Tag Archives: Better

How Do You Differentiate Your Offering? Five Critical Steps

Situation:  A company has had success with a few large clients but wants to expand their customer base for long-term growth. The challenge is that their offering competes in what is commonly regarded as a commodity market. How do they avoid being perceived as a commodity? How do you differentiate your offering?

Advice of the CEOs:

  • One company created differentiation by getting to know everyone in the business. They built long-term relationships, based on reputation and trust. They took the time to understand the needs of customers that they wanted to develop. As opportunities arose, they built relationships and asked questions to clearly define and align with client needs. While this takes time and patience, the objective is to be able to say “We know your business” – with credibility. Here are the steps that they took:
  • Study the businesses, sector, and customers that you wish to serve.
  • Leverage your success with large customers. Talk about how you helped subunits within these large customers. This makes a big customer seem more like a collection of small customers similar to your prospects and makes your experience relevant.
  • Let prospective customers know that you are hungry and will go the extra mile for their business.
  • Learn who currently serves your prospective clientele. Study these competitors, their strengths and weaknesses. Talk to their customers – learn what they love about competitors’ service, and what they would like to see changed. Find the holes in what others provide and fill these holes with a better offer.
  • Look for and encourage repeat business and references to new business.

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How Do You Encourage Others to Take the Initiative? Five Points

Situation: A CEO has a challenge getting employees to take initiative in areas that she wants to delegate. Part of the challenge is that she needs to “let go” and tends to do too much checking in. She is concerned that this results in employees’ hesitation to demonstrate the initiative that she desires. How do you encourage others to take the initiative?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Continual checking-in alters the “urgency.” It feels more like a lack of confidence in the individual’s ability to complete the task to specifications and on schedule.
  • Work to establish more trust. Do this incrementally – start with less urgent / important responsibilities or tasks and move toward more urgent / important ones.
  • Determine boundaries and clearly establish deliverables.
    • Write the objective down ahead of time – as well as how much information to give them.
    • Ask yourself: Is this providing “just enough” information to guide them without micromanaging or over specifying the solution?
  • Is an objective being set, or are you trying to teach a methodology to reach the objective?
    • Unless the methodology is critical, focus on the objective and let them determine the methodology.
    • Once the objective is completed review and learn from them how it worked. Ask how they prefer to complete the objective so that you can provide the appropriate level of guidance in the future.
  • Delegating takes more time than doing it yourself.
    • Employees will complete a task differently than you will. As long as an acceptable result is achieved, be tolerant that the method or tone is different. They may be coming up with a better way!

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How Do You Improve Delegation? Three Solutions

Situation: A company is growing rapidly. As it grows it is important to build the management team needed to support this growth. A few talented potential managers have a tough time letting go of previous responsibilities. How does the CEO help them to let go of previous responsibilities. How do you improve delegation?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Don’t teach method. The individuals to whom responsibilities are to be delegated may feel like trained monkeys, not the bright creative people that they are.
    • Set goals. Give them the information that they need to get there. Let them know that there is a procedure, and they are welcomed to use or adapt this as they wish. If they can find a better way that is more efficient – Wonderful!
    • Empower them. This is an investment. Like many investments, it may take time to generate a return, but be patient and wait for this return.
  • Look at the required roles and prioritize them as most to least critical to the company.
    • Start delegating the less critical roles, as well as the roles that are less time sensitive.
    • This will make it easier to maintain patience.
    • Also, delegate roles that play to the strengths of those to whom new responsibilities are being delegated. Those taking these roles will be happier and will do a better job.
  • Create an organizational chart for each department and responsibilities.
    • Make sure that all of the roles for which a department is responsible are included, but group these into similar roles so that there are, for example, 3-5 role delegations.
    • Prioritize each role for importance and urgency.
    • Take the least urgent and significant role and delegate it. Either assign it to an existing individual, or hire someone to take it on.
    • Once this has been done this and those to whom roles are delegated are used to them, do the same with the next least important or urgent role.
    • Do this over time until all the needed roles have been delegated, and managers are comfortable managing the individuals now responsible for them.
    • A valuable resource is the EMyth Revisited by Michael Gerber. It is a quick read and provides guidelines for how to delegate and let go of responsibilities the organization grows.

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What Can be Learned from Employee Departures? Five Observations

Situation: A company has recently seen the departure of several younger employees. Reasons given were better offers at other companies. These employees have been replaced by what appears to be better talent. The CEO took these departures personally and is concerned about the impact on the departments of those who departed. What can be learned from employee departures?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • In working with Millennial employees, it may be necessary to lower your expectations in terms of employee loyalty, work ethic and longevity. Millennials have a different perspective. Recognize this and build expectations around it.
  • Be frank with new employees up front. Plan their career progression out 36 to 48 months and let them know that this time will give them great training. If they are interested in the company and career progression beyond this, then the company be open to discussing options with them.
  • Use outside resources to do a 2–3-month post-op on those who left, as well as to help monitor employee attitudes on an ongoing basis.
    • The outside resource can conduct interviews by telephone, on a confidential basis. The objective will be to assess the reasons why the employees left once the emotions of the action have died down. Summary results of the interviews will not identify the past employee. This will prompt them to be frank with their feedback.
    • Similarly, use an outside resource to conduct confidential telephone interviews with random current employees on a periodic basis. Let the employees know that they will be contacted by an outside agency on a random basis, and that their responses will be confidential. The purpose is to gain information on how the company can better address employee needs in the work environment. Only aggregated and summary results will be presented to the company.
    • These actions will help to assess whether the departures were an extraordinary event or an early warning of more systemic challenges within the workforce.
  • The increased salary needs of those who left may be symptomatic of the current economic conditions.
    • Currently, the need of companies to attract talent has increased pressure to raise wages. Along with this and there is increased turnover among employees who believe that they can make more elsewhere. There is little that can be done to run a sensible business while trying to keep up with current salary demands.
    • Most companies who survive successive boom and bust cycles do not respond to wage pressure, knowing that each boom will be followed by a bust.
    • Once the next bust sets in, wage demands will go down until the next boom cycle starts.
  • Should anything to mitigate the impact of employee departure on their departments?
    • Keep ears open for any sign of an ongoing impact.
    • As above, consider an outside resource to check the temperature of the employees.
    • The best mitigation may be a strong integration of the new, energetic R&D employees into the team.

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