Tag Archives: Change

How Do You Scale Up a Product That Is Taking off! Four Points

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Situation: Demand for a product produced by a company has increased dramatically. The CEO realizes that they need to scale up production quickly to meet this unexpected demand. The company is small and the CEO wants advice as to how his company can accomplish this without killing the product. How do you scale up a product that is taking off?
Advice from the CEOs:
• This represents a major change of both mentality and culture. Essentially, the company needs to move from a “handmade” process to a commodity volume process. This may also mean moving from low volume/high margin production to high volume/lower margin production. This shift will significantly change the company.
• If there is high confidence that the company will land a contract for long-term production consider establishing high volume production at a new site. Rent or lease another facility. Alongside this hire a set of experienced people who understand the challenges of scaling up rapidly. Consider giving this facility a new name to suit the new team. This will help to establish a new culture suitable to the new opportunity.
• While negotiating a lease, ask for an option for additional space to be included in the lease. If things don’t pan out, look at this new space as the eventual location for your existing team.
• Two other options to consider: (1) Outsourcing to a 3rd party manufacturer. This is an option unless the company is an OEM outsourced producer itself. However, be careful – you could be telling your customer that they could go directly to your OEM source at a lower price. (2) Establishing an overseas production capability – one where you own the facility and manage quality control. This will be a challenge if the customer wants to specify “Made in US”, or where quality concerns are essential.

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How Do You Change the Company’s Culture? Six Suggestions

Situation: The CEO wants to change the company’s culture. How can the CEO facilitate “buy-in” to support this cultural change? How do you change the company’s culture?
Advice from the CEOs:
• Encourage staff to think BIG – project 50 years ahead to a $2 billion company with business in 10 countries.
• Ask questions: Can we achieve it? Can you imagine that far? Is it real? What would make it real?
• Encourage participation in this exercise across all functions.
• When one company wanted to make a major change, they brought in an expert to help craft the communication of the changes and to explain it to staff.
• Move fast – don’t go slow. Let people know that it is OK to make mistakes. This is the Try-Fix-Do model that helps to encourage creativity and rapid development of new ideas. It makes going fast less of a risk to the individual.
• Let people know that it’s OK and necessary to challenge each other. Their involvement and input are what’s important. Keep it real and civil.

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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 Improve Morale and Performance in a Professional Services Company? Four Observations

Situation: The CEO of a professional service company says that his employees have been through a lot of stress over the last few years. He wants to improve company morale to boost performance and is interested in how others have done this. How do you improve morale and performance in a professional services company?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Manage Morale and Employee Feedback – In times of economic change and adjustment, it is important to have a good handle on what employees are thinking about their jobs and the company as a whole. The use of anonymous surveys administered via computer or a neutral 3rd party generally yields more objective and honest feedback than 1-on-1s with the CEO. They offer employees an opportunity to anonymously share their concerns, and to offer constructive feedback on how to boost company performance.
  • NOW is the time to act – whether the economy is positioned for a rebound or another dip. Employees have dealt with a lot over the last few years and may be starting to look at opportunities outside the company. Therefore, it is important, right now, to put programs in place to:
    • Retain high performing employees, and
    • Communicate to employees what the company is doing to position itself for growth so that they see a bright future for both the company and themselves as employees within the company.
  • Professional services are people-to-people businesses. Focus on relationship building to increase market presence. Recognize and reward employees for their efforts to build new relationships with clients. Use these as examples to inspire other employees.
  • Many more women have entered and become an important component of the workforce. Conduct group meetings to compare the experiences of male and female sales people in relationship selling situations. These will differ between purchase decision makers in different markets and situations where one gender vs. the other predominates. Sharing experiences offers the potential to learn from and to support each other as well as to improve performance. Ask employees how these meetings should be conducted and whether they prefer same or mixed gender meetings.

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How Do You Optimize Your Product Offering? Four Points of Focus

Situation: A CEO wants to take better advantage of his company’s product offering. There are many opportunities available, but the company needs more focus on optimizing these opportunities. How do you optimize your product offering?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Brand – Where has the company been? Where is it going? The world is constantly changing – what’s the company’s new brand? The brand identifies the company and both your customers’ and business partners’ identification of the company and its products and/or services. In a changing world with increased competition and “noise,” having a strong handle on the brand and brand message is critical to remaining at the top of customers’ and partners’ awareness.
  • Education/Customer Advocacy – An underutilized source of marketing strength includes both customer education and customer advocacy. Customer education allows the company to better position its product and/or service to the customer and helps the customer better meet unrecognized needs. Customer advocacy positions the company along with its customers in an area of mutual interest and strengthens both bonds and loyalty.
  • Diversification & Channels – In a changing and rapidly diversifying world, being open to new opportunities and channels through which to reach the company’s stakeholders is a source of sustainable advantage.
  • Partnerships to Take Advantage of Diversification & Channel Opportunities – Partnerships are an underutilized resource to creatively diversify and open new channels to stakeholders. They require less investment than doing everything on your own and can form the basis for key alliances and strengths going forward.

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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 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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How Do You Manage Seasonal Gaps in Project Flow? Five Options

Situation: A company experiences seasonal gaps in project flow. This makes it difficult to project both cash flow and staffing needs into the future. In addition, monthly cash flow tends to be uneven. What can they do to improve control of internal and external resources in this environment? How do you manage seasonal gaps in project flow?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The company currently focuses 60% on consulting and 40% on internal projects, some of which produce future projects. Relative proportions shift over time, and projects can be cancelled.
  • Try to write the company’s contracts to push revenue to early stages of a project, so that there is more cash cushion to help ride out short cash periods.
  • Look for options to change the business model to increase financial flexibility.
    • If there are significant margin differentials between different types of projects this has overhead implications when resources are shifted.
    • Look for ways to allocate less expensive resources or virtual resources with a lower cost to lower margin projects. Look for opportunities to utilize remote resources if these resources cost less.
  • Adjust staff assignments to maximize payoff, as well as staff retention options. Look for project work opportunities.
  • Analyze and evaluate the ability to switch personnel between paying projects and internal development projects.

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Should You View a Competitor’s Illegally Published Code on the Internet? Four Points

Situation: A CEO recently learned that the proprietary code for both his company’s and his principal competitor’s products have been published on an international web site. He is conflicted about whether he should look at his competitor’s code, knowing that this would potentially be illegal in the US. Lawyers have offered conflicting and vague advice. Should you view a competitor’s illegally published code on the Internet?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Consider the status of IP protection outside the United States.
    • In some countries there do not appear to be clear legal guidelines. One of these countries is likely where this situation originated. The country in question either lacks rules governing IP or the ability to enforce rules that exist.
    • The frustrating thing is that the playing field is not level between US and non-US companies. US companies are held to a high ethical standard by US law, whereas competitors in other countries that are not held to the same standard are free to review the illegal source code and learn from it as they can.
  • How complicated and expensive would it be to change the code? If this is feasible and not prohibitively expensive this may be the best option. Updated code can be provided to users through a software update.
  • Any company has to assess their own ethics as they craft a response to this situation. Make sure that the solution is consistent with the company’s ethical standards.
  • Could this have been an act of economic terrorism and/or theft?
    • If so, it is possible that the U.S. Justice Department could step in if one can make a case for national or economic security (unfair trade) based on violation of software copyright laws.
    • An action like this would, at a minimum, discourage similar future events. It could also help reduce the likelihood that competitors would try to profit from this situation at the company’s expense.

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