Tag Archives: Education

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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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 Develop the Next Level of Leadership? Two Points

Situation: A CEO finds that it is time to develop the next level of management and leadership to support the company’s planned growth. She has received input from several sources but is curious as to how other CEOs have taken their staff to the next level. How do you develop the next level of leadership?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Consider as an example how a law firm typically grooms and grows new partners:
    • Give them an area of responsibility.
    • Provide targets (expectations and metrics) and give them the opportunity to produce results.
    • Put the highest performers on track for promotion.
    • As is the case in a law firm, the candidates for management and leadership for will be a combination of rainmakers and the best talent in critical performance areas.
  • What should be budgeted for professional growth and development?
    • One example – provide up to 10% of hours per week for an individual who shows a true desire to improve their skills. Watch how the individual performs, but make sure that there is a measurable return before continuing this beyond a certain point.
    • Another alternative: let the candidate decide by matching 50% of what they are willing to spend on training and education. Require proof of completion of the course and likely an acceptable grade average if the training is academic and reimburse after the fact.
    • Ask the candidate to demonstrate the ROI for the training for which was reimbursed 50% before agreeing to continue to support additional education. Let them develop the calculation but insist on final review and approval of their analysis before continuing to fund additional education.

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How Do You Foster Channel Development? Three Topics

Situation: A company has grown successfully designing and producing products for larger companies. In the process they have enhanced their own reputation in the industry. The CEO wants to boost growth by designing and marketing their own products. This will require the development of new marketing channels. How do you foster channel development?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • What are the initial steps?
    • Hire a commissioned salesperson with deep experience and contacts in in the company’s industry. This individual’s objective will be to seek new business opportunities.
    • Have top management, including the CEO, take a sales course – for example Dale Carnegie Sales Training.
  • What are the company’s objectives as it seeks to grow?
    • To feed the company’s ability to develop, produce, and sell their own proprietary products.
    • To create the capacity for the company to grow without relying on the efforts and success of current customers.
    • To develop pride in building a solid and lasting company that makes important contributions to technology.
    • To increase profitability and company value to benefit owners and shareholders.
  • What can be done right now, as the early steps are put into place?
    • Find ways to include pictures of company’s products in all company collateral – whether the company’s own or products developed and produced for others.
    • This may mean creating a small variation to an easily recognized existing product – without the customer’s logo – so that it becomes clear that the company is the source of these ideas and products without voiding existing agreements with key customers.

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How Do You Execute the Product and Market Timing Plan? Five Points

Situation: A company’s CEO is operating in a complex marketplace. Product pricing and consumer acceptance are issues. Consumer education about the product is an important part of the market plan. It may take a couple of years for the market to develop. How do you execute the product and market timing plan?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Important issues are survival while the market develops and maintaining a unique technology advantage.
  • As a small player in a busy and rapidly evolving market, a critical element of the strategy will be to rapidly gain the attention of the people that Seth Godin has named the “sneezers” – those who have significant influence on their consumer and business peers and who can quickly help to create the momentum that will drive the company’s market position.
    • Examples: give the product to the key influencers at target companies.
    • Make it easy or free for the key influencers within your partner organizations to experience, love and spread the word about the product. Allow them to give a few free copies to friends.
  • To avoid becoming roadkill, fly under the radar.
    • Look for opportunities as they occur in this evolving market. They may come from many players.
    • Have a solid strategy in place to execute once an opportunity arises: What do you want to achieve? What is the timeline? How will you measure achievement?
    • Have multiple back-ups to the key partners that the company is currently courting.
  • Instead of looking for VC funding to fund the next round, why not secure the additional funding from the company’s original backer?
    • To earn this the company will have to demonstrate: interesting partnerships, traction in the marketplace, and assurance that an existing major player won’t squash the company.
  • A perceived barrier is that the product is not quite ready to deliver the experience that customers will expect.
    • What is “not quite ready”? Most successful products are not 100% ready on introduction. Look at Microsoft’s strategy. From their earliest products to the present, new versions are launched when they are 80-90% complete. They then respond quickly with updates based on customer feedback. Many other companies have done the same.
    • Historically, first to market has beaten later, more complete entrants.

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What Can SMBs Do To Empower Women? Six Options

Interview with Linda Gold, CEO, M3iworks

Situation: While women comprise the majority of US society and business customers, they continue to be underrepresented in business and government. For girls growing up, it’s hard to be what you can’t see, so girls and young women don’t see the opportunities that business offers them. What can SMBs do to empower women?

