Innovation and adaptation is a fundamental component of viability and longevity.  One day’s dominant market leader is tomorrow’s dinosaur.  I have been historically critical of the US auto industry for not catching the wave of innovation and change.  And, their behaviors put them in a prime spot to win the race to zero.  By continually ignoring the threat of foreign competition, protecting a system and culture that had existed untouched for decades, and paying lip service to a market that was sending clear messages to them, the US auto industry was near collapse.  Were it not for a government funded bailout, one of the nation’s most historically prestigious corporate names would have become the next RCA.

Contrast the behaviors and the lessons provided by GM to the strategy of Cintas.  Cintas was founded as a uniform rental service.  Traditionally uniform rental plants were based in old neighborhoods and were dingy and hot and inefficient.  Also, the uniform rental industry was very mature with flat revenues and declining profits.  Instead of going small, Cintas went big.  They built large, highly efficient operations in high profile business parks.  The founder’s mantra was when the economy is good we raise prices, when it is bad we acquire our competitors.  For nearly 30 consecutive years Cintas has experienced over 18% annual growth.  However, Cintas did not achieve this growth simply in uniform rental.  Recognizing the limitations for growth in a flat, mature industry, Cintas branched into plant safety, janitorial services, white collar garment sales, and document storage.  They not only became a very efficient and dominant player in their core and mature market, Cintas discovered other areas to expand, grow, and become highly efficient, competitive, and profitable in.  They had no interest in participating in the race to zero.

The race to zero is a long enough race that no one should ever get to zero unless they were not paying attention.  When customer buying habits, competitive trends, and technology adversely impact your revenues and your profits the need for change is right in front of you.  Rather than focusing on being really good at what you do, or have historically done, this would be the time to ask yourself what am I good at that I can do differently or change and improve to be in front of?

I have a client that read the race to zero tea leaves and has completely abandoned what their historical business model has been.  They are focusing on a new strategy and plan that leverages what they learned and discovered while building the current one.  It is a risky move, an aggressive one; however, they saw they were in a race to zero and decided that their skills, experiences, and capabilities can drive their business in new and different and sustainable direction.  Like Cintas, they leveraged innovation to keep the business growing instead of protectionism tactics to simply keep it alive.

The race to zero has no winners.  Be aware of the shifts in your business, the changes in your competitive and financial landscape and make an honest assessment – am I trying to hang on?  If you are, look at your business in a different light and put some innovation and change in the mix.  You will likely find a new race to win—the one of profitable sustainability.

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Customer service is about serving the customer.  That the client’s customers were expressing interest in competitive customer service programs implies there is an issue with the exisiting customer service program.  However, fixing, improving, or changing anything related to customer service requires the participation, engagement, and involvement of the customer.  Without customer involvement this is not a customer service program improvement, this is merely an internal process change.  There is no validation that the cutomer is being served — only the organization perceptions of itself have changed.

Many businesses engage in these reactive activities far too often.  In response to a competitive threat, instant erosion in revenues, or customer defection, businesses start to look inward to fix, correct, or improve their process.  They are looking in the wrong direction.  When there are situations in your market that are impacting the business, the place to go is to the market — your customers — to find out what needs improving, why it needs improvement, how it will stabilize the business relationship, and how a fix can provide a different type of competitive advantage.  Solutions are solved exclusive from inside the company, they must involve the people that know your business and your competitors best — your customers.

Next time you have the urge, the need, or the desire to make a change focus your planning and information gathering in the right direction — focus outward.  Focusing inward may make you feel better about making some changes; but, if it doesn’t do anything for the customer from their point of view, you have not fixed anything.

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Short-term-it is – an affliction of the mind and the spirit that reactively makes decisions to a narrow view or timeline to simply fix a problem or influence an outcome, without any measure of the impact, perspective or investment for the long-term future or long-range view. 

Where do we see it?

In business:  Leaders managing to the quarterly forecasts to appease investors and analysts instead of managing and making decisions that will position their business for the strength of a long-term strategy and outcome.

In politics: Political leaders making decisions to quickly react to solving an immediate problem (can you say TARP?) without any consideration for its impact on the entire citizenry or the implications over the long-term politically and economically and socially.

