Champion Leadership Tip #1 - Leadership Defined
October 24, 2009 by Skip Weisman
Filed under Featured
Ten years ago I heard U.S. Army General and first Gulf War Commander Norman Schwartzkopf speak at a leadership conference. He told us that day that defining leadership was similar to the Supreme Court’s definition of obscenity, “I can’t define it but I know it when I see it.” He proceeded to try to define it anyway with, “getting others to do things they ordinarilly wouldn’t do because they want to do it.”
In preparing for a leadership keynote address I was asked to deliver recently at a regional martial arts school I decided I needed a definition that rang true for me.
I sat down this week to craft my own and in reviewing not just my 27 years in business, 20 years in minor league professional baseball management, and now 10 years studying business success and successful leadership I reflected on the role those I respect as the best leaders I’ve experienced in my life played in making me who I am today.
What I realized was they inspired me to go for something that I was not even aware of was something I could enjoy achieving or being a part of. They usually did so by being a role model in how they went after the same or similar thing. Additionally, they took responsibility for their role in inspiring me to go for it and continued to me by coaching and guiding me to perform at the level necessary to achieve success at it.
Based on my experiences as identified above, here’s what I came up with:
“Inspiring others to do something they ordinarilly would not do, and/or coaching them to perform at an even higher level than they ordinarilly would perform, if left on their own.”
What do you think? Does it ring true for you? What would you add or change about it? Or, what is your definition of leadership and what specific references do you have that have directed you to define leadership in the way you do?
I look forward to your comments and contributions.
“Little” Things Make a “Big” Difference in Customer Service
October 16, 2009 by Skip Weisman
Filed under Featured
Often times when I walk into a company for a meeting, whether it be a marketing call on my behalf or a client consulting session I am usually offered a beverage by someone in the company. Sometimes the offer doesn’t come until I meet with my party, other times it comes when I am greeted by reception and I am waiting for my party to arrive.
Today, with regards to customer service I experienced something completely new, different and most importantly - exceptional and memorable
The company is one of the largest and most prestigious CPA firms in the Hudson Valley Region of New York - Vanacore, DeBenedictus, DiGovanni and Weddell.
After the “Director of First Impressions” greeted me from behind her open window at the reception counter, she promptly called my party to let him know I had arrived, she handed me a menu of beverages. This menu was presented to me as if it were a wine list at a fine restaurant. The options included soft drinks, coffee, tea, sparkling water, and regular water. I chose plain water.
A few moments later she walked out to the waiting area and handed me a real glass full of water. Usually I am proferred a paper or plastic cup, or a coffee mug with water. This was an impressive drinking glass.
In my business consulting I encourage my clients to focus on the “fundamentals” to achieve market differentiation. In football they call it “blocking and tackling,” in ice hockey its skating and stickhandling, in basketball its the free-throws and blocking out under the basket. Every sport has them and all businesses have them.
My musical hero Bruce Springsteen wrote a song a long time ago which is rarely, if ever played, called “It’s the Little Things That Count.” It relates to personal relationships but is just as pertinent in the business setting.
So, today, my vote for a “Champion Business” goes to Vanacore, DeBenedictus, DiGovanni and Weddell based in Newburgh, NY for the presentation of a beverage “menu” to its guests, offered by their “Director of First Impressions.” Great job!
What are the “little things” in your business that for little or no cost and little additional effort, you could easily raise the bar on the impression you make on your clients, prospects and competitors? Pick one today and start working on it.
It Is Time to Forget About Your Company’s “Mission”
October 14, 2009 by Skip Weisman
Filed under Featured
One of the most mis-understood and mis-construed concepts in all the business world has to be the concept of “mission.” There are probably as many different takes on “mission” as there are consultants who facilitate strategic plans. Many times the vision and mission are confused. Other times the mission is two-three paragraphs long and no one cares to read it after its created and put on a poster to hang in the hallways, never mind trying to memorize it.
I want to give business leaders a different approach to make the concept more useful and give it greater impact throughout their organization. That is why I am recommending doing away with your company’s “mission.”
