I recently was asked to participate on a panel of technology leaders presenting to a group of CEOs.  As I only had 10 minutes to give some advice and tips on how to effectively leverage technology, I did my best to pare down my thoughts to a short set of principles:

• First People – Then Process – Then Technology
• Never abdicate your responsibility for your company’s technology
• Have a solid, documented IT strategy
• Practice Rhythm of Review
• Know your total cost of IT
• Strive for simplicity
• Proactively manage security and risk
• Be a very tough, but very fair customer
• Know ALL your “IT people” – treat them as one team
• You get what you pay for – invest wisely and as part of a plan
• Be wary of tech trends

Readers' thoughts and input on this list are welcome as we plan to continually refine it over time.

First People, Then Process, Then Technology

This has become a bit of an overused cliche from consulting companies and IT professionals, but it's true!  Focus your efforts and money in that order.  If you don't have the best people on board and your business process isn't clear and simple, fix them first before you jump into any new technology.  Remember, only you can be a true judge of whether you have A players on your team.  Your IT vendors aren't going to tell you that the reason your technology project is failing is because your people are weak.  They're just going to work longer, and most likely charge you more, to try to get the job done.

Never abdicate your responsibility for your company's technology

Many business executives are not comfortable dealing with the complexities of IT.  It's fine to have the desire to say "I don't care how it works, I just want it to work!".  But even if you've hired the best technology managers and vendors to run your company's IT, you still should give it a decent amount of your personal attention.  After all, it's expensive.  Sometimes the most expensive part of a company's budget.  Remember, the business leaders (not the IT managers or vendors) own these systems and the processes they support.  When I'm brought into a client to clean up a technology project or system implementation gone seriously awry, I'm pretty tough on IT vendors who mess up.  But I'm even tougher on the business managers who hired them and did nothing about it.  There is a big difference between delegation and abdication of responsibility.  Overall, as a CEO, it's best to keep a "buc stops here" mentality on what has become possibly most critical tool in your business arsenal.

Have a solid, documented IT strategy

This builds on the above point.  Be sure to invest time in this.  Work directly with your IT managers and vendors to create a clear, holistic picture of where your technology is and where it's going.  Their job is to worry about the details, but also to make technology simple for you and your non-tech business leaders to understand. 

Practice Rhythm of Review

The best strategy, budget, forecast, or project timeline is worthless without regular checks on where you are vs. your plan.  Put checkpoints and tollgates in your calendar up front and stick to them.

Know your total cost of IT

Have an exhaustive IT budget and monitor it regularly.  It never fails to amaze me how many senior managers don't have even a rough idea of what they are spending on technology in total.  It's easy to remember buying that expensive piece of hardware, or paying for a big new system to be put in. But it's when you total ALL areas of technology and look at both the one time and recurring costs that you get the big picture.

Strive for simplicity

As a company grows and runs over time systems and add-on technologies propagate like weeds.  It may seem a bit counter intuitive, but less is better, cheaper, faster, and easier to cope with.  It is challenging to create a simple IT Architecture, but definitely worth it.  Fast companies value having the best technology, but are completely on top of it and don't allow unplanned complexity to bring them to their knees.

Proactively manage security and risk

Protecting your valuable business data and ensuring that your critical IT systems are always available gets more important every day as companies become more and more dependent on technology.  Your job as a leader is to balance risk tolerance vs. IT spend at the appropriate levels for your company.  Think broadly and holistically when you make a plan considering your data, your customers' data, system backups, viruses, hackers, malicious outsiders, disgruntled employees, accidents, and natural disasters.  Then be sure to put the necessary policies and procedures in place.  No one can spend an unlimited amount of time and money to make their IT 100% full-proof and it's always necessary to carry a certain amount of risk and tolerate some vulnerabilities.  But in this area, it's far better to make conscious, informed decisions with your eyes wide open than to be caught by surprise.

Be a very tough, but very fair customer

Set up your IT vendors for a long term successful partnership with you, but hold them to a very high professional standard.  Drive your IT suppliers (internal and external) to be business people first and technology people second.  Expect your IT employees and vendors alike to articulate issues in a clear way that facilitates decision making.  Don't ever let them bury you in techno-jargon.

Know ALL your IT people, treat them as one team

This includes anyone who affects your systems including full time employees, consultants and contractors, and outside tech suppliers.  Even more importantly it includes your non-IT employees who have a big role to play in owning the systems they use.  Establishing SuperUsers for each critical functional area / system is one of the best techniques I've seen for helping IT and "the business" work well together.

You get what you pay for

Realize that solid, worthy technology costs money, but wise investments up front (as part of a good strategy) will save money in the long run.  Technology mistakes grow to become expensive mistakes even if they just seemed like an easy and cheap fix at the time, so be sure to really think through your technology investment decisions.

