You Can't Shrink Your Company into Greatness

Some things change and some things stay the same. Just think that 65 years ago in 1954, a film called Executive Suite focused on the boardroom battles of Tredway Corporation, a furniture company, after the founder suddenly died without a succession plan. That former president changed the culture of the company by walking the factory floor and tossing badly made furniture. Now, furniture is certainly not as exciting as tech or social media or search, but for those of you into history, manufacturing was the norm post World War 2.

The movie and its themes, however, are as relevant then as they are today. Check out https://youtu.be/vcEOsGvT0qA which shows William Holden's final climactic boardroom scene where he talks about innovation vs. cost reduction and pride that the workers feel in building good products. Think about today and how corporations act to improve current earnings so the street is appeased. And think about the company for which you want to work. This movie was an expose on the machinations of big business. It showed power struggles, behind the scenes scheming for power and leadership, and the reluctance of one person to compromise his ideals for the good of the company. Interestingly, all the executives felt that they had the best interests of the company at heart.

It came down to is Loren Shaw (played by Frederic March) vs Don Walling (played by William Holden) in the battle between cost savings and accounting vs product quality and innovation. Shaw used short-term accounting gains and cost reductions to satisfy the stockholders. Walling was more concerned about the quality of the company's products, better manufacturing processes, and new products to grow the company and infuse passion into the workers.

Walling's enthusiasm, vision, and his stirring boardroom speech won over the entire board in the end. But you have to watch this stirring performance to appreciate the battle and the climax.

Memorable quotes:

A good movie, to me, has some great memorable quotes and this movie certain has them as well. Here are four memorable quotes as relevant today as they were nearly 65 years ago:

Ø  Stop growing and you die.

Ø  Grabbing for the quick and easy is the sure thing that is just a lack of faith in the future.

Ø  The force behind a great company has to be more than the pride of one man; it has to be the pride of thousands.

Ø  Never ask a man to do anything that will poison his pride or work.

I know I can relate to these concepts and hold the belief that you cannot shrink yourself into greatness by cost reduction and a focus on the present. Being afraid to innovate is the kiss of death. Think about Blockbuster, Kodak, Toys R Us, Radio Shack, Sports Authority, and Borders among others. Some imploded because their business models were obsolete while others did not take advantage of new technology. Yet, others failed to appreciate the seriousness of the competition and failed to react to it.

Lessons Learned:

The themes in the movie from 65 years ago are relevant today. Here are a few takeaways.

1. Stay true to yourself. If you don’t like politics in business, start your own company. If you want to stay in corporate America, you have to learn to play the game.
2. Build relationships around you- in the company for which you work, in your office area, and with suppliers. I used to believe that being the smartest person in the room was the key to success. A lot of people are equally smart. But it is the combination of innate intelligence (IQ), Emotional Intelligence (EQ), and Business Intelligence (BQ) built on a platform of relationships with people that will enable success.
3. Innovation is the heartbeat of business. Innovation can be in products, in processes or even the way people are treated and led.
4. Passion is critical to building a strong company. Every worker should have passion in what they are doing and feel that they can contribute to the success of their company. An engaged workforce where each employee believes they are part owner of the company- and get compensated accordingly- will help a company grow.
5.   Always look to the future. Craft a vision on where you want to be and get aligned to your vision and cause.

C-Level Partners has been established to help executives build value for their companies. Whether the company needs to increase value because the owner wants to retire, or whether the company needs to change because their growth curve has flattened, we can help. Feel free to reach out to me at dfriedman@clevelpartners.net or call me at 949 439-4503 for a free 45 minute consultation of how we can help your company grow. As Satchel Paige said:  don’t look back: someone may be gaining on you.

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.

Communications for Strategic Advantage: The Voice of Leadership

                          The art of communications is the language of leadership.    

                                                             James Humes, author and presidential speechwriter.  

I was always taught as a youngster that if you are smart people will listen.  How UNTRUE.  Certainly being smart is important but it is the tone, tenor and communications style you use that makes you real powerful and a person to whom people want to listen.  Think about the people in your life – be it at home or in the office- and see how you react to them in different situations.  Learning the key traits to communicating is both an art and a science.

I had the privilege of listening to Victor Dominguez, Managing Partner of Ligature Group provide a keynote talk at a recent Masters Lunch.  Victor is a communications pro and a “creative” with an advertising background. His consultancy focuses on building authentic communications with people and to move relationships from the initial stages of building trust to forming strategic partnerships.

Here are some of his pearls of wisdom from his talk.  Frankly I wish I learned this as a first time executive as I would have been able to build relationships faster.

