@Real_EstateInfo Hilarious, but so very wise!
Inspiration:
From Confusion to Clarity
In 7 words or less
Ken Aber and Ian Chamandy form the powerhouse behind The Blueprint. This is not a product or service, but a dynamic and innovative process that allows businesses and individuals to enact great vision by “stripping away layers of varnish until the real wood is revealed”. Spend just 30-minutes in their company, and you instantly want them to help you create a new blueprint for your business. They’re irresistible.
They are fun, they are dynamic, they are highly intelligent. Being seasoned in business, and highly successful in their own right, they are also extremely good at what they do, with an amazing track record behind them.
Implemented right, The Blueprint is one way to get to profitability sooner.
Ian Chamandy is a proud strategist, quick to cut through the chaff to get to the wheat. Equally adept at business planning, Ken Aber is the type to listen and observe, then, in concert with his partner, lead businesses to find their cores, their corporate DNA: in other words, a brilliant tactician with a strategic mindset. What a dream team!
By the end of The Blueprint business planning process, an entire organization (or an individual) can succinctly answer the “Why should I chose you?” question in seven words or less. Two or three words are even better.
It’s not as simple as creating a catchy ‘tag-line’, although that is one salient part of the process. It’s more about getting to the core dialogue of a business and creating a plan, a business architecture, so that everyone involved in a business changes their perception of a company’s core proposition in mere minutes, and starts living the company story in every moment. This is a radical change that penetrates deep into the heart of corporate culture – in the best of possible ways.
Getting on for seven years ago, Ken and Ian started having a conversation about business planning – in the upper level of Balzac, purveyor of excellent coffee in Toronto’s Distillery District. They realized they had a shared passion for strategic planning, and shared frustration about the conventional planning process. They intuitively knew there was a better way to go about this – a way in which people would be so inspired by the plan that they are similarly inspired to implement it, and live and breathe it every moment of their working lives.
Business planning is broken
To better understand how the business planning process was broken – and if you’ve ever spent two or three days with fellow executives in an off-site strategic planning meeting, bored out of your mind, and convinced that you could spend your time better, you would understand the ‘broken’ description – this pair stripped it down to its simplest terms.
Who are you? Where are you going? How are you going to get there?“This is effective for organizations, charities, individuals or even people like politicians”, said Chamandy. “We have a conversation that revolves around why I should choose, you, donate to you, work for your organization, or vote for you. Even why I should hire you. It’s the single most important question in business. You may have the greatest product, service, people or business, but if you cannot answer the ‘Why should I choose you?’ question, you are going to fail.”
Clarity and brevity are all that really matter
How Blueprint works is to hold between four and six half-day sessions with a leadership team (or individual) to guide them through the Blueprint process. Well described on their website, the four components are Core Proposition (what defines you at the ‘DNA’ level), Business Architecture, Core Dialogue (which allows everyone in the company to articulate answers to questions in ways that are meaningful to them) and the Company Story.
According to Aber, all of this is arrived at following “three or four hours of Ian and I, in a collaborative process of course, asking questions and saying “bull” to most of the long-winded answers, until we have stripped away all the layers of varnish. We believe that business leaders have all the answers, and that The Blueprint is the process for extracting it, getting to clarity quickly and creating succinct core propositions, core dialogues and company stories.”
Ask any of their clients, and they will tell you that it works. And it works extraordinarily effectively. If only they’d been around 20 years ago when I was a senior executive in a software company: we could never quite put our finger on our core differentiator. The Blueprint would have been perfect.
Blueprint: core propositions that work
United Van Lines – a higher standard of care Interiors Inc. – opening sooner Famous People Players – we inspire people to achieve moreA cancer charity – more birthdays
by Editor
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Seamus O’Regan
From a place of love
As co-host on CTV’s Canada AM, Seamus O’Regan is the master interviewer of myriad newsmakers including former US President Bill Clinton, Bishop Desmond Tutu and Conrad Black as well as four Canadian prime ministers. This time the tables were turned as, having just turned 40, he sat down to talk with Tempo Toronto about his life and loves.
