Anthony Taylor is the CEO and senior strategic planning facilitator at SME Strategy. Holding a Bachelor’s in Business Administration with a specialization in marketing and the Certified Associate in Project Management designation. Anthony combines academic expertise with over a decade of hands-on entrepreneurial experience across various industries. As the author of “I Wish I Knew”, he shares key insights for aspiring entrepreneurs.
In 2016, he was named a Global Entrepreneurship Week Ambassador for Canada, and SME Strategy earned the Palme Blue for "Microenterprise of the Year" from the French Chamber of Commerce. Anthony also hosts the Strategy and Leadership Podcast, engaging with thought leaders on strategic insights. He is fluent in French and has a personal goal to visit every MLB stadium.
“People don’t care about your strategy, your strategic plan, or your priorities—they only want to know what it means to them and how they can succeed. If you’re leading an organization, ask your people: What does winning look like to you? Because when you help others get what they want, that’s when you truly win as a leader.”
- Anthony Taylor
Website: https://www.smestrategy.net/
Hello and welcome everybody to this episode of The Insight Interviews. This is your host, Jason Abell, and I've got a guest today that is, I don't know, interesting. So here, let me give you just a brief little introduction, and then I might have him introduce himself a little bit more, but my guest today is none other than Anthony Taylor. You may or may not know Anthony. If you don't, he hails from Canada, which in my mind just makes you cool, Anthony. I quite like Canadians, and so that is just a fun thing for me. But listen to this. Anthony Taylor is the CEO of, I'm going to SMEE strategy, might be SME strategy, which we'll talk about in a minute. He's an entrepreneur. He's a guy after my own heart. He loves scotch, and he wants to visit all 30 MLB stadiums, which, again, there's a cool factor there that this guy exudes. But Anthony, welcome to the show.
Thanks so much, Jason. Happy to be here. It is SME strategy, but we do gets SMEE from time to time. And my mom says, I'm cool. So grateful to be here. Excited to chat with you. Thanks for having me.
So how many MLB stadiums have you been to so far?
I think I'm at like 16 now. I have been to Camden Yards, but I haven't been to some of the kind of more obscure ones. I have not been to see the Tigers. We'll save that. But I'm over the hump now, and I think Camden Yards actually was one of the ones that that got me just over.
You know, that's one of those things that people often say that to me. So, I'm from Baltimore. I'm a big Baltimore Orioles fan, and I've been in Camden Yards, I mean, a lot of times. More times than I can count. But many people are like, hey, I've been there and, you know, that's one of the ones that they want to check off. So, I'm glad that you were here in Maryland, and yeah, hopefully we were good hosts for you.
It was great. I just had a great time.
So, I'm going to ask you a different opening question, and then we're going to get into strategy and all kinds of things that you do, that you specialize in, for sure. But to get us facing in the right direction, we ask all of our guests the same question, Anthony, which is this. As you and I face each other today across international borders, and here it is in August 2024, who or what is it that you are especially grateful for today?
I mean, so much. How long do we have on the podcast? I’m grateful for my family. I am grateful for my health. Grateful for just the abundance that we have right now. I'm grateful that I get to share with you and just give to your people, because that's ultimately why I'm here. When you ask like, hey, what do you want to get out of today's podcast? I didn't say it, but I just want to, like, give to your people. So that's what I'm here. I'm beyond blessed. So, it's pretty awesome. My wife is due with our second child in the next kind of couple of weeks here.
Congratulations.
Thank you so much. So, we're rocking and rolling. We got a lot of cool stuff happening and I have two of my team members in a small town in Norway doing off site work with each other, so they're doing some cool stuff too.
Ah, that's fun. Now when is your second child due? That's fun.
September 17th on paper, but the first one was seven weeks early.
So, any day now, is what you're trying to say.
I mean, in principle.
Okay, so if you need to, like, rush and hurry up off the podcast, we might give you a pass, because we know what's going on there.
My phone's on Do Not Disturb so I wouldn't even know.
That's right, I made you do that ahead of time. Oh, man, okay. Well, let's get to it and do it. You and I are talking for a reason, and it's probably not scotch, it's not MLB stadiums, it's not the fact that we're in different countries, but you've got a specialty that you bring to the table that I think our listeners will benefit from hearing. So, give us a little bit more of your history than I did in a couple sentences of introduction, and then, yeah, let's dive in the deep end of what you do.
