How Do you Position Yourself as the New Leader? Six Points

Situation: A new CEO has just taken over at a well-developed medium-sized company? He will be a first-time CEO. The principal concern is how to introduce himself to the staff and customers. He believes that first impressions are critical and wants to get off on the right foot. How so you position yourself as the new leader?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Proactively engage both staff and customers in a dialogue about the direction and potential of the company. Focus comments on positive opportunities. Demonstrate a fresh sense of excitement and energy. Both staff and customers will be looking for a leader who shares their excitement. Demonstrate good listening skills.
  • There are a number of good books on leadership. Look for a title and theme that is appealing. An important point is the need to “market” yourself to both staff and customers.
    • Develop a list of hopes, desires and needs for the company. Add to this list based on what is heard from staff and customers.
    • Look for synergies between your and their hopes and desires. Create a “launch campaign” around these synergies.
    • This will position you as both an essential member of their team, and as a leader that others will want to follow.
  • Find a mentor. One who has deep experience with the role of “new Leader”. Seek their advice and counsel. Use them as a sounding board while developing a campaign for “Operation New Leader”.
  • Remember that both the company and the new vision are just plans and may require flexibility.
  • Ask others – particularly mentor and staff:
    • What is the model that they see? What are the key objectives that the company should accomplish during the first year?
    • What niche do they see the company aspiring to fill? From this may come insights into underdeveloped opportunities that the predecessor failed to leverage. Also, an opportunity to gain key allies within the company.
    • Focus discussions on what will bring increased value to the company.
  • While speaking to others, listen for their questions about the role of the Leader. This will present an opportunity to define the Leader role by addressing their needs as you transition into the new position.

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How Do You Align Vision Among Leadership? Three Approaches

Situation: The CEO of a software company finds that she and her #2 don’t have the same vision for the company concerning objectives and what is required to reach these objectives. In addition, key employees are reaching retirement age. The company needs to bring in new employees to learn the skills of those who will retire. How can these challenges be addressed? How do you align vision among leadership?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Consider the following approach:
    • Add 1-2 people and bring them up to speed within the company so that they can step into the roles of the employees who are nearing retirement.
    • Focus the CEO’s role on creating the development outline and priorities, assisting in closing significant sales opportunities, participating in industry seminars to publicize the company’s capabilities, and guiding administration and finance.
    • Focus the #2’s role on assuming a greater role in new software development and customer support and have this person delegate and oversee internal technology development and code maintenance.
  • In pursuing this approach take the following steps:
    • Buttress the CEO’s skills with another developer who knows the key software, and who can maintain this for the company long-term.
    • Shift development from individual efforts to a collaborative atmosphere to ease and speed integration of new code into the company’s software.
    • Reduce the CEO’s day-to-day administrative role.
    • Increase the #2’s role in software development and reduce focus on maintenance and internal technology.
    • Add an additional resource in sales/marketing to boost company growth.
  • How to Get There?
    • Allow the #2 the latitude to start developing some of his own ideas for new tools or products.
    • Bring in a “marriage counselor” to assist the CEO and the #2 to define a common understanding.
    • One focus will be to establish that they clearly respect and value each other’s talents and contributions. The other focus will be to work through objectives and requirements where there has been difficulty reaching consensus.

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How Do You Reduce Interruptions in the Office? Three Points

Situation: A CEO of a small company finds it difficult to focus of company strategy and direction because on continuous interruptions to handle customer and company issues. Frequent phone calls and employees coming in to ask for guidance or to talk about issues make it difficult to focus on plans for the future. How do you reduce interruptions in the office?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The company has grown to the point that it is time to build a management structure to facilitate decision-making. It’s time to delegate.
    • Identify promising individuals within the company who have the capacity to take on management responsibility. Provide them with the training to assume managerial roles and to handle direct reports.
    • If the talent is lacking in some areas, hire managers to oversee these areas.
  • The phone is the #1 problem – interruptions to deal with customer issues.
    • Hire an assistant to manage incoming calls and to transfer these calls to the appropriate department.
    • Learn to say no. For example, if an opportunity requires the CEO to be off-site to evaluate and estimate a project, that individual could not answer the phone in the office. Similarly, it is necessary to carve out concentrated time for strategic and critical tasks when in the office.
    • Explain to the team the challenge, and the benefits of spending uninterrupted time each day working on strategic direction. These benefits include additional growth and opportunity for both the company and employees.
    • Establish an official time – during regular hours – that the CEO is not available to respond to calls or other immediate needs. During these times, have an assistant direct these requests to the appropriate department or schedule time later in the day to handle an issue.
  • Any executive in a Fortune 500 company plans time for planning and other essential work when they cannot be interrupted. Working without interruptions is essential to efficient, high-quality work.

