The assumption is that your communication of strategy, tactics, goals, and behaviors through the organization actually works the way you intend.  Yes, you’re the CEO.  Yes, you do communicate with your team – perhaps even very often.  But note well that there is a difference between “telling” and “effectively communicating,” in a manner designed to create and reinforce desired behaviors and results.

During a recent coaching session with the CEO and General Manager of a successful office furniture distributor, both of them were shocked to learn that they were out of alignment on the most fundamental goal for the business.  The CEO’s top priority for the GM: create profitable growth.   The GM, however, believed that her top priority was to protect the CEO’s investment.  More background: The CEO and GM have worked together for years and are also friends away from the office.

Neither could fathom how it was possible – after all they worked together for years and were also friends – to be out of alignment in such a fundamental way.  Yet they were.

Now think about your leadership team and front-line staff, and consider the probability that you’re just not all as in synch as you should be.  My own experience with numerous clients and plenty of independent, credible research suggests that it’s not just highly likely – it’s predictable.

Lack of alignment is predictable when 1 or more of the following 3 conditions – invisible obstacles to profitable growth – exist in your business:

Unclear Vision, Strategy, and Metrics to Measure Progress

The Problem:
If you haven’t clarified your vision (“where” the business is headed) and your strategy (“how” you are going to approach your chosen markets to make the vision a reality), you can’t communicate a sense of direction and guidelines to help your people make decisions in their day-to-day work.  What’s more, the absence of simple, clear metrics to indicate progress reduces accountability and further increases confusion regarding what’s most important.  The acid test: pick 4 people at random in your company and ask them to tell you your vision, your strategy, and the KPIs that are most critical to the business achieving its objectives this year.  At least 3 of them should answer all three elements accurately.

How it Feels:
Like the business is adrift and that you’re constantly reacting to external events.

The Fix:
Gather your senior team and invest the time and energy to create a clear vision and strategy for your business.  A qualified coach or external facilitator with a proven process for this will dramatically improve the quality of your dialogue and the outcome, which must be actionable for it to have value.  Once the strategy is clear, create Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure critical numbers for both people and process, which must always remain in balance.

Ineffective Communication

The Problem:
In their book “Made to Stick,” Chip and Dan Heath highlight The Curse of Knowledge as a key contributor to ineffective communication.  The research behind this demonstrates that you routinely communicate from your own frame of reference (i.e. CEO or Business Owner with complete access to all results and records of the business plus your own thoughts about the future).  The Curse of Knowledge causes you to communicate in ways that make it difficult for your team to understand and internalize.  It’s like the Gary Larson cartoon with a man talking to his dog and all the dog hears is “Blah, blah, blah, Fido.  Blah, blah, blah Fido.”  The details are lost in translation!

How it Feels:
You wonder why your front line staff don’t say and do the things that you would say and do if you were in their jobs yourself and why they don’t “get it.”

The Fix:
Be sure that your communications are translated in a way that everyone in the organization – from top to bottom – can clearly understand and act upon them.  Humans are fantastic at pattern recognition – so think about explaining strategies and plans in familiar terms; for example “your tic-tac-toe” strategy” or “this quarter’s Jeopardy theme to ensure that we ask our customers 3 questions on every call.”  You should spend at least as much time figuring out how to translate your strategies and initiatives as you do creating them to ensure understanding and to permanently overcome the Curse of Knowledge.

Lack of Regular Communication Rhythms

The Problem:
Repetition is the mother of all learning.  It’s how you learned your multiplication tables, how to ride a bike, how to eat, and virtually every other behavior and piece of knowledge you’ve mastered.  Unless you have regular communication rhythms – daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual – established as habitual practices, you are limiting repetition learning, information flow, and “think” time for your senior team.  In full swing, for example, a daily huddle discipline can completely align an organization with hundreds of staff in the span of 30 minutes – with most of the staff attending a single 6-7 minute meeting.

