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It was August, and that meant it was time for our third workshop of 2011. Our theme was Unique Ability, and we looked at it both on a personal and company level.
Prior to attending the workshop, all of you went online to fill out a special Kolbe Index questionnaire to determine your Kolbe score. This is a four-number score that indicates your natural abilities and instinctive talents. You came to the workshop with your score in hand, ready to discuss. We started by having you fill out an 
Activity Inventory to list everything you do in your business in the course of a normal week. Then you scored your Inventory by whether you felt these represented Incompetent, Competent, Excellent, or Unique Ability activities. There was a lot of discussion about how you could begin to restructure your company so that you could spend more time operating in your Unique Abilities and less in your Incompetent and Competent activities! Finally you incorporated an interpretation of your Kolbe score into an action plan.
The Experience Transformer is one of the most valuable tools we introduce during the Bigger Future program. Its genius is in its simplicity. It asks the question, "If you were to do this experience over, 
knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?" As a group we each selected an experience from the last quarter, likely an experience that didn't go well, and worked it through the Experience Transformer. One of the key concepts is that even negative experiences can providing learnings, and if you don't capture those learnings, then the experience was a complete waste. You took time to capture the learnings and build a strategy for reacting differently the next time we are faced with a similar experience. Have you faced that experience again since the workshop? How did you react this time? Is there another experience that you've had in the past few weeks that deserves an Experience Transformation? Download a blank form and go through the exercise with your team.
One of the biggest challenges for any company is to clearly define its positioning and brand. We spent the entire afternoon of the workshop exploring what brand means in the context of Rwanda and the East Africa Community. We debated how focused a company can or should become in a small market like Rwanda. Then you began to work on refining your positioning statements for your business. This is a very difficult process, and everyone worked very hard to define and refine and declare their unique positioning.
At the end of a very long day, we revisited the Entrepeneurial Time System. You brainstormed three specific Focus, Buffer, and Free Day activities to focus on in the upcoming quarter. So how are you doing? Have you taken Free Days? Are you cleaning up your messes on your Buffer Days?
On Thursday during our one-on-one consulting time we organized ourselves into small groups of three and "workshopped" our positioning statements again, presenting them to each other and continuing to refine the language. It was a rich and productive time of challenging and encouraging each other.
Another exciting week in Rwanda with business owners who are really making a difference!
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Here are the resources from the January workshop for your personal use:
- Dan Sullivan Question
- DOS Framework
- Three-Year Planner
- Cash Flow Projection Example
- Employee Engagement
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The Bigger Future program was in full swing in January as we introduced a new group of Rwandese entrepreneurs to the Year One program and reconvened last year's members into the Master's Program.We were also priveleged to have 20 graduate students from the Johns Hopkins Casey Business School working with our program for three weeks in Rwanda.
On Monday evening we enjoyed a reception at the Lemigo Hotel with members from both programs and the students from Johns Hopkins. There was great business networking as hotel staff circulated with tasty appetizers.
Year One
On Tuesday morning the Year One program kicked off with a review of our recent past. We spent the first hour reflecting on our top achievements of the past three months (Positive Focus) and realizing that we have been making significant progress already. This realization was very empowering and gave us confidence to set ambitions goals for the future. The DSQ and DOS frameworks gave us the datapoints to begin to frame a 
3-year business outlook. This process is always very hard work, and it took us to mid-afternoon before we each had a comprehensive set of business goals and quarterly milestones. We ended this planning phase with setting short-term 30-day "sprint" goals.
We took a break from strategic planning to discuss some practical business topics. The subject that took most of our attention in the afternoon was cash flow. We reviewed a projected cash flow template and discussed the importance of financial planning and tracking. This led to a frank discussion about financial management, separating personal and business bank accounts, and learning how to predict business results.
Master's Program
Last year's entrepreneurs who graduated from Year One began a deeper exploration of strategic planning and business growth with the new Master's Program. After reviewing and establishing new 3-year goals and quarterly targets, we continued with our series on branding and marketing. The focus for this workshop was on identifying and profiling "best customers" as a way to develop a targeting plan. We used the DSQ and DOS frameworks, but in this case we used them to profile five top customers and then look for common themes and similarities. By better understanding the dangers, opportunities and strengths of our top customers, we can look for ways to increase our "share of wallet" through developing new products and services or expand our marketshare by targeting new customers with similar profiles.
Our business practicum module was on Employee Engagement. Using data from Gallup, we surveyed the group on our own level of engagement in our companies as owners and then discussed the importance of creating a company culture that fully engages our employees. Gallup maintains that the top 25% of companies with strong employee engagement outperform those at the bottom 25% by a factor of four. 
