Are your off-shore facilitates really less expensive? It all depends on how you are calculating your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Your TCO calculation should include all the hidden costs your new strategy will experience over the life of the project. These could include:

1. Extra inventory needed while you wait for your restocking order that is in transit from your chosen low-wage manufacturer. Remember, it is travelling slowly over the ocean a long distance away. (more…)

To some, there’s an enormous difference between expectations and objectives. Our expectations are based on such factors as “the social contract”, our knowledge, and our personal experience. Objectives are rational, exhibiting little, if any, measurable bias, and are clearly communicated.

Our expectations reflect our personal biases. Expectations are often unstated — they are somehow expected to be understood. For example, we expect that adult pedestrians will not haphazardly dart in and out of vehicular traffic. That seems like a reasonable expectation, doesn’t it? We don’t often hear or read of pedestrians being killed as they burst or wander into traffic. The car is bigger, heavier, and faster — why would anyone risk serious injury or death?

Expectations being what they are, many are not met. They are often burdened by others’ expectations. For example, you expect the businessperson on the street corner, on their cellphone while dragging a wheeled suitcase along, is going to look before crossing the street in front of your car. They, on the other hand, expect every vehicle operator to see and yield to them. Someone’s expectations will be dashed, probably both.

One thing expectations rarely are, and that is “based on empirical evidence or sound policy“. Suspicions and hunches aren’t evidence. Too often, a manager comes up with “that’s the way it’s always been done”, or “that’s the way I’ve always done it and it’s always worked.” (Always? Really? Show me the numbers that bear that out.)

“It ain’t braggin’ if you c’n back it up.“
“Dizzy” Dean

Another thing expectations never are, and that’s “communicating well with others“. The essence of a well-run company is establishing SMART objectives that everyone in the organization understands and agrees with.

If you want your expectations met, you have to state them as clearly and precisely as you can to everyone responsible for meeting them. You have to get feedback from those people so you know everyone’s on your wavelength.

“A moving target is hard to hit.“
Lucy Ricardo (“I Love Lucy”)

Do this and your expectations are no longer mere expectations — they are the company’s business objectives. Unstated expectations will always be unmet expectations.

Are you a “good” boss?  Google’s “Project Oxygen” has taken a lot of time — a couple of years, actually — to study what makes a good boss. Their “people analytics” staff has come up with eight key attributes of good managers within their organization.¹ Among those eight attributes are:

• Technical expertise (as you might expect of a tech firm like Google);
• Having a clear vision and strategy for “the team”;
• Helping your employees with career development;
• Be productive and results-oriented; and
• Be an effective and empathetic leader.

What shouldn’t surprise us is that of the eight attributes of a good manager, the “ability to work well with one’s employees” was ranked first in Google’s study. “Technical expertise”, which Google had considered an absolute necessity to being a team leader, was ranked at the bottom.

You may recall that in the Bizmanualz blog, we’ve talked about the qualities of great leaders and what makes true leaders different from others.   Mostly, what separates leaders from mere managers are those intangible qualities, those “quirks” of personality that stump psychologists and sociologists to this day.

What makes for a good manager and exactly how do we quantify it? Well, it’s been tried — a number of times — but Google is putting their own spin on the concept. Despite past failings elsewhere, the people at Google think it’s possible to make the process of grooming leaders a reliable, repeatable process. Their goal is to make the process of hiring and training leaders like any other human resources procedure.

This should be welcome news to every other HR department if Google’s HR can do it right. Managing people, with all their complexities and variations, is (at best) extremely difficult and statistical analysis is helpful only to a point. The chief problem with “data driven management” is that people can’t easily be reduced to a set of predictable behaviors and outcomes — we are only human. Every statistic has to be taken with a grain of salt² but even more so when human behavior is the focus.

I’m going to follow Google’s Project Oxygen to see if there’s any merit to it. I sincerely hope so but I don’t harbor lofty expectations, either. Google may have a world of resources behind them but — people being people – it’s not a sure bet that Project Oxygen will deliver the goods.

So, what do you think? Can Google be successful — at something not so technical — when many other companies before them haven’t been?

NOTES

¹Bryant, Adam, “Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss”, New York Times, 12 March 2011 — http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/business/13hire.html.

²Seife, Charles, Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception, Viking Press (23 Sept 2010). ISBN-13 #978-0670022-16-8.

I’m at that age where I have one or more doctors run annual tests to gauge my health. At least once a year, I see my primary care physician, a cardiologist, a pulmonologist, and other assorted  health care providers. They compare my current numbers — height, weight, blood pressure, cholesterol count, and so forth — with the numbers typical of a person of my age and gender, as well as with my historical numbers.

If my numbers are improving or if they’re above average, they let me go for another year with just a light warning to do this, or don’t do that. Now, there’s nothing in the law that says I have to get an annual checkup; it just makes good sense to me to know if I can proceed “as is” or if I need to take some kind of corrective action. Here’s another example: I’m averaging seven years’ ownership per automobile in the time I’ve been driving¹, a fact that I like to think is due to my attention to routine preventive maintenance.

