Archive for August, 2011

Strategy Based on Innovation

Tuesday, August 30th, 2011

By Howard Shore

One of the most important topics that I discuss with C-level leadership is strategic planning for business growth. It doesn’t matter how good or how bad the economy is, all companies want and need growth. (more…)

VN:F [1.9.16_1159]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

Was Hiring a Recruiter A Mistake?

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011

A person we will call “Tony,” recently used a recruiter, and this went against his usual practice. Typically he tries to avoid the cost of recruiters, seeing no value in the resource. The person he hired did not work out. The recruiter will help him replace this person at no additional cost, yet Tony’s first conclusion was that he had made a bad investment in the recruiter.  Was this a bad investment or not?

Tony forgot why he hired the recruiter in the first place. His company was short of recruitment resources and was in desperate need of someone to fill a specific position. After two months of knowing they needed to hire someone, no one in his company had done anything to generate one viable candidate.  They needed someone special, with specific industry experience, and wanted to do it as quickly as possible. While the company hired a recruiting firm on contingency, there was nothing stopping them from conducting a search on their own, which they did not do.

The firm quickly presented them with a few candidates. They decided to speak to two and hired one of them. The whole process took a month to six weeks. It could have taken less time, but Tony and the others that needed to provide information to the recruiting firm and conduct the interviews were slow to respond at first.

In the end, Tony chose what the recruiting firm thought was the lesser of the two candidates, but no one asked them. Actually, the recruiting firm found them hard to communicate with and could only contact them through email.  The recruiting firm was happy to make the placement, but found it strange that it only took 3 resumes before a person was hired. Typically it is not this easy.

The candidate started off well. However, they found that he was taking an unusual number of days off. This escalated, and it turned out that his work started suffering because he was having family problems. Ultimately, they had to fire this person as he could not meet the needs of the company.

So I pose the question to you, was it a bad business decision to hire the recruiter?

 

Howard Shore is a business growth expert who works with companies that want to maximize their growth potential by improving strategy, enhancing their knowledge, and improving motivation. To learn more about him or his firm please visit his website at www.activategroupinc.com  or contact Howard Shore at (305) 722-7216 or shoreh@activategroupinc.com .

VN:F [1.9.16_1159]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

Uncover Your Hidden Leadership Weaknesses

Thursday, August 18th, 2011

Often too much focus is put on the lagging indicators of leadership problems such as missed deadlines, sales coming in below plan, and disappointing profit results. The reality is that there are many weaknesses in behavior that should be managed and dealt that hide in plain sight. By ignoring these weaknesses you guarantee lower-than-optimal results.

Here are some questions you may want to ask each member of your management team to uncover your firm’s hidden leadership weaknesses:

  • What written or unwritten rules in your culture/environment/organization/department decrease the effectiveness of your people?
  • Which processes and systems are disincentives for your people to perform at a higher level?
  • When are your strengths becoming your weaknesses?
  • Which of your weaknesses hurts teamwork?
  • Do you have belief systems that are based on opinions rather than facts?  How does this interfere with best practices that others are trying to install in your organization?
  • How do your personal biases affect your ability to really listen to your customers?
  • How do your personal biases affect your ability to really listen to your employees?
  • Are you assessing success based on measurable key performance indicators for each person in your organization? Are you falling into the trap of believing that the value of certain positions cannot be measured?
  • Are you overrating loyalty?  How do you define loyalty anyway? For example, is it doing what is in the best interest of the organization oryour own best interests? Do you measure loyalty based on whether someone tells you the brutal facts or only what you want hear (do your people feel you shoot the messenger)?
  • When you give credit for achievements are you properly attributing success to the real contributors or only to the people who you like best or have been around longest?
  • When you say someone has been indispensible to the growth of the organization, are you talking about the present, or are you still thinking of “the old days”? Can you continually measure why each year?  For example, “Since the sales manager joined the organization our market share grew from 1% to 3% in existing territories, and we expanded into 3 new territories and exceeded our plans in all 3.”

Howard Shore is a business growth expert that works with companies that want to maximize their growth potential by improving strategy, enhancing their knowledge, and improving motivation. To learn more about him or his firm please visit his website at www.activategroupinc.com  or contact Howard Shore at (305) 722-7216 or shoreh@activategroupinc.com .

VN:F [1.9.16_1159]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

Belief Systems and Results

Thursday, August 11th, 2011

We all carry belief systems that may lead to success and or throw us off course. Many times behavioral weaknesses that are obvious to others (but not to ourselves) are the results of these belief systems. Often they are belief systems that have suited us well overall. However, when used in the wrong situations or to an extreme these same systems hurt us.

In a recent article I posted I demonstrate how one company with a successful CEO had trouble finding “A” players for his company. His belief system and our results to our assessments did not align. When you have strong belief systems you subconsciously will do anything to support them.  Read the full article here.

