Leadership

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Going Beyond The Open Door Policy

 

Most senior leaders I know consider themselves to be far more accessible than they really are. They believe attending events such as weekly office meetings, the annual Christmas party, offsite planning meetings, and various office mixers makes them accessible. However, the truth is, they continue to be surrounded by the same group of 15 to 25 people who dominate their attention and skew their information base, providing them with a false sense of “unbiased” knowledge.

A leader’s ability to know what is really going on in a company has much to do with the breadth of their information sources. If the sources are constantly the same, a leader could miss what is really happening at the different levels within the company. This often results in an issue escalating into a crisis before an executive can even realize there is a problem.

Leaders fool themselves by having “open door” policies. They assume their employees will feel comfortable enough to walk into their office with pertinent information. An “open door” policy is fine, but in a decentralized office environment, only the people at that location have access, and those employees most likely would not feel comfortable talking outside the normal chain of command.

Generally, because of rank and title, leaders are perceived to be intimidating, and oftentimes even aloof. In addition, subordinate leaders often give directives such as “don’t tell the boss,” and punish those who express their ideas to a “higher chain of command” without permission. These types of unspoken or unwritten rules exist often without a leader’s knowledge.

I found that in order to get more clear and unbiased information, I had to adjust my methods to actively seek it out. With that in mind, I used three techniques: […]

By |October 1st, 2015|Career Lessons|0 Comments

Failing Your Way To Success

Enterprises evolve by being willing to fail on numerous initiatives in order to find the one or two that create competitive differentiation and transformation.
The job of an entrepreneurial leader is to improve their company’s value-added market position by creating superior competitive offerings for their firm. Succeeding in evolving successful initiatives with organic growth objectives is often the way you do that.

I have started 15 to 20 new initiatives throughout my career, in an effort to create new businesses or product lines. The success rate of those initiatives has only been about 30%, but thankfully; those few successes were triples or home runs that changed the competitive landscape.

If the probability for failure is so high, how could it be wise to pursue a new initiative? Is there anything that we could have done to increase the probability of success? Did we have a lot of bad ideas? This article is about what we learned.

Initiative failure is rarely about lack of quality of the idea or the dedication of the team. The reason for failure gravitates from too many, often uncontrollable, widely diverse issues. Some of these situations include:

Having the wrong leader
Losing the right potential leader due to early failure or disappointment
Investing too little money, time or energy
Having a non-supportive core business that protects the existing power structure
Wrong timing—either ‘before its time’ or during unexpected economic distraction
The wrong point of sale within the buyer’s organization
Conflicts with services of the existing brand in the eyes of the customers
Trying foolishly to get early synergy with the core business
Experiencing early quality control issues that were not expected or accepted
Possessing little ability to recruit the right supporting cast due to core business identity
Inappropriately trying to re-trend previously successful personnel to a […]

By |July 1st, 2015|Career Lessons|0 Comments

Moving Your Company Upstream

My services are often requested from mid-sized professional services firms desiring to add management control and internal synergy, as their companies grow in multiple directions. Most of those firms started with several good content centric consultants and succeeded in growing by serving their clients well. With that success they wanted to add new growth streams and had internally found numerous advocates for new approaches. They embarked on a series of growth initiatives of various success levels. They observed larger firms and have tried several, if not all, of the following:

Add geography (more cities and even more countries)
Add new practice sectors (transportation, energy, water, environment, buildings, public relations, information technology, etc.)
Add new service offerings in both the upstream and downstream approaches (construction, CM at Risk, PPP, procurement, manufacturing, management consulting, asset planning, and operations and maintenance)
Add new client sets (different industrial sectors such as oil/gas, pharmaceuticals, tires, forestry, defense, etc.) or the Federal Government or state and local governments)

When I work with them and discuss their frustrations, they complain about increasingly having a complex set of “tribes” with different pricing concepts, skill types, risks, compensation expectations, client sales points, and wildly different superiority complexes. The CFOs are usually in a daze as to how to account properly to give everyone credit, but have one auditable set of books. Organizational design is especially a problem and no one is happy with the current design. Designs are complex requiring a three- or four-dimensional matrix. Sometimes they even have a few independent companies that each require different levels of support. No matter how they organize they may solve one issue, but soon create new flaws. These new flaws irritatingly grow over time, suggesting another re-organization. At the same time […]

By |March 1st, 2015|Career Lessons|0 Comments

Drilling Holes For Reality

Recently one my former Human Resources directors sent me an excellent article by Jack and Suzy Welch, entitled The One Question Every Boss Should Ask. Strayer University’s Jack Welch Management Institute published it. The boss’ key question of the article’s provocative title is: “Am I alone?”

