Paralysis is rarely a winning strategy. And with all of the economic and political uncertainty of the past summer, it’s hard to be decisive right now, isn’t it? Businesses had just found their footing in this new business climate dictated by the 2008 recession when the one-two punch landed, and it is tempting to take a defensive stance of “let’s wait and see.”

But really, it’s mostly just noise. As loud and relentless as this noise is, it is largely market-driven, outside our control. The good news? The businesses we work with are performing better, and the leaders are less fearful than in 2008. The bad news? It’s hard to be bold and have confidence in this environment.

How do I know this? We’ve been trusted advisers to senior executives from across Central Iowa for more than 17 years, and we’re not hearing the same concerns we did three years ago. Of course, the 24/7 “the world is ending” news cycle does often give us pause, but the business leaders in our executive roundtables see opportunity ahead, because this time around they are ready.

Your business can move ahead with confidence by adopting these three strategies.

1. Commit to core business focus and execution. Now is the time to be really good at your core business. Sloppy, inconsistent execution brings a harsh penalty. If your natural gifts as a leader don’t lend themselves to operational excellence, put the right person in that critical role and set him or her up to succeed.

2. Pour your energy into the one change initiative that will have the greatest impact on bottom-line success and competitive positioning. The leaders we work with rely on an outside-in perspective gained from their boards of directors, a non-industry-specific peer group or trusted mentors to help them identify these critical leverage points. For a number of our clients, this has meant reinventing their sales/growth model, understanding their customers’ changing needs or reconfiguring their senior talent mix.

3. Invest in your own growth. Savvy, successful business leaders realize they must step up their game as leader and coach to lead change and improve organization performance in an environment more challenging and complex than ever before. If you were to pick out the one person in the company who, with a noticeable improvement in effectiveness, would have the biggest impact on organizational performance, who would it be? Leadership assessment, coaching, peer groups, mentors and executive education all provide an outside perspective and challenge an executive’s thinking.

Now is the time to be confident, focused and bold; are you ready? Run a quick system diagnostic. Spend some time with a trusted peer or a blank notepad thinking about these strategies and see if that gets you moving forward.

Have you ever worked with someone who was so negative that it took tremendous energy to maintain your own calmness when in the same room with him or her, even if you weren’t directly interacting?

We all know that emotions can be contagious. Here is one explanation for why that might be the case. In the early 1990s, neuroscientists discovered a brain function that revolutionized thinking about learning, empathy and reading other people’s intentions. This new discovery was that there are certain neurons, called mirror neurons that go into action both when a person performs and action, and fire in the exact same manner when a person observes someone else perform that action.

Before this discovery, the common wisdom was that our understanding of other’s intentions and feelings was a conscious process of logic and generalization. The discovery of mirror neurons suggests that our understanding of others’ actions, thoughts, and feelings happens on a much more biological and obligatory level than we’d believed. Mirror neurons appear to let us “simulate” not just other people’s actions, but the intentions and emotions behind those actions.

In a New York Times article on mirror neurons, an Italian neuroscientist, Dr. Rizzolatti, said, "We are exquisitely social creatures. Our survival depends on understanding the actions, intentions and emotions of others. Mirror neurons allow us to grasp the minds of others not through conceptual reasoning but through direct simulation. By feeling, not by thinking."

Others have articulated the function of mirror neurons very thoroughly, and I’d encourage you to watch this PBS video: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/mirror-neurons.html, or read this article: http://www.sfn.org/index.aspx?pagename=brainBriefings_MirrorNeurons.

 So why write about this on a business blog?  There are clear workplace applications.

Accounting for mirror neurons, the feelings you bring to work set the tone for other’s emotions even more than you know. With every action, you are consistently broadcasting your feelings and intentions to those around you. Others take in all the nuances offered by your behavior, and in many instances, automatically mirror your feelings

Mirror neurons act automatically and without our conscious control. This means that we respond internally to other people’s actions and emotions whether we want to or not. Alternatively, insight comes only with intentional focus and motivation. Thus, it is highly likely that:

1) we impact others more than we are aware of; and,

2) others impact us without knowing it.

 Here is an exercise I sometimes use when coaching leaders. Quickly read the next sentence and fill in the blank:

“Why are people always so _________________________?”

Now take that thought and insert it in this sentence: “Why am I always so ____________________?”

Surprised?  This simple exercise demonstrates the emotions you may be conscious of, but think about the thoughts and feelings that you are NOT consciously aware of.  What are others perceiving about your thoughts and feelings that you aren’t aware of?  What is the typical reaction you elicit from others? If it isn’t what you expected, what is going on in you that others are mirroring back?

In the end, the idea behind mirror neurons isn’t all that far off from mom’s advice of treat others as you’d want to be treated.  If your attitude is positive and forward-thinking, you will likely see that reflected in the people around you.  Likewise, if it is the opposite that’s what you’ll see. 

So what are you seeing?  If it’s not what you expected, the good news is that you can work to change it.

References

Blakeslee, Sandra. (2006, January 10)  Cells that Read Minds.  The New York Times.

Lametti, Daniel. (2009, June 6) How Mirror Neurons Let Us Interact with Others.  Scientific American.

It is distracting and unnerving. Voices run through business leader, employee and customer heads asking: “What’s next? What happens to our businesses if this continues?”

The facts are few of us have any control of the market, but leaders can control how they run their business and where they put their energy. Based on our experience business leaders who win in uncertain times stay the course and focus on execution. Specifically, they:

1. Limit their consumption of news … it may or may not be true and limit their discussion of the economy to people who offer perspective and insight not more uncertainty.
2. Communicate clearly to their leadership team that performance expectations and accountabilities have not changed … no excuses accepted.
3. Absolutely ensure that the customer sales and service experience is better than ever … customers are getting their own dose of deflating news elsewhere.
4. Reassure employees and owners that the market is cyclical, we’ve been through this before, we are smarter than before and we will get through this again.
5. Keep their marketplace surveillance at high levels watching for any disruptions with customers or the supply chain.
6. Make prudent business adjustments based on facts and not emotion.

As a leader you have a choice.  You can stay the course and focus on execution, or you can let the market and the media control your focus, performance and direction.  Making the choice to stay the course is easy; having the discipline to stick with it is not. 

But when has winning ever been easy?

A senior executive confided to me yesterday that she was pulled aside by a peer this week.  “You’re doing it wrong,” he told her.  In a five-minute conversation he constructively and respectfully said:

1. Remember when you pulled me aside a few months ago and gave me some tough love feedback?  That helped me more than you know.  Please let me return the favor.
    
2. You bring talent and savvy critical to our success.  We can’t do this without you.  We need you to be successful and we want you to win.
    
3. You are not being successful with our CEO.
    
4. Change your style with him.  Rather than responding the way you do when he challenges you, try this …
    
5. The rest of us on the team are on your side.  Let us help.  Here is how you can let us help …
    
6. Use me as a sounding board whenever you like.
    
7. I will continue to give you feedback.

 Is that great stuff or what? 