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How Do You Maintain a Healthy Work/Life Balance? Three Perspectives

Situation: A CEO finds that even on vacations he is obsessed with what is happening at the office. This keeps him from relaxing even during time off. Moreover, his family notices this and is unhappy that he isn’t spending his vacation time with them. How does he turn this around? How do you maintain a healthy work/life balance?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • If an individual is still working most of the time when on vacation this has a number of negative effects.
    • It makes the vacation even more stressful than normal work. First, a vacation is meant to provide distance and perspective from the workplace, as well as to allow time to relax and recharge. Second, this is time set aside to enjoy being with family and focus on work robs everyone of this. Third, while on vacation, there are fewer resources at one’s disposal so solving problems from afar is more difficult that when in the office.
  • To address these issues, plan on the next vacation to be “fully unplugged.”
    • Designate a “substitute” to act as CEO during this vacation. Assure that this individual has their own “go to” person to work with if they encounter a situation that puts them in over their head. Perhaps this can be a member of the board or another senior officer.
    • Plan the next vacation for two weeks to test the substitute model.
    • An additional benefit is that this can provide assurance that even if an unexpected situation prevents the CEO from being present, there is an assurance that the company can operate without the CEO if necessary. This boosts the value of the company.
  • Remember that success as a CEO is measured partly on the ability to have a fully operational office when the CEO is absent. Build and conduct the role so that the company operates well when the CEO is not there. This is consistent with a healthy growth model and long-terms plans for building a successful company.

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Where Do You Focus to Build a Strong Company? Four Considerations

Situation: A company has just hired a new CEO. Historically the company has focused on high quality and good customer service but has lacked good financial management and has experienced financial difficulties. As a result, they could not support their staffing needs. Where do you focus to build a strong company?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Critical areas where the CEO should focus:
    • Quality – assuring that the company continues to produce high quality products.
    • Customer service – assuring that the company continues to offer excellent customer service.
    • Quality and customer service must remain one and two, though they can be in either order.
    • Financial soundness; but not so focused on the bottom line that either quality or service suffer.
  • How do you achieve or maintain focus on these areas?
    • High quality and good customer service are already well established.
    • What has been lacking is sound financial management. Evaluate whether the right people are in place, and what financial and financial record systems are in use. If expertise is needed, bring in an expert to evaluate both personnel and systems and recommended changes that need to be made.
  • What other important factors should be the CEO’s focus?
    • Ethics – particularly when evaluating the company’s financial system, assure that both people and systems support a strong and reliable department. This may result in some hard decisions that are necessary to turn the situation around. If this is the case, be determined but fair.
    • Sustainable business practices – assure that any new practices that are instituted are sustainable. Look at case studies of similar companies that have turned themselves around.
    • Fun – an enjoyable workplace as far fewer issues than one that is difficult. It is important to build strong teams, and to give them the autonomy necessary to do their jobs well without overly taxing team members.
  • Build a company that has a good balance between the first 3 critical factors. When new hires are necessary look for people with an established track record and business background who also have strong ethics.

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How Do You Delegate Challenging Tasks? Three Suggestions

Situation: A company is creating new capabilities which require engineers to think beyond the limits of current capacity. Some are hesitant to take on these tasks, which are critical to the company’s maintaining its competitive edge. How do you create the tools or capacities to make these technical leaps? How do you delegate challenging tasks?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Encourage the engineers to expand their conceptual “boxes”. Encourage them to
    • Utilize web-based searches of existing research on technical boundaries;
    • Explore their own creative capabilities – encourage them to connect to science UseNets for solutions to technical challenges;
    • As solutions are developed using outside resources, have engineers document progress so that intellectual property rights can be preserved. Line up legal resources to assist.
    • Encourage them to use their unconscious processes to enhance the “Eureka” factor. Allow them to work on multiple related tasks that can spark creative solutions within the team.
  • Consider this challenge as part of the process – acknowledge the “point of despair” that is often encountered with new technical challenges. Encourage them to use their creative capabilities to move beyond their perceived limitations.
    • Understand that this will involve the use of scarce resources and that mistakes will be made in the learning process.
    • Be patient and treat these as the cost of progress.
  • Other options to consider:
    • Investigate resources at nearby universities. Faculty and students appreciate the opportunity to be involved in cutting-edge projects. Protect the company by signing intellectual property agreements with the individuals and institutions.
    • Invest in and expand the library of cutting-edge resources for engineers to use as tools to develop solutions.

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How Do You Balance Career and Personal Goals? Three Guides

Situation: After two challenging two years, a CEO has observed that to keep the company afloat he has had do set aside his personal goals. As the economy has recovered business conditions have improved and he wants to devote more time to personal goals and objectives. Where should he focus, and how have others faced this challenge? How do you balance career and personal goals?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Take the time to think about and quantify a long-term solution. This should be in detail with specific and measurable objectives, and, ideally, timelines.
    • Talk to peers. Ask them about their experience and how they defined both professional and personal goals.
    • Seek a mentor. Evaluate several before selecting one
    • Use introspection and identify the real issues and factors – both those that must be tackled and those that are aspirational.
  • Document your dreams and pursue them.
    • Define your goals and objectives.
    • Define what makes you happiest and assure that the goals objectives align with this.
    • Create a reward structure. Assure that you are in charge of each reward.
  • Pursue fulfilling outside activities.
    • Look at organizations or courses that are inspirational and aspirational and which align with what was documented in the first two steps. These could be formal organizations like Toastmasters or evening academic or online courses that appeal to the documented aspirations.
    • Get a copy of Don Clifton’s “Now, Discover Your Strengths.” It includes a link to the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment that helps to identify strengths and fulfilling talents.

