Building Business Value | Corporate Management Strategies

5 Steps to ensure "Slowth"

First in a multi-part series.

Yesterday I attended an excellent presentation by Lee Frederiksen on a piece of research conducted by Hinge Marketing and sponsored by the investment bank, McLean Group.  The question they were trying to answer was why some professional services firms are able to grow in any market.  A summary of their research can be found on Hinge's web site.

This reminded me of another presentation I witnessed while I was lecturing at UMBC's Alex Brown Center for Entrepreneurship.  Norm Snyder, the founder of Conquest (since acquired by the Boeing Company) was our guest speaker and he looked back on his early years in business.  Norm was the President of Conquest and when he sold this business to Boeing, revenues were greater than $80M.  But for many years however, Conquest struggled as a software product company and in a thoughtful post-mortem,  Norm was able to clearly articulate why the early years were so tough.

Perhaps the most insightful piece of Norm's presentation was his analysis of his early years in business.  Instead of being characterized as a "growth" company, Norm said they were a "slowth" company.  So just as there is a formula for growth, there is also formula for "slowth."  According to the O'Neillsters dictionary, slowth is defined as:

Slowth

- noun
1.  a constrained act or process, or a manner of growing very, very slowly; gradual increase (maybe).
2.  something that has grown once and has stopped or is constrained by the obvious.
-adjective
1.  of or denoting a business, industry, or equity security that grows achingly slowly or is expected to grow in value over a long period of time but never does: a slowth industry; a slowth stock.
-synonyms
1.  stagnant, dormant, wheezing, coughing, sputtering.
-antonyms
1.  growth, build, create, zoom.

Typical of any "slowth" company are the following five attributes:

1. Decide what you want to build, not what the customers need.
2. Sit in a room for years writing software.
3. Invest all of your money, including retirement savings.
4. Work with terrific people who are just like you.
5. Keep doing what you are doing and be confident that everything will get better.

We'll look into each of these elements of "slowth" over the next few weeks.

5 Steps for Planning a Killer All-Hands Meeting

The second in a series on All-Hands Meetings

A few Sundays ago I picked up my son from his Sunday school class and asked him what they talked about in class.  I wasn't expecting chapter and verse but I was hoping for a little more than "oh, you know, the regular stuff."  This got me thinking about other gatherings and how much and how long people retain the salient points.  I did a bit of advanced research (I asked three people last week about their last all hands meetings) and I found out they must have been in my son's Sunday school class because their answer was the same ... "oh, you know, the same old stuff."

Most leaders don't start planning their meetings with the objective to present the same old stuff to the same old crowd and hope for the same old results, but somehow that is what ends up happening.  Many of us get in a routine and don't put the time to think through what we really want to accomplish in an all-hands meeting.

Start by answering this question.  What is the one thing you want people to remember and take action on as a result of this meeting?  Not ten things, not five things, not even three things.  Just one thing you want people to remember and take action on.

OK, I hear you screaming "But I have tons of stuff to cover this month!"  The new forecasts are due, we're releasing a new version of the software, we're closing our Paducah office, we're making changes to our comp plan, our benefits plan, our bonus plan, and on and on and on!  These are probably all important items and you have to find ways to communicate each and every one, but when you are asking your entire staff, or division or company to come together, use that time wisely to move the company forward, don't just tread water with the same old song.

When you are thinking about your all-hands meetings and that ONE thing, plan out an entire year.  Think of it as your editorial calendar.  In January, we are going to stress customer intimacy, in February we are going to stress goal setting, in March our theme will be process improvement.  And then each meeting, your team will leave knowing the most important issue of the month and something specific they can do to improve the company's position.

Here are the 5 Steps to planning a killer all-hands meeting:

1. Pick 1 Thing.  Build an editorial calendar for the year with the major issue you plan to build your meetings around.  Support the all-hands meeting with other related communications throughout the month.  Come up with sample "call to action" suggestions for how the staff might have an impact on that issue or challenge.  During the course of the month and then specifically during the meeting, make it obvious what the "1 Thing" is.

2. Tie that 1 Thing to the Corporate Direction.  One of today's most significant leadership challenges is battling the WIFM and LICD cultures we live in.  WIFM stands for "What's in it for me" and LICD stands for what is the "Least I can do."  When you tie that "1Thing" into your corporate higher purpose, folks will begin to understand that the "1 Thing" is more than a trivial exercise, it's the creation of a line of site that links what they are doing everyday with the purpose, direction and success of the company.  They will eventually begin to understand that doing that "1 Thing" is good for them AND the company and that the MORE they do of it, the more successful they and the entire organization will become.