      1. There are 10 cultural conflicts which undermine a  company’s success
            a.      Fear
            b.      Blame
            c.      Workaround
            d.      Assumptions
            e.      Backsliding
            f.       Lack of Accountability
            g.      Organizational Silos
            h.      Gossip
            i.       Disrespect
            j.       Chronic Dysfunctional Behavior

    2. Employees can resolve conflict  without special training by focusing on
           a.       Respect
           b.      Trust
           c.       Listening and identifying shared goals
           d.       Advise
           e.      Change
    3.  Align communications with ethics and actions
           a.       Do the right thing
           b.       For the right reason
           c.       Do it the right way
   4.    It’s not about the words you use; it’s about what people hear
   5.    Build trust and respect by
           a.       Asking questions
           b.       Listen actively and purposefully
   6.    Communicating with Millennials seems to be hard but is really easy
           a.     Millennials don’t like BS!
                        i.      Avoid corporate talk
                        ii      Say it straight and don’t talk down to a millennial
           b.   Focus on the end goal to solve a problem
           c.    Recognize them for their results- then again, who doesn’t like kudos and recognition?
   7.    The ability to learn faster than your competition may be the only sustainable competitive                advantage.

Of the 7 items listed I know that early in my career I violated several of these tenets.   Thankfully I have learned from my mistakes.  The good news is that many younger executives and even more “mature” ones should pay attention to these pearls of wisdom as the combination of smarts and communications skills will make you more effective faster.

Do you agree or disagree with this blog?  Let me know and please like it and share it as you see fit.

The 7 Cornerstones of StreetSavvy℠ Leadership

The topic of leadership has come up more and more in the past month through articles in the popular press and streams on my LinkedIn page. I have commented on several articles – and even commented on the comments – because I think some of the information and concepts are either too simplistic or incorrect. For example, I read one article that relayed the one leadership skill that could change a company from good to great. It was click bait to me but I clicked …….. and commented about its incompleteness!!!!

Leadership has many facets. When you read the leadership gurus like Peter Drucker, Warren Bennis and John Maxwell, they talk about leaders having influence and followers. That is certainly true. For a more current view, I like John Maxwell’s thinking on leadership because he has a more integrative approach covering 21 indispensable qualities of the leader, and 21 irrefutable laws of leadership. He, too, touched on many components of leadership and his insights are excellent. But I don’t believe even he goes far enough.

I want to add to this thinking by talking about StreetSavvy℠   Leadership. This is my take, not from merely studying others and codifying what I observed, but also because I lived it and had both successes and failures as a leader. Regardless of your position in the organization, you will have both success and failure as leader. Witness the rise and fall of luminary leaders such as Jeff Immelt who took over GE and is struggling with the growth of the company. And let’s look at leaders who were successful in one company but failed to capture success in their next company … or vice versa. 

I am a NY Yankee fan and remember when the Yankees hired Joe Torre. Torre was not a good manager with the Mets, Braves and Cardinals and compiled records marginally below .500. But with the Yankees, who saw something unique, he was able to win 4 world championships and 2 additional pennants. Granted, they had great players (competencies) in that era as well but Torre was the leader and a lesser manager might not have been as successful.

StreetSavvy Leadership blends theory with reality and execution to garner results. It is leadership within the context of the company and the environment in which the company operates. Leadership without positive results in business is being a pretender. StreetSavvy Leadership means doing things differently than before to grow your business and protect against mediocrity. StreetSavvy Leadership looks at data and transforms data into knowledge and gives that knowledge to the right people closest to the decision point and trusts them to make the right decision. It means setting the right vision and ensuring alignment among all members of the exec team and throughout the organization to execute effectively and efficiently.

Here are the 7 Cornerstones to StreetSavvy Leadership:

1. Set actionable vision. The vision has to be credible and recognized to be eventually achievable even if there is no clear path to that end. Recall when President Kennedy said: our vision is to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Vision is achieved by looking at the 3 Cs – customers, competitors and competencies – and ensuring that the company knows the best way to grow relative to these three components. The vision may be such that one or more of the three C’s must change over time.
2. Keep a mindful eye on the environment and adjust. Within this construct is a concept called PEST – political, economic, social and technology changes. The leader needs to watch for changes in all of these factors and be prepared to manage responses relative to the shifts in some or all of these factors. Clearly the leader doesn’t do that on his or her own, but tasks different groups or select individuals to keep a watchful eye.
3. Build a sustainable team.  Unless you are a one person company, leaders have to hire, train, manage, and motivate people in their organizations to achieve success. I recall one definition of leadership is to get ordinary people to extraordinary things. That is partially true. The StreetSavvy Leader understands that a strong team needs to be built and that employees want to see a solid career path. That encourages loyalty and ensures that the top employees rise to the top. However, there is a time and place to hire from the outside and not merely from the competition. If every company in the industry hired from a competitor, eventually all companies will regress to the mean, ceteris paribus. However, the StreetSavvy Leader might hire from an entirely different industry or for entirely different skills to ensure that the company doesn’t become too internally focused and can challenge its own prevailing wisdom. Training, shadowing, mentoring and other assignments make the employees well rounded. A formal program for top 10% of the execs should also be in place as both a reward and expectation of future success. IBM for many years and GE have successfully established internal programs to supplement the training of the top tier executives.
4. Establish the right culture. Would you want to work for a leader who sets a punitive culture such that if bad news is given the leader goes ballistic? Or work for a leader who fails to recognize the success of individuals in the company yet accepts the kudos for him/herself? I worked for one boss who liked to yell at people who brought bad news to the executive meetings. I realized many years ago that I would rather meet that bad news head on and ask the executive who brought the bad news for prescriptions to manage the impact of the bad news. That reinforces the concept of responsible management and ensures that each person in the organization has the obligation to find solutions to problems.
5. Practice open book management. People need to feel part of the organization. Ideally they should feel like part owners and have the opportunity to own a stake in the company. To do that I am a firm believer in sharing the financials and metrics that the company uses to determine success. Once these metrics and financials are shared, it would be incumbent for the executive and managers down the line to work with their people such that each person in the organization understands their role in creating revenue or managing cost. By doing this, each person can see how their job affects the success or failure of the company.
6. Live the 5F Factors. There are five factors that characterize the StreetSavvy Leader. They are Focus, Fast Afoot, Fluidity, Flexibility, and Fast Failure. The business world shifts quickly and these five F factors enable the leader and the company to be nimble and take advantage of opportunities.
7. Seek self-improvement. I personally have never been satisfied with who I am and what I can be. Executives have to continue to improve functional skills but also should improve in their understanding of business issues. Unfortunately, in the business world, I have seen too many CEOs and other high ranking executives believe that once they hit that lofty pinnacle, they can stop improving. Self-improvement takes place on many levels. Executives can and should continue learning by participating in peer groups, reading various business journals and biographies of successful leaders, and even self-improvement books. Having an executive coach and advisor can help as an external sounding board and someone who is not fearful telling the emperor so to speak – that he or she has no clothes. Three sixty and employee survey results which should be shared with the team can be used to help the executive understand his/her style of communications which may affect the organization’s growth. And to understand the business, what better way to do that than becoming an undercover boss or walking the production line or working as a customer service rep or front desk employee or even a bellhop or maid. I don’t believe these are radical ideas and they should be considered if you want to improve to eventually be a StreetSavvy Leader.

