Who is Managing and Leading Your Front-Line Managers?

Posted on March 15, 2011 by David Shedd

Every organization requires strong front-line managers and leaders. The job of developing these managers falls to their direct supervisors, leaders who are “managers of managers.”

These managers of managers must select, train, and hold front-line managers accountable. Alas, many managers of managers neglect this fundamental aspect of their job; they do not coach or teach management skills to their first time managers. Rather, they ignore all warning signs and just let their managers “sink or swim.” This poor leadership is dysfunctional as many first-time managers develop shocking leadership skills and styles. Further, it is wasteful as promising employees progress into management, only to flounder without adequate guidance, and then leave with their career in ruins.

Key Skills for Managers of Managers

  1. Select and train front-line managers. This includes choosing the right people to become managers and teaching managerial skills to first time managers. In addition, they need to support and encourage their front line managers while holding them accountable for managerial work and their team’s results.
  2. Manage relationships across the group. This includes deploying resources (money, time, attention, people) across the group of front-line managers. Further, they need to break down barriers between and among the group, simplifying work wherever possible.

 

Key Challenge for Managers of Managers

The key challenge for managers of managers is to evaluate their front-line managers’ performance without undercutting their authority. They need to know how their managers are really managing. Are their managers getting results while managing and leading in the proper way? Or are they so focused on results that they have adopted a “kiss up but kick down” leadership style? Managers of managers need to:

  1. Observe the availability and approachability of their managers.
  2. Manage by Walking Around (MBWA). Develop relationship with people below the level of their direct reports. Walk around, meet and interact with them. Ask questions such as “what is going right today”, “what is going wrong today?” Ask alignment questions such as “what are the goals of the organization?” and “what are your three priorities?” Listen to what the people have to say and what they don’t say. Note: if no one sincerely praises or compliments the manager (especially a new manager) in your discussion, then you likely have an issue; the employees’ silence speaks volumes. With MBWA, you may coach the employees, but should not solve their problems. Problem solving remains the responsibility of their direct supervisor, not you.
  3. Review the calendar and daily activities of their managers. What do the managers spend time on? Are they focused on their own work or on the work of their team? Do they allocate sufficient time for managerial tasks such as following-up, coaching, supporting, and training?

 

Warning Signs for Managers of Managers

There are many warning signs that indicate that managers of managers are not doing their jobs well.

  1. Doing too much individual work. They are too much of a doer; they continue to do the activities that made them successful, or they continue to do the tasks that they most enjoyed in their old jobs.
  2. Too much “make it happen.” With a single minded focus on getting the work done, managers of managers will often take over and directly manage a manager’s employees to “get it done.” This undercuts the front line-manager’s authority retarding his or her leadership development.
  3. Poor delegators. They may have difficulty delegating and letting the front-line managers solve their own problems. The front-line managers must be able to give their views and solve their own team’s problems. No development tasks place if the manager of managers is solving every problem or making every decision.
  4. No feedback. They give little or no feedback to their managers. There is no focus on performance management (reviews and periodic assessments).
  5. Failure to build a strong and diverse team of front-line managers. They may leave poor managers in their roles. Or they build a weak team of managers. Or they build a group of managers that are all clones in personality, expertise and leadership style. The goal is to develop a broad and diverse team of outstanding managers.
  6. Bunker mentality with the rest of the larger organization – us vs. them.
  7. Too much ego. As in all leadership roles, there needs to be a value shift. It is no longer about the manager of managers as an individual performer (“I”); it is about the long-term success of the group of managers and team that the manager of managers builds (“We”).
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4 Warning Signs That a New Manager is Failing

Posted on March 9, 2011 by David Shedd

Perhaps, you have just been promoted to management for the first time. Perhaps, you have just promoted someone to their first management role. In either case, the next few months will be a challenge. The shift from valued contributor to successful manager is a difficult road with potholes, detours, and drop-offs up ahead.

As such, it is vital to detect the warning signs when a first-time manager is struggling. It is likely that the performance of the manager’s team will not immediately crater. But, these warning signs, these flashing “yellow lights” will give a heads-up that something is not going well and that future problems are just around the bend.

  

1.  The Manager Does Not Change Mindset and is Still All About “I”
First time managers are nearly always promoted to that position because of their individual success in their previous positions. They are high performers who have been accountable and performed. Well Done!! Now, however, their success will not be measured by what they themselves do. Rather, they are evaluated based on the success of their team. Thus, the new manager’s overriding focus needs to shift to the performance of their direct reports and getting this team to get their jobs done.

This is a significant shift in mindset; the manager needs to think less about “I” and more about “We.” As a colleague once said:

You need to take the “I” out of ego.

Failing first-time managers do not change their mindset and remain focused on their individual performance. Further, they may refuse to take ownership for the performance of their people, distancing themselves from the team’s problems, challenges and failures.

 

2.  The Manager Does Not Utilize the Basic Management Toolkit
As a first-time manager leading on the frontlines, the key skills remain:

  1. Defining and assigning work to be done.
  2. Ensuring that the direct reports have all the tools and time to do the work.
  3. Following up and providing feedback and support (encouragement, recognition, gratitude) to motivate and engage the direct reports to get their work done.
  4. Problem solving and removing obstacles that hinder the direct reports from getting their work done.
  5. Building relations across the company with other managers.

Effective managers spend most of their days on these basic management tasks and realize that it is their job to get their team to do their job well. Flailing managers spend little time on these skills, most often neglecting the follow-up. In addition, they will often interject themselves in the work of their team fixing their people’s mistakes rather than teaching them how to do their work correctly.

 

3.  The Manager is Power-Tripping
The manager may be rarely available and not approachable. She may view questions from direct reports as interruptions from her “more important” work. Or he may over-rely on his title (and position), barking out orders and threats to get his team to do something.

  

4.  The Manager Refuses to Admit That He or She is Drowning
Becoming a manager does not come naturally, especially for a star individual performer. All too often new managers refuse to admit that they are not succeeding. To get the team’s work done, they go beyond fixing people’s mistakes and begin to take on more and more of the team’s work themselves. They stop delegating and justify their actions with the slogan: “if you want something to be done right, then you need to do it yourself.” And they do not ask anyone (boss, peer, trusted direct report) for help.

  

Conclusion

Avoiding the potholes and developing successful and skilled first–time managers is a vital task in any organization. First, these new managers are on the front lines of the business where 90% of the daily battle takes place. Second, these first-time managers are the future senior leaders of the company. If they do not learn to be effective managers and leaders at this level, then they will likely never learn these skills with serious and debilitating consequences for their organizations.

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8 (Almost) Fundamentals of Problem Solving

Posted on March 3, 2011 by David Shedd


As business leaders we are bombarded with challenges that need to be addressed, situations that need to be improved, and problems that need to be solved.

Of course, each challenge, situation or problem is different. Nevertheless, there are some fundamentals of problem solving.

1.  Define the Real Problem
This is the biggie. Ensure that you are solving the right problem. And ensure that you are solving the root cause of the problem and are not just treating the symptoms. There are numerous methods to determine root causes – cause mapping, fishbone diagrams, etc. For me, the easiest is to use the Five Whys. Ask a question and to each answer ask Why? again. Doing this for five times should get you to the root cause of the problem, which may be very different from what appeared to initially be the problem.

2.  Define the Real Problem
I have to repeat this because it is so important. Determine the real problem and solve it. Toyota is justifiably famous for its problem-solving savvy in perfecting its production methods. According to Toyota, the key to their method is to spend relatively more time defining the problem and relatively less time on figuring out the solution.

3.  Get the Facts
Dig deep and get the facts to truly understand the nature of the problem and the possible solutions. Do the analysis to let the facts do the talking instead of gut instinct. As Wharton Professor Peter Cappelli says:

I tell my MBA students that whenever you are going with your gut, you are doing something wrong. In most cases, you can actually figure it out. So, you should sit down and figure it out.

 4.  Use Hypothesis
As happens on the CSI television shows, make a best guess as to the solution to the problem at the beginning – define the initial hypothesis. Then test this initial hypothesis digging deep to determine whether the hypothesis is right or wrong. Then, adjust the hypothesis as the facts dictate. This use of hypothesis has been the basis of the scientific method for the last several hundred years. There are two advantages to problem solving using a hypothesis. First, the initial hypothesis gives you a framework, a way of explanation, to understand all the facts and data that you are collecting. Second, by calling it a hypothesis that still needs to be proven you avoid becoming locked in on a solution and are more open to changing your mind as the facts dictate.

5.  Keep the solution simple
Any solution to a problem has to be implemented by your team. Thus, keep the solution as simple as possible. Be able to explain the solution to the problem clearly and precisely in 30 seconds or less. Keep the action items to solve the problem to three or fewer. Think 80 / 100. Go for the solution that solves 80% of the problem, but that is 100% implementable by the team rather than the 100% solution that is unlikely to ever be properly implemented.

6.  Do not re-invent the wheel
Unlike in school, plagiarism can be good. If someone has a clever idea or way to solve your problem, by all means legally use it. “Not invented here” syndrome is just sheer arrogance.

7.  Gain momentum in problem solving
In situations where you have multiple problems to solve (for example, a business turnaround, new market development, or an acquisition) pluck the low hanging, but important, fruit first; solve the easy problems. This gives momentum, shows progress, and gives your team confidence. Then focus on continuing to hit singles, not home runs. The way to success is to solve hundreds of little problems.

8.  Consider time
Look at the time element in problems and problem solving. In any solution, think critical path to ensure that you do first what needs to be done first. Also, ensure that the solution can be implemented in a reasonable period of time. With most problems, solutions that take longer than a few months will likely fail. The momentum will die out; top management will move on to another “critical issue.” To best solve a problem, implement your solution before the day, before the week, before the month is out.

Summary

Define the problem properly. Solve. Implement quickly. Move on to the next problem. Repeat.

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Does Your Company Have the Right DNA?

