Tag Archives: Leadership

Avoid Deskitis

Business owners are a very interesting breed. In the early days, when they are most entrepreneurial, most are willing to do “whatever it takes” in order to get the business off the ground and well established. The average executive at this point in the life cycle of a small business wears every hat and can predictably be found doing dirty jobs because there’s no one else there to do them. As the business experiences a little success, hirings are made and there are others to whom some tasks can be delegated. At this point, the owner may still take on tough assignments like outside sales, negotiating contracts with vendors and customers, and handling sticky customer service situations. If the business grows beyond the first 5-10 employees, some specialization of labor begins to occur and the owner should be smartly stepping away from  business disciplines that don’t match what I’ve heard referred to as “motivated ability.” 

However, it is very common that a business will hit a plateau at some point in it’s first several years. When this occurs–whether due to changes in the competitive environment, or simply apathy on the part of the original 5-10 employees, it is time to do something that hasn’t been done in a while. One must roll up his sleeves and get the job done. What job? Spending time outside the office, talking to customers, suppliers, even competitors in an effort to determine what is working and what is not. Why don’t most executives do this? It can be attributed to an acute case of deskitis.

desk chainIn case you are not familiar with the term, deskitis is an affliction in which the infected feels attached to his desk at work and that prolonged contact with the desk will resolve all problems known to man. You chuckle only because you’ve encountered people who suffer from the malady described and it seems to you to be as trivial as the common cold. Unfortunately, this is a very severe disease and must be treated with the utmost care and concern.

Who are the prime sufferers from this affliction?

  • Billable hour professionals who think that billable work is more important than community involvement, networking, and relationship maintenance.
  • Owners of a trade business (one that relies on a specific skill that is often learned through apprenticeship)
  • Any executive in a small business whose base compensation is over six figures per year

What can be done to counteract onset of the condition known as deskitis?

  1. Leave the office, damn it!
  2. Visit someone who is important to the success of your business–
    • a referral source
    • a client
    • a fellow board member of a non-profit
    • your attorney, CPA, banker (as long as they are not going to charge you for the appointment)
    • your spouse
    • an association executive in your industry
    • someone who is a good networker
    • the local chamber of commerce executive
    • your friendliest competitor
    • a supplier
  3. Ask the other person what they think about the direction of your niche market.
  4. Take notes!
  5. Ask many follow-up questions; you do not know it all!
  6. Buy their lunch, coffee, etc; thank them; ask what you can do for them in return.
  7. Go to your vehicle and review your notes.
  8. Identify what new questions come to mind, what nuggets you’ve found, and actions you think you should take.
  9. Review your lists the very next day with your leadership team.
  10. Reinvent your business continually!

Hope that these suggestions are helpful to you. As a business development mentor, organizational development consultant, and management succession resource, I observe deskitis more often than I should. Don’t become a statistic–become vigilant instead!

 

Succeeding As the Little Fish in the Big Pond

When you set out to start a business, you can’t possible anticipate all of the challenges that will be faced. Many, many days you will find that something totally unexpected can come into your world and dominate your thoughts, perhaps even threatening your livelihood. However, most every entrepreneur knows that they start out the underdog. It is your job number one to figure out how to compete with the market leaders, outfoxing them when you can to carve out enough market share to pay your employees and pursue your dream.

First to market can be a hard advantage to overcome. Note – not impossible – just hard. 

little fish quote The Office imageWriting for Inc.com recently, Mayra Jimenez described how she and her husband found a way to compete with “the big dogs” in their industry. Her designer swimwear business, The Orchid Boutique, has grown nicely into a multimillion-dollar business. Here are some of the insights she shared earlier this week:

Separate “professional” from “robotic”

Larger companies tend to present themselves in a rather corporate manner. Their frosty approach gives you a chance to charm the market with your personalized company story. Clients want to feel they are shopping with a company that cherry-picks their products or personalizes their services in some manner. Casualness and customization are not your enemy! Take advantage of the fact that your ideas don’t have to go through a string of departments to get approved, and make it as personal as you can.

React quickly to industry trends

The most important advantage that you have over your competitor is your ability to react quickly. The bureaucracy of large teams and approval processes are tedious and time-consuming. While your senior competitor moves like an elephant, you’re a vibrant cheetah running rapidly towards your next milestone. Stay abreast of innovative strategies and implement them. This is especially important in ecommerce, as blogging, videos, and social media have changed the rules of converting browsers to customers.

Push the boundaries of your industry playbook

Let yourself think outside the box. Way outside the box. Be bold. As long as the end goal is increasing profit or branding, go for those ideas that sound crazy. Monitor the results closely, and if it’s not working, change it, cheetah.

Consider Mayra’s recommendations in your own business. How can you improve the customer experience to be more friendly, less obtrusive, an easier to navigate? When technology or another factor causes your market segment to shift, how can you respond nimbly and be on the cutting edge of innovation (though not out in front, as that often carries unnecessary risks)? All too often, established companies suffer from the “TTWWADIH” syndrome – that’s the way we’ve always done it here. Since you don’t have as much history, use it to your advantage and brainstorm new approaches that make sense for you, your team, and your target customer- without the constraints of worry about whether it will seem outlandish! 