Great. So, let's take it back to, let's call it 2010. In 2010 I was doing marketing plans, I was writing business plans for folks, scrappy guy had, you know, two jobs, working my way through university, doing a bunch of stuff, and I and I was trying to, like, build my professional expertise. And so, I joined a couple boards and one of the boards was a green Chamber of Commerce and it was another one. It was a downtown East Side business improvement and association. it is a really bad, rough part of town. Rough part of Canada, to be honest. And I was working with a bunch of folks that were super well intentioned, but disorganized. And so, I found, I said, okay, well, how can I have impact here? How can I make a difference that I want to make? And I actually found strategic planning as a tool. I was doing my business degree, or had just finished it, something like that, and they said, hey, there's this process called strategic planning that I think might help our group. At the same time, I was running two coffee shops, and my business partner embezzled $100,000 from me, and I said, well, I don't want to have that happen again, and so, I basically combined my risk aversion for people and wanting to help them with my need to help herd these cats and make a difference in my community, and SME strategy was born. Since then, we've facilitated strategic planning sessions for hundreds of leadership teams, mainly US, Canada and other parts of the world. One of my colleagues is in Paris next week. And we just help teams get clear and aligned on where they want to go, help them kind of plan, manage for the future, and ultimately have them be clear and aligned on what success looks like and what they need to do to get there.
Thank you for that. That helps. Sorry about the partner that embezzled. I can't tell you how many stories like that we've heard over the years, and so that's a bummer, but it sounds like some really good stuff has come as a result of that, specifically SME Strategy. And so, I know that our listenership, as we engage people at Rewire Coaching, our clientele, strategy comes up a lot, but for those listening that may think they understand strategy, would you mind just first defining strategic planning. What exactly is it?
So, I've heard some people define strategic planning as an oxymoron, that like, you can't be strategic and plan at the same time. So, if you did define it, strategy is about choices. To me, to us, it's more about what you don't do than what you do do. And then planning is fundamentally like long term or somewhat long term, depending on how you look at things. And so, if you put those two together, strategic planning is, what are the things that you will or will put your time on? What will you prioritize so that it can ultimately get you to that end state where you know, in the spirit of rewiring, folks think about strategic planning as like, hey, what are the operational tasks? What are the things that I'm going to do? Which I equate to, like, what road am I going to take? Different from how we look at strategic planning, which is, what is the destination that we want to get to? Because if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there, as was said in Alice in Wonderland. So, we really help people think more around where do you want to be? What does it look like as an executive team? A leadership team? Our clients range from kind of $2 million to $800 million and above. You know, where it is that shared success? What is going to get in the way of us accomplishing that? And then what do we need to prioritize right away to make that happen? Some folks think of strategic planning as I'm going to make a 10-20 year vision, and while that's very appropriate in a lot of cases, we specialize in helping teams come up with what we call our three year one destination, because it's far enough that it’s strategic, but close enough that it's operational. And another key part of that, and then I'll stop, is part of how we do it is a five step process. Where are we now? Where are we going? What's going to get in the way? What do we need to do to get there? And then how are we actually going to implement it? And I was speaking with a group today, and they wanted to kind of shortcut the first part. I was like, if you as an executive team can't even agree on where you're starting from, there's no way you're going to agree on what good looks like. And it was an interesting reflection for me to say, hey, you need to make sure everybody sees the picture the same way before you even start working on it. So that's a little bit about strategic planning.
I always take notes, you know? A lot of people think that we do this podcast for the listeners. Selfishly, at times, I'm like, I take a page and a half of notes, and I just personally benefited from this, and so thank you for that. So, I wrote down, I'm already starting my note page, Anthony and I wrote down, you know, strategy is about choices, and planning is more long term. But then you broke it down, you've got some three step things and some five step. There's a couple different places I could go with that. I hear you loud and clear, and I'm sure a lot of our listeners do also. When you engage a client and you're like, hey, I've got this thing that works out really well, and you dive in, and the client goes, no, no, we're not going to do that, we're going to do this. And so, part of my questioning could just go down that road, like, I'm intrigued, man. How did you wrangle this group to be like, no, no, the process works. Let's go through the process. How did that go?