Posted on February 23, 2011 by David Shedd


Businesses have been using personality tests for years to determine employee’s thinking styles and corporate fit. In general, the benefit from all this testing and analysis has been meager. The test results, communicated in complex language, are not easy to put in practice.

Quick question: What does ESTJ mean to you?

Nevertheless, having an understanding of how your leaders think, their personality, and what they prefer to do is important. For several years, we used the more straightforward HBDI testing (Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument) to determine how someone thinks and what they prefer to do. Keeping it simple, the test measures someone’s method of thinking along four quadrants, which can be defined as follows:

  1. Analytical
  2. Organized
  3. Inter-personal
  4. Creative

Everyone is a mix of one of these four types. A superstar may think and have equal preferences in all four quadrants; but that is rare. In general, financial and technical people tend to be more analytical and organized. Artists and designers are more creative (no duh); and sales people are more inter-personal focused.

Now consider the combination of all the thinking and personality styles of your company.

  1. Would an organization of all analytical and organized leaders effectively focus on customers over the long term?
  2. Would an organization of all creative or all inter-personal types effectively execute on all the new ideas and contacts that they come up with?

At the risk of gross over-simplification, the answer is: No!

This mix of thinking style, personality and preferences determines the DNA of the company. This DNA then determines the company’s approach to the market and the company culture.

Three key points about your company’s DNA.

1.  DNA Diversity is Good
People with different thinking styles will clash with one another. The analytical and organized person may be a “just the facts, ma’am” type of person in all his or her dealings, while the inter-personal may empathize more with the feelings of others. As such, there will be conflict. But, this conflict allows diverse ideas and viewpoints into the discussion. Moreover, without the diversity from having people with different personality and thinking styles, the company will become one-tracked and may lose its way as the marketplace evolves.

Many companies achieved success in their business during the great boom by being organized to deliver their products well and analytical in detecting and resolving any inefficiency. Demand was high; operations and finance were king. Today many of these same companies are struggling. They remain analytical and organized and have few creative or customer-focused leaders in positions of influence. Their DNA pool is too narrow. As such, they seek to solve problems in an organized and analytical way even when that is not appropriate. In trying to drive sales and profits, they may focus on pricing programs or re-organizations (analytical and organized approaches) rather than promoting superior customer relationships (inter-personal) and developing new and innovative products and services (creative). Their restricted leadership tool-kit is hindering the business from adapting to the changed reality.

 

2.  The External Environment Determines the Best Fitting DNA
No one type of company DNA fits with all external realities. In the example above, an analytical and operational focus worked quite well in the boom years. Likewise, many computer companies have struggled as they have not adapted. Led by techies they have under-appreciated the evolution in the marketplace. No longer does the latest and coolest technology win the battle. Now, having the most innovative, best-designed (think Apple) technology is the critical factor for success. In short, struggling technology companies have not evolved their DNA to downplay the analytical side and strengthen the creative side.

As with evolution, the winners will be able to adapt and fit their corporate DNA to the changing external environment.

3.  To Change DNA Significantly Usually Requires New Blood
People can evolve their own DNA – their unique mix of thinking style, personality, and preferences – somewhat. But, to really evolve and change your company’s DNA requires new leaders with different ways of looking at reality, different ways of thinking and different preferences. This new blood strengthens the overall company gene pool by adding new mindsets and new personalities. This will certainly lead to conflict; but it will also make the company more adaptive to the changing marketplace. As you consider how to succeed in the “New Normal” reflect on what is lacking in your current company DNA. Then, either find someone in the company that has that “missing link” or hire from the outside. Your company’s long term success and survival may depend on it.


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For Better Business Results, Use Yellow Lights

Posted on February 16, 2011 by David Shedd

Quick Question

Why are functioning traffic lights at an intersection so much better than a policeman signaling traffic?

  1. The yellow light gives each driver a signal in advance, a heads-up allowing all approaching traffic to make decisions ahead of time and adjust their behavior. If close enough to the intersection, the driver can continue or even (so I have heard J) speed up. If far enough away, the driver can
    slow down and brake. Policemen have but two signals: a wave of the hand (green) and an outstretched palm (red).

     

  2. The traffic lights are above the level of traffic and quite visible. On straight streets, they can be seen as far as a mile away. With their illumination, a driver from any direction can clearly see the lights and respond. By contrast, the policeman is at ground level with his hand signal at most six feet off the ground. He is all but invisible to you until that big black Escalade in front passes him by.

     

  3. The traffic lights are consistent. There is a consistent time that the lights are green. And there is a set and carefully considered duration for the yellow light allowing traffic to come to a halt in one direction before traffic in the other direction proceeds through the intersection.

In short, the yellow lights make the difference.

But, what does this have to do with business?

To optimize any aspect of your business – be it operations, sales, or customer service, it is beneficial to communicate with yellow lights.

In short, give a heads-up or an advance warning of impending problems.

Use yellow lights to give the customer or the other party, a heads up that there may be a problem or that you will be delayed. This signal in advance allows the other party to adjust what they are doing to reduce the fall-out from the setback or delay. As one customer wrote us after being adversely effected by a delay which we had not communicated to him:

Had all parties known of the delays, we may not have been happy but at least we would have had an opportunity to make planned adjustments to schedule and revenue. And we may have avoided the negative financial consequences which resulted from this delay.

To make the yellow lights as effective as possible, make them visible and obvious so that everyone knows that there is the potential for a problem. Clear communication to all involved is essential. An example from the world of production would be kanban cards, which offer a clear, visible method of yellow lighting and indicating that a level of stock may be low and soon needs to be replenished. The point of this effective communication is to ensure that attention is directed towards solving the issue that is causing the yellow light and mitigating the fall-out from the setback.

Further, create consistency in the use of yellow lights. Require yellow lights in all cases where there might be an upcoming issue. The more consistently yellow lights are used, the less of a stigma will be attached to admitting that something might be going wrong. Nearly all employees are aware of the historical fact that (yes) messengers often do get shot. By encouraging regular and consistent yellow lighting, you can reduce the innate (and justifiable) fear of communicating a problem or potential problem.

The alternative to using yellow lights is to abruptly change from the cruise control of a green light to the car crash of a red light. As a result, the problem is not promptly addressed, everyone else is caught by surprise, and the resulting damage from the problem or delay is magnified.

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Four Reasons Why Leaders Don’t Take Action

Posted on February 10, 2011 by David Shedd

The external environment is changing; we are living in the “New Normal”. The business is falling behind and weakening. Yet, nothing happens. No change takes place. Critical issues are not addressed. The leadership continues to do what it has always done.

But, why? Why aren’t the business leaders taking action to change their business model and get their company back on track? Undoubtedly, the leaders are working hard and want to succeed. So, what is stopping them from facing the problems head on?

In short, why do they procrastinate?

 

1.  The leaders don’t detect the problem – Boiled Frog Syndrome
According to this anecdote, a boiled frog that is placed into a pot of boiling water will immediately jump out. A boiled frog that is placed in a pot of cold water that is then heated will not notice the gradual difference in temperature. This frog will not jump out and will eventually die. Likewise, many leaders may not notice the gradual deterioration of their business and believe that nothing has changed. “Yes, sales are down. But, it is just the economy.” These leaders continue to see the reality of the world and their business as it might have been several years ago. Without an obvious reason for change, they won’t.
 

2.  The leaders are waiting for an external change that will solve their problems – Deus Ex Machina
Deus Ex Machina comes from ancient Greek; it means “god out of the machine”. Deus Ex Machina refers to a plot device in ancient Greek theatre, where a play would be resolved by having one of the Greek Gods appear on stage (either flying in from above dangling from a crane or emerging from below by a riser lifting the god through a trap door). Once on stage, the god would save the good, punish the bad, and make everything all right.
Today, many businesses have run into similar dead ends and need to be saved. Alas, there is no god coming out of the machine to resolve everything by changing the reality back to the way it was a few years ago. Business leaders need to stop waiting for the housing market to recover, for the economy to turn around, for the government to fix Health Care, Medicare, you name it. Business leaders need to stop waiting for their problems to be solved. Instead, they need to start taking take the action to fix and grow their businesses in the cold, hard business reality that now exists.

3.  The leaders are uncomfortable or fear the change and what it brings – Comfort Junkies
By nature, leaders, like everyone else, get into routines of what they do on a daily basis. They usually stay within this comfort zone as a way to reduce stress, to be reassured, and because it is easier. Taking action to address the changed critical issues and to change the business is hard. It requires more work (which usually is not a problem) and it requires different work (doing different things that you as the leader may not be good at).

Further, it is risky. There is no certainty that the change will be successful. And if it is successful, then the change may mean that the leaders lose power, position and prestige as the new skill set required to lead the business no longer matches their skill set. Alas, as leaders we are not paid to do what we like to do, we are paid to do the right thing for the business. We are paid to get uncomfortable. We are paid to take a professional risk. We are paid to drive our businesses to success.

4.  The leaders are too busy and do not have enough time to bring about change – Lack of Priorities
For other leaders, it is all a matter of time. They would change if only they had more time. Sorry, but lack of time is just an excuse. If you know that your business needs to change. If you know that your business will not be magically changed by some different external circumstances. And if you are willing to get out of your comfort zone and confront the fear and uncertainty that the change might bring. Then finding the time to get the right change done will be easy. Prioritize on this most important of tasks (adapting your business to the new strategic reality), and you will have plenty of time to get it done.

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Are You Open to New and Unexpected Customers?

Posted on February 3, 2011 by David Shedd

Most likely, a number of potential new customers are contacting your business today to see if you can help solve their problems: they will walk through your doors; they will call you on the phone; they will contact you by E-Mail; they will connect with you through your Website.

How will these potential customers be treated?

  • Will your company be easy for these customers to do business with?
    • Will your company’s professionalism show through?
    • Will their phone calls or E-Mails be returned?
  • Will you solve their problem?

In short, are you open to these new and unexpected customers?

We are all aware of how difficult it is, at times, to buy from companies. In fact, I experienced just this in the last two weeks.

