Business in Vancouver: Boardroom Strategy (Aug 4-10th)

Boardroom Strategy: Mike Desjardins

Friday, 07 August 2009

Ten tips for leading businesses in turbulent times

There’s no denying these are turbulent times. But there are things that you can do to lead your team and your company to success against the odds.

Here are the top 10 things that you can start doing today to adapt past approaches and lead through to success.

Simplify the strategic message. The easier your strategy is to understand and communicate, the greater the likelihood that it will be executed successfully. The idea is to have people understand what the top three to five goals are for the year. Stephen Covey took this idea one step further in his book The Eighth Habit, in which he describes the concept of a “Wildly Important Goal” – the most important goal for the company this year, which everyone in the company must be able to understand, feel compelled by and repeat. Simplify to make the message easy to spread.

Use a reverse one-, three-, five-year approach. Short-term thinking can drive organizations to make decisions that are not in the best interest of stakeholders long term. This situation is exacerbated in turbulent times. View decisions from three unique perspectives: one, three, five years in the future. Ask your (future) self what decisions you wish you would have made. What do you regret? What advice do you have for yourself?
Drive revenue, reduce costs and monitor cash flow tightly. Drive revenue by getting in front of the market while your competitors are inwardly focused. Reduce costs by looking at each major expenditure in its own light, not based on a sweeping percentage. Educate your top people on how to monitor cash flow. Cash is like oxygen to a business; without it, it’s game over. It astounds me how many executives are able to rise through to the senior ranks without understanding cash flow.

Stand out while everyone else is standing down. One thing that you can count on in turbulent times is a decline in ad sales.

Not only does this mean less clutter and a higher probability of reaching your audience, but when ad sales go down marketing mediums get hungry and drop prices. Lock in long-term contracts now at the lower rates.

“Confront the brutal facts but move forward with healthy optimism anyway.” In Good to Great, Jim Collins writes about being realistic about where you’re at, while at the same time putting together a positive plan to move forward.

Think of it as realistic optimism with three steps:

•be clear about what the situation is today – pretending things are better than they are is ludicrous;

•explain what the changing conditions mean for the organization or for your division; and

•share what the strategy is to move the company forward in the right direction and what each person can do to contribute to the plan’s success.

Operate based on a one-page strategic plan. Distil your strategic plan into one page that encompasses values, goals, relevant financial data, key performance indicators and actions for three to five years, one year and the next quarter.

This is far easier for people to digest than a 50-page diatribe. (For a sample format visit my blog at www.mikedesjardins.com).

Keep your strategic plan dynamic. The most successful companies we work with review, evaluate and revise their strategic plans each quarter.

Adapting your strategic plan to meet changes in the market, industry or company creates a document from which decisions can be made rather than another dusty binder for your shelf.

Be candid and speak authentically. Whether things are good or bad, the rumour mill has a way of spinning them into whatever is easy to pass on. By focusing on the candid facts and how people are being affected by what’s happening, a sense of community and camaraderie can be built around finding a solution.

Cut fast and cut early: Multistage layoffs are far more damaging to corporate culture than one large downsizing. The death of a thousand cuts leaves people constantly realigning priorities each time there’s a layoff and wondering if they’re next. Lead people back to engagement and productivity by listening to what they’re experiencing and helping them regain focus.

Start doing, stop doing, keep doing. When fear sets into an organization it can lead people to the point of inaction or what we call “analysis paralysis.” Have people ask and answer three simple questions: What should I start doing? Stop doing? Keep doing?

If this is a topic that you are interested to know more about, visit this link for a recorded webinar that goes into more detail and examples: www.virtusinc.com/webinars. •

Mike Desjardins is the Driver (CEO) at ViRTUS, an organizational development consulting firm with expertise in strategic planning and implementation, leadership development, change management and succession planning for medium to large organizations.

This article from Business in Vancouver August 4-10, 2009; issue 1032

Why most leadership development initiatives fail.

