Category Archives: Leadership

How Do You Correct Inappropriate Behavior of a Productive Employee? Four Points

Situation: A CEO has a key manager who frequently uses inappropriate language and demonstrates lack of care towards co-workers. This individual is smart, has great drive, and does the work formerly handled by two employees. How do you correct inappropriate behavior of a productive employee?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Create a firm company policy on swearing and the use of inappropriate or abusive language.
    • Each time any individual swears or uses inappropriate language, they must put $1 into a pot. Anybody can call anyone else for swearing and the one who’s caught has to pay. The money in the pot goes to buy pizza on Fridays.
    • This is a creative and even entertaining solution and should resolve the problem in a short time.
  • Sit down with this individual and go over their positives and value. Besides these, emphasize which behaviors are unacceptable.
    • Explain the legal implications and consequences for the individual and company. Provide goals and set objectives.
  • Send this individual alone or with a team to a Pryor Customer Relationship seminar, for example the seminar “How to Communicate with Tact and Professionalism”.
    • Let the instructor know in advance that you want to be sure that certain behaviors are covered during the seminar.
    • This may provide the individual the incentive to behave like an owner of the business.
  • Make it clear who’s in charge, and at whose discretion the individual remains with the company.

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How Do You Use Focus and Communication to Strengthen Your Leadership? Three Points

Situation: A CEO is curious about how others have strengthened their leadership skills over time. From discussions with other CEOs she has gathered that focus and communication are important strengths to build. How do you use focus and communication to strengthen your leadership?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Often the process is more important than the actual decision because the process frames how the decision is made.
    • If the process is open to new ideas and approaches, and these are welcomed in the discussion, this can generate both more creative decisions as well as increased buy-in to the ultimate decision being made.
  • One CEO finds that his company is always focused on the outcome. However, he has grown to understand that it is important to frame the decision-making process around your values.
    • Value-based decisions not only generate increased buy-in by all involved, but they strengthen the sense of company culture and values.
  • Another CEO was faced with a personnel issue. She found that by analyzing past decision-making processes company leadership was able to identify a previously unrecognized factors and processes that fed the personnel issue.
    • By addressing the process, the company was able to resolve the issue to the satisfaction of all.

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How Do You Focus Your Team? Six Points

Situation: Several CEOs asked how others have had success improving company performance and is interested in how they focused their teams. How do you focus your team?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Important tasks for any company are to validate the value proposition, technology, target customer, and the rate of market expansion, and minimize risk and liability. This should be a regular company exercise – not a one-time event.
  • Assuming that a company has goals and people who can align with and achieve them, a company needs a vision – the broader strategic picture of where they are going. Often some of the best ideas come from line staff who are enabled by their company’s culture.
  • It is critical that companies are able to quickly identify problems and have systems in place to drive problem resolution. The minigame technique is very useful in these cases.
  • Companies should have a plan for transitioning employees into new roles as the company grows. The key is clear identification of the individual’s role within the company, and how that role compliments achievement of company objectives.
  • If a company wants to grow sales from, say, $20 to $60 million, it will need a professional sales leader. In addition, growth may require a change in company culture from engineering and development centric to sales centric.
  • A significant challenge is determining how to define corporate success. Much depends upon the questions asked. The Great Game of Business by Jack Stack provides guidelines and tools for assessing options. Anyone starting or growing a business should look at this book.

