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Archive for the ‘Management’ Category

As an organization grows in revenue, other aspects also may grow from operations to people.  Eventually when small business owners or chief executive officers determine they can no longer manager all the daily operations, they will take action to hire additional staff and give them the titles specific to their responsibilities.   These titles usually are:

• Managers
• Supervisors
• Team Leaders

What sometimes happens is these titles become very confusing because of:

• No clearly articulate organizational chart
• Poorly written to even non-existent job descriptions
• No evaluation process
• Lack of written policies, procedures, processes and systems including succession leadership
• Interference from small business owners or Chief Executive Officers (Think E-Myth)

With so many small businesses operating in today’s global economy, having a clear understanding of these roles and their impact on the organization appears to be even more critical today than even last year.

In reading a posting by Tammy Kohl of RAC Corporation, she shared the results of a survey conducted by OI Partners of Cincinnati, OH.  They surveyed companies about who would takeover current leadership roles (think about your current great managers, best supervisors or good team leaders). What the results revealed was:

• Past succession plans had not been updated
• 54% lacked enough successors to fill current roles
• 14% are unsure if they have enough future leaders in place

These results confirm other management research about the lack of effective successors at all levels of management from those good team leaders to best supervisors to great managers.  So to answer the question, at this time there is no difference when we look from the 30,000 view point.

Leadership is what separates good companies from great ones and this is not about revenue or sales.  Small companies may have incredible leaders be them managers, supervisors or team leaders.  Business Training Coaching Tip: One of the better books on organizational leadership and how that translates into individual leadership is Fail Safe Leadership.

As Peter Drucker has been quoted as saying, “Leadership is all about results.”  What makes Great Managers, Best Supervisors or Good Team Leaders is the ability to secure the predetermined results with behaviors that reflect the values of the organization. Without this critical component, organizations cannot achieve their full potential.

Working with individuals and organizations to improve the results is always interesting. One ongoing challenge is very large gap between knowing the results and then doing, taking the necessary actions to secure them.  Of course, some people have asked me this common sense question,  “How is this possible?”  Why do people not understand results?

I realized part of the source of this problem again as I heard a new economic statistic to demonstrate the results specific to the efforts to stimulate the US economy and grow business productivity.  This new, never before used figure, is called lives touched through the stimulus dollars.

Beyond being just plain ridiculous (using the talent intelligence of common sense) what perked my ears was the word “feelings.” This new metric would give people  good feelings about the stimulus and potentially may make people feel better about a proven ineffective government program. There have been very few government programs that have demonstrated a positive return on investment as government is inefficient and ineffective.

Remember E.T. and how his finger touched people and made things better? I am not sure how a cost of $194,000 per job can make anyone feel better and only adds to the confusion about results.

When the government is not honest about results and continually changes the metrics to measure results, how can the average employee who wants to do a good job not be confused?

Last Friday’s editorial discussed lies and business ethics. As long as those in management be them government officials or for profit management executives continue to ignore reality, these individuals will be living in the land of “Da Nile”  (denial) and the real lives touched will experience far more negative feelings and consequently negative results than positive ones.

Have you ever heard the child’s or nursery tune – Oh Where Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone? I was reminded of this tune after reading this post about 40% of the workforce is looking to change jobs in the Fall of 2010. Given the instability of the current US and probably world economy not to mention the high unemployment rate (almost double of what is was in August of 2001), this is a significant percentage.

Then another posting about banning job descriptions seemed to only add to this employment pot of discontentment. So what is the answer?

Possibly from the 30,000 foot view, why not try consider having a Chief People Officer sitting at the C-Level or C-Suite executive table. How can any company or organization say that people are their greatest asset when their actions demonstrate just the opposite?

When we have a Chief Information Officer, a Chief Technology Officer, a Chief Operations Officer, a Chief Procurement Officer, a Chief Financial Officer and a Chief Executive Officer all sitting around the table and ignoring human capital (human resources) what makes all of that happen is almost as ridiculous as having an agrarian educational system in a 21st century global technology driven economy. Oh, wait, I forget the U.S. is still operating its K-12 educational structure on that farming economy. Please excuse the digress.

Until people are recognized for the value they bring to any organization by having an authentic voice through that Chief People Officer and therefore human capital is recognized by all the other executives, you will still have people anxious to leave and this is beyond the current control of human resources since they are not at the executive table. . Bottom line retention in employees provided they are performing is just as critical as retention of external loyal customers who are also high performing because of their repeat business. By taking such action will not only demonstrate innovative leadership, but will the organization in the black and not the red.

All businesses be them for profit or not for profit have overhead.  For single office/home office (SOHO) and independent contractors including realtors, financial advisors, lawyers, accountants (CPAs) this budgetary and financial number is much easier to determine than for the small business owners with employees and the much larger companies where it exists, but no one department wants to own even a part of it because it reduces profits within that department.

