Wayne Wilson on Companies in Transition

Confident, upbeat consistency will more likely carry the day.

Confidence, Optimism, Consistency – These are essential traits for the owner/CEO or manager who would successfully transform a company or any other organization.

Employees, like voters, recognize that their personal fates often depend on the actions of their leaders. They are constantly looking for signs that:

• You know what you are doing (confidence),

• You are optimistic that the plan or goal can be achieved (sunny disposition), and

• Your consistency of words and action demonstrate that you really do have a well thought out plan which might actually work (consistency).

In one of my prior lives as a corporate COO, one of the most productive (and enjoyable) parts of the job was getting out and talking to employees and associates. They need to see you, hear you, test you (through there questions), and go away confident that you and they are in it together.

When employees and associates are confident about your leadership, they are more likely to then go do their part to make it happen.

Excessive risk taking comes home to roost.

The news these days about the economic woes resulting from the subprime mortgage mess illustrate the truth of the old adage about chickens coming home to roost – the financial industry’s excessive risk taking has come home to roost on them, and on many other people as well.

Entrepreneurial capitalism clearly depends on risk taking, but when the downsides of the risks are very large or will be borne by people other than the people making the decisions to take the risks, perverse things can happen. (Management theorists refer to this phenomenon as agency risk.)

How can owner/CEOs balance these two challenges?

• Successful risk takers do more homework and think more about the potential negative / unintended consequences of their bets before making them. As a result, the risks they take are much smaller than they at first appear to be.

• Risk taking which could lead to “betting the farm (business)” should be weighed even more carefully.

• Risk taking delegated to subordinates must be closely supervised to avoid nasty surprises.

Has your company reached a "strategic inflection point"?

Andy Grove, co-founder and former CEO of Intel, once defined “strategic inflection point” as “a time in the life of a business when its fundamentals are about to change.” The fundamentals may be changing because of:

• New competitors,

• Emerging technologies,

• Maturing markets, or

• A host of other reasons.

But the key challenges for the owner/CEO remain the same:

• Recognize that the fundamentals are changing (better yet, anticipate the changes)

• Identify the ways in which they are changing

• Figure our what skill sets are necessary to respond to the changes

Strategic inflection points often require very different managerial capabilities from those which previously made the organization successful. The companies which adapt quickly will more likely survive and prosper.

If you get things right, good things happen.

Mark Hurd, CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co., on the remarkable three-year turnaround he has led at H-P,

• If you “get the strategy right,’

• “get the operating model right,”

• “get the people right,”

• then “good things happen.” [1]

During those three years, Hurd has reportedly been a heads-down executive focused on understanding and running the business. How does he do it?

• Sticks to his knitting – Hurd is an intense operational CEO

• Challenges every dime of spending – slashing costs in all areas

• He makes the decisions – “The more you leave the kids in the room to figure it out on their own, the more trouble you’re going to get.”

Every turnaround situation is different, but they all require strong leadership and clear direction.

---

[1] Quoted in Connie Guglielmo, Hurd Rebuilds Hewlett-Packard by Debating Every Dime, Bloomberg.com, February 8, 2008.

Did you know that you were in sales?

When asked about my professional background, I frequently answer that I have had four careers and that I plan to have at least one more. That statement sometimes surprises people but not as much as the next one: my first career was in sales and sales management in the life insurance business.

Now my sales career was not particularly stellar (I survived), but more importantly, I learned skills which have served me enormously well over the ensuing years. When you boil it all down, sales skills are really people skills – establishing and maintaining relationships, brokering compromises, and influencing outcomes.

With this post, we begin an occasional series by guest author, Christopher Thompson, founder and president of Catch 22 Solutions, a sales performance consulting company. For more information, visit www.catch22solutions.com.

******

This article originally appeared as “Life is Selling,”
in the Union Leader – NH Sunday News, November 10, 2007.
Copyright 2007 Catch 22 Solutions – All Rights Reserved

Throughout our life, we are taught all of the critical skills that will enable us to be successful in a competitive world. We are taught how to read, write, make decisions and effectively communicate. As we attend school during our childhood and teen years, we are given a foundation of knowledge that will allow us to choose our own destiny and select a career that we are most interested in.

Unfortunately, I have never heard of a course prior to higher education that teaches one of the most important skills every person needs to succeed in life: selling skills. I strongly believe the absence of sales training in general studies is a disservice to everyone and there is one major reason. Everything we do in life is selling.

Feedback drives performance

Owner/CEOs, themselves frequently entrepreneurs, sometimes struggle to provide key employees with timely, meaningful performance feedback. And yet, performance feedback is critical to sustaining and improving performance.

A structured performance appraisal program can provide significant business benefits by:

• Providing constant feedback about areas in which an individual excels as well as areas which need improvement

• Developing consistent performance through the formalization of the employee’s job description coupled with regular assessments against those criteria

• Integrating career development into the feedback process to aid in the retention of your best and brightest employees

• Empowering employees to collaborate in the goal setting process

• Improving the efficiency of the employee management process allowing more of your time to be spent on growing the business

The timely, thoughtful care and feeding of key employees, frequently your most valuable assets, will pay big dividends.