So How Do We Reward Risk-Taking?

Five years ago, appliance makers Maytag and Whirlpool both faced a recessionary environment, intense global competition, and products that consumers could not tell apart. Maytag elected to hunker down and cut costs while Whirlpool took a different tack. Under then-CEO Dave Whitwam, the company launched an all-out, enterprise-wide initiative to develop a core competency in innovation. Not having a cookbook to follow, they experimented with how best to reward risk-takers and foster a culture where ideas were welcomed, supported, and funded. 

 

Now the results are in. Maytag, a once-great American brand, cost cut its way to near-oblivion, while a reenergized Whirlpool grew by 36 percent into a global appliance powerhouse. Whirlpool is in the final stages of buying up Maytag for a fraction of its former worth. 

 

More and more companies are embracing Whirlpool's strategy as they see the limits of Maytag's. Yet in attempting to drive organic growth to supplement acquisitions, companies routinely find they lack the champions and risk-takers needed to dream up and execute bold new ideas. "We've been operationally-minded for so long," they tell me, "that we are having trouble finding entrepreneurially-minded folks to lead the charge." 

 

What behavior do you reward? When it comes to changing people's behavior, it's important to remember an underlying principle: behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated. If you've rewarded risk-avoidance, punished failure, and ingrained incrementalism for decades and that was what moved managers up the ladder of success, guess what types of projects people run away from?

For years, companies from Tyco to Kraft to GE rewarded managers for making their numbers, gobbling up other companies, and cutting costs. The fact is, it worked. Until it didn't any longer. Maverick thinkers who somehow made it through the Orwellian hiring tests that help HR departments identify "people who think and act just like us" were not seen as valuable talent but as difficult-to-manage nuisances. Often their reward was to be first-fired during layoffs.

So if you're now looking for different behavior, you have to get clear on exactly what actions, decisions, cultural norms and values you've been rewarding - and then look for ways to incent different behaviors going forward. It won't be enough to have your CEO speak about the importance of innovation as one of the company's 17 top priorities and expect people to suddenly alter ingrained habits. You'll need to do lots of things to get the word out that expectations are changing, and that not innovating is the greater risk to one's career.

If you have trouble identifying people in your organization whom everyone recognizes as risk-takers and entrepreneurs, that should tell you something. My advice: steer clear of monetary rewards as a way to get attention. Beyond small monetary rewards given to teams not individuals, cash for ideas can backfire, and besides, the literature shows that recognition is the most reliable reward of all. Properly motivated and recognized, enough people will step forward and seemingly ordinary contributors that you may have assumed "didn't have it in them" will do amazing things.

Publicizing examples of innovativeness from your own people is another way to gain buy-in and reinforce the new behaviors you're hoping to spawn. Not only do you shine a spotlight on people who dearly need recognition, but you provide evidence that innovation isn't something that only the Apples and the Googles can do; it's something your people are doing too - and need to do more of. Give recognition to teams and individuals who stick their necks out to launch new products, even if they aren't successful right off and even if they fail. 

The rarest, and therefore the most valuable people to identify, are those who are more concerned about customers than they are about the latest company politics. Seek out those who care deeply about identifying problems customers have that they aren't solving very effectively using existing products. Look for people who dream up new solutions to customers' problems, who aren't content just to perfect the system but want to originate bold new products, services and solutions and change the system.

Robert B. Tucker is president of The Innovation Resource (www.innovationresource.com), an innovation consulting firm based in Santa Barbara, Calif. A frequent keynote speaker at conferences, he is the author of "Driving Growth Through Innovation: How Leading Firms Are Transforming Their Futures."

Social Networks Take Up The Most Online Time

 People in the U.S. who go online spend more time on average perusing social networks than watching online video. But what else is eating up time: email.

GfK and the Interactive Advertising Bureau conducted an online survey in the U.S. as part of a digital-video report ahead of the advertising “upfronts” and the web video “NewFronts.”  Statista created the chart from the report’s data, which was published in April.

People surveyed said they spent about an average of 37 minutes a day on social networks like Facebook and Twitter in 2013, according to the survey. Emailing clocked in at a robust 29 minutes, while watching online video — everything from TV shows and movies to amateur video and shorter professionally produced clips — was 23 minutes.

The report found that while people doubled the amount of time they spent watching online video over the past four years, the overall percentage of their online time spent watching video slipped to 12% in 2013 from 13% the year before. (Overall time online is rising, largely driven by mobile.)  The average number of minutes watching video, emailing and reading newspapers online all slipped. What are people doing more of? Reading blogs, gaming and listening to the radio all saw increases.