Instead of developing a “mission,” business leaders should be focusing on their company’s “purpose.” Your company’s “purpose” is a very simple concept to understand. There should be no confusion.
What is a “purpose”? It is the reason your company’s exists. In eight years of facilitating strategic planning processes this has been the number of concept that has provided the most value to my clients and is something that has been extremely well received and remembered.
This concept was reinforced for me twice last week. The first time was when I was watching the new Ken Burn’s PBS series on “The National Parks.” In reviewing the history of Yellowstone National Park the message over the North Gate was discussed, which states, “For The Benefit and Enjoyment of the People.”
This message over arch of the gate is Yellowstone’s “purpose.” It is simple, easy to recite and remember. It is also a statement both park employees and visitors can understand and associate to in a very positive way.
Other examples include the first purpose I ever created with my co-workers at my former employer, the Hudson Valley Renegades minor league professional baseball team. There is a long story and a lot of inner-office debate behind the creation of this purpose and it took all of my influencing skills as a leader to help our executive team agree to it, but it is something I believe is the true essence and purpose of the organization to this day:
“Making Magical Moments and Memories for Our Community”
Some other recent clients have developed the following Purpose Statements and are all using them in place of “Mission” which I believe to be an obselete concept, it is time to put it out to pasture:
“Constructing Exceptional Buildings and Exceptional Environments for Our Community”
“Transform the mental health system so that each individual with mental illness
has hope for recovery, choices for quality care, and a sense of empowerment and self-determination.”
If you want to get the most out of your employees, connect at a deep level with your customers and build a brand around something that shows your company makes a difference forget about the mission and find its“Purpose.”
At a recent workshop with a half-dozen business leaders this subject was a hot topic we discussed for at least 30-minutes because they all wanted to know “where to start?”
You start with asking and answering these questions:
“What is the one thing that our company must fulfill for our customers that will absolutely ensure our financial success for the long-term?”
“What is it that we do consistently that makes a difference in our customers lives/businesses every day?”
Even with these questions leadership teams have a challenge in answering them by themselves because internal facilitators fail to push the issue deep enough to get to the core essence of the company’s existence. What is created is a statement that lacks power and emotion. If you want to create a statement that has power and emotion like the ones above, it helps to have an outside facilitator take the leadership team through the process.
CEOs Are “Wusses?” I Agree With Pat Lencioni
October 7, 2009 by Skip Weisman
Filed under Champion Leadership, Featured
In Tuesday’s Wall St. Journal Pat Lencioni wrote an article proclaiming that many CEOs are “wusses,” meaning they are weak when it comes to proactively managing performance. I have one thing to say:
ABSOLUTELY!
I couldn’t agree more.
As many of you know my coaching practice began by helping business owners breakthrough the habit of procrastination. I continue to do workshops where I get uncomfortable, squirming in the seats of business owners and CEOs when the subject of procrastination is broached.
Why are CEOs “wusses” and what do they procrastinate on? You’d be surprised to learn a myriad of things, including as Lencioni points out confronting behavior issues that negatively impact individual and organizational performance. Other procrastination items include marketing, sales, accounts receivables, delivering bad news to employees and customers, and the list can go on.
Not to be flip here but one of the big issues CEOs procrastinate on is the procrastination of their employees. Instead of confronting performance issues, they hope they get better, they hope they get better, they hope they get better. Then, they blow wreaking havoc on the individual and ripple affects are felt throughout the organization impacting the culture for months, if not years.
Here are some resources with more specific articles on some of these issues, if you want to learn more and go a little deeper into this issue. Thank you to Mr. Lencioni for bringing the issue to the fore, I’ll do my part to help CEOs build the skills they need to more positively influence individual and organizational performance and improve workplace morale:
Manage Workplace Conflict to Improve Employee Morale
Stop Procrastination Before It Kills Your Business
Champion Organization Defined, Does Yours Stack Up?