St. John’s Newfoundland born Seamus O’Regan started his journalism career three decades ago. In the 70s – at the age of 10 – he was regional correspondent for CBC Radio. By 2007 he was the first journalist to be included in Canada’s Top 40 Under 40, and in Maclean’s 100 Young Canadians to Watch in 1999.
He studied politics in Dublin, marketing strategies in INSEAD near Paris, and received a Masters of Philosophy from the University of Cambridge. He worked with Environment Minister Jean Charest in Ottawa, Justice Minister Edward Roberts in St. John’s, and was policy advisor and speechwriter to the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, Brian Tobin.
In 2000, he joined the groundbreaking current affairs program “the chatroom”, great preparation to co-host Canada AM starting in 2002. Now, he is also in his third season of Bravo’s The O’Regan Files – telling artists’ stories.
Seamus is big on giving back, especially to the arts, and is on the boards of The Rooms, Katimavik, The Company Theatre, and works with Shallaway, Coady International Institute, Spread the Net and, more recently, joined the board of ArtBound. [Tempo profiles Jason Dehni and the Artbound organisation later in February.] When we met, Seamus was preparing to journey to Kenya to make a CTV documentary with Nelly Furtado about the work of Free The Children with Artbound (of which Seamus is Honorary Chair), together establishing art schools so that children can help support their families through the arts.
Seamus is in love with life and all of the people that surround him – all heartily reciprocated.
“I am in the best of all possible worlds.”
What’s one thing that few people know about you?
Not many people know that I almost became an actor. I did a lot of theatre when I was younger, and was encouraged then to pursue it. But I didn’t want it so badly that I was prepared to make sacrifices – I have great admiration for musicians and artists that take so many risks. I also happen to make great curries – I love hot food, and I’m a huge Sci-Fi movie buff.
What makes you unique?
I am very curious. I don’t think in silos at all, and I like to research the connectivity between things. I have always considered myself to be a good listener, too. It’s my curiosity that inspires me. I have the privilege of doing wonderful work in a job where I deal with new information, new situations and new people every day.
What is most important to you in life as you mature?
The people around me: I want always to be a good husband, a good son and brother, and a good friend. I have to say that I have one of the best jobs in the communication business. It never feels tired, and I am truly happy where I am.
What do you count as your biggest achievement?
Although interviewing is what I think I do best, my biggest achievement has been finding the person I married! It’s much easier to maintain life balance when you have a home that you really look forward to going to. My commitment to my marriage is an inner discipline, and spending time together is a priority for us. If I don’t get at least two nights at home during the week, then there’s a problem.
Tell us about your Bravo show, The O’Regan Files
It’s a wonderful release for me to get to talk to musicians and performing artists for a whole 22 minutes. We can really warm up and get comfortable in that time, and perhaps they will reveal something insightful that they may not have done in a shorter interview. The average time for Canada AM items tends to be three or four minutes.
How would you want your story to inspire others?
If you really want something, you have to work at it. I really wanted this [Canada AM] job, I’d watched it since day one, and worked diligently to get the co-host job. I started with a guest appearance on the show, and it came from there. It’s hard work, but it’s damn good work. [Seamus also described how the Canada AM team operates like a close-knit family, and assured me that it’s impossible to fake that.]
What about ArtBound?
This is an organization formed by a group of young Toronto professionals working with Free the Children to establish art schools, starting in sub-Saharan Africa. They approached me to be Honorary Chair and I admit I was hesitant to take on more work because I am on six boards already and I didn’t think African schools really needed this. But I quickly got the message that children can adequately support their families through art. It means a tremendous amount to me to be involved with Artbound.
What do you want your legacy to be?
I have amazing friends and a fantastic family. I want to be remembered by them all as a good husband, son and brother, a good friend, and wherever I went a good time was had by all.
by Editor
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