3. Compete for their Interests.  In the case of an all-hands meeting, you are competing with all sorts of conflicting priorities.  I could write a book with all the excuses I've heard over the years for why people missed meetings, but in general it boils down to this.  "It is not a priority in my life and I found something I'd rather do with my time."  Since this is the playing field you've found yourself in, you've got to bring out the heavy artillery.  Find out how you can first motivate your staff to willingly attend, and then motivate them to take action.  Think of yourself as a director with a major network.  Why would people want to come to your meeting rather than watch American Idol?  Sure, you can make them come, but the stick will only work as short-term motivation; the carrot will produce long and lasting results.

4. Plan an Event.  Think of these meeting as "Events" and not just meetings.  Plan out your event in detail. Start with your objective or the "1 Thing" and work backward.  Make it a welcoming environment.  Get people to interact and you'll find the energy will go through the roof.  If Wal-Mart can greet people at the door, why can't you?  Make them feel welcome in their own company.  Know their names, where they work, their customer or project issues.  Feed them, but don't just feed them pizza and snacks; feed their inner being.  At one time in their relationship with the company they were excited, really excited about being with the company.  There is no valid reason why you can't rekindle that on a regular basis.  There is no valid reason why people shouldn't circle the all-hands dates on their calendars and view them as can't miss events.

5. Delivery. I heard a speaker recently whose credentials and knowledge on the topic were second to none but about half way through his presentation, I began to tune him out.  He was speaking down to his audience.  A bit condescending.  People don't really care how much you know until they know how much you care.  If you hold all-hands meetings, you probably already care about people.  Show it.  Look for ways to make your delivery come to life and really speak to people.  We once had our CFO dress up like a clown because we discovered that we paid the clown we had hired for the summer picnic more than our average billing rate.  I once tattooed my arms with our goals for the upcoming year.  I've seen music and videos used creatively.  I've seen skits and costumes that convey a theme.  I've seen executives sing, dance and even play an instrument.  It all serves to humanize the company and build relationships that are person to person and not person to company.

So there you have it.  If you only remember "1 Thing" from this blog ... good!

The Dreaded All-Hands Meeting - 5 Reasons Your Meetings are Lousy

The first in a two part series on All-Hands Meetings.

There it is!  That email you've been waiting for.  That one piece of corporate communications that gets you all excited!  That tidbit of company propaganda that gives you goose bumps.  The All-Hands Meeting Announcement!  Eee-haa!  Delete!

So where did this term, 'all-hands', come from and why are these meetings generally so awful?  Well, the best I can tell is that all-hands is primarily a nautical term; you know, "all hands on deck."  But since I grew up on a farm, I'm guessing it could also be a reference to farm-hands as well.  It‘s generally something you say when everyone's help is needed, especially to do a lot of work in a short amount of time.

As to the second question, why are these meeting so awful, I'm afraid you'll just have to blame yourself.

An all-hands meeting in today's business jargon is basically a town meeting.  According to Wikipedia, "A town meeting is a meeting where the population of an entire geographic area is invited to participate in a gathering."  Today's all-hands meetings gather the workforce and are generally trying to accomplish something.  Normally better communications of some form or another but often times they leave us wanting.

Your meetings are probably lousy for one or more of the following reasons:

1. You're killing everyone with a death by PowerPoint march.  I once had an executive at Boeing show 57 slides in 60 minutes and not once did he mention our business unit. Talk about a snooze!

2. Your attempt at transparency is transparent.  If you are going to share information, then share it.  If it's not the secret to Coke or Pepsi, or personal information, then share it.  John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods was quoted recently in and interview with Charles Fishman of Fast Company as saying "The world is getting more and more transparent. You're in a fishbowl these days. You can't hide in the boardrooms anymore. With the speed with which information can be sent around and the way activists and journalists dig and dig and dig, it's very difficult to hide things. I think that is an irresistible trend. And it's a healthy trend."

3. You're making the meeting about you and not about them.  You already know what is going on (hopefully), your job now is to tell as many people as you can and engage them to join you in this noble battle of competition.

4. People are no better off for attending.  I recently asked a CEO why people should come to his all-hands meetings and he said "because they are mandatory."  Bad reason!  Leadership is about creating the ‘want' in people.  They should look forward to the all-hands meetings.  They should be better informed, more skilled, more productive, more engaged as a result of attending the meeting.

5. No one sees their face in the company's success.  By their very name, all-hands meeting should be about the people attending.  What can the staff do to help?  Remember "all hands on deck?" The staff doesn't know how they contribute to the success of the company and so they have no line of sight between their everyday experiences and the successes or failures of the company.