This led to a candid conversation about how we value each other and the importance of encouragement and positive feedback. There was much discussion about the broader Rwandese culture and how we could provide leadeship.
One highlight of the Master's Program was that four companies were chosen to work with teams of MBA students from Johns Hopkins. We took time to hear as the entrepreneurs and their student team leaders reported on their progress.
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The week of January 9 will be busy for the GRDP | Bigger Future team in Rwanda.
There will be a reception on Monday evening for all Bigger Future members.
On Tuesday morning starting at 8:30am, the Bigger Future Year One workshop series will begin for all new members. By the day's end, each member will have detailed 3-year business goals and 90-day objectives.
Wednesday begins our Master's Program for all 2010 graduates of the Year One program. This quarterly series will focus on deepening the concepts learned in Year One and building a stronger network of Rwandese and North American entrepreneurs.
All events will be held at Lemigo Hotel located in Kimihurura-Rugando.
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Here are the resources from the November workshop for your personal use:
Tips for using the DSQ and the DOS tools:
1. Set aside at least 30 minutes with one of your best clients so that you don't feel rushed.
2. You ask the Dan Sullivan Question and then fill out the form on behalf of your client as they begin to talk about their dreams.
3. Do the same with the DOS framework, asking them to brainstorm their biggest Dangers, Opportunities and Threats while you take notes on the form. Then ask them to give you their top three in each of the categories, and then circle those top three and move them over to the right side of the form.
4. Promise your client that you will send them a copy of what they shared, and then take this information back to your office and think about new ways you can provide value to your client.
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The November workshop came as the year was beginning to wind down. It's always important to take time to review our accomplishments of the past year before we start making plans for the next year. So our Positive Focus took a look at not only the previous quarter but the entire year, and it was encouraging to see how much progress we've made! This helped to give us the confidence (the "electricity of life") to make ambitions plans for 2011.
The business focus of this fourth workshop in 2010 was on Marketing. We did an important exercise of ranking our customers to find our top five customers. We rated our customer base on profitability, our level of relationship, whether our values are aligned, and whether they are good "connectors" to future business. 
Good "connectors" are important to your business because they have valuable relationships that can help your business grow beyond your backyard to the neighborhood and eventually the world. We talked about (legal) ways to show appreciation to connectors.
We also discussed how valuable it is to do market research on our top five customers to look for themes or similarities among them. This insight will help us understand more about our market and how we should build a marketing plan.
We reintroduced the DSQ and the DOS as our market research tools, and we spent time practicing interviewing each other. Your assignment between now and our January workshop is to visit your five top customers and interview them with the DSQ and DOS. Take your notes right on the worksheets and then bring those worksheets with you to the January workshop. We will work together to analyze the data and build a target market strategy for 2011.
Remember, you may find that your best opportunity is to take 
your current products and services to new customers, or you may find that your best opportunity is to develop new products and services for your existing customer base. We will work together in January to figure that out.
Also in January, we will spend time planning for 2011. We will use a one-year planner to prioritize goals for the year and for the first quarter. See you soon!
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Here are the resources from the third workshop:
The Entrepreneurial Time System
Branding to Compete in the East Africa Community
If you have any questions about how to use these worksheets, don't hesitate to contact us.
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This was an exciting week to be hosting the third workshop in the 2010 Bigger Future series. Monday was Election Day in Rwanda. The polls were orderly and the voting was peaceful, and when all the results were in, President Kagame received an overwhelming mandate to continue to lead Rwanda. After most of the country was up late to follow the election coverage and the celebration at the National Stadium, it was a relief to learn that Tuesday was declared a national holiday.
It was on the heals of these historic events that we gathered for an informal reception Tuesday night and held the third workshop on Wednesday at the Laico Hotel.
After an encouraging Positive Focus exercise, we launched right into the Experience Transformer tool. 
We talked about how in life all our experiences can be catalogued as things that "work" and things that "don't work." We are happy when life is full of experiences that work, or in other words, that meet our expectations, and we are frustrated, depressed, or even angry when our life doesn't work, or our experiences don't meet our expectations. Most people don't take the time to reflect on the reasons behind either scenario, and therefore their learning is much smaller than their experience. Our goal as entrepreneurs is to make our learning bigger than our experience. The Experience Transformer helps us do just that, leading to an understanding of "what we would differently if we knew then what we know now."
We learned the definition of a "brand" and a process to build a strong brand to enable Rwandan companies to compete in the new 140 million person East African Community. We used a framework that helped us discover what we are most passionate about, where we can be the "only" company, and where the "market pull" exists. Out work culminated in everyone working on their first fdraft of a position statement for their business. This work is not for the faint of heart!
