Author Archive
The Awarness to Lead
Posted by: | CommentsMany things have been said about leadership some good and some bad, but the one thing that has stuck with me has been the awareness of leadership. Now when I say awareness, I don’t be mean micro-managing your staff or applying dual layers of approval. I mean awareness of the atmosphere you create in your company. Different companies will have different cultures, but at the very least you should think about these areas:
You create the atmosphere
This might sound like something out of the mouth of Tony Robbins, but it’s true. As the CEO you set the tone of your organization. You create the universal truths of your organization and you decide how that organization functions as a team. Consequently if you have a dysfunctional organization, you need look no further than your desk.
Let failure be your guide
This too sounds counterintuitive, but the thing about failure is that it highlights things that have to change. We’ve seen how these huge companies have fallen, mostly due to the arrogance that their way is the way customers want. Your customers are your lifeblood and rather than treat them as a necessary evil, create an atmosphere where your employees are encouraged to learn from a perceived failure. Your staff failures tell you that something in the way you want them to complete a task is not working. This brings me to my next point…
A Pay for Performance Twist
Posted by: | CommentsIn a conversation with a trusted advisor this morning, I had a rather revolutionary suggestion thrown at me. We were complaining about employee motivation and work quality solutions and how none of them actually seemed to address the motivation and reward head on. My advisor threw out the suggestion “what if people were only paid for the kind of work they completed? It would end 8-hour days and the superstars would get paid for creating entire projects and wouldn’t have to work an entire day”. It’s revolutionary and it has the potential to create the kind of work-life balance that telecommuting just hasn’t been able to capture. The question, “how would it work?” immediately comes to mind and I’ve been giving this some thought. Here’s how I would do it.
Embrace Technology
Business has been continually moving towards remote teams as a rule rather than an exception and if I were to adopt this a-la carte employment, I would embrace the ability that technology has given me to acquire and retain talent. Think Zaarly or Elance.
Price the tasks
Komen and Planned Parenthood: The end of a marriage
Posted by: | CommentsThis week women’s rights took a big blow with the dissolution of the partnership between the Susan G. Komen charity and Planned Parenthood. One side says its politics; the other side says the rules of the relationship have changed. Sounds like a scene from divorce court right? Well here’s what we can learn from this disintegrating relationship.
Communicate perceived weaknesses
Planned Parenthood’s stance is that Komen is bowing to political pressure and that they were blindsided. Komen says that it just didn’t fit their criteria anymore. A partnership is an extension of your business goals and although those goals do change, what shouldn’t change is how you communicate what you need from your partner. You have to have conversations and those conversations have to be meaningful.
Align your values
While it’s true you are going to have staff members who don’t support the partnership, you need to make sure that their resistance won’t be used to terminate the partnership. Komen hired Karen Handel as the VP of Public Policy and it’s said that she is pro-life and publicly denounced Planned Parenthood. The moral of this story is that you can’t form a partnership without agreeing on some fundamental things and marrying another company that hates a big part of what you do is a recipe for disaster.
Lessons from J.C. Penney
Posted by: | CommentsEarlier this week, J.C. Penney announced that it was going to undergo a major overhaul in the way it does business and communicates with its customers. As we watch this change unfold and wait for customer reactions, here are some of the more positive things business owners can pull from the strategy.
Simplify, Simplify Simplify
This is the best part of the strategy, even though the J.C. Penney strategy is really not simple. They have a three tags system: red for everyday low prices, white for monthly value and a blue tag for the cheapest price. What is simple is creating a normal price tag with the everyday low prices, showcasing the monthly value in a sales display and simply letting the customer see for themselves that the monthly value merchandise is the cheapest. The customers are going to continue to comparison shop. They don’t really need you to do it for them. The lesson in this is don’t complicate the simple strategy, if you say it’s easy then it should be easy.
Communicate Changes
Thank You Ma’am
Posted by: | CommentsLast night I read a wonderful article in Entrepreneur about giving praise to your staff. It was wonderfully written, but I thought the article was missing the most important element of praising your staff-sincerity. So with that in mind I wanted to highlight the reasons why sincerity should be included in your praise package.
A sincere thank you is a million times better than a well-crafted one.
I agree that there are certain guidelines you should follow for keeping a thank you short and sweet, but ultimately if it isn’t sincere it isn’t going to make a difference. The key to a great thank you is acknowledging that an employee saved your behind and really came through for the company, the structure of the thank you is not as important as the spirit of it.