Over the past ten years we’ve had the opportunity to work with well 1,000+ executives and CEOs, focused on helping them becoming better leaders, strategists, and visionaries. In that time I’ve seen the aftermath of many failed leadership development initiatives, that we’ve been called in to fix or replace, and they seem to carry a number of similarities. If you’re a CEO, VP HR, or Director of Leadership Development, I think you’ll find this helpful.  Here is a list of the reasons that most leadership development (LD) initiatives fail:

1. They ignore reality. Good, bad, or ugly, there is a style of leadership that is accepted in your company right now. It’s been woven in to the fabric of the organization until it became the unwritten rule of “how you lead here.” Ignoring the fact that most people don’t look down the organization for tips on leadership they look up, and hoping that by training the “up and comers” below the exec team to behave differently than the exec team does simply doesn’t work. People turn off the volume and watch the video: how are leaders acting in this company so I know how to act like them so one day I can become an exec too. We call it the Video Test. If the senior team doesn’t understand, promote, and clearly demonstrate the behaviours that you are hoping to teach your up and coming high potentials (hi-po’s) then it’s really just paying lip service to leadership.
2. There’s no connection to the business. Teaching leaders how to lead without showing them the direct connection to the actual situations and circumstances that they are going to run into in your business is leaving out a very crucial step. Making the connection from behaviour to situation to outcome to success based on actual circumstances that occur today in the business or occur frequently in their day-to-day roles is one of the most effective ways to ingrain an approach.
3. We’ll do it in-house “through HR.” Most HR departments are not equipped to handle facilitation of leadership development programs in-house. It’s not their expertise, they are usually understaffed, and this is the core capability of the company. The most effective way (yes, I know, I’m biased, tough – it’s true), to implement a proper program is to work with an external leadership development partner who is willing to take the time and energy to understand what success looks like for you and the business, and design something that fits your situation (run away fast if they have the solution already built – your business is unique, you deserve a unique solution).
4. It’s event driven. Holding an annual leadership retreat or semi-annual “learning event” means that for about one month after the event you’ll see some faint signs (usually in the form of terminology from the event) leaking out. After that it’s back to business as usual. The only way adults can actually their behaviour is to: see a model of what world-class behaviour in this area looks like, immerse themselves in learning in a practical way how to change their behaviour, and have the opportunity to revisit the learning on a frequent basis.
5. Stick it in the LMS (Learning Management System). Right and magically everyone will find it since they spent the majority of their day surfing your corporate intranet looking for learning opportunities (is the sarcasm too light?). Leadership development is something that people need to be invited to participate in in a tangile way. Whether it’s live, on a webinar, a coaching call, whatever, the point is you engage them, not the other way around.
6. They used an elementary school approach. Remember when you were in elementary school and your teacher was the expert and she told you how to do stuff that you weren’t sure you’d ever use again and that’s how you learned.  Well that’s called pedagogy. There are some things missing from that experience for adults: no control over the learning, no feedback to the person helping me learn, no connection to my reality, and no practical application right now. Adults require interactive, experiential learning where the “teacher” is really facilitating the learning process by bringing forward new concepts in a way that allows the learners to try them out.

If you’re not sure where to get started but you know you need to do something about developing stronger culture of leadership in your business here’s the best ways to begin:

1. Write a list of all of the leadership behaviours that you don’t like that are going on in your company today.
2. Take that list and write what the opposite, positive behaviour would look like.
3. Think one year down the road and ask yourself this question, “what would substantial progress look like for us?”
4. Interview your executive team and ask them one question, “what are the core leadership abilities that we need to foster in this organization to help us compete in the business over the next 1-5 years?”

One of the coolest things I do all year…

I’m inviting you to experience your courage and join me on the ViRTUS Drop Zone Team. On September 15, 2009, our team will be rappelling down the side of the AXA Pacific Building in downtown Vancouver and we’d love you to join us! Here’s a quick video that show’s you how it works:

If you think it’s crazy to be rappelling down the side of a building, well, you’re probably right, but we do it anyway to support the kids!