My wife discovered some old style 3.5 inch “floppy” disks with pictures of our children when they were very young. We wanted to be able to access these photos and keep them in our digital library. But, we no longer had a drive that could read the disks. My first stop was the local Audiovisual store which promises to help with “all things audio and all things video.” The uninformed clerk at the store had no idea what I was talking about. But, he took my information and promised that the manager would call back as soon as he got back to the store. I am still waiting for the call.

Now, it was time to buy a 3.5 inch disk reader that could connect to my computer allowing me to transfer the photos myself. So, I went off to three different electronics chains, two of which specialize in uncommon pieces of electronics. None of them had it in stock. And none of them gave me any assistance or suggestions to help me find what I was looking for. In further research, I found that one of the chains had what I needed at a neighboring store. And another chain had it on their website. Alas, this was too late; I had already bought it on Amazon.

Each of these companies had the opportunity to receive my money. But, they all dropped the ball. To them, I was a simple inconvenience, not a customer with a problem to be solved. Yet, they lost something bigger than the $20 I eventually spent; they lost me as a potential customer the next time that I have a similar, somewhat out of the ordinary, request. And they do not even know that they have lost my potential business.

Most B2B businesses proactively manage the sales funnel to make an unqualified prospect into a potential customer into a completed sale. But, what about those potential customers which are not on the sales funnel or not on the sales plan? What about the unknown customers who have already taken the initiative to contact your business? How many times a day do we drive away customers because of our lack of responsiveness or inability to even begin to help solve their problem? And how much does this cost us in terms of lost business and lost growth that is all but invisible?

Two further anecdotes:

The Good: One $4M a year customer helped lead us into a new growth market. This customer initially contacted us and a few others with a phone call after the customer had done an Internet search. We were the only ones that responded promptly and professionally. Thank goodness.

The Bad: A few years ago, I met a potential customer at a local networking event. After we got to know one another, he remarked that his company purchased a lot from our local competitor. I asked him why he had not considered buying from our company, especially as we were well-established in the market. His response was sobering: “Oh, I tried to buy from you. First, no one ever returned my call. Finally, I did manage to speak with someone. But, he told me that since my request was not a standard product, he did not have the time to help me. So, I went to your competitor.”

Three takeaways:

  • If you can, track all calls that come into your office, even those from new and unexpected customers and ensure that you are doing your best to serve them.
  • Consider following up with these new customers a little while later. These customers could be fruitful; they already know you exist, and they have already taken the initiative to contact you. And if you have helped them, they may already think positively of you.
  • Even if the customer request is tangential from your business, you can help them down the path of solving their problem. It rarely takes that much extra effort and, if need be, “you can always say ‘No’ later.”

To have a customer service perspective is to believe that every interaction with a possible customer provides an opportunity to create a positive, lasting impression.

Posted in Growth and Strategy, Sales and Marketing | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Three Hidden Truths about Change – Guest Blog by Howard Perlstein

Posted on January 31, 2011 by David Shedd


For 14 years I have been a corporate trouble shooter, the one brought in to figure out what is broken, to tell people what is wrong, to clean up a mess, to get people through gut-wrenching change. My job does not have quite the “glamour” of George Clooney in the recent movie, Up in the Air. I do not fire people and I do not leave once the plan is developed. Nevertheless, my outsider and fixer experience has given me insights into three truths about change and the change process.

  

1.  Change will happen and some people will lose.
 

Normally, I am involved in environments where events are politically charged and emotionally intense – where the consequences of not changing the status quo far exceed any pain from change. I am usually the person asking everyone to take off the rose colored glasses and see the world as it really is. I have been called the doctor, the rock at the bottom of a stormy sea. But, I cannot stop the change, even when I want to. Quite often bad things happen to good people. Change happens all the time and always will happen. And change is not always in the best interest of everyone. Some people will lose. But, without the change, everyone would lose.

 

2.  People respect authenticity.
 

Your employees, your team members, all of us, know truth. So when you talk genuinely to your people, they will know. And that will make all the difference. This does not mean you can save someone’s job, keep their job from changing, keep someone from getting moved across the country, or change the hierarchy in an organization. But, you can, without any cost, respect each person and be straight with them. This candor takes guts. They may not like you for what you have to do or what you have to say, but they will respect the honesty and dignity of how you did it. This brings me to my third, perhaps most radical truth about change.

 

3.  Dignity is paramount.
 

You can get any change done if at the core of everything you think and act with dignity. Relationships make or break any business, and dignity is the DNA of relationships. Treating everyone with dignity has not historically been a hot topic at the country’s top management schools or spoken aloud in corporate board rooms or executive offices. In practice, however, relationships and dignity are essential to making the most difficult changes and minimizing the fall-out from the changes. But, you cannot give dignity and respect for the employee mere lip service; it needs to be authentic.

Conclusion

The repercussions from change are diverse and long-lasting, which is why many organizations do not accurately see the connection between poor change – where people are neither respected nor told the truth – and dignified change. Yes, these truths about change may seem obvious, even self-evident. Yet, few try to employ them and even fewer succeed. As such, these three truths about change and the change process remain hidden from many managers. Nevertheless, these truths remain profound.

Howard Perlstein is a consultant specializing in Business Transformation and Process and Operational Excellence. Howard welcomes your comments and feedback. He can be reached at howard@howmanagement.com.

Posted in Improve / Turnaround, Leadership | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

La Femme Nikita and Business Strategy

Posted on January 24, 2011 by David Shedd

Recently, I watched an episode of Nikita, a spy v. spy television drama. In the episode, Nikita is approached by the leader of the evil terrorist syndicate, Gogol, who suggests that they team up to defeat Division, their common enemy. Before responding, Nikita “plays it forward” and talks through the likely scenarios. First, if they cannot defeat Division, then naturally Nikita loses. Second, if they are successful in defeating Division, Gogol would become much more powerful, and Nikita would have a new, even more formidable foe that she would need to fight off. As she would lose either way, Nikita declines Gogol’s offer.

As companies begin to develop new strategies to re-kindle growth, they would do well to remember Nikita’s concept of “play it forward.”

Scenario Analysis

“Playing it forward” is a simple name for scenario analysis. In scenario analysis (also called scenario planning), a company analyzes the different possible outcomes of a strategy to understand all risks and pros and cons of the strategy. Typically, such scenario analysis occurs with large strategic decisions such as acquisitions where two scenarios are fleshed out: a base case and a downside case. When done well, the downside case analysis is crucial to determine the risk of the strategy. And it often creates “trigger points” for a change in strategy or “strategic retreat” if things are not going to plan.

  • In one instance, we were considering acquiring a money-losing business. In analyzing the different scenarios, we determined that the downside case was limited; we were buying at such a discount that we would break even if we had to liquidate the whole business within two years. In short, with our downside covered, we made a good one-sided bet (since we could not lose much, we could only gain) and proceeded. The acquisition was a success.

     

  • In another case, we realized that a market entry strategy that made good sense in the base case turned out to be an absolute disaster in the downside case as the particular market had significant and long-term exit costs. We re-assessed our commitment to this new market and decided not to continue.

 

Success Scenario

Besides just considering a downside case, it is important to analyze the success scenario. Assume that the strategy that you have chosen becomes successful. Then, brainstorm about what this future state looks like and what are the consequences of this success.

  • If successful, what would your company be required to deliver? Would your company be properly organized to deliver that better than the competition? Would your team be capable of delivering on the promise?

     

  • If successful, would you be able to sustain your differentiation and the competitive advantage? Or would your new strategy just raise the cost of doing business for all supplier companies without differentiating your business in the long term?

     

  • If successful, would you be competing against your current customers or current key suppliers?

In one case, we were half-way through a multi-year product development initiative to introduce a standardized product line in a semi-custom business. We finally had the data to work through a success scenario. By playing it forward, we realized that if we were successful with this initiative the overall business would lose.

  • We would have satisfied the corporate staff of our incumbent national customers, but alienated the local and regional teams who had all the power day to day on the ground.
  • We would have lowered the barriers to entry in the market, opening the door to smaller, more aggressive, but financially weaker competitors who had until now been excluded from the market.

 

Faced with this “lose-lose” outcome, we quickly pulled the plug on this initiative.

Conclusion

Before embarking on your business strategy spend the time to think about what the world would be like if you achieved your strategic goals. You certainly want to avoid spending inordinate time and effort only to prove that age-old adage:

“Be careful what you wish for as you may just get it.”

Posted in Growth and Strategy, Perform / Execution | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

How to Make Yourself Heard Above the Noise

Posted on January 17, 2011 by David Shedd

The biggest challenge “was just getting people to pay attention. It’s seventy percent of the battle.”

Dan Gilbert, CEO of Quicken Loans



With today’s biblical flood of information and communication, how do you get your message heard by the right people? How do you get people to pay attention?

Do’s

  1. Be brief, specific and easy to understand

    Keep the message short and simple. Use 8th grade language. Use bold, vivid words and images that “stick” in people’s skulls. Avoid the bland words that have lost all meaning – value, synergy, solution provider.

     

  2. Target the message specifically to the audience

    While you may be able to solve a broad array of problems, focus the message on what you do best and what is in the best interest of the audience that you are trying to reach. The goal is not to be front of your customer’s mind all the time; the goal is to be front of mind when they are looking for the solution that you can best provide.

     

  3. Use stories to enhance credibility and give a personal touch, thus becoming more memorable.

    A colleague, Paul McGhee, explains it well in his Sales Scale blog:

    “Selling is asking the right questions.  Selling is listening.   And selling is telling the right stories.  Some stories are best told with pictures, some with numbers, some with analogies, some with comparisons, some with customer quotations, some with 3rd party data and some with internally observed metrics.  You don’t tell every story every time.  But if you “frame and tame” – tell the right stories at the right time in the right way – you win more.  And if your entire sales team is telling the right stories, you win a lot more.”

