Tag Archives: Manage

How Do You Improve Communication and People Management Skills? Three Points

Situation: As his company grows and adds new employees, a CEO wants to improve his skills working with employees as well as managing time when employees come to him with suggestions or issues. Occasionally there is confusion between what is said and how his directions are interpreted. How do you improve communication and people management skills?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • How can one improve conversational skills when meeting others, breaking the ice and establishing a conversational relationship?
    • The easiest way is to ask benign questions. How was your weekend? How are you doing? Actively listen to what they say.
    • Remember their responses. Probe more deeply to prompt them to go into more detail. Show an interest in them. Most people love to talk about themselves and their experiences.
    • If they in return ask about you, give them a pleasant but brief response, and return with a question about them. This is like a tennis volley – keep on returning the ball.
    • The important point is to show an interest in others, and to improve the ability to recall what they have shared. Don’t cross personal boundary lines of what is “too personal.” Others will appreciate this attention and will warm to you.
  • If the concern is confirming understanding, start by repeating what you hear and confirm your understanding before responding.
  • Some individuals come into the office, plant themselves in a seat and just chat to waste time.
    • When one of these individuals comes into your office, stand to greet them with a smile and a friendly question of how you can help them. Do not sit down. Remain standing as long as they are in your office. This will naturally shorten the conversation and prevents them from “settling in.”
    • When you stand up, smile and greet them with a friendly question you are not putting them off. In fact, you are giving them more attention than they have received in the past. As a result, while preventing them from settling in, this is being done in a way that shows them respect.

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How Do You Improve Your Time Management Skills? Four Recommendations

Situation: A CEO is finding that reduction in staff over the last two years combined with expansion of business have left her in a quandary trying to manage too much. While the prospects of bring in new staff are improving, she wants to improve her time management skills to support company growth. How do you improve your time management skills?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Delegation and communication around delegation is about “monkey” management – getting the monkeys off you back and onto the backs of others. In addition, it’s about not letting others put inappropriate monkeys on your back.
  • Think about the difference between:
    • Empowerment versus involving yourself in all aspects of the business.
    • Empowerment is more effective and frees up time to focus on new opportunities and growth.
    • Involving yourself everywhere quickly leads to a time crunch and is less effective.
  • Set quarterly goals for yourself, just as you set quarterly goals for the company. This drives achievement and growth. It helps you to:
    • Clarify your role – where you should be focusing your time, and to
    • Let go.
  • Think of your staff as your customers. Like customers, the more you give and recognize them, the more they love you. Effectively, this is serving your staff just as you serve customers. This is called Servant Leadership and builds both empowered employees and great employee loyalty.

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How Do You Train Others to Do Your Old Job? Four Points

Situation: A CEO has a key employee who has just been promoted to an important managerial position within the company. The task for this individual is to train others to do what he has done in the past. However. this individual feels uncomfortable training others to do what he was able to do. He feels like he is obsolescing himself. How do you coach this individual to let go of past responsibilities? How do you train others to do your old job?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • This individual was promoted because he excelled in his former job. His mastery of these skills, plus his past management background, prompted the CEO to offer him a managerial position. It is critical to understand that his job and responsibilities are no longer what they used to be.
  • As a manager, an individual is no longer expected to be a “doer”. The primary responsibility is now to select, manage, train, and promote others whose primary responsibility is “doing.”
  • As this individual is coached, encourage him to step back and look at the big picture of his new role.
    • The CEO does not expect perfection from the start. He understands from his own experience that learning management takes time.
    • However, he also knows that to become a new manager requires giving up many of the hands-on activities that one used to perform. The job is no longer to do these yourself, but to coach others to be able to perform these tasks to the standards of the firm.
    • Initially, this takes more time than “doing it yourself.” However, this individual now has talented people reporting to him and they will learn quickly. In a short while, it will take less time to delegate than to do it himself.
    • From a big picture standpoint, a manager justifies the higher salary and greater prospects that come with a new position by training his or her team to do what used to be “their job” at a lower salary than the manager’s current salary.
  • In short, in the role of manager, the better one is at developing others who can take on the skills that they used to demonstrate, the more successful that individual will be as a manager, and the more value they will bring to the Company.