I have three immediate reactions for you.  First, this is what high performing leaders do.  They are player coaches.  They worry less about line authority and personal scorecards and more about what it takes for everyone to win.  Second, this is what a high performing team looks and acts like.  And, good news, this is teachable.  Finally, you too, valued reader, are probably doing it wrong.  Chances are high there is someone on your team or in your organization who could benefit from some honest, honorable straight talk about a blind spot or self-defeating behavior that is preventing them from contributing the way they should and the way you need them to.

More good news: you can just about use the real conversation above as the script for your own conversation.

1. I think you could use some help.  And I think I can help.
    
2. You bring talent and savvy critical to our success.  We can’t do this without you.  We need you to be successful and we want you to win.
    
3. This (particular thing) is getting in the way and preventing you from being successful.
    
4. Here are some suggestions for getting better results in this particular area …
    
5. The rest of us on the team are on your side.  Let us help.  Here is how you can let us help …
    
6. Use me as a sounding board whenever you like.
    
7. I will continue to give you feedback.

 Any questions?  Now go, do.

I just hate those times when I am so utterly, totally, obviously, hilariously wrong.  And if this were a Facebook post I would have ten comments from family and friends in no time flat saying something like “you mean there are times you aren’t?”  Ugh.

* If you’re in a hurry you can leave now, because the rest of this post will play out exactly like you expect it to!  

Yes, I’m proud of him.  Serving others through church, community activities and philanthropy is important to our family.  We try to put our time and treasure where our values are, and have generally done a pretty good job of living those values.  But as a concerned father I’ve been encouraging him to not change his major, which I see as narrowing his options later.  After all, those non-profits won’t turn you away if you have a good, old fashioned business degree, will they?  

A recent Roundtable conversation caused me to realize what a dope I’ve been.  A room full of CEOs and senior execs was calling out one member on his passion.  The gist of the conversation was that if he wasn’t passionate about what he was doing and about leading the business through the challenges ahead, he needed to figure out what he was passionate about and leave to go do that.  There was no sugar coating, and the feedback was unanimous.  I loved it; how invigorating and affirming to hear talented, successful business leaders say that without passion all you’re doing is going through the motions. 

And then I remembered my not-so-sage advice to my son.  He has discovered his passion, he wants to pursue it, and I’m trying to talk him out of it.  Ugh.  

I’ll close with this.  How is your passion meter?  Are you just going through the motions?  Is it time for you to find a friend, mentor or colleague and challenge one another on your passion and commitment?  Give it some thought, this is important.   And Max, you were right all along.  Change your major.  Go change the world.  You’ll do great things.  Love, Dad.

If you have been stopping by this blog for some time you know how much I love leading our executive Roundtables.  Over the past 16 years I’ve led approximately 360 Roundtable discussions, and so far it hasn’t once felt like Groundhog Day.  And with all those discussions logged in my head, somehow a recent Roundtable might have been the most amazing of them all.  It was a powerful day.

A seasoned executive (we’ll call him Buddy) checked his ego at the door, got naked in front of the group (figuratively, thank goodness), and asked his peers for some direct, uncomfortable and challenging feedback.  His industry is in a period of turbulence, the business is facing a crisis they have seen coming but have not adequately prepared for.  His partners are restive and are considering selecting a new managing partner.  Buddy plans to walk into the next partner meeting, make a case for radical, painful change, chart a vision for the future, tell the group what he needs to win, and ask to run the business.

He recently test drove all this with his peer group.  He asked his peers to bring their A game, and they did.  The feedback he heard was encouraging, insightful, and at times challenging.

• Don’t do anything until you are clear about your vision and what you will need to achieve it.
• Crisp up your message.  Don’t get stuck in the details.
• You need to be all in on this, 100% committed or don’t start.  Better to be shown the door after that meeting than be set up to fail later.
• Your partners need you to step up and lead them.
• You most likely don’t have the team in place you will need. Make that a priority.
• Be prepared for a season of long hours and heavy lifting.

Oh, how I wish I had a strong, confidential, committed peer group like this earlier in my career.  I can think of three specific moments in my career when a peer group would have been invaluable to my growth and performance as an executive.  One was defining my role as the youngest and newest member of the senior leadership team. Another was stepping up and redefining my role with my CEO.  The third was when I leading a major change initiative in my business unit.  And leading it badly.

So kudos to Buddy for going all in with his Roundtable and asking for their best.  And kudos to them for giving it to him.  And while I’m jealous that Buddy and the group have something this valuable to lean on, I’m even more grateful that I get to be part of making that happen for them.

1. Start by answering questions. Why does an alliance make sense? What do you hope to achieve? What are your options? How will you measure success?
2. Look before you leap. Identify potential partners and find out all you can about them before you get into any discussions with them.
3. Share common values. If your business ethics and values are different than your partners, it’s likely the alliance will fail.
4. Share common goals. Make sure both parties understand and agree to the goals.
5. Align your interests so you win together or lose together. If the key members of the alliance can succeed in their companies without the alliance succeeding, you haven’t constructed it correctly and the possibilities of failure go up.
6. Identify an exit strategy. Situations change and alliances end. It’s far easier to end them amicably if you’ve talked about it up front.
7. Keep the principal leaders involved. Alliances have better success when the people who set them up remain involved. But people move on in their careers, so it’s vital to measure success and communicate results to maintain buy-in. 
8. Identify the primary go-to people in each company. They may be the principal leaders or others who have been given the responsibility. 
9. Create an atmosphere of trust and respect. Regular communication is key. The problems that arise can be dealt with if there is an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect.
10. Identify how you will deal with differences. Company cultures vary. One company may have a strong marketing arm and be used to making quick decisions, while another may be outstanding in engineering and used to a more deliberative decision-making process.
11. Design good metrics to measure results precisely. How you measure results depends on how you put the alliance together. One way is keeping track of profitability, allocating expenses properly so you have a real picture of profits, costs, and expenses.
12. Share the results. The long-term success of any alliance depends on broad buy-in at many levels. To ensure the alliance doesn’t languish when the originators move on, it’s vital to share the results.

• One client has had people and operations in Japan, Australia and New Zealand impacted by the natural disasters in those countries.  All their people are safe, but their operations in those countries have been disrupted.  They also cancelled sales events in Egypt and Libya for obvious reasons and are exploring different strategies for those markets going forward.
   
• Another client has been unable to find employees willing to travel to Cairo for a project that has already been sold.  Product is packed and waiting to ship and the invoice is aging.
  
  
• A manufacturing client tied to the auto industry is unable to get specific information from a key supplier in Japan.  “Situation does not warrant optimism” is about the best they have so far.  The client has implemented a discretionary spending freeze and is reassigning employees to try to stay ahead of what they expect to be a difficult period.
   