  4. Develop a relationship or a commonality with the customer or the audience

    Network to get warm leads instead of relying on cold calls. A personal referral all but ensures that you will at least get in the door. Know about the people and companies with whom you meet and use this knowledge. We all like to be stroked and reminded of something we may have done well.

  5. Listen

    With so many of us speaking all the time, the person who listens to others is unique. Listen and then clarify and confirm what the other person has said. This shows your interest and shows that you care.

     

  6. Give it away

    Give your customer something that may help them in their business – advice, an insightful article on their industry that you may have read, your informed perspective on their industry and growth possibilities. Even if you don’t get the work, you will be remembered because you have helped them.

     

  7. Create trust that you will do what you say

    Set yourself a specific goal or deliverable to the customer or audience, and then deliver on it perfectly. “I will send you a detailed proposal by noon tomorrow, and I will follow up with a call on Thursday at 10:15 am.” This will differentiate you from the 95% of business people who do not deliver on what they say they will do.

     

  8. Be consistent over time

    The value of your message succinctly and consistently delivered over time is what helps you stay front of mind. Regular customer contact is vital to prove your reliability and preserve relationships.

Don’ts

  1. Don’t speak too loudly or too flashily!!!!!!!

    The decibel level in our environment today has continued to climb, reaching 110 dB or even higher. Screeching, screaming, and constant hard selling just ratchet the volume up even higher. Do you really think that this point is more important because I added seven exclamations points? Instead, try to vary the volume. Sometimes, speak in person or with your message very softly and then louder. The change in volume is what gets noticed.

     

  2. Don’t promise too much

    The forgotten part of how to always “do what you say” is to not say as much. In other words, promise less and make sure you always deliver on it. As customers, our suspicions always rise when someone is promising too much. Do we really believe the never-ending promises and guarantees in a 2:00 am infomercial?

     

  3. Don’t talk about yourself too much

    It is all about your customer and target audience. Keep it on radio station – WII-FM (What’s In It For Me).

    As an anecdote, a few years ago, I went with some salespeople on an important sales call. The meeting was scheduled for an hour. The presentation about our company lasted for over 50 minutes. We actually never got around to talking about the customer, his problems, and how we could help solve them. Not surprisingly, we did not make the sale.

    It is great when you are proud about your company and what it does. But, honestly, the customer and the target audience really do not care. They just want to know how you can help solve their problems.

     

  4. Don’t Garble

    Keep your message on point. Resist the urge to add interesting, but ultimately irrelevant, information. The more garbled or jumbled the message, the more confusing it will be for your customer or audience.

     

  5. Don’t overwhelm

    Excessive information and too much contact can begin to grate. Create short, sharp messages on a regular basis to put you front of mind and reinforce. And nothing more. When visiting with customers, get in and get out; don’t waste their time.

Having the perfect solution to someone’s problem is insufficient. You must also make yourself heard.

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Seek Out the True Truth

Posted on January 9, 2011 by David Shedd

“There are three sides to every story: your side, my side and the truth. And no one is lying.”

Robert Evans (Hollywood Producer)

For business leaders, it is vital to seek out and find the “true truth” in order to make decisions based on facts rather than opinions.

What is the “True Truth?”

On July 12, 1998, Brazil lost to France in the World Cup final by a score of 3 – 0. Earlier in the day, Ronaldo, Brazil’s star and the best player in the world at the time, had suffered a seizure of some type. In any event, he played the game, but played poorly. After the game,
the Brazilian public and media could not believe that their favorites had lost. This led to a suspicion of foul play and corruption. As detailed in Alex Bellos’ book, Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life, the Brazilian senate decided to investigate the event and determine why Brazil had lost. Ronaldo was, quite naturally, called to testify. He gave his opening remarks:

I also hope that my truth pleases you, because there are many truths, many truths. It’s up to you [the Brazilian Senate Commission] to decide which is the true truth and analyze it afterwards.

“My truth.” “The true truth.”

For our purposes of business leadership, Ronaldo hit it on the head. As a business leader, it is your job to seek out and find the true truth. You will hear lots of truths from lots of different people. You may call it their opinions, but to them it is not their opinions, it is the truth. It is their truth. As a leader, you will need to hear all these “truths” to determine the “true truth”, the “real reality.”

So, how do you go about finding the “true truth”?

  1. Seek out multiple viewpoints
  2. Listen
  3. Observe

Seek Out Multiple Viewpoints

This one should be easy, but it is not.

Be a researcher and a historian. Get the primary source material from the mouths of your customers and employees. This means direct engagement with the customer. This means developing relationships with people in your business below your direct reports. This means listening to other stakeholders.

Importantly, in any issue, dispute, or conflict, get the viewpoints of all sides. I would tell my General Managers that I would not fault them for making a wrong decision after getting the “truths” from all key stakeholders. But, I would fault them for not getting the “truths” from all affected stakeholders, even if they made the right decision in the end.

Listen

Listening is one of those skills where 90% of us rate ourselves as being in the top 10%. Alas, few business leaders listen well. We all know how to listen well; we just do not do it. As evidenced by this quote from Sir Francis Bacon, the advice on how to listen well has been the same for at least four hundred years:

Listen not to contradict and disprove, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.

We all know how to do it; we just do not do it. Some simple ideas that I have tried include:

  1. Physically force yourself not to be distracted. Move away from the desk and keyboard, put down the smart phone, remove the distraction
  2. Briefly summarize what the other person has just said
  3. Especially for meetings, create an “interruption fund” where you pay $5 to a quarter-end “cookout fund” each time you interrupt

I have one anecdote about interrupting to share.

In the early 1990’s, I had an excellent mentor at TRW. We were having a meeting, and I proceeded to interrupt him. He told me that I was interrupting him. So, of course, I interrupted him to tell him why I interrupt so much. His response was to interrupt me and tell me the following: “I don’t care why you interrupt because I don’t care about the “why.” It took me thirty years of psychoanalysis to realize that the “why” does not matter. What matters is to just not do it. So, do not interrupt.”

Another aspect of listening is to listen to and interpret the meaning behind the words. Most of us make the assumption (which is usually the case) that people are telling us the truth. But, they are always telling us “their truth.” We must first respect that it is their truth; that it is what they believe. More importantly, we must think about and reflect on their point of view and why they are saying what they are saying.

In his book The Management Myth, Matthew Stewart describes the listening style of one quite brilliant consultant as follows:

“He does not focus on what you are saying. Rather, he tries to figure out what you want to get by saying it. And then he tries to figure out why you think you want what you want. And then he tries to figure out what he can do about the things that make you think you want it.”

This consultant’s “third order” listening skills may be a little too deep for all of us. But, as a leader, trying to ‘figure out what the other person wants to get by saying something’ is sage advice.

Observe

Get out there and carefully observe the reality as it really is, not as you want it.

Most top executives are treated to Potemkin Villages when they go out and see the businesses they oversee. The expression “Potemkin Village” comes from a story in Russia in the late 1700’s. According to this story, a Russian minister, Potemkin, wanted to impress the Empress Catherine II during a state visit. So, he had hollow facades of villages constructed along the barren banks of the Dnieper River to impress Empress Catherine as her boat sailed down the river.

In my previous company, any announced visit by a top executive, a member of the Board of Directors, or a group of Wall Street analysts would result in a two week spruce up campaign on the facility sometimes to the tune of $30,000 or more. Having approved these expenditures on numerous occasions, I find it hard to fault anyone in the field for initiating such a spruce-up effort. But, the reality is that the top executives are not seeing the company as it really exists.

As a top executive, it is your job to side step the spruce-up campaign and look behind the façades of the Potemkin Village to observe what the business is like on a normal day. This can involve regular visits or surprise visits or just looking closely in the corners.

As an anecdote that encompasses seeking out multiple viewpoints, listening, and observing, I relate a sales call I made as a sales manager a number of years ago.

I often traveled with my salespeople to observe them in action and to interact with the customer. In the sales calls, I knew that my presence changed everything. When I was with the salespeople, they were on their game, organized, prepared, and with pressed shirts. The purpose of my sales management calls was to get the customer’s point of view and to see how the salespeople could be when they were on their best. I could usually accomplish these two things. What I could not usually get was the truth in how the sales people were on their normal days.

But on this sales call, I found out.

I was with a salesperson and he was putting on a good show. He was on his game, and I was impressed. The customer was engaged and asking good, if a little bit basic, questions. And the customer had a big smile on his face the entire time that the salesperson was presenting. In any event, as the sales call wound down, the salesperson had to get something from his car, so I was left alone with the customer. Not being the shy and retiring type, I asked him about the basic questions he was asking and his smile.

His response: “Please don’t tell Kevin (I changed the name), but I am smiling because I am really impressed with how well he can present and sell when he has to, and I am asking these questions because we have never really talked about most of this stuff before. Usually, Kevin just comes in, we go immediately to lunch, have a pleasant non-business conversation, and he leaves.”

Ouch! Despite the odd bout of pain, it always pays to seek out and find the true truth.

p.s. In December 2001, the Brazilian Senate Commission published its findings about what happened at the 1998 World Cup Final. Their conclusion about Brazil was that “we lost because we did not win.”

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New Year’s Resolutions: Do a Little Less… to Get a Little More Done

Posted on January 3, 2011 by David Shedd

The New Year’s Resolutions for many B2B business leaders often boil down to achieving one goal:

Be more successful with their businesses while spending less time working and having less stress.

Given that most business leaders already work extremely hard and that there is little extra time in anyone’s day, achieving this goal requires more effective use of time. In turn, this requires prioritizing and forcing the business leader to focus on the important and to stop doing or to do less of what he or she has done in the past. As Jim Collins of Good to Great fame has advised:

“Be rigorous about what not to do. What you don’t do determines what you can do.”

 

And so, I begin my suggested New Year’s resolutions for the B2B leader with recommendations on what to do less of.