A recent post in the COO Bulldog by Kevin Callahan provided a simple explanation as how to calculate and subscribe overhead costs to employees. His last point reaffirms what Gary Sutton talked about in his book Corporate Canaries specific to you cannot outgrow losses.

Operating a business can either be from a short term or long term perspective.  Data from the Small Business Administration suggests many small business owners appear to operate from a short term perspective given by year five, 50% of these organizations are not longer viable.  By not understanding and properly allocating overhead can contribute to this small business failure rate.

One other variable in this mix is this one word – value.  The inherent value within your products and services can help you in your overall pricing structure.

By knowing and being able to clearly articulate this value to your customers should allow you to raise your prices or sell more of your products and services at their existing price levels while building customer loyalty.  Then provided you maintain your overhead costs along with direct costs because you cannot outgrows losses you should be able to increase your profits and not be constrained by your losses. Bottom line is you will then be the Red jacket in both sales and profits.

As always, please feel free to leave your companies or observations about the importance of this business practice.

A recent media request that I received from Evan Carmichael asked to provide inexpensive tips to improving corporate culture and overall business operations. Numerous people in management positions from the  small business owners to the entrepreneurs to the C-Suite executives are all seeking ways to reduce cost while improving the performance of their workforce.

S0 what does inexpensive mean?  From a logical perspective, this word is almost the opposite of expensive.  When we hear the word expensive many think big bucks.  Conversely, when the word inexpensive is used, we may think cheap to actually free.  However, is this truly accurate?

For example, employee productivity research from Gallup Poll suggests 70-75% of the workforce are disengaged to actively disengaged meaning 8 hours of work are not being delivered for 8 hours of pay.  When an organization has a modest payroll of $100,000 this means $75,000 of salaries are not securing a positive return on investment.

Another example is the cost of employee turnover which is part of talent management to a business.  When an employee leaves, the cost is estimated at 1 to 3 times the total annual salary plus benefits.  If the total compensation package is $30,000 on the low side, then is investing 10% inexpensive to retain that employee. Hmmm…???

The words we think, write and use can affect our results.  So the next time someone uses the word inexpensive remember that term is indeed relative to the big picture.  And sometimes being cheap can hurt an organization’s corporate culture and employee productivity far more than management realizes.

Much of business growth focuses on securing the goal to increase sales. Yet, even with the best revenue growth you cannot outgrow losses as Gary Sutton discussed in his book Corporate Canaries. Sales Training Coaching Tip:  Consider adding this quick yet very insightful book to your professional development library.

One significant area of loss is employee retention. A recent post in Harvard Business Review discussed retaining a workforce that wants to quit. This posting had some great information including:

• More employees quit their jobs than were fired in the last 3 months
• Replacing an employee costs up to 250% of his or her annual salary
• 25% of labor force looking to leave their jobs within the next year according to one study

The old adage of people leave managers or management and not organizations appears to still be true. With management thinking there is a plethora of eager beavers waiting for that next opening only further contributes to this mounting operational problem of employee retention.

Human capital appears to still be the less valued in many organizations.  Just look to  the executive management boards of any small to large organizations and count how many Chief People Officers there are among all the CEOs, CFOs, COOs, CIOs or CTO’s etc.

Maybe the first action to be taken is for management that is serious about business growth (increase sales) is to establish a Chief People Officer who is responsible for the integration of Human Capital into the day to day operations of the organization. Then possibly the continued drain from discontented employees will reverse allowing employee retention to increase thus improving overall business results.

Business outsourcing is a viable business building strategy when done properly meaning a positive return on investment or ROI.  However, a recent post by Brian Solis looks at ROI through a different definition (and one I wished I had thought of) – Return on Ignorance.

His posting examines why ROI specific to social media should not mean return on ignorance. This perspective truly can be applied to any outsourcing effort by business management or even in house initiatives provided the organization has the resources not to mention the failure to utilize a strategic plan.

The study Mzinga and Babson Executive Education tudy cited by Solis confirmed my own experiences that business management, in both profit and not for profit organizations, all too often,  operates without any direct linkage between actions and results. What happens is almost a spraying and praying mentality takes hold. Spray your activities all over the place and pray that something sticks and then will bear fruit so to speak. Sales Training Coaching Tip:  The authors of Fail-Safe Leadership provide a great example in this simple, quick read on effective leadership and management.

Two other great points in this posting are:

1. Understanding that one size (marketing) does not fit all
2. Free marketing such as social media does cost time

As someone who has engaged in education based marketing through article distribution, I do understand that my time does has value. This is why I know how much time it takes me to write an article and gauge that time against Hubspot’s inbound sales leads costs.

For example, on average I can write and submit a 400 word article in 20 minutes. Given I value my time at $150 an hour, the cost to produce this marketing message is $50.  An inbound sales lead from organic searches to paid per click (PPC) ads is estimated to cost $134.  From tracking all my statistics over the last 5 years, I can confidently state that each article when released delivers one sign up (partially qualified sales leads) to my various lists within the first 24 hours.  Sales Training Coaching Tip:  The more you write the better you think; the better you think the more you write.