In our personal lives: Quick fix diets, make money fast shortcuts, and lavish spending habits beyond our means (not anymore – that goose got killed).

What are the cures?

Collaboration: Our society has become polarized.  There are too many factions, functions, and ideologies that are not solving problems — only reacting to them.  You cannot solve any problem without making a commitment to discovering a solution that addresses the cause of the problem not merely its quick fix remedy.   In a truly collaborative process there are no rights and wrongs, there are only common goals and a commitment to outcomes—a solution to a problem, challenge, or issue.  Until we learn to collaborate to create solutions, mere fixes will only create band-aids not solutions.

Communication:  Effective communication is much, much more than one’s ability to articulate in words their perspectives, beliefs, opinions and views on something.  In fact, vocal eloquence is a very small part of communication.  If everyone is talking, no one is listening.  If everyone is right, nobody’s wrong.  Communication requires the ability to listen as earnestly to as many diverse perspectives as possible to effectively define and understand both the issue and the opportunity.  Until we learn to communicate – listen to wide ranging views – we will continue to be exposed to the “I am right” mentality.  The solutions that come from this mindset are both very short-sighted and narrow.

Discipline: Effective change and improvement in anything requires an investment in time and resources.  Making reactive decisions that foster more reactive decisions represents a complete lack of strategic and intellectual discipline.  Designing, implementing, and creating impactful, lasting change and improvement requires the discipline to stay on an intended course while making subtle, necessary course corrections as more information is shared.   Continuous, reactive course changes are not based on knowledge, they are disruptive and opinion based – which is no way to live your life, run a business or lead a country.  Put some discipline into the process.

Focus:  Though a great deal can be accomplished in 100 days, the focus cannot be only the 100 days; but, on the long range goal and mission.  It is can be very challenging to effectively sustain focus on anything that is two, three or four years out; however, most successful and sustainable outcomes require a long-term view not an Attention Deficit Disorder mindset.  Focus your team, your family, your business, and your leaders on daily accomplishment to a long-range outcome and good things will happen consistently; more importantly it will be repeatable and sustainable.  Focus facilitates the potential to accept and embrace the potential of the long-term strategy and takes the pressure off those that want to embrace the I-want-it-now mindset.    

Short-term-itis is a very destructive affliction in our society.  Awareness of the issue and a commitment to getting it under control with better communication, collaboration, discipline and focus will help us more effectively deal with the issues that each of face in various aspects of our personal and professional lives.

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Know, do, repeat

To accomplish a repeatable success model, requires the following:

1. Focus: Know precisely what markets, clients, and segments your business is consistently successful in.
2. Awareness: Know specifically why your best clients bought, why they continue to buy, and what they value.  Ask them — this is NOT a survey conversation. This is an interactive knowledge gathering conversation.
3. Convert: Utilize this information to develop a selling strategy and program for your growth team to get more new great clients just like your current great clients.  Since your story resonates with your current great clients it will be rather simple for it to resonate with your future new clients provided you are telling your story in the right place (note step #1 – focus).
4. Train: Develop and implement an educational program that equips your team with the tools, the resources and the knowledge to be productive and effective in this very focused effort.  You do not need sales people simply running around trying to find any kind of business deal; you need your team equipped to be very efficient and effective at building relationships with businesses and in markets that your organization has consistently been quite successful in.  Your development program provides that focus and discipline.
5. Savor: Celebrate and enjoy with confidence your team’s ability to consistently and repeatedly land the type of business deals that make your business strong, profitable, and valued. 

It is much more fun to know where your business is growing and why, than struggling to figure out how to get your business revenues up.  Just like “Lather, Rinse, Repeat” is good for shampoo, leveraging the many benefits of “Know, Do, Repeat” requires nothing more than the F.A.C.T.S.

