business

Six Steps to Building Trust in Relationships

Six steps to building trust in relationships

While many of us intellectually understand the importance of building trusting relationships, we don’t always demonstrate it.

Consider the case of Cathy. She was recently appointed as VP responsible for relationship management for her firm’s largest client. The interactions between the client and her predecessor became rocky and she must quickly smooth things out and prove that her company can provide value added products and services. The fact that her company was voted by an industry panel as providing “best in class” products doesn’t carry enough weight. It’s all about building a trusting relationship so that the customer feels their needs are being met.

And then there’s Derek. He just joined a major retailer and is tasked with turning around their relationship with their franchisees which has become contentious over the past several years. The company is trying to convince the franchisees to invest money in upgrading their stores and provide new menu options, but he first must restore trust that the marketing strategies will drive traffic and increase revenue. Derek is not fully convinced that the company has the right plans, but he needs to quickly understand their needs and make sure there is proper alignment. (more…)

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What’s Your Communication Goal?

What’s Your Communication Goal?

As leaders we’re constantly communicating to our stakeholders with strategic intent. The question is whether our communication plan is effective or not. This may sound simple, but amazingly, many leaders miss excellent opportunities to communicate with employees in ways that develop them by enhancing their understanding of business priorities and engaging them in driving sustained business outcomes. When you’re communicating with others it’s important to think about your goal to ensure your methodology is properly aligned.

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Doing Nothing – The Biggest Risk

Doing Nothing – The Biggest Risk

There’s a well-known parable about a wealthy CEO who took an extended business trip. He left his company in the hands of his three VPs, and gave each of them a portion of the net assets to manage in his absence. Based on what he knew of their capabilities, he gave the first one, we’ll call her Pat, $50 million. The next one, Chris, was given $20 million, and the last, Joe, was given $10 million. When the CEO returned, he asked for a report of their activities and earnings during his absence. Pat proudly showed him how she had doubled the assets entrusted to her, and now she had $100 million. Chris was pleased as well to show that she now had $40 million. Joe by now realized he had fallen far short of his CEO’s expectations. He was afraid to take a risk in losing his leader’s money, after all he couldn’t afford to pay it back, so he did absolutely nothing with it. Nothing. Joe didn’t even try to increase it, or put it in an interest bearing bank account. You can imagine what the CEO did with Joe after that. He likely didn’t have a job.

Now Pat and Chris could probably tell some interesting stories about their journey to doubling their assets; things they learned along the way both about themselves and their business strategies. They likely had some failures, but they were able to effectively manage through them.

Rut vs. Risk

Joe was afraid to take any type of risk with the valuable resources he had. He simply sat on them. Hopefully he had an idea of a business strategy he could try, something he wanted to do, but unfortunately he didn’t know how to do it or was afraid to take the risk. And by doing nothing, he effectively lost ground.

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Cracked Concrete – Is Your Business Foundation Sound?

Cracked Concrete – Is Your Business Foundation Sound?

My husband and I recently realized that we would soon have to repair or replace the circular concrete driveway in
front of our home. We thought it would last a lot longer than this. Instead, after only 14 years, several concrete slabs are sinking; weeds are creeping up in the spaces between them; a large crack is running through one, courtesy of a heavy delivery truck; another slab is scaling; and the snow plows that are a staple of Michigan winters has left scrape marks on other parts.

We never thought this would happen because they look so strong and thick. We could wait another year or two, but the situation will only get worse.  What we thought was a solid foundation with high structural integrity, wasn’t resilient enough to withstand a variety of above and below ground pressures. What if the quality or thickness of the concrete had been stronger? What if we had ensured that heavy vehicles didn’t pull into the driveway? What if we carefully used a walking snowplow each winter instead of hiring a heavy truck to plow it (not!). In hindsight it was hard to predict we’d be in this spot, but we now need to look at options to repair or replace all or a part of the driveway.

Fortune 500 Foundation

As I reflected on this disappointing situation, I happened to look at Fortune Magazine’s recently released list of the top 500 global companies. Their total revenue declined for the first time since 2010 by 11.5% to $31.2 trillion, and profits shrank by 11.2% to $1.48 trillion1. Once strong sectors (such as Oil) and other stalwart corporations have stumbled, and are struggling to find their new footing. Companies that placed in the top 100 in the prior year, have now been displaced from the list.