Come be a superhero with us.  All you have to do is raise $1,500 in pledges. You can sign-up to join us or sponsor us here.

PS This is the fourth time I’ll be rappelling and trust me, it’s more exhilarating and exciting than it is scary. And I can guarantee it’s better than anything you have planned for Sept 15th!

Some fascinating research on pricing different options.

Jeffrey Kearney, one of the Mentors at ViRTUS, send me the link to this TED talk the other day. It’s a relatively short video of behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, discussing his own counter intuitive (and sometimes shocking) research findings on how we make choices between competing options.

I was shocked by some of his finding and what they mean for the practicality of pricing options.  Subtle changes in how different options are priced relative to each other can lead to some drastic differences in the way people make their buying choices.

kickstarthr.com

My friend Lewisa Anciano has worked with her business partner, Jacqui Noftall, to create one of the coolest new tools for growing companies that have small HR departments but not the systems required to handle their growing business: kickstarthr.com.  Basically for a few hundred dollars you can buy Recruitment, Performance Management, Engagement, or Succession Planning programs with all the forms, instructions, and setup pieces you need.

The entire package was built from the ground up by experienced HR professionals who have spent years developing their own systems internally. Basically you get to leverage all of their hard work!

If you own a growing business or are in the HR department, and you don’t have the resources you need (and find the thought of building them from scratch daunting), then this is probably the best product I’ve seen out there. There are over 70 comprehensive tools that require few modifications, and a ‘how-to’ guide that helps with successful implementation.

[note: I have no equity ownership or derive any compensation from kickstart - I'm just really impressed by it.]

What if consumers negotiated like the business world?

Maria LoScerbo from EpicPR.ca sent this fantastic video to me the other day.  It shows what it would look like if consumers negotiated the same way some people do in the business world. It’s quick, it’s funny, and it’s worth a watch.

Webinar: Leadership Lives in Turbulent Times

Link to the recorded presentation:
http://tinyurl.com/mjdrn2

Books I mentioned:
Good to Great by Jim Collins
Eighth Habit by Stephen Covey
Winning by Jack & Suzie Welch

Link to our website:
http://www.virtusinc.com

Webinar: Leadership Lives – Despite Turbulent Times

On Tuesday, June 16th, at 10am PST, ViRTUS will be collaborating with Mindfield Group to present a webinar focusing on the top 10 things that leaders throughout your organization need to focus on during turbulent times.  This 60 min webinar (30 mins presentation, 30 mins Q&A) will be appropriate for anyone within your organization who is in a leadership role and is looking for practical tips and techniques that they can apply immediately.

Recorded version of the webcast. Click here.

Start doing, stop doing, keep doing.

When David beats Goliath

Joel Shapiro emailed me a link to an article that Malcolm Gladwell has written in this week’s New Yorker magazine, that takes the story of David versus Goliath and connects it to modern examples of how to change the game in your favour.

Here are two key concepts that come up in the article:

1. If you have limited resources when compared to a much larger competitor then using a similar strategy to them in the marketplace will most likely lead to failure.  The solution is to approach the market in a way that is unexpected.  The best non-business example of this is the current problem of the Somali pirate attacks, IEDs in Iraq, and frankly terrorism overall.  Small, poorly funded, unorganized, and badly armed bands of marauders have managed to cause significant damage by not attacking head-on, instead by attacking using stealth and their small size to their advantage.
2. A full court press beats the wait and see approach the majority of the time. Slowing down or completely stopping the momentum of your competitor with your actions will cause they to focus on the wrong thing and doing that means moving away from their own strategy.  The current example of this is the I’m a Mac commercials from Apple.  Microsoft was forced by it’s much smaller competitor to abandon it’s advertising approach (which was actually also in response to Apple) and instead focus on selling off price differential, basically saying, “hey, well, at least we’re cheaper!”

I’m interested to hear some examples of business cases where these principles have shown to be valuable so let’s turn this monologue into a conversation.  Comments?