• Our insurance industry clients are monitoring their investment portfolios carefully.
   
• Our clients in the agricultural and food industries tell us that consumer food prices will continue to rise.  Grocery stores have been absorbing some of the price increases so far and we can’t expect that to last.
   
• Fuel prices are hitting some of our clients hard and they are struggling with how to manage costs and what strategies to use to pass along some of those costs to customers.  Our clients are also concerned about the impact rising fuel costs will have on their customers spending decisions.

As one of our client CEOs said to his group, “It’s hard to be bold right now.”

So one learning here is this – do you and your key people adequately understand the impact recent world events are having on your industry, your business and your customers’ businesses?  Are you doing any scenario planning to anticipate their responses?  And what are the opportunities that will present themselves to you?

Strategic alliances cover a broad gamut of possibilities that range from loosely structured partnerships to full-scale mergers. Structured correctly alliances can leverage the strengths of both parties and accomplish significantly more than either partner could accomplish on their own. When considering an alliance the two words mutual and benefit cannot be overemphasized.

Do it if …

There is significant mutual benefit for both parties that cannot be easily achieved by other means—such as an acquisition or internal growth.

Don’t do it …

• So you can get bigger. Bigger is not always better. Make sure there are sound business reasons for growth and explore whether you can grow your market yourself.
  
  
• If you can’t grow internally. Be sure you’re not using an alliance to try and solve an internal problem. If you’re losing market share, ask yourself what needs to change in your company.
  
  
• Because you like the person. Go to lunch or play golf together, but don’t create an alliance if this is your main motivation.
  
  
• Because someone talked you into it. If it’s not your idea and you haven’t considered how it fits into your overall business strategy, then you’re relying on luck.
  
  
• You always like to be in control. Remember the word mutual; you are aligning with another party. It has to be a give and take relationship to succeed.

Over the past month, I have worked with three separate groups of CEOs on the issue of pricing. In each group, I posed the question:  “In your pricing strategy, how do you know you aren’t leaving money on the table?” Of the 30 very competent company leaders I posed this question to, only a handful had a confident answer to that question.

As a business psychologist, I don’t claim to be an expert in pricing strategies. I am, however, an expert at getting to the root cause of problems, how people make decisions, and difficult conversations. What I see over and over again in working with companies is that underneath it all, many internal pricing decisions are driven much more by emotion than fact, although the emotion often masquerades as logic.

In any decision to raise prices, there is a possibility for big gain, but there also is a big threat. The gain is increased profit for your company; the threat is loss of the business. At a time when the economy has caused widespread fear, the threat of losing the business is particularly powerful.

At a physiological level, the amygdala in our brain still responds to threats as if we were about to be attacked by a tiger, with a push to fight or flee. This is not the state from which we make our best, logical decisions. However, push back from our customers can lead us to make decisions in this way. 

How often have you heard this feedback from your sales force?

“The customer won’t buy at that price.”

“If you price it that way, we’ll lose that business.”

For most sales staff, it’s less uncomfortable to push back on pricing internally within the company than deal with the customer’s negative reaction to price increases. So, how do you know if your trusted sales member (above) is accurate in this assessment or taking the easier path?

One company I work with recently revised its incentive program. In the past, the sales force was incentivized based on sales figures. This company had recurring difficult conversations about pricing, generally with the sales staff pushing back whenever there was a price increase. The revision of the incentive program shifted the incentives from sales figures to profit. Thus, instead of making their life more difficult, a price increase now increased the commission of the sales staff. Over the course of 18 months, this company successfully increased the price 14% in the key segment of their business.

In a 2007 front-page article in the Wall Street Journal, Timothy Aeppel describes a revolution in pricing at manufacturing company Parker Hannifin. The historical pricing strategy was based on the assumption that pricing should be approached from the perspective of cost plus a profit margin on top. Their revolution involved shifting to a retail-based strategy. Instead of asking: “What does this cost us to make, and what margin do we need?”, the question changed to: “What is the value of this product to our customer and what is the customer willing to pay?”

As you reflect on your pricing strategy, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is your brain convincing you the risk is bigger than it truly is?
2. Is your sales force choosing the lesser of two difficult conversations and restricting your prices?
3. Are you building the right relationships with your customers so you get accurate market intelligence? 
4. What assumptions are you starting from, and how do you question those assumptions?

Aeppel, T. Seeking Perfect Prices, CEO Tears up the Rules. March 27, 2007 Wall Street Journal

Fortier (2011), Presentation to Chief Executive Network, Atlanta, GA.

Once you have reached a point in your career where intelligence or technical skill no longer differentiates you, emotional intelligence becomes an increasingly important differentiator.

A 2005 study by the Center for Creative Leadership studied leaders who had progressed to manager level and then had involuntarily stalled or been demoted/fired. These were the key derailers that were identified as contributing:

• Inability to change or adapt during a transition
• Problems with interpersonal relationships
• Failure to build and lead a team
• Failure to meet business objectives

At least three of these are directly related to emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence has four facets:

• Your own awareness of your emotions and reactions
• Your ability to accurately identify other peoples emotions and perspectives
• Your ability to manage/contain your own emotions in times of stress
• Your ability to use awareness and self-management to build productive relationships

 The good news about emotional intelligence is that much more so than general intelligence/ability, emotional intelligence can be developed. For example, think of a recent difficult situation or conversation you encountered. Imagine yourself from one or two decades earlier in your career encountering the same situation. Hopefully, your response in this moment was more thoughtful, self-aware, and productive than your reaction might have been earlier in your life. That difference is an example of how emotional intelligence tends to develop naturally as we age.

 But what if you don’t have a decade to tackle those internal challenges that might derail your career? In my experience, executives who are serious about coaching are often able to develop a decade worth of emotional intelligence in 18 months. 

 Additionally, leaders who have a productive relationship with his/her spouse, often find they get top notch coaching from the spouse. Emotional intelligence is often about working around blind spots in our own awareness of self or others. There is a great deal of overlap between the blind spots in our personal life and our professional life. Often spouses are well positioned to identify when a relationship has encountered a blind spot, and (hopefully) diplomatically point it out.  This accurate mirroring of our behavior is one of the most powerful ways to increase our emotional intelligence, should be chose to listen to it.

Other suggestions: 360 evaluations, reading books on the people aspects of leadership, observation of people who are highly effective in working with others, and asking regularly for feedback (and listening to it non-defensively so people tell us the truth).

• The “middle ranks” experience this frequently as their workload increases but their power and influence don’t.
• A scarcity mentality breeds infighting and defensive behavior, which her research found more often in companies that “lost” in a prior recession.
• Powerlessness is contagious, and is spread by managers who limit sharing important information and who foster a culture of blame.

• It has always been this way.
• The problem is out of our control.
•  Unless the _________________(e.g. government, CEO, corporate office) does ________________ (e.g. increases funding), this problem cannot be fixed.
• This problem is too big, too complex, too entrenched to tackle.