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The World’s Most Admired Company Is…

The World’s Most Admired Company Is…

According to Fortune’s 2016 report of The World’s Most Admired Companies, which surveyed over 4,000 executives, directors, analysts and business insiders; Apple again commands the top spot on their list, for the 9th consecutive year! It’s followed closely by Alphabet (Google), and Amazon. With a track record like that, we’ve got to understand the ingredients to their success.

First, it’s important to know that the attributes used to determine this ranking include quality of products, quality of management, innovation, long term investment value, talent attraction, financial soundness, corporate asset use, social responsibility, and global business. A well rounded set of criteria that considers all facets of the business.

Apple CEO Tim Cook was interviewed by Adam Lashinsky to get his take on their phenomenal achievement, as well as how they’re handling criticism of recent fiscal first quarter performance, which was strong, but missed investors’ revenue expectations. His response provides several tips as a good reminder for leaders in any organization.

  1. Block out the noise.  

Analysts, media, shareholders, and others will always have some comment or critique about your products or services, but be selective about who you’re listening to. You can’t react to every question or criticism. You can’t be all things to all people. A prime example is their recent issue with the U.S. government on providing access to encrypted information on an iPhone. Whether you agree with Apple’s position in this situation or not, overall, you must evaluate every option and potential product or service based on the next point.

  1. Focus on your mission and vision.

Cook talked about staying focused on “making the best products that really help people enrich their lives in some way.” So do your mission and vision inspire and excite employees and customers? Does your product or service continue to align with your purpose and the areas where you’ve been successful? Or does your company get distracted by what I like to call shiny objects alongside the road. You know, getting caught up in the latest trend, trying to do what other companies are doing, or letting financial goals be the primary driver to all decisions. Which leads to point three.

  1. Identify balanced metrics

Cook says he’s driven by the data that shows his customers are happy.  And while recent sales didn’t meet analysts’ expectations, they still sold 74 million iPhones at a profit of $18 billion. The temptation to chase profits is HUGE, but most businesses need to take the long view and invest in their future, build a strong internal and external brand, and be known for the quality of their products and services; along with maximizing performance in the immediate term.  What metrics best reflect your organization’s goals, market positioning, customer and employee needs?

  1. Explore the possibilities

Apple has a primary focus on innovation and is widely rumored to be working on a car project. While Cook would neither confirm nor deny that, he did admit that the DNA of the company includes curiosity around a variety of product options that align with their mission, and deliberately selecting a few to pursue. Their cash position makes this easy of course. But they approach it from a perspective of exploring technologies and different ways to use them to align with the focus on making great products that help people.

How Can You Become Most Admired?

So your company or team may not be quite as big as the 1,500 that were considered for this top 50 list. But you can still be greatly admired by colleagues in your industry, geography, or organization. Consider the following questions.

  • What are you doing to ensure you are a great place to work, and have the best talent for an organization of your size, geography and industry?
  • Do you have the right management team to lead you to the next level, or are you prioritizing loyalty, mediocrity, or family members above talent?
  • How are you ensuring high quality products and services?
  • How does your organization leverage its head, hands, and heart to support social causes?
  • What is the global impact of your products and services?
  • How are you innovating? What are you exploring that will make a substantial difference in your business or its operations?
  • Are you making decisions that will ensure the financial stability of your organization?
  • How are you managing and maximizing your corporate assets?
  • What are you doing that would make others want to invest in you and your organization?

Addressing the items on this list may be a challenge for some organizations, but doing so is a reflection of implementing a level of organizational discipline necessary for success. And success is what is most admired.

***

Korn Ferry was Fortune’s survey partner for this project.

To read the interview of Tim Cook, go to http://fortune.com/tim-cook-apple-q-and-a/

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Let It Go: Making Room For New Opportunities

Technology changes and times change, but sometimes it’s hard to let go of what was once a good thing.