Long ago, I heard the saying, “when small, act big; when big, act small.” The adage is just as wise today as it was when I first heard it. Think about how you can copy the things you like about your competitor but outmaneuver them in a subtle myriad of ways.

Private Company M&A Lacking Objectivity

One of the area of my consulting practice that is most enjoyable is advising clients on merger and acquisition issues. While very few of my clients actually do a deal, more and more are considering inorganic growth as a means to address both the economies of scale that come from combining back office solutions as well as what are perceived as historic opportunities to perform “roll-ups” in a variety of vertical niches. Understand that my clientele is exclusively privately held businesses whose annual revenues are under $50 million. In fact, in the $1 – $50 million range, they are usually on the lower end when we start working together. 

When I have the opportunity to become involved in a strategy conversation about the potential benefits of a transaction, then, it is not with multinational, public companies who are measuring cross border opportunities as a defensive mechanism to preserve market share against more aggressive competition. These facts notwithstanding, I enjoy reading research performed on the larger company front because many of the issues studied trickle down into my part of the market. This past fall, the global law firm Eversheds published a study, The M&A Blueprint: Inception to Integration, wherein the authors claim that deal teams need a more holistic approach and stronger connections between the planning, completion and post-deal integration phases. Amen!

The universe of participants in the study included 400+ large businesses who had pursued cross-border deals in the period 2009-2012. Many respondents felt that the inability to envision the end from the beginning (think through integration and beyond during due diligence) was the single greatest cause of unrealized potential. 

Robin Johnson, M&A partner at Eversheds, said: (bolding of phrases added)

The current economic climate has made the business of doing deals much tougher, with the research highlighting an acute awareness of risk in the process…Our research shows that the overriding factor contributing to the success of a cross-border deal, is the presence of a core team providing the ‘connective tissue’ to link all the phases together, taking the deal from the inception stage through to post-completion integration. Businesses need to start joining the dots between the different stages of the deal cycle to move the focus from just simply ‘doing the deal’ to thinking about life for the business beyond the deal.

The Eversheds report recommends a methodology that rolls out as follows:

1. Inception

  • From the start – 38% of deals where the in-house team were brought in too late suffered problems during integration.
  • Early warning – 59% of all respondents said they had spotted potentially damaging issues early enough to advise that a deal should not go ahead.

2. Planning and due diligence.

  • The crucial stage – 43% said the most common cause of the failure to realise value in transactions was down to avoidable errors in the due diligence and planning phase.
  • Joined up thinking – 70% felt that linking due diligence and integration planning together would help to improve the deal process.

3. Deal execution

  • What matters most – The reasons General Counsel would advise not to proceed with a deal were illegality/regulatory (45%), e.g. bribery, competition and antitrust, and commercial concerns (45%), e.g. price and valuation, litigation risk, integration costs.

4. Integration

  • A false saving? – 83% did not use external lawyers to a large degree during integration, although they were acknowledged to add value. The main reason for this was cost.
  • Avoid mismatches – 26% felt that the failure to realise value in a recent cross-border M&A deal was due to a misalignment between legal dealmakers and the day to day business team.

Recognizing that Eversheds is acutely focused on the implications for the legal field, they found that involvement of external transaction advisory experts earlier in the deal process yielded better results. Applying this thought to and the process outlined above to my own experience, I strongly recommend that cultural due diligence be brought front and center early on. Internal teams are not usually objective enough to evaluate their own culture, let alone that of another entity. When we delve into matters of governance, decision making, core values in action, executive team personalities and styles, we are able to more accurately predict what may happen in integration and beyond. If red flags go up, back away!

 

 

Tremendous Entrepreneurial Success From Reading

 

Charlie “Tremendous” Jones, who is well-known in the insurance industry as a motivational speaker, believes in helping people improve themselves. His conviction for years has been that one must take responsibility for their own success. The quote below illustrates how he thinks one can best accomplish success in life:

You are the same today you’ll be in five years except for two things: the people you meet and the books you read. In every turning point and crisis of my life, there’s always been a book that helped me think and see more clearly and keep laughing and keep looking up and keep my mouth shut. I would never tell anybody I ever had a problem, so everybody always thought I was on top of the world, and yet I was just like everybody else with problems coming out of my ears. Now, when people come to my office, they come to talk to me. Instead of conversing with me like they think they are going to do, I get them reading. I pick out some great books and have each person read three or four sentences. I just received another email from a person recounting how his life was changed by learning the power of reading together–rather than talking.

As you may have read in a previous blog or Twitter post, I follow Under30CEO.com. Matt Wilson, one of the co-founders, posted on the Under 30 blog today some insights he gained from reading books this year. A few excerpts are provided below, with Wilson’s comments.

