If you are like most leaders, you'd like to take your organization or business to the next level. Perhaps you have a clear vision. Perhaps you are still working on one and it remains slightly out of focus. No matter which, a major obstacle standing between where you are and where you'd like to go is that there never seems to be enough time. As the perennial question goes, how's it possible to drain the swamp when you are up to your keister in alligators? Now there's a way to create the vision and to free the time. It's called The Martin Management Method, or M3 for short. What does M3 do? First, it provides a methodology to create the vision. Second, it creates a structure or framework that will get everybody throughout the organization pulling his or her own weight--everyone from department heads to hourly employees pushing ahead in the right direction with a sense of urgency and accountability. And that means you will have more time to think and to lead, rather than having to spend it putting out fires. Sound too good to be true? It's not. Neither is M3 complicated or hard to implement. Besides a methodology for creating a shared vision, it's essentially a structure comprised of a few simple rules involving action registers, scorecards, and interlocking teams. Once it's instituted, everyone will know what he or she must do to succeed personally, as well as what has to be done for the organization to succeed. Because it's so powerful, we expect that in a few short years most companies will have adopted M3. In the meantime, yours can be among the first.
About the Author: Stephen Hawley Martin is Senior Partner of Hawley Martin Partners, a business consulting and branding firm that exists to help leaders take their companies or organizations to the next level. Steve was a principal and Senior Vice President of The Martin Agency (GEICO, Walmart) during that firm's meteoric rise to national prominence. A lifelong student of business as well as a strategic thinker and writer, he has authored 17 books, many on business management topics such as lean enterprise, lean manufacturing, product development, process based management and marketing communications. James Shannon Maxwell worked for more than ten years under the tutelage of world-renowned branding guru and co-founder both of The Martin Agency and of Hawley Martin, the late David Martin. Jim is a graduate of the Jepson Leadership School of the University of Richmond and of U.Va. Law School. When he is not conducting branding research or developing strategy, he is an adjunct professor of advertising, entrepreneurship, and business planning at the University of Richmond. He teaches similar courses during summer sessions at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.