The concept of positive deviance is a change management strategy that does not involve significant hoopla, implementation of the “management theory of the month,” or significant outside expertise.  The idea behind positive deviance is to turn members of your own organization into scientists who identify solutions that already are present and amplify them.

Think of a dilemma within your organization, one that is longstanding and seemingly intractable. Ask yourself: “Are there any places within your organization that suffer under the same constraints and yet are successful?” 

An example of the positive deviance strategy is Save the Children’s attempts to address malnutrition in a poverty-stricken third world country. Save the Children had experts on a variety of topics related to malnutrition (nutrition, farming, sociology, physiological development), yet the expertise did not provide a workable solution to the problem. All members of the community were affected by:

• Inadequate food
• Inadequate sanitation
•  Political turmoil
• Lack of medical care

Save the Children asked the question, “In this community where starvation and child mortality are rampant, are there any exceptions? Are there any children or families who are plagued by the same conditions and yet the children thrive?”

Interviews were held within the community with mothers and this question was explored. “Are there any exceptions, are there any children or families that do not suffer the same ravages of malnutrition and high mortality?” Exceptions were identified, and this group of women were asked to investigate what made the difference.  They found these differences in families where children thrived:

• Children were fed multiple small meals throughout the day instead of 2-3 larger meals.
• Additional protein was accessed through foraging and was added to the child’s diet.
• Children were fed normally even when they were ill with diarrhea, when the standard practice was to limit food when children were ill.
• Parents bypassed the tribal hierarchy and sought medical attention based on their own judgment.

With the support of the community members who had identified these differences, these success strategies were implemented, and the malnutrition and mortality rate declined significantly. Because the “solution” was untapped wisdom that was already contained within the community, and the implementation was shared peer to peer, it bypassed the typical resistance to expert authorities imposing external solutions.

According to Richard Pascale and Jerry Sternin in the Harvard Business Review, this “positive deviance” approach has been used successfully by companies such as Hewlet Packard and Goldman Sacs to indentify internal solutions to intractable problems. In their HBR article, Pascale and Sternin identify a six step process:

Step 1: Make the group the guru

Step 2: Reframe through facts

Step 3: Make it safe to learn

Step 4: Make the problem concrete

Step 5: Leverage social proof

Step 6: Confound the immune defense response

If your organization is experiencing an organization sticking point, one that is crucial to its success, and one that requires changes in behaviors and attitudes, you might ask yourself and your organization: “Are there any places within your organization that suffer under the same constraints and yet are successful?”

If you have some unrecognized, positive deviants, learn from them!

Reference: Richard Tanner Pascale and Jerry Sternin. "Your Company’s Secret Change Agents." Harvard Business Review. May 2005

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither are leaders
In a recent issue of Leadership Wired, John Maxwell suggests the primary difference between a good leader and a great one is the commitment to continual personal growth.  A good chance to reflect on how you work on personal growth. 

You are the biggest obstacle to change
It is true.  As leaders we often get in the way of meaningful change because we don’t truly understand the psychology behind it.  This McKinsey Quarterly article offers up the belief that it takes a lot more than common sense to build an effective change initiative.  The authors argue change happens when leaders embrace the seemingly irrational to be successful. 

Looking for more about how to effectively create change?  Check out the book Switch, which we did a deep dive into with our Executive Roundtables.   We also talked about it a couple of weeks ago in this blog entry.

Stop the bus! I want to get off!
We talk about getting the right people on the bus (and even in the right seats), but what happens when someone valuable wants to leave?  This Fast Company blog reprints a Harvard Business Review article that provides an overview of ways to manage your talent without giving away the house.  Practical thoughts as we look at an improving economic environment.

Again, these articles are from sources that we frequently read.  What out there has caught your eye?  Leave your suggestions in the comment section.

Reduce extracurricular commitments
To attain work/life balance, people can first reduce the number of extracurricular activities in which they or their children participate. Overbooked schedules lead to chaotic, frantic lifestyles. Each time you're asked to volunteer or join a committee, think about how doing so will affect your family or social life, or both. 

Turn off the technology
Try to leave your work at the office so you are both mentally and physically present when you're with your family and friends. It's important to unwind and relax after work by setting aside a time to turn off all cell phones and enjoy as many television-free dinners as possible. 

Realize having it all at once is probably unrealistic
It is crucial to accept the idea you can't have it all at once. If you try, you will have a lifestyle full of stress and exhaustion. People can have it all—personal gratification, financial success and an enjoyable social life, for example—but not all at once. You have to prioritize your needs and devote time to each goal accordingly. 

Minimize materialism
To stop the vicious cycle of overworking and over consuming, minimize materialism. When you want more, you worry about payments, work overtime and live more chaotic, stressful lives. By desiring and acquiring less, people tend to be more satisfied and grateful for what they have. Make a list of the things in life for which you're grateful and the aspects of your life that are going well. It's natural for people to ignore what they have and focus instead on what they are missing out on. Practicing appreciation of what you do have will help your work/life balance. 

The process of achieving work-life balance can take months, but by making gradual changes, you'll greatly reduce the amount of stress and exhaustion in your social lives and family.

We often leave that first meeting wishing that they would have called two or three years earlier.  Why?   Because if the owner had better prepared the business for sale in advance; the value would have been vastly improved.

Here are a few basic questions that should be addressed well in advance of a sale so that adjustments can be made to make the business more attractive to potential buyers:

1. Is our business dependent on relationships and does one individual in our business personally own all the key relationships that really matter? Buyers will be wary of businesses that hinge on one person; if that individual is gone so is plenty of the business.
    
2. Is our business too dependent on one or two key customers? Single customer concentration greater than 30% is a red flag for buyers and lenders because the loss of a customer of that scale may make the difference between profit and disaster.
    
3. Will our customers be the survivors in this increasingly competitive business environment and be solid buyers in the future, or are they tier two competitors that will only be around a few more years? Potential buyers will be more likely to pay up if you have long term viable customers.

Perhaps the best overall question to ask two to three years ahead of time is “What would a potential buyer look for if they were interested in my business?” And what is that? Simply put, a smart buyer wants to know that what makes the business work will stay in place after the sale. If the good parts stay intact they can confidently decide how to grow and make the business better.

The simple concept of Prepare to Sell can make a very big difference in the sale price of a business but it takes thought, planning and change. Owners often get so involved in their business that they lose the objectivity that a potential buyer would have in evaluating the business. We have seen many sad stories where owners just didn’t have their business ready to sell and consequently received far less than they ever anticipated. It doesn’t have to be that way. Significant value adding adjustments can be made to many businesses but that requires an honest evaluation of the business. Often getting an outside in look by an experienced advisor can make that process more objective, easier and more effective. 

1.  DIRECT the Rider

• For every two men who earn a college degree in 2010, three women will.
• Women, along with 50% of medical and law degrees, now earn 60% of master’s degrees.
• There are now more female managers than male.
• 75% of those who lost jobs during the recent recession were men.