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Taking a business in a different or exciting direction requires insight, innovation and creativity.  Putting caps or limits or rules on a strategic process restricts the possibilities for incredible discoveries and opportunities.  Creativity solves problems, inspires people to move with great energy, and paves the way for new opportunities and growth.  Creativity is so important in our businesses today that the June, 2011 issue of Fast Company features a section on the Top 100 Most Creative People.  It was the editor’s letter about creativity that captured my attention and is the motivation and the source for this post.  In his letter, Robert Safian defines four lessons learned about creativity.  While this is his list, the comments associated with them are my comments and insights in support of them:

1. Creativity can come from anywhere: Your entire organization possesses the ability and the capacity to create.  They constantly have thoughts, ideas, and insights rarely shared or explored.  I am constantly discovering insights and opportunities from non-traditional sources like movies, television, radio, music, and simple social conversations.   Recognizing creativity requires the awareness and receptivity to these notions when they are introduced for they happen in an instant.
2. Creativity can solve problems that seem insurmountable: There is not a problem, issue, or challenge that cannot be solved without a little creativity.  Like the presenter referenced early, humor relaxes the audience and the source of the humor can be an inspiration to move forward from that funny comment.  She even used an example of “gallows humor” to solve a particular problem.  The challenge in creatively solving problems is allowing all possibilities, even the seemingly insane ones, to be explored as an opportunity.
3. There is a limitless supply of creativity: Just as creativity can come from anywhere, the sources are limitless and unlimited.  The entire universe is constantly on a continuous learning and improvement curve.  This perpetual cycle of innovation and invention is a constant resource for creativity.  Open up your channels and tap into the virtual, unlimited creative network.
4. Creativity implies reinvention: Many organizations lose their creativity when they get into a fixed and structured process.  While that process may work at its inception, it begins erodes its value the very next day as the world continues to evolve and change.  People are constantly looking for the next idea, the next big thing, or the next opportunity.  A little reinvention can only stimulate those energies.  Creativity is the source for reinvigorating an old machine.

I love change. I am a passionate believer that everything needs to be evaluating, improved, validated, and moving forward.  To that end, I am always looking at and for innovation and creativity wherever I go and in whatever I do.  Sustainable growth requires the ability to be flexible and receptive to the ever changing demands of customers and the threats of competitors and economics.  Maintaining a vigil on all the sources for and opportunities to be creative is a key to that success.  Along the way, have some fun with it – everyone benefits.

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I witness a great deal of behavioral disconnects in senior level management to the cores values or policies.  Whether these leaders know or care about the impact these behaviors have on their leadership abilities, I cannot say. What I can state with great conviction is that nothing destroys the credibility of a leader than incongruent behaviors.  Either we are in this together as a team or we are not.  When you demonstrate you are not, neither will your team be, as well.

Here are a few real life examples of leadership behaviors that lack congruence and destroyed team psyche:

1. A famous football coach, recently resigned for covering up the fact that several of his best players had engaged in activities that, if revealed at the time, would have made them ineligible for the upcoming season.  The incongruence here is that the coach has continually promoted integrity, discipline, and accountability as his core values.  Creating a special exception for these special players, protecting them from discipline, why lying to do so, demonstrates a belief that these values are subject to interpretation and application.  Values are not something we honor when convenient, true values are lived and emphasized in a consistent manner all the time – especially when it comes to teamwork– there is no credibility in this duality.
2. A senior sales manager continually arrives after 9AM to start his workday.  His late arrival prevents him from getting the parking spots close to the office, so he parks in the “Reserved for Customers” spots.  Though he repeatedly chastises vendors who park in these spots, he justifies his parking there is a right of his seniority.  Leadership is about setting examples for others to follow.  Putting yourself above the expectations and rules you have set for others demonstrates a lack of congruence.
3. At a national sales meeting, which was moved to another site in an effort to save money because the organization was in serious red-ink, the President of the company arrives in a limousine.  Though everyone in the sales organization was under a mandatory cut expenses policy, the President chose to show up in style from the airport.  Whether it was cheaper than taking a cab or not is not the issue; it is the appearances of exception that creates discord.  Like the football coach, there are no exceptions to accountability for policy, procedure, and expectations – unless your leadership is not congruent.  Then, you can do anything you want – and so can everyone else.
4. The President of another organization that lists as one of its five core values – “We value our people, our team are our most critical asset”—decimates the Human Resources department with layoffs in order to qualify for his quarterly bonus.  While it may have been a necessary business decision, the timing and the related personal benefits, reflect incongruence to the company values.