I recently decided (in a fury of “decluttering”) to remove the perfectly good CD/cassette tape stereo from my office bookshelf and give it to charity. Truthfully, I hadn’t even used it in years. It was just taking up space that can be better occupied by something more relevant. Then, in another burst of energy and insight, I gathered up all the old cassette tapes stored away (for what?), the CD/DVD teaching packages that were regularly dusted but otherwise ignored, and gave it all away in boxes to The Salvation Army. I’ll admit that I had a moment of sentimentality. The information and music shared via these mediums was still good, but the method and technology no longer met my needs. I listen to music on my smart phone now, and watch videos on my laptop or iPad. (more…)

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Your Dream or Your Nightmare: Keys to Successful Small Business Development

Your Dream or Your Nightmare: Keys to Successful Small Business Development

This is supposed to be your dream come true. Finally, your business is up and running. You’re breathing life into your big idea. You no longer have to answer to the boss because you are the boss. You’re working your business plan.  You’re finding your path to financial freedom. You know your target market and you’re finding new clients. You have positive feedback on your products and services. You’re developing new technology. You’re finding additional funding. You’ve finally found the right team to work with. You have the right workspace. You can feel the exciting energy when you walk into your business each morning. (more…)

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Your Best Advice

Your Best Advice

What’s the best advice you ever received?  Fortune magazine asked this question to several business leaders recently. They identified the people who gave them their best advice, who helped them become successful, to realize their potential more fully, and kept them from making life altering mistakes.

Here are a few of the lessons they learned.

Ask Questions, And More Questions

Mellody Hobson, President of Ariel Investments and nonexecutive chairman of DreamWorks Animation helped Jeff Katzenberg, DreamWorks’ CEO, think through the pros and cons of a major acquisition. He describes her as “the Picasso of questions” for her ability to ask powerful questions that helped him consider the details and come to the right conclusion for the business.

Similarly, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin learned that “the best answer to almost any question is another question”. He credits current White House budget director Sylvia Mathews Burwell, his former chief of staff, with the ability to frame and probe discussions with key parties during the 1995 budget crisis, in a way that enabled them to develop a new and different alternative. This required patience, and the willingness to look at the situation from many different perspectives. I call it don’t just do, think first.

Admit it. Sometimes when we have what we think is a great idea, we want someone to validate it, not poke holes in it.  So if someone starts asking meaningful questions that we can’t answer, or the answer doesn’t support our great idea, it can be frustrating.  We can blame that person, or recognize the value of their input and thank that person. When we’re emotionally involved in an issue, it’s important to have a rational mind to paint the picture in front of us that vividly shows the pros and cons of that decision, to help us prioritize what we want to achieve. Leaders select the people on their team very carefully, because it’s important that they have individuals whom they can trust to provide the right insights.

Pursue Evaluated Experience

While every octogenarian may not be a fount of wisdom, I’ll take advice from Warren Buffett any day.  Warren at 83, along with Charlie Munger, his 89 year old Vice Chairman, have dished lots of advice to each other during their 54 year friendship. They’ve made mistakes but have learned from their lifelong experiences and observed “what works, what doesn’t and why”.  Their shared evaluated experience has benefited their business.

This means you must be willing to listen to someone who’s been through what you’re going through, and learned from it, instead of dismissing their advice as no longer relevant to today’s challenges. Seek out experienced people and carefully consider their counsel.  What you’re attempting is probably not uniquely different from what anyone else has done.  

Find a Truth Teller

Who do you have in your inner circle who won’t hesitate to tell you the truth, even when it hurts? They’re not sticking a knife in you; they’re holding a protective shield in front of you so that you see your decisions closely reflected in the hardened metal of reality. Carefully surround yourself with people who care about you enough to give you candid and constructive feedback. This is advicethat will help you grow, and push you to continual improvement and different approaches. Munger helped Buffett to see the wisdom of a different investment strategy that has obviously paid off handsomely for both of them. Katzenberg reports that Hobson’s communication style is like a knockout punch, but so smooth that it feels like you got hit by a feather.

A trio of entrepreneurial friends, Alexa Von Tobel, Daniella Yakobovsky, and Lucy Grayson Deland shared valuable information and advice as they were founding their respective companies. They were a sounding board for one another in a way that entrepreneurs don’t typically communicate. Having a trusting relationship like this with someone who will demonstrate transparency and openness is critical to gaining honest insight into how to improve your behavior, and your business.

Take Smart Risks

Peter Salovey, President of Yale University and Judith Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation have been collaborators and friends for over 30 years. They bounce ideas off of one another, distilling them to understand which ones would have the greatest impact on the real world.  In other words, there’s a lot of great information out there, but they think about what’s really important to know and understand in order to positively leave a mark on their environment.