There is a lot of good information and reading out on the Internet – blogs, articles, websites – and a number of ways to receive them.  Periodically, we’ll run a list of links to articles that we found interesting.

Growing Leaders on the Farm(Ville)

Fast Company: Leveling Up Your Staff: Zynga's Mark Pincus on Entrepreneurial Companies.  

The genius behind the social network games FarmVille and Mafia Wars talks about what he looks for when hiring talent.  They’ve grown to more than 1,000 employees in just three years, so this important. 

“…they have to be a good manager of people and projects and that means they have to have a high EQ.  The more you can be self-aware and honest about yourself, the more you can cultivate that in other people.” 

We have a useful EQ assessment instrument we use effectively with individuals and teams.

To Infinity, and Beyond!

Forbes.com: Lead Like … Buzz and Woody

This is a fun read, and echoes a point Eileen Wixted made at our recent “What’s Your Oil Spill” event. 

“Because, even though they often are confused or scared, they never stop thinking, never stop looking for the answer to a problem, and despite a minor detour now and then, they never go off mission. No matter how great the crisis — whether it’s the vicious kid next door or death by trash-compactor — Woody and Buzz stay engaged in the issue and never forget the people (sorry, toys) they care about.”

So who do you lead more like Buzz, Woody … or like Tony Hayward?

One Size Leader Fits All?

NPR.org: Candidates Play Up Former CEO Experience

With election day looming, this is an inside look at two intriguing business figures and how their business experience may or may not translate to being an effective elected official.

“Politicians often say, ‘We need to run government more like a business.’ In California, the Republican candidates for governor and the U.S. Senate are two former corporate executives from Silicon Valley: Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina. Is running a company the same as running a state?” (This is an audio story. You’ll need access to a media player)

Business leaders have made the transition successfully because the ability to execute is important in both the government and the private sector.

Know Thy Self … and the Competition

McKinseyquarterly.com: Making the leap into emerging markets: An interview with Clorox’s Beth Springer

 An established company decides to make a thoughtful, but deliberate move into emerging markets that are largely abroad.  They are looking inside at their successes and failures, as well as closely monitoring their competitors.  This move is in addition to strategic partnerships and acquisitions.

 “Last year, we also took a hard look back at our successes and failures in developing markets, as well as those of our competitors. This confirmed a lot of things we knew and also gave us new insight, particularly on what it takes to deliver profitable growth in emerging markets. We articulated some general success principles, which we’re now applying. We also dug deeply into why our market shares and profitability varied in the same category across countries. It was eye opening and led to our more sophisticated approach to sizing each category and country combination that we consider entering.”

 Pete Petersen has talked about a number of these strategies in other blog entries.  Check out the Growth section of the blog.

Have an article you’ve read that you found inspiring, thoughtful or just plain wrong?  Post a link in the comments, we’d love to see what we’re missing.

• Our culture is stale and resists change. 
• Our roster is filled with “C” players.
• Innovation has been a company priority for three years, but we still can’t innovate our way out of a paper bag right now.
• Two tough years have brought right sizing and reorganization.  There is growing discontent in our workforce.  Some of our best next gen players are leaving, or worse, shutting down.
• Direction is clear, goals are good, operating plan is good.  Execution is not good.  Never has been.
• We get no leadership from mid-management.  None.  Why don’t they get it?
• We have no depth at all below our senior team.

So, dear reader, my question to you is this; where do you start?  Where do you look first to address these issues?

Leaders, the truth is that YOU are the single greatest lever for change in your organization.  Everything starts with you.  You set the tempo, you determine or enable the culture, and you send the messages, both intended and unintended, that people remember.  It is very possible that the single most effective leadership development investment your business could make right now is in … you.

Meaningful leadership development is first and foremost about you, not just about your senior team or your high potentials.  Every leader needs to invest a portion of her/his time into understanding who they are as a leader and how they can become more effective.  Here is a quick self-check to help you think about your personal leadership development.  Rate these on a five point scale from “Not So Much” to “Feeling Pretty Good.”

1. I have a high level of awareness of my personal leadership style, strengths and weaknesses
2. I set clear and appropriately demanding expectations for people
3. I consistently tell the truth with compassion, even when it is uncomfortable or hard
4. I utilize multiple strategies to gain outside perspective on my decisions and my business
5. I am able to maintain a healthy balance between driving for results and investing in relationships
6. I invite feedback and constructive criticism
7. I confront reality and make the hard decisions

If you have more than one or two of these that you aren’t feeling pretty good about, consider working with someone to map out a personal development plan.  Because the truth is, you’re the lever for change.

This was my first time working with this team, and I found it very helpful that we had all read the same two books. The shared understanding of the concepts in the book allowed us to discuss complex interactions in short-hand. 

For example, as the team struggled with their own sense of being powerless in the face of corporate decisions, I was able to subtly say two words from Bounce to the leader: “absorb anxiety."  He immediately got my meaning and began implementing one of the strategies from the book in the team meeting. Without the shared language and immediate recognition from the book, those two words would have needed 30 minutes of dialog. 

Another client has recently read the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. In his leadership team, one of the challenges is that under stress, the team struggles to stick to the team ground rules. He found the concept “motivate the elephant” from this book to speak to why he thinks the team stumbles when implementing agreements under stress. We now pause after coming to agreements to ask ourselves “the rider agrees to this, but what will it take to motivate the elephant?”

I have intentionally not explained what those phrases mean here as a teaser to encourage you to read the books and find out.  I found something of value in each of the three books mentioned here, and I imagine you will too.

As a team, you might consider this strategy:

• Identify a book to read together as a group. Ideally this book is a quick read that has concepts that could apply to your team.
  
  
• Discuss the book as a group.
  
  
• Have each person identify at least one take away message.
  
  
• As a team, agree if there are any concepts from the book that they would like to use within the team.
  
  
• Come up with a few quick phrases that will quickly draw the concept to mind:
  • Switch: Motivate the elephant
  • Bounce: Absorb anxiety or Morale, the army kind
  • 5 Dysfunctions: No buy-in without weigh-in
    
    
• When the team hits a stuck point, pause and ask, “does anything we learned from _________ book apply here?”

Consider that …

• 67% of organizations do not currently have any formal succession planning process (Cutting Edge Information)
   
• Only 24% of organizations are confident in their ability to staff leadership positions during the next five years (Watson-Wyatt)
   
• Only 10% of family owned businesses survive transition to the third generation.

There are many apparently rational and understandable reasons companies give for having delayed succession planning (time, money, business needs tactical attention, and inability to find successors).  What we have learned over time is that underneath these explanations there are more complicated personal reasons. Succession planning requires difficult conversations and a depth of self-assessment that makes most of us uncomfortable.