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How Do You Add a New Capability? Four Approaches

Situation: A CEO reports that customers frequently ask whether the company can deliver a service that isn’t current in their portfolio of capabilities. In a substantial number of cases, the ability to offer this service is a key factor in their choice of vendors. The company’s experience with outside consultants offering this capacity has been disappointing. How do you add a new capability?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Reevaluate the company’s needs and assess whether these can be better meet by bringing this capability in-house, or by restructuring how the company works with contractors. Determine whether the latter is just a negotiation and contract / payment problem.
  • Take a closer look at how the company contracts and creates incentives for outside contractors. Do they have performance objectives written into their contracts that reward them for meeting contract commitments? Can they earn bonuses for beating contract deadlines or exceeding design requirements? Are there penalties them for missing key deadlines?
    • Is it clear whether contractors are missing deadlines because of the “creative process,” because they don’t use their time efficiently, or because they have other commitments that take precedence at the company’s expense?
    • If the answer is either of the two latter situations, then contract adjustments may work. Similarly, if they have an incentive to be more creative faster to meet a bonus deadline a contract adjustment could also work to the company’s benefit.
    • Another option in working with independents is to make it clear that the company is generous, but if the contractor does not meet deadlines, they go to the bottom of the list for future opportunities.
  • An option is to hire one specialist and challenge them to grow a practice within the company. This may mean that they have to do all tasks early on, but the potential win will be the opportunity to grow a significant business and hire a team to do the lower-level work under their direction.
  • Another option – bring on a creative problem solver with appropriate experience who can support the existing team, but who will have more flexibility than a pure specialist.

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How Do You Expand into a New Market? Four Points

Situation: A company is interested in expanding into new market. The CEO notes that they have little experience in this market, but it is lucrative, and they believe that their technology has effective applications in this market. How do you expand into a new market?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • If the new market is technical it is important to identify the standards that govern production in that market. Examples include ISO 9000 processes and 13485 ISO Medical Standards. Start work on these now to assure that the products and services under development meet market standards.
    • While it will take effort to become ISO compliant, this investment will bring significant benefits in terms of regularizing all the company’s processes and procedures.
    • There may be some early resistance, but the long-term benefit is worth the pain.
    • Being ISO certified helps the company to sell its services. Many clients will not consider the company as a serious vendor unless it is ISO certified.
  • Pull in an outside consultant to do a quick gap analysis between where the company’s current procedures are and where they need to meet the standards.
  • Will ISO certification provide a competitive advantage?
    • It will never disadvantage the company and may provide a competitive advantage with customers.
    • Use Blue Ocean Strategy to create a new advantage for the company around ISO certification.
    • Industry will eventually require vendors to increasingly become ISO certified. If the company is already there it will be ahead of the curve and may be able to gain a premium price for its products and services by being there ahead of others.
    • European and International companies increasingly insist on ISO certification – they are ahead of the US.
    • Create a Market Road Map. Identify the markets that the company could serve. Look at the requirements for doing business in these markets. It may be possible to find additional leverage in ISO certification that will allow the company to enter additional markets with minor incremental additional cost.
  • Will ISO certification add an additional cost structure to the company’s services?
    • Under ISO, a company can have both ISO and non-ISO projects. Company standards will simply identify which projects are which and when non-ISO standards apply. Standards can be changed under ISO as new non-ISO opportunities arise. It is just a matter of updating procedures.

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How Do You Sell an Onsite Business? Five Perspectives

Situation: A company has several locations for its operations. One is onsite at one of their principal customers where they perform services for the customer. The rest of the business is pursuing a different direction, so the CEO wants to sell the onsite business and focus all efforts on the main business. How do you sell an onsite business?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Do onsite business (OS) personnel identify themselves as part of the company or the customer’s company?
    • The older personnel themselves as part of the parent company; the new engineers see themselves as tied to the customer which is far larger and enjoys broad and positive brand recognition.
  • Now may be the time to sell from a price perspective. Companies are hungry for revenue sources and experienced personnel. The price that they would pay for the OS business is small change for them.
  • The decision comes down to price – can the company get the right price at the right terms?
  • Consider this alternative – break the OS off into an independent entity. Make it a separate company with own managers.
    • This allows the sale of the OS to be set up with its own operating rules and incentives, independent of the company’s other operations.
    • This move queues the company up for whatever is possible – ongoing operation or possible sale to a buyer. It also simplifies the sale scenario as OS would be a stand-alone unit, with its own personnel and management structure. There may be some shared infrastructure services with the company’s other locations, but these are services that would be taken on by the buyer using their own systems.
    • An option is to give stock to the managers of the OS – a piece of the pie to encourage them to stay on.
  • Given the company’s strategy and direction, investing additional funds in the OS doesn’t make sense. Selling and keeping the money makes more sense if the company is ready for this and feels that there is little or only a limited future for the OS business.

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