Well, I mean, technically, I could think of a dozen. That was a sales call that I was on earlier this morning. But really, I've been leading strategic planning workshops for 13 years. I've done a lot of them. I've seen big and small. If there was some mistake that happened within the session and it didn't go well, it almost always goes back to breaking the process. And so, like, we really have a good system. It's proven, it's built. We've iterated it. It's far from perfect, but I can track back to say if I did something wrong or something bad happened, it's because I didn't follow the process that I know works. And anytime institutionally, if we have an issue, we say, at what point did the process break down? And then, like, let's coach for the breakdown in process, not coach for the breakdown in results.
Yeah, so good. Trust the process. You know, as I think about our coaching clients, I know, like, even before we hit record, I just said, I hear our coaching clients talk about strategy a lot, and I'm not sure that even a lot of them understand it. And so even defining it the way that you did, I think, is super helpful. Are there patterns out there? Not that we're going to go through all five of your steps and we're not going to have one of your workshops right now inside of the context of this conversation, but are there some patterns, some things out there that you see that if we went through a little bit of the that process during the conversation right now, as a listener who is either in the C suite or they run their own organization, that would really make them think? And kind of like you, I just want to add value to the people that are listening. Are there trends that you see? Are there challenges that you're seeing over and over again that we might be able to talk about and even work through during our conversation today?
Yeah. So, what I would say, it's like, if anybody has any curiosities about this, you can basically type the question and put SMB strategy at the end. It'll likely come up. We give away our framework. We give away our approaches. Everything is free. You can get all of our tools. You can get all of our stuff. So that's out there. I think a question that I would have been, your leaders, our leaders, our people, if you ask your team, if we got to our version of 100% success, what would it look like? How would I actually know if I was there? And if your team has a different answer, and when I say team generally, I mean like a leadership team, but you could also apply that a project team or whatever, but if they have any deviation in answer, it means you're going to different places. And the example that we use when we talk about vision and say, hey, Jason, me and a couple buddies, and you and a couple buddies, we're all gonna go to California, all expenses paid. Does that sound good? Then you say, of course, Anthony, that sounds great. Well, my version of California might be going to like Los Angeles and eating Korean barbecue, your version of California, it's like, hey, I want to go check out a Padres game and sit on the beach. One of our friends’ versions of California might be going to San Francisco to go to museums, whereas another one might be Napa Valley to drink wine. It all sounds conceptually like California, or in our case of our for-profit clients, it sounds like growth, or our nonprofit clients, it sounds like impact, but when you actually get into the nuance of it, it's very different. Do we want to grow by 10 million or 50 million? Because if we say grow, once we get into the implementation, that's where like the breakdown start happening, because we have a different lens on how we're looking at the issue. And so, a lot of problems with teams arise in communication, breakdowns, in perspectives, understandings, beliefs, knowns, unknowns, assumptions. So how are you coming up with this answer? What makes you think of it? Another one that throws groups off is that CEOs typically, if you're a CEO listening, your job is to think two or three steps ahead of people. It's your job. You’re the CEO. The problem is you don't exactly bring people into that thought process, you jump into the thought process with them at step three. Meanwhile, their job is to implement from step one. So, CEOs say, well, how come you're not on board with the vision? And the executive team says, well, we need more detail to understand it. And then there's like, well, why can't you just do it? And so, it's all about getting teams explicitly aligned, versus implying all those five steps kind of align with that. But that's really the beliefs, understandings, communications, understanding and lenses. I may have said understanding twice. If you have 10 people on your leadership team, you have 10 different views on the organization, and they're all right. So how can you put all of those together to create one picture so that we're all on the same page?
Yeah, thank you. Let's continue down that path. Your analogy of California certainly hits home. One, I've been to all those different places in California, right? It's all California, but man, it's different and so that resonates. I think that's going to resonate with a lot of our listeners. So, if we continue that, I'm also smiling because that problem that you described with the visionary here, the CEO, President, founder, whatever, and the executive team or the staff in in a different spot, brother, I just see that all the time, and I'm sure you do too. And so, let's kind of continue down our timeline here. You see that that exists, that disconnect. Then what?