Be relevant
Many times a thank you is off the mark because this may have been the only positive light for the employee; in that case you shouldn’t try to make their situation look better. Say thank you for what they have done now, don’t try to create a trail of good deeds if there isn’t one. Let this one incident serve as positive reinforcement. Be sincere.
A Leadership Perspective
Posted by: | CommentsI had a new experience as a juror this week and as we were deliberating one of my fellow jurors made a poignant statement. He quoted the Blackstone ratio and said ‘it is better than 10 guilty persons escape, than one innocent suffer’. Bringing those experiences back to the office made me think about how we lead our staff; some use leadership as a punitive advantage and others use it as a method to force the hands of our employees. By doing that we are being our most ineffectual selves, our staff is our most valuable resource. The Blackstone ratio could give us the framework to be more effective leaders and here’s how.
Your staff is right until they are wrong
Now this is not an invitation to let your staff run amuck, but it is an invitation to give your staff the benefit of the doubt until you have the necessary details to make an educated decision about challenging situations. We all know that staff can and will lie, but that should not be a deterrent to treating them fairly and getting the facts of the situation.
Your analysis should involve only the relevant factors
Sears: A Post Mortem
Posted by: | CommentsSears has been on a steady decline for quite some time and they have just released news that they have a new merchandising officer. They have lured Brookstone CEO, Ron Boire, to fill this invented position under the guise that a focus on merchandise will help the struggling brand. We can learn from some of Sears’s mistakes and here’s how.
Find your voice and stay true to it
The thing that strikes me the most about Sears is how it has managed to lose its reputation and confuse the people that shop there. When I was a girl (I know I’m dating myself here) we went to Sears when we were going to buy a new stove, dishwasher or washer machine. When my son was a baby, I noticed that they had begun the foray into selling clothes and let’s be honest-it was never their thing. If I wanted appliances I went to Sears, if I wanted clothing I went somewhere else. They have always been the appliance store and that’s what they should stick with because that’s what they used to be good at. Find your voice and stick to it.
Know your customers
Verizon Are You Listening?
Posted by: | Comments
As of January 15th Verizon will start charging its customers a $2.00 convenience fee for paying their bills on-line via a credit card. Now as a Verizon customer myself for my home and business, let me address all the ways that this situation was mishandled and hopefully give a summary of how customers don’t want to be treated.
Don’t spring change on your customers
Most customers will be loyal to a company if good service is guaranteed and changes are communicated directly to the customers. I understand that business has to evolve, but let me know with more than a notice on the website that I may or may not see. Explain to your customers what you are changing and why you are doing it. Don’t issue the standard corporate statement; if you want to retain your customers during the change you are going to have to give them a reason to trust you. So the old ‘suprise!-We’re charging you more money’ schtick is probably not the best way to go.
Don’t lie to your customers
The Bitter Entrepreneur
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve been sitting around wondering what to write about since the usual business topics have been covered and I think I’ve come to a great topic, the bitter entrepreneur. I promise that I’m not being facetious, but at one time or another we have all been this person. You know the one at the networking event or trade show that is sulking in the corner wondering why another ‘lesser’ company is more successful. As an entrepreneur you never know where your next sale is going to come from or if it will ever happen and we all think we are wonderfully brilliant…so when the bitter entrepreneur shows her face remember these kernels of truth.
You are braver than most people
I know we all hate the dreaded question ‘So what are you working on?’ particularly if you don’t have anything on the horizon, but the fact of the matter is that this is the moment where you shine. It takes a lot of guts and chutzpah to go out on your own and most people will never leave the security of a job to walk down your path. So speak candidly about your situation and then talk about your strengths. You are an entrepreneur and that is a qualification of the highest order.
Lessons from Avon
Posted by: | CommentsThis week Avon CEO Andrea Jung was released from her position and stock prices soared. The company is trying to find its footing and the CEO was the unequivocal target. Is that a bad thing? Is there anything that Jung can take from this experience?
No woman is an island
The first thing that jumps out at me is the fact that Jung had no COO. I believe that this fact alone could have predicted this outcome. She’s got experience and pedigree, but the lack of a COO is a lesson in business acumen. As much as we women want to believe we are great multi-taskers, the reality is that we cannot do everything well. We may be able to divide our attention adequately, but doing something well requires focus. The best way to be successful is to surround yourself with an executive team that you can depend on. A strong support team could have alerted Jung to challenges before they became shareholder problems.
Business objectives should be consistent
In an international company like Avon the need for a consistent business message is so important. Different sites are going to require different tactics, but the over arcing message should be consistent with the company’s core business objectives. This consistency makes it easy to implement upgrades to systems and changes in management structures.