A Little Less

  1. Reduce the clutter and noise, focusing on the important over the urgent
    1. Less time spent on E-Mail. Try starting the day working on your important tasks before even opening the E-Mail. Try shutting the E-Mail down for set periods during the work day.
    2. Less time spent on internet surfing. Surfing the internet can be a huge time suck. Try measuring the amount of time spent on the internet as a way to encourage you to surf less.
    3. Less time spent on regular reading of newspapers, magazines or trade journals. Skim them or read the headlines. Get the gist. Move on.

     

  2. Fewer Interruptions
    1. Try to create solid blocks of time for doing work on what is important and resist the urge to check E-Mail or answer the phone during that time.
    2. Try batching your communication with your team; send out one voice mail message or E-Mail covering five items rather than five different messages or E-Mails each with only one item. Or, likewise, meet with a direct report once and cover all five things at the same time. Either way, your people will come to love you for it.


  3. Fewer goals and initiatives
    1. Try focusing on 3 – 5 goals at most
    2. Try to reduce the number of initiatives to the important few and focus your (and your team’s) time and attention on these few.

     

  4. Less internal activity
    1. Try to have fewer internal meetings, especially at peer levels.
    2. Try to require fewer budget re-forecasts, reviews, and reports, especially the 60% of reports that no one reads anyways.
    3. Try going on fewer non-customer related business trips. Too frequent business trips checking up on operations or visiting with suppliers often waste time.

 

A Little More

For the New Year, I suggest that we all spend a little more time on the important: our team, our customers, “sharpening the saw”, and ourselves.

  1. More time spent “managing by walking around.”
    1. Try to get out and talk with your team in informal settings to see what is happening on the front lines and how the employees are doing. Thank them for their work, give them recognition, teach and coach them.
    2. Try to set up informal “lunch and learn” sessions where you can meet with people further down in the organization and re-communicate your values and the company’s direction and goals.

     

  2. More time with customers
    1. Try to visit with customers more often.
    2. As the leader of your business, you flatter your customers in a very positive way when you go out and meet with them and thank them for their business.
    3. While visiting with customers, try to discover other issues or problems they are facing that your company can solve for them.

     

  3. More time spent broadening your horizon
    1. Try to network outside your industry with other leaders and find out their issues and challenges.
    2. Visit with and understand the operations of a customer or related business.
    3. Use your extra time to read different perspectives that others are not reading; this may include reading different books, following different blogs, or reading a more international perspective.

     

  4. More “time outs”
    1. Try to break from your digital tether and step away from the business.
    2. Try to stop looking at E-Mail and answering phone calls after 7:00 pm.
    3. Try to take a whole day off each weekend (a “Sabbath”) to re-charge your juices.
    4. Try to take that vacation you have been postponing for the last few years.

 

Conclusion

In implementing these suggested resolutions, think small. Small changes in your behavior and time allocation will have significant effects on the business and will build momentum.

  1. If you stay cooped up in your office, try to get out just twice a week (do first thing in the morning or put it on your schedule if you have to) to walk around and talk to the team.
  2. If you never visit with customers, try to visit one a month to thank them for their business and see what you can do to help them further.
  3. If you are digitally connected 24/7, to try put down your I-Phone and to not even look at E-Mail or answer a phone call after 7:00 pm and before 7:00 am and one day on the weekend. If you are anything like me, this will be the hardest. But, it will also make you realize how addicted we have all become to the stimulation of instant updates and round-the-clock information.

 

Since these changes are small, they are doable. While not all-encompassing or earth-shattering, they will be significant, positive steps towards improving your business, improving your life, and achieving your New Year’s Resolution.

Best Wishes to You and Yours for a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year.


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2010 in review

Posted on January 3, 2011 by David Shedd

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

Featured image

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,500 times in 2010. That’s about 6 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 49 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 21 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 2mb. That’s about 2 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was November 30th with 109 views. The most popular post that day was More Quotes on “Do the Right Thing”.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were linkedin.com, innovationamerica.us, businessinsider.com, mail.yahoo.com, and ezinearticles.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for do the right thing quotes, doing the right thing quotes, quotes about doing the right thing, david shedd, and quotes on doing the right thing.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

More Quotes on “Do the Right Thing” September 2010
1 comment

2

Quotes on “Do the Right Thing” July 2010

3

About June 2010
1 comment

4

Quotes on “Winning Teamwork” July 2010

5

Social Media and B2B – LinkedIn December 2010

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The Ten Characteristics of an Accountable Business

Posted on December 20, 2010 by David Shedd

In a well-managed and well-led organization, a culture of accountability permeates the business. Each individual, each team, each profit center, each division is responsible for their success.

Businesses Lacking Accountability

It is easy to spot organizations where accountability is lacking.

  1. Promises and commitments are not kept
    1. Phone calls and E-Mails are not responded to
    2. Deadlines are not kept
    3. Endless meetings that are endlessly long end with nothing resolved and nothing committed to

     

  2. CYA, blame and finger pointing are pervasive
    1. “I did my part. But they did not.”
    2. “It’s not my job.”

     

  3. Excuses abound
    1. “Our company did not perform because of the economy, because of the weather, because of government regulation, because of…”
    2. “I did not make my sales numbers because our competitors are stupid and giving it away, because the market stinks, because our prices are too high, because I do not have enough resources, because…”

     

  4. Non-performance is tolerated, especially at the senior level
    1. As an anecdote, in one company I have worked with, one senior leader had not made his numbers in 10 out of the last 11 years, but still continued in his role.
    2. Non-performers may even be promoted due to “having the right skill set,” friendship, nepotism, etc.

     

  5. Denial
    1. “It is not my fault.”
    2. Passing the buck
    3. “But, I did not know what to do. I was never told.”

     

  6. Risk-taking diminishes
    1. It is better and safer to be conventionally wrong than to be unconventionally right.
    2. Inertia and inaction take over as everyone “waits and sees” what will happen next instead of taking the initiative

 

Business Embracing Accountability

  1. Accountability starts at the top
    1. The business leader is accountable to building a better business and does not allow un-kept promises, CYA, excuses and denial in him or herself or in any of the leadership team. He or she leads by example.
    2. Senior leaders who do not perform are dealt with directly
      1. They are not promoted
      2. They are not “kicked upstairs” to useless and bureaucratic staff positions

     

  2. Accountability continues with the individual employee, manager, leader
    1. Each individual does what he or she says
    2. Each individual takes responsibility for successfully accomplishing his or her assigned tasks
    3. Each individual takes ownership for his or her results

     

  3. This accountability is pervasive throughout the organization and not just on the front lines
    1. Managers and staff people are as accountable as those in line positions
    2. Many organizations have strict accountability on the front lines: production workers are measured on efficiency and quality daily; salespeople’s sales quotas are assiduously tracked. But, this accountability trails off in other areas that are not as easily measured and where the results of the individual’s actions are not as direct and immediate, such as with staff roles and management roles.

     

  4. The goals and objectives for each individual in the organization are simple and clear
    1. Napoleon once said that orders need to be so simple that they cannot be misunderstood. Likewise, for each employee, their goals and objectives are crystal clear and front of mind.

     

  5. Management continues to follow up and evaluate employee progress towards those goals and objectives
    1. The fundamental management skill of “following up” is pervasive and consistent over time, ensuring that everything is on track with help provided when there are problems and issues.

     

  6. There are consequences for those that lack accountability and do not perform
    1. If, after working with the individual, the person is still not accountable and unable to carry his or her own weight; the accountable organization confronts the problem and finds someone who can perform.
    2. “To succeed as a team is to hold all of the members accountable for their expertise.” Mitchell Caplan (Former CEO, E*Trade)

     

  7. The organization is fairer and more of a meritocracy.
    1. Since performance is required and non-performance has consequences, there is less chance for favoritism, nepotism and other morale-sapping business practices.
    2. After a non-performer has been given sufficient opportunity to improve his or her performance, it is fairer to all involved to terminate that employee.
      1. “When someone does not produce and does not improve, it is not fair to them to keep them on. They cannot possibly enjoy not being successful, and it is arrogant on our part to believe that they could not be successful doing something else.” The Leadership Machine
      2. Inevitably, the alternative is to wait until there is a downturn and then lay the person off at a time when the economy is the worst and the jobs are scarcest.
    3. The good employees are not over-burdened picking up after the laggards.
      1. In any organization, the good employees know who does not pull their weight and resent taking up the slack.
      2. I give as an extreme example a story from a business I later managed. An employee, John (name disguised) who had once been a star had just stopped performing, despite repeated discussions and warnings. Because John had previously been so valuable to the team and was in an important role, the General Manager and Regional President balked at firing John. Finally, they pulled the trigger. Several weeks later, the Regional President visited the plant and asked the controller how the business was surviving without John in his important role. Her response was tinged with sarcasm. “Well, it has been very difficult for us to survive without John. But, we have done it. You see Ken now comes in late twice a week and then spends two hours talking by the water cooler. Mary comes to meetings late, contributes little and makes sarcastic comments. And I have been taking long lunches with my friends and charging it to the company as a sales expense. It has been difficult. But, by pulling together we have been able to cover and do all the work that John had done before.”

     

  8. The organization is leaner and simpler.
    1. Bureaucracy and layers do not need to be added to keep tabs over employees and pound on them to do what they should be doing anyway. As such, the organization and business are simpler with a significant reduction in meetings, reports, reviews, etc.
    2. There is less, but more focused activity.
      1. Growth initiatives and profit improvement initiatives are undertaken only when there is accountability in the core business. Without accountability for performance in what your business is doing currently, how can you assume that there will be accountability when your business tries to do something new?
      2. Initiatives are used to move the business forward and not as a new program to substitute for the lack of accountability currently in the business. As an example, when an accountable business has a sales problem, they make sure that they have the right sales team and right sales management in place and hold them accountable before beginning a fancy sales improvement or sales training initiative.
      3. Only when there is accountability throughout the organization, is it possible to determine the most important and highest leverage initiatives that would be worth the company’s time and effort to focus on.