So, I mean, the first step is figuring out, like, hey, where are we going as a team of 10? If we were 100% successful at the end of, let's say three years from today, and I literally say we, not just I, we literally say three years, August, blank, September, blank, 2027, 2028, whatever. How will we know, akin to the picture on the front of a puzzle? Because otherwise we're building different stuff. And then we say, if that's where we want to go, well, then what's going to get in the way of that? Because all of us have different lenses on the challenges and needs. If I want to plan a picnic, it might be a little bit of rain or a hurricane. If I want to drive downtown, there might be traffic, or I might get my car stolen. Both of them have impacts on our liability to do it, but they have different likelihoods and impacts, you know? And so, we go through that, and then we say, given where we want to go, and given where we are, we have this, what's in the middle. That's our risk. And then from there, where do we start? A lot of people walk into a strategic planning exercise saying, here's what we want to do, how we help rewire and help people think about it is just what we need to do, because the obstacle is actually the way. And so by addressing the biggest challenges, then we can break through historically what hasn't moved. And that's why people really like our process, because they get more out of it than their standard strategic planning thing, because it's based on not only strategy management best practice, but behavioral science as well, which I know that you appreciate.
Oh, big time. You've used the word rewire a few different times in your answer, which I very much appreciate. I think you're strategic in how you answer questions, Anthony, and I appreciate it. I just want you to know- noting that. I also wrote down the obstacle is the way. Very well done. I think I've heard that once or twice before, and I also think that you're giving people something to think about here, because I will tell you, from a strategy standpoint, I've seen large companies, medium companies, even small companies, and man, it's just a jawbreaker of a thing. But the way that you've broken it down, at least the way that we're engaging one another right now, I will tell you that I feel a sense of ease as I listen to you go, almost like a Sherpa, like you're like, no, no, no, we can break this down into steps. We're going to do this first, and there might be some problems as we're working through that, but here's how we're going to solution some of those problems. And the guiding that you're doing, yeah, it's just me at ease as I think about walking through strategic type of planning things. So yeah, thank you for that. You're obviously very good at what you do. I've asked you some specific questions around strategic planning, but without my guidance on that, is there any particular topic when it comes to strategic planning, or this type of umbrella topic that we're talking about that you want to bring to the table? Knowing what you know, seeing what you see, looking at the horizon with AI or political circumstances, or economic circumstances, or anything that you're seeing that you're like, well, I appreciate these questions, and we've dug into a little bit of those specifics, but Jason, here's the types of things that I'm seeing, or that I'm excited about that I want to make sure gets out there today?
Okay, so, I mean, yes, we could probably talk for a long time.
Yeah, that was pretty wide ranging there. But yeah, where do you see it fit?
Well, I'll tell, I used to have this expression, Utah Jazz Basketball. This was about 20 years ago. It's ugly, but effective. It's like, the more things change, I think that organizations need to just get back to fundamentals. You know, we're seeing a big rising tide in terms of like, people want managers training, and I have a story on that, but I gotta park it for now. Going back to our strategic planning process, why it's valuable is because it's not like a big thing. It is truly a series of, I don't know, whatever it is, 10, 12, 15, conversations that build upon each other, and our whole thing is we don't care about the document, it's really about alignment. And so, as I lead a group, and these are like, you know, you're talking C suite, $100 million companies, these are big players, billion dollar companies and managing their personalities, it's really like, holding everybody's hand at once, step by step. And if I know, like, hey, I misaligned here or misaligned here, where did the process break down, as I alluded to earlier? And so, if you try to just home run every time, you're going to lose people. And so, it's really important about making sure everybody's there along the way. You know, I talked to you about how SME strategy got started, and I had a hypothesis in my own strategic planning. My stream is looking forward. And I said, okay, you know, in 20 years from now, what's the world going to be like? By the way, one of the exercises we do in our process called the pastel analysis, to look at trends. And I said, in 20 years from now, there's going to be a lot of baby boomers who will have retired, which means that there's going to be big gaps in organizations where you've had folks that have been in these positions 20-30 years, who never trained anybody, who've had the experience, no one else has the experience, and they're going to be creating spaces. So, my hypothesis was, if I can be a provider that supports “young leaders”, folks who have to fill in the gaps, who might be technically good but don't have the experience in being good at leaders, I will always have a job.
Yeah.
