Do More By Doing Less

Courtesy Huffington Post

Susan Howington, founder and CEO of Power Connections, hosts a meeting of top level business executives from around Orange County. At these round tables she raises a topic of interest and executives discuss and share their points of view. It’s very interesting and engaging and all of us learn from each other.

Recently, Susan brought together a dozen executives with backgrounds in general management, operations, sales, marketing and human resources. Susan started off by reading a recent Wall Street Journal article from January 2018 entitled: How to Succeed in Business: Do Less. That article basically said that it’s best to do fewer tasks and obsess over getting them right. Another study of 5000 executives referenced in the round table, provided insight into how top producers work. In this study, the key to success revolved around mastering selectivity on what was to get done and saying NO to bosses.

It was unanimous within the group that FOCUS is critical to executive success and to a company. It was no longer the norm to work harder. The goal is to work smarter and by working on fewer “priorities” success would follow. This doesn’t mean you forget about everything that is on your list of 50+ activities that need to be accomplished. Rather, this list is maintained. Select the top three activities and then as one is complete you add another to the top three list. Focus is critical. I remember an employee at one of my companies that came to me with a list of more than 100 items and was overwhelmed. I sat down with her and tried to prioritize those 100 into some sequence to get her to focus on the most important. I cannot say it was a perfect success, but we did agree by eventually using pairwise comparison, which activities were on top of the list. And then I told her I would only evaluate her on the top three activities and when those were complete we would modify her objectives and add the next priority. She was not happy but she acquiesced.

During the round table discussion, some attendant questions were addressed:

1. How do you prioritize personal needs with business needs?
2. How do you find what is the most important in the corporate world?
3. How do you say no to bosses?

How do you prioritize personal needs with business needs?

• Executives must balance both personal and corporate needs. We hear about work / life balance and millennials especially want to ensure this balance is maintained.
• Ensure you know what you want to do. Start with a personal vision/mission statement. For example, mine is to build businesses and build the next generation of business leaders. Make sure there is time set aside each week to do one or two things that help support your self-vision.
• On the corporate side, ensure you understand the business strategy and the metrics the business will use to determine success. Then make sure you develop a maximum of one to three things and make sure your results support those corporate metrics.

How do you find out what is most important in a corporate world?

• On the corporate side, ensure you understand the business strategy and the metrics the business will use to determine success. Then make sure you develop a maximum of one to three things and make sure your results support those corporate metrics.
• Market research can be used to determine what is important to focus on. Notwithstanding the corporate strategy and business plan, market research can obtain information on what is important to the customer and how well the company performs on that attribute. The results can be plotted on a Quad map. (See my prior blogs for a detailed description.) Priorities should be given to those attributes that are important to a customer and which are performed well (leverage and maintain those activities) as well as those that are important yet not performed well. Those have to be corrected and might form strategic initiatives for the company.
• Once you determine what is important to do, you have to determine how that task or activity fits on the importance/urgency scale. Certainly if something is urgent and important, it has to get done. However, the key to success is to determine what is important and NOT urgent and prioritize those activities so you have time to do them right.

·     What happens when you have a boss that says, “We will work from morning til night until everything is done,” and then keeps adding more activities and chores to the list? I know I have had those types of bosses. Sometimes you have to say no and it is how you say no that may be critical. Of course you can try to quote Warren Buffet who said: ”The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” In my opinion, you can do this only if you have succeeded in prior projects and earned that type of respect. But what happens when the boss is adamant?

How do you say no to bosses?

• Develop your list of activities and work with your boss to determine the top three things that need to get accomplished.
• Use the concept of SMART (specific, measurable, accountable, responsible, time limited) goals or management by objectives to set up the goal, metric for success, and time when the objective will be accomplished.
• Ask for more time or help to accomplish projects or activities that are important to the boss.
• Note: the participants at the round table suggested that if the boss will not agree on prioritization and other negative cultural habits crop up, that environment could be toxic and it might be time to find another job. Most bosses will listen to reason – at least we hope.

Once these three questions are addressed, you have to execute. Here are some prescriptions to help execute your priorities:

• Use your calendar to block specific time slots, making a meeting with yourself, to accomplish your priorities.
• Answer emails only at selected times during the day, e.g. first thing in the morning, before lunch, and before you leave for the day. Many of us hear the little email tone signaling “you’ve got mail” and we respond immediately.
• Select a personal advisory board to help you keep focused on the important tasks both personally and for business.
• Develop a corporate battle rhythm to focus on those important activities and plan them out on a calendar with the right people in attendance. As a correlate, don’t have meetings without a clear agenda and expected outcomes and don’t invite people if they are really not needed at the meeting.
• Develop executive alignment on strategic initiatives through the strategic planning process. Use a facilitator to help define the priorities. Market research that provides input from customers on importance and performance can be used as the basis for that alignment and the executive team can multi-vote on the most important strategic initiatives.

This blog is only meant to touch the surface of what we discussed and the answers in many companies are probably more complex. Yet the round table discussion was a great start to get us to think about how focus and prioritization will make us more productive. And saying NO to bosses, while scary at times, is the right way to help you, them, and the company to be more successful in the long run.

If you have any questions or want to continue the dialog, contact me at dfriedman@clevelpartners.net or Susan Howington at susan@powerconnectionsinc.com. 