Jimmy Dean said: You cannot change the wind but (a leader) can always adjust his sails to reach the destination. How true. StreetSavvy Leadership reflects the Jimmy Dean quote. It is something that can be learned and if used correctly I believe it offers the best chance of success for a company. I would be glad to hear your thoughts. Feel free to comment, share and repost and let’s continue this dialog. My email is dfriedman@clevelpartners.net.

The 5 F Factors in StreetSavvy℠ Leadership.

I attended a roundtable discussion sponsored by Susan Howington, CEO of Power Connections, the other day. Susan holds these meetings with senior executives regularly and we discuss topics of interest. The topic we discussed revolved around whether a strong leader is not afraid to change his/her mind and under what circumstances they should be flexible in changing course. It appears that many leaders, in order to look strong, set a course of action, and don’t want to change for fear of looking weak and flighty.

There were several people in the discussion today including Peter DeAngelis (CEO, TechCoastAngels), Ron Davis (CEO and GM), John Theron (former CEO and current software consultant), Patrick Flynn (PE CEO and former aerospace exec) and Cindi Mullane (CEO and operations executive in the fashion industry.) This was an excellent complement of people.

The initial discussion centered on the need for clearly setting goals and objectives, continuity of strategy, becoming agile in one’s thinking, recognizing challenges and preparing your team to meet the uncertainty of these challenges, and keeping options open, e.g. predesigning flexibility into your decisions.

Many years ago, I coined the term StreetSavvy℠ as applied to many executive functions. When I worked for founding CEO of US Cellular Don Nelson, Don and I coined the phrase fast, fluid and flexible as we were trying to grow in the young but growing wireless market. I have used that concept over the past many years of my career. This was the start of thinking about the characteristics of what StreetSavvy Leadership is about. Additionally, I have also talked about fast failure in getting products to market. More recently I wrote a blog and did a talk on managing a business. The two words are Focus and PODFU (plan, organize, delegate and follow-up). After participating in this discussion group, I found myself seeing how all these components now come together in what I call the 5F Factors in StreetSavvy Leadership. These are the five factors I believe that can make leaders stronger and their companies grow.

1.  Focus. Business executives are constantly bombarded with many different product opportunities, decisions, strategies and the like.  If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.  Therefore, the first characteristic for a StreetSavvy executive is to be laser focused.  Don’t try to do more than two or three major initiatives at the same time.  You have to have clear priorities because you need to have dedicated resources to be successful.  As Sun Tzu said: concentrate your resources at the competitors’ weakness at the point of attack.  This is the business correlate.

2.  Fast Afoot. Fast doesn’t mean reckless. Most executives believe they have to make a decision and do it with speed. Then once a decision is made you execute relentlessly. This is basically true. As executives we need to have information and facts upon which to base decisions. Unfortunately, in business, information and facts are never complete and there is a point at which more facts give you limited additional utility in making a decision. Because an executive never has complete information, decisions are always uncertain and it is a matter of how likely the decision will be correct and how potentially damaging uncertainty becomes.

3.  Fluid. Things change. Water conforms to the changing landscape to reach its destination. The destination or goal may still exist but there may be impediments along the way and obstacles to overcome. Fluidity means dealing with these changes, mostly tactically without changing the strategy or the end game. StreetSavvy Leaders continually scan the environment absorbing new facts and information. They figure out a way to maneuver through the changes that take place. Scanning the market through customer panels, tactics like mystery shopping or Undercover Boss, assigning people or teams to track a competitor – both direct and indirect – are critical to get new information and upon that new information to make informed decisions which might change the tactics of the strategy or to a lesser degree the strategy itself.

