Dando Advisors

Public CEO’s Email About Respect: A Reality Check for Execs

Kirk Dando — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:24:28 +0000

A recent email from friend and colleague, Brett Hurt, CEO of Bazaarvoice, to his team prompted me to stop and think about the importance of Human Capital in a world that can focus on the mechanics of business.

When a company experiences tremendous growth and success, the core values it began with often get watered down (see The Top 12 Warning Signs of Success No. 4). Culture is a priority for Brett and Bazaarvoice (which recently had a successful IPO) as it should be for every organization.

Read his email below to his team and please let me know your thoughts in the Comments box.

“Team,

As our company gets bigger and more “successful”, it is easy to forget how we got here. And it is especially easy to start thinking that we are turning nobs and dials of one big corporate machine. We have to fight this habit, and it starts with the way we treat and talk about our people.

RESPECT
We are a company of equals.
We… Read More >

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There are 4 types of employees. Which are you?

Kirk Dando — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 19:48:18 +0000

The Dando Warning Signs of Success is an ongoing series of insights and strategies for powering growth and building on your most valuable asset: you and your team. Every team has a variety of personalities and work styles, some more conducive to scaling a business than others. The Dando Team Assessment Matrix helps you recognize who on your team is a winner, who is an underperformer and worst of all who is a destructive performer. This is a powerful tool for assessing and discussing with your team. CLICK HERE to learn more.

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Shark,Teddy Bear…What’s Your Leadership Style?

Kirk Dando — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 18:27:21 +0000

The Dando Warning Signs of Success is an ongoing series of insights and strategies for powering growth and building on your most valuable asset: your people. The Dando Leadership Style Matrix, helps you recognize your leadership style, as well as the individual styles of team members, and helps you identify where you need balance in order to provide the “jet fuel” necessary to grow yourself, your team and your business. CLICK HERE to assess your leadership style.

QUESTION: So what, now what? What is your key take-away from this assessment and what actions will you take?

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9 Reasons Growth-Hungry Leaders Use a Strategic Plan

Kirk Dando — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 15:57:56 +0000

Strategic Planning does not deal with future decisions. It defines the future of present decisions. As a leader your job is to have a blind date with destiny!

An active, articulate, well-communicated direction for a corporation, division, or business unit is evidence of game changing leadership. Effective strategic plans encompass organizational discipline, accountability and direction.

Does it follow that an organization that lacks a strategic plan also lacks leadership? Perhaps. The leader who claims, “Of course I know where we are going. With this market it is obvious what we have to do. Besides we cannot afford the money or the time right now to get away and plan. I will let the others in on the direction on a need-to-know basis” is at least several shingles short of a full roof when it comes to leadership.

As leaders, we often forget…we get what we set ourselves up for!

A strategic plan provides:

A unified direction for your company: A strategic plan is a valuable leadership device. Employees sense when the organization is focused and when it is diffused.
More effective communication: A consistent means of expressing

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How to Avoid the Pain of Hiring or Promoting the Wrong Person

Kirk Dando — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 15:25:12 +0000

As your company grows, the need for new/better talent becomes apparent. You are fully aware of the pain and destruction that can be caused by hiring/promoting the wrong person. However, due to your unknowingly flawed hiring and promoting practices, you now have friends, family members, partners, “pedigreed” executives hired from other companies or long-term loyal employees (who are not qualified for the job) in key positions. This is what I call HIRING AND PROMOTING FOR EXTINCTION.

No one ever disagrees; it takes the right person to get the job done. Letting the tyranny of the urgent force you into hiring/promoting the wrong person blindly marches the company towards mediocrity and dumbs down the culture … or worse. There is no other area in business where such poor results are so consistently tolerated than the area of promoting and hiring the right people. As leaders we often forget; we get what we set ourselves up for!

As the saying goes, we hire for expertise and we fire for behavior. In short, if you want to improve your organizations growth and profitability, then improve the expertise and behaviors by doing a better job of promoting… Read More >

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HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY: 3 Steps to Making 2012 Your Best Year Ever!

Kirk Dando — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 19:53:20 +0000

Have you ever encountered people who say they desperately want to change their circumstances, but do not want to change themselves? They unconsciously choose the “hard way” over “hard work” and simply hope things will turn out for the best.

Dr. Woodrow Kroll recently reported in his radio broadcast that 3% of people have written goals, 10% have goals but haven’t written them down,, and the other 87% simply do not have any specific goals at all. Dr. Kroll noted that people with written goals are 50%-100% more likely to achieve them than those who haven’t written them down. As Zig Ziglar says, “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.”