In the businesses we’ve assisted, Russell and I have identified the five most common real obstacles:

• Telling the truth. Succession planning requires thorough assessment and hard conversations about performance and potential with current employees.
• Confronting your own truth.  Succession planning requires the organization’s leader to think about retirement, aging, and mortality.
• Letting go. Developing next generation leaders requires that current leaders share power. This may require the leader to change life-long patterns.
• Learning to coach: Grooming successors requires organizational leaders to be both boss and coach.
• Founder syndrome. Many business founders have these characteristics that impede transition to the next generation: high overlap of personal identity and work, lack of outside interests, highly controlling of decisions, difficulty letting go, and can’t imagine life after leaving the business.

Why are these barriers? Each is a tough discussion or major change.  Many of them ask the leader to do the very opposite of what made him or her a successful leader.  Most of them are difficult for others to push the organization’s leadership to pay attention to if they resist. Let’s look at two examples where the conversation on the surface encounters barriers from the unspoken realities that are underneath the surface.

Scenario #1: Tell the truth

Have you ever worked in an organization that consistently avoided having the really hard conversations with employees and leaders? Many organizations give lip-service to accountability but don’t enact it consistently. If this organization begins succession planning and an assessment of internal talent:

On the surface

• Meeting after meeting that is uncomfortable but yields little progress
• Disagreement about how to measure performance
• Many strong opinions about selecting the right process
• People express being busy and this task is “too much”
• A complicated process is created that still avoids really pinpointing performance accountability

Under the surface

• One or more leaders in the process are the very people who should be the recipient of difficult feedback but it hasn’t occurred.
• Lack of faith that the leaders who will need to give difficult feedback will actually give it.
• Strong feelings about how uncomfortable it will be to begin giving difficult feedback.
• Competence fears about ability to have difficult conversations.
• Discomfort in imagining staff reaction to increased accountability. 

Scenario #2: Confronting your own truth

Succession discussions often occur as the current CEO ages. Most of us, including CEOs generally prefer not to think of the changes aging and mortality will have on our own lives.

On the surface

• CEO may state his/her awareness of the need for building bench strength.
• CEO may express skepticism regarding the readiness of next generation leaders and consistently identify problems with choices made by possible successors.
• The leader may agree to begin to pull back, yet resist it by subtly retaining control.

Under the surface

• The leader may have these thoughts or fears that are often unspoken barriers that stop the change occurring:
• As I watch others my age that have retired, many of them have lost their mental quickness. I don’t want that to happen to me.
• In my business I am respected and valued. I have no idea what I’d do in retirement that would bring this type of respect.
• I don’t know if my relationship with my spouse will survive so much forced togetherness.

What business psychologists know is that when an organization is having a conversation on the surface but avoiding the real conversation that is below the surface, productive process rarely occurs. There are strategies to get around the barriers that we’ll address in a future blog, but for now ask yourself why your company doesn’t have a succession plan.  Is it really that you don’t have the time and resource to devote to it?  Or, are you getting in the way of planning for a future without you in it?

Playing Defense
This client has spent the last three years coming through a turnaround situation.  Theirs is a difficult, complex business; the sales cycle is long, the value proposition is difficult to articulate, they face operational and regulatory complexity and change, margins are slim, and technology and scale are important for success.  

For the past three years their strategy and planning has been all about strong, detailed operating plans with a focus on execution.  They fall victim to the fire drill syndrome at times as they are forced to deal with challenges and surprises they didn’t see coming.  Growth over that time period has happened in large part because of their excellent reputation, but the growth has come from unexpected sources that haven’t been in the center of their sales target.

This is a talented leadership team that has successfully turned the business around and positioned it for growth.  They know how to play great defense, but are uncertain about their ability to play great offense.

Playing Offense
Understanding this was important for all of us.  We worked with them to develop a different approach to strategy and planning than they’ve used in the past.  We helped them take a methodical, clear-eyed look at their customers, the marketplace and themselves.  Like many clients, they have been so caught up in day to day operating challenges they just don’t get much time together as a team to talk in depth about the bigger issues.  The result is a one year plan for them that has a very different look and focus than in the past.

• The 2011 plan is primarily about growth (playing offense)
• The plan includes just three key focus areas: Growth, Process Improvement and People
• The plan includes just seven strategic initiatives, and five of them are all about growth
• We also mapped out the ongoing technology and operational initiatives that are critical for company success
  

The secret sauce, however, consists of the three huge strategic “ah has” the team experienced in the planning discussions that kicked them from playing defense to playing offense.

1. They realized their growth from non-sweet spot sources has become a niche market with enormous growth potential.  They are creating a dedicated business unit for this niche and are making it a central focus of their growth strategies.
2. They discovered that sales from customer referrals close faster, close at a higher rate and carry higher margins than other sales.  Their core growth strategies now center around customer referrals.
3. Given the complexity of their business and their narrow margins, aligning sales, operations and product design with market segments and niches will impact both growth and profitability, so they will begin tackling that challenge in 2011.
   

For this business, growing in the new normal means some very visible changes to play offense rather than defense.  What does it mean for yours?

It is very easy to lose your perspective as a business leader. It leads to decision paralysis, poor choices and misguided strategy. Trust me; I’ve been there and done that plenty of times in my career. 

Here’s how it happens:

1. You become totally absorbed doing the business of your business; managing, organizing, analyzing and problem solving. 

2. You talk to the same people on your team about the same issues over and over again.

3. You shun customer visits and outside business activities so you can concentrate on the business.

4. Discussions outside the business are limited to industry peers who are facing many of your same issues.

5. You begin to think your business is “unique and complex”. No one from the outside could really understand your issues particularly someone who is outside your industry,

6. You become convinced that the only way to run the business is your way.

The reality is that:

1. There are many ways to solve operating and strategy issues. At the Roundtables last week I heard 30+ well thought out individual slants on critical issues that executives were facing. 

2. Some of the most insightful and fresh approaches come from leaders who don’t know an industry or a particular business well.

3. You can talk to your own people too much. After a while you all see the issues and solutions through the same lens; everything becomes groupthink. One of our clients puts it this way, “we are smoking our own stuff”.

4. There are lots of smart business leaders out there who are great money makers, brilliant strategists and terrific opportunists. Unfortunately you can’t meet them holing up in your office.

5. Your business is not as unique and complex as you may think. On of my bosses once told me, “don’t tell me you have a complex business. Microsoft is a complex business and you are not running Microsoft.” Sometimes just listening to other business leaders discuss their issues and successes helps you see your business in a simpler light.

6. There are many leaders that have dealt with the same set of issues you are grappling with today. You are not alone and your problems are not insurmountable.

Our Roundtables are a terrific opportunity for senior level leaders to step away from their business a half day per month, interact with savvy, smart leaders and maintain their perspective. 

One of the Roundtable executives sent the following to us after a recent very robust discussion at their business. “I was a little surprised at the group’s complete and utter dislike of the growth concept.  I think they were right on the money, but it is interesting how an idea can be so popular inside our company and when you hear it from the group’s perspective it sounds terrible.  It is good for me to have both perspectives.”

