A key driver to profitably scaling your business is having a strong culture where the right people with the right talents believe in your core purpose, your reason for being, and your core values. As you depend upon people to achieve success, you will struggle greatly without the right people at all levels of your company.
With the rise in U.S. GDP from 1.8% in 2017 to 4.1% in 2019, our economy is accelerating at massive speed, essentially doubling. To keep up with the growth, you will need to hire in every department to continue to deliver on your customer requirements. If you’re having a problem finding skilled 'A' level talent, it’s because we are in a battle, a war for talent, the likes of which hasn’t happened to this extreme in recent history. This war on talent is driven by several key factors:
Are you getting feedback on a regular basis as a leader? If you are a CEO, is your senior leadership team comfortable giving you feedback? Are you getting feedback from your board? How are you handling it?
What does it feel like when you get negative feedback? For me, sometimes I can get defensive. It can depend on the subject, and on my own emotional state and level of stress at the time, but more often than not my tendency is to be defensive.
Barron’s recently published results from its annual survey of institutional investors about their views of the world’s top 100 companies, based on market cap as of May 12, 2014. This cross section of U.S. money managers ranked companies on the basis of 1. Strong management, 2. Ethical business practices, 3. Sound business strategy, 4. Competitive edge, and 5. Product Innovation. Barron’s has been conducting this survey since 2005, and uses a numerical scale relating to four statements of Highly Respect , Respect, Respect Somewhat, and Don’t respect.
Kip Tindell, Chairman and CEO of The Container Store has a system of onboarding that is revolutionary.
Tindell is author of Uncontainable, How Passion, Commitment, and Conscious Capitalism Built a Business Where Everyone Thrives. Training is a large part of The Container Store’s onboarding process, where new employees receive nearly 300 hours of education and training, compared to a retail industry average of 8 hours. As a result of the investment, The Container Store has a following of devoted customers who love to shop there, and who tell others of their experience.
Are your on-boarding processes functioning well? Are they used strategically to introduce new employees to the systems and mechanisms used in your organization designed to accomplish the goals and deliver a remarkable customer experience? Are you as a CEO involved in the process? If not, you need to be.
A definition of culture that I like is from Jim Collins, author of Good To Great, Built to Last, and numerous other books and articles … Culture is a combination of core values, core purpose, combined with the BHAG, or Big Hairy Audacious Goal, which is a very aggressive stretch goal set for a long timeframe. Another is what people are saying about their company to others, including customers. Culture is either intentional by active design and promotion, alive in the organization and cause for continued operations, or it is unintentional and largely ignored by passive default.
Most companies have two cultures. The first is the one reflected by your view of the world as a CEO. It is written on your website, and discussed in your annual retreat. It is a corporate worldview that may be shared by your Senior Leadership Team. However you have a big problem if that view of culture is not shared by the majority of employees in your company, who are actively supporting Culture #2.
Culture #1.
Culture #2
Culture #3
With culture #1, you will have difficulty scaling your business, and will be stuck and frustrated each day working ‘in’ the business instead of ‘on’ it. And employees will not have the same view of culture that you as the leader and your Senior Team have if you do not consistently and frequently communicate the core values and core purpose, and BHAG of your company to others.
If your company’s culture looks like culture #1, then you are not consistently and frequently communicating the purpose and core values, and your goals. The generic words you have written on the conference room wall have no viability and are basically useless. In fact, having two cultures takes a lot of energy to manage, drains the organization of creativity and innovation, and creates tension. It definitely hurts your credibility as a CEO.
If this resonates with you, it is a problem… your problem. You created it, and you need to fix it. Your big job is to create a new culture, one we’ll call Culture #3. Culture #3 could be a bridge between what you would like to have as a culture, your ideal state, and what actually exists within your firm.
My guess is that if you don't do something about it, your company will be challenged to be relevant going forward.
I would like to hear your thoughts. Feel free to connect and we can discuss how to create a high performing culture you would be proud of.
Are you passionate about your work as a leader? You know the answer, and what may come as a surprise, so does your team. If you aren’t, you may be frustrated, ineffective, and struggling to get results. It may be the reason you are not making progress.
Leaders need to have a passion for their work, and have a vision for their organization, exuding the essence of it in all thoughts and expressions to all stakeholders, at all times. S/he needs to be passionate and stay focused like a laser on bridging the gap that exists between that vision, and the mission…what the company actually does day to day.
In one turnaround I was leading, a member of the senior leadership team was always in agreement with everything we discussed and pleasant to be around, but was quietly and effectively undermining my efforts to discover variances that were causing waste numbers to be excessively high. His department was causing the problem by using materials that were over specification because the correct inventory was not available when needed to meet order lead times. This senior manager didn’t want to spend the time or energy to solve it. Instead he tried to bury the data with evasive maneuvers. His passive/aggressive behavior proved not only costly to the company, but fatal to his career.
Strategy can emerge from a gap analysis illustrating where you are currently, your mission, vs your vision of where you want to be. Strategies, goals and objectives can all be set once the mission and vision are identified and agreed upon, and those strategies must be in alignment with the mission, and the organizations overall vision. Its extremely important to identify a unifying strategy(s) and to gain buy – in from all stakeholders in the value chain, and that includes customers, suppliers, employees, bank, and board.
Congratulations! You’ve just been hired as CEO of a company in deep financial trouble. The ownership and board of directors have given you free reign to do your job, and you feel up to the task of leading the effort, but you have limited time to turn this ship around, and get it moving in a different more profitable direction.
What will be your plan starting Monday, your first day on the new job… the first month…the first six months. How will you evaluate and manage the company and its processes. How will you engage with the customers?
Roselinde Torres, in a recent TED talk, describes a new 21st Century world which is global, digitally enabled, transparent, with faster speeds of information flow and innovation, and where nothing big gets done without some sort of a complex matrix. Ms. Torres suggests that leadership is defined by three important questions that we should be considering for ourselves as leaders, and for those whom we lead.
What is a thought leader?
Wikipedia defines thought leadership as follows: A thought leader is an individual or firm that is recognized as an authority in a specialized field and whose expertise is sought and often rewarded.[1] The Oxford English Dictionary gives as its first citation for the phrase an 1887 description of Henry Ward Beecher as "one of the great thought-leaders in America."
There really isn’t anything like a safe job in a safe company anymore. Job security has become a casualty of disruptive innovation. Earlier generations spent entire careers in the same company in a ‘cradle to grave’ track. My father worked for two companies in roles of progressively greater responsibilities during his career. I have worked for or started six companies during my career.
Quotations from luminaries whether in business, sports, medicine, law, or politics can inspire and clarify. A great quote is concise and crisp, capturing a thought or idea in an entirely new way.
Great quotes can speak directly into our own unique situations. One quote from Peter Drucker on leadership said ‘Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.’ Of course, he is right about getting results, but in my own view Drucker leaves something on the table for debate.
In a recent Peer to Peer discussion with some CEO’s, most were defensive on the topic of how to deliver an outstanding customer experience. They mostly felt that their employees were always focused on the customer. One CEO said his company has data showing their consistent delivery of full customer satisfaction through customer surveys reflecting on time deliveries, rapid response rates on corrective actions, on time billing, and so forth.
Copyright © 2019 Langhout International | Terms of Use
