Why do you do what you do? That's the question used nowadays during employee team-building exercises in places like Silicon Valley, google and Twitter. The thought being, if you and your co-workers can hammer out WHY you do the kind of work you do, then perhaps the group of you can agree on the underlying shared core values that should be driving your business, the values that should in turn drive value definition and value delivery to your customers.
The goal is to dig deeper to expose any misalignment between what we do and what we would aspire to do, were we to follow our inner motivations.
Now, ask this same question of the decision makers within your most coveted customer segments. Dig deep enough, and if you find the answer to be similar, then you have struck gold. The discovery being, what matters most is not on your company's line card, or in the technical discussion of what your products do. What matters is that you connect with your customer on a deeper level of need.
WDYDWYD is a question every business manager needs to encounter on the path to becoming a business leader, because the answers are not written on lengthy and all-absorbing daytime to-do lists. They are written on many a wish list kept among our more private thoughts, tucked away nightly after the lights have been turned off.
jb
Monday, October 25, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
On reaching the age of reason and delaying dementia...
We reach the age of reason at age seven and from there on apparently, we need to train our brains to delay dementia. I take this to be the message of the banner ad on my Linked in home page. Philips is the sponsor of the ad, and since my business partner and I once did some cool web work for them, I don't doubt the veracity of the ad. Moreover, I am convinced there is a message here for all business leaders.
Putting an organization together is like reaching the age of reason: Here you are in the world, now what? You've got all your brains, what are you going to do with them?
Somewhere along the way, if we are lucky, as individuals we discover what we are really good at, passionate about and can be successful doing. But when you are an organization trying to become a successful company, then you are many brains, brains that have matured beyond the age of reason to find their own way, brains that have formed their own beliefs and opinions, and your vision is not really theirs.
It's easy to see how disoriented an organization can be when it needs to become a company, but is not guided by a clear understanding of its value potential, vision and mission. The Philips ad is right, inasmuch as business leadership goes.
An organization without a unifying brand identity faces early dementia.
jb
Putting an organization together is like reaching the age of reason: Here you are in the world, now what? You've got all your brains, what are you going to do with them?
Somewhere along the way, if we are lucky, as individuals we discover what we are really good at, passionate about and can be successful doing. But when you are an organization trying to become a successful company, then you are many brains, brains that have matured beyond the age of reason to find their own way, brains that have formed their own beliefs and opinions, and your vision is not really theirs.
It's easy to see how disoriented an organization can be when it needs to become a company, but is not guided by a clear understanding of its value potential, vision and mission. The Philips ad is right, inasmuch as business leadership goes.
An organization without a unifying brand identity faces early dementia.
jb
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Organizational alignment isn't about consensus...
I have long believed that clarity and consensus were prerequisites to organizational change. My belief being, a company cannot move in a cohesive direction until a CEO's executive team achieves a "consensus" opinion as to that direction. In my firm's world, that direction enables the building of brand identity and going to market, strategically guided by two reference points: internal value definition and external value recognition.
But it turns out I've been wrong. Achieving clarity is essential, but achieving consensus is not. I became convinced of this recently upon meeting a gentleman by the name of Miles Kierson.
Mr. Kierson (kiersonconsulting.com) speaks with a quiet confidence. He has been a leadership consultant for over twenty-five years; so when I told him of my many encounters with B2B organizations unable to market and to sell to their full potential, due to their lack of clarity and consensus, he genuinely understood. Then he shared the following observation, which he has also summed up nicely in his book, The Transformational Power of Executive Team Alignment:
"Executive team alignment is only powerful when it is a function of a commitment that has been made in advance. The commitment is this: Whenever a decision is made, I will align with it."
The revelation here is that most CEO's believe they have been moving their companies forward by seeking and getting consensus agreement on mission, message and strategic direction – when in fact, consensus is almost always impossible to achieve. All too often, what a CEO has really been experiencing is silent disagreement, caused by the CEO's failure to communicate up front exactly how he or she intends to arrive at each decision. In his book, Mr. Kierson identifies six different ways a decision can be made, all of them legitimate, but only one of which is by consensus. So when a CEO thinks he's looking for consensus, but the executive team knows otherwise, then "what we have here is failure to communicate." Which leads to organizational entropy and failures to execute.
Communication is a funny, fluid thing. Enlightened, insight-based communication flows from the top down and from the customer back up (value definition/value recognition), allowing wrong-headed beliefs to be eroded or washed away; or more often than not, allowing them to be smoothly, agreeably bypassed to create alignment and momentum.
jb
But it turns out I've been wrong. Achieving clarity is essential, but achieving consensus is not. I became convinced of this recently upon meeting a gentleman by the name of Miles Kierson.
Mr. Kierson (kiersonconsulting.com) speaks with a quiet confidence. He has been a leadership consultant for over twenty-five years; so when I told him of my many encounters with B2B organizations unable to market and to sell to their full potential, due to their lack of clarity and consensus, he genuinely understood. Then he shared the following observation, which he has also summed up nicely in his book, The Transformational Power of Executive Team Alignment:
"Executive team alignment is only powerful when it is a function of a commitment that has been made in advance. The commitment is this: Whenever a decision is made, I will align with it."
The revelation here is that most CEO's believe they have been moving their companies forward by seeking and getting consensus agreement on mission, message and strategic direction – when in fact, consensus is almost always impossible to achieve. All too often, what a CEO has really been experiencing is silent disagreement, caused by the CEO's failure to communicate up front exactly how he or she intends to arrive at each decision. In his book, Mr. Kierson identifies six different ways a decision can be made, all of them legitimate, but only one of which is by consensus. So when a CEO thinks he's looking for consensus, but the executive team knows otherwise, then "what we have here is failure to communicate." Which leads to organizational entropy and failures to execute.
Communication is a funny, fluid thing. Enlightened, insight-based communication flows from the top down and from the customer back up (value definition/value recognition), allowing wrong-headed beliefs to be eroded or washed away; or more often than not, allowing them to be smoothly, agreeably bypassed to create alignment and momentum.
jb
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