Tag Archives: EQ

How Do Successful Businesses Manage Their Operations?

After working hard on the marketing plan and the financial plan, successful executive teams develop operating plans to implement them. These are the plans that ultimately result in successfully bringing one’s idea into the marketplace–and profits into the owner’s pocket. Staffing, office administration, and work flow supervision are the primary needs. Successful businesses anticipate problems and take steps immediately to improve workflow efficiency. Supervisors and budgets are assigned to control costs. If necessary, outside fractional help is secured to make sure that appropriate resources are allocated to the best potential outcomes. In addition, the top executive may recommend steps financial and marketing teams can take to enhance overall productivity–and, by extension, profitability. For example, organizations that offer and sell the same or similar goods or services over and over usually see fewer cost overruns and therefore generate more profit per unit of sale.

Staffing a business with the correct number and types of employees makes your workplace both productive and more enjoyable. Sprinkle in some training and development and you demonstrate care and concern for your people. Create feedback loops and engagement will soar. Successful organizations increase or decrease staff levels as operating plans require. Outsourced human resources–whether through independent contractors, fractional professional staff, or subcontracting–allows your company to optimize human resources for any level of work necessary. Making preparations to finish existing projects while beginning new ones and documenting how the work will be accomplished will focus your efforts.

Administering a variety of initiatives simultaneously places certain demands on office staff as well. A successful executive team thinks through the documentation needs of the organization and assigns responsibilities to appropriate personnel. Institutional knowledge is thereby captured for the benefit of all and adjustments become easier to make. Well-organized files–physical and electronic–are another vital component to smooth business operations and can eliminate wasted time and effort, as well as reinforce best practices!

Successful supervision of field (or plant or billable or development) personnel involves more than simply the “management by walking around” approach of yore. Think about technology as a means to do more with less. Creatively brainstorm as to how to maximize the benefits of being face-to-face versus virtual–it’s a trade-off of time, money, and precious additional resources. Recruiting and hiring should reflect an effort to add to the team those who are the best cultural fit rather than simply strong technicians who may undermine the esprit de corps. Compensation and performance management systems should reinforce your value system–not stand separate from it. Think of processes like equipping, quality management, customer service, coaching, mentoring, motivating as key factors in your success. When you do, plans can be made to enable your organization’s operations to become efficient and profitable.

What Have You Overcome to Be Successful?

Entrepreneurs who don’t win business plan or pitch competitions often get down on themselves. They may wonder whether they will ever get the funding needed to turn their idea into a commercial venture. The sense of frustration when circumstances don’t appear to go the right way can lead to despondency.  Vivian Giang, writing for Business Insider in an article published earlier this week, reminds that others have overcome greater odds.

Giang shares Ryan Blair’s story of coming from a broken family, learning disorders, and gang life to become a multimillionaire serial entrepreneur. In his book “Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain,” Blair writes:

“I quickly saw how the system worked, how the street lords kept themselves in power through influence and manipulation. I observed how the older people used bribery and fear to get the younger kids to do their crimes, and I saw how the young people willingly went along with it because it seemed like the only power structure that had any kind of respect in the neighborhood.”

“Long before I became a millionaire entrepreneur, I was a kid with a criminal record, street gang experience, and a lot of emotional scarring from years of abuse from my father. My teenage years were hardly the typical starting point for a normal, productive life, let alone a successful business career. Turns out, that didn’t matter.”

Blair was arrested more than ten times. Living the street life left him facing a four year sentence and the tender age of 16. His mom began dating a businessman a couple years later who showed modeled how to make money legally. Giang observes that Blair was insightful when he decided to apply the survival skills learned on the street to make money the right way. His “street smarts,” she writes, were gained from observing the strengths of the gang system through a new lens.

“There’s a hierarchy in gangs, a hierarchy of positions and power,” he says. “A gang is an economic system, and there’s a lot of similarities between gangs and some legal companies. I know that it’s not always the most powerful organization that’s going to make it, it’s the one that’s most adaptable with the changing times, the one that understands how to manage their politics.”

At 21, Blair launched his first company (24/7 Tech) and brought his understanding of street economics, plus a determination to turn himself around, to bear on the effort. Today, he’s the CEO of ViSalus and won the DSN Global Turn Around Award in 2010 when he actually turned the company around from being $6 million debt in early 2008 to sucess 16 months later.

When trying to get his first business off the ground, Blair says he was nervous about ‘taking his skeletons out of his closet,” because people were always “looking for a reason to see why they are better than you. People look at people who don’t have pedigree upbringings differently.” But “if you avoid it, or hide it, others might feel as though there’s a dishonesty there, and hiding something is a very expensive emotional thing for you.”

Blair’s belief that others, too, can overcome mistakes and troubled histories influences the way he runs his own company. He said that he’s willing to hire people with a criminal record–provided they are honest about the past in the present. It seems to be working well for him!

So, if you as an entrepreneur feel that you have long odds for success, consider what Blair and others have been through. He has faced similar challenges to your own–and additional ones that, thankfully, do not confront you. With that in mind, hopefully smaller challenges will be seen for what they are.

 

 

 

Delegating By Degrees is Effective Leadership

In advising private businesses, I am frequently trying to help owners delegate more effectively to their teams. It is hard to get the executives to give up making all the decisions. Making fewer decisions is part of the challenge; influencing less decisions is even harder.

Sergio Zyman, the former Chief Marketing Officer at Coca-Cola, in his book “The End of Marketing As We Know It,” wrote about the decision making process he used with his team, broken down into 5 levels:

  • Level 1 – His decision with no input from the team
  • Level 2 – His decision with input from the team
  • Level 3 – Consensus decision
  • Level 4 – A team member’s decision with his input
  • Level 5 – A team member’s decision with no input or influence from him

When other organizations have experimented with processes similar to Zyman’s, some employees found the five level decision making process difficult. Others perceived it as freeing because the knew in advance what was required to keep an initiative going.