I'd rather not leave this topic on such a negative note but for the sake of brevity (and editing), we'll stop here and pick up next time with a few really good ideas to make All-Hands meetings sing!

Building Value Through Project Portfolio Management

Guest Blog by Tim Jaques, PMP

Note from Marty - Tim Jaques is a first time author, but a more apt description is first rate project manager. Tim and his partner Jon Weinstein have recently published a book on project management, "Achieving Project Management Success in the Federal Government." I've worked with both Tim and Jon but I have not yet read their book ... though it is in my reading list. Their book is available now and Tim's guest blog is based on a lesson from their new book.

2009 produced, among other things, executives with sharper, hungrier instincts. As mid-market companies come about to face fresh opportunities, many executives are chaffing to make bold moves. We see pent up demand in current customers and as well as new, untapped markets. Many companies achieved better than expected results in 2009 through sales and cost reduction efforts. Moving into 2010, mid-market executives require a solid approach to rolling out new investments within the business. By investments, I mean any type of project that is substantial, directly addresses the mission, or is required by law or business necessity.

The temptation is to put 2009 behind us by investing ahead of the curve. Investments into the business are good and necessary, but in 2010, we need to ensure that they build value for the organization. There is a better way to avoid common investment pitfalls, and that is through Project Portfolio Management, or PPM. Some of the common pitfalls include:

Lack of Investment Focus. Opportunities abound everywhere. From proposed new hiring tax credits, to corporate fire sales, to investing in new automated solutions, many mid-market companies are beginning to see a wealth of new possibilities. In this frenetic environment, executives can lose their focus on their mission and core offerings. We need a clear vision of the expected benefits of an investment, and when those benefits would accrue to the company.

Maintaining the Austerity Mindset. For nearly two years, mid-market companies have been reeling in the face of customers who won’t buy and don’t pay. Entire supply chains have been decimated, which brought about an austerity mindset for many companies. As departmental budgets decreased, managers were required to justify every investment. This mindset will become unproductive in 2010, as we look toward a new marketplace filled with skeptical buyers. What got us through 2008-09 will not get us through 2010.

Poor Communication. As mid-market companies move into action, there will be a host of projects designed to reconnect with customers, shore up credit lines, make the most of government-sponsored investments, and enhance the workforce. Throughout all of this, corporate executives should be focusing on the communication of these investments. Customers and employees need to hear a clean, clear direction from the executive office.

Effective Project Portfolio Management (PPM) practices offer a formalized approach to forming, selecting, managing and retiring investments within the business. The portfolio addresses the scarce pool of resources (people, time, and money) required for growth, and creates accountability across all investments. Portfolio management processes provide an excellent forum for executives to maintain a dialog about the best uses of the company’s resources. Mid-market companies respond well to portfolios, as a well-run portfolio allows for greater agility and more visibility into the investment. PPM can be a way to better manage the flow of investment dollars – more control on the spigot. Often, value is created through collaboration across an organization, or multiple organizations. PPM offers an effective path to value creation through executive collaboration.

As mid-market organizations look toward new investments in 2010, PPM is a highly effective tool that can help transition to a healthy, rationalized approach to investments.


For more on this topic, contact Tim Jaques, CEO of Line of Sight (www.line-of-sight.com), specializing in creating value through project management and process improvement. Line of Sight serves large and mid-market companies, as well as governments. He can be reached at tjaques@line-of-sight.com  

Pink, Blink and Act - Four questions to find the perfect compensation model.

Dan Pink, author of "Drive, The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us", suggests that if we really want to find a compensation system that produces superior results, those in the system have to feel just the right combination of autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Malcolm Gladwell, author of "Blink" and "Outliers", points out in his stories about rice farmers in the Pearl River Delta and Jewish immigrant garment workers, that work must be meaningful, complex and autonomous in order to achieve consistently superior results.

In our book "Act Like an Owner", Bob Blonchek and I suggested that in order to create a culture of ownership, there had to exist five beliefs in the company.  A belief in the leader, a belief in the purpose, a belief in the operating model, a belief in empowerment and a belief in the reward.

Leaders are constantly looking for the secret sauce.  They are looking for a compensation model that will motivate just the right behavior.  They're looking for a reward system that will benefit the customer, the company and the individual.

Put your current compensation plans through the following test to get a feel for whether you are engaging your workforce or just beating them up with heavier carrots and pointier sticks.