– Brian R. Fitzgerald

SOCIAL MEDIA EXPLAINED

100 Great Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Ask

Paul Graham, Jim Collins, Tony Hsieh, and other business leaders share the questions you should be asking if you want to improve your company.

 

 

There’s no Superman versus Iron Man face-off between questions and answers over which is the better tool for innovation. But if there were, questions would be winning. 

Questions ignite imaginations, avert catastrophes, and reveal unexpected paths to brighter destinations. Jim Collins, Marshall Goldsmith, and other thinkers have compiled their own stocks of questions, which they urge leaders to pose to themselves and their teams. The right questions don’t allow people to remain passive. They require reflection, followed by action.

Warren Berger, author of A More Beautiful Question, praises inquiry’s ability to trigger divergent thinking, in which the mind seeks multiple, sometimes non-obvious paths to a solution. Asking good questions and doing so often “opens people to new ideas and possibilities,” says Berger.

To compile this list of provocative questions for business owners, we reached out to entrepreneurs and management thinkers, scanned blogs, and revisited our favorite business books. (Though we tried to identify the origin of each question, some had competing claims of authorship. In those cases, we made our best call.) Have you got a great question that you use at your company? We welcome you to add your own to the list via the comment box below the story. Rigid mindsets are dangerous things. We hope the following will keep your mind supple.  