When organizations understand their resources of time, energy, money and emotions are really limited, then maybe they will begin to stop confusing motion with progress and activity with results quoting my colleague Doug Brown. This understanding will help them to receive a positive return on investment and not experiencing a return of ignorance.

Trend analysis has been around for a very long time.  By tracking trends from weather  such as with the Farmer’s Almanac to the U.S. economic growth to business results, management in those organizations can begin to determine if they are securing the results they are seeking over a specific course of time. This is considered seeing from the 30,000 foot perspective.

For example, Alexa.com is an online trending tool that helps to determine from your traffic relative to other sites and can measure these trends over a period of time.This Internet marketing site can create a firestorm of controversy depending upon what Internet marketing or Search Engine Optimization expert one listens to and more importantly believes.

Site Sell provides a fairly easy and reasonable argument as to the pros and cons of this tool. SEO Pitfall shares another viewpoint, but does agree this tool has some value and is not totally worthless.

Sales statistics from each location to each individual salesperson can also be utilized to identify trends. The data is then analyzed to determine specific trends such as seasonal ones.

In the book, The Ultimate Question, the author uses a specific formula to determine customer loyalty.  Again, this formula can help to pin point specific loyal customers from which data can be extrapolated into a trend analysis.

Unfortunately, many in business  management including small business owners (SBO), entrepreneurs, C-Level executives  and even the single office/home office independent contractors cannot see the trends because they have failed to invest the time to work On their business as Michael Gerber detailed in his book the The E-Myth Revisited.

Trend analysis may require some split testing to determine what the data is really telling you. For example, my education based marketing action plan includes article marketing. During the last 30 days, I refrained from submitting any new articles to , Evan Carmichael and Sales Gravy so that I can better analyze increased traffic to my website compared to the previous 30 days when I submitted almost 70 articles. Now for the next 30 days, I will submit approximately another 70 articles. Then I will review the data to see any trends. Sales Training Coaching Tip: I know from reading the statistics from my Control Panel (CPanel) within my website that a significant amount of visitors come from these three sites.

If you truly wish to be the Red jacket and stay ahead of the flow, you must have a pretty good idea where the flow is going.  Trend analysis is just the tool to help you. Sales Coaching Tip: Excel or a similar spreadsheet program is a great software tool to help you collect and analyze this information.

The recent drilling tragedy and subsequent deep well oil disaster  in the Gulf  is taking its toil on local citizens to world wide political ramifications.  What this ecological and economically catastrophe has also demonstrated is poor communication between all those involved.

Ineffective communication is always a symptom of much greater problems.  Unfortunately,  stakeholders become so embroiled in the initial issue of the moment a blame game starts to take place with no one knowing as in the old Abbott and Castello skit “Who’s on First.”

I saw this once again as I listened to Admiral Thad Allen as he discussed the Jones Act. Allen said that no one had asked for the suspension of this law as had been done under President Bush for Hurricane Katrina. Then I heard Carol Browner White House Environmental Aid said no request had been made to suspend the Jones Act.  All of a sudden my head was going back and forth much like the “Who’s on First” skit not to mention the warden in Cool Hand Lake discussing What we have here is (a) failure to communicate.

To improve productivity regardless if it is to increase sales or clean up a disaster, effective communication is paramount to success.  If your organization, be it 5 to 500 employees, is having any challenges make sure your communication is clear and consistent.  By taking this action, you will not be sounding like Abbott and Costello talking about “Who’s on First” and “What is on Second.”

Salesperson are in many cases the first contact for their representative organizations. Between the business to business networking events, the civic organizations, the chambers and other associations, sales people are the ones meeting and greeting.

Unfortunately, so much of the sales training coaching programs fail to look at leadership skills and focus more on specific sales skills such as:

• Asking probing questions
• Overcoming objections
• Delivering  “killer” presentations
• Closing the deal (I truly dislike this phrase and prefer “earning the sale” however closing the deal is a key search word phrase.)

In the last few days, I have read several great posts about leadership. In all cases, these individuals were in sales even if they held a non-selling title.

For example Tim Berry shared his 5 crucial business lessons learned the hard way. Leo Hindrey wrote about the CEO shortsightedness. Then Kevin Eikenberry discussed leadership respective to the current oil spill.

Years ago Peter Drucker, noted management and respected guru, said “Leadership is all about results.”  In my book and numerous articles, I have enhanced his definition with this clause: “Using clearly articulated positive core values.”  This is why I believe selling is about results and ethical behaviors and why I write so much about both of these topics. Sales Training Coaching Tip:  The different between leadership and management is managers partner with others to secure the results.

When the belief is adopted that everyone is in sales from parents selling education to children to teachers selling learning objectives to students to management selling the vision, values and mission to their stakeholders, then everyone must demonstrate great leadership.  Just imagine what could happen if everyone became leaders who delivered results while modeling positive core values (behaviors).