The same is true of my bank accounts and my personal relationships. Regular, careful attention to details helps ensure that very little falls through the cracks.

If it’s important for an individual to routinely measure events and processes and analyze them in light of reasonable expectations and history, isn’t it reasonable to expect that businesses would do the same?

Which begs the question: Is your company measuring its performance? Is it doing something substantial with those measures, like improving its processes? Regardless of whether your company is required by some standard or regulation to measure its progress toward objectives, doesn’t it make good business sense to always look at how you’re doing in comparison with certain reference points (your own past, your goals, competitors’ performance, etc.)?

It’s been proved many times and in many ways: You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Do you agree or disagree?

NOTES

¹The average jumps to over eight and one-half years when I count just the new vehicles I’ve owned.

A LinkedIn acquaintance of mine has shared what I think are some remarkable insights regarding leadership.  His group, Followership, is dedicated to a better understanding of what’s demanded and required of us when we are in the role of follower.

In the Bizmanualz blog, we’ve talked about what qualities our leaders should possess (and too often don’t) but we haven’t talked about one of the most important parts of leadership. To be a leader, you have to have followers.

“Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.”
Gen. George Patton, U.S. Army (1885-1945)

Why don’t we get the kind of leaders we want more often? Is it because we don’t know how to follow? How many of us follow our leaders passively? How many of us play an active role in ensuring the success of our leaders?

It’s sometimes said that leaders are made by their followers, and vice versa. From that, it should follow that if we’re to get leaders who embody those traits leaders should have, we as followers should embody many, if not all, of those leadership traits ourselves.  Those traits include:

1. Self-respect (and respect for others);
2. The ability to communicate well;
3. Integrity of character;
4. Humility;
5. Courage;
6. Persistence;
7. Dedication;
8. Commitment;
9. Willingness to accept responsibility; and
10. Decisiveness.

How about you? What kind of followers do you have? What kind of follower are you, especially if you’re a leader? Tell us what you think.

How many times have you seen this in the movies — the “last stand”? A group of soldiers is heavily outnumbered, supplies are getting thin, and nerves are frayed.

Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957)

Reinforcements are nowhere in sight. The enemy’s commander is just outside the gate, calling for the group to surrender.

Now, imagine yourself in the place of the officer in charge. Your organization is the castle/outpost/fortress under siege. You can fight or you can surrender; you’re surrounded, so retreat is not an option. It looks like there’s little chance of a favorable outcome for your small group. What do you do?

Your company might not be literally “under siege” but in our current economic state, you can be excused for feeling sometimes like the vultures are circling overhead. When times are tough for your business, what do you do?

1. Be a leader, not merely a boss. Get out in front of your employees. If you don’t demonstrate leadership capability, who will follow you?
2. Stand on your principles. There’s the expedient thing to do and there’s the right thing to do. If you believe in yourself, your product, and your employees, you’ll do the right thing.
3. Maintain employee morale. Convince yourself there’s no such thing as impossible, then demonstrate your conviction to your troops.
4. You know who your employees look up to — make those individuals part of your circle of command (“C of C”). Don’t lock yourself into one hierarchy.
5. Within your C of C, quickly determine your options.
6. Realistically assess your resources, strengths, and weaknesses.
7. Plan for the best- and worst-case scenarios.
8. Lay out the options for all your employees and explain why you prefer option ”x”.
9. Give your employees a choice whether to take a stand with you or cast their lot elsewhere. Those who aren’t firmly with you will weigh you down.
10. Execute your plan.

Remember — anyone can play a leader when things are going well. It’s in times of crisis when we find out who our true leaders are.

Maybe you and your business have been — or are — in a scenario like the one above. What kind of leadership did you display in that time of crisis? Do you have other ideas on how to lead in a crisis?

We were asked this by a reader not long ago, in reference to writing a quality procedure. Exactly what procedure, the reader didn’t say, so I’ll keep my explanation brief and general.

In the policies and procedures we offer on the Bizmanualz web site, we generally include a statement of purpose. That is, what’s the purpose of the procedure outlined in the document? Not only is what you do important — why you do it is just as important.

Again, why am I doing this?

Overall, the purpose of any procedure is to serve as training material. In addition, an important purpose of procedures is to ensure consistency. Procedures are designed to help reduce variation within a given process.

Furthermore, clearly stating the purpose for a procedure helps you gain employee cooperation, or compliance, and it instills in your employees a sense of direction and urgency.

The statement of purpose is a “soft” statement of reasons and goals. Objectives, on the other hand, are about quantifying and measuring. For any of your business processes, you must have measurable objectives. How do you know if your processes are working if you’re not tracking and measuring the results? How do you improve your processes if you don’t establish a baseline, then measure output against the baseline? And, how do you compete effectively if you’re not continually improving?

In short, a procedure’s purpose addresses the “why” and the objectives address “what”, “when”, “how”, and “how much”. The purpose is general, where the objectives are specific.

I hope that helps clarify the issue. If it doesn’t — or if you have a differing opinion — let me know, won’t you? Thanks.

I and a colleague of mine began a couple of informal polls last week as a result of the response to a recent blog post in which I asked the question, “Leaders: what makes us want to follow them?“. We set up a questionnaire on Survey Monkey, asking participants to identify the top three leadership characteristics from among those I listed in the post.