This summer I completed my second RAGBRAI, the annual bike ride across Iowa. 

The range of riders on RAGBRAI is startling. Bikers range from elite athletes with $10,000 bikes and shaved legs (men too!) to armchair athletes with beer bellies and bikes from the 1980s.  During the ride, it struck me that in some ways the range of riders on RAGBRAI is much like a large workplace. On RAGBRAI, and in your workplace, there are the stars and those that are “average;, people who are motivated to win vs. motivated to do a job, people who have every resource to succeed and those who succeed in spite of few resources. 

As I rode with a former colleague, the impact of resources was clear, let me describe our experiences in two different ways. 

First, looking only at performance, here are the facts:

• I departed earlier each morning. I rode faster. I arrived in the overnight town earlier every day. 
• She left later than I did each morning. She rode slower. She arrived in the overnight town later than I every day.

Given these facts, ask yourself: which person you would ask to be on your bike team? Also ask yourself: If you had $2000 in development funds, whom would you invest in? 

Now let me describe our experiences looking more broadly.

• I own a $2000 road bike that weighs less than 20 lbs. She owns a $350 hybrid bike that weighs 40+ lbs.
• I grew up in a biking family. My dad did “hill training” with me when I was still in grade school. She learned it all on her own.
• Our goal was the same, to push ourselves and enjoy the week. My commitment to and focus on RAGBRAI was a 4 on a 10-point scale. Her commitment and focus was a 9. 
• I trained 550 miles prior to RAGBRAI. She trained 1200 miles.
• RAGBRAI was one week of vacation for me. I had 3 or 4 other weeks of vacation this year. RAGBRAI was her sole vacation in 2010.
• My “success” was visible and reinforcing for me as I passed the masses pushing hard up a hill.  She persisted in the face of being passed by others thousands of times over the course of each day.
• I went on RAGBRAI with a charter service who set up my tent and took it down every morning. She needed to save money so she managed her own camping arrangements. By the time she got on her bike each day, she’d already had an hour of hassles.
• Because I left early each day, I avoided the worst of the heat and the wind. Because she managed her own camping arrangements, she left later each day. Winds tend to increase over the course of the day, so the last two hours of her ride was often into a wind I didn’t face.

Now, ask yourself those questions again: “which person you would ask to be on your bike team? Also ask yourself: If you had $2000 in development funds, whom would you invest in?

When it comes to bottom line performance, it is clear that I had the edge. However, I’m not certain that $2000 invested in my biking would have any noticeable impact on my performance. Invest that $2000 in my colleague and you’d see results -- increase her speed, create opportunities for her to feel successful, and perhaps lead her to persist in biking when otherwise she might not

Professional development activities and funds are a finite resource. Companies often have to make difficult decisions about how to identify and develop people who are key to an organization’s bench strength. 

One reasonable approach to allocating scarce resources is to identify top performers and invest in them. However, have you ever asked yourself who in your organization trained 1200 miles, competed on a $350 bike, and looks average, but would zoom to the front of the crowd with a new bike?

You just might be surprised.

• Our strategic plan outlines strategies for acquisitions, targeting customers of vulnerable competitors, and upgrading talent in key roles, but we’ve been paralyzed and have not acted on any of these. We’ve missed some great opportunities and it looks like we’ll miss more.
   
• We’re still avoiding some tough personnel decisions.

• We took advantage of some attractive pricing and bought some heavy equipment. Based on what we’re seeing in that market today, that was a very good call.
   
• We accelerated our plans to buy land and a build new building. The market was too favorable to stick to our original timeline.
   
• We’ve been intentional about upgrading talent at key positions. Competition for good talent is actually pretty stiff right now, but we’ve been able to hire some experienced talent that we most likely wouldn’t have been able to attract a few years ago.
   
• We worked hard to streamline our operations, improve our processes and right size our workforce, all things we should have been paying more attention to in the past.
   
• Our value proposition has always been about demonstrating a measurable ROI to our clients. We made this a clear priority and are pleased with the results

Area	Family System	Business System
Goal	Development and support of family members	Profits, revenues, efficiency
Relationships	Deeply personal, of primary importance	Semi-personal or impersonal, of secondary importance
Rules	Informal, unwritten rules based on shared history	Written and formal rules, often with rewards and consequences written out
Evaluation	Support generally unconditional and based on who you are; effort counts	Support conditional on performance and results; employees can be promoted or fired
Succession	Caused by death, divorce, or illness	Caused by retirement, promotion, or departure
Authority	Based on family position or seniority; may be fluid and depend on situation	Based on formal position in organization hierarchy
Commitment	Lifelong and based on one’s identity in the family	Short-term; based on rewards received for employment

• Your people will develop and use critical thinking skills.
•  You will force clear, objective analysis and decision making.
• You will reinforce a culture that fosters clear, direct accountability in a positive way.
• You will empower your people by always asking what they need from you to support them.
• You will build a culture that focuses on clear objectives, measurable outcomes, and accountability.
• And, you may very well discover that you are less inclined to jump in and rescue or micro-manage.

1. Why do people buy from us? Is it because of our people, our products, our quality or our customer service?
2. How do we get new customers? Do they come by referral, the internet or by word of mouth? How do we lose customers? How do we know?
3. What is the profile of a good customer for our company? How many “good” customers do we have?
4. What does a good supplier look like to our customers and do we fit the description?
5. What is important to our customers? Do we know their direction, issues and concerns so that we can be their supplier of choice? How do we know?

1. Context is critical. Learn quickly and look through the eyes of important constituencies and stakeholders.
2. Set your own timeline and specific transition goals.
3. Establish your priorities and understand expectations.
4. Control your agenda; be ruthless in managing your time.
5. Construct your team, and build key relationships, early.
6. Build a strong, respect-based peer relationship with your board and your board chair.
7. Your personal assistant and support infrastructure are critical early decisions.
8. Develop a clear transition communications strategy.
9. Find a way to get honest, balanced feedback and information. This often means going around your direct reports and using outsiders.
10. Establish appropriate personal ground rules so you aren’t on duty 24/7, except for when you have to be on duty 24/7.

• Identifying WHO you need to build relationships with to be effective, both internally and externally, is every bit as important as identifying WHAT you need to get done.
• “I wish I would have moved faster on the people issues.” – Two recently former CEOs.
• Real change, as in new agenda, new direction, new culture change, happens in uncomfortable, high stakes, one-on-one conversations. If you aren’t comfortable with conflict you need to make that piece of your leadership development work a top priority.
•  As CEO your voice carries louder and further than you imagine. And your actions drown out your voice. Be very thoughtful about what you say and what you do.
• “The last time I knew for certain what people really thought was the day before I was named CEO” - A current CEO. Davis’ point about finding a way to get honest, balanced feedback is right on the money.
• Your ability to lead and effect change starts, and often stops, with your own personal credibility. Remember that you are not bullet proof, invisible or invincible.