     

  9. But, the well-run accountable organization is not a “lean and mean” metric-driven organization
    1. There are repercussions for non-performance. But, that does not mean that 10% of all employees need to be fired each year (a la Jack Welch).
      1. If everyone is performing and being accountable, then why would you introduce the fear and inevitable politicking by decreeing that 10% will be fired anyway?
      2. Alternatively, if more than 10% of your employees are not performing than you should address all of the non-performers, even if more than 10%, with the reassurance that if next year everyone performs than none will be fired.
    2. There are limits to metrics. In such grayer areas as new product development or R&D, accountability cannot be based solely on performance metrics and the end results because the end results are not guaranteed. There needs to be a focus on the effort, on doing what you said you were going to do, and on learning from past mistakes. Otherwise, all risk-taking will stop and innovation will be at risk.
    3. An organization that is single mindedly focused on accountability to metrics and numbers will become sub-optimal because the focus will be on the metrics not on making the business better.
      1. I give as an example a business that I visited. This business was a very profitable manufacturing business that prided itself on the quality of its operations. It was ISO9001, lean six sigma, etc. To get to this level of success, it had adopted a very clear system of about 20 metrics which it judged all operations on each and every day. Failure was not an option on any metric any time. Having 19 out of 20 metrics in line was still considered a failure. In touring the facility and spending time on the floor, I saw innumerable low hanging fruit: poor housekeeping, poor organization, poor warehousing, and employees working at ¾ speed without any passion whatsoever. I asked the General Manager why he did not fix some of these obvious deficiencies. His response was: “Yes, we know about these issues.  But, we have no time for training because we do not want to take anyone off the line. Further, correcting some of these problems will have a negative effect on the metrics in the short term so we don’t do them.” As such, they continued to run the business (which nevertheless remains successful) in a way that everyone from the General Manager on down knows is inefficient and less than optimal.
    4. In short, you can have too much accountability.

     

  10. In the accountable organization, each employee is respected as being an integral part of a winning team
    1. The accountability does not come at the expense of listening to and profiting from the insights of the employees
      1. Feedback loops exist to ensure that the goals and objectives continue to make sense. If not, they are changed.
      2. New ideas and risk-taking are encouraged and are rewarded even if that means missing a previously agreed to metric.
    2. The employees that are always accountable are thanked and recognized
      1. They may do nothing heroic except doing exactly what they are asked to do day in and day out. As such, they can often be forgotten and feel underappreciated
    3. “The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.” Vince Lombardi

 

In summary, to be a very well-led and well-managed business requires the business to have a culture of accountability.

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Three Ways Companies Bungle Change Initiatives

Posted on December 14, 2010 by David Shedd

Recent consulting studies have re-confirmed that most performance improvement programs fail to achieve their stated goals and improve the business. These change initiatives are worse than “much ado about nothing”, as they divert attention and resources away from more critical needs and frustrate and exhaust the employees who worked on the initiatives.

In general, when undertaking change, companies often make one of three critical mistakes right at the outset.

  1. Companies try to change too much.
  2. Companies change the wrong things.
  3. Companies try to skip bases and implement change that the business is not capable of doing.

 

Change Too Much

Businesses undertake too many changes for several reasons.

  1. Businesses over-estimate their capacity to change. In looking at the business and the competitive landscape, top management often realizes that there are many areas to improve. While it is true that each one of these areas needs to be improved, people do not have the attention and perception span and the time to improve all these areas at the same time (while focusing on their “real jobs”). In one extreme case that I have experience with, a $20M business unit was working on 26 performance improvement and change initiatives at the same time! By default, too many priorities become no priority.

     

  2. Top management and their staff pride themselves on their bias for action. So, they introduce changes and initiatives to “make it happen.” For staff people, “high potentials” who are rotated through jobs every few years, or people in middle layers in a bureaucracy, these initiatives become justifications for the importance of their job. Further, top management may not realize that the time it spends on any one initiative is multiplied several times over as the initiatives extend down into the trenches to the people who will really do the work.

     

  3. Poor management and poor execution is not dealt with directly. Instead, it can become a reason for a change initiative or training program. A poor performance in sales may not require a “sales training” initiative. It may just require having better sales managers and holding them accountable.

 

Change the Wrong Thing

Business leaders will often focus on improving what they know and understand (and like to do). As such, they may neglect to focus on the change in an area of the business that is outside their comfort zone, even when that change could have the highest impact on business results.

I give an example.

An operational consultant friend of mine (schooled in Theory of Constraints, Lean, Six Sigma, Quality, etc.) was invited into a plant in central Pennsylvania to see what he could do to improve the operations further. The plant manager already had a number of initiatives under way and was genuinely open to new ideas. My friend was impressed; the plant was clean, well-laid out, and efficiently produced a quality product. Afterwards, he met with the President who was excited to know what more could be done to improve the plant.

My friend’s answer was quite simple. “Don’t do anything more in the plant. The plant runs very well. But, the most important thing that can be done to improve the business is to bring in more sales. Any tweaks and slight improvements in the plant would be minor compared to the improvements in the business with more sales.”

In this case, the overall constraint (what is holding the business back) is not the plant, it is sales. By improving the plant further, you make the plant better. But, that does not necessarily make the business better. It is great to have an excellent plant. But, the goal is not to have the best plant. The goal is to have the best overall business with the best competitive position.


This concept of “change the wrong thing” often occurs when management trained and promoted under one set of business conditions needs to respond to different business conditions. In the example above, the production focused President wanted to solve the company’s problems by focusing on what he knew best (production) instead of what was needed (additional sales). To a leader comfortable and confident in swinging a hammer, every problem will look like a nail.

As such, many companies do not focus their change and profit improvement efforts on the most important and highest value added area of the business.

Skip Bases

Baseball is reasonably simple. You get a hit. You run to first base. If it makes sense, then you run to second base. Then to third base. Then to home. You do not skip bases.

In change and change initiatives, people often skip bases. They try to go from the batter’s box to third directly without going to first and second. Most often, you will see this in change initiatives undertaken with the help of consultants, who are peddling a “solution.” This solution has to be reasonably complex or the company will not perceive that the consultant is adding any value. Unfortunately, the company may not be prepared for the solution that the consultant has to offer.

Let’s give an example.

A company is struggling and realizes that it has a weak sales team and poor sales and marketing presence. The solution is to immediately implement a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) program like Salesforce.com. With it, the sales team will all be able to track customers and customer activities better and everything will be great!!!

WRONG!!

The company cannot skip bases. As described, the company is barely out of the batter’s box on sales and marketing. Full implementation of a productive sales and marketing effort with Salesforce.com is third base. To even begin working on a CRM solution you need to be at second base. But, to get to second base, you need to, first, ensure that top management has a commitment to customer service and sales. Then, get decent sales management in place that will over-see and evaluate the sales team. Then, ensure that you have the right people on your sales team. Then, ensure that the team is properly trained on how to sell the product or service. Then, develop the discipline in the sales team to diligently record their contacts in a simple database or Microsoft Outlook and to write sales reports. By this point, you may finally be ready to implement Salesforce.com or another CRM program.

In short, companies need to undertake improvement initiatives appropriate for their current capabilities; they need to walk before they can run. Such initiatives may not seem ambitious enough for some in top management. But, they have a far higher probability of being successful in making the business better.

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Social Media and B2B – Facebook and Conclusions

Posted on December 9, 2010 by David Shedd

In a previous blog, Social Media and B2B – Let’s Get Started, I listed the three key benefits of social media as:

  1. Brand
  2. Relationships
  3. Information

Today, I will specifically discuss Facebook. I will then offer with some final thoughts about B2B and Social Media.

Why Use Facebook?

The benefits of using Facebook are as follows:

  1. Brand
    1. Increase visibility to build the brand
    2. Tell stories and share information that reinforces your key brand promise
    3. Personalize and humanize your company and brand
  2. Relationships
    1. Through engaging in conversations, expand your network
    2. Facilitate relationships by knowing more about the people you meet and do business with
  3. Information
    1. Share information that shows your customers and potential customers that you know what you are talking about and understand and care about their needs
    2. Listen to what your customers and others are saying about you and your brand

 

Facebook is often considered to be the social media space for your personal life as it started out as a way to connect with family and friends. There is, however, a use for Facebook for a B2B company. Facebook is unlikely to be the primary social media marketing tool for your business (the primary tools would be Blogging, LinkedIn and Twitter as I have already discussed). But, with over 500 million users, Facebook should be part of your overall social media strategy.

What to Do?

  1. Conduct initial research and familiarize yourself with Facebook
    1. Look at the Facebook pages of well-known B2C brands – Nike, Coca-Cola, Gap, etc. – to see what they do
    2. Look at the Facebook pages of some larger and better-known B2B companies to see what they do
    3. Ask around in your company and find people who are active on Facebook and have a brainstorming session with them for ideas
  2. Based on the research, start with a modest Facebook page that can be put together in half a day at most
  3. Monitor the site for the comments and opinions on the Wall
    1. What are others saying about your company?
  4. At least every few weeks, add material and update your Facebook page
  5. Add new features as you learn more about Facebook
  6. Monitor other Facebook pages every few weeks
    1. When going to meet with a customer or other company, peruse their Facebook page to see what further information that you can learn about them
    2. Continue to check out other B2C and B2B company pages to see if they are doing things that are of interest to you

The initial set-up of the Facebook page can likely be done quite quickly and quite expertly by one of your employees who is a Facebook fanatic (nearly every company has at least one such fanatic). After that, your personal attention as the leader of your B2B Company can be as little as a quick scan daily. Nevertheless, keeping current with Facebook is important. With its large base of users, Facebook has the critical mass to lead the evolution of social media. And you will want to know about that when it happens.

Conclusions

Phewww!!! We are done. Over the course of five blogs, I have covered a lot of ground and given a lot of suggestions about social media marketing.

As always, amongst all of these ideas and all of the social media tools, it is important not to lose sight of the forest for the trees.