Be wary of tech trends

Innovation is crucial and early adopters of new technology can often gain a competitive advantage, but jumping on the latest bandwagon with no good reason just amounts to spending on technology for technologie's sake.  Work with your team to get good at making quick assessments of a new tech offering and determining if you should be an early adopter, fast follower, late adopter, or not use it at all. 

Workshop Materials for Download

The information is protected with the password distributed at the meeting (found on the bottom of the Team Assessment Tool).

Feel free to use this site to make any comments or ask follow up questions for continued group discussion under this blog entry or in the password protected area (link above).  You can also e-mail me directly (e-mail link to the left) with follow up questions if you'd prefer.

I thoroughly enjoyed the excellent discussion and appreciate your active participation in the session.  Don't forget to do your quick and easy follow up homework!

Workshop Materials for Download

Feel free to use this site to make any comments or ask follow up questions for continued group discussion under this blog entry or in the password protected area (link above).  You can also e-mail me directly (e-mail link to the left) with follow up questions if you'd prefer.

Thanks for your participation in the session!

Regularly scheduled rigorous reviews of results against plan (finance, sales, project status, inventory, etc.) are critical to ensure companies stay focused on their most important metrics.  In particular, your IT department needs this rhythm to align their efforts well with the business strategy and flow.

In my years as a consultant, I've been surprised to find that many companies of all sizes have no single calendar that shows when all their important management meetings are scheduled.  And often these aren't planned at the macro level at all, so there is no communicated rhythm of review in place. 

If you're doing everything ad hoc, then chances are you're missing some necessary disciplines around both strategic planning and tactical execution.

I've searched several times for a good calendar template and found none, so I created this Excel tool and have used it for several clients and my own consulting practice:

Download Visular - Company Master Calendar Example - v02

This example is populated with dummy data for demonstration purposes - feel free to customize to meet your needs.  Read on for instructions:

Objectives of the tool:

1. clearly see all fiscal and calendar dates at the quarter, month, and day level
2. capture ALL important business events (yearly customer conferences, industry events, etc.)
3. plan and show all core regularly scheduled business meetings
4. show holidays and other business closing dates
5. see the whole year on 4 pages (one per quarter) so you can spread this out on your desk or a wall to get an easy bird's eye view of your year
6. allow for as many or as few "areas" (shown as columns) as you need for your business

Doing this in Excel make the process very quick and you can get creative with font sizes, colors, shading and other formatting to make your calendar easy to read and work with.

Using the tool:

• Your financial review and accounting process should drive the overall rhythm and other regular meetings should flow from there.  
• Depending on the size of your company you may have a column for each division and one for corporate, or you may chose a column for groups of key functions (Marketing & Sales; Finance & Legal; Engineering & Manufacturing; HR &  IT).  
• I'd try to limit columns to 5 or 6 - by forcing the calendar to fit clearly on 4 pages you keep it manageable.
• Use the second tab to give more details about your big meetings if necessary (owner, attendees, objectives / description, etc.).  See also Meeting Agenda template.
• Once you have some data in the calendar, physically print it out to look at your company's whole year.  

Key questions to ask:

• Do we have the right type and timing of key strategic and tactical check points?
• Do we have too many big meetings?  Too few?  
• Are the owners, objectives and agendas for all these meetings clear? 
• Have we put key strategic meetings (board meetings, 3-year planning sessions) in at the right times?
• Are important operational meetings scheduled on a regular basis?

Involve your senior leadership team in completing this and be sure they are bought in to the Rhythm of Review concept.  Only top management can drive this and ensure it happens.  At GE under Jack Welch it was like a religion.  You NEVER missed the key dates and objectives and measurements were crystal clear.  No small feat for one of the world's largest companies.

I often preach about the importance of balancing business strategy with tactical execution and having a calendar like this in place this helps leaders do just that.  Hope you find this helpful.

I recently gave some advice to a colleague who was lamenting going into a performance review for one of his people who was delivering far below expectations.  It was at the point where if major improvements weren't made soon he would have to be fired.  My approach helped and he just e-mailed me saying the discussion went much better than expected, so I thought I'd share the leadership tip.

When you sit down face to face with that problem employee for the dreaded bad review, before you go into your documented laundry list of their problems, weaknesses, and failings - let them talk first. 

There's a good chance they know that at least some bad news is coming and they'll feel better if they get a chance to articulate the problems right up front in their own words.  An intro like "Bill, before I go into the details of this review, why don't you tell me how you think you've performed over the past X months" is a great way to kick off this session. 

It will give your employee a bit of empowerment during an uncomfortable situation and may also give you some examples you can refer to later where you know they already agree with your assessment.  If you have a formal document with your feedback and scores in writing, turn it over face down on the table during this first part of the chat.  Then, when it's your turn to talk you can show the ugly details after the ice has been broken a bit.

In my experience this works just as well during a first negative assessment as when you have to threaten to put a person on that final warning before they will be let go.  You may even be surprised that they are so aware of the bad fit between them and the company that they tell you they plan to resign before you have to go any further.  Much better for both of you and for the company than a formal firing.

An important caveat: 
I'm assuming you have a clear role document / job description for everyone on your team and documented goals and objectives to measure people against.  If those aren't in place you have some ground work to do before you can be too harsh on someone and still be fair. At a minimum make an as objective as possible list of issues backed up by concrete examples.  Focus on tangible deliverables and results that have been missed. 

Otherwise you risk violating the No Surprises Rule with employees.  One of the worst things you can do as a boss is catch someone on your team totally off guard with a negative review.  Your people should always know where they stand with you and how they're doing on the job.

Give bad news early, constructively, and fast no matter how small the issue.  Don't let problems with your people fester for a second!  It's always easier to address something the moment it happens than bringing it up much later.  And it feels absolutely terrible to have an employee say "but you never told me you weren't happy!"

Negative reviews are a necessary evil in the business world, but take courage in the fact that honesty is always the best policy when it comes to your team's performance.  Hope this helps - your comments are welcome.

In the current economy more than ever strong leadership is needed, yet unfortunately many firms can't afford the time and investment to develop a comprehensive leadership curriculum. 

In addition to the many free tools and references on this evolving blog, I've put together a list of some recommended quick hits for leadership development.  The idea is to help your company get some tactical “points on the board” without the overhead of developing an entire leadership competency structure. 

The first, in the spirit of shameless self-promotion, is my own offering.  The others are from fellow highly experienced consultants who I trust.

1 – Visular (Tom Wolf)  - The GE Leadership Values in Action

Download Visular-Workshop_Profile-GE_Leadership_Vaules_in_Action-v04web

This is a quick session on what I still consider THE best practice in company leadership.  Many of us former GE folks take it for granted, but it’s very useful for managers who haven’t lived through GE during the Jack Welch era.  I’ve had great feedback on this session and would love to deliver it to your team.

2 – Strelmark (Hilary Fordwich) - Career Critical: Business Development Boot Camps for IT Execs

Hilary is phenomenal at teaching technical teams the key soft or “human engineering” skills that the most successful business leaders need to master.  Her sessions are motivational, tactical and practical.   I’ve seen Hilary in action on two occasions so far and highly recommend her boot camps to help your team develop critical skills that are often lacking in the technology arena.  Her sessions include case studies; tips to build lasting, successful, beneficial business relationships; and human relationship truths to apply for gaining & retaining clients & employees in every situation.  Her list of clients and testimonials is more than impressive.

3  - The R Group (Myron Radio) - TriMetrix Leadership Style Assessment & Coaching

Myron’s firm is certified to deliver one of the better leadership style & coaching assessments I’ve come across.  Many of us have been through these types of exercises in our careers (Myers Briggs, leadership evaluations, etc.).  TriMetrix is very fast & easy to complete and provides a wealth of valuable assessment feedback beyond a typical behavioral tool.  It looks at three distinct views of an individual to get a more complete picture of “How”, “Why” and “What” they will do on the job.  Myron had me take the on-line test and gave me the coaching report personally and I was very impressed at the many helpful insights I gained.

All these are proven, quick, affordable offerings that can have a big impact on your existing leadership team and are also valuable for developing future leaders.

Feel free to contact me for more details, ballpark costs, testimonials, and direct referrals if you have any interest.

As anyone who has seen me in action will tell you, I tend to hold technology vendors to an extremely high standard and can be pretty tough on them, especially when I find instances of a supplier being lax or unprofessional.  Fundamentally, however, I take an approach of setting up vendors for long-term successful relationships and am just as hard on company managers who don't take full responsibility for their business processes.  After all, it's their choice where to spend money on technology.

Here are my goals for conducting an effective vendor search:

• Find and evaluate as many vendors / solutions / options as possible - quickly and with minimal cost and effort
• Make your search process repeatable to save time (create clear documents so all you have to do is send the same stuff over and over as new vendors are identified)
• Educate vendors (especially your short list) for highly effective demos and proposals
• Enable vendors who are not a strong fit to self-select out early (saving time)
• Set up key vendors for success to build an effective long-term relationship and avoid surprises later
• Demonstrate your company's tech and business savvy throughout to encourage great vendors to want to work with you
• Be a very tough, but very fair customer

Download Visular-Team_Assessment_Tool_v02

This tool is strongly influced by the GE leadership approach to managing people - focusing on A players and exiting C players.  It is NOT a substitute for a full employee management process (role documents, goal setting, performance reviews, merit-based bonuses, etc.).  Instructions for using the tool are included in the file.