Leaders who play it safe and fail to take risks, fail to make progress. Playing it safe means staying with what you know, instead of learning something new. Can you imagine not taking the risk of learning to do something new, whether pursuing a new career, learning new technology, or launching a new business initiative? Rather than back away from it, gather advice from smarter experienced people about how to be successful at it, and take the plunge.

Smart people take smart risks based on information, evaluation and education. And while every action won’t achieve the desired result, smart risks create the best learning opportunities, which lead to better longer term results.

My Best Advice

To position yourself to receive valuable advice, you need good relationships. During his 20s, Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and other best-selling business books, formed a personal board of directors to provide him with life shaping advice.  Some of the most meaningful tips were from Peter Drucker, who advised him not to worry about trying to survive, but to focus instead on trying to be useful.  Bill Lazier, his co-author of Beyond Entrepreneurship, told him that people view life either as a series of transactions or a series of relationships.  Only those who view it as relationships will have a great life. And John Gardner, former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson told him to spend more time being interested, not interesting.

A trusted mentor recently encouraged me to pay it forward; to commit a portion of my time and talents to help others become successful, without expecting anything from them in return. I had done this in other areas of my work, but he was challenging me in a new area.  I’m going to accept his challenge and consider it a seed sown to build stronger relationships, that in time will produce a harvest of benefits in others’ lives as well as my own.

Read Jim Collins info here.

All other stories from The Best Advice I Ever Got, Fortune, November 18, 2013, p. 117-130

Istockphoto

Copyright 2013 Priscilla Archangel

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The Accidental Entrepreneur

The Accidental Entrepreneur

Most of what we accomplish in building a business involves balancing the right combination of the person, product and profit. The person must possess the right business and leadership skills.  The product has to be in demand for the market.  The profit comes from sufficient funding and management of resources.  But is it possible to accidentally be successful as an entrepreneur?

Auntie Anne’s pretzels is a phenomenal success and today has 1200 stores across 26 countries, with 2012 sales of $410 million. The business wasn’t a likely candidate for such success though when it was started by Anne Beiler. Anne was raised in the Amish community and when she married at 19, her only goal was to become a mother. Unfortunately, a tragic accident killed one of her daughters and her marriage went into a crisis for six years. Thankfully she and her husband were able to restore their relationship. In an effort to support other families going through similar marriage and family issues, they opened a free marriage and family counseling center in their community. To fund this initiative, they purchased an Amish-owned store that sold pretzels, pizza and ice cream for Anne to run.

Business owner holding an "open" signAnne lacked the education, financial backing, and business plan for this entrepreneurial adventure, but credits her success to her discipline, teamwork and perseverance instilled through her upbringing. Over time she improved on her recipes, narrowed the product to just pretzels, learned how to market, built a franchise operation, and found an angel investor. She credits her overall business success with using three small Ps, purpose, product and people, to yield one big P, profit. After about 17 years of ownership, she recognized that the company’s growth was outpacing her capability and capacity, and she made the difficult decision to sell it. The company still bears her name, but she has no financial interest in it.


The Entrepreneurial Knack

Contrast Anne’s skillsets as an entrepreneur with typical traits and characteristics of entrepreneurs as suggested by Kara Page of Demand Media. These traits include:

  • The ability to motivate yourself and others.
  • Integrity of your product or service, and yourself
  • Creativity to continually identify new ideas and opportunities,
  • Inquisitiveness to ask questions and engage in continuous learning about the competition and your own business
  • Willingness to fail and ability to evaluate what went wrong to keep trying
  • Sociability to meet potential clients, suppliers and develop networks.

This challenges my paradigm of the skills that are really most important to be a successful entrepreneur, because what I expected to see, but is missing from this list are the standard items like education; experience in financial management, marketing, sales, or operations; strong leadership skills, etc.  As the business grows, the entrepreneur can hire people with these skills, but in the early years, the founder/entrepreneur frequently has to be a jack-of-all-trades. While Beiler didn’t appear to have a plan for a franchise business when she first opened her stores, she seemed to possess the majority of these skillsets.

Accidental or On-Purpose

Thus Anne looks like the accidental entrepreneur. In spite of her business deficiencies, she developed a good product and created a demand for it. The opportunity propelled her forward to success, and part of the motivation was being able to use the profits to help her community.

So if you really feel a calling to entrepreneurship, but aren’t sure whether you have what it takes, are you focusing on the right skillsets? Are you shortchanging your abilities and experience? Have you creatively explored different approaches to accomplish your goal? Maybe you have a non-profit organization and entrepreneurship will provide the funding to support it.