Five Not So Easy Lessons on Growth Leadership

Most of us watched Superbowl 52 between the Eagles and the Patriots. Part of the charm of the

Superbowl and the parties we attend, relates to seeing the commercials. In fact, much time is used “rating” the commercials in terms of humor, appeal, and somewhere down the line the effectiveness of the advertising spend. As a piece of trivia, a Superbowl commercial this year costs $5 million for a 30 second ad PLUS the actual cost of designing, developing and shooting the commercial. Note that Nick Foles, the Eagles’ Quarterback and MVP, made only $1.6 million for the entire year. By the way, as a Giant’s fan I really liked the Eli/Odell Dirty Dancing commercial.

Last year, Coke eliminated the role of Chief Marketing Officer and reorganized around a new role of Chief Growth Officer (CGO) to integrate marketing with customer and commercial teams. Other consumer package goods (CPG) companies, such as Hershey and Kellogg, have also moved to a similar function with Kellogg instituting the function in mid-2015. How successful are those companies? It may be too early to tell. Kellogg’s results over the past few years have been passable and they might not be the best model to use. Their CGO was an advertising executive – albeit very smart and well regarded and their revenue the year after his appointment was DOWN.

We can argue that a title change may be necessary but it is certainly not sufficient for improving growth and making that revenue and growth profitable. The Chief Marketing Officer has significant issues in a corporate structure. I have seen many times that marketing is regarded as a function of planning more ads, designing creative billboards, winning the contest of the best Superbowl ad, and winning creative awards. This is more “fluff and stuff” vs the reality of hard marketing and on this basis alone, a change in title from marketing to growth officer seems warranted.

Let’s take a look at five (5) lessons that can be applied to what I call Growth Leadership.

1. Growth starts with the CEO. Without the CEO and his strategy, successful growth plans cannot be put into place. I keep reminding myself of the Alice in Wonderland quote: If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there. Companies who want to grow have to put a CEO with that objective in place and not all CEOs fit that bill.

2. The company has to have a growth mentality. While this may start with the CEO, the people he hires and the culture of the organization must be focused on growing. I know this may sound strange to some. Unfortunately, most of us have been in companies that believe growth is based only on EBITDA increasing. While that is important, EBITDA can be improved – at least in the short term – by cutting cost. I have never believed that you can shrink yourself into greatness.

3. Innovation must be a hallmark of a growth company. Without a solid business model and without good products companies will not grow. There is just too much competition and the internet and agile development around software puts many companies on an even footing. Think about companies you know. How many of them are growing? How many of them have a solid product line and product portfolio? Growing companies have solid portfolios and products in the wings – or a good acquisition strategy to acquire new products or partners that have these new products. A creative ad on the Superbowl is not sufficient. Recall the commercials you watched. Which ads pushed minor line extensions or existing product vs. new ones? I only recall two really new products: a Kia Stinger car and a new Lexus LC500. (BTW, I like both of these cars!!)

4. P=R-C. Let’s get to basics. Any officer in a company must recognize this fundamental equation and determine how they can affect the elements which create profit. Clearly, a Chief Growth Officer will be responsible for the revenue side as well as the investment which will be put to use in generating that revenue. As a correlate, growth officers must change their internal perspective of being cost centers to investment centers. They need to think about a concept called return on investment. Even good marketing officers that I have known, focus on a concept called ROMI or return on marketing investment, treating marketing as a business and not merely a creative channel. So, when we look at the Superbowl commercials, how many of these were merely “fluff and stuff” creating awareness for the company vs. a means to drive growth? Would the company be better off spending more than $5 million on alternative marketing activities that would directly drive growth? What is interesting is that small companies with lack of budget dollars focus on the bottom line and are tactically driven.

5. An integrated approach to growth can be achieved with forethought. Whether you call the executive a Chief Growth Officer, Chief Revenue Officer or Chief Marketing Officer, I believe this person is an integrative force within the company. This person, whether directly or indirectly, must be a linking pin between the outside world of the customer and the internal world of production and manufacturing. That person needs to connect and get different functions such as marketing, product, demand generation, social media, customer service, usability/user interface, and customer service to work together to a common end.

 

That person must be responsible for a) managing at least part of the investment in growth initiatives, b) managing or certainly influencing the innovation process relating to new products, line extensions, and processes to make the customer experience better, c) the overall go-to-market strategy and tactics that are broad to include all customer touchpoints. I call this Big M marketing where the company executives are aligned for a common purpose and focus on providing the best products and services to the customer.  Individual silos are eliminated and therefore a consistent brand image can be projected. And most, important, all these components need to have targets and be measured and reviewed as part of the business battle rhythm of the company.

The title of a function is important just as a brand and its meaning is important to a company. I am not a huge fan of marketing as it is implemented in many companies because in my opinion current Chief Marketing Officers have failed with regard to helping a company grow their revenues profitably. I have argued this many times before. I believe I am correct in my assessment, as the tenure of a CMO is approximately 4 years, lowest tenure in the C-suite and approximately half as long as their CEOs. But I also believe that there is an opportunity for companies to improve their top line growth and margins by following these 5 prescriptions. We, at C-Level Partners, are focused on helping small to mid-cap businesses improve their growth and margins. Write to me at dfriedman@clevelpartners.net to see how we can help your company grow.