discipline.

Because the human mind serves as a connector of facts and information, fresh input is the raw material of creativity, opportunity recognition and problem solving. The mind is always hungry for new information because it stimulates thought and is fulfilling. Unfortunately, basic process of thinking provides the opportunity for distraction. Distraction is always the path of least resistance and the most natural activity for the mind to embrace. The speed of life offers up scores of opportunities each day that lure us into distractions that gobble time.

Between today’s conditions and tomorrows hope is a gap that must be crossed. In that gap is every goal, objective and action step that must be taken to be successful. Achieving focus is a matter of identifying the high-leverage activities in the gap that powerfully impact results and developing the mental skills to insure they receive the time they deserve.

Execution

The ability to persuade others has a direct impact on achieving superior results, faster, which is what the speed of life demands. As we gain clarity and develop our focusing skills, the need to concentrate on high-leverage activities becomes paramount. However, identifying and focusing on those activities is only the beginning. Once our high-leverage activities are known the challenge of actually doing them becomes the issue. People must be persuaded to focus on these activities and to act quickly! This always involves exceeding expectations.

There is more to exceeding expectations than adopting the idea as a strategy. Exceeding expectations has its greatest impact when it is adopted by individuals as a way of life. When you have a group of people who are willing to exceed expectations in the normal course of their daily activity a powerful force for superior results is created.

People in businesses and organizations are persuaded to exceed expectations based on the positive strategic presence of their leadership team. Leaders create images of influence in the minds of those they lead and those images define the organizational perception of leadership. It is this overall persona that creates what I call Strategic Presence. Leaders are constantly creating positive and negative Strategic Presence based on their values and their behavior. The most important fact about Strategic Presence is that it produces two possible reactions in others. It either produces voluntary cooperation or it produces various forms of resistance. If the Strategic Presence of leadership is highly positive, people will be more likely to support the vision of leadership. If the Strategic Presence of leadership is negative, people will not be willing to exceed expectations. They may actually try to undermine the goals of leadership!

The key to persuasion is Strategic Presence and the ability to communicate strategically is the foundation for both. Organizations frequently treat communication as a collection of skills, or just another training or coaching objective. This idea represents a tactical approach to communication. If execution can be seen as a train rolling down a track to a predetermined destination, communication is the engine that powers the train! If you can’t communicate effectively you will not execute effectively.

To listen to Tony Jeary discuss Strategic Acceleration, go to:

http://odeo.com/episodes/24145543-Strategic-Acceleration-Succeed-at-the-Speed-of-Life