  1. The goal of using Social Media is to build and improve your business!!
    1. It may be great to be “world class” in social media marketing, but only if it is truly helping your business to grow
  2. As an important element of your overall marketing plan, social media can…
    1. Increase the visibility and validity of your brand
    2. Further your relations with customers and other stakeholders
    3. Improve and enhance the information flow between you and your customers
  3. Social Media is a part of your marketing plan. As such, it enhances but does not substitute for the personal face – to – face interaction that is of paramount importance in the B2B world. So, no matter what we do with social media, as B2B business leaders, we all need to go out, meet, talk with and listen to our customers.
    1. As we all know, in the B2B business world, it is still largely true that “people buy from people.”

 

Until Next Time.

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Social Media and B2B – Twitter

Posted on December 6, 2010 by David Shedd

In a previous blog, Social Media and B2B – Let’s Get Started, I listed the three key benefits of social media as:

  1. Brand
  2. Relationships
  3. Information

Today, I will specifically discuss Twitter.

Why Tweet (use Twitter)?

The benefits of tweeting are as follows:

  1. Brand
    1. Increase visibility to build the brand
    2. Tell stories and share information that reinforce your key brand promise
  2. Relationships
    1. Facilitate relationships by knowing more about the people and companies you meet and do business with
    2. Enhance your credibility with key customers and stakeholders
  3. Information
    1. Share information that shows your customers and potential customers that you know what you are talking about and understand and care about their needs
    2. Listen to what your customers and others are saying about you and your brand
    3. Internally share the collective reading and learning of your management team better informing everyone

 

Twitter (www.twitter.com) is a micro-blog where the writer, the person who “tweets”, is limited to 140 characters. Importantly, within the 140 characters, you can use hyperlinks to refer the reader to another website, article or blog. What you tweet can be read by anyone who follows your tweets. In short, it is a one-to-many communication platform.

Especially among business professionals, Twitter has a terrible reputation as being a useless waste of time as people tweet about waiting in line or having a coffee at Starbuck’s or some other mundane thing.

For consumer companies (B2C), Twitter has often been used to promote specific products by offering instantaneous coupons or special deals to the followers of a specific tweeter. Since B2B companies rarely, if ever, use coupons or instantaneous deals, this use for Twitter does not apply. Rather, Twitter should be considered an important part of your social media marketing for its communication and information sharing purposes.

Tweeting

On a daily basis, consider tweeting information that reinforces your brand promise and positions your company as a “thought leader.”

  1. When you write a blog, promote it by tweeting about it many times over several days
  2. When you add something new and relevant to your web page, tweet about it
  3. When you read an article or blog that might be relevant to some of your customers, instead of E-mailing, press the little Twitter symbol at the end of nearly all articles on the Internet, add a brief introduction or summary of the article, and Tweet it.
  4. When you have a short thought or a brief quote that is in line with your brand and/or relevant to your customer’s business, Tweet it.
  5. When an employee wins an award or does something noteworthy, tweet about it.

With regular tweeting, you will also help improve your Google search engine ranking, increasing your company’s visibility.

Following

  1. Follow key customers and key individuals in these companies to know what are important and/or pressing issues for them
  2. Follow interesting and different people who may be thought leaders (not Ashton Kutcher, please) and who might give you some new insight or a broader perspective
  3. To get the most out of following:
    1. Stop following people whose tweets add little value and just clutter your Twitter “stream”
    2. Rather than just following one stream, create and follow multiple “lists.” With the list feature, you can collect together all the tweets from different members of a group that you set up. So, you can create separate lists of customers, of thought leaders, of suppliers, of employees with Twitter accounts, etc.

 

Searching

Your company should also consider using Twitter for its search capabilities (http://search.twitter.com). Twitter search is generally considered to be one of the largest (but often unknown) search engines. Along with using Google search and Google alerts (www.google.com/alerts), you might want to:

  1. Search Twitter for references about your customers. Are there issues or challenges that they are facing?
  2. Search Twitter for references about companies that you are considering doing business with.
  3. Search Twitter for mentions of your own company. Are other people saying good or bad things about your company?

 

Internal Information Gathering

Twitter has the capability of creating private accounts where the tweets can only be seen by those who you chose to let follow you. Combine this with the list feature and consider setting up a private Twitter list for your executive management team.

Currently, if you want to share articles or thoughts among the management team, you may E-Mail the article or thought to the different members of the group. It then collects dust in their E-Mail boxes and even if read is often quickly deleted and forgotten. With a Twitter list, just tweet the article (as discussed above, this is often a “one-click” action) or post the short thought or comment. All these will collect in the Twitter stream for your group and be accessible to the group members when they have the time to read or reflect upon them (e.g. while waiting for an airplane). In this way, the executive management team can collect together the best of all the wide reading and learning of each member of the group, significantly enhancing the team’s collective learning.

Final Thoughts

  1. With only 140 characters to use for an individual tweet, you need to…
    1. Develop the art of writing useful but seductive headlines (Note: Personally, I have yet to master that art myself. J)
    2. Use a program such as TinyURL (www.tinyurl.com) to shorten the hyperlinks in your tweets giving yourself more space in your tweets.
  2. For important ideas that you want many people to see, it may make sense to tweet the same thing multiple times over a day or two. Otherwise, they may get lost if their Twitter stream gets filled up with more recent tweets.
  3. Tweeting is easier and quicker than it looks
    1. You can gain 90% of the benefits of brand, relationships, and information by being active on Twitter twice a day for 5 minutes at a time

 

Next Time, I will discuss Facebook and conclude with some final thoughts about Social Media for the winning B2B company.

Until Then.


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Social Media and B2B – LinkedIn

Posted on December 2, 2010 by David Shedd

In a previous blog, Social Media and B2B – Let’s Get Started, I listed the three key benefits of social media as:

  1. Brand
  2. Relationships
  3. Information

Today, I continue this series on Social Media and B2B and specifically discuss LinkedIn.

Why LinkedIn?

The benefits of LinkedIn are as follows:

  1. Brand
    1. Increase visibility to build the brand
    2. Personalize and humanize your company and brand
  2. Relationships
    1. Facilitate relationships by knowing more about the people and companies you meet and do business with
    2. Enhance your credibility with key customers and stakeholders
    3. Gain referrals and access to people you don’t know and may want to know
  3. Information
    1. Share information that shows your customers and potential customers that you know what you are talking about and understand and care about their needs
    2. Better utilize the collective learning and experience of your team
    3. Learn from others; post questions on tricky issues and get the help and feedback from others who may have already faced the issue

LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) is the social media site for business. With more than 80 million users and growing fast, LinkedIn is fast becoming a vital part of doing business today.

What to Do on LinkedIn?

There are so many things that your company and key employees can be doing on LinkedIn that I will limit myself to just ten suggestions to get you started. I would be very interested to hear others that I may have overlooked. Please share.

  1. Create a company LinkedIn profile emphasizing your brand. Link your blogs, website and Twitter account through that profile and make sure that they are visible to people who are following your company on LinkedIn.
  2. Post job openings in your company on LinkedIn
  3. Follow key customer companies on LinkedIn
  4. Have your key employees post their profile (with a picture) on LinkedIn and actively expand their connections
  5. Use LinkedIn to expand your company’s network
    1. Use your and your employee’s connections to get second and third level connections to network with customers and other people that you want to know so that you do not have to cold call on them
  6. Before any meeting with a potential customer or stakeholder, have your management and/or sales team read the profile of the key individuals so that they are better prepared and know the individuals’ background. This lets you find a proper sales approach and possible personal areas of commonality, better facilitating relationships.
    1. Anecdote: A high- powered salesperson recently asked me for a meeting to sell me something. Since it was a referral from someone I knew well, I agreed to a 45 minute meeting. During the course of the meeting, it became clear that the salesperson (who was selling something that I actually might have bought) had no idea about me and about my background. He had just not done any homework. With that, I was actually offended. My unspoken thought: how could you not prepare for a sophisticated sale without at least reading my LinkedIn profile to know something about me? As you might expect, this “high – powered salesperson” left our 45 minute meeting empty – handed.
  7. Read the profiles of your employees to learn more about their background. Some companies have easily accessible internal databases of employee competencies and backgrounds, but most don’t. So, if you don’t, use LinkedIn.
    1. I know of more than one occasion when a senior manager was looking externally for a person with a specific experience. Through using LinkedIn, he found out that such a person already existed within his company. No one within the current company had known that that person had the specific experience while working for a previous employer.
  8. Find out about potential employees. One of the key challenges in business is finding a replacement for someone in a specific and critical role that is only a “C” player. Use LinkedIn to search for people who can fill those roles, giving you a possible alternative and thus a lot more flexibility to upgrade your team.
  9. Join LinkedIn groups that are relevant to your customers. When in the groups, have key individuals answer intelligently and informatively questions posed by potential customers in that group. This develops a relationship and gives credence to your company being a knowledge leader in solving customer’s problems in that specific market space.
  10. Have top management join senior executive LinkedIn Groups and, where necessary, pose questions related to tricky issues that they may be facing. You are likely to get dozens of insightful comments from people who have already faced and surmounted the same issues.

 

A Downside to LinkedIn?

I can hear you saying. But, if I allow my employees to be active on LinkedIn they will just spend time job hunting and will be visible to competitors and others that want to poach them.

Yes, that is a risk. But, first, a reality check. Your best employees are going to be on LinkedIn and visible whether you want them there or not as LinkedIn is such an important part of their personal career management. You might as well get the benefit of their efforts and connections on LinkedIn to help your business succeed.

Conclusion

Active participation on LinkedIn does have some risks for your company. But, this potential downside is far outweighed by the upside of using LinkedIn to build your brand, further relationships, and gain and share information.

Next Time, we will discuss Twitter.

Until Then.

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Social Media and B2B – Blogging

Posted on November 29, 2010 by David Shedd

In a previous blog, Social Media and B2B – Let’s Get Started, I listed the three key benefits of social media as:

  1. Brand
  2. Relationships
  3. Information

Today, I will specifically discuss blogging.