• Which of our siblings stands out as reliable, smart and good with people?
• When will Dad die, and how soon do we need to begin preparing to replace him?
• Who in our family will inherit the family legacy and why?

This post started with a conversation Pete and I had about a client the other day. This person is a senior exec team member of a business we’re working with. High potential guy, perhaps CEO material, but with some patterns of behavior that undermine his performance and his credibility. As we brainstormed ways we could offer to help Pete declared, “What he really needs is a boss!” That prompted one of the best 10 minute discussions I’ve had in the past year.

• Almost half the people I’ve talked with have never had “that boss.” Think about that for a minute.
• About a third of the people who spoke with me cited a high school or college coach as “that boss.”
• The remainder, about 10 percent, have had neither. They have never experienced being challenged/supported to do more than they thought they could, and have never had a role model to show them how to do that for others.
• When I asked people to describe “that boss” these are the common themes:
  
  
  • Accessible and helpful – I am important to him/her
  • Positive and encouraging vs. negative or threatening
  • Paints a picture of what I/we can be
  • Demands my/our best
  • Coaches and delivers constructive feedback
  • Walks the talk about both values and performance
  • Authentic and genuine

• When the alarm went off at 5 a.m., I’d be headed to exercise instead of immediately turning on my computer to work.
   
• When I looked around my house, I’d be pleased that it was orderly instead of seeing clutter everywhere and being overwhelmed.
   
• When one of my subordinates came to give me bad news about a deadline, I’d notice I didn’t feel angry at the person and had patience to work on problem-solving.
   
• Because I felt calm, I’d notice I wasn’t wasting time on unproductive strategies I use to relieve stress: shopping online, griping with co-workers, and spending time on low-priority items.

• Are we performing better or worse than our competitors ... why?
• What does it take to win in this industry today … and how are we doing?
• What are our real obstacles to growth?
• How are we leveraging our competitive advantages?
• What do we do best and how can we apply it most effectively in new ways?
• Do we understand our customer’s issues, their direction and what is important to them?

• about taking risks, from one client who is good at it and one who is not.
• about holding people accountable, and about how to do a better job of helping clients learn to more effectively hold people accountable. And about how I need to press the issue more firmly.
• from one of my colleagues about continually improving what we do.
• about the importance of staying in closer touch with our clients.
• about strength and courage from two people I’ve known a long time.

• We were never more than five minutes off our agenda
• Every person around the table had a voice and felt listened to
• The group made the big decisions that needed to be made
• The entire group owned every decision; nothing was forced
• In spite of the number of high achievers in the room, no single ego overshadowed the discussion
• Bob made sure many people around the table had their moment in the spotlight and did his best to avoid it himself.

1. He was clear about what the meeting was really about. It was not about checking off agenda items and hammering through decisions. It was about enabling the NAC to lead and support an ambitious change initiative. That wasn’t going to happen if the players in the room didn’t own it and feel valued.
    
2. He knew how things really worked. The staff at Drake need to implement the change and run the operation, but they also need to help shape the vision and direction of the Center for Leadership. This isn’t a Board / Staff relationship so much as an interdependent partnership requiring a high level of mutual trust and respect. He treated it as such.
    
3. He knew who he was. The Adams Institute teaches Don’s six personal values of leadership: take responsibility, be honest and dependable, be persistent, preserve your options, never stop learning and love unconditionally. Bob was just living those.

• Marry well
• Serve on Board of Directors
• Attend charity events
• Find mentors
• Use your investigative skills to learn the different “rules” across class lines

• Which of three qualified candidates will be the best performer in your organization?
• How do you save a talented performer from his/her blind spots?
• Are the right executives in the right roles?
• Who are the next generation leaders in your company?

• Clear expectations regarding pay, time-off, job descriptions and performance evaluation
• Strategic planning that assures agreement about business goals and strategies
• Communication training for effective negotiation and disagreement
• Mutual agreement regarding appropriate work/family boundaries
• Succession planning
• Clarity regarding financial legacies and estate planning
• Facilitated family business meetings that address issues in a timely and productive manner

• Reoccurring arguments that never seem to get resolved
• An on-going feeling of “stuckness” or hopelessness regarding resolution
• The “family” part of the work is harder than the work itself
• Deterioration of family relationships outside of work
• Triangulation and alliances
• Conflicts that raise questions about the succession plan or family members staying in the business

• Competitive advantages
• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Owner issues
• Management issues
• Use of financial reports and other metrics

The Art of Family Business:
How to Have a Healthy Bottom Line and a Happy Thanksgiving Dinner

Thursday, April 29 | 7:30 – 10 a.m.
Registration begins at 7:15 a.m.

Glen Oaks Country Club
1401 Glen Oaks Dr, West Des Moines, IA

Cost: On us, but please register before Tuesday, April 27 by calling 515.875.4858 or emailing sarahz@rjensenconsulting.com.

Running a family business brings complexity to both the family and the business that few outside of a family business truly understand. At their best, family relationships bring levels of loyalty, rapid action and communication that non-family businesses strive for but rarely achieve. At their worst, family relationships can drain the life from a thriving business endeavor, with anger, resentment, hopelessnessand exhaustion poisoning both the business and the family.

THE FAMILY BUSINESS FORUM examines the overlap of business and family relationships and spotlights the difficult conversations successful family businesses must have in order to thrive as a family and a company.

You will leave this session with:

• A written assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of three aspects of your business: family relationships, business systems and ownership systems.

• A list of critical conversations every family business must have.

• Practical suggestions to address business/family overlap.

• An overall strategy to navigate the family dynamic to achieve both a

successful business and Thanksgiving dinner.

Our own Michelle Clark, Ph.D., brings hands-on experience assisting family businesses to productively manage transitions, have difficult conversations, and build business systems that serve both the bottom line and healthy family boundaries.

• Energy – You saw this one coming, didn’t you?
• Interpersonal conflict – Is the frequency and degree of interpersonal conflict higher or lower than when you are at your best?
• Personal productivity – Are you getting things done or are you just generating activity?
• Focus – Are you spending the right amount of time on the right issues?
• Communication – Are communication gaps and surprises popping up?
• Your desk – For some executives it is as simple as noticing the condition of their desktop in the morning and in the evening.

Beginning today, we'll be sending a monthly e-mail that let's you know what's happening at Jensen Consulting.  It's a quick snapshot of the happenings and conversations we're having with our clients. It is a complement to our quarterly newsletter, Consultations.

If you'd like to be added to our distribution list, send your name and e-mail address to newsletter@rjensenconsulting.com.

We are excited to have the new Jensen Consulting website up and running.  As we iron out a few last details, we're preparing to launch a blog filled with thoughts related to our leadership development, strategy and family business practices. 

We invite you to subscribe or come back soon to read more.