September 2, 2009 by Skip Weisman
Filed under The Traits of Champion Orgs
This morning at a client meeting I was challenged to define a Championship Organization so the company leadership could get a grasp on the concept. That was unusual for me. Usually I’m the one asking the question of the client to get them to focus on what they want to create that is different, better and/or special from where they are at.
The question challenged me to come back to my office and define it for myself sothat I can better articulate it to my clients, here is what I came up with.
Championship Organization Defined:
A Championship Organization is one that stands out from the rest by continually striving to achieve something unique and special from others in its field. A Champion Organization is one that is exceptional in the way it operates, exceptional in the way it treats its employees, exceptional in the way it serves it customers, and exceptional in the way it interacts with its community, and doing it all with a high level of integrity.
The Championship Organization does it in a way in which all stake holders are:
- Enthused to participate,
- Empowered to contribute in their own unique way, and are
- Engaged in contributing to fulfilling the Vision & Purpose of the organization by consistently interacting with other stakeholders according to agreed upon values and behaviors.
Is that the type of organization or company culture that can thrive? If an organization were to fulfill that definition would it or could it be considered operating at a Championship level?
I think so, what about you? Feel free to leave a comment about what you would add or subtract to make my definition even better.
To read about five key traits that Champion Organizations should require of individuals they hire and retain read this article at www.SkipWeisman.com titled - How a Champion Culture Can Give You a Competitive Advantage
Does Your Company Have a CYA Culture?
July 14, 2009 by Skip Weisman
Filed under The Traits of Champion Orgs
I realized yesterday while facilitating a clients’ senior leadership team meeting that they were stuck in the old style CYA culture. You know, “Cover Your A##.”
I asked if they ever went on a construction job site and just gave out praise to the workers and the site supervisor pointing out specific areas where they were excelling or ahead of schedule. In return there was a blank stare, then a comment:
“Well, in our business if the work is done and done well, its a waste of time to rehash that stuff. We need to keep moving forward and make sure the things that aren’t done to spec need to be addressed while focusing on the next phase of the project. Looking back acknowledging things already done never had any value before.”
I could tell a light bulb had gone off in this individual’s mind while another team member chimed in, “you know we’re always looking for pictures of the good work we do and we can never find them because all we take pictures of are the problem areas so we can make sure we don’t get blamed for them or to show our sub-contractors what they need to fix. I sure wish we had some nice, photos of finished projects so we can use ‘em in our newsletter, and on our website and stuff!”
Again, more CYA. So much time is spent in corporate America covering rear-ends that the good work everyone is doing goes unnoticed and un-appreciated.
I’d like to propose a new CYA culture - “Celebrate Your Achievements!”
There is not enough of it!
This does not mean to get soft and open your company to lawsuits, lost revenue, re-doing jobs that eat into profit margins because of a lack of identifying areas that need to be addressed. What it means is taking some time throughout the day, week, month to be open to looking for, and acknowledging and recognizing, the individuals who are doing good work.
It can be as simple as a private pat on the back, or a public recognition at a monthly team breakfast or lunch with a gift certificate as a reward. You can determine what is most appropriate for your situation and budget.
I believe this type of CYA Culture will improve morale and productivity while gradually breaking down the cynicism and lack of trust in most organizations as workers begin to feel appreciated for their contribution.
Focus on Teamwork Is Misguided, Needs Paradigm Shift
June 30, 2009 by Skip Weisman
Filed under Champion Service & Sales
There is much focus today on teamwork in the workplace. It’s about building more effective teams, working more effectively with each other in teams, supporting your teammates, etc. It’s become almost like muzak on an elevator ride to nowhere.
Focusing on teamwork in the workplace is misguided. It is misguided because most employees are rewarded for serving customers through direct sales or service, and/or manufacturing a product at a margin that leads to profitability, not for working as a team. Even if individuals are hired with “teamwork” in their job description or expectations it is a nebulous concept at best.
Many times working as a team means having to support a team member whom, a) they may not like and b) whom they may see as threat to their job security. Also, there is usually is no direct incentive for working as good team player. Company’s rarely reward based on the results of “teamwork” because it is hard to quantify, unless a specific team is brought together to achieve a specific outcome.