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How Can You Improve Your Time Management? Four Points

Situation: A CEO says that she fills her time with too much, leading to pressure. She is concerned that by thriving on pressure she may be sacrificing quality. Additionally, she wonders whether she is trying to do too much. How do you improve your time management?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • The real key is creating priorities, and concentrating on these. As Brian Tracy indicates in The Creative Manager, geniuses know how to concentrate fully on one thing at a time. As a corollary, multitasking is the enemy of genius and quality – it sounds neat to say that one can multitask, but the reality is that this is wasting both focus and productivity.
  • Many of the Forum members revisit their priorities daily.
  • Consider the Quadrant paradigm from Steven Covey:
Quadrant 1

Urgent + Important

This is where top CEOs spend 20-30% of their time

Characteristics:

Reactionary

Deadline-Driven

 Quadrant 2

Not Urgent + Important

This is where top CEOs spend 70-80% of their time

Characteristics:

Proactive

Planning Ahead
Quadrant 3

Urgent + Not Important (not on your high priority list)

Delegate These Tasks

 Quadrant 4

Not Urgent + Not Important

Do Not Do These Tasks

Be Aware of Them and Watch to See if They Become Important or Urgent
  • Quadrants 1 and 2 represent the highest priority tasks, and only the highest priority tasks. Quadrant 3 represents lower priority tasks. Quadrant 4 is self-explanatory.
  • As CEO, delegate many of the Q1 items to staff and spend more time in Q2.
  • Do Not spend any time in Q3 and Q4. There may be times when it is necessary to do some Q3 tasks, but keep these to an absolute minimum.
  • Use the quadrants to better manage time. Take the existing task priority list and categorize each task in the appropriate quadrant. Within each quadrant, prioritize each responsibility. Get together with the management team and delegate these tasks as appropriate. All of the Q3 tasks are areas to delegate to the team and supervise their work.
  • One of the responsibilities of management is to be the firewall for the CEO. This means keeping all Q3 and Q4 tasks off of the CEO’s plate, and handling as many Q1 tasks as possible so that the CEO can concentrate on Q2 tasks.
  • Completing this exercise should yield immediate ways to reduce existing time management pressures.

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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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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 Find the Right Funding Source? Six Solutions

Situation: A company is short of cash and needs a source to fund their cash flow needs. Their needs are mapped out for the next four years and they can fund current operations for a few months. However, their bank will not extend their credit line. How do you find the right funding source?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Try another bank. Ask friends and contacts about their banks and see if they’ll refer the company to their bank.
  • Explore renegotiating the company’s lease to ease the cash flow needs.
  • Explore renegotiating payment terms with suppliers. See what can be worked out. The bottom line – if the company goes Chapter 7 or 11, they get nothing.
  • Consider going to a larger company and working out an arrangement.
    • Ask that they allow the partners to operate as an “independent” entity retaining their titles.
    • In exchange for funding the company’s cash needs, the larger company shares in the profits.
    • Seek a temporary arrangement to allow the company can get back on its feet financially.
    • Use the friends and reputation that the company has developed over the years. The company is a good outfit and respected. Others may help if asked.
  • A similar tactic is to approach a larger company to negotiate an arrangement that will allow the company to survive. Start with a business plan.
    • Highlight the company’s reputation and the quality of its products. Use references from highly satisfied customers.
    • Highlight the company’s key strength – developing the critical path and plan for a successful project.
    • The thrust of the presentation: the partner gets a quality team and shares in the profits from projects completed. The partner provides the cash to fund the projects. Compare the risk and return on these funds compared with other investment options available to highlight the value of the proposal.
  • Other CEOs shared similar situations that have worked for them.
    • The financial realities were kept secret from staff, customers, and competitors.
    • All unnecessary expenses were cut.
    • The focus was on making money today.
    • Supplier payments were delayed as necessary to manage cash flow.
    • The process was managed creatively, sometimes with the assistance of friends, and the companies were able to prevail.
  • There is no shame in facing and dealing with this problem. Determination will pay off.

