Situation: The CEO is moving a key employee from head of engineering to a more customer development focus. To support this, she will have to bring in or promote another employee to fill the position of leader/supervisor/manager of the engineering group. The CEO seeks advice on the best way to approach finding a replacement for this key job. How do you replace a key position?
Advice from the CEOs:
• First, it is necessary to develop a timeline for finding and transitioning the replacement. Realistically, count on 6 months to find a replacement and transition the responsibilities to a new person.
• Keep in mind that anybody you find or promote will be different from the individual who currently occupies the position, and will not handle their new responsibilities the same way as the current individual. Their motivation and their approach to their new responsibilities will be different, at least at the outset, and they will not handle their responsibilities the same way that the current individual does.
• Seek an individual, either currently within the company or an outside hire with strengths that, over time, will add significant value to the organization. Prepare for this by brainstorming and developing a profile of the ideal candidate.
• If you have qualified candidates, the ideal person will come from within the organization. This has the added advantage of demonstrating to other employees that they, also, may become candidates for future positions to grow both their skills and income.
Tag Archives: Support
How Do You Jump-Start Sales in the New Year? Four Points
Situation: A CEO has been working with his team to jump-start sales to set the company on a positive growth path. His team has come up with some interesting ideas. He would like to hear from others as to what they have done to set their companies up for a year of positive growth. How do you jump-start sales in the new year?
Advice from the CEOs:
• Set up a focused, manageable revenue target list of 30-100 existing and desirable new clients. Focus sales efforts on these clients. This is much more effective than a shotgun approach.
• Touch-up and refresh the target list on a consistent basis. Create and lay out a schedule of contacts by email, telephone or meetings and stick to it.
• Schedule regular meetings with the team to share successes and insights gained from their efforts. Compliment this by awarding points and recognition for the best contributions to the meetings. Rather than deciding on the awards yourself, have the team vote on the best contributions. This will increase the camaraderie of the team and will encourage them to support each other
• Develop a focused network to link to former colleagues. For example, if you’ve worked at other companies join or create an alumni group for those individuals on Linked-in. This can develop unexpected new opportunities.
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How Do You Boost the Performance of a Life Sciences Company? Six Suggestions
Situation: The CEO wants to improve the performance of her life sciences company. She has questions about the business plan and roles within the company. She is also looking for better ways to connect with current and potential customers. How do you boost the performance of a life sciences company?
Advice from the CEOs:
- Assess both your own role and the company to ensure that there is good alignment between the business plan and the roles within the company.
- Be strategic after assessing the company’s needs and situation. Too often companies jump to tactical considerations because they are action oriented. To be effective, tactics must align with the broader company strategy.
- Build a foundation based on value and compliment this with effective models to communicate and leverage this value base.
- Think outside the box. Consider options to use or increase the effectiveness of social networking. This has growing dramatically in importance as a way to reach and communicate with key current and potential constituencies.
- Perception is important. Be aware of what others think of the company and work creatively to present the company in a light that will support objectives.
- The visual cortex represents 75% of sensory awareness. Leverage this on web sites and in marketing campaigns.
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How Do You Attract Investment to a Small Company? Four Perspectives
Situation: A small company seeks outside investment to support its growth. The company’s industry is dominated by large, well-recognized players. These companies have historically been the company’s customers; however, they have a quarterly mindset, and are increasingly looking to support their own development groups. How do you attract investment to a small company?
Advice from the CEOs:
- What is the company’s ROI and risk profile?
- Positive ROI, particularly taking advantage of new distribution channels.
- ROI turnaround is typically 1-2 years.
- There are about 50 similar companies in the market.
- The company possesses intellectual property that makes it appealing.
- Project maturity is generally considered a risk in the industry – it is not as experienced or mature as other industries.
- An additional risk is that new developments in online distribution are continually changing the industry environment in unpredictable ways.
- Investigate and approach companies in other industries with similar structures – dominated by large players but with a healthy presence of smaller companies. Examples include the movie industry and real estate pools.