How it Feels:
Like you are disconnected from your front line staff and customer touch points or like the organization isn’t as “tight” as it used to be when it was smaller.

The Fix:
Implement daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual meeting rhythms in your business.  Daily huddles are to synch work units and to create daily top-to-bottom alignment and information flow.  Weekly meetings are for your extended management team to focus on monthly objectives, obstacles, and problem solving.  Monthly meetings are for senior management to focus on quarterly objectives, obstacles, problem solving, team development / learning, and the evolution of your plan.  Quarterly meetings are for executive management to focus on strategy, annual objectives, longer-term goals, team development / learning, and the evolution of your plan.

If any one of these three conditions exist in your business, it is predictable that you have a lack of alignment – which means that your organization is falling victim to an invisible drag on performance and growth.

Clint Eastwood as Cool Hand Luke said “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”  Overcoming your assumptions and naming the right problem is always about 50% of any solution.  The other 50% lies in your ability to implement The Fix – processes and disciplines – required to create a permanent remedy.

Mark Green is a business growth expert who works with companies to help them implement a proven, easy-to-use framework to run and grow the business faster and more profitably, while expending less effort and less time. To learn more about Mark or his firm, visit his website or contact him directly at (888) 720-7337 or Mark.Green@Performance-Dynamics.net.

If you’re the smartest person in the room you’re a genius.  If you surround yourself with the smartest people in the room and continually strive to help them get even smarter, you’re a genius maker.

According to Liz Wiseman, author of “Multipliers – How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter,” Multipliers are genius makers who bring out intelligence in others and build collective, viral intelligence in organizations. Diminishers, on the other hand, are geniuses.  Absorbed in their own intelligence, they stifle others and deplete the organization of crucial intelligence and capability. 

Diminishers are usually unaware of their behavior and its consequences.  According to Wiseman’s research, Multipliers get TWICE the capability from their people as Diminishers.  That’s like doubling your staff without increasing overhead!  So there is a massive drag on productivity and engagement that Diminishers pay for their actions.

Unfortunately, statistically speaking, most of us are unintentional Diminishers.  This means that you and your management team likely exhibit diminishing behaviors, whether you realize it or not.  This is the first reason that your business is going to underperform in 2011:

1. You and Your Management Team Exhibit Diminishing Behaviors

To overcome this massive drag on productivity, first make sure that your management team is aware of Wiseman’s research and of the consequences of diminishing behavior.  Read the book and discuss it as a team, take the author’s Accidental Diminisher Quiz to better understand your own diminishing tendencies, and begin to call out Genius (diminishing) behaviors you observe in one another.

Here are the other reasons why I believe that your business will underperform next year:

2. You Believe What You Hear

What you believe impacts the results you achieve.  If you pay too much attention to “conventional wisdom,” including media coverage of the economy, your beliefs and expectations from your business will diminish which, in turn, yields underperformance.  I’d be a crazy wealthy man if I had a dime for every time I hear “the economy” excuse from CEOs and Managing Partners to justify their lackluster results.

You, in turn, hear and accept excuses from your team that help them justify your own and their own failures and shortcomings.  “We couldn’t have won this deal anyway based on the competition’s price” – EXCUSE.  “It’s impossible to get the bank to extend our line of credit – nobody’s lending” – EXCUSE.  “We’re glad we stayed flat this year given the economic conditions” – EXCUSE.  Sound familiar?

To overcome beliefs in conventional wisdom and institutional excuse making, first change your surroundings. Because you are a product of those around you and of what you are repetitively exposed to, it might be time to find friends and colleagues who share a more positive “can do” outlook.  A little distance from negative people and excuse makers will go a long way to inoculate you from picking up the bug.  You might also consider doing something I did several years ago – stop consuming general media, which is predominantly negative (good news, after all, doesn’t sell!) and of little practical use to any of us.  Finally, begin to recognize excuse making in yourself and in others – and call it out.

