Category Archives: Leadership

What is Agile Leadership? Five Perspectives

Situation: The environment continually becomes more complex for leaders. Not only must leaders perform classic roles, but they must also deal with increased uncertainty and change. How do you build a new leadership paradigm to address ongoing change? What is agile leadership?

Advice from the CEOs:

There are three challenges facing leaders today.

  • First, given that change is constant, what does the next likely settling point look like in your environment? How is this different from past settling points? Everything starts with your people. Once you determine the likely next settling point, conduct a capability inventory with your leadership team to determine whether you have the right people to handle the new reality. Can current members be trained to take on the new challenges? Do you need to add new talent and capacity?
  • Second, are your processes limiting or enhancing your flexibility? Do current processes encourage adaptability, cross-functional connection and communication. If not how will you change them? Deconstruct and reconstruct all critical processes to make them more agile, responsive and adaptable to current and future needs.
  • Third, how are you linking desired outcomes with rewards and incentives within the company? Growth in the past may have focused on building up infrastructure – adding more people and capacity. Now, knowledge management focused on tools and processes is required to make people more effective. Individualized assessment and reward structures have become an obstacle and have to be shifted to emphasize the importance of collaborative versus individualized performance.
  • Agile leadership and management focuses on reaching outside the boundaries of your own company. To deliver differentiated value suppliers and customers must be included in the exercise. It is necessary to reinvent engagement with suppliers and customers so that they are part of the collaboration.
  • The agile paradigm focuses on the unspoken needs of suppliers and customers. This takes the conversation beyond the transaction and includes quality, on-time delivery, and other differentiators that are mutually important. This can include competing for your competitors’ suppliers by being a better customer!

Thanks to Jorge Titinger, CEO of Verigy, Inc. for his contribution to this article.

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How Do You Maintain The Focus on Your Plan? Five Suggestions

Situation: A company has both an annual and a 5-year plan. These are discussed both in company meetings and in 1-on-1s with managers. The CEO fears that she’s starting to sound like a broken record. How do you maintain the focus on your plan?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Break the 1-year plan into quarterly objectives. Don’t just divide annual objectives by four. Vary objectives for each quarter so that the total sums to the annual plan.
  • Create a series of milestones to guide the plan. Celebrate the achievement of each milestone. This helps to maintain momentum and keeps everyone engaged.
  • Establish metrics to assess progress against both the milestones and the plan. These will enable you to evaluate progress against the overall plan and the degree to which you are ahead of or behind the plan. It will also help to evaluate whether underperformance is a matter of externalities or a flaw in the plan itself. If there is a flaw, fix it as soon as you find it.
  • Evaluate your “worst case” scenario so that you know the implications. This enables you to compare current performance against “worst case.”
  • In his book “Good to Great,” Jim Collins found that an important difference between G2G and non-G2G companies was the ability of the G2G companies to maintain faith and to slowly build momentum regardless of the apparent obstacles faced. This allowed good companies to establish the momentum that eventually made them great. Non-G2G companies continually changed direction and never built sustainable momentum.

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How Do You Design an Effective Sales Model? Eight Points

Situation: A company is in the process of building an inside sales program to complement their outside sales capabilities. What are the most important strategic components of an effective sales model? How do you design an effective sales model?

Advice:

  • In a marketing/sales system, marketing is the precursor to everything. If you can’t effectively deliver your message to your audience, you have no lead generation machine and sales must resort to cold calls. In today’s online world, two of the key components of a marketing system are email and online campaigns, combined with tools for rapid and responsive follow-up.
  • In an effective system, the inside sales team has primarily responsibility for following up on leads. This team’s role is to qualify the prospect responding to the company’s marketing outreach. Is this person the right buyer for their company? If not, who is?
  • A strong rapport between inside and outside sales is important. If this isn’t present opportunities are being lost.
  • Has the company allocated an adequate budget to fund an outreach strategy? If not, when will they?
  • The most critical aspect of the inside sales rep’s role is to be an effective filter in collecting and passing data on to the field sales force.
  • Many inside sales reps fail because their performance is measured on the number of calls made, not on the quality of the calls, information gathered, closure rates, and the value of closures. Effective incentives for inside sales are based on the quality of data gathered and on the success of field sales in closing the leads they receive from inside sales.
  • The effectiveness of outside sales comes down to choosing the right people. The 80/20 rule applies here. Typically, one out of five field sales reps hired is truly successful, one is marginal, and three don’t make it. Hire based on past experience selling to the company’s target customer groups, subjective elements aligned with company culture, and careful reference checks.
  • For the CEO, attracting and hiring good people this individual’s most important role. 

Thanks to Sanjay Sathe, President & CEO, RiseSmart.com for his contribution to this article.