1. How can we become the company that would put us out of business? -Danny Meyer, CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group 
2. Are we  relevant? Will we be relevant five years from now? Ten? -Debra Kaye, innovation consultant and author
3. If energy were free, what would we do differently? -Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos
   Hsieh explains, “This is a thought experiment to see how you would reconfigure the business if you had different resources available or knew that different resources would one day become available. Another question might be, what if storage was free? Or what if labor costs half as much or twice as much?”
4. What is it like to work for me? -Robert Sutton, author and management professor at Stanford
5. If we weren’t already in this business, would we enter it today? And if not, what are we going to do about it? -Peter Drucker, management expert and author 
   The late Drucker posed a variation on this question to Jack Welch in the 1980s. It inspired General Electric’s “fix, sell, or close” strategy for exiting or restructuring unprofitable businesses.
6. What trophy do we want on our mantle? - Marcy Massura, a digital marketer and brand strategist at MSL Group 
   Massura explains, “Not every business determines success the same way.Is growth most important to you? Profitability? Stability?”
7. Do we have bad profits? -Jonathan L. Byrnes, author and senior lecturer at MIT 
   Byrnes explains, “Some investments look attractive, but they also take the company’s capital and focus away from its main line of business.”
8. What counts that we are not counting? -Chip Conley, founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality and head of global hospitality for Airbnb 
   Conley explains, “In any business, we measure cash flow, profitability, and a few other key metrics. But what are the tangible and intangible assets that we have no means of measuring, but that truly differentiate our business? These may be things like the company’s reputation, employee engagement, and the brand’s emotional resonance with people inside and outside the business.”
9.  In the past few months, what is the smallest change we have made that has had the biggest positive result? What was it about that small change that produced the large return? -Robert Cialdini, author and professor emeritus of marketing and psychology at Arizona State University
10. Are we paying enough attention to the partners our company depends on to succeed? -Ron Adner, author and professor at Tuck School of Business 
    Adner explains, “Even companies that execute well themselves are vulnerable to the missteps of suppliers, distributors, and others.”
11. What prevents me from making the changes I know will make me a more effective leader? -Marshall Goldsmith, leadership coach and author
12. What are the implications of this decision 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years from now? -Suzy Welch, author
13. Do I make eye contact 100 percent of the time? -Tom Peters, author and management expert
14. What is the smallest subset of the problem we can usefully solve? -Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator
15. Are we changing as fast as the world around us? -Gary Hamel, author and management consultant
16. If no one would ever find out about my accomplishments, how would I lead differently? -Adam Grant, author and professor at Wharton
17. Which customers can’t participate  in our market  because they lack skills, wealth, or convenient access to existing solutions? -Clayton Christensen, author, Harvard Business School professor, and co-founder of Innosight
18. Who uses our product in ways we never expected? -Kevin P. Coyne and Shawn T. Coyne, authors and strategy consultants
19. How likely is it that a customer would recommend our company to a friend or colleague? -Andrew Taylor, executive chairman of Enterprise Holdings 
    "Taylor’s use of this question at Enterprise Rent-A-Car inspired Fred Reichheld to create the Net Promoter Score, a widely used metric for customer loyalty.
20. Is this an issue for analysis or intuition? -Tom Davenport, author and professor at Babson College
    Davenport explains, “If it’s a decision that’s important, recurring, and amenable to improvement, you should invest in gathering data, doing analysis, and examining failure factors. If it’s a decision you will only make once, or if for some reason you can’t get data or improve the decision-making process, you might as well go with your experience and intuition.”
21. Who, on the executive team or the board, has spoken to a customer recently? -James Champy, author and management expert
22. Did my employees make progress today? -Teresa Amabile, author and Harvard Business School professor 
    Amabile explains, “Forward momentum in employees’ work has the greatest positive impact on their motivation.”
23. What one word do we want to own in the minds of our customers, employees, and partners? -Matthew May, author and innovation expert 
    May explains, “This deceptively simple question creates utter clarity inside and outside a company. It is incredibly difficult for most people to answer and difficult to get consensus on--even at the highest levels. Apple = different. Toyota = quality. Google = search. It’s taken me three years to get one of my clients, Edmunds.com, to find and agree on their word: trust.”
24. What should we stop doing? -Peter Drucker, management expert and author
25. What are the gaps in my knowledge and experience? -Charles Handy, author and management expert
26. What am I trying to prove to myself, and how might it be hijacking my life and business success? -Bob Rosen, executive coach and author
27. If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what would he do? -Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel 
    In 1985, with the company’s memory-chip business under siege, CEO Grove famously posed this hypothetical to Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, leading them to ditch memory for microprocessors.
28. If I had to leave my organization for a year and the only communication I could have with employees was a single paragraph, what would I write? -Pat Lencioni, author and founder of The Table Group 
    Lencioni explains, “Determining the substance of this paragraph forces you to identify the company’s core values and strategies, and the roles and responsibilities of those hypothetically left behind.”
29. Who have we, as a company, historically been when we’ve been at our best? -Keith Yamashita, author and founder of SYPartners
30. What do we stand for--and what are we against? -Scott Goodson, co-founder of StrawberryFrog
31. Is there any reason to believe the opposite of my current belief? -Chip and Dan Heath, authors who teach at Stanford’s and Duke’s business schools, respectively