I believe we need to shift our thinking. We need to shift our paradigm on the concept of “teamwork” in the workplace. Let’s forget about it!
Instead let’s focus on customer service. “Internal” customer service.
Internal customer service takes a back seat to “real” or “external” customer service, which is servicing the end user of our product or service. Yet, its the internal interactions between team members (teamwork) that can drastically impact how your external customer service is applied.
Whereas many companies promote teamwork to the cynicism of the masses few encourage their workers to see their “teammates” as true customers, customers of their internal product/service delivery. What would happen if they did?
Most employees understand the value of servicing a customer and will do backflips to make the customer happy (many times to the detriment of company profits and building value in the eyes of the customer, but that’s a post for another day) while “internal” customer service and the treatment of co-workers is deplorable in many companies. As such I believe making this shift will help tremendously in raising the bar on performance for three reasons:
1) Employees understand the importance of “customer service” and adding to the definition of who their “customers” are should be an easy adjustment;
2) It is much easier to hold individuals accountable to customer service metrics than “teamwork” metrics;
3) It is easier to define in the workplace a “customer service” situation than a “teamwork” scenario thus allowing for the sharing of resources to be more easily facilitated. This alleviates the instance of those who hold back on resources in a teamwork setting due to uncertainty of the relationships necessary to achieve desired results (helps to break down the silo mentality that is ingrained in so many company cultures).
My entire shift in addressing issues of company culture and improving performance results is going to focus on “internal” customer service. As such I believe outstanding teamwork will become an easy and natural by-product of of this approach.
Curiosity May Have Killed the Cat, But Indecision Kills Leaders
June 30, 2009 by Skip Weisman
Filed under Champion Leadership
One of the first articles I ever wrote for publication was called “The 3 D’s of Leadership - Decisions, Delegating & Diplomacy.” The more coaching and consulting with business leaders I do the more I’m concerned with the ability and willingness to make the tough decisions.
A lack of will in stepping up to address key issues in their division or their own company, if owners or CEOs, and the stories used to justify avoiding the tough decisions is mind boggling.
In January, in the midst of 50 other business leaders at an introductory version of my End Procrastination NOW! workshop, one business leader of a $20 million dollar company, admitted in front of the audience that his habit of procrastination has cost him personally $5 million over the last 10 years. He is now a client.
Last week I met with the managing partner of another $20 million firm who admitted to me that he has been procrastinating on addressing key issues at his firm, including updating their partnership agreement and marketing initiatives in their own backyard where competition has edged in front of them in key networking organizations, business alliances and Chambers because a decision to make it a priority and to hold team members accountable to following through has not made it to the top of the list.
These are avoidance issues all based in fear. As my hero Bruce Springsteen sings in his 2005 song about a soldier in harms way in the Iraq war, “fear is a powerful thing…fear is a dangerous thing, it’ll take your God filled soul…”
This is 100% procrastination. Procrastination is an interesting term that evokes strange reactions in people. Despite working with many intelligent business owners over the last 7 1/2 years of my coaching and consulting practice I continue to be amazed at the lengths many go to engage in this costly habit.
Procrastination, and this flawed decision-making, action-taking strategy is a killer. It is a killer of success, it is a killer of hopes and dreams, it is a killer of self-confidence, self-esteem and self-worth!
Can someone please explain to me how such intelligent, high level, successful business leaders can engage in this behavior that is killing their business and costing them, their partners and employees millions, if not, billions of dollars worldwide?
Championship Lessons From the Two Newest Champs
June 19, 2009 by Skip Weisman
Filed under Real Life "Champion Organizations"
Two things that make an organization a true Champion is consistency and resiliency. Those traits exemplify the two most recent Champions crowned in North America’s winter long professional sports leagues, the National Basketball Association’s Los Angeles Lakers and the National Hockey League’s Pittsburgh Penquins.