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How Do You Rebuild Company Morale? Six Suggestions

Situation: A CEO has regular lunches with staff to foster communications and sharing of information. In recent months, few employees have been attending these lunches. Also, she has noticed a negative tone beginning to pervade the office, though the situation seems to improve when the CEO is present. How would you address this situation? How do you rebuild company morale?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The immediate priority is to correctly diagnose the problem. Is this a question of the CEO’s energy or the team’s awareness of plans for the company? Or is there something else going on of which the CEO is unaware?
  • Meet with employees. Have open and frank discussions with them about the future of the company.
  • Meet with the most valuable employees first. Share hopes and vision for the business. Express appreciation for their contributions and discuss plans for their continued growth. Next, ask open-ended questions about the company and seek their input on how to improve it. Listen to what they have to say.
  • Next are borderline employees. Again, share the vision and appreciate their past and current contributions, but be honest about expectations for performance. Then ask the same open-ended questions that you asked the first group and listen.
  • For underperforming employees, again appreciate past and current contributions, but be clear that unless they substantially improve performance, future employment isn’t guaranteed. Ask the same open-ended questions that you asked the other groups and listen.
  • Be patient. Don’t try to develop all the answers immediately. Listen and learn what drives employees – particularly keepers. Involve them in developing programs to drive the future.

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How Do You Maintain Focus on Your Core While Growing? Six Considerations

Situation: A company has established a strong core business and it is time to diversity. The most promising opportunity for growth is complimentary to but a different business model from the company’s core. What are best practices for maintaining focus on the core business while developing a new opportunity? How do you maintain focus on your core while growing?

Advice:

  • Most importantly, be emotionally and strategically ready to make the bet and commit to action. In doing so you must “know thyself.” Specifically, take a long look to determine whether you tend to overanalyze or are too quick to pull the trigger. Understanding your tendencies will help in the steps below. 
  • Establish the prerequisites for pulling the trigger. This means determining:  the level of operating stability for the core business that will allow you to split focus; the level of financial stability and predictability that will support both core and expansion efforts; and the level of organizational and process stability that will allow you to take on the new opportunity.
  • Understand and define the differences between the old game and the new game. What are the financials of the growth opportunity? How do they differ from your core business? Are there conflicts that must be resolved? Can you launch an innovative solution to differentiate the new offering?
  • Gather enough understanding of market need that will satisfy you with the new opportunity so as to be able to address it effectively.
  • Establish a sound execution strategy and timeframe for launching the new business. Some of your decisions will be wrong. You need the resources to tolerate a learning curve while running fast towards your goal.
  • Draft a leadership development plan for both the core and new business before you start. This plan must define the skill sets and growth needs of each business.

Thanks to Clark Avery for his contribution to this article.

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What are Best Methods to Develop Your Staff? Three Thoughts

Situation:  A CEO wants to build her team, identify leaders within the company, and develop managers. How have others done this? What are best methods to develop your staff?

Advice of the CEOs:

  • A valuable resource is “First Break All the Rules” by Marcus Buckingham. Among Buckingham’s findings are that great leaders are different from great managers. Good leaders are outgoing and goal-oriented whereas good managers are people-oriented. Expecting good leaders to be good managers and vice versa is not effective. Only the exceptional individual exhibits both sets of talents. The traditional business structure assumes that talented people will want to “move up” the organizational chart. The reality is that some people are very good at a particular level of responsibility, and are happiest with this responsibility.
  • How do to enhance your team’s leadership and management capabilities? Evaluate your team for candidates who possess the qualities of leadership or management. Tailor your training to enhance the natural strengths of your candidates. Draft agreed upon written responsibilities and performance objectives with each of your candidates. Regularly follow up and provide feedback. Establish trial projects for new candidates that will allow them to experience additional responsibility, and allow you to see how well they perform. Make small steps at first. If the individual demonstrates talent, make successive steps more challenging.
  • Look at your organizational chart. Does it provide room for both leaders and managers? Does it provide room for the skilled role player who thrives in a particular role? If not, how will you fix it?

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How Do You Effectively Manage Your To-Do List? Five Recommendations

Situation: A company recently downsized. The CEO and sales staff are overburdened by administrative and business development tasks. What’s the best way to bring to add resources to support sales and infrastructure? How do you effectively manage your to-do list?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Look at what hats you and others are wearing. Wear the hats that fit best and take off the others. If an activity is not core to company success, off-load it. For example: look at your bookkeeping, shipping and receiving, records and basic correspondence. These are necessary, but don’t generate revenue.
  • If your core businesses are sales and service, is one more profitable than the other? Can you outsource pieces of the less profitable activity short-term?
  • Where do you want to be personally in the next two years? On what roles do you want to focus? Build a plan to transition yourself into these roles. The E Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber is a quick read that outlines the process.
  • You may not need to bring in a high level operations manager. Consider hiring an office manager to help organize both you and your business development staff. For a smaller operation, this person can take care of phones, bookkeeping, shipping and receiving and routine correspondence. This will allow executive staff and sales to focus on growing and servicing customer demand.
  • During the summer months hire high school or college summer interns. They provide an inexpensive source of labor, high levels of energy and creativity, and are eager for work experience. Some of these individuals may become future employees.

