Thursday, April 28, 2011

PTV©’s Purpose Seed – the Passover Lamb of Strategic Planning?


With the past week being observed as the Passover/Easter/New Year week, respectively in Judaic-Islamic/Christian/Indian traditions, we started our inquisitive journey of learning more about the significance of this week, within the scriptures of both east and the west alike. While the “Passover Lamb” is being portrayed as the symbol of “freedom” in Judaic and Islamic traditions, Christians have taken that symbolism, a notch above, and have equated it with Jesus’ death, as a means of unleashing grace to free mankind from the transgressions of this world, once for all.

As it turns out, Hinduism also has a similar perspective of their Avatars descending into this world, in the form of a Messiah unleashing the mukti experience, barring some subtle differences within the karma and grace dimensions. Nevertheless, the Sanskrit word Avatar, has an interesting origin - the term Av’ part means ‘down and ‘tr’ part means ’Passover’ – meaning, God passing over the earth in a human vessel. Yet another interesting similarity is the word ‘Mesh’ within the word ‘Messiah’, as per the zodiac tradition, also happen to signify the Lamb, depicting the entry of the Sun into Aries during this New Year week – as further reiterated by both Chinese and Indian Siddhas.

While these are all interesting tidbits of information, I hear someone asking, what this “Passover Lamb” has got to do with strategic planning. Well, with our blog being known for deriving its insights from the scriptures, we thought of connecting the dots within those insights and expound PTV© in an all together different dimension!


The IGR Challenge comes to a newer life within this Passover Lamp metaphor!


Those of us, who have been following our blogs closely, might recall an earlier insight regarding – one of the important challenges facing most corporations today –



  • IDENTIFYING, GUARDING and RESURRECTING (The IGR Challenge) those hidden value accelerators that are being buried deep within the pull side of the value chain in the form of a positive cash flow (i.e. value) generating growth opportunities.

While we had covered this IGR challenge, in detail, using our Experience Pool Portfolio (EPP©) Framework as part of that earlier blog, we thought of reframing the IGR challenge today, using a Funnel Metaphor, and bring this IGR challenge to a newer life, in a holistic manner – along with a TRIO concept called PTV+ that is being derived from, few scriptural insights –



  • E-GRACE (Experience Pool’s Greatness & Riches (or insights) At Capability Pools’ Expense), that is being represented as the upper opening of the funnel - resembling grace in the form of manna/body/unleavened bread.

  • P-GRATE (Purpose driven Portfolio’s Greatness & Riches (or insights) At Thread’s Expense), that is being represented as both sides of the funnel (5 Portfolio Principles and 5 Thread Principles) – acting as the gravity, pushing the E-GRACE down the funnel in to the radial framework for it to be grated/filtered - resembling the law or the 10 commandments.

  • C-GRAPE (Capability Pool’s Greatness & Riches At Purpose Seed’s Expense), that is being represented as the lower opening of the funnel, transforming E-GRACE into stakeholder value - resembling faith in the form of grape vine/rod/blood.

In other words, the experience pools (or growth opportunities) that passover the funnel in the form of the Lamb, first transforms itself into E-GRACE, and then, gets grated/filtered by P-GRATE (using the 10P driven radial framework), before transforming itself into stakeholder value using C-GRAPE– as depicted in the picture on top of the page. Coincidentally enough, this TRIO concept also has a greater resemblance to another one of our earlier article PTV as the Ark of your businesses as well.


The PTV+ TRIO and its supporting insights


As part of forming this PTV+ TRIO concept (E-GRACE, P-GRATE & P-GRAPE), we specifically coined the acronym E-GRACE, resembling the word GRACE (God’s Riches At Christ Expense), to help us comprehend the following insight –



  • While the Purpose (Seed) driven growth opportunities (or experience pools) are freely available to everyone (including the competitors), the phrase “Capability Pool’s Expense” within E-GRACE, is the one that helps us to understand, the extent of capability price (or the C-GRAPE), that needs to be paid, before one can transform, those experience pools into stakeholder value.

Similarly, we have coined the acronym P-GRATE resembling the word GRATE (or filter/purify), to help us comprehend the following insight –



  • While there are plenty of experience pools (or growth opportunities) freely available, the phrase “Thread’s Expense” within P-GRATE, is the one that reminds us the importance of applying the Thread Principles, in filtering the best out of the Portfolios, using the radial framework (with its three sub frameworks called EPP© , CPP© & PIP©).

Similarly, we have coined the acronym C-GRAPE resembling the word GRAPE (or juice/blood) to help us comprehend another insight –



  • While the capability pools are definitely constrained with an upper limit, the phrase “Purpose Seed’s Expense” within E-GRAPE is the one that reminds us the fact that the Purpose Seed has the unique ability to continuously renew/recycle/recharge/reenergize/refresh the stakeholder value (and hence, renew C-GRAPE continuously as well).

