Category Archives: Team

How Do You Beef Up Talent to Drive the Company? Three Questions

Situation: There is no secret that hiring is more challenging now than it was two years ago. A CEO is finding it difficult to attract and bring in the right talent to achieve her growth objectives. What are others doing to bring in new talent, especially high performers who will help to bring in new accounts and work with key customers to develop new business. How do you beef up talent to drive the company?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • What has worked best for others?
    • Hired low and developed home grown talent. This means building the capacity to train new talent to meet the company’s needs.
    • This may not produce entrepreneurs like the company’s founders but can produce solid performers.
    • Some sectors are by nature risk averse. Individuals are not dollar driven as much as by security with an acceptable salary. Good candidates who are hungry for growth are more likely to be found outside of these sectors.
  • How do you hire to match the company’s objective?
    • The objective is rapid growth – the mold of the original founders who were risk-taking entrepreneurs atypical of the sector.
    • Look for candidates who are driven by growth. The right candidate will jump at the opportunity to take a $5M book of business and grow it to $10-15M in 3 years with appropriate corporate support and compensation.
  • What has been tried or investigated in the past?
    • Looked for successful smaller businesses similar to the company as possible acquisitions. The challenge was that the people running these companies liked their independence and didn’t want a boss.
    • Looked at individuals from corporate backgrounds in the same sector. Some worked, some didn’t. Frequently, these people were not entrepreneurs or builders.
    • Talk to private equity companies. Ask who they have bought or sold in this space. Gather names of drop-in CEOs and key staff who turned companies around and did well.

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How Do You Handle a Difficult Employee? Five Observations

Situation: A CEO is pondering how to handle a difficult employee. This individual has brought in good business but is never satisfied with his level of pay – though he is highly paid. While he is good at bringing in new accounts, he doesn’t make the effort to grow them over time. How do you handle a difficult employee?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • It is necessary to establish a mutual understanding with the employee that no matter the level of pay, the employee will think that it is too little. This reframes the discussion because it establishes that there is no win by paying the individual more. The unspoken part is “why bother?”
    • Given this reality, the maximum level of pay for the employee is $X.
    • Note that there is no negotiating power until once this is said it is acceptable to let the employee walk away.
  • The CEO feels indebted to this individual because he has brought the company many new accounts. He is a good hunter. But the task now is not to hunt but to cultivate and grow the opportunities that that the company has in hand.
    • The issue is that this individual doesn’t build relationships that will grow business in his accounts.
    • He has done well for the company. The company has rewarded him handsomely. However, now a different talent is needed.
  • What’s the best alternative for action, and how is this communicated to the staff?
    • Do not lay this individual off – terminate him for cause.
    • This individual has repeatedly been asked to act as a team member, but he has steadfastly refused to do this.
    • His attitude, while good for his own efforts, is bad for the company and is clearly counter to the desired culture.
    • He is better off in a situation that aligns with his talents and style.
  • Terminating this individual for cause sends a critical message to the rest of the company – culture is important. You are determined to establish a healthy culture even it if means eliminating your best performer.
    • To those who ask, answer that this individual was treated fairly. Clear expectations were established, and ample opportunity was given to be a part of the culture that you are establishing.
    • Ultimately, the culture that you seek to establish – one that is good for the whole team, not just for star performers – was not right for this individual.
  • Use this situation to relaunch a campaign to build a company culture of collaboration and best practice development between teams. With the elimination of this individual there may be new enthusiasm around this initiative.

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How Do You Refocus on Growth? Four Points of Emphasis

Situation: A CEO wants to refocus his company on growth following a difficult two years. Employee absences and stress due to the pandemic have had a significant effect on performance. The objective is to rally the team and excite them about future prospects. How do you refocus on growth?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Focus on the top goals for the company: revenue, customer satisfaction, product quality and delivery, and strategic positioning.
    • These have been company strengths in the past and will form the foundation for new growth and opportunities.
    • This is the time to be the head cheerleader. The company has a strong past and will be even stronger in the future.
  • Key points of communication to the company:
    • We have a strong Good News/Good News story – the company has survived the last two years, has an aggressive plan and a strong future, and will do even better as conditions return to normal.
    • The company is focused on an important and growing sector and is positioned for strong growth as customers refocus their companies.
    • Start this aspect of the communication this week – then keep on repeating it to reinforce optimism as the company repositions itself for new opportunities.
  • Communications to customers to support the strategy:
    • Tell clients that the company is healthy and well positioned to continue to meet their needs better than any other alternatives available to them.
  • Allow a few months for employees to regroup.
    • Staff will be exhausted, physically and emotionally, following the last two years – give them time to regroup and refocus.