Why Blog?

The specific benefits of blogging are as follows:

  1. Brand
    1. Tell stories and share information that reinforces your key brand promise
    2. Personalize and humanize your company and brand
    3. Increase visibility to build the brand    
  2. Relationships
    1. Enhance your credibility with key customers and stakeholders
  3. Information
    1. Share information that shows your customers and potential customers that you know what you are talking about and understand and care about their needs
    2. Internally share collective stories and learning better informing all employees about the company goals

Blogs are written in a more informal, more personal style than what is written in marketing materials or on a website. The purpose of a blog is to let the customer hear the “voice” of the company. It is this more personal voice from blogging whether through stories, anecdotes, examples, or other insights that gives support to all the promises in your other marketing materials.

How?

Let’s say your brand focus is on relentless customer service and technical excellence in coming up with innovative solutions. You can write about these brand attributes in a website and have it as part of a mission statement. But, it is better to blog about different customer stories (hide the identity of the customers, of course) and how you responded and followed up with customer service and innovative solutions. By continuously blogging over time at a set interval (say, once a week), you can build up a treasure of stories that would be related to the brand attributes and highlight the many problems that you have solved and the industries that you have served.

Why is this important? First, stories “stick” much more than promises. Second, these stories and anecdotes show your customers that you know, understand, and are able to respond to their issues and challenges.

Third, these stories can be excellent sales tools. As an example, let’s say that a sales call leads to a discussion about responsiveness in product warranty. The salesperson responds that the company is excellent and thorough in standing behind their products. That night, he sends a follow up E-Mail attaching and also giving the link to a blog that discusses a time when the company did an outstanding job in solving a product warranty issue. As something given to a customer after the fact, but written down before the meeting, the blog and the related story truly resonate, reinforcing this brand promise of the company and differentiating the company from the competition.

Further, these stories and blogs are important in giving employees an understanding of the goals and objectives of the company and of highlighting the company’s successes.

Finally, blogs will also increase the visibility of the company and its brand promise. First, insightful, well-written blogs are often shared and tweeted across the internet, exposing your company to numerous other potential customers. Second, regular blogs improve your position with SEO (search engine optimization) tools, helping move your company onto that magical Google first page and making your company more likely to get that call when someone is searching for a solution to their problem.

To get started with a blog, go to WordPress.com or other sites, set up your blog, set up the appropriate URL’s, link the blog to your website and your LinkedIn profile and you can be up and running within 30 minutes, telling stories about how great your company is.

Next Time, we will discuss LinkedIn.

Until Then.

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Social Media and B2B – Let’s Get Started

Posted on November 23, 2010 by David Shedd

Nearly all B2B (business to business) companies have websites and marketing materials touting their products and services as an integral part of their sales and marketing strategy. Over the last few years, however, these have become insufficient.

Companies, even B2B companies, need to become actively engaged in social media. That is to say, they need to create, publish and exchange information over the Internet, telling stories, becoming known as ‘thought leaders’ and engaging in conversations with customers and other stakeholders.

Full disclosure: I am by no means a social media expert. Instead, I will try to address the topic of social media from the perspective of a business leader. As such, I hope to provide a practical guide to help get you started in using social media to make your businesses more successful.

  1. Getting started with social media
    1. Why spend time and effort on social media?
    2. The benefits of social media
    3. How to get started
  2. Key social media that B2B companies should be involved with
    1. Blogging
    2. LinkedIn
    3. Facebook
    4. Twitter

This blog will discuss getting started with social media. My next blog will discuss Blogging, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in more detail.

Why Spend Time and Effort on Social Media?

But, David, we already have all of our marketing material and we have a good website, so why on earth do we need to spend all the time and effort on social media?

Excellent question! To answer that, let’s begin with a 10 minute exercise and a quick quiz.

Exercise: Go to the website of a one of your supplier companies. Browse through and read the website for 10 minutes. Then take the following quiz.

Quiz:

  1. Could you last the whole 10 minutes of reading or did you get bored and move on?
  2. Did you believe what you were reading or was it just marketing fluff?
  3. Do you now understand how this supplier is different from all the others and better able to serve your needs?
  4. What stuck in your mind and made you want to do more business with this supplier?

Unfortunately, most of you would have felt (like I do) that you were just reading advertising copy or marketing materials. Most likely, nothing stuck in your mind, nothing was memorable, and nothing differentiated the supplier company from all the other companies in the same market space.

Today, having a good website is just a cost of doing business. A good website is largely just an electronic form of marketing materials. It gives basic information about your company. But, it rarely tells what is unique about your company and why people should buy from you.

To differentiate your company today, you need to…

  1. Tell stories that show how your company lives its brand promise
  2. Develop relationships and viral marketing so you have others as referrals or (in a perfect world) evangelists for your company and its products and services
  3. Show your customers that you are listening to them and understand their needs and the issues that they face in the marketplace

Done well, social media takes giant steps forward in each of these three ways to differentiate your company and significantly enhance your sales and marketing effort.

The Benefits of Social Media

Three key benefits to social media:

  1. Brand
    1. Increase visibility to build the brand
    2. Tell stories and share information that reinforces your key brand promise
    3. Personalize and humanize your company and brand
  2. Relationships
    1. Through Facebook, LinkedIn and engaging in conversations within social media, expand your network
    2. Facilitate relationships by knowing more about the people you meet and do business with
    3. Gain referrals and access to people you don’t know but may want to know
  3. Information
    1. Share information that shows your customers and potential customers that you know what you are talking about and understand and care about their needs
    2. Listen to what your customers and others are saying about you and your brand
    3. Internally share the collective reading and learning of your management team better informing everyone
    4. Learn from others; post questions on tricky issues and get the help and feedback from others who may have already faced the issue

 

How to Get Started

  1. Write down and communicate limited goals
  2. Monitor to ensure that everything is in alignment with these goals
  3. Commit time and resources to do regularly

Write Down and Communicate Your Goals and Strategy

Social media is vast and can be overwhelming. As such, you will need to keep the goals limited or you will never accomplish them.

First, if you are brand new to social media, it is crucial to get on all the key social media, to try them out, and to understand what each of them is all about. By this, I mean not just the marketing department, but also the business leaders.

Next, it is time to develop the initial goals and strategy for social media. To help get you started, I give a possible example of initial goals and strategies for a B2B company. As you have success pursuing these goals, you will likely develop more complex, even unique strategies that take advantage of all that social media has to offer in making your business more successful.

Goals

  1. Brand
    1. Reinforce and strengthen three key brand attributes (as an example)
      1. Relentless customer service
      2. Technical excellence to come up with innovative solutions
      3. We understand our customers and their needs
    2. Broaden knowledge of company and brand
  2. Relationships
    1. Facilitate relationships so that people buy from our people
    2. Increase the number of relationships and referrals
    3. Really listen to the customers and stakeholders that are communicating with us through social media
  3. Information
    1. Position our company as industry experts
    2. Improve internal information flow and sharing

Strategy

  1. Brand
    1. Blogs, tweets, stories, anecdotes will revolve around and reinforce our three brand attributes
    2. Our Facebook and LinkedIn profiles will represent these brand attributes as well
  2. Relationships
    1. Using LinkedIn, everyone will go into meetings with customers and suppliers informed about the background and interests of the individuals across from the table
    2. Using LinkedIn, we will actively seek to expand our network and to use referrals to get more business
    3. Using Facebook, we will listen to what others are writing about, posting about or like about our company. When appropriate, we will engage with them.
  3. Information
    1. By blogging, Facebook, and Twitter, we will share information with customers and suppliers that position us as the company that understands and can respond to their customer needs. We will become the industry “thought leader”.
    2. By blogging and using the private group feature in Twitter, we will internally share company success stories and disseminate information that all of us come across in our daily work increasing the collective company knowledge.

 

Monitor to Ensure All Efforts are Aligned with These Goals

Once the goals and strategy are written down and communicated, it is vital to monitor the individual and company social media effort. Once something is on the internet, be it a blog, a tweet, a posting on Facebook, etc., consider it there forever. So, to keep to the goals and strategies, strict policies likely need to be in place to ensure that everything is done in accordance with the goals and strategies. This will likely mean that only a few individuals will be allowed to blog, tweet, or post for the company.

The monitoring of the efforts should be done at the top level. Why? First, the leaders are the ones who best understand how they want the company to be portrayed and defined. Second, requiring the top level to monitor social media forces the leaders to be actively involved in social media, be it blogging, tweeting, or… Third, the occasional blog or tweet from the business leader is essential to give credibility to the social media effort, both within the company and with customers.

Commit Time and Resources to Do Regularly

The biggest critique of social media is about the amount of time it takes to do all of this. It can be time-consuming, especially creating insightful and “on message” blogs. But, it does not need to be overwhelming. Less material of a higher quality on a consistent basis is more useful than lots of “junk.”

Some suggestions from my own experiences:

  1. Have one person who has at least 30% of his or her job dedicated to social media. For larger companies, this can be a dedicated person. It is critical that this person can actually write and create content as well as be a “facilitator” for social media. One thing to be aware of: just because someone is in marketing does not mean that that person can actually write well!
  2. Keep the Facebook and LinkedIn profiles up to date and fresh, reviewing at least twice a month adding new information, articles, press releases, photos, etc.
  3. As a company, try to publish a blog once a week. It may not sound like much, but after one year the company would have 50 high quality blogs reinforcing the brand attributes and positioning the company as a thought leader. Note: blogs do not have to be long. A 250 word blog on a successful job for a customer with a photo or two can work wonders.
  4. Try to tweet or re-tweet on a daily basis. If not possible, then do it on a regular schedule, say, twice or three times a week.
  5. Commit key management to spend a small portion of their day – 20 – 30 minutes but no more – on social media. Do it every day.

In short, for the B2B leaders out there, it is time to get started with social media!!

Next time, we will discuss the key social media that B2B companies need to be actively involved with – Blogging, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

Until Then.

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