Advice from Linda Gold:

  • Women contribute greatly to the business community, particularly in small and medium-sized businesses which are the principal job creators in the US. For example, in tough times, smart companies and CEOs face outward rather than retreat inward. Women are naturally more collaborative and can be better at networking and building communities of interest that can open up new opportunities. Smart CEOs will leverage this talent.
  • Dr. John Gray (“Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus”) points out that business is like a football game—it’s about getting the ball and running with it. While women know we should be given more credit for our contributions, we need to learn how to take more credit. We need to accept the credit and accolades we receive and deserve. And if a male team member takes “our ball” and runs with it, defense needs to “kick in” and recover the ball. You can only score if the ball is in your possession.
  • Dee Dee Myers, President Clinton’s former Press Secretary gives an example of how to gracefully take credit. When a colleague told her she had done a great job, instead of deflecting the credit, Myers simply and elegantly replied “Thank-you.”
  • Small and medium-sized businesses employ a significant population of women. This gives them the opportunity to raise the profile of their women employees both in the local press, at local social business events, and through social media.
    • The YWCA TWIN Awards – Tribute to Women and Industry – recognize women for excellence in their area of expertise, and for giving back to the community. In Silicon Valley, CEOs nominate their high-achieving executive women for this prestigious TWIN award each year.
  • Girls For A Change (GFC) is a national organization that empowers girls to create social change. GFC encourages young women to design, lead, fund and implement social change projects that tackle issues girls face in their own neighborhoods. The program depends on volunteer coaches – local business, professional and career women – who receive coach training and meet with girls for a 12-week period after school. By publicizing this opportunity within your company or sponsoring a GFC team, SMBs can make a significant contribution.
  • SMBs have a vested interest in encouraging public education to adopt more relevant curriculum and teaching methods. We are in the information age, not the industrial age. We can learn more about opportunities to offer services to and partner with local schools and educational foundations like the Silicon Valley Educational Foundation. We can also lobby for more H-1B visas.

You can contact Linda Gold at [email protected]

Key Words: Empower, Women, Representation, Role Model, Collaboration, Credit, Contribution, NAWBO, YWCA, TWIN, Girls For A Change, Education, Standards, H-1B, Visa

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What Three Qualities Characterize the Company of the Future?

Interview with Philippe Courtot, CEO, Qualys

Situation: Few economists predict a robust recovery. We know from past recessions that in a slow recovery some companies will fail while others rise to the top. What are the three qualities of the companies that will thrive and become the companies of the future?

Advice from Philippe Courtot:

  • Companies of the future will have three qualities. The first is a keen sense of who your customers are – what characterizes them and their buying and use decisions. You need to see yourself through their eyes. This will give you the ability to shift more easily as their needs shift. Making this shift is easier for a service company than for a manufacturing company because the infrastructure of a service company is more flexible.
  • Second is an intense focus on operational excellence. Everything is measured with the objective of obtaining the highest levels of productivity as well as the opportunity for ongoing learning and improvement. The companies of the future will have superior systems for gathering and tracking performance data, as well as cultures which allow them to learn from what they track.
  • Third is a culture of continuous innovation. The company of the future will be the company disrupting itself. Germany provides a wonderful example because of its culture of excellence in small, family owned companies. You may be surprised to learn that it is these small companies who are the true drivers of German innovation, not the big companies like Daimler or BMW. The small companies follow the three rules outlined here. Their success has been aided by the emphasis in German education on math and engineering which means that there is an ongoing supply of domestic talent to feed these jobs.

You can contact Philippe Courtot at [email protected]

Key Words: Company, Future, Quality, Customer, Shift, Adapt, Service, Manufacturing, Operations, Excellence, Learning, Improvement, Data, Culture, Innovation, Continuous, Disrupt, Family, Business, Education

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How Can Business Contribute to the Future of Technology Education?

Interview with Muhammed Chaudhry, CEO, Silicon Valley Education Foundation

Situation: A critical component for the future of technology in the US is a workforce trained in math and the sciences. In Santa Clara County, California – the heart of Silicon Valley – only 49% of high school students complete University of California/CSU qualifying courses, and only 26% of Hispanic students. How can private industry contribute to the improvement of education and the training of future workers?

Advice from Muhammed Chaudhry:

  • Silicon Valley Education Foundation’s objective is to make Silicon Valley the number one region in California in student readiness for college and careers. It has been shown that the top predictor of college success is the completion of Algebra II in high school.  Our primary program – Stepping Up to Algebra – focuses on students and teachers to increase the number of students who are ready for Algebra I in 8th Grade. To date 2,500 kids have gone through our program.
  • We actively encourage private industry to get involved in our programs and to invest in solutions that work. We call this involvement Work, Wealth and Wisdom.
  • Let’s talk about Work:
    • Our aim is for every business person to make it a priority to invest time in public education. This takes an investment – we ask for a consistent investment of 4-5 days a year.
  • Next is Wealth:
    • We encourage every business person to sign up to our Sustainer Program. The commitment is modest – only $5 per month to support our activities.
    • We encourage corporations to Adopt a Classroom for $10,000.
  • Finally we have Wisdom:
    • We encourage business people to get involved. We need help designing technology products that enhance learning and in formulating a blended learning approach.
    • We need to improve the enabling of technology in our schools to improve individualized learning to maximize the potential of each student.
    • We need support and involvement in policy work by contributing business thinking. Education has lessons to learn from business.
    • There is room for innovators who are interested in social benefit and long-term investment with profit as a secondary consideration.

You can contact Muhammed Chaudhry at [email protected]

Key Words: Technology, Future, Education, Workforce, Math, Algebra, Science, College, Preparation, Work, Wealth, Wisdom, Investment, Engineer, Software, Funding, Learning, Policy, Innovation

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