A new perspective on industrial leadership…

We meet often with industrial leadership teams to help them with their brand identity development as a first step toward more effective marketing. These are engineering, manufacturing and sales professionals who are inclined to modernize their branding and marketing, just as they have modernized their manufacturing operations. They want to identify and remove the “constraints” within these activities, so that they can become true centers of competence in the organization.

Now we’re talking. Bring it on.

However, when it comes to branding and marketing, the constraint for any industrial leadership team is one of perspective. All around the table, each leader will tell you that their products and services are the best. The CEO is also at the table and, suspecting otherwise, suggests the group should take an honest look at how well the organization is communicating, both internally and to customers.

All will nod at the wisdom of this.

And then someone will ask, but how much does a new website cost? And someone else will ask, how much time will brand identity development take away from our work? And sales may suggest, can’t we just quickly retool our old site and use the money for bonus incentives? 

And then in the worst of scenarios, a process quality control manager will assume the task of vendor managing the branding process so as to minimize its intrusion on the leadership team. And now we’re NOT talking.

Therein lies the overwhelming constraint to industrial branding and marketing – an internally focused perspective that impedes an open, honest, collective endeavor to bring forward the company’s more profitable brand identity. Until this constraint is alleviated, a company simply cannot achieve its greater potential in the marketplace.

The constraint of an internal perspective is pervasive among manufacturing companies that have done well enough by staying internally focused on production and selling what is on their product line cards. The internally focused viewpoint that “our people are the best and our products are the best” has worked well enough to get the company this far, so why change?

Why change? CEOs who expect more from their organizations know the answer to this question. An internally focused perspective keeps a good company from contemplating true innovation and genuine customer relationship development. And during leadership discussions around such change, an internally focused perspective does not find urgency in managing down the cost of a new website. Rather, the team joins in the effort to identify and communicate ways the company can solve customer problems and costs.

CEOs know they need this change. It starts from a different perspective.

jb

centrifuge-now.com

Was your company put on this earth for a reason?

The way we are raised matters. Whether the “we” in that sentence means you, your family or the company where you work, how we are raised matters.

I’ve not posted to this blog since my mother died of pancreatic cancer last fall. Just couldn’t get into it. But mom said something to me near the end and after a couple months of thinking about it, her words have prodded this returning note. 

Mom was 91 years old, had been a constant in my life and I somehow thought we had more time. So that weekend when every few hours she opened her eyes to share fewer and fewer words, she was much braver and caring than I knew at the time.

Words take on greater meaning when the person saying them is dying and trying to sum things up for you. But while her words were unfaltering and emphatic, they sounded too familiar to be all that profound. I don’t know what I was expecting when she opened her eyes near the end to gather the energy to say, “God put you on this earth for a reason, John.”

Now that some time has passed to think about it, they were the right words. Regardless one’s faith or philosophy, having a sense of purpose matters. Whether we move through life as individuals or collectively as families, communities or companies, in the end, having a sense of purpose matters. 

You might not think this has much relevance in the realm of industrial manufacturing, where the mantra of building a brand identity is so often without meaning or measure. But if it is your path in life to be a leader of such an organization, then it is important for you to know that the way your company is being raised does matter and there’s not as much time as you think, so start communicating. 

Your people need to know that they and their company are special, that collectively their company has the potential to be great and that it was put on this earth for a reason.

jb

centrifuge-now.com