4.Flexible. Opportunity knocks and changes in tactics may occur. Tactics and strategies must be consistent with goals and objectives which are much longer term. Andy Grove, former Chairman and CEO of Intel wrote that only the paranoid survive. To me, paranoia in business is good in order not to be complacent. Executives have to look at opportunities as they arise and address them. Should an opportunity exist executives might need to change course. I recall working for one company which had negotiated a large contract with a supplier many years before. The technology shifted and over time that technology was neither as robust nor cost effective as a newer technology invented by an Israeli company. Our company chose to stay with the older technology and that was perhaps one reason why our company was not as successful as we could have been. It happens all the time. Culture has to be set to enable this flexibility as changes to a plan are not normally welcomed by the highest levels of leadership due to economic or political concerns.

5.  Fast Failure. Making a decision is one thing. Staying with a decision that becomes a losing one can cause irreparable harm to a company with potentially serious side effects like going out of business or having to lay off people. As one of the participants stated: bad new does not get better with age. I recall when I was at one of the Baby Bells and we were trying to grow our business by focusing on new product development. Unfortunately, one of the products on which we spent significant resources was not going to be a winner. The right decision was to terminate the project yet the project lead who worked for me did not want the stigma of failure on his shoulders. The culture was to “punish” failure. In this specific case it was a slow failure. In retrospect, the life support on this project should have been pulled years before. In this case with a little prompting, the project lead terminated the project and I gave him a reward for making the right decision. The culture had to be established for fast failure. Just think of Google and how many projects they have in the works at any one time. Or even 3M. They know that some projects will fail and executives are ok with that. Similar to stock trading you have to let your winners run and cut your losers quickly. How many of you are willing to do that?

How does the StreetSavvy Leader manage to implement these 5 F Factors? The primary need is to communicate and have an open dialog with your team and others lower in the chain of command. It is critical for the leader to walk the talk and become Pattonesque in their leadership style. Be on the front lines with your troops. Be visible and be communicative. Ask questions and listen and know that your obligation to your company is to new and even divergent information so you have the best chance of building a successful company.

Glad to have other viewpoints.

The Nifty 50 Websites and Resources for StreetSavvy Business Executives

My business partner, Brian Newton, and I were talking about resource for business executives.  Since I host a segment of a business cable TV Show called EYE on Business (Time Warner/Spectrum) and my section focuses on StreetSavvy Business (from my days growing up on the streets of New York, hence the image to the left), we decided to develop a "Nifty 50" list of those sites and resources that would be ideal for the StreetSavvy Business Executive.   StreetSavvy Business is aimed at finding solutions to complex business problems and by so doing executives are leading their companies in new thoughts, directions, and opportunities.   StreetSavvy Business is a way to prevent companies from regressing to the mean - and worse, mediocrity.

There more than 750 million URLs for websites in the US and around 200 million that are “active.” There are certain sites because of their breadth, content or unique perspective that can help entrepreneurs and executives alike in understanding the business environment, changing behaviors of different segments of the population, the economic environment, and the political environment. C-Level Partners put together a selection of sites that they have found to be useful to business leaders of all kinds.

We divided these sites into categories but clearly there is overlap among the websites. Based on the collective wisdom of C-Level Partners and its advisory group of more than 60 C-Level Executives, these are the sites that are used time after time by those queried.

Much of the information is free while there are premium services or subscription services. Even if there is a fee for premium services, signing up for the blogs or free newsletters will help the executive get and stay ahead. A word of caution: A website is only as good as the information that it provides for an intended purpose.

General Business

www.businessweek.com Originally called Businessweek and now called Bloomberg Businessweek, this magazine provides information and opinions on what is happening in the business world. It focuses on issues shaping markets, technology and politics, and provides options on developments which affect the business world.

www.ceo.com CEO.com is a resource for executives seeking out the latest in business news and leadership strategy. Our editors probe the web and handpick the most relevant content for the site that will help you become a more effective business leader.

www.cfo.com Targeting corporate financial executives this site offers information on Accounting & Tax, Banking & Capital Markets, Risk & Compliance, Strategy and Technology. Their content includes articles on current topics, white papers and links to other relevant content.

www.cio.com For this site’s content the “i” means “Information” so much of the content is related to technology topics. When visiting the site in January 2017 I noticed a piece on European privacy regulation which, having lived in London for 14 years, can be a minefield. Given the current state of flux in these regulations, a firm with activities linked to Europe would be well-served to remain compliant. Of course, there were many technology related items on this site which has extensive content.

www.forbes.com Published bi-weekly, Forbes features original articles on finance, industry, investing and marketing topics. Forbes also reports on related subjects such as technology, communications, science and law.

www.fortune.com Fortune Magazine competes with Forbes and Bloomberg Businessweek in the national business magazine category and distinguishes itself with long, in-depth feature articles.^[2]  The magazine is best known for the Fortune 500, a ranking of companies by revenue that it has published annually since 1955.