  1. Who’s Got Your Back by Keith Ferrazzi  – Relationships should be about quality over quantity.  The goal should not be to “know everyone”.  Build a small group of people that want to go out and conquer the world together.
  2. Boomerang by Michael Lewis – Base your economy, your company, and your income on creating real value for others.
  3. Small Loans Big Dreams by Alex Counts – Entrepreneurship knows no borders or social classes.  Coupled with education and accountability, access to capital can create sustainable micro-businesses.
  4. 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene – “Disdain things you cannot have: Ignoring them is the best revenge.”
  5. Startup Nation by Dan Senor and Saul Singer –  “Immigrants are not averse to start from scratch. They are by definition risk-takers. A nation of immigrants is a nation of entrepreneurs.”
  6. The Education of Millionaires by Michael Ellsberg – “The biggest thing you won’t learn in college is how to succeed professionally.”
  7. Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie –  It is truly possible to build a business both rich in profit and in social good.
  8. The Greatest Salesman In the World by Og Mandino –  “You were not created for a life of idleness.”
  9. Iceland, India, Interstate by Colin Wright – Go out there and LIVE.  Life is short, take advantage of it, and when you get a crazy idea–go for it.
  10. The Art of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau – “If something is worth doing, you might as well do it all the way–so I’ve added ‘radical goalsetting’ to my own unconventional life planning.”
  11. Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh – There will never be another 2013.  When Tony sold his first venture to Microsoft, he said there would never be another 1999, and went to work on his next act, passing up millions of guaranteed dollars if he had simply stayed with the company and let his shares vest… All to chase his passion.
  12. The 4 Hour Chef by Tim Ferriss – Whatever you want to do in life, think about how to hack the system, so you can compete with only the best.

Matt’s list was 17 items long. Since there are 12 months in the year, I condensed it to 12 books and corresponding lessons to be learned and applied. Hope you find a nugget to help now and a book to read later. May you be better in five years for having applied yourself to reading!

 

Create a Stronger Brand Through Research and Leadership

As an adviser to SMBs, we frequently are in the role of addressing branding issues in an organization either looking to jump start growth or figure out how to combine forces with a merger partner. In any such scenario, the effort to rebrand is a challenge. To take a known corporate identity and recast it in the minds of a target audience requires research data, creativity, and commitment.

Overture NetworksOverture Networks in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina merged with another competitor, who happened to be located in the same town. Both Overture and Hatteras Networks competed in the telecommunications equipment sector. After the merger, the new company had a broader product line, bigger sales distribution channel, and deeper expertise. Mark Durrett, Overture’s marketing director, and Alicia Smith, the communications director, shared seven lessons from their rebranding experience via the Marketing Profs website this morning:

1. Executive buy-in is critical

Our executive team recognized that our rebranding project had the power to help grow the business and change buying behavior. With the CEO’s support, every executive leader, a member of our board of directors, and other company leaders became involved. Vested in the project’s success and expecting measurable results, they all cleared their calendars to participate.

2. Set internal and external goals

The merger brought together two companies with complementary products, but different operating cultures. By marrying the objectives of our rebranding work with the company’s strategic business and growth goals, we helped ensure that everything we did drove business value and focused on growing the bottom line. We learned to be realistic with our timing, knowing that ships don’t turn on a dime, and gave ourselves time to define and then “live” our new brand.

3. Research can inform and guide

There’s tremendous power in asking questions—and in listening. Diving deep, we asked everyone—customers, analysts, internal stakeholders—what they thought we did, how we did it, how we could do it better (or different or easier or with more impact), what they wish we did, how they prefer to work with… you get the idea. After we created a safe forum to receive candid, useful responses, the input poured in. In any such exercise, you must be prepared to get quality feedback; you must listen carefully, evaluate honestly, and decide what really matters.

4. Collaboration (and outside experts) can bring you together

A valued and trusted partner will use your research, extract ideas from the entire team, and empower key leadership to make quality decisions. And just because you’ve expanded the circle of collaboration doesn’t mean you make decisions by committee. With everyone invested (and involved) in the process, our leadership made decisions that the other collaborators readily accepted.

5. Establish a foundation, then build on it

Before beginning any creative exercise—from your new logo to a datasheet—your team needs to have agreed on all the elements that define you as a company. Armed with those foundational brand elements, you can effectively build out the language, design elements, stories, and guidelines that allow your brand to grow in the direction you desire.

6. Convert collaborators to evangelists

Executives and other leaders have a unique role in sharing your brand story with customers, analysts, employees, and key stakeholders. Ideally, they will transition from collaborators to evangelists. 

7. Keep walking the walk: You have to live the brand

Once the launch party fades, the hard work begins. Hopefully, by now, your entire company agrees that your brand consists of everything that has anything to do with your company, and that your brand goes everywhere. Your stated values must become reality. Anyone who interacts with your people or your products, receives an invoice, or sees your logo—really anyone in any circumstance—expects an experience that aligns with your brand attributes. 

 

Even if you have not undertaken a rebranding project, you and your company can benefit from the advice offered above.  Think through how you can solicit and implement feedback from customers. Incorporate their input into your messaging, involve executive management in the process, and seek to build collaboration into brand evangelism.