Why do people avoid writing down their goals? What story do they tell themselves that makes not writing them down OK? Why is hope so attractive, even though it doesn’t work?

With the New Year upon us, it’s a great time to check your systems, people, strategies and resolutions to make sure you and your company don’t rely on HOPE as a strategy. As leaders, we often forget…we get what we set ourselves up for.

Three overly obvious and embarrassingly… Read More >

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Why Most Successful Executives Don’t Scale

Kirk Dando — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 19:52:38 +0000

It’s So Simple, You Just Missed It!

The moral of this story: Executives often are too busy trying to look smart; by doing so, they dismiss the solutions that are in plain sight. As leaders, we often forget, we get what we set oursleves up for.

Many executives are worried about how competition might kill their company, when in reality, they are doing a more than adequate job on their own of committing corporate suicide.

I recently gave a talk to a room full of Fortune 500 C-level executives about the Top 12 Warning Signs of Success™. One of the executives commented that these warning signs were very elementary compared to their “real” issues, such as figuring out their global go-to-market strategy. What she didn’t know was that I gave the exact same talk to 75 of the top managers and leaders in her company just a month earlier. She was perplexed to learn that these 75 people, many of whom report directly to her, said the top 3 issues facing their company were (click on for full explanation):

Warning Sign #2 – NOTHING KILLS FASTER THAN SUCCESS

Warning Sign #7 – HOPE IS… Read More >

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Only 1% Have What It Takes to Lead … Do You?

Kirk Dando — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 18:53:54 +0000

Dando’s definition of lead.er.ship \ lēd-ər-ship\ n : Leadership is a walk on the wild side. If we did not have to deal with people or problems, leadership would be a piece of cake. Instead, leading is all about aggressively moving toward a clear goal while predicting the “train wrecks.” Mix in limited resources, uncertainty and people who may, or may not, come through in a pinch. Leadership is about growing in the face of crisis. Crisis is the eruption of chaos … it takes leaders to the edge, where some do not survive.

I’ve talked with more than 2,000 executives and their teams at growth-hungry companies around the world. In my experience, only about 1% of people have what it takes to be a Game-Changer. By gathering information and observing behavior – and its consequences – I’ve gained perspective on the traits I believe these leaders possess.

Heaven knows the world doesn’t need another article on the characteristics of a leader. The reason I am sharing my thoughts is to provide you with a tool you can use to 1) measure against your own perceptions and 2) let your team express how they… Read More >

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A Tiger By the Tail: How Growth-Hungry Companies Get and Stay on Top

Kirk Dando — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 19:38:46 +0000

I have always been fascinated about what makes certain leaders and their companies get and stay on top. Why are some businesses wildly successful and stable, while others in the same industry, with the same opportunities, who fight the same battles day after day, level out in their growth and never reach their full potential? What, exactly, do successful companies and their leaders do and focus on that’s different?

After helping build a business to $1 billion, selling and subsequently interviewing and coaching over 2,000 executives in growth-hungry companies, I have been very surprised by the answers I’ve found. I thought I would find very complex and difficult-to-implement strategies; but I discovered just the opposite. It’s all about predicting and preparing for what turn out to be overly obvious and embarrassingly simple root cause problems (see The Top 12 Warning Signs of Success™). I have come to recognize significant, predictable patterns that are true for every business. Although the way your business grows is unique to your situation, the challenges that growth itself presents are common to all.

Experience has taught me that by focusing on the… Read More >

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10 Steps to Make Your Meetings Suck Less

Kirk Dando — Thu, 27 May 2010 19:37:15 +0000

A couple of years ago I was talking to my friend John Day, who was complaining about how much time he was spending in meetings and how bad they sucked. He had to get to the office super early and stay super late just to get “real” work done.

I asked John why he and his company were having so many meetings. He said most of them were regularly scheduled meetings to share information and give and get updates. I asked him the obvious question: “John, if these meetings are not a good use of time or suck so bad, why do you and everyone else keep going to them?” He sheepishly said… “They were ‘mandatory’ and no one ever questions them?”

I told him not to worry about it; it is very normal for a successful, growth-hungry company to experience what I call “Fieldtrip Meetings,” where people show up to meetings and take “mental fieldtrips” until they’re over. Then when the “fieldtrip” meeting is over, the “real” meetings (sidebar meetings) begin in the hallways and offices of everyone who was supposed… Read More >

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