Economic/Financial/Political/Technical

www.ft.com The Financial Times is the cornerstone of international business news, analysis, market data and company information. It provides perspective on global business issues and provides clarity in a complex business world. Also, as it is UK based, the points of view presented are less US-centric than many other publications in this list. 

www.money.cnn.com Purportedly the largest business website, CNN Money provides information on business, markets, technology, media, luxury, personal finance and a section on small business.

www.theeconomist.com The commentary makes it a requisite for any business professional. You need to stay up to date on all news to cultivate partnerships and understand the new realities of both the political and economic climate to be successful whether you are an entrepreneur or a corporate executive. Like the FT mentioned above, The Economist is UK-based and the point of view is less US-centric and thus useful for US executives to better understand communications with overseas partners or customers.

www.reuters.com Reuters.com brings you the latest news from around the world, covering breaking news in business, politics, entertainment, technology, video and pictures.

www.research.stlouisfed.org.  The St Louis Fed offers an outstanding range of publications and data on economic, financial and policy issues. Their FRED service is the data service and they make available an Excel Add-in that allows you to download historical data including thousands of series covering the entire world.

www.gartner.com, www.forrester.com, www.idc.com We lump all these together and you can add others as well. These sites provide market research, analysis and advisory services on a range of technology and Information Technology that is critical for the Chief Information Officer, Marketer and even other executives to understand.

Investment/New Technology

www.yahoofinance.com Yahoo Finance provides one of the most complete sites for business, finance and stock market news including quotes on stocks, options, and portfolio management.

www.investors.com One of my favorite sites with news and information that moves the markets and a complete tool for analyzing stocks and financial markets. It has a new America section which focuses on technology trends and companies that will change the economy.

www.motleyfool.com This is Dave and Tom Gardner’s site which became famous for its investment insight, and analysis of stocks. You can also find out which stocks and industries will make the most changes to our economy during the coming years.

www.marketwatch.com MarketWatch operates a financial information website that provides business news, analysis, and stock market data. It is a subsidiary of Dow Jones & Company, a property of News Corp.

www.seekingalpha.com Seeking Alpha is a crowd-sourced content service for financial markets. Articles and research cover a broad range of stocks, asset classes, ETFs and investment strategies.

Leadership/Management

www.bain.com Bain is a top management consulting firm that advises companies on strategy, marketing, organization, operations, IT and just about every aspect of business. They have a tab called Insights which is their blog that can help executives find new ideas that generate results.

www.mckinsey.com In the same vein as Bain, McKinsey and Company is a global management consulting firm that serves leading businesses, governments, non-government organizations and non-profits and helps them realize their performance goals. Their blog provides stories about people and research which might be useful to find and implement new ideas.

www.strategy-business.com Business strategy news articles for CEOs, corporate executives, and decision makers who influence international business management.  Their prime focus is to highlight the complex choices that leaders face — in strategy, marketing, operations, human capital, governance and other domains — and the impact of their decisions.

www.enpinstitute.com Executive Next Practices Institute is a research, collaboration, and thought leader forum composed of several thousand C-Level executives from Fortune 5000 companies, including those from C-Level Partners. Their focus is on first look innovations, beyond the current best practices.

www.cebglobal.com CEB (formerly known as the Corporate Executive Board) is a best practice insight company with several subspecialties in HR, IT/Operations, Marketing and other functional areas. It develops its programs in partnership with leading organizations around the globe and shares solutions to drive corporate performance and to effectively manage talent, customers and operations.

www.hbr.org Harvard Business Review is one of the cornerstone magazines for new ideas and classic advice on strategy, innovation, leadership, technology and marketing from the world’s best management and business thinkers.

www.linkedin.com Everyone should be on LinkedIn, the largest professional database. You can find people, new opportunities, and through groups engage in dialogs on trends, technology, marketing, business, economics and almost everything else. By participating in posting articles or sharing information you will also encourage others to find you and that can lead to business deals. Everyone likely knows that Microsoft bought LinkedIn in 2016.

www.edgar-online.com EDGAR Online is a leader in helping professionals uncover intelligence from financial disclosures. EDGAR Online offers distribution of company data and public filings for equities, mutual funds and other publicly traded assets. Check out the 10k filings of publicly traded companies to get a good understanding of the business climate and insight into their business strategy.

www.marshallgoldsmith.com Marshall Goldsmith is a leadership coach with some of the key corporate, public and non-profit leaders of the world. His books include What Got You Here Won’t Get Your There are insightful and offer many useful suggestions for motivating and energizing your teams. Also, his subscription service provides weekly 3- to 5-minute videos which offer useful suggestions for better handling challenging, or even very obvious, situations.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship

www.cbinsights.com This venture and start-up website contains a private company financing and angel investment database. It also provides excellent infographics on technology trends and shares eco-systems of market categories.

www.slideshare.net Authors, writers, and companies share their information through presentations, infographics, and documents. Owned by LinkedIn, you can now link your presentations to your LinkedIn account.

www.techcrunch.com. TechCrunch is a leading technology media property, dedicated obsessively to profiling startups, reviewing new Internet products, and breaking tech news. Check out its companion site, www.crunchbase.com, which provide an excellent database on innovative companies, their funding, and the people behind them.