32. Do we underestimate the customer’s journey? -Matt Dixon, author and executive director of research at CEB 
    Dixon explains, “Often, companies don’t understand the entirety of the customer’s experience and how many channels may have already failed them. They don’t understand that the customer goes to the website first, pokes around but can’t find the answer to their question, and then tries to start up a chat with an agent, only to get frustrated by the delayed response. Only then do they go to the Contact Us tab and call. From the company’s perspective, the call is square one. The customer sees it as, you’ve already wasted 15 minutes of my time.”
33. Among our stronger employees, how many see themselves at the company in three years? How many would leave for a 10 percent raise from another company? -Jonathan Rosenberg, adviser to Google management
34. What did we miss in the interview for the worst hire we ever made? -Alberto Perlman, CEO of Zumba Fitness
35. Do we have the right people on the bus? -Jim Collins, author and management consultant  
36. What would have to be true for the option on the table to be the best possible choice? -Roger Martin, professor, Rotman Business School 
    Martin uses this question when members of a group bring diverse opinions to a decision. It allows people to step back from their strongly held beliefs and contemplate a range of circumstances that might--or might not--support each option.
37. Am I failing differently each time? -David Kelley, founder, IDEO
38. When information truly is ubiquitous, when reach and connectivity are completely global, when computing resources are infinite, and when a whole new set of impossibilities are not only possible, but happening, what will that do to our business? -Jonathan Rosenberg
39. Do we aggressively reward and promote the people who have the biggest impact on creating excellent products? -Jonathan Rosenberg
40. What is our Big Hairy Audacious Goal? -Jim Collins
41.  Is our strategy driving our strategy? Or is the way in which we allocate resources driving our strategy? -Mark Johnson, co-founder, Innosight Johnson explains, “You might think you have a strategic plan, but your people may be doing things on a day-to-day basis that are undermining it. It’s essential that people believe in the strategy so they can make the daily decisions that support it.”
42. How is the way you as the leader think and process information affecting your organizational culture?  -Ari Weinzweig, co-founder Zingerman’s Community of Businesses  Weinzweig explains, “Describe the culture you'd love to have in your organization. Then check the desired characteristics of the culture against the way you think and process information. Are they congruent?  Do you want collaboration but think in isolation?  Do you want a flat organization but think hierarchically?
43. Why don’t our customers like us? -James Champy
44. How can we become more high-tech but still be high touch? -James Champy
45. What do we need to start doing? -Jack Bergstrand, CEO, Brand Velocity
46. Whom among your colleagues do you trust, and for what? -Charles Handy 
    Handy tells this story: “One CEO had a problem with his best subordinate, who was very good at his job. But he was also personally ambitious, so the CEO could not trust him to be totally loyal. The dilemma was whether to keep him because of his abilities or lose him because he couldn't be sure of him.  The answer was for the CEO to either assign the subordinate jobs where his loyalty wasn’t relevant or to confront him with his feelings. After some pushing from me. the CEO did the latter, and it cleared the air.”
47.  Are you satisfied with your current role?  If not, what is missing from it? -Charles Handy
48. Do you keep 50% of your time unscheduled? -Dov Frohman, engineer and executive, author The 50% stat may be somewhat arbitrary. But Frohman’s point, laid out in his book “Leadership the Hard Way,” is that leaders should make sure they maintain sufficient “slop” in their schedules to allow space for reflection and the assimilation of lessons learned from experience.
49. What would I recommend my friend do if he were facing this dilemma? -Chip and Dan Heath
50. What kind of crime could a potential new hire have committed that would not only not disqualify him/her from being hired by our organization, but would actually indicate that he/she might be a particularly good fit?  -Pat Lencioni Lencioni explains, “In this case "crime" is a metaphor.  This question speaks to values. A particularly idealistic organization may be okay with hiring someone that was previously reprimanded for standing up for his beliefs or blowing the whistle on something. A particularly competitive organization may be okay hiring someone who in prior positions was reprimanded for being overly arrogant or difficult to work with.” 
51. If our customer were my grandmother, would I tell her to buy what we’re selling? -Dan Pink, author
52. If our company went out of business tomorrow, would anyone who doesn't get a paycheck here care? -Dan Pink
53. What is something you believe that nearly no one agrees with you on? -Peter Thiel, partner, Founders Fund
54. Do you have an implicit bias for capital investments over people investments? -Tom Peters Peters explains: “Capital enhancements are important. They're also cool. You can get your picture taken next to a new robot. People investments are invisible and hard to measure. The tendency is to favor the hard stuff over the soft stuff. But the soft stuff is invariably more related to long-term strategic success than the hard stuff.”
55. Do we have enough freaky customers in our portfolio pushing us to the limit day in and day out? -Tom Peters
56. Who are you going to put out of business, and why? -Brad Feld, managing director, Foundry Group
57. What happens at this company when people fail? -Bob Sutton and Jeff Pfeffer, Stanford professors
58. How will you motivate the dishwashers? -Bill Keena, independent casino consultant 
    Job interview questions comprise a genre unto themselves, so we chose not to include them in this article. With one exception. Keena says the only correct answer to this question, posed to manager candidates in a hotel chain, is “If they are overloaded I would roll up my sleeves and start washing right alongside them.” That speaks to the candidate’s ability to create employee engagement. Turned inward, however, the question reveals even more about culture. Ask yourself this: Are we the kind of company that cares whether our dishwashers are motivated?
59. Do your employees have the opportunity to do what they do best everyday? -Marcus Buckingham, author
60. Where is our petri dish? -Tim Ogilvie, CEO. Peer Insight
61. What Microsoft is this the Altair Basic of? -Paul Graham
62. Do we say “no” to customers for no reason? -Matt Dixon