After lunch we learned about how important it is for the entrepreneur to be disciplined in the use of time. An approach that has been very effective is called the Entrepreneurial Time System (ETS). The ETS divides the 365 days a year into Free Days, Focus Days, and Buffer Days. If we thought coming up with a position statement was hard, thinking about actually taking Free Days (24 hours away from the business) is even more difficult!
After updating our 3-Year Planner, we had a business practicum on a proven approach to managing employees, from hiring to professional development and performance measurement, to when you might have to terminate an employee.
We heard start-up stories from two entreprenuers (Pavel Patyuk from Deborah Log Homes and Fabrice Shema from SOGEM), resource opportunities from GenerationRwanda and Women for Women, and the SME Toolkit from the IFC and Maxinet/CBS.
It was a full day!
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Download this Mid-Quarter Energy Booster and do a mid-quarter check-in.
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GRDP Blog
Here are downloadable versions of the frameworks and presentations from the second workshop:
Practical Financial View of Your Business
If you have any questions about how to use these worksheets, don't hesitate to contact us.
GRDP Blog
It was a successful week in Rwanda of informal networking, one-on-one coaching, and a full-day workshop for the many entrepreneurs involved with GRDP's Creating A Bigger Future program.
Networking
On Tuesday night, 
many of us gathered at the Laico Hotel for coffee and snacks to get caught up with each other in an informal setting. It didn't take long for the conversations to turn to business and innovation and how to take advantage of the many growth opportunities in Rwanda. The discussion continued over dinner as a few of us migrated outside to the patio and a delicious buffet dinner.
Positive Focus
As usual, I began with the Positive Focus, an excellent tool for setting a healthy perspective for the day. Everyone took ten minutes to reflect on and write down the five most important personal and professional accomplishments since our last workshop. 
Then we broke up into small groups of 3-4 to share our accomplishments. This is always the inflection point early in the day when the mood in the room turns from anticipation to excitement. There is a palatable rise in energy as reports of positive achievements bounce around the room. It's a healthy discipline to take time to pause and reflect on all the good things that have happened in the past quarter.
After we do the Positive Focus, we go around the room and reintroduce ourselves along with mentioning one or two of our achievements. 
I take the opportunity to update everyone on GRDP and remind the group about the importance of the entrepreneur in Rwanda as an agent of change and growth.
DSQ, DOS, and Three Year Planner
After refreshing our DSQ (Dan Sullivan: "If we were meeting here three years from today, looking back over those three years, what has to have happened during that period for you to feel happy about your progress?") and our DOS (Dangers, Opportunities, and Strengths) worksheets to reflect any changes in the last 90 days, we turned to our Three Year Planner to review our progress to date. One of the most important aspects of this program is our accountability to each other to do quarterly reviews of our progress. 
The Three Year Planner requires us to report our progress by quarter and the percentage completion we've made towards our goals. We spent time updating our Planners, including adding new goals as necessary. Then we broke back into small groups to review our progress with each other and brainstorm ways to move forward. It was exciting to see the progress that so many entrepreneurs had made even since January!
The Gap
Every entrepreneur faces points in time when reality doesn't meet up with the aspirations of our the "Ideal." Fortunately, there is a way to train the brain to avoid the guilt and discouragement that can come when this happens.
I used the metaphor of the horizon as an example of a "mental construct" that is real in our minds, but that is impossible to every actually reach; the horizon keeps moving out away from us as we try to get closer.
In the same way, our "Ideal" for what we want to accomplish is a mental construct, and there will always be a difference between that picture in our minds and our actual achievements. This is what we call The Gap. 
How do we manage with the frustration of not reaching our Ideal? Instead of measuring our progress against where we want to eventually go, the trick is to turn around and measure our progress by how far we've actually come. It is usually much more significant that we thought, and this realization gives us encouragement and confidence that we are making progress.
The Strategy Circle
As entrepreneurs, according to Dan Sulivan, each of us has three brain abilities:
1. Vision - the ability to see future possibilities
2. Opposition - the ability to see all the possible obstacles to achieving our vision
3. Transformation - the ability to transform those obstacles into strategies for achievement
To help make Transformation part of our entrepreneur skill set, I introduced The Strategy Circle®. This is a powerful tool for isolating all the potential obstacles to a goal, and then identifying specific strategies for each obstacle.
As a practical application of the tool, everyone chose one of their goals from their Three Year Planner. By listing all the possible obstacles to this goal and then identifying specific strategies to attack and remove each obstacle, we were able to develop practical plans for implementing our goals. Everyone took 15 minutes to work through his or her own Strategy Circle, and then we used the small groups to share and brainstorm each person's plan.