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How Do You Position a Professional Services Company for Growth? Part 2 Three Suggestions

Situation: The CEO of a professional services company wants to position her company for growth. What suggestions do others have to assist her? How do you position a professional services company for growth?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Make Time for Organizational Development – Attention to organizational development and enhancing the organization so that it meets the needs of employees can yield significant dividends in terms of company performance and adaptability. When employees’ needs are met, they are motivated to extend their efforts both in performing their current roles and to develop new ideas that will benefit the company. Be sure to recognize these efforts.
  • Temp to Perm (Even for Hiring Leaders) – As the economy recovers there remains a high level of uncertainty as to how robust the recovery will be. In light of this, additions to staff may be approached cautiously. The temp to perm route offers a way for a new individual and the company to get to know one another and to test mutual fit before making a full commitment to permanent employment. This can be true even for positions of significant leadership within the company.
  • Meet the Unrecognized Needs of Customers – The top of the Customer Pyramid is meeting unrecognized needs – needs which the customer may not even know that they have. In a world of increased competition and rapid change, finding ways to understand, anticipate and meet these unrecognized needs of customers yields a significant competitive advantage. Brainstorm with your sales, marketing and customer service teams to identify unrecognized needs of past customers. Use the results to identify unrecognized needs of current and new customers.

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How Do You Position a Professional Services Company for Growth? Part 1 Three Suggestions

Situation: The CEO of a professional services company wants to position her company for growth. What suggestions do others have to assist her? How do you position a professional services company for growth?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Focus on Dynamic Processes – The world and business environments are changing rapidly in response to economic, business and political stimuli. This places a premium on developing dynamic and highly adaptable business models. Companies that develop these models will have a much more sustainable competitive advantage than those who do not.
  • Leverage Information – Along with rapid change comes a great deal of new information. Companies with a sustainable competitive advantage will leverage information from both traditional and new sources to develop new opportunities and new applications for older but still valuable technologies and processes.
  • Be Sensitive to Cultural Issues – The expanding global economy means that customers, suppliers and employees will come from all over the world, bringing with them different cultural backgrounds. By adapting business models to address and respond to varying cultural needs – by celebrating differences instead of being inhibited by them – a company enhances its competitive advantage.

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How Do You Make the Most of People, Processes and Technology? Four Points

Situation: A CEO wants to improve efficiency and use of people, processes and technology. What have others learned from their experience? How do you make the most of people, processes and technology?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • One CEO gained new insights on the importance of details within the decision making process. She learned that details have had a much greater impact on the outcome of the decision process than her company had previously appreciated.
  • Cost reductions may cost more than they save. If the longer-term vision for the company isn’t considered a company may make short-term decisions that actually cost more in the long-term.
  • Difficult times equal opportunity. The key is keeping your head together and approaching challenges objectively, with an eye to long-term consequences of the choices made.
  • Always maintain balance in both choices, decisions and execution. There will be surprises along the path. Open eyes and balanced consideration will help to address these surprises constructively.

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How Do You Use Metrics to Focus Your Team? Three Points

Situation: A CEO wants to improve company performance and is interested in how others use metrics to focus their teams. How do you use metrics to focus your team?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Engage your employees in the development of metrics.
    • The team members are close to the customer and the company’s key vendors. What makes sense to measure? What metrics are tied both to performance and a healthy or supportive but competitive environment? What would create adverse conflicts within the business or with either customers or vendors?
  • Metrics need to be meaningful and applicable.
    • They have to directly pertain to day-to-day, week-to-week and month-to-month objectives and performance.
  • Factor in personal issues.
    • Everyone doesn’t need to have the same metrics – instead formulate metrics that are pertinent to the different roles and individuals within the company.

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How Do You Downsize Intelligently? Three Perspectives

Situation: A company has run into a rough patch and needs to cut costs. The CEO is considering a number of alternatives, but wants to hear input from other CEOs on how they have faced this challenge. How do you downsize intelligently?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The key to intelligent downsizing is to take a different perspective. Look at the needs of the business in terms of a 3-5 year plan, not just at what is needed to do to survive today.
    • What key talent will be needed 3 years out? What key roles will need to be filled? Who is on-board today who will be needed in 3 years? How does this affect the decision on where to trim? Are there other options to simply laying off staff?
    • Answering these questions helps to consider options with a rational long-term view.
  • Establish a new paradigm. What do you want the business to become?
    • Is it the same as, complimentary to, or completely different from the current business model? Once the paradigm is developed plan personnel needs in line with this paradigm.
  • Look at all resources proactively.
    • For example, if you are considering moving your offices to a smaller space, look at your vision for the company 3 years out.
    • It may be more sensible to stay where you are and negotiate a new lease with your landlord that is more favorable short-term than paying for multiple moves.