And so we are now, we're teaching people for stuff, on communication, goal setting, because it's a need, because there's such a big gap. So, I see a lot of those gaps of people who didn't do MBAs because, you know, people who are in these positions of success in executives in an organization, but don't have business training, and grew up because they were technically good. And so, for us, we're trying to support them through that and then we're also seeing a lot of other providers in the market move towards that more management training model. But yes, it's interesting to see the skills gaps that may continually occur and how people are filling that up in the market.
We see so much of that, Anthony, and it I see this across industries where the individual contributor gets promoted, promoted, promoted, and then they're in a leadership position. They're not doing any of the things that they were really, really good at, but now they lead people. And the skill set of leading people is not necessarily the same skill set as what made them a really great individual contributor. But what we've also seen along with that is that that profile of a person isn't so ready to admit that they don't know what they're doing from a leadership standpoint, so they kind of just stumble and bumble along. And then when either good coaching comes into play, or good consulting, like, what you do comes into play. It's like, yes, like, almost like oxygen, like, can I have some of that? Because I really don't know what I'm doing, but I don't want to tell anybody that I don't know what I'm doing, and then you can do the back-to-basics thing that you described, and maybe some tools, some good coaching, or whatever it is to go, okay, no, no, we can actually do this together. So, I like the back-to-basics piece that you're talking about, and I like giving the oxygen mask to those that sorely need it but may not be so readily able to admit that they need it.
I mean, nobody knows what they're doing. Everybody is just making it up.
But you and I do, right?
I have practice at doing it, but I still, like, I mean, every situation is like, I have never had today before. And when I'm in a session with folks, I say today is the only, you know, August 28 whatever I'm ever gonna have, so I'm gonna make it a good one with you, and are we okay as a group to like we're only going to have today is today? So, let's, like, make it a good one together. And that's like, one of the things that I do. A small distinction I will make, because I think it's relevant, is, you know, for us, we consider ourselves facilitators. And akin to a coach, I can go two days without telling anybody anything. I will invite, I will suggest, I will recommend, I will offer, I will have you consider and all we do is ask questions. But in my experience, you will learn more if I give you a plan, you'll be like, that's the consultant's plan. If I facilitate a conversation with a group and say that's your plan, like you came up with all the answers. I didn't tell you anything. And then it kind of breaks their brain a little bit. They will be like, wait a minute, this guy didn't tell me anything over two days. All of this is mine, which then puts the accountability and onus on them, versus the onus and accountability on a facilitator, consultant.
Oh brother, you are speaking our language. In coaching, we rarely, if ever, give advice because of exactly what you just articulated. Our brains. We think we want somebody to tell us what to do and hold us accountable, but there's things in our brains that really come up against that. Even if I think that's what I want you to do, it's really not, and so, because of all the things that you just articulated. Very well said there. Man, I'm glad I asked that question, because you just went to places that were super fun. Anything else that you see, again, when I mention AI, political, global, economic, environment, anything else that you see that the listeners who are business owners, C suite executives that they should just be looking out for? On their radars? Anything else fall under that umbrella, Anthony?
I mean, the world is changing. So, we're recording this in 2024 and I ask groups, and I say, has anything changed over the past couple years that might impact your ability to be successful? Oh, yeah, all this stuff, you know, COVID. And I said, so wouldn't it stand to reason that you build your next plan, considering all of the stuff that could happen, impact you? Because, like, some people have a false belief that their business operates in like four walls, like the four walls of their office or either town. But I say, you know, you're open to the challenges of like progressions and technology progressions in like society. You know, we have an election coming up Depending on how you view things, you know that there's just, like, so many different things happening. And so Wayne Gretzky, famous hockey player, had a saying that says, “don't go where the puck is, go where the puck is going to be”.
Right On.
So we incorporate it as part of our strategic planning and say, hey, where's the puck going to be so that we can get ahead of it? Versus being reactive to it. Or said another way, responsive to it. And so I won't necessarily say, hey, watch out for x, y, z, because yes, when I would rather say, equip yourself with the ability to look at what's happening so that you can respond to it, whether that's incorporating AI in your code development or personalization or whatever. Whether that is recognizing that interest rates are going to go up or down, and how that might affect your capital costs. Or, you know, the wants, needs, desires, beliefs of employees, relating to remote work, in person work, being friends with colleagues, blah blah. All of those things are going to change. So, I think change happens faster than ever, and so that's why we don't recommend having a strategic plan document and laminating it, so to speak. It’s worth really having it as an iterative process that moves with the needs of your organization and moves with the world that we operate in.