    You may have created your customer policies at a time when you lacked resources, technology wasn’t up-to-snuff, or low service levels were the industry norm. Have those circumstances changed? If so, your customer policies should change too.
63. Instead of going to current contacts for new ideas, what if you reconnected with dormant contacts--the people you used to know?  If you were going reactivate a dormant tie, who would it be? -Adam Grant
64.  Do you see more potential in people than they do in themselves? -Adam Grant
65. Are you taking your company in the direction of better and revenue or cheaper and cost? -Michael Raynor, director, Deloitte Services LP
66. Would you rather sell to knowledgeable and informed customers or to uninformed customers? -Don Peppers, founding partner, Peppers and Rogers Group 
    Partly it’s a matter of values: uninformed customers can be easy targets who swallow your pitch without pushing back. Selling to knowledgeable customers, by contrast, “is a mark of a trustable firm--one that is working to advance its customers’ best interests,” says Peppers. And there’s another benefit: “Your most valuable customer references are not the ones who spend the most, but the ones who have the most expertise and authority. That gives them credibility with their peers.”
67. What are we challenging, in the sense that Mac challenged the PC or Dove tackled the Beauty Myth? -Mark Barden and Adam Morgan, founders, eatbigfish 
    Barden and Morgan explain that for companies challenging market leaders with greater resources, competing on the status quo is death. Instead they must assault the dynamics of a category (the dominance of PC) or a cultural meme (what society defines as “beautiful” in women).
68. In what way can we redefine the criteria of choice in our category in our favor, as Method introduced style and design to cleaning and Virgin America returned glamor to flying? -Mark Barden and Adam Morgan
69. In the past year, what have you done (or could you have done) to increase the accurate perception of this company/brand as ethical and honest? -Robert Cialdini 
    Cialdini explains: “Of course, the preferred way to increase the perception of a company as ethical is to foster ethical practice within the organization. However, sometimes a company can be ethical without a corresponding perception in the marketplace that this is indeed the case. Therefore, companies should strive not only to enhance and reinforce an ethical culture but also to arrange for a warranted perception of that ethicality to be part of their brand.”
70. To whom do you add value? -Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood, co-founders, The RBL Group
71. Why should people listen to you? -Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood
72. How would our PR, marketing, and social media change if we did not use outside agencies? -Guy Kawasaki, founder, Garage Technology Ventures and Alltop 
    Kawasaki explains, “Let’s see what happens when a company can't abdicate these functions to hired guns. I'd bet that employees, because they know and love their product more than any agency, can do a much better job at less expense to boot.”
73. What was the last experiment we ran? -Scott Berkun, author
74. Are your clients Pepsi or Coke drinkers?” -Marcy Massura Massura explains: “This is a symbolic question that gets at how deeply you have researched your target clients. Business leaders can find out more about their customers than ever before thanks to the ability to collect data on a grand scale. Such detailed information allows the company to interact with targets in new ways and to assess current product development and marketing roadmaps.”
75. What is your BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement)? -Roger Fisher and William Ury, negotiation experts
76. What's the best design framework for an organization in a post Industrial-Age if the top-down, command and control model is no longer relevant? -Traci Fenton, CEO, Worldblu
77. Who are four people whose careers I’ve enhanced? -Alex Gorsky, CEO, Johnson & Johnson
78. Where can we break convention? -Shane Snow, co-founder, Contently
79. Whose voice (department, ethnic group, women, older workers, etc) might you have missed hearing from in your company, and how might you amplify this voice to create positive momentum for your business? -Jane Hyun and Audrey Lee, partners, Hyun & Associates
80. In retrospect, of the projects that we pulled the plug on, what percent do we wish had been allowed to keep going, and what percent do we wish had ended earlier? -Ron Adner
81. Do you, as a leader, bounce back quickly from setbacks? -Bob Rosen
82. Who do we think the world wants us to be? -Geoffrey Moore, organizational theorist and management consultant
83. How will we build a 100-year startup? -Phil Libin, CEO, Evernote
84. What successful thing are we doing today that may be blinding us to new growth opportunities? -Scott D. Anthony, managing partner, Innosight
85. If you could go back in time five years, what decision would you make differently?  What is your best guess as to what decision you're making today you might regret five years from now? -Patrick Lencioni
86. What stupid rule would we most like to kill? -Lisa Bodell, CEO, FutureThink
87. What potential megatrends could make our business model obsolete? -Michael A. Cusumano, professor, MIT
88. What information is critical to our organization that our executives are ignoring? -Max Bazerman, professor, Harvard Business School
89. What have we done to protect our business from competitive encroachment? -Tom Stemberg, managing general partner, Highland Venture Capital
90. If you had to rebuild your organization without any traditional competitive advantages (i.e., no killer a technology, promising research, innovative product/service delivery model, etc.), how would your people have to approach their work and collaborate together in order to create the necessary conditions for success?” -Jesse Sostrin, founder, Sostrin Consulting
91. What are the rules and assumptions my industry operates under? What if the opposite were true?Phil McKinney, innovation expert
92. Do the decisions we make today help people and the planet tomorrow? -Kevin Cleary, president, Clif Bar
93. What is your theory of human motivation, and how does your compensation plan fit with that view? -Dan Ariely, professor, Duke University
94. How do you encourage people to take control and responsibility? -Dan Ariely
95. Who do we want out customers to become? -Michael Schrage, professor, MIT
96. How do I stay inspired? -Paul Bennett, chief creative officer, IDEO
97. Do I know what I’m doing? And who do I call if I don’t? -Erin Pooley, business journalist
98. Do they use it? -Howard Tullman, CEO, 1871
99. What is our question? -Dev Patnaik, CEO, Jump Associates
100. How is business? Why? -Thomas A. Stewart, executive director, National Center for the Middle Market