By the end of the morning, we had updated our Three Year Plans, 
determined which goals were on track, gained confidence in how far we had already come, and then practiced using The Strategy Circle®, a powerful tool for putting together a practical plan to address our goals for the next quarter.
We had a wonderful buffet networking lunch at the Laico Hotel, and then returned to the conference room for the afternoon sessions.
Leadership and Impact
David Helmer, a board member of GRDP as well as an entrepreneur and CEO of Helmer, Inc., a medical supply manufacturer, was up first with a presentation called Leading for Impact. 
He discussed the differences between a manager and a leader. David spoke about the importance of healthy leaders, the value of purpose in the lives of employees, and concluded with a practical nine-step process for implementing servant leadership.
A Practical Financial View of Your Business
Bruce King, CEO/COO of Helmer, Inc., bridged the important aspects of planning and execution from an operations perspective. He demonstrated how important it is in planning to move from the 30,000 foot perspective down into the weeds to better understand from a customer perspective what the priorities of the business need to be. In his presentation, A Practical Financial View of Your Business, he gave very practical advice on building a financial "dashboard" of key business metrics, and showed how financial reporting that help an entrepreneur make fact-based decisions about growth and investment.
We wrapped up promptly at 5pm, and many members signed up for individual one-on-one consultations the next morning. All in all, it was another full workshop packed with both strategic planning and practical business concepts.
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Here are downloadable versions of the frameworks and presentations from the first workshop:
Sustainable Social Enterprises
If you have any questions about how to use these worksheets, don't hesitate to contact us.
GRDP Blog
It was another sunny day in Kigali as 42 entrepreneurs gathered at the Sportsview Hotel for the first in a series of workshops called Creating a Bigger Future, facilitated by David Ormesher, chairman of GRDP. 
We began our session with a Positive Focus. The Positive Focus is an exercise that captures your five most important personal and professional accomplishments over the past three months, and it will be a regular part of each workshop throughout 2010.
I would also suggest that you do your own Positive Focus on a monthly basis. Set aside 30 minutes on a Monday morning to note your top accomplishments over the previous month. Reflect on why these achievements are important, and then brainstorm ways that you might be able to make further progress. Finally, and this is an important part of prioritizing your time, think about what should be your first action step in building on your accomplishments.
Goal setting is an important but often overlooked part of entrepreneurial planning. A valuable tool to help us focus our attention on the future is the Dan Sullivan Question, "If we were meeting here three years from today, looking back over those three years, what has to have happened during that period for you to feel happy about your progress?" I would encourage you to use this question with your family, co-workers, business partners, and clients. It is a powerful tool for helping someone understand and articulate the heart of their personal vision.
One of the biggest challenges that every entrepreneur faces is the inability to focus on the most important priorities. We all face many challenges and distractions every day. We are interrupted by our cell phone, an employee drops by our office with a problem, or we are overwhelmed by multiple deadlines. We are victims of the "tyranny of the urgent." To help us pick the most critical Dangers to overcome, the most exciting Opportunities to capture, and the most important Strengths to maximize, we used the DOS Worksheet. The final three priorities in each section should help you decide which projects will be the most effective in reaching your goals.
After identifying our goals and priorities through the Dan Sullivan Question and the DOS Worksheet, we began pulling on this data together into a 3 Year Planner. 
This enabled us to get very specific with our goals, commit to deadlines, and imagine what the final result will look like if we are successful. The worksheet also requires that we break these long-term goals into quarterly projects that we can focus on and monitor. When we gather together on April 28 at the next workshop, we will review our long-term goals and quarterly projects. This will help keep us accountable to ourselves and to each other.
Our guest business experts from The Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business used the afternoon session to challenge us on our ability to delegate and our understanding of business models for the Bottom of the Pyramid economies.
Oksana Carlson's presentation How to Delegate Effectively offered the benefits of delegation, and then she tested us. There were a few surprises as we realized how many of us aren't very good delegators!
Dr. Dipankar Chakravarti, Professor of Marketing and Vice-Dean, presented Sustainable Social Enterprise, a very compelling argument for how to create business models and innovative product offerings that can be successful in low-income economies.
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Welcome to the Creating a Bigger Future member website. Throughout the year we will be posting business tools, workshops handouts, and other articles and information that should help you as you put your business plan into action.
Please note that these documents are copyright-protected and are for your use only and not for distribution or sale.
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It's an exciting time to be an entrepreneur in Rwanda! Follow along as we track the progress of many of Rwanda's most promising innovators and visionaries.