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 Dear
CEO/Top Executive
A few ideas from Perth Ventures that might just improve your leadership performance, increase your organization's impact and results, and make your staff and team members even more inspired.....
Current preoccupations: in these low-growth times, how much of your lack of growth is due to the economy and how much to your personal profile, and what can you do about it? How do you unlock the unconscious nuggets built up over years of experience which could turn into innovative new products and services? What's wrong with Sarbanes-Oxley and what do you really need to do about building a useful board?
Any ideas or suggestions? Or want to retain our services? Email us at etedprince@perthventures.com or call at (352) 333 3768. Suggestions and ideas - and business - are always welcome.
Yours in Leadership,
Ted |
- Leadership Approaches - Is Your Personality A Barrier to Your Company's Growth?
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Now this might seem to be a sensitive topic but we are going to raise it nonetheless because we feel there’s a serious point to it and it is not raised often enough, if at all. Not everyone who runs a company or an organization of any description has had a background in sales. So could a CEO’s personal profile actually be a barrier to the growth of the company?
The answer is yes, but we hasten to add that this is not necessarily a problem and can be a plus in the right circumstances. Providing the CEO is aware of the issues, a personal profile which is initially a barrier to growth may ultimately be a bigger aid to it than if the CEO was indeed a super-salesman.
There are plenty of good CEOs who actually have more of an intrinsic focus on the product or the financials than they do have on the sales side. By itself, if uncorrected, this may well lead to problems on the growth side of the house and these indeed may be fatal if uncorrected. CEOs with a technical, product, operations or financial background can frequently fall into this trap.
Choices, Choices.
Why does this happen? Because running a company involves choices and the background and personal characteristics of the CEO tend to determine the bias that is applied to those choices. And if the background of the CEO is not sales, it is quite likely, particularly in the earlier stages of his or her tenure, that sales may get less attention than it should. And the choice might be totally unconscious on the part of the CEO.
Yet this need not be. One of the most sales oriented companies we can think of is one that is a leader in its market run by one of the most intensely technical and non-sales oriented CEOs you could possibly meet. Yet this CEO was able to put in place the right strategies and techniques to become one of the sales leaders in its market. And there are plenty more like that. Yet there are also plenty more who unwittingly do become a barrier to their company’s growth.
The answer is for the CEO to be made aware of the objectives that motivate him or her that may not have been explicitly enunciated and then to take corrective action. This is sometimes easier said than done, but it is the vital step in getting to sales success for many CEOs. And the strategies and techniques are not difficult to implement once the principles are known.
In these difficult economic times, sales may well be at a premium for any company. Asking the question as to the CEO’s personal profile may be a key step in increasing sales and in taking a totally different tack to the growth issue.
Recommendations
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French Leadership in Corporate Governance?
The name sounds like it’s a regional village in Provence, but Sarbanes Oxley is now all the rage in corporate governance circles. Everyone is getting on the bandwagon, even us since its now de rigeur. Consulting companies have their Sarbanes Oxley checklists and if you don’t meet them you are now toast with the analysts (how times change). We have a novel approach to Sarbanes Oxley, namely making the board actually work, rather than just making it look like it does.
A lot of boards just don’t work, at least not like they are supposed to. Sarbanes Oxley at least has the faint merit of setting some formal standards. Problem is, Sarbanes Oxley is dominated by accountants and lawyers, people for whom the appearance is just as, if not more important than, the reality. By focusing just on the compliance aspect Sarbanes Oxley threatens to strengthen the tendency to board formalistics, without actually focusing on the fundamentals which would actually increase boards’ effectiveness.
Formalism or Bust, Must Be French
And what is that effectiveness? Lost in all the hoo ha is that boards are about supporting the company’s leadership. That means supporting (not pandering to) the CEO. And supporting the CEO means getting on with him or her, board member independence notwithstanding. And actually complementing the CEO so that the board brings styles and perspectives that complement those of the CEO rather than just reinforcing them.
When did you last hear of anyone actually focusing on the need to have complementary personal profiles on the board? We did, but only from our own proprietary approach to leadership, which is 180 degrees away from the formalism so in vogue right now. Believe us, it won’t take too long before the penny drops and shareholders, investors and even the regulatory big wigs will start to realize that they may be throwing the baby out with the bath water.
What is needed is not just more compliance (although certainly less fraud) but more attention to the fundamentals of helping the CEO, complementing his approach, and supporting the CEO where he or she has gaps – as all CEOs do. Once we all recognize this, corporate governance will be ready to take the next quantum jump.
Recommendations
- Check the fit between the personal profile of the CEO and your board members.
- Develop a board program to support the CEO in the areas where he or she needs support.
- Give Sarbanes Oxley checklists to computers and accountants, where they belong.
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- Perth Leadership Institute News
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Trends from The Field
Yep, several more clients have retainedour services, both consulting and coaching. They hail from a variety of industries, including software, engineering services, event management and computer services. Representing yet another slice of our ever-more complex global and variegated economy, as indeed they must having hired us in the first place.....
So what have we learned from them, as opposed to what they might hopefully have learned from us?
- Customers are demanding ever faster and better service, even if you are low-tech and small, i.e they increasingly expect from the smallest what they get from the biggest.
- Everyone has to market on the web, the only issue is how; looks to us like the Google sponsored link product is rapidly becoming the new global advertising model.
- More business is migrating to the web, no matter what the pundits told us; when Amazon can sell frozen goods you know that Webvan was right after all and all the naysayers were wrong.