Leadership in today’s environment is not easy.  It is very, very challenging.  The pressure to generate results, to inspire teams of people to work together in a tough economy, and to keep the organization moving in a forward direction are significant.  Nothing stops momentum more than discord and distrust. This is where leadership congruence comes in.  When the leader stands, lives, and demonstrates consistency to the values that drive him, the opportunity to trust, believe, follow and engage are improved significantly.  When the leader creates an environment where there are two sets of rules everything breaks down.  Effective leadership in a challenging environment is all about congruence.

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Leadership is a pretty popular topic in today’s business climate. As organizations continue to work through their economic and growth challenges, the pressure and expectations put on leaders, executives and managers to generate immediate results increases. From there, everything rolls downhill and the real work and those related pressures are transferred to the workforce.  At one time leadership may have been about guiding and directing people in a near autocratic fashion.  In our world today, leadership is very complicated and complex and, like customer service, dangerously close to becoming a lost art. 

One of the bigger challenges with leadership today is the internal beliefs that leaders carry that actually limit their ability to lead instead of enhancing their abilities.  Managers and executives live in an environment where they believe they must have the answers and must know how to solve every problem.  When in the visible world, having any percieved weakness like not completely having the answers, is viewed by the leader as a fault or a shortcoming.  When, it is actually an opportunity for the leader to engage the team and demonstrate to the team the leader’s value and trust in the team to help discover a solution or solve a problem.  

“Leaderships sucks…everyone looks to you for inspiration, guidance, and answers even when you have none to give.  The true test of  a leader is when he is as frightened and confused as those who look up to him; in that moment when you can’t find it in yourself you will find it in them — that’s leadership.”

When all else fails, leadership is having the wisdom to know when and how to learn from the team.  I encourage those who are in a leadership position to take the time to engage, trust, and learn from your team.  It is that interaction that builds and strengthens the team and facilitates the development of the respect of the team in your leadership.  People are looking for authentic leadership in every part of their lives.  Understanding and accepting that learning is part of the leadership process will build trust, respect, and confidence in your team.  More importantly, your team will discover your trust in them and will be more inspired by it.

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Like most trusted business advisors, little of what I share is actually unique.  I bring my brilliance to clients by the way we strategize and solve for the obvious.  Intentional common sense™ is one of those thoughts I have started to develop.  If it makes such common sense, why do businesses get so far away from it?  They get away from it because they forget to focus on a regular basis those aspects of their business that enabled them to grow and be successful in the first place.  What they start to focus on is the distaster of the day and the bottom line profits and the not the fundamental, common sense activities that sustain effective growth.

Intentional common sense™ focuses on bringing the following into organizations every single day:

1. The growth strategies that have made your business successful.  The tactics and strategies may change, but the culture, attitude, and commitment may never change.
2. Customer centric, customer first communication and behaviors. Your customers continue to buy from you for a reason.  Once you know what that is, give it to them every single time you connect with them.
3. An empowered, informed, and educated team. Like your customers, your business is nothing without an enaged, educated, and empowered team.  Providing them with the tools and resources to work and communicate like a team in concert with and for your customers makes everything else easy. 
4. A focused business strategy designed only on attracting, converting, and retaining the best.  Be it employees, suppliers, or clients an organization only needs to form the relationships that best fit with the company and it values.  The downfall of many organizations is that they don’t have a firm grasp on what relationships work best in their organization, how to find more, and how to keep them once they find and develop them.

Sustainable revenue growth is nothing more than intentional common sense™.  The challenge for many firms is making the commitment to going back to basics and discover how to insert them back into the organization.  Many businesses incorrectly asume that engaging in these basics are costly.  It is just the opposite.  Nothing is more costly than churning customers, losing valued employees, and investing in sales and marketing programs focused around weak markets.  Put some intentional common sense™  in your business and watch everything, including the bottom line, improve!

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When a new leader comes into an organization the best thing they can do is learn.  Many leaders come into a new environment with the idea that everything they have experienced, deployed and utilized in the past will work in their new assignment.  As a result, they make the fatal mistake of focusing on bringing change to the organization without really understanding the organization.  Learning to understand is how one builds trust, credibility and teams. 