1. Does the workplace just make sense?  Does the work have purpose?  Is there a higher purpose?

2. Are employees encouraged to figure things out themselves?  Do they feel autonomous and are they empowered to make decisions?

3. Is the work complex?  Does it require higher-level thinking?

4. Do employees trust that you as a leader and the company in general will stand by their commitments?

Finding the perfect compensation model takes a great deal of effort.  Rolling out an "if-then" reward system in a complex environment simply won't work.  Save the "if-then" system for routine and rule based tasks. Find ways to engage employees for your toughest challenges. Leaders have to stop using old methods to motivate our employees, and move towards intrinsic motivators to improve performance.

11 Minutes of Action

That's how much real action is in a typical NFL television broadcast.  David Biderman's article by the same name in the January 15^th edition of the Wall Street Journal cites a WSJ study of four recent broadcasts that suggests the average amount of time the ball is in play on the field during an NFL game is about 11 minutes.  So if you add up all the real action between the time the ball is snapped and the time it is whistled dead, you come up with a whopping 11 minutes.  That means you could actually watch each of the conference championship games during half-time of the Super Bowl and still have enough time to have a few beers.

That got me thinking about how productive I am on a daily basis.  Let's say that instead of a 3 hour NFL broadcast, we triple that and say we worked a brutal 9 hour day.  Now the question I have to answer is; have I put in more than 33 minutes of real work in that 9 hour ‘broadcast'.  Was 60% of the time spent standing around or thinking about my next move like it is in the NFL?

The ratio of inaction to action in the NFL is about 10 to 1.  Apply that ratio to your workday.  On a typical 10 hour day, are you in action more than 1 of those hours?  What or who is eating all of your productive time?

Now the NFL is as popular a sport as any in the world and by all accounts they have cracked the code on this 11-minute workday thing.  You know to be honest, I haven't decided if I'm confused or simply jealous.

I've got to go ... this blog took me 20 minutes to write and I promised myself I was going to have a better work-life balance in 2010.  I'm suddenly exhausted!

An IDEAL time to review your IDEALS

"Give us clear vision, that we may know where to stand and what to stand for - because unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything."  This is a 1947 quote from the Chaplain of the US Senate, Peter Marshall.  This or close resemblances of the "know thyself" quote has been attributed to among others, Alexander Hamilton, Ronald Reagan and for goodness sakes, former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Steve Bratkowski.  A varied bunch to be sure.  But now that I've covered myself on the origin of this particular species, what is the point you may ask?

The point is that every business has to know what their ideals are.  Why are they in business, what is their real purpose for opening the doors every day?

When I was an executive with the Boeing Company, I attended Boeing's annual leadership summit in the very chic Century City section of Los Angeles.  After opening the session with a fabulous Hollywood production showing all of Boeing's state of the art hardware flying all over the place, Jim Albaugh, then President of Boeing Integrated Defense business unit, said "aren't you glad you don't make mayonnaise for a living?"

His point was not to slam the food industry, his point was that Boeing had a higher purpose that everyone could get excited about.

So what are your company ideals?  Have you laid out a vision that people can share?  Are you constantly motivating everyone to make that vision a reality?

The best ideals pass the test of time.  Giving meaning and purpose to your corporate purpose answers the question of - why do you open your doors every day, whether that door is online or on main street.

Ask yourself these questions when reviewing your ideals.

• What do you think about most often?
• Where do you spend most of your free time?
• Where do you spend your capital?
• What pleases you most about the direction of your business?

You should be able to pass just about every tough question you'll ever face through your ideals filter.  The answers may not be the easiest, or the most popular, but they will be true to your values and that is really all your stakeholders are looking for.

The Right Decisions Done Quickly

This is the last post in a five part series on decision making.

There simply are no second chances these days.  The wrong decision can be your last decision.  Leadership teams flailing in an environment where decisions are based on emotion and not clear data are in a hopeless situation.  A year ago I sat down with a CFO and CEO of a privately held $20M company.  The CFO was antsy about the market and presented a case for cutting about $900k in expenses.  Since the CEO was emotionally attached to a number of these expenditures, she was never able to pull the trigger.  Twelve months later, this company is on the sales block, barely making payroll and will probably sell for a steep discount from their earlier valuation.

But it does not have to be that way, even in the toughest of times.  Leaders that understand what drives value in their companies can narrow their focus to only those components of the business that add value.  Leaders able to inspire their entire leadership team with a new course of direction will be able to motivate them to buy into the risk and return associated with your transformational initiatives.  Your leadership and ability to make good decisions will help your team navigate through the choppy waters of this current economic situation and position your company to grow and build value just as the economy rebounds.