The Goal of Business

Monday, November 8, 2010.

The Goal . .

 - - is to grow your customer base, keep your clients happy and loyal and to make 'gobs' of money doing it. 

Here are two questions:

1. How do you do that today when the internet is dominating business?  Too few of us know how, let alone execute with all the expertise required.  Instead, we tend to default to improving efficiencies only with technical solutions that improve internal systems. Although efficiencies are important in driving out costs, they'd better help you with the goal in the long term.

2. How do you break into new markets and offer great value that matches the market's motives, give adequate service and engage the market with fun, exciting fresh approaches?  Are you counting on waking up with fresh thinking every day or could you engage a team to develop and implement new strategies? 

Most of the managers we have been coaching for the last 30 or 40 years are not involved or empowered to do the thinking it takes to figure out all the above.  They either work for a big company that owns a lot of their market, competes by hiring very bright people who aren't allowed to bet a blade of grass let alone the farm.  Or, they are in a small to medium size company that is niching its way to success or having trouble figuring anything out because they think survival is the game.  Now, this is an over-generalized view, but it sure seems that it is this way to me.

You can hire the next new MBA to help you figure things out, and/or you can apply some leadership to go with your management formulas for success.   For over 50 years we have been asking managers to distinguish the difference between leadership and management in our Leadership for Managers coaching and training programs.  These managers are not in universities learning theory.  They are faced with an internet dominated market, competition issues, people issues, departments competing for resources and companies who don't involve them much in innovative strategic solutions. 

We, in the early stages of our work, usually get all the right, theoretical or academic answers but these answers don't always hit home because most managers only see what's in their way, and one of the barriers they face is usually their boss, or the owner who typically don't lead by example.

Genuine leadership growth can come when one of your smart people, focused on making the company grow, passionate about the business, gets out of the way and lets people think, invent and get organized to do what is required in the marketplace.  Henry Ford used to become frustrated because when he hired a pair of hands he had to take the whole person.  What would his blood pressure be like today with the well educated, "want more" generations in our companies??

Peter Drucker, the father of management theory and practice, claimed since the 70's management and leadership are equally important.  There is no other leadership group but managers.  As a manager unless you are going to do everything yourself you are going to have to accept that you don't know everything and cannot control everything, You need to lead,  listen and involve others, allow them to think, invent, and coach for improved performance.  Visionary leaders who are market centric need to manage as well.  They need to plan, organize direct policies, watch what is measurable, and get systems working together for the strategic direction of the business.

People can be good managers but fail to see what is really going on outside their spreadsheets and can't take a business forward.  Some leaders can be great at seeing what's going on in the market and driven by vision, but have a hard time getting things done through others and struggle growing the business.  In today's world, very few of us can afford to do one or the other.  What I have found is that there is an abundance of management-oriented people and fewer leader types.

All of us can grow in leadership and management.  No excuses.  Nothing works all the time, all processes eventually stop working.  Many things we try fail so it is even more important to be skilled, trained, and disciplined at good management and leadership skills so we can adapt and pick up the team and ourselves when required.  Where we see a need is that few management teams become strategic leaders, let alone organization or people leaders.  It is possible that management teams can be guided in figuring out what next best opportunities are out there and how they can connect and engage their people in figuring out and executing what needs to be done to make the opportunities real.  Leadership and effective management to find and keep customers is needed now.

Another element is coaching for performance.  It's almost impossible to grow without managers directly improving the performance of people.  Too few managers get connected at this level.

ACTIONS

to ponder this week:

1. Are you connected to where the business is going?  Do you even know where it is going?  If not and you aren't a C-Level executive or owner, find out.  How are you planning to make money - to find customers and keep them?   

2.  As management, are you getting out of the way and allowing people to think through what has to be done?  Are you allowing them to innovate, improve the business strategically or operationally?  If you aren't, set up a meeting.  Give the business outcomes desired and ask them to figure out what has to be done.

3. What is your plan to coach for performance improvement?

Incidentally, last week a terrific group of business people who are Monday Morning Mentor subscribers got together for a few hours at our office. We focused on ways to wake up our businesses for more growth, our team to innovation and our own leadership.  We engage in good dialogue and commitment.  We unanimously decided to meet monthly to keep the dialogue and commitment going so we can learn and grow. 

If you want to bring this model in-house, or if you want to engage with us, let me know.

 (kdcrone@dalecarnegie.ca 905-826-7300)

Have a great week.