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What are Attributes of a Highly Effective Sales Force? Three Points

Situation: A CEO wants to improve the effectiveness of her sales team. As CEO of a young company she faces a choice between using contract versus direct sales reps. She seeks the advice of other CEOs as to what has worked most effectively with their sales approaches and teams. What are the attributes of a highly effective sales force?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Spend time vetting either contract or your own sales reps:
    • The choice of contract vs. direct sales reps is driven by market conditions and end desires.
    • Utilizing a contract rep is an effective way to gain entrée into the customer. Even though they are 1099s, they must be managed as though they were company employees.
    • It is important to spend considerable time vetting candidates for direct sales. Attitude, desire and commitment are much more important than experience and technical prowess. Spend as much time as necessary to make sure that you are hiring the best people. Test them, check references from employers and customers alike. Leave no stone unturned.
  • Measure:
    • What gets measured get done. Determine what behaviors are necessary for success and develop metrics for these behaviors. This enables you to manage success.
    • For one CEO, the biggest challenge is selling above the gap – selling high and wide within the customer organization. Most reps concentrate their efforts on a few people in the client organization – generally low and mid-level people – and fail to establish relationships with senior management.
    • It is important, and rare, to have those senior relationships. Getting them requires deep understanding of the customer’s business combined with confidence, determination and persistence.
  • Respect and manage reps:
    • Many companies treat sales as a “necessary evil,” setting up an antagonistic and ineffective relationship between sales and other departments. This causes the salespeople to hide much of their information or spend time “scamming the system” rather than working as part of the team.
    • The best companies treat sales as a revenue engine and encourage, value and respect input from the salespeople. This encourages sales to be part of the larger team.
    • There can be challenges transitioning people from a pure product sale to a long term service business relationship – a transition from Hunter and Farmer. Most believe that these are two very different personalities. It may be better having hunters who bring in the business and then transition the customer relationship to account managers to maintain long-term relationships.
    • It may be necessary to design two compensation plans to incentivize the desired behavior of each group.

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How Do You Navigate Communication Style Differences? Four Points

Situation: A CEO seeks advice on how other CEOs work with employees who have significantly different styles of communication. He suspects that this is a source of conflict between employees and wants to reduce that conflict. How do you encourage employees to be more open and receptive to other employees? How do you navigate communication style differences?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Conduct regular personnel reviews. In reviews work with the individual to develop personal growth plans in addition to professional development objectives.
    • It may be necessary to create enough stress in an interview situation to prompt the real personality to show.
    • Recognize that sometimes an employee who meets professional goals can still be a poor fit for the team. This can impact other, productive team members. Don’t be afraid to fire a bad hire.
  • How much can you expect to mold another person’s communication style?
    • There must be personal motivation to change – the impetus must come from within.
    • To prompt the conversation acknowledge that something isn’t working – or isn’t as effective as expected.
    • Communicate to the individual that the consequences of not changing are potentially worse than the effort to change.
  • Breed adaptive communication skills throughout the organization.
    • Use an assessment tool to start the conversation and align tasks.
    • In dealing with an individual who is confrontational, probe to determine what is motivating the individual’s question or position on an issue. Does the individual genuinely need additional information or are they using a wall of questions as a roadblock to moving on?
    • Work with the individual to organize their answers or input into a plan.
  • Communicate values and goals as they pertain to individual contribution and appreciate the impact of different departments’ actions on each other.
    • Be flexible – some people need more definition and reinforcement than others.
    • Understand that changes and transitions in the company’s focus can shift roles.
    • Review each individual’s role periodically to insure that it fits the company vision. This can increase the individual’s understanding of how they are contributing to moving the company forward.

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