Consistency is the Lakers’ trait, for sure. The franchise has won 15 NBA Championships in its history and nine in the last 29 years, since 1980, winning five in the 80’s and four since 2000. Their coach, Phil Jackson, now has 10 NBA Championships on his coaching resume after winning six with the Michael Jordan led Chicago Bulls in the 90’s before moving to Los Angeles to start a new dynasty with the Lakers.
The Pittsburgh Penguins on the other hand have been the resilient franchise. After winning two Stanley Cup Championships in the early 90’s with Hall of Fame Center Mario Lemieux leading the way, the team struggled in the early part of this decade rebuilding its player personnel and fighting to financially stay alive.
Lemieux saved the franchise for the city of Pittsburgh by putting together and ownership group and becoming its managing partner. He has since negotiated with the city for a new arena to replace the antiquated Civic Arena. Lemieux’s hockey personnel have rebuilt the team by taking advantage of top draft picks and adeptly identifying role players that make the sum greater than their individual parts.
Which is a great lesson for all of us looking to build Champion Organizations, when you focus on team members strengths and put them in positions to leverage their what they do best, a team without a lot of superstar performers can achieve great things (in the case of the Penguins the mixed three superstar performers Centers Sydney Crosby and Evgeni Makin and goaltender Marc-Andre Fluery with a superb supporting cast).
The Lakers took the much the same approach by leaning on superstar Kobe Bryant but looking to teammates to step up and lead the way when called upon.
Now, there’s a recipe for Championship success. Where are the opportunities in your organization to do similar work?
How to Be Motivated & Fulfilled Like a Champion Every Day
June 18, 2009 by Skip Weisman
Filed under Motivating Yourself & Others
If there is one thing Champions at all levels are, it is motivated! They are all motivated by the intrinsic desire to be the best and are willing to do almost anything, and sacrifice just about all else to become Champions. That takes tremendous motivation and daily connection to their goals in a way that fulfills them to keep going. I’m not sure how all Champions do this but below is a great idea we should all incorporate into our daily habits.
Thanks to the new world of Twitter I’ve made a friend with someone who has impacted my life and business in a simple, yet profound way. Her name is Misha Thomas and you can follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/queenmisha
As with most of these social media connections I can’t remember how I came to meet Misha but I began following her on Twitter. One day last week she sent these three separate and simple Tweets that I caught at just the right time at the end of my day:
Tweet #1) What was the Best Thing that happened to you today?
Tweet #2) What did you do that was most Fun today?
Tweet #3) What did you Learn today?
I’ve known about the power of questions since I immersed myself in Anthony Robbins programs 11 years ago. Tony suggests we ask five focus questions in the morning to direct our focus and mindset for the day (I’ll write about those questions in another post later this week). I have to admit I fell out of the habit of asking those questions, and these from Misha came at the perfect time.
Misha sent the questions out at the end of today, too. Not sure if she does ‘em every day, but I know I’ve seen ‘em at least 3 times out of the last six business days. When I first saw them last Monday I responded to her on Twitter and I’ll probably do it again tonight but I’ll post my answers here first.
1) The Best Thing that happened to me today was that I met with a business prospect over lunch who told me an article I sent to him over the weekend had immediate impact for his business. He applied a strategy I suggested and it gave him a sense of control over his business and his customers that he didn’t have before. Made my day (and his, hopefully)! The article is titled “Your Quest for Outstanding Customer Service May Be Killing Your Business”
2) The thing I did that was most Fun today was attending my regular Monday, 4:30pm Yoga/Pilates Fusion class called “Centergy” with my wife. She and I have been consistently attending this class and one on Saturday morning every week since January 1st, unless we’re out of town for have other business commitments. But, I bet neither one of us has missed more than 2 of these classes since we started, I’m really proud of both of us for that!
3) What I Learned today is that no matter how close a relationship you have with a present client, when it comes to a new project, make sure you get the proposal/contract signed, and finalize specific payment terms before you leave the scene of the meeting after obtaining a verbal agreement and setting a date to start the project. I received an e-mail late today asking to postpone the project for three weeks due to unforseen issues and that may delay my expected cash flow (lesson learned).
What about you? How would you answer those three questions?