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How do You Minimize Inventory Damage by an Outsourced Manufacturer? Five Points

Situation: A company uses outsourced manufacturing but is concerned about inventory damage by the manufacturer. Tests have been established to assure both visual compliance and functional performance, overseen by a company employee. Still the company is receiving too many unacceptable parts. How do you minimize inventory damage by an outsourced manufacturer?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • It is perfectly acceptable for a vendor of consigned materials to bear the risk of product that is not to specification.
    • In any contract for manufacturing, require that the vendor carry insurance to cover the full cost of materials and processing in case of damage either during manufacturing or shipping.
  • It sounds like this is a new opportunity and situation for the company. In the process they have not guaranteed that both cost and risk are covered.
    • There is no point in assuming all this risk.
    • For future opportunities like this, take on the work as a time and materials project at an appropriate hourly rate for the market, and with a significant mark-up to cover risk as the project is transferred to a contract manufacturer.
    • Another option is to take on the project under a project management contract, and to bill engineering separately.
  • This situation sounds familiar for an evolving project. In the future try to unhitch the manufacturing piece from the engineering. Engineering should be more profitable, which will allow the company to more successfully manage the project into early manufacturing.
  • Strategically, this could be a good move for the company provided they partner with a reliable vendor to facilitate early stage manufacturing. One option for paying sub-vendors is to pay for yield – particularly if early stage work has a high failure rate.
  • If the market opportunity is there do two things:
    • Set up an organization with professionals who know early stage manufacturing.
    • Be aware this group will have a different culture and approach compared to design engineers.

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Should You Sell or Buy Another Company? Six Thoughts

Situation: A founder CEO is faced with two options – either selling his company or buying a complimentary company. The acquisition would fulfill his dream as CEO, but he is concerned both about the synergy between the two entities and his ability to manage the combined company. Should he sell, or buy the other company?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Given these concerns approach the purchase opportunity skeptically. Be more prepared to say no than yes.
  • In evaluating his ability to run a larger operation, the CEO should objectively assess his own abilities.
    • A good CEO is not a Superman. A good CEO creates a viable business model and vision and hires a good team to bring that model to reality.
    • Consider past accomplishments. In an industry where nobody makes money the CEO has created a business model that is sustainable, highly profitable, and technically superior. The only thing lacking is size in terms of revenue.
    • The new opportunity – on the right terms – can launch the company from dominance in a niche to dominance in a significantly larger industry.
  • Assess the new opportunity both as a technical and cultural match. If there is a good cultural match:
    • Fewer things must go right to add value.
    • The purchase provides a channel to a larger market.
    • The acquisition will rapidly speed company growth.
    • The biggest concern will be the time to manage both entities.
  • The most important factor will be the chemistry between the two company teams. If the chemistry is good, the combination offers reasonable assurance that the two teams will complement each other.
  • Look at the purchase as an opportunity to build a win-win with enduring value.
  • In considering outside investors to support the acquisition, be cautious about financial partners and the conditions behind each financing option.

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How Do You Maintain Your Culture as You Grow? Five Thoughts

Situation: A professional services company wants to grow while maintaining the small company atmosphere that has been the key to its success. There is a limit to how many clients a manager can manage, and with this the reality that if the firm is to grow they will have to bring on more client managers and support personnel. How do you maintain your culture as you grow?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • To maintain your boutique atmosphere, consider hiring to fit your needs rather than to maintain a culture. Use team meetings to direct team members while communicating and instilling the culture that you wish to maintain.
  • Don’t risk diluting the strength of your client relationships. A $250K client who is fully committed to your service may have more demands than a $1M client for whom you only represent 10% of their business.
  • Service companies with the highest profit ratios rotate customer contact among several qualified people. What matters is the level of service provided, not the individual providing the service.
  • Grow by adding locations. Instead of growing vertically in the same office, grow modularly by spawning additional offices.
    • Create an optimally sized model for the level of service that you wish to deliver.
    • Design the organizational structure for this model and identify the order in which slots will be filled as business grows through each office.
    • Develop a service and organizational template with standard operating procedures, metrics, technology, and reporting.
    • Once the model is created, spawn it.
  • Focus your business. Define a niche that you can serve better than your competitors. Focus on this niche and develop a sustainable advantage over your competition.
    • Assure that your service delivery is seamless to the client and make sure that it remains seamless.
    • Offer a menu of service options and price options by the level of service delivered. Some will want to buy a Mercedes, and some will be happy with a reliable lower priced sedan.

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