Many organizations have a disproportionate number of Level 2 and Level 3 decisions. Level 5 is the least common. A critical success factor seems to be selectively choosing what to care about (not to be confused with apathy.) The evolution needs to be towards a focus on being involved personally only in decisions that are strategic in nature and require knowledge or experience unique to your role. What is likely to ensue is a new paradigm in which the executive’s willingness to let go creates unexpected, but still very positive outcomes. It may not look the way it would have with your hand print, but can still “work out.”

 

 

Resilient Leadership Anticipates Challenge

Leadership is full of challenges. It’s not so much whether problems will crop up, but how the leader responds. The ability to push through and come out on top is a hallmark of a resilient leader. Claudio Morelli, Superintendent/CEO of the Burnaby School District in British Columbia, thinks the ability to maintain resiliency is defined by elasticity, bend, stretch and not “breaking” during challenging situations:

All organizations encounter challenges, issues and difficulties everyday including financial shortfalls, downsizing, increased workloads, and succession issues. These challenges force the organization to turn inward and look at itself and its effectiveness. It is a time to regroup and assess where the organization stands.

If the organization embeds and nurtures a culture based on mutual trust and where all members of the organization strive to be trustworthy and treat one another with respect and caring, then you have a solid foundation to deal with the challenges and issues you face. But where do you begin? It begins with a focus on people and building/enhancing positive relationships.

Most people want to be part of the solution. They would like to have a sense that their ideas are heard, not necessarily accepted, but considered with some action taken. They want to be part of the team, participating, engaging and solving some of the challenges.

Inclusive leadership involves followers and teams. It engages the hearts, minds, and wills so that resiliency is imparted into the work group. 

Morelli’s 6 Steps to Lead When Facing Challenges

  • Make personal connections
  • Build important relationships
  • Interact face to face when possible
  • Be open, transparent and authentic
  • Model integrity with the right intent
  • Act on feedback and deliver results

When a leader takes the time to connect on a personal basis with followers, it demonstrates care and concern in something more than the task at hand. The investment of time in getting to know others pays off in multiple ways, not the least of which is learning about talents and interests that may lie beneath the surface. In the realm of human resources, the term “high potential” is used to identify those who strategically merit the attention of an organization’s leaders. Talent management is not the only reason to build strategic relationships…clients, key vendors, referral partners all are worth the effort to go deeper, beyond superficial workplace conversations.

The types and frequency of interactions are important in preparing a support structure to succeed in the face of challenge. Whenever possible, open up to those with whom you are working to build strategic relationships. Become more vulnerable, let them know what concerns you have, admit when you don’t have a solution and elicit the help of others.

Getting into the habit of acting with complete integrity is helpful in setting a good example, establishing an expectation, and creating a culture of trust. When others within the organization (or strategic relationships outside it) offer constructive input, be gracious. Listen, then act on what has been shared and communicate back the outcome(s) of implementing the advised course of action.

These leadership practices will enable your organization to withstand challenges through better collaboration and increased resiliency.

Lead Me – Don’t Manage Me!

 

“People don’t want to be managed. They want to be led. Whoever heard of a world manager? World leader, yes. Educational leader. Political leader. Religious leader. Community leader. Labor leader. Business leader. They lead. They don’t manage. The carrot always wins over the stick. Ask your horse. You can lead your horse to water but you can’t manage him to drink. If you want to manage somebody, manage yourself. Do that well and you’ll be read to stop managing. And start leading.”

-Printed by United Technologies Corporation in the Wall Street Journal

One of the most heated conversations we had in the MBA program at Elon (ranked #1 part-time program in the USA) was over the value of management versus leadership. One of our courses was in organizational leadership and many of the younger students did not enjoy the finesse and nuances of the subject matter. They wanted to stay in the realm of concrete, numbers driven topics wherein there is a clear cut “right” answer. Leadership, for people who have not held positions with substantial responsibility, is challenging to describe, pursue, evaluate, and articulate. Management, on the other hand, was easier for the cohort to articulate in terms of metrics and definitions that met with consensus.

Whether in class or on the job, very few people want to be managed per se, they would prefer to be led. Managing is a process better applied to resources rather than individual people. Even in our home lives, when we are trying to get our children to do the right thing, it is incumbent upon us as parents to inspire them to make good choices. Inspiration is one of the key results of leadership.

Cynthia Stewart, writing for the Lead Change Group’s website last week, made some keen observations about the dichotomy between management and leadership:

“One specific example of what I am talking about comes to mind that illustrates this perfectly.  In fact, I was speaking with a President of a company today and she mentioned the same example.  Most of us have been part of a United Way campaign.  In the early days, these campaigns were delegated to management to run.  Typically management would take the tact of talking to their employees about the importance of being a good citizen and helping to fund helping agencies so their patrons could have a hand up (effectively trying not to appear to strong arm you into giving so that the company goals could be met.)

Then, one year things changed.  The leaders asked for employee volunteers to lead the campaigns. Everyone couldn’t wait to show up to the next new event, and attendance and giving doubled and tripled.  You saw people showing their true talents, coming alive, doing things you had no idea they could do.  The fun quotient spiked, the giving exceeded goals, employee morale improved, and the new office stories were accompanied with more laughter.   Hmmm – no management in the picture.”

Stewart’s commentary reveals a gap in thought leadership. Many Millenials are misunderstood because Boomers think that they are too revolutionary and almost insubordinate. That’s because many in management are not leading them; they are trying to only tell them what to do. My experience with the younger generation is that they are in search of authentic leadership.

How can we individually and collectively make a commitment to leadership?