www.ted.com TED Talks are inspiring and revealing. While the site talks about new ideas and trends, it is more than a site for entrepreneurs as it has a strong community. Information from these talks is beneficial to both entrepreneurs and successful corporate business people. Check out www.mashable.com as well, as these two are nice complements to each other.

www.fastcompany.com Fast Company provides a breath of fresh air as it inspires new innovative and creative thought leaders who are inventing the future of business. While aimed at the younger generation and start-ups, Fast Company provides good information on leadership and management that is applicable to the corporate executive as well giving them an edge in business.

http://www.eofire.com This is a platform and podcast for entrepreneurs and marketers. Founder, John Lee Dumas, interviews inspiring Entrepreneurs.

www.quora.com Leaders and entrepreneurs in the tech industry share their information and answer questions from the reader base.

www.entrepreneur.com This site provides the latest in news and advice for the startup entrepreneur. And the information is also useful for those in the corporate world who delve into innovation.

www.inc.com Find out the latest in tips, news, management, leadership and other resources for entrepreneurs from one of the most reputable magazines in the industry.

Marketing

www.chiefmarketer.com Chief Marketer serves marketing professionals at consumer and business-to-business brands, as well as their agencies, with rich, detailed information on measurable marketing strategies, tactics and techniques. Marketing executives discuss marketing and technology challenges, how to understand the relationships, and how to determine which tools are most effective, and the role of data and content.

www.hoovers.com Hoovers has one of the largest databases for use by business people, sales people, marketers and others and which provides in-depth information on more than 85 million companies. You can use this for targeted mailing lists and depending on the subscription you choose, you can get industry information and competitive information as well.

www.advertisingage.com Advertising Age has been around for a very long time and this website helps marketers understand advertising as part of the overall marketing mix. Many marketers still are behind in digital marketing knowledge and this site can help by sharing ideas on what others are doing. As part of Advertising Age, www.btobonline.com provides specific information for the B2B marketer including news, advice, trends and technology.

www.avention.com Avention is the new name for OneSource, a database of companies that marketers can use to find information on companies in their industry, competitors and even use it as a lead source for direct marketing campaigns.

www.marketingtoday.com Marketing Today is a combination marketing magazine and blog covering such topics as general marketing, digital marketing, social media, advertising and public relations.

www.marketo.com Marketo is basically a marketing automation site and a good one at that. It provides through its webinars, events and blogs a host of useful information that marketers can use to generate sales and partners.

www.hubspot.com Hubspot has a fantastic blog covering a range of sales and marketing topics, including A/B testing, content marketing and e-mail marketing.

www.econsultancy.com Econsultancy shares the latest digital marketing and ecommerce insight from a team of analysts and experts.

www.kissmetrics.com The KISSmetrics blog aims to help you track, analyze and optimize your digital marketing.

Miscellaneous/ Specialty

www.apple.com/education/itunes-u The iTunes U app gives you access to complete courses from leading universities and other schools — plus the world's largest digital catalog of free education content — right on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch.

www.businessinsider.com This site has spent the past few years providing free articles and reports on a wide range of business, technology and policy issues. Quite recently they have begun to charge fees for many of their reports, which are, in fact, well researched. However, whether they’ll be considered value-for-money has yet to be determined.

www.instantcheckmate.com This is a relatively new yet interesting site which claims to have the ability to find out background information on most people. You can use it to verify people you want to hire or partner with.

www.lynda.com This site contains over 2,000 video courses on a wide range of topics which are led by industry recognized instructors. For an introduction to a new area of interest, or to dig deeper on a topic than you already are, this site likely has courses to meet your needs. This is available for a small registration fee and offers a 12-week free trial so you can assess whether this is right for you.

www.mashable.com Mashable is a global, multi-platform media and entertainment company with a focus on the intersection of technology and culture. Check out its YouTube channel as well.

www.wired.com Wired probably needs no explanation. Everyone is connected in some way to something or someone. The content is current, often leading edge material that typically is reliable. If you are unfamiliar with it, check it out. Likely you’ll be impressed and use it going forward.

If you are interested in becoming a StreetSavvy Business Executive, call me or Brian to find out how you can qualify for a complimentary 45 minute appraisal.   My telephone is 949 4394503 and email is dfriedman@clevelpartners.net.  Brian's email is bnewton@clevelpartners.net.  

Do You Have What it Takes to be a Visionary?

Do You Have What it takes to be a Visionary?

Visionary. (noun). A person with original ideas about what the future will or could be like.  These visionaries will change the world for the better over time. Who are those visionaries around you?  Do you – or they – have what it takes to be a visionary?

Visionaries come from different walks of life and professions. But generally, they are activists, artists, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and in, general, non-conformists. All have a different view of the problems they face. All have changed the world. We know who visionaries were in the past. Here’s a short selection of some of my favorites: Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Albert Einstein, Gandhi, Walt Disney, John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk.

I decided to give my perspective on the characteristics of a visionary. This is not a well-researched statistical piece; it is based on what I have read and observed in my 30+ years of business and worldly experiences.