3. You Are Not Actively Combating Commoditization

I heard author and consultant Bob Bloom speak this week at the Gazelles Fortune Growth Summit.  He mentioned that Procter & Gamble is going to begin selling their products – like Tide, Charmin and Head & Shoulders – directly to consumers via the internet.  Memo to grocery distributors and stores: UH OH!

This case of disintermediation is a symptom that illustrates how technology and the increased amount of information available to buyers is speeding commoditization in virtually every industry and profession.  For example, if I need to hire an attorney to review a contract, I believe that there are probably 100 within a 10 mile radius of my office who have the capability to do a good job for me.  Since they all seem the same, all I’m left with is price to determine who I will hire.  This pattern is happening in your industry right now, whether you realize it or not and it is already impacting your ability to generate the results you want.

It is imperative that you actively and doggedly combat commoditization – unless, of course, selling a commodity is part of your business strategy.  Start by defining your ideal and minimally acceptable clients to find a niche where you can provide uncommon amounts of value.  The days of trying to be “all things to all people” – a path littered with razor thin margins and shuttered businesses – are long gone.  Once you have clarity on your niche, stop talking about value added and start finding ways to beat your clients and prospects over the head with a value club – they have to see it clearly and it has to be relevant to them (not to you!).

4. You Lack Discipline and a Plan of Action

As your organization grows more complex, it becomes increasingly difficult to put knowledge and understanding into practice.  It’s not about “what” to do (in most cases you and your senior team know this) – it’s about “how” to get it done through the work of others. Many talk about this; few actually pull it off – because they don’t know how to neutralize the complexity that inevitably creeps into a growing business. An inability to create and stick to a plan of action and instill discipline, habits, and alignment that are conducive to producing predictable results condemns many organizations to mediocrity.

There are four critical decisions that must be evaluated and monitored in every business. They are:

Strategy – How are we going to generate revenue, for what, from whom?

Cash – How are we going to accelerate cash flow in the business?

People – How are we going to attract, develop, and retain “A” players?

Execution – How will we align the organization, create accountability, and manage the flow of information to ensure we stay on track?

Make time to plan for your business and implement a process to continually evaluate these four critical decisions.

5. You Are Underinvesting in Your Leadership Development and Growth

I have yet to encounter an organization where the growth rate of the business exceeds the personal growth rate of the senior team. You and your senior team must grow for your business to grow.  Failing to acknowledge and act on this leads to insular thinking, less innovation, an inability to react to competitive and environmental threats, and an organization that spends most of its time living in the past at the expense of the future. All strengths and weaknesses in your organization can be traced directly back to the leadership team and your levels of trust, competence, discipline, alignment, and respect – each of which requires continual care, planning, and development.

Consider:

What are you reading?  What industry and general business conferences do you attend?  Name 3 business growth / leadership speakers you’ve heard in the last 12 months. When was the last time you paid someone for business advice?

Set goals, a budget, and time for this! Most high performing growth firms work with a coach who serves as a catalyst to generate leadership growth. You must grow for your business to grow.

Choose Your Next Step

As you begin to contemplate making 2011 the year you want it to be, pick 1 of these 5 reasons for underperformance. Focus on it for the next 90 days with your team – make time, make changes, and implement.  Even with a modest start, you’ll be on your way to a more predictable and sustainable growth trajectory for your business.

Mark Green is a business growth expert who works with companies to help them implement a proven, easy-to-use framework to run and grow the business faster and more profitably, while expending less effort and less time. To learn more about Mark or his firm, visit his website or contact him directly at (888) 720-7337 or Mark.Green@Performance-Dynamics.net.

If you’re the smartest person in the room you’re a Genius. If you surround yourself with the smartest people in the room, you’re a Genius Maker.

These terms and concepts come from the book ”Multipliers – How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter” by Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown, published earlier this year.

Based upon their own research the authors define Multipliers as “Genius Makers” who bring out intelligence in others and build collective, viral intelligence in organizations. Diminishