Last week, I wrote about building the different strengths required to be good at investing, operating and advising. It’s worth some time digging into how to work differently with them. In a nutshell, play to their strengths. With investors the more data you can muster to support ROI, the better. With operators lead with strategies, operations or organization and culture as appropriate. With advisors, help them help you by being open to their help.

Investors

Investors choose how to create and allocate financial resources. In general, expect them to be analytical, knowledgeable about finance, compliance and governance, and be forward-looking at their best.

Expect them to be most interested in the return on, wait for it, their investment. Everything else is a sub-set of that. Of course, every-so-once-in-a-while you’ll bump into an investor with some human-like qualities. But don’t count on it.

What that means is that the what – so what – now what framework works. I laid this out in an earlier article on the three essential questions of big data: what, so what, now what.

What

“What” is code for the data and facts. Be clear on the difference between true facts (not open to interpretation), perceived facts (influenced by biases,) and assumptions (not necessarily based on facts.)

Anyone looking at a true fact from any direction with any bias will see the same thing. For example, the average temperature in Paris is warmer in summer than winter.

So what

“So what” is code for judgments, interpretations, and conclusions – what you think about the data and facts.  Following on from the earlier example, you might conclude that people will spend more time outdoors in Paris in the summer than in the winter. Of course, others might conclude the opposite if they’re focused on days with extreme heat.

Now what

“Now what” gets at the choices and actions that follow on from your judgments, interpretations, conclusions – what you’re going to do about it. The Paris example might lead you to employ more outdoor waiters in summer than winter.

For investors, the framework plays out with three points:

Here’s what we know.

Here’s how we interpret that.

Here’s where can invest to earn a superior return.

Operators

Operators design, produce, sell, distribute and serve. In general, expect them to be interested in arranging things to bring order to complexity across strategy, operations and organization and culture. Expect them to care about delivering results.

The Core Focus Framework is helpful here.

Once you know the focus of an operator’s enterprise, the other pieces fall out. If their focus is:

Design, expect innovation, specialization, enablement through principles, and freeing support.

Produce, expect accountability, hierarchy, enforcement of policies, and command and control.

Deliver/Distribute, expect collaboration, a matrix, enrolling behind team charters, and shared responsibility

Service, expect customer-centricity, decentralization, a customer-experience focus with guidelines, and bounded authority.

Expect operators to emphasize and be interested in different things with different stakeholders. And they have a whole range of stakeholder beyond their board and investors/owners.

When operators work with collaborators or customers or their own organization, the best operators will have one consistent set of values and messages, but will interpret and parse that out differently for the different groups to deliver what’s required.

Advisors

Advisors provide investors and operators frameworks and insights to ratchet up their influence and impact, guiding their decisions, relationships, and behaviors. Expect them to be empathetic relationship-builders telling truth to power and enabling others.

Those working for others don’t get to decide what those others really need them to do or how the organization really works. They do get to choose to focus on the mission-critical parts or their role, and do get to choose to adapt to the culture. Essentially, they can choose to do “their job, their way” or go do something else.

Advisors come in all shapes and sizes, advising on general leadership, strategy, operations, organization, investing, M&A….The list is endless. The best become expert in their field, making their advice that much more valuable.

Here’s the thing though, if you’re hiring and advisor, they work for you. You don’t work for them. Yes. You want them to tell truth to power. You want them to challenge your thinking. But you’re in charge of you and your choices and the consequences of those choices.

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