Monthly Archives: April 2012

Annihilated by Apathy

The story is told of military training (whether true, or no, is immaterial–the principles are sound) wherein the new soldiers are placed in a simulation. Within the war game being played, they are told  that three snipers are crawling towards them through tall grass. The snipers are live soldiers who have been trained for their role in the exercise; the “bullets” to be fired are blanks. As the defenders wait for the attack, a  figure pops up across the field suddenly and is fired upon with full force. Closer to the defenders, another attacker pops up and the newbies direct their attention to the target. Immediately thereafter, the entire platoon is taken out by hand grenades thrown by the third attacker, who had been sneaking towards them and was able to obtain a close position undetected.

Because the platoon failed to recognize the immediate threat closest to them they lost an insignificant, yet instructive battle. Similarly, as business owners and managers, we have as our most important target the existing customer base. If these folks go somewhere else, collectively they can “upset the apple cart” of business success.

Since most businesses don’t have an offering that is clearly superior to the competition, they must focus on how they provide goods or services as a differentiator. If your organization has a great quality control system to make sure jobs are done to standard and timely, but the customer is not aware of your system, you are missing a great opportunity to connect with what’s truly important. Or, maybe your efforts to simplify the ordering process have not seen the return you hoped because the customer doesn’t yet know. Educating customers about what they are receiving for the money is good business!

Ike Behar is in the men’s clothing business. While this line of work, like many, faces pressures from abroad and tries to avoid commoditization, the way the company differentiates itself is far from apathetic. Taken from some of its promotional materials about men’s dress shirts, the statements below will show you: a.) how Behar stakes a claim for competitive advantage and b.) the type things you need to be able to say about your business that will matter to a prospect.

  • There are 52 steps involved in making one of our shirts. Each shirt sports an authentic split yoke, removable collar stays, and button sleeve pocket.
  • Handkerchief-rolled seams. This tailoring technique prevents puckering and produces and elegantly finished shirt, with added durability.
  • Buttons. We carefully match our buttons–ranging from mother-of-pearl to unbreakable plastic–to complement the fabric and style of each shirt. A spare button is sown into the tail of every shirt.
Behar lists many more, but these should give you an idea of what is helpful to get your point across. (With thanks to Jaynie Smith, who literally wrote the book on Creating Competitive Advantage.)
You can see the threat in the grass, but what are you going to do?

 

Focus on EQ Rather Than IQ

While one may not be able to improve IQ, the ability to improve one’s Emotional Quotient has been shown effective in enhancing management decision-making.     EQ Mentoring is most successful when directed management team members who support an organization’s executives.

“Emotional intelligence isn’t a luxury tool you can dispense with in tough times. It’s a basic tool that, deployed with finesse, is the key to professional success.”

~Dan Goleman in The Harvard Business Review

What is Emotional Intelligence (EQ)?

Effective and timely decision-making is at the heart of good performance. To improve performance, we need to understand how to make better decisions. At the most basic level, our ability to make good decisions and, in turn, perform well is captured by our competencies. Competencies are the things we know how to do and what we are good at are capabilities. Most performance management processes are built on the concept that competencies are the direct antecedent or predecessor to good decision making and high performance. What determines our competencies?

Preceding our competencies are our behaviors. Behaviors include our day-to-day activities that determine where we focus our time and where we focus our energies. Cognition precedes behavior. Slightly oversimplifying this concept, cognition refers to one’s intellectual capacities, thoughts, knowledge, and memories. This is the rational part of our brain. What finally precedes cognition in this physiological sequence to high performance is one’s EQ—a body of personal characteristics and social abilities that are closely tied to success in both our professional and personal lives.

How is EQ Improved?

In order to establish a baseline, an EQ Assessment is taken at the inception of the competency improvement process by each team member individually. The mentoring process is explained to the group and some recurring group meetings are held (minimum of once/month) to reinforce concepts in a team environment. Primarily, however, the mentoring  occurs individually and the scheduling of weekly meetings with each team member (half hour ea.) creates an environment for concepts to “grow legs” and become implemented.

The mentoring is administered by a professional certified in the process and competent to interpret the assessment results into a personal development program. The five competencies (self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills) that constitute one’s EQ scores are evaluated and a plan created to improve the mentee’s lowest area(s) first.

During the weekly sessions, hypothetical scenarios are discussed between mentor and mentee to identify thought processes, offer alternatives, and learn better decision-making styles. After six to eight weeks, the hypothetical gives way to actual work examples and on-the-job learning occurs. Generally, it is at this point that executives can see early signs of improved management skills.

As the mentee becomes more enlightened, additional tools and assessments are introduced to keep the free flow of information positive, eye-opening, and stimulating. Generally, a follow-on assessment is administered at the six month point and a joint decision is made as to how to proceed.

NOTE: For EQ improvement to become part of the culture, it is generally advisable that the owner/CEO/etc also submit to the process and go through their own mentoring. After such, there is opportunity to learn new methods of interaction that reinforce principles and better habits learned.

Guide the Culture to Continuous Innovation

As your company expands, don’t forget what has led you to this success. Make sure you embrace your company’s history and that your new employees do as well. Your employees will see the success that you have previously attained and will look to fit in and add to that success. Include mission-vision-values elements in new-employee orientations. ake responsibility within your domain for personal growth, AND enlist help from other managers to keep the momentum going across the company. Consider collaborating on the following:

  • Add flexibility to planning & budgeting

Many times, rituals are demotivating to employees. Think about recurring activities—particularly important ones such as planning and budgeting—and how you may get more enthusiastic participation if the process became more flexible. For instance, in balanced scorecard environments, one often does quarterly or monthly review of performance against plan rather than waiting until year-end. Consider going off-site. Consider hiring a third-party facilitator. How can you “shake things up” and make the tedious more engaging?

  • Design interactions across organization

One of the biggest hindrances to innovation is structure. Make it a new practice to collaborate across departmental lines, across multiple layers, and among newly arrived and long-tenured alike. Seek out different viewpoints, structure teams in creative ways, and generally think, “how can I get objective, insightful input?”

Once the management team is effectively collaborating, then strategies can be put into place to move from considering the right motives to change to cultural innovation. Successful organizations deconstruct themselves in order to grow and become more responsive. At IBM, Lou Gerstner inherited a company losing almost a billion dollars per month. He realized that “culture isn’t just one aspect of the game—it is the game.”

Gerstner had heard that one of IBM’s chief rivals had made the comment that, “IBM? We don’t even think about those guys anymore. They’re not dead, but they’re irrelevant.”  When he shared this comment with his senior leadership group, there was instant motivation, but the skills and creativity were six years in coming. During that time, IBM became hugely profitable, and share price increased more than tenfold. What drove the turnaround was a change in internal communications. An internal memo by Gerstner to all employees instructed everyone on the new agenda:

FROM: TO:
Product (focus) Customer (focus)
Do it my way Do it the customer’s way
Manage to morale Manage to succeed
Decisions based on anecdotes and myths Decisions based on facts and data
Relationship-driven Performance-driven
Conformity (politically correct) Diversity of ideas and opinions
Attack the people Attack the process
Rule-driven Principle-driven
Value me (the silo) Value us (the whole)
Analysis paralysis (everything must be proven 100%+) Make decisions & move forward with urgency (80%/20%)
Fund everything Prioritize
   

If your market-leading competitor were to make a comment about your business, would they say that you are irrelevant? How can you keep that from ever being the case? By making a commitment to continuous innovation!