WICA Nor. Cal. Tournament Registration Deadline May 11

The deadline to register to attend the WICA Northern California Golf Tournament is Friday May 11, 2012.  The tournament will be held on Monday, May 21, 2012 at Crow Canyon Country Club in Danville, California.  There will be a shotgun start at 12:00pm, lunch will be served on the course, and there will be a dinner held in conjunction with the awards ceremony.  The cost to register for the tournament is $125 per person for members and $175 per person for non-members.  WICA is offering hole sponsorship opportunities at the tournament as well.  Hole sponsorships cost $200 per hole for members and $250 per hole for non-members.  To register using the new online registration system, click here.  If you would prefer to register via the paper registration forms, the registration form can be downloaded here and the sponsorship form can be downloaded here. 

WICA-WSC Labor Management Meeting a Success

The leaders of the Western Insulation Contractors Association and the Western States Conference Business Managers met April 17th in Phoenix, Arizona to review and discuss some of the hot topics for the western states. Participants discussed the final draft of the Maintenance-Market Recovery Agreement (MMRA) that was recently negotiated between the WICA & WSC. The agreement will be sent out to all WICA members and will be posted on the WICA website once a final draft is issued.

After a detailed review, it was generally agreed that it was a big step in the right direction for assisting the contractors and the local unions as they look to become more competitive and work to regain marketshare. Another chief issue discussed was Mandatory Contractor Bonding For Trust Obligations. Russ O’Brien, Mike Schumacher, and Pati Piro all of Associated Third Party Administrators (ATPA) presented an overview of some of the challenges facing Trust Funds in the current economic cycle. After an informative discussion it was agreed that WICA & WSC would form a subcommittee to negotiate a new “participation agreement” that will be required of all signatory contractors. More details to follow in the coming months.

WICA PacNW Golf Tournament Registration Open

WICA is hosting the 2012 Pacific Northwest Golf Tournament at Trophy Lake Golf and Casting in Port Orchard, Washington.  The tournament will be held on July 13, 2012 and there will be a shotgun start at 7:30am.  There will be a lunch following the tournament along with an awards ceremony.  The cost to register for the tournament is $125 per person for members and $175 per person for non-members.  Hole sponsorships will also be available at this tournament for $200 per hole for members and $250 per hole for non-members.  To register using the online registration system, click here.  If you would prefer to register by using the paper registration forms, the registration form can be downloaded here and the sponsorship form can be downloaded here.  The deadline to register for the tournament is Tuesday, July 3rd.  

WICA Convention Registration Materials to be Available Soon

The WICA Programs Committee has completed their planning for the 2012 WICA Annual Convention and registration materials will be made available in the coming weeks.  This year’s convention promises increased dialogue between members as well as informative education seminars.  This year’s President’s Dinner will be held at the Living Desert Zoo on the Palm Garden Patio.  Additionally, spouses will have the opportunity to participate in a cooking demonstration if they so wish.  Mark your calendars now to attend the convention in Palm Desert from October 7-9, 2012.

Six Habits of True Strategic Thinkers

You're the boss, but you still spend too much time on the day-to-day. Here's how to become the strategic leader your company needs.

In the beginning, there was just you and your partners. You did every job. You coded, you met with investors, you emptied the trash and phoned in the midnight pizza. Now you have others to do all that and it's time for you to "be strategic."
Whatever that means.

If you find yourself resisting "being strategic," because it sounds like a fast track to irrelevance, or vaguely like an excuse to slack off, you're not alone. Every leader's temptation is to deal with what's directly in front, because it always seems more urgent and concrete. Unfortunately, if you do that, you put your company at risk. While you concentrate on steering around potholes, you'll miss windfall opportunities, not to mention any signals that the road you're on is leading off a cliff.

This is a tough job, make no mistake. "We need strategic leaders!” is a pretty constant refrain at every company, large and small. One reason the job is so tough: no one really understands what it entails. It's hard to be a strategic leader if you don't know what strategic leaders are supposed to do.
After two decades of advising organizations large and small, my colleagues and I have formed a clear idea of what's required of you in this role. Adaptive strategic leaders — the kind who thrive in today’s uncertain environment – do six things well:

Anticipate
Most of the focus at most companies is on what’s directly ahead. The leaders lack “peripheral vision.” This can leave your company vulnerable to rivals who detect and act on ambiguous signals. To anticipate well, you must:

• Look for game-changing information at the periphery of your industry

• Search beyond the current boundaries of your business

• Build wide external networks to help you scan the horizon better

Think Critically
“Conventional wisdom” opens you to fewer raised eyebrows and second guessing. But if you swallow every management fad, herdlike belief, and safe opinion at face value, your company loses all competitive advantage. Critical thinkers question everything. To master this skill you must force yourself to:

• Reframe problems to get to the bottom of things, in terms of root causes

• Challenge current beliefs and mindsets, including your own

• Uncover hypocrisy, manipulation, and bias in organizational decisions

Interpret
Ambiguity is unsettling. Faced with it, the temptation is to reach for a fast (and potentially wrongheaded) solution.  A good strategic leader holds steady, synthesizing information from many sources before developing a viewpoint. To get good at this, you have to:

• Seek patterns in multiple sources of data

• Encourage others to do the same

• Question prevailing assumptions and test multiple hypotheses simultaneously

Decide
Many leaders fall prey to “analysis paralysis.” You have to develop processes and enforce them, so that you arrive at a “good enough” position. To do that well, you have to:

• Carefully frame the decision to get to the crux of the matter

• Balance speed, rigor, quality and agility. Leave perfection to higher powers

• Take a stand even with incomplete information and amid diverse views

Align
Total consensus is rare. A strategic leader must foster open dialogue, build trust and engage key stakeholders, especially when views diverge.  To pull that off, you need to:

• Understand what drives other people's agendas, including what remains hidden

• Bring tough issues to the surface, even when it's uncomfortable

• Assess risk tolerance and follow through to build the necessary support

Learn
As your company grows, honest feedback is harder and harder to come by.  You have to do what you can to keep it coming. This is crucial because success and failure--especially failure--are valuable sources of organizational learning.  Here's what you need to do:

• Encourage and exemplify honest, rigorous debriefs to extract lessons

• Shift course quickly if you realize you're off track

• Celebrate both success and (well-intentioned) failures that provide insight

Do you have what it takes?
Obviously, this is a daunting list of tasks, and frankly, no one is born a black belt in all these different skills. But they can be taught and whatever gaps exist in your skill set can be filled in. I'll cover each of the aspects of strategic leadership in more detail in future columns. But for now, test your own strategic aptitude (or your company's) with the survey at www.decisionstrat.com. In the comments below, let me know what you learned from it.

Paul J. H. Schoemaker: Founder and Chairman, Decision Strategies Intl. Speaker, professor, and entrepreneur. Research Director, Mack Ctr for Technological Innovation at Wharton, where he teaches strategic decision-making. Latest book: Brilliant Mistakes