IMAGE: Shutterstock

LEIGH BUCHANAN is an editor-at-large for Inc. magazine. A former editor at Harvard Business Review and founding editor of WebMaster magazine, she writes regular columns on leadership and workplace culture.

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TEAM + TRANSFORMATION = TURNAROUND

BACKGROUND

A few years ago, a business acquaintance referred me to a European multinational media organization which was looking for someone to takeover leadership of one of their major Canadian media operations. The parent organization operated over 300 publications, 60 websites in 21 countries. North America was their largest market and Canada represented approximately 95% of their North American business. The particular Canadian operation that I was asked to lead was causing them significant challenges. The most notable of which was the fact that it had become their largest money loser globally.

 
This business unit operated approximately 14 regional and national magazines and newspapers, 3 websites, employed approximately 50 people, was headquartered in Toronto and had 7 regional offices. It was a market leader with a circulation of over 700,000 publications monthly. The publications were printed in 4 different locations across the country and distributed through 7,500 locations nationwide.

In the 5 years prior to my arrival, the senior leadership role of this Canadian company had changed several times. The management team (i.e. department heads) had been negatively impacted by this ever changing leadership. The individual managers, for the most part, while capable within their respective areas of responsibility, suffered from a lack of leadership and as a result had developed a noticeable “silo” approach to handling problems and making decisions. In other words, there did not appear to be any noticeable team approach to dealing with issues and challenges. Each department implemented their individual solution when it came to dealing with situations that were of a more general nature. This had resulted in situations where the actions of one department negatively impacted the ability of another to function properly. There was a fair degree of acrimony among some department heads and, on my first day, I was informed that a few key department heads had submitted written or verbal resignations.

Financially the business was in bad shape:

• there was a significant operating loss and had been for a number of years.
• bad debt was in the double digit range.
• some accounts receivable were over 180 days past due and, of these, several owed well over $150,000.
• many of these larger bad debt accounts were still booking business with the company despite their outstanding debt situation.
• the company’s cost structure had gotten out of control in some areas. For example, websites were locked into a cost structure of $75,000 a month, produced no discernible revenue benefits and were experiencing declining traffic.

The company’s European head office was losing patience with the operation and I was advised that I was the last “kick-at-the-can” for this business. Upon my arrival, I was given several briefings by head office senior executive on their views of what needed to be done which included a list of which members of the management team should be replaced and where costs should be slashed.

SITUATION

My assessment of the challenges I faced was:

• My superiors wanted to see developments quickly. (NOTE: The global COO, to whom North America reported, met with me 2 weeks after I joined the company and within an hour of our meeting advised me that “my vacation period” was over and I was to send him, within 48 hours, a list of my 10 quick fixes for the business.)
• I did not want to immediately act on the suggestions made by my superiors. I needed to be able to make my own decisions regarding my management team.
• There were a few members of my management team who had indicated their intention to leave. I needed to convince these individuals to stay.
• I had a reluctant and battle scarred management team. Many of whom were convinced that my primary responsibility was to wind down the operation at the behest of my superiors. The management team’s buy-in and commitment was integral to any transformation strategy for the business. The challenge was to find a mechanism for achieving this immediately despite their misgivings.
• I needed to produce identifiable and meaningful short-term progress in order to reassure my superiors that my decision to not implement their suggestions immediately was a proper course of action.

STRATEGY

It was important to get the management team involved in the problem solving and decision making process at the outset. They needed to feel empowered and involved if I wanted them to stay around, take ownership and be part of the turnaround process. 

In hindsight, I guess I was implementing a cross functional team style approach. The benefits associated with this approach, included:

• Faster problem solving and decision making
• Increased level of by-in or commitment to the resultant action plan by those who crafted the solution.
•  Increased ability to get multiple situations dealt with simultaneously. A cross functional approach should require less senior management involvement in each problem solving and decision making circumstance. In my case, I worked with individual managers to help identify the key issues or problems and then turned the matter over to teams who would return to me when they had arrived at what they felt were implementable solutions. This allowed me to have a number of problems being worked on simultaneously without personally being involved in every detail and running the risk of being the source of delay.
• Opportunities to assess the quality of the management talent by observing them in real work situations. It can be a very effective way to measure how individuals function in a team, their leadership or potential leadership qualities, problem solving and decision making skills, organizational capabilities and overall work ethic.
• Improved customer relationships resulting in increased sales and brand strengthening. I have on occasion put inside and outside sales together with finance to manage aspects of the sales process and experienced surprising benefits.