- Talk to investors who are familiar with these industries to see whether they would be interested in investing in the company’s projects.
- There is a good deal of money out there looking to beat the current returns available through the stock market and paper investments. Look for an angel investor.
- Given the Risk/Reward structure of the industry, approaching professional investors may be the best bet for the company.
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What are the Consequences of Not Meeting Goals? Four Points
Situation: A company recently established a weekly objectives program. Weekly objectives are set on Monday, with reminders to complete objectives for the week sent by email on Thursday. However, some team members are failing to meet goals for the previous week and want to roll over previous week’s unmet objectives to the new week. Should there be consequences for failing to meet stated objectives? If so, what is the best method to phase these in? What are the consequences of not meeting goals?
Advice from the CEOs:
- Track which objectives are being met and which are not. Measure the impact of not meeting objectives on original timelines. Assess the depth of the problem.
- Watch the process for four weeks. At the weekly meeting following the end of the four weeks, discuss the process as a team.
- What’s working and what is not?
- Are realistic objectives being set?
- If objectives are not being met, is there something that regularly interferes with objective completion?
- Are monthly or quarterly objectives at risk as a result?
- Reset and reestablish expectations for the following four weeks as a team. Raise the bar for compliance, as a team, as you mature the process.
- If any team member shows signs of chronic difficulty meeting weekly objectives, meet 1-on-1 to assess the situation and reset expectations.
- Discussion builds team support of the process and adds a layer of peer-pressure to prompt individuals to improve their consistency in meeting weekly objectives.
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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 Build the Right Organization? Four Observations
Situation: To accommodate future growth, a company has to build its management infrastructure and has developed an organizational chart to guide this process. Should preference be given to existing personnel who are qualified and have expressed an interest in the new positions or should leadership wait until they identify exceptional outside talent for the new positions? How do you build the right organization?
Advice from the CEOs:
- Move forward with internal talent that have been identified. The company and management know these people and the “ideal” outsider may also come with “less than ideal” baggage.
- Create a 90-day plan with specific broad objectives for those who will be offered the open positions. Let them know that the assignments are conditional upon their ability to achieve their objectives during the 90-day period. Provide coaching, and cross-departmental training to give them the best chance to succeed.
- For one position, there are two individuals who have expressed an interest in the decision. How should the CEO choose between these individuals?
- Move forward with the individual who is considered the best choice, but offer training and support for the second individual so that there is a ready candidate for new positions that may open, or a natural successor should the position in question open up for any reason.
- The company has a very flat organization chart. Individual employees work on several projects, with a different manager for each, simultaneously. What is the best way to evaluate individuals in this situation?
- Use a 360 peer-to-peer and peer-to-boss approach to gather feedback for performance appraisals. There are a number of web-based systems available. This will provide an objective source of feedback to support performance appraisals and reviews.
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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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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 Will Your Personal Plans Impact the Company? Six Points
Situation: A CEO, for personal reasons, is planning to move to another state. While he will remain CEO, he is concerned about the potential impact of this decision on the company, particularly the fact that he will not be present personally to handle matters that arise. What can he do to alleviate this concern? How will your personal plans impact the company?
Advice from the CEOs:
- Put a stake in the ground. Set a date for the move and work backwards to see whether this is attainable.
- Have a discussion with the company’s key managers.
- Empower them to challenge the date.
- Discuss this as a brainstorm to plan the future and what must be done to get there. Once a plan is established retest the timing.
- Consider this as a gradual transition. Start 3 weeks here / 1 week there, and gradually transition to 1/3. This will help you to determine how the company performs absent the CEO’s daily presence.
- Move family but keep a small place here. Start the transition now and figure out balance. Do what is necessary.
- Have the key managers transition their roles before initiating the move.
- This will provide confidence that they can handle this transition.
- As part of the process, look at areas where the company can use more support. For example, is HR up to snuff? What about information services or financial management? Prior to initiating the transition take steps to fill any gaps.
- Does the company have a formal metrics structure?
- If not, establish one and in preparation for the transition see how the two managers manage this.
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