When providing the article, my friend went on to compliment me as being one of the best leaders he had ever worked for to avoiding the Welch’s feared syndrome. That comment inspired me to write this article.

In the article, Jack and Suzy were referring to the isolation, and thus, a lack of a true world framework leaders often find themselves in when they are victims of not getting enough unbiased, unfiltered information. The insularity is caused by continually hearing the news from the same people, all of who have personal agendas. All reports want to stay relevant and positively regarded in their boss’ minds. Good news and compliments often grant them that, along with more and even easier future access.

The authors talk about the boss being trapped behind a corner office door receiving a stream of appointments consisting of only senior people who receive access and your time due to their positions. For the leader, these direct reports can steal most of your time. Of course, you need to allow time to listen to these subordinates you count on to help run your business, but devoting 100% of your time to them creates a false perception. Time is wasted when the same people consistently give the leader an overly reassuring, positive impression of the business. The result is the leader being comforted about their personal performance, which leads to decisions based on devoting the vast majority of your time to […]

By |January 1st, 2015|Career Lessons|0 Comments

The Golden Access

In previous articles on client service, I have talked about ‘reading a client office’ and ‘leaving something behind.’ Now I want to discuss perhaps the most important client interaction trait. You should treat the receptionist and administrative assistants of your key clients with recognition, grace and care. Having the administrative staff as an ally is enormously important in many facets.

It is not hard to get along well with administrative personnel—simply treat them as equals and interact with courtesy. Read their space also. Their space will tell you about their family, pets, background, interests, vacations and personality. Engage in discussion about something you notice, without prying. Some of the most common questions to engage include, “What a terrific looking set of kids! Are they yours? Are those photos recent?” or “It is really nice to put a face to an email address! How long have you been Ms. Smith’s assistant?”

The higher your positional level, the more impressed the administrative staff is that they are noticed and you treat them with dignity and care. I am not talking about portraying false sentiments; rather, I encourage you to express genuine interest, as they are an important part of your client’s team. In fact, often they are the gatekeepers to access.

The longer I know an administrative assistant, the more likely I am to bring them something on each visit. The items I select always reflect something about me or where I live. YES, you’ve got that right—something about me. I invite them to get to know me better. So, whether it is some chocolates from a specialty Boulder candy store I like; a book on one of my hobbies; or a bracelet that my daughter made, the item relates […]

By |September 1st, 2014|Career Lessons|0 Comments

The Elevator Speech

I found in my last four years of being CEO, there was something consistent about remarks coming from all the people we brought into the corporate center to recruit. It happens that the American headquarters for several of our businesses, along with the global headquarters for industrial clients and our construction company, was housed in a building across the parking lot from global corporate headquarters where I was located. Often, prospective recruits who were interviewing would meet executives in both buildings. More often than not, I was one of the last people they talked with.

By the time I met them, the remark they consistently made that always caught my attention was some version of this comment: “I’ve interviewed with numerous companies, but I’ve never been to one where all the executives I meet are able to state the strategy of the company with clarity in such consistent terms and ownership.” I might add, this comment was told to me at least 20 times. Note that they did not say whether they agreed with the strategy, just that everyone could recite it with consistent accuracy and clarity.

I always bristled with pride when I heard that, but also with some confusion. I said to myself: “You mean other companies haven’t embedded the consistent understanding of their company strategy through their executive ranks? Did they not all own their vision?”

So what made that happen in our company? I can assure you that it certainly did not happen because we wanted to impress people we would be interviewing. That was an unexpected positive consequence.

What did happen was that we knew we had a complex transformational strategy. We knew that not all employees in […]

By |July 1st, 2014|Career Lessons|0 Comments