This idea first came to me when I was running a company that was facing a particularly aggressive competitive environment. We were losing sales because the sales reps, especially the outside sales reps, when trying to cut deals with clients were required to contact their supervisors for approval before they were permitted to wander off the official pricing schedule.

The solution was to have the sales management team and finance department work together to come up with a pricing management process that would provide the field reps with the latitude to make pricing decisions while sitting with the clients while at the same time safe guard the businesses margin requirements. Finance and sales management structured a pricing practice that, while riskier in terms of maintaining margins, ensured that our reps left very little money on the table for competitors.

In addition to the direct benefits in terms of increased sales, clients were impressed that our reps were empowered to make these decisions and to make them quickly. This reflected well on the reps individually as well as the company.

IMPLEMENTATION

Beginning the day I arrived, I spent most of my time meeting with my managers one-on-one to discuss their departments and to get their perspective on what they felt was required to get things back on track. These meetings were always held in their offices, never in mine. I needed to get them to accept my presence and this was the best way to reinforce that I was part of their team and my role was to remove obstacles as well as help and support them. I had no hesitation in telling them that they were the experts when it came to their departments. Through these initial sessions and ensuing discussions, I believe it became evident to the management team that I had high level of confidence in their ability to get this organization back on its feet.

Initially, from a few Department Heads, I was greeted with a litany of “won’t, don’t and can’t” responses to my suggestions on how we could attack a problem. This was not entirely unexpected, I had experienced this type of resistance in previous roles. Most of what I was suggesting were actions that these managers had requested under previous administrations but their requests had been met with resistance and traditional risk averse rationalizations. What I was now hearing was the re-iteration of what they perceived as the parent company’s resistance to these ideas.

NOTE:  I always find it amazing that when companies or business units find themselves in dire circumstances the senior management (i.e. the guys in Head Office) often adheres to “safe” practices that probably got them into their difficult situation in the first place.  A major portion of my career has involved being recruited into organizations to lead management teams that are underutilized and, often, have become demotivated due to being subjected to risk averse senior level decision making and problem solving practices. The major challenge I usually face is transforming these teams into motivated, energized groups that embrace innovation,  make the tough decisions and zealously pursue being best-in-class.

I seldom have encountered managers or department heads who do not want to take a risk. What I have encountered are managers who have been discouraged from taking risks because of a lack of senior management support. Someone once expressed it best when they said “senior management want us to take risks but not to risk anything”.

Changing or transforming an indigenous team can be difficult and not without its challenges. Often it is preferred to replace all or part of the existing team with known talent that you may have worked with previously. It has been my experience that the management team that was in place when an organization went off the rails can be the best team to get it back on track. It seldom is the front line management or department heads who have caused the problems, they are just the ones asked to accept the blame. Given the opportunity and the proper environment they often quickly rise to the challenge.

RESULTS

 

With a few exceptions, I was able to keep the original team intact and in the first 12 months the team was able to accomplish the following: 

• The company, after years of losses, was  returned to profitability.

• Bad debt plummeted from double digit to low single digit.

• Production costs dropped $1,000,000.

• New products were introduced.

• Web costs were reduced almost $50,000 per month and the websites were restructured to be revenue contributors.

• Magazines and newspapers were redesigned to make them more relevant to market needs, to reduce paper costs and to optimize the use of ad space. Studies were conducted regarding readers preference for size and aspects of layout. The objective was to reduce paper costs by reducing publication size but not lose ad revenue by reducing ad sizes excessively.

•  Editorial costs were reduced 25% while maintaining quantity and quality of content.

•  Distribution was re-engineered.

Cooperation and Collaboration

by John J. Trakselis Coaching Essay

“It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too): those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” – Charles Darwin

“The most powerful force ever known on this planet is human cooperation - a force for construction and destruction.” – Jonathan Haidt

Do you remember some of the old Western movies where the good guy faces down the bad guys? I think the image of the lone gunslinger is a part of our American culture, but if you look at those western shoot ‘em up movies again, you will notice the presence of someone who assisted our hero in accomplishing his task. Maybe it was a little boy who yelled “watch out” or maybe it was the townspeople who mustered their courage to provide that extra “oomph” so our hero could get the job done. Rarely did one guy win the day all by himself – especially when you consider the number of incidents typically leading up to the final “shootout.” Someone was always rooting for and/or standing by our hero in some way. Heck, even the “Lone” Ranger had Tonto.