The following is the process a committed leader needs to follow when joining a new organization:

1. Be selfless: You are not here for you, you are here for your team.  Leave the ego of past successes and experiences in your car until you know your new team and your new organization quite well.
2. Know your team: Meet with everyone on your team.  Listen to their story of how they got here, what inspires and drives them, how they view the world and the organization, and discover their strengths and weaknesses.
3. Understand the organization and processes: Just because you believe something is broken and that is why you were brought in to save it, doesn’t mean it is.  Learn and discover what works, what doesn’t, the strengths, weakness and opportunities that exist.  Utilize all the information that is provided to you before you offer your thoughts on change and improvement.
4. Discover and strategic opportunities: Instead of unilaterally implementing change, engage others–your team–in collaborating solutions to problems you uncovered in the learning process.  You can engage a lot more people to embrace change if they feel they were included in the process.
5. Listen, learn and inspire: If you are not a people person, you are not a manager.  Effective management is not simply getting results; effective management is all about inspiring people to get to great results.  This requires people skills around effective relationship-building skills like listening, understanding, and inspiring.
6. Roll up your sleeves: Engaged leaders are successful leaders.  Be engaged, involved, and willing to do the work you expect of your team.
7. Be decisive, honest, and consistent: I live by the motto “tell people what they need to know, not what they want to hear.”  How you communicate, the consistency with which you apply your values, your style, and your intentions defines how your team will trust and collaborate with you. 

Following these seven habits is the key to creating an organization that embraces change because you have invested in learning, understanding, and being respectful of the current environment.  Nothing is more disruptive than a new boss who believes that the best thing they can do is come in and start making changes without understanding the current situation.  The short-term results may facilitate success; however, the much needed teamwork and collaboration that makes organizations today sustainably great will never exist.  Make a commitment to building a great team through discovery and collaboration and communication – it is a more productive path.

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Are you making progress in your business by sheer will and determination; or, are you experiencing consistent, reliable, and steady growth?

This question was prompted by a conversation I recently had with a business owner.  When inquiring how things were going the answer was, “we are ahead of last year, which is better than the previous year.”  While I was happy to hear that the business was growing, I didn’t get any sense that there was much of an understanding of why the business was really growing, any confidence that it will continue or, whether this was a repeatable, steady, predictable occurance. 

Through hard work, determination, perserverance, and decent leadership many businesses can and will grow.  However, the effort and stress associated with simply “willing” growth is too much for any of the organizational components over an extended period of time.  Without a clear sense of what it facilitating this growth, there is no way to define what will accelerate growth or understand what will kill it. 

Effective business growth is not an accident.  It is a byproduct of a foundational understanding of what your business does best, where those strengths lie both inside and outside of the organization, and effectively leveraging those advantages into repeatable and predictable successful outcomes.  Effective business growth happens by design, not by accident. 

If your business is going through what seems to be a cycle of successes interrupted by unexplained, unplanned, and unanticipated failures, your program needs a serious assessment.  Here are the first steps in identifying what makes your business work and grow:

1. When you experience a successful growth outcome what occurred that made it possible?  There is a reason you experienced a productive outcome.  As when you experience a setback (steps 3 and 4) you need to know what happened, why it happened, what made it possible, and everything that occurred.  Wherever possible, involve your customer in the learning and research process.
2. Who was involved and what were their roles and activities? Relationships, people, roles and behaviors influence everything.  When something goes well identify everyone who was involved in the process — internally and externally — and what conversations, strategies, relationships, tactics and behaviors were leveraged by these people to make things work.  Keep track of the people who are making a difference influencing positive outcomes.
3. When you experience an interruption in momentum what occurred or, what went wrong?  The process for these next two steps are identical as the process for analyzing your successes.  The difference is that you are looking for patterns in processes, behaviors, strategies and people that are interrupting success and progress.
4. Who was involved and what were their roles and activities?

When you assess the patterns of successes and failures, you will facilitate a better understanding of what makes your business work well.  The next step is to put these learnings into a process where success is repeatable and failure is avoidable.  More on that in next week’s blog.

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