PTV’s Purpose seed, the corner stone of the SCA mix


As we look at these three insights – one can clearly recognize the fact that the common denominator across all of them is the purpose seed, and rightfully so, purpose seed is the cornerstone of our PTV© - and hence, it is important that corporations, to get their purpose seed (with its five part instructions listed below) correctly identified, for the PTV+ TRIO to function effectively, within their growth and/or turnaround journey.



  1. Vision (what the firm aspires to be)

  2. Mission (why does the firm exist/what does it stand for)

  3. Values (what drives us)

  4. Codes (what guides us)

  5. BHAG (BIG HAIRY AUDACIOUS GOALS)

In other words, this purpose driven PTV+ and its TRIO (E-GRACE, P-GRATE and G-GRAPE), must flow in an optimal fashion within this Funnel Metaphor, for corporations, to produce the so called sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) driven value! Simply put, the primary objective of PTV is to arrive at the SCA producing TRIO mix – which means, the funnel must have all of its three passages (top opening, the middle tapering/filtering passage and the lower opening) opened in an optimal manner, for the value to flow efficiently, producing the SCA mix.


PTV+ TRIO , the Manna/Amrit flavored Dessert?


The fact that these three TRIO’s are the ingredients of the optimal SCA mix , also reminds us, yet another heavenly food called Manna/Amrit – where, the manna/amrit, symbolizing E-GRACE, first gets grated/filtered/purified using P-GRATE, and then gets mixed with the five fruit flavored C-GRAPE (i.e. five capability pools within CPP© framework) – resulting in a tasty dessert called Manna/Amrit+. What an insightful way to comprehend PTV+ and its TRIO concepts, using this powerful manna/amrit+ inspiration from the scriptures!


Conclusion


Finally, in closing, we would like to highlight, yet another important point, that the Passover event happened on the Easter week, 2000 years ago, is the event that divided history into two eras - B.C and A.D - similarly, PTV©, is being reframed, today, with a potential to transform the strategic planning engagements from the B.C era of “passive ceremonial impression” type of effort (i.e. historical data based, expected events driven, left brain thinking enabled, analytics driven planning) into the A.D era of “active gracious expression” type of effort (i.e. historical/survey/word-of-mouth/consumer content based, expected/unexpected events driven, left/right brain thinking enabled, analytics/synthesis balanced planning) - and so, it is time that corporations to embrace our PTV©, very much like how, history embraced the Passover Lamb 2000 years ago!

5 comments:

  1. Hello Charles,

    I love the extension of the "The PTV+ TRIO", and by also brilliantly incorporating philosophy into business ideas. That all religions fit into this extension are an added value. You keep moving the boundaries outwards and by doing so increasing our comprehension of your model. E-LOVE to this work admixed with E-RESPECT and E-ADMIRATION. These are my E-TRIOS.
    The funnel is self-explanatory and makes a real contribution to the understanding of this post.

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  2. You bring up some interesting points as well Ali. As a matter of fact, if we add the leadership dimension to PTV+, I definitely see another TRIO emerging with Love, empathy, respect/admiration etc - in alignment with the G5 leadership concept, promoted by Steve Faber, Tim Sanders et all, more specifically their extreme/servant leadership concept based “greater than yourself” leadership principle, is one of my favorite topics. (http://www.g5leadership.com/)

    I guess, you have given me a seg-way for another blog…

    Regards,
    Charles

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  3. What a great response, Charles. Surely it deserves a post on its own. I really appreciate the depth of your response

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  4. Charles, your conclusions for transforming from BC to AD are fabulous - (i.e. historical/survey/word-of-mouth/consumer content based, expected/unexpected events driven, left/right brain thinking enabled, analytics/synthesis balanced planning). That is what I call purpose-driven Leadership. Purpose-driven leaders have -
    * A commitment to act on data, not use data as an excuse to maintain the status quo.
    And purpose-driven leaders also have -
    * A plan for course correction when warranted and exit plans embedded into action plans, so that if mistakes are made, time and cost are minimized.

    Distressed organizations seem to have a disconnect between strategic plans and annual operating (budget) plans. They really need to address questions such as: Do our organization's strategic plan and its priorities correlate with the operating plan in terms of service prioritization, business development, capital needs, operating margin requirements, cash needs for working capital, etc.? Is our three- to five-year capital budget realistic? Is the operating margin budgeted for this year sufficient to carry out your strategic plan? Does the business model really "hang together" and work?

    Thank you for highlighting the benefits of purpose-driven strategic planning. I enjoyed your skillful narration by weaving in all religious philosophies.

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  5. Surya, you bring up some great follow-up questions –

    To your point, while it is important to have the right answers for these questions, what is more important, as you have alluded, is exhibiting the purpose driven leadership traits – with “proactive/flexible to change/commitment driven expressiveness/movement” type of behaviors (as opposed to the reactive/rigid/situation based impression style/campaign type of behaviors) - is going to be the deal breaker at the end of the day!
    With that said, both, you and Ali seem to be bringing up similar points on purpose driven leadership traits (or as some folks call it G5/extreme/servant leadership) and so, it might deserve a separate post on its own merit. Please stay tuned.

    Again, very intriguing comments Surya,
    Appreciate it.
    Regards, Charles

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