Admittedly, there’s really no such thing as an accidental entrepreneur. People simply approach business ventures differently based on their background and perspective. The true key to success is combining the right skills with your entrepreneurial passion and calling…in essence, being on-purpose…in line with what you’re called to do. Who knows? Maybe your entrepreneurial success will be a gift to those around you.

Read more about Anne Beiler and Kara Page’s characteristics of entrepreneurs.

Photo courtesy of IStockphoto

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Business Values Add Value

Business Values Add Value

A recent interview with Jack Dorsey, the billionaire founder of two well-known tech companies, Twitter and Square, in the November 5, 2012 issue of Forbes, provided insight into one of the keys to his success as an entrepreneur. Twitter has 500 million members communicating across the globe.  Square has changed the way 2 million businesses handle financial transactions, and Starbucks is expected to exclusively use that technology in their U.S. stores in the near future. At Square’s San Francisco headquarters, employees work at rows of desks in open spaces, or at tall tables; and conference rooms are glass enclosed. Dorsey spends 90% of his time with people who don’t report to him, and does a lot of his work at these tall tables in an open space so that he’s easily approachable. He also requires that at any meeting where more than two people are present, one of the attendees must take notes and send them to all the employees. This open style of communication and interaction is important to Dorsey because he believes in serendipity; that his team learns just by spending more time around each other. This has become a core business value for his companies, and drives how they operate.

Sign with the word VALUES highlighted over many other wordsCore Values

Bruce Gibney and Ken Howery identify core values as one of Four Things to Get Right When Starting A Company in the May 9, 2012 issue of the Harvard Business Review. In particular, they state that when teams develop, they must quickly decide how they want to do business, because culture seems to become entrenched after about 24 employees are hired.  Coherent and clearly communicated business values improve the quality, efficiency and consistency of decisions throughout the organization. Founders, leaders and employees are able to use them as a basis for ensuring alignment and proper direction when considering different courses of action.


For new and developing businesses, values are best developed up front along with the business concept and processes. They should be the guiding force, not the lagging afterthought that explains how they do business. Not only is this important for the individual entrepreneur who may be the sole employee (solopreneurs), but as the business grows, that entrepreneur must be able to clearly identify and communicate core business values when interviewing prospective employees, and establishing business processes and organizational norms. They are communicated to others through marketing and branding strategies, policy decisions, workplace norms and customer interactions.

The process of identifying and developing core business values requires thoughtful discussion among the founding leaders of a growing business at each step of the process.  Solopreneurs might have these discussions with a business coach or consultant. The point is to think through all aspects of the business process and how the business promise will be fulfilled and aligned with the business values. They are typically very personal based on the priorities and preferences of the individual leaders.

Such discussions may be ongoing as the business evolves and grows. Throughout the process of adding more employees, customers and stakeholders, these values are communicated through behaviors and decisions.  Just as leaders are at the core of establishing business values, employees are at the core of fulfilling the promise of the business values. Thus it’s important to engage them in understanding how their behavior contributes to and support values.

Start the Discussion

Consider the following questions.

  • How will my product provide value to my customers?
  • What are my quality standards and how will I ensure that they are reinforced?
  • What criteria will I use when deciding who to collaborate with or to do business with?
  • How do I want to serve my customers? How do I want them to remember me?
  • How and what should my employees communicate with one another, and how do we establish our work processes and environment to support that?
  • What are our financial resources and options?
  • What are my leadership styles and attributes, and how will I make sure that my employees are motivated and engaged?

Gibney and Howery cite Facebook’s “focus on impact” as an example of explicit business values or principles guiding a company in a more successful direction. Facebook’s 5 core principles are Focus on Impact, Move Fast, Be Bold, Be Open, Build Social Value. Theirs is almost more of a social mission than a business focused on revenue.

Whether you lead a business, non-profit organization, work team, volunteer organization, or your family, take the time to think through your core values. Define and discuss them with your stakeholders, and ensure alignment in all your decisions.  As you collaborate with others, ensure that they share similar values. Clearly defined, shared values are a critical part of your personal and professional success.

Read the Forbes article at http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/10/17/jack-dorsey-the-leadership-secrets-of-twitter-and-square/

Read the HBR article at http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/05/four_things_to_get_right_when.html

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