“I never did anything alone. Whatever was accomplished in this country was accomplished collectively.” – Golda Meir

So what makes us think we have to do everything by ourselves? Yes, we have a responsibility to address those things requiring our attention. However, we must keep in mind there are a number of ways to go about completing our assignments, and asking for help is key. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion recently that there is nothing we get done as a result of our singular efforts.

Think “Win-Win”

One of the important principles in cooperating and collaborating with others is Stephen Covey’s principle of “Think Win-Win.” Organized sports, political races, winning an Oscar or a Grammy are “Win-Lose” in the minds of the general public. In many respects, this is unfortunate. Not to diminish those who catch the brass ring, but the fact is that “winners” all have one thing in common. They have someone behind them who enabled, empowered, assisted or even pushed them to get to where they are. The same is true for those who earn a place or get nominated for a significant accolade.

In my work as a Vistage Chair I get to see a number of speakers and business coaches whom the general public views as individual performers. Sure, they are often on the stage by themselves and they might be the center of attention. But, if you look at what goes on behind the scenes, you’ll see there are a number of things they accomplish that requires a supporting crew. In some cases it might be handling the administrative tasks – the details that would distract these professionals from concentrating and preparing themselves for what they get paid to do. In other cases, winners may have trusted collaborators who tell them the truth (as they see it) with the sole purpose of pointing out the blind spots which can hinder success.

I also work with a number of successful business owners, CEOs and senior executives, and I have not found one who doesn’t want a good team behind him or her to help drive the success of the whole company. In a team situation, you may have heard that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. What is a chain in a company? It is the myriad processes, systems and people who run the business on a day-to-day basis. A well-functioning group of purposeful people is a beautiful thing to watch. A dysfunctional team, on the other hand, can be painful to observe.

So, I encourage you to think about how you can accomplish more with the assistance of others.

Take in Feedback—Be Coachable

“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” – Phil Jackson

At the personal level, I notice that in our rush to finish an assignment we may get irritated if someone suggests additional actions when we are ready to move toward completion. Notice your irritability! Take that extra minute and process that anger or fear or even sadness. Do you have an issue with the one who makes the suggestion? Not all “suggestions for improvement” are done with positive intent. While it may be hard to take disapproval of your work by someone who does not have your best interests at heart, see if you can focus on the quality of their suggestion. Is it helpful, practical or cost-effective? Will it add to the quality of the work? Will accepting the feedback improve your work, allow the project to be completed on time or be completed more economically? Is it part of the next phase or your work, i.e., is it essential now or for the future? Did you miss it when doing the work? Realize that it is rare when we can’t improve our work but also realize that you cannot reinvent the wheel every time you solve a problem, take on a challenge or pursue an opportunity.

Do You Belong Where You Are?

“Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.” – Ryunosuke Satoro

At the organization level take a look at how your culture supports results by fostering teamwork. Is it a sharing culture or a hoarding culture? Is it hero driven or is it results driven? I like participative, collaborative and collegial cultures. More work gets done in this type of environment, and I think the people in the company have more of a sense of accomplishment and belonging. They feel seen, heard and accepted. Their work and the work of others have more meaning. The funny thing about cultures, however, is that no one individual fits all types of settings. In fact, one of the big factors that will determine the success of any individual is their fit. If you don’t fit in two things will happen: you will eventually be shunned and you will ostracize yourself—and not necessarily in that order.

What will Make My Cooperation and Collaboration Successful?

“Nothing truly valuable can be achieved except by the unselfish cooperation of many individuals.” – Albert Einstein

If we seek greater cooperation and collaboration, the following questions might be helpful in determining if we can work with a particular individual or with others in a certain company:

• Do I have clearly defined values?
• Does my task (or responsibilities) have a clearly defined mission?
• How do my mission and values correlate with the purpose and values of the people I want to work with – in other words are we in alignment?
• Am I working in or with a culture where I fit in?
• What will be my unique contribution?
• How effectively will I work with others, including team members and my boss?
• How strongly do I trust my answers to these questions?
• How can I validate my conclusions – who is capable and willing to give me useful feedback?

The Bottom Line

Give up the illusion that you have to do everything yourself, all of the time! You can receive a lot more help than you may realize and there is a a great deal of assistance available to you. Look for the opportunity to make 1 plus 1 equal to 3 or more. The Pareto Principle says that the first 20% of the effort produces 80% of the results. You can get a lot closer to that 100% if you learn how to cooperate and collaborate with others in your endeavors and in their assignments. Think about getting to 100% without more effort but with the backing of your collaborators.

“One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery.” – Wallace Stegner

And, there is more, there always is.

Be genuine.