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How Do You Develop an Employee to the Next Level? Four Points

Situation: A CEO has a key employee who wants a higher level of responsibility. Currently this employee is primarily focused on business development. He’s good at this but wants a higher level of experience. The CEO agrees. How do you develop an employee to the next level?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • If you ask this individual what needs to be done, what happens?
    • Revenue is number one. This is where he is focused, but he wants more than this from his role.
    • If this is also the CEO’s primary objective then the CEO needs to back off and direct him to split his time between closing high level opportunities and training his direct reports to be able to close lower-level opportunities on their own.
  • To the CEO – thinking about your own experience, how did you mature to a higher level when you had primary responsibility for business development?
    • Answer: I built and trained staff to do this and delegated these responsibilities to them.
    • Allow this individual and other key managers within the company to do the same thing, and coach them along the way.
    • Empower this individual to build his staff and enable them to take on more of the functions that he no longer wants to handle himself. Allow him to prioritize his time to focus on: hiring and training of his key staff and coaching and supervision as they grow into their new roles.
  • Consider this solution as a larger project manager role. Take a key product and empower this individual to design, build and manage the organization to deliver this product.
  • To frame this solution short-term, start with a 1-on-1. Ask about his vision – what he wants as his role and how he sees building this.
    • Follow by laying this out in terms of the company’s objectives – be specific as to what this looks like.
    • Look for a win / win reconciliation between the CEO’s and the employee’s visions that meet both of their objectives. Get on the same page with this individual, so that this fulfills both of your needs.

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What are the Options for Your Next Phase? Six Suggestions

Situation: It’s a new year, and a CEO is thinking through options for the coming year and beyond. She has decided to leave her company and establish a new role and career for herself. Immediate concerns are funding the transition and entry into a new career. What are the options for your next phase?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The area that can be built most quickly to provide income is a consulting practice based on the experience developed as a CEO and as a specialist leveraging past experience. Building a new practice is a big commitment. Make this the initial focus and get a few gigs to get the ball rolling. The company is an early option, as well as some of their key customers. These relationships are already in place.
  • On the academic side, investigate Executive Education programs in Business Schools. Here the clientele is different from normal undergraduate and postgraduate education – actively working managers and executives. For this audience the combination of experience as a CEO and academic credentials is advantageous. For this audience, a lack of credentialed teaching experience is largely counterbalanced by the weight of professional experience.
  • The Professor / Consultant track looks best if established as a 5-year plan.
  • While getting established in a new role there will be an initial challenge managing the time demands of teaching, research and developing a consulting practice. Think of this as managing the multiple functions of a company. It will be important to establish early priorities to accomplish the desired plan.
  • A professorship does not necessarily tie financially to current goals but can be an important strategic adjunct to consulting efforts. In a certain sense, teaching will have to be its own reward.
  • To the extent possible and depending upon how the board responds to the decision to leave the company negotiate the best possible severance package. This can tie into some of the suggestions, above.

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How Do You Hire and Retain the Right People? Four Suggestions

Situation: A CEO is concerned about employee turnover, particularly among promising younger employees. He doesn’t know whether these employees are different from past employees, or whether it is a function of the current economy and recovery. They look like a good fit during interviews and appear to fit well with the company when they come onboard. Yet, after a few weeks or months they leave. How do you hire and retain the right people?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Ask other companies in your area whether they are experiencing the same phenomena, and what they are doing about this. Are their experiences similar? Why do they think this is happening? Have they developed successful strategies to stem the resignations?
  • Conduct follow-up interviews 3 months after the employees leave. Use an independent party – or at least a neutral party within the company – to conduct the post-departure interview. While there may be a variety of reasons why individuals leave, are there similar themes in their motivations?
  • Are employees being treated similarly to the way that Margery Mayer and others have discussed treating customers – are they being heard?
    • Ask and listen to their true motivations – perhaps they value the opportunity to take an extended vacation for a life experience more than they value a raise. Intel and other companies offer their employees an extended sabbatical after a certain number of years of service. The employee does with this time what he or she wants.
  • Host informal beer and pizza sessions with employee groups. Keep the mood relaxed. Let them open up and complain if they so wish. It’s far better to let them air these feelings with the CEO than as buzz within the office – particularly if the see that they are being heard.
    • It is important to follow up and respond to what is heard. Employees appreciate the opportunity to be open and honest, but only if they sense that their input is producing the changes that they desire.

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How Do You Shift the Sales Mix? Five Suggestions

Situation: The CEO of a professional services company wants to shift the focus of the company from emphasis on service of existing customers to new customer development. Historically they have counted on repeat sales, but these have lagged. The CEO wants to develop new customers to build current and future revenue. This is a mentality shift. How do you shift the sales mix?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The objective is to move the current customer to new customer mix from 80/20 toward 40/60.
    • As an example, the CEO has shifted her focus day to day management to long-term planning and strategy over the last two years.
    • Now it’s time to motivate others to make a similar shift in customer development.
  • Make the shift to sales – to rain-maker – a requirement for Partner Track. Let those who want to pursue Partner Track know that this is a key part of their qualification for Partner.
  • Make cash flow analysis an integral part of new project proposals and current project tracking. Have project managers devise their project analyses to show return but review these to assure that their analyses are accurate. Require them to sell their analyses to the Partners. This will help them to see the value of correctly bidding new projects up-front.
  • Ask them – what do you want to be doing in 10 years? How will you be contributing to the goals of the firm? What are you doing to get there? Communicate the critical metrics that will be evaluated: sales, new account development, profitable bids and project cost control. Focus cost control on keeping options presented under control and minimizing rework.
  • Reserve Partner Track for those who can produce both sales and effective delivery of services. In employee reviews make this distinction clear.