So far, participants in that poll believe the top three leadership qualities are:

1. Decisiveness (especially in a crisis);
2. Doing what’s right (not what’s popular); and
3. The ability to plan effectively.

Similarly, we asked members of a group on LinkedIn (Smart Leaders) an open-ended question: ”What do you feel are the two most important qualities a leader can have?” Participants in this case weren’t restricted to a list of a dozen or so items; instead, we wanted the first thing(s) that popped into their heads.

Nearly all men can stand adversity but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

Naturally, responses are all over the place. Interestingly, a number objected to being limited to just two leadership qualities and gave us a half-dozen or more “most important” leadership qualities. For now, the two most important leadership qualities according to Smart Leaders are:

1. Vision; and
2. Passion.

There’s a host of other characteristics tied for 3rd place (e.g., courage, inspiration, empathy). As we get more responses from the LinkedIn group, the “top three” should become clearer. Of course, we’ll keep you updated.

Now it’s time to ask you — our readers — how you feel. What qualities do leaders need most, in your opinion? Are there two or three characteristics they need more than all the rest?

Do leaders need different qualities now than they did a decade ago, or a century ago? Are there people you work with who don’t have “leader” in their formal job title but are, in fact, leaders?

Head to either of our online polls (Survey Monkey or LinkedIn), or leave your comment on leadership below.

Thanks, and best wishes for the coming year,
Steve

Real leaders — not those people who run for office every other year, promising “real” leadership for a change — possess a combination of qualities and characteristics that make us want to follow them. Whether we naturally gravitate to these quality individuals or we subconsciously recognize their leadership, we follow them. We’re pretty good at recognizing greatness in certain people.

Why are some people great leaders? What do they possess that we don’t?

“What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder? What makes the dawn come up like thunder?”
Cowardly Lion, “The Wizard of Oz” (1939)

Leaders generally possess these characteristics:

• They are credible;
• They’re persuasive;
• They’re able to plan effectively;
• They have a strong belief system (a sound moral/ethical code);
• They communicate extremely well (direct, to the point);
• They’re confident, both in their abilities and in the abilities of others;
• They’re goal-oriented;
• They’re charismatic;
• They do what’s right, not necessarily what’s popular;
• They are decisive, especially in crises;
• They are responsible;
• They’re knowledgeable and experienced (and they share their knowledge and experience);
• They don’t become complacent (they don’t rest on their laurels);
• They trust, but don’t assume; and
• They have an eye for talent.

“Lead, follow, or get out of the way.”
Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1 (1776)

But where does it come from? Is there such a thing as innovative leadership quality? It seems anyone can be trained to be a manager, but leaders are cut from a different cloth. Why? It’s not that they’re born that way. They can be made, but there’s no easily reproducible process, no easy-to-follow recipe or we’d be doing it all the time.

The service academies seem to have the greatest success in this regard — they purposely educate and groom individuals to be leaders by instilling discipline, self-sacrifice, and an unshakable work ethic and by constantly emphasizing the need to plan for the best but prepare for the worst. Still, even they don’t have anything close to a perfect track record when it comes to turning out leaders. Similarly, there are outstanding leaders throughout history who never served in the military.

“The real leader has no need to lead; he is content to point the way.”
Henry Miller (1891-1980)

How are leaders best made, in your opinion? Or are they born? Do you go looking for leaders or do you wait for them to come to you? Does your organization have a process for identifying and training potential leaders?

If you want to grow your revenues, it’s important to know whether your company is driven by sales or marketing efforts. Sales driven companies grow by adding more sales people, while marketing driven companies grow by adding more marketing programs.  How do you know which one — sales or marketing — drives your company?

Try adding more salespeople (resellers or distributors), assign them a sales quota, and let them loose in a territory and see if your sales grow.  If you start getting more sales, you know your company is driven by sales.  If your sales fail to grow, try adding marketing activities. For example:

• Expand your website;
• Increase your public relations efforts;
• Add a company blog or a periodic newsletter;
• Expand your advertising or pay-per-click (PPC) program on the internet;
• Add more keyword focused pages to your internet marketing;
• Experiment with direct mail or email marketing;
• Attend (more) trade shows or events;
• Host your own conference for your customers and leads; and/or
• Add new products or enter new markets.

You can also try increasing your overall sales and marketing effectiveness by introducing more control over your sales and marketing cycle. If you’re unable to grow your sales by either adding sales people or expanding your marketing activities, it’s time for a strategic review. There are only two ways to grow your revenue — sales activities or marketing programs.

When neither of these works, it’s time to change your strategy.  Your business strategy is what drives marketing, and marketing is what drives your sales.

Sales and Marketing strategies and plans are critical for any business. Why leave them to chance?  The Bizmanualz Sales & Marketing Policies and Procedures manual contains procedures for developing strategy, adding sales people, and creating marketing activities. These prewritten and fully editable sales and marketing procedures can help you quickly and effectively take control of your sales and marketing processes to achieve consistent results.

What drives your organization? Sales? Marketing?