Is it Mike Tyson that said something like, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face”, right? Like, there's, there will be punches in the face that that will occur. So having your plan, but holding it loosely enough to understand that you could try to think about all the challenges that will come up, and those are probably good exercises, and you would be the one to know that, but know that the plan should include some of the things that you just can't expect and you don't know, because those things will happen. We just don't know exactly what those things will be today. So yeah, really, really well said.
And conversely, we work with entrepreneurial organizations, and so, you don't want your plan to be so rigid that you miss out on good opportunities.
Yeah, right on.
So, like, the way I think about businesses is, as an adult, small startup, you're like a sailboat. You know, you're very nimble. You can turn on a dime. It's easy. You can run it with one person. As you grow to 50, 100, 200, 500, 1000 people, you're like an oil tanker, and to make those changes requires a tremendous amount of coordination. And so, the nimbler you are, the faster it is, but it also means that you can have, you know, shiny object syndrome, whereas large for organizations need to be more intelligent, tactical, strategic with what they do. But your plan shouldn't limit you, but it should be a filter and a guide to make decisions, ultimately.
Yeah, right on, right on. Man, I've appreciated our conversation. You've gotten me excited just the way that you're passionate about what you do. Dude, you're passionate about strategy. Like, I feel like, you know, there's this CPA in accounting in the Maryland, Washington, DC area, that, as he's presenting, he tells jokes, and he's got all these, you know, slides up on the screen that are just boring in nature, but he makes him sound fun and exciting. And you're doing the same thing with strategy. So, thank you so much for that. Anthony, is there anything that I haven't asked you that you want to make sure comes up today, before we before we end our time together?
I think a successful leader helps people get to where they want to go. And John Maxwell has a famous saying that I love. He says, “A leader with no followers is just going for a walk”.
Yep, that's true.
And so, people don't care about your strategy. They don't care about your strategic plan. They don't care about your strategic priorities. They only want to know what it means to them and how they can be successful. So, it's not necessarily what you asked or didn't ask, but I'd rather an invitation for the live star, saying, if you are leading an organization and you want to be successful in getting to that next place, ask your people what does winning look like to them. Because it doesn't matter what winning looks like to you, because they don't care about you, they care about them. And so, when you can really help other people get what they want, that's when you truly win as a leader. And so strategic planning is functionally a tool to do that, but it really starts with conversations and connecting to people to help them win, and then everybody wins.
You're making me think of my old friend and mentor, Zig Ziglar, with some of the things that you're saying about helping enough other people get to where they want to go. Anthony, such a great way to end. I have a feeling people are going to look you up and want to find out more about you or connect with you. What is the best way for our listeners to do that?
Anthony C Taylor, on the internet. There is a soccer referee named Anthony Taylor, and he's not very liked. So, Anthony C Taylor. LinkedIn is the best place, but YouTube, I'm pretty famous on YouTube.
Famous?
Infamous or famous, one of the two. People reach out and say, hey, I looked all your videos. I know who you are. Well, that makes one of us.
That's amazing. Well. Anthony Taylor, thank you so much for your expertise. Thank you for your time, your passion, it comes through loud and clear. Yeah, man, we appreciate everything. What you're doing, please keep on doing it, and thanks for your time today.
Pleasure is all mine, Jason. Thanks for the time today.
Well, gosh, as I say after just about every episode and every guest, I had so many insights. Anthony C Taylor. Really, what came across is his passion for the narrow band of what he does, which is just this strategic planning piece. And so, he has very specific steps that he's honed over the last, I think he said 10 or 15 years. He even broke down some of those steps for us. And the insight that I had is that there are systems that were, you know, when he said things like getting back to basics or getting back to fundamentals and going step by step through things, it just reminded me that processes do work, and trusting the process oftentimes really does work. And then just this thing about that we're all human beings. We want to add value to one another, and as a leader for us to help our people get to where they want to go. That will ultimately help the organization and help the leader get to where they want to go. So those were the insights that I had listeners, but as we end every episode of The Insight Interviews, it doesn't much matter what me as the host, what my insights were, but what really matters is what insights did you have?
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