- Marketing will increasingly go viral and the number and types of viral marketing models will increase, just as their PC analogs have.
Seminars
We have run several of our seminars on “Why CEOs Fail – And How To Improve Performance” They continue to be a revelation for the attendees. We have several more planned including:
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A CEO Boot Camp for Columbia Graduate Business School in October, planned just right so we can see the leaves fall.
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An upcoming two-day workshop in Asia in September on “Why Executives Fail – How To Prepare for General Management” focused on senior executives in large corporations.
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A CEO Boot Camp for the Ateneo Graduate Business School in Manila (OK, so we get around).
We continue to find a a high level of fascination with this topic and with our proprietary leadership system. Its unconventional focus on the personal profile of the executive seems to be welcomed as a counter to the conventional MBA-type perspective that it is the product and the market which mainly determines the success of a company. Indeed, our approach restores real responsibility to the CEO's role, unlike Sarbanes Oxley above.....
Many fascinating issues raised by and with our attendees:
- What are the underlying triggers for executive failure?
- Can one predict the potential exit valuation associated with CEO personal profiles?
- Is charisma a contra-indicator of success?
We have some definite views and approaches on the above. Needless to say, however, there is far too much to say on these to include here.
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"The more one pleases generally, the less one pleases profoundly."
Stendhal. Love. 1822 |
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Leadership Solutions (formerly "The Technology Fundamentalist") is a publication of Perth Ventures, Inc. Offices at 488 Madison Ave, 19th Flr, New York, NY 10022 and 8524 SW 23rd Pl, Gainesville, FL. 32607. Telephone: (917) 216 8907 and (352) 333 3768. Email info@perthventures.com. Website www.perthventures.com. Copyright. All rights reserved. Articles may be copied or reprinted only with the permission of the Publisher.
Perth Ventures provides leadership training for CEOs and senior executives based on its proprietary Perth Leadership System. This provides the basis for innovative advisory and coaching services to CEOs and senior executives in developing strategy, increasing sales, raising capital and developing new types of strategic alliances. Perth Ventures’ clients are business leaders in companies and large corporations in fast-moving markets all over the world | |
Your Business Secrets: Secret Even From You?
One of a leader’s most valuable assets is one of which he or she generally is totally unaware. That is the vast trove of experience possessed by the leader.
That treasure trove includes rich sets of patterns and findings, which relate ways of doing business to their success or failure. And that wealth of knowledge is there for the finding, ready to yield up valuable conclusions, if only you care to ask.
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
But, paradoxically, most leaders are unaware of this knowledge since it is held at an unconscious level. Most leaders are too consumed by the business at hand to either think about what valuable unsurfaced business knowledge they possess, or how to retrieve it and put it into a useful form that will result in real payback for their organization.
Many leaders could improve their performance dramatically by retrieving this knowledge. That knowledge inside you is probably the fastest way to improve your own performance. Using it will outperform other techiques such as consultants, new hires, or the trendiest of management techniques.
The Brain, Again
Our brains are amazing instruments. While we toil on doing all the things we need to do to keep our organizations running, our brain is there also running in background mode, processing data and findings on its own and squirreling this knowledge away until the brain’s owner finds the key to unlock this treasure trove.
Normally we call this intuition, hunch or educated guesswork. However the extent to which we use this deep storage is minimal compared to what is possible if we set out with a deliberate strategy to mine this knowledge.
The Eureka Moment
We have worked with many business leaders, skeptical concerning the extent or even the existence of their unconscious knowledge. And yet, within as short a time as a half hour, we have seen the same leaders undergoing revelations concerning knowledge and specific discoveries they found in themselves when put to the test - in the right environment. This unconscious knowledge can provide insights for new products and services, new approaches to their business and new techniques for sales, marketing and product development.
Typically in such situations, what seemed to be highly improbable before the event quickly turned into a conclusion that the knowledge, in retrospect, was “obvious” No doubt the reader has seen many examples of this process also.
Next time you decide to hire a consultant to help you figure out new products or services, ask yourself if the answer may not be, literally, within you.
Making The First Move
The more experienced the leader, the greater the trove of experience-based knowledge and potentially the more valuable it is. And, yet, often the more experienced the leader, the less likely it is that he or she will put themselves into a position where unlocking this knowledge is possible.
This occurs because of the power of habit and a frequent reluctance to put themselves through a process which is decidedly different from that involved in the day-to-day running of the organization. A process such as this can smack of hocus pocus, yet it is no more than guided retrieval, a well-known psychological technique.
Extraction Can Be Fun....
Unlocking this knowledge is not difficult. It just requires the right process, the right environment and the right coach, who is able to work with the leader to gradually tease out this knowledge and to help crystallize it into a form that is usable. But it does require the right commitment on the part of the leader, both in terms of energy, focus and time.
Practice Insider Trading?
Every business leader should set aside time to unlock their unconscious business knowledge at periodic intervals. They should do this for more than one reason. First, to prevent themselves from going stale. Second, and more importantly, to unlock useful, possibly invaluable, knowledge they possess which would otherwise never come to the surface.
Ideas from the outside are invaluable. So are those generated on the inside, since their pedigree is known. Perth’s view is that unlocking this secret knowledge is a vital part of leadership training and performance improvement. It is seldom practised yet is one of the quickest ways to fast performance improvement possibly at the breakthrough level.
Recommendations
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arrange a session, preferably with us, to recover and crystallize the gems of that experience, it may be the best therapy you ever had.
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