VN:F [1.9.16_1159]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

Culture and Getting Things Done

Tuesday, August 9th, 2011

By Howard Shore

Do you ever wonder why some organizations seem to implement new ideas with ease while others fail? Or why very competent and successful people seem to fail miserably when they move from one organization to another?  Or how a very experienced and talented consultant can implement a best practice in one organization and get rave reviews and then go to another organization and come out looking incompetent? Well I have! Being a person that takes a lot of pride in getting results and one that hates to lose, I have been thinking about these questions throughout my career.

I have concluded that the most important question that must be answered when you take on a client is whether the company culture is right for what the CEO wants (or claims to want) done. This is tricky because what got you in the door may not get you to the desired result. Everyone has their own belief systems, including me. This is about determining what someone else’s values need to be in order to get on the right path. If someone’s values do not support what needs to get done, they cannot achieve their goals. There is misalignment. 

Many entrepreneurs run into this problem. Imagine you are entrepreneur that prides yourself on avoiding structure and process. You essentially like things to be loose and to have a family environment. However, your belief/value systems don’t allow you to price your goods or services competitively. Maybe these values and beliefs cause you to lose market share and/or not be profitable. In addition, you and a few others in the organization have to do everything because many of your original employees are not equipped to do their jobs. Training will not change this fact, but because you feel like they’re part of your family, you do not want to fire them. Your organization now needs a complete overhaul to become more profitable, or maybe worse, to survive.

In our observation, failure to achieve business plans, lack of organizational effectiveness, and poor results from consulting engagements, training initiatives or internal changes lead back to the CEO.  The most important factor that affects the strength of leadership and management in an organization is culture. The CEO decides the overall tone and direction of the culture and is most responsible for driving it. Further, that culture can and will determine the strength and effectiveness of the leadership and management in an organization. An effective culture can multiply or diminish the effectiveness of people.  For example, you can bring in leaders that have a track record of building and instilling disciplined process, structure, and systems in a company.  However, if people can go around them to the CEO, and the CEO himself will violate those disciplined processes, structures and systems, this will undermine and diminish the others he has brought in. Eventually, in order to survive in such an organization, the new disciplined employees either quit out of frustration or stop fighting and conform to reduce their stress and frustration. At a minimum, the time it takes to drive change in the organization is significantly elongated, and talented individuals that learn this about your organization stay away. This leads to minimized results and progress of the organization. In the end, we find the CEO will blame the leaders and managers for failing to achieve the goals they were hired to accomplish and replace them and repeat the cycle.

In conclusion if you want change in your organization you must first take assessment of your culture to understand how it must change. The second step is to understand how the CEO must behave differently to make this possible. Lastly, the rest of the executive team must follow suit. The CEO needs to show commitment and support to all initiatives. Until the CEO makes the commitment to shift his behavior and drive a cultural change from the top, change will not occur.  It is a simple case of “monkey see, monkey do.”  More importantly, one of the hardest things for owners and CEOs to accept is that anything they do or say is magnified 10 times.

Howard Shore is a business growth expert who works with companies that want to maximize their growth potential through business consulting, executive coaching, sales force development, training, and employee selection. To learn more about him or his firm, please visit his website at www.activategroupinc.com  or contact Howard Shore at (305) 722-7216 or shoreh@activategroupinc.com .

VN:F [1.9.16_1159]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

Belief Systems and Results

Tuesday, August 9th, 2011

By Howard Shore

We all carry belief systems that may lead to success and or throw us off course. Many times behavioral weaknesses that are obvious to others (but not to ourselves) are the results of these belief systems. (more…)

VN:F [1.9.16_1159]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)

Four DecisionsTM Executive Workshop

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011

Join us on November 3rd at the Signature Grand Hotel in Davie FL to learn how to accelerate profitable growth using the Rockefeller Habits.

Four Decisions

The Four Decisions refer to the critical decisions that growth companies must get right to maximize their revenue, profit and time. These four decisions involve the areas of People, Strategy, Execution and Cash. This workshop will teach you tools for making the right decisions in each of these areas.

Spend a day with a senior certified coach and you will GAIN:

  • An overview of the Four DecisionsTM (People, Strategy, Execution, Cash) you must get right to grow.
  • A considerable start on your 2012 One-Page Strategic PlanTM, to focus and align your team.
  • The Rockefeller Habits checklist to strengthen your ability and accelerate your growth.
  • An aligned, accountable and enthusiastic leadership team, ready to hit the ground running at 2012.

Learn More Here…

 

 

 

VN:F [1.9.16_1159]
Rating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)
  • Free Whitepaper—Build a Talent Machine

    Learn how to create a “Dream Team” without needing to increase your payroll.

    • - Build a team you can be proud of
    • - Raise the bar on talent
    • - How to manage a dream team
    • - The best assessment tools
    • - And much more.
    First Name * :  
    Last Name * :  
    Your Email * :  
  • You Should Be Thinking About...


    Are You Really Coaching Your Employees?
    May 18, 2012

    Part of your job as a manager and leader is to provide coaching to your direct reports. All employees deserve this, and they all need it to succeed and stay engaged with their work. But remember that there is a …




  • Upcoming Events

    • June 14, 2012

      BPI: An Introduction to Business Process Improvement Webinar

      Read more