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How Do You Respond to Market Uncertainty? Five Suggestions

Situation: Many industries face uncertainty due to potential changes in reimbursement and shifts in regulation. How does this impact strategy for an early stage company or the introduction of a new product? How do you respond to market uncertainty?

Advice of the CEOs:

  • First and foremost put a premium on focus, particularly in markets dominated by large incumbents. Past practice we would have blanketed the market to maximize early market share. Current practice focuses on being much more selective in terms of where to compete and putting more effort into targeting geographies.
  • This focus is accompanied by more caution and control of spending. Only hire a new sales rep, for example, if there is assurance that there is a significant customer base in the market that the new rep will serve.
  • Similarly, be more cautious in capital equipment decisions. In parallel, if an employee leaves do not automatically replace that individual unless there is market potential in the market served by that employee.
  • In terms of price planning, where in the past it was possible to count on annual price increases, plan for the potential of prices decreasing over time to reflect new pressure on reimbursement and cost containment. As another example, if there is a pending tax change on the products produced assume that this will reduce margins where in the past the additional cost might have been passed it on to the buyer. Reduced margins will also impact new product selection and investment strategy.
  • The big change in long-range planning is that many companies are focused on slow, sustainable growth – maintaining both gross and net margins and profitability. This is a major change from several years ago when the focus was on maximizing rapid market penetration for new products. Focus on being self-sufficient financially and thus avoid having to rely upon future fund-raising rounds.

Our thanks to Ken Purfey for his contribution to this article.

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How do you Maintain Morale in the Face of Uncertainty? Four Guidelines

Situation: Industry is changing and the CEO must adapt both the structure and focus of her company. Adaptation will include a 10% layoff of staff not aligned with the new focus. It is critical that this adaptation be executed in a way that is not disruptive to the remaining employees. How do you maintain morale in the face of uncertainty?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Ask for employee input as to industry trends and what possible directions for the company. Employees are closer to the customer than the CEO and have valuable insights. Gather input in small group meetings to prompt discussion and ideas. Make this a research talk. Leverage the “wisdom of the crowd”.
  • Research other industries that have undergone similar changes. What strategies did the most successful companies pursue? Could these work for you? When faced with protracted uncertainty, what did others do while waiting for market clarity?
  • Conduct the layoffs in one day. Monday is better than Friday. The benefit of a Monday layoff is that you will see everyone on Tuesday and the team can continue to address their concerns. Do it early in the day. Give final checks the day of the layoff. Provide instructions for filing for unemployment assistance via the Internet. Hold a company meeting for remaining staff immediately after the layoffs. Focus your message on the future and positioning the company for the future. Prepare a brief summary of your message. Distribute it as a take-away from the meeting.
  • Be prepared for a grieving process following the layoff. Consider utilizing an expert on grieving to overview the process. Following the company meeting, have key employees conduct smaller group meetings to lead discussions and allay fears about the layoff. Fully prep these individuals about the situation with written responses to likely questions.

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Are Your Employees Living the Company’s Values? Four Recommendations

Advice from the CEOs:

Situation: An important tenet of a company’s CEO is that all decisions are made consistent with company values. However, some of the managers are asking for guidance on how to do this. How have other CEOs encouraged managers to make decisions consistent with company values? Are your employees living the company’s values?

  • Create cross-functional teams to address initiatives, solve problems and develop new processes consistent with company values. This builds understanding other departments’ perspectives and awareness of the impact of decisions on the company as a whole. It builds awareness of company values and fights unhealthy competition between functions.
  • One company created an employee task force to encourage living company values. Their solution includes: reviewing the company’s values and revising how they are stated for easy learning; involving employees in discussions of company values and how they are applied in their departments; creating a cross-functional employee task force to address inter-departmental conflicts and to suggest solutions in line with company values; and expecting everyone to know the company’s values, and occasionally testing them on these.
  • Build a vision of what the company looks like as an expression of its values. Make living this vision part of the CEO’s role. Include living and demonstrating company values as a formal responsibility of managers. Reward initiatives that transform company values into company efforts. Regularly review and discuss with your mangers their execution of company values.
  • Create “SMART” objectives around implementation of company values. Hold individuals accountable for achieving their objectives.

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