1. Open-mindedness. This refers to one’s ability to keep an eye open for new thinking and not be closed to new ideas just because they are different. In fact, actively seeking out new ideas would be ideal.
2. Values diversity of thought. Sometimes surrounding yourself with people from the same background provides a very narrow focus and homogeneous solutions to the problem. I like diversity of people and diversity of thought. That is how I like to construct cross-functional and matrixed teams and I find it amazing to see the robustness of decisions and options.
3. Action oriented.  There is a difference between a dreamer who thinks about a different world and a visionary who sees the different world and puts a plan in action to get to that point. If Martin Luther King’s Dream Speech just shared the dream of one world with all people created equal change would not have occurred or occurred as fast. Rather, he put into place activities that began to implement his dream.
4. Conviction.  If you are a visionary, you might be treading on existing ideas and values. Many people don’t like change. So visionaries have to have a firm conviction that they are right in seeing a new world even when many shun those new ideas.
5. Persistence. Coupled with conviction is the characteristic of persistence. Being visionary challenges prevailing wisdom and the road to change is fraught with difficulty, roadblocks, and potential legal and regulatory restrictions.  A visionary accepts those challenges and preseveres. A significant amount of energy comes from the visionary’s followers.
6. Inspiration.  We all know of inspirational and charismatic leaders. I used to think that inspirational leaders were vocal and can get a crowd excited by rhetoric. I was wrong. To be inspirational the visionary needs to deliver clarity in the new world order and be articulate in explaining the benefits.
7. Clarity. A fuzzy vision doesn’t work because with change, people must “see” and believe in an end result. Think about JFK’s speech on Sept 12, 1962 to 35000 people in Rice Stadium in Texas wherein he said “We choose to go to the Moon! .. We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win..”  This was not a fuzzy vision of space travel but a clear goal and vision of space exploration taken with first steps to land a man on the moon in a specific time frame. And, of course, in 1969 I watched as we landed a man on the moon.
8. Boldness.  Along with clarity, the vision should be bold, something that is not just an incremental improvement but a major change, a major shift in the way things are done. Sometimes we call this a BHAG – a big hairy audacious goal. Boldness with conviction is critical because it rouses the energies within people to achieve success.
9. Risk-tolerance. Along with risk tolerance is the lack of fear of failure. Thomas Edison said that “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”   He framed his end product in such a way as to give him the will to succeed. By positive thinking that he is closer to an end result, he was able to maintain his work ethic and develop the electric light bulb.

Are you born with these characteristics or can you learn them?  My personal belief is that there is some internal encoding of these characteristics in your DNA but that family and environment coupled with some good mentors and influencers will solidify these characteristics.  Reading biographies and auto biographies can also help understand the thinking of visionaries.

There may be other characteristics of a visionary and you can certainly add to this list.  When you attend entrepreneur events and innovation conferences think about how these apply to the people who present and the people whom you meet.  Then imagine you, the reader, having these characteristics and the opportunity to change the world.

C-Level Partners is dedicated to helping companies achieve value creation through revenue growth and margin improvement.  We can also help with your innovation plans, advisory services and helping establish a framework for innovation (see our blog on this subject at http://clevelpartners.blogspot.com/2016/10/how-to-institutionalize-innovation.html).  Or feel free to call me at 949 4394503 for a complimentary analysis.

How Successful Leaders Prioritize - When Less is More

An old Russian Proverb says:  If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one. Think about

that in the context of priorities at work and the resources companies need to employ to chase those priorities. How many of you have worked for a company where the boss indiscriminately piled on projects that sounded just too good to pass up? CEO said that the company is not doing enough and her desire was to see how many more projects can be handled? 

One of my colleagues, Dennis Drent, was a new CEO of a specialty insurance company. It was an operational turnaround situation and much needed to be done to correct course. With the best of intentions, Dennis tried to fix all the problems in his first year! Needless to say, nothing got done in that first 12 months. In year two, Dennis directed the management team to choose the three top priorities after rigorous debate. All three initiatives were completed and the results began to improve immediately.

When I worked for US Cellular, a new CEO came on board and while I did not subscribe to everything he said, I did like his approach to strategic initiatives. He told us that we will focus on doing one thing well and when that is complete we will move on to the next priority.

I personally believe that there is a middle ground whereby the resources and competencies of a company determine how many projects can be handled simultaneously. Yet even with multiple projects, when a critical need arises, resources are refocused on the top priority.  So how do you know what is really a priority?  How do you set priorities?  How do you manage priorities?  And how do you incorporate their prioritization results into a "business battle rhythm?” 

Here are 6 steps to setting and managing priorities.  If you want copies of these tools, please write to me at dfriedman@clevelpartners.net and I will send them to you.

 Clearly define the project or initiative. Make sure there is clarity of the end results and the metrics for success. One tool we use is the Opportunity Template, a picture of which is located here. 

Note that each project has a clear owner, i.e. the person defined as “A” on the top line and has the basic tasks and metrics laid out.    

      Develop and use a process to rate and score the various, and perhaps disparate projects. One tool we use is called the Analytical Hierarchical Process. It ensures that the evaluators and decision makers agree on the way the projects are evaluated. 