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How Do You Evaluate Management Team Performance? Four Points

Situation: As the end of the year approaches, a CEO is evaluating management performance over the year. An area of focus during the year have been evaluating new business opportunities and the impact of these on the company. The CEO has been uncomfortable with disagreements between departments which have slowed opportunity evaluations. How do you evaluate management team performance?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Breaking down issues of concern, there are two areas of focus.
    • Problems that should have been resolved by two people have required a referee (the CEO) to mediate the solution because the two parties could not work things out themselves.
    • Individuals who are otherwise highly skilled have become overly sensitive about minor issues that have prevented them from developing their own solutions
  • The most important step is to have the management team agree on a protocol for dealing with new business opportunities and the impact of new sales opportunities on development and support. A protocol will help to avoid the two issues of concern that have been identified.
    • Direct the team to come up with a protocol that they all agree to, subject to CEO review.
    • Once it is finalized, announce it with great fanfare as the new process that will guide the company. Make it mandatory.
    • Support this process with daily (short – 10-15 minute) or weekly (longer but 1 hour or less) team meetings to anticipate and remove blocks to execution.
  • Tension between sales, service and engineering are natural and healthy. This is because each is driven by different priorities, all of which are necessary to serve the customer.
    • Resolution of this tension requires a turnkey handoff protocol, involving checklists and flow charts.
    • The best protocols are not imposed on people but are developed by the people involved. This gives them ownership, and a stake in implementing and maintaining the protocol.
  • If, despite everyone’s best efforts there is ongoing dysfunction, it may be necessary to replace difficult people. As challenging as this seems, those who report to difficult top managers likely experience similar difficulties with them. Organizations often respond with relief after leadership eliminates a difficult manager.

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What Do You Manage as You Adapt to Market Conditions? Four Points

Situation: A company is in the process of adjusting its customer and business focus in response to changing market conditions. Gross margin on projects that have been the company mainstay in the past have fallen significantly. The CEO is evaluating different adjustments to address this. What do you manage as you adapt to market conditions?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The company’s business model is shifting from a staffing agency to a product development model. This means that the business must be driven by a different set of parameters and metrics:
    • A different time/utilization mix.
    • Different personnel – the company needs managers.
    • Changes to the organizational chart and incentives.
  • How does the company currently charge clients for Project Management?
    • Currently it is time and materials.
    • Consider charging on a percent of project cost basis. For example, 15% of total project cost. The pitch will be that the client will be able to reduce the overall cost of the project – ideally in both dollars and time – and that the company will have increased accountability for delivering these results.
  • How will this impact the company’s cash position? How will the company retain adequate cash flow during the transition?
    • The current cash position is 4 months of projected monthly cash plus receivables.
    • If there is drop to 3 months, flag a yellow caution light.
    • Two months becomes a red light.
    • What is the backstop if the company runs shy – if, for example, some engineers are not very active? In this case, will deferral of unpaid vacation time and other options allow the company to survive without further draining cash? Have a meeting with key managers to evaluate the impact of this option.
  • Consider looking at competitors for possible collaborations. This can be delicate because they may want to steal the company’s personnel and there are other risks, but sometimes promising deals can be arranged.

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How Do You Build and Develop the Right Team? Four Points

Situation: A CEO has two issues. One concerns her COO about whom she is receiving complaints from staff as new processes are implemented, and the other is beefing up the sales team. On the latter issue she is concerned about both her ability to pay the high-level seller-doers that are needed to support growth and potential turnover. How do you build and develop the right team?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The COO has already put the right process in place. Coach this individual to lighten up and allow everyone to adapt to the new regime.
    • As new processes are implemented coach him not to implement them rigidly at first. Allow people time to get used to the new process. Allow some flexibility in implementation so that the new processes can be adapted to the individual styles of the key players.
    • Over time tighten expectations gradually until each process is fully in place and running smoothly.
  • Have the COO communicate to the company that it’s growing, the focus is now on hiring, and the task facing the company is revenue growth.
  • For new salespeople, the investment cycle can be 6 months to full function.
    • In the mix of salary and bonus, weigh the bonus side heavily – the side that won’t become payable until the new individual produces.
    • This becomes an incentive for new salespeople to get up to speed quickly. It also helps to weed out those whose talents aren’t as sharp as they represented in the hiring process.
  • The salespeople are the key marketers for this company as well as the rainmakers and producers. It may be necessary to commit to this investment to ensure future growth and adjust the company’s annual earnings forecasts accordingly.

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