In this case, I show a one level system and the key areas of evaluation are strategic, financial, competencies, and operational. Each area is weighted and a score can be given on how well the project meets that criteria.  A total score is then developed and an ordinal ranking of the projects can be determined.  If there is a legal or regulatory requirement that must be completed in the planning cycle, that automatically goes to the top of the list.

While many executives don’t like a mechanical process, the exercise enables all projects to be evaluated in a consistent manner based on what the organization or company wants to achieve.  If there are lots of projects, the executives can see what is on top and what is on the bottom and can debate which project is to be staffed with the right resources. The goal is to help the decision making, not to let a mechanical process determine the answer.

Resource the project with the right people.  Develop a strong team. This sounds so simple yet sometimes is hard to do. At C-Level Partners, one of the tools we use is called RACI. This enables projects to be resourced correctly. Eventually, depending on the number of projects, companies will run out of the right resources as those resources will become a limiting constraint. RACI stands for:

• Responsible:  who will be assigned to work on the project
• Accountable:  who has the authority to make a decision and whose head will roll if something goes bump in the night?
• Consulted:   who are the stakeholders that will be consulted before a decision is made
• Informed:  who has to be kept updated on the project e.g. those whose work depends on the project?             

      Track progress through a dashboard and make the project part of the organization or businesses “battle rhythm.”A business battle rhythm is a way the organization manages its business activities, processes, decisions and control points.  If these projects are priorities, in my opinion, they should be part of the executive dashboard where the results are measured, tracked, and adjustments made to the plan. We use a stop light tool on the overall project as well as on the subordinate tasks.  Each task or project is given a Green light (things are on target and going well, a Yellow light (the project is in for some turbulence and this is an early warning of potential issues), or a Red light (we are missing milestones and metrics and need to put more resources on the project, change course, or abandon the activity). 

       Note on abandoning projects. Abandoning projects is something that is difficult. Many companies never kill a project because there is too much politics in admitting failure. At one company we worked, executives were brutal. If a project was off course and in retrospect they made a mistake the executives killed the project.  When I was a VP at Ameritech I publicly made a special award to people who made the right business decision and one award was to a director for killing a favorite project.  The person who received the award did not want it because he perceived it would kill his career.  It did not! People were in shock at first. But abandoning projects for the right reason yielded some discipline to the company as people knew if a project they were on didn’t perform there would be accountability.

      Proactively manage risks.  We believe in managing risk and the impact of those risks on any project especially those that are strategic, revenue oriented, or operationally critical. One way to do this is through a tool called the Risk Impact Matrix which lays out the risks to a strategic objective, a project, a product or other priority.  Once the risks and potential impact is specified, the person in charge of the opportunity or project will work with the team to determine ways to develop contingency plans.  These contingency plans will be put into place if the overall project or even some of the tactics veer off course. See Brian Newton’s blog on ways to measure and manage at http://clevelpartners.blogspot.com/2016/02/defining-ways-to-measure-and-manage-risk.html.

      Conduct post mortems. Every organization is a learning organization. What this means is that we learn from our successes but sometimes we learn more from our failures. After a project is completed or terminated, the team lead, the person accountable, should provide a post mortem debriefing to determine what went well, what did not go well, and share the learnings of the project with other executives and team leads.

An Example

Let’s see how one fictionalized company handled priority setting.  Let’s look at a fictionalized company called HyperCorp.  The executives developed a list of projects prior to an executive off site that each thought would be important to the company and their functional area.  The initial list of 25 projects was winnowed down to 7 based on their determination that these projects met their financial, operational, strategic goals and they had the competencies and skills to resource these projects.  Some projects would have high priorities for the executive team itself, others for HR, others for IT and still others for Marketing and Sales.

This executive team concluded that of these 7 projects, two – integrating a newly acquired company and updating operating systems to conform to a new regulatory compliance requirement had to be accomplished.   These two initiatives consumed a substantial amount of IT resources; yet the good news was that integrating two companies used operational IT resources whereas updating the operating system required application development. 

The Marketing and Sales team had to make a choice as it did not have the resources to perform more than one initiative and because IT resources were consumed on the two higher priorities, Marketing and Sales had to forgo launching a new product at this time. 

The team decided to focus on only four projects:

1.       Updating the operating system for compliance

2.       Integrating the newly acquired company

3.       Redesigning and updating the website to remain competitive and to improve customer acquisition

4.       Designing a new sales compensation plan to retain and engage the sales team

One executive was given primary responsibility (the “A”) for each respective initiative, was required to develop a detailed project plan using the RACI system, and was obligated to report the status in monthly operations reviews.    The initiatives were announced to the entire company with the CEO stating that if anyone is ever in doubt about priorities, these initiatives get “fed first” in the order listed.  Case closed.

If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority!!!  Accordingly, this blog provides some structure and tools to be used by corporate executives to manage their priorities.  The number of priorities may vary in different organizations. Yet, in my estimation, at the top level of each company or organization, there should be a clear focus on no more than 2-4 priorities which are properly resourced. As one priority is finished, then the company can move on to the next one. We, at C-Level Partners are here to help you and your company with determining your priorities and advising on managing these projects.

If you have questions, please feel free to contact me at dfriedman@clevelpartners.net.  Also please like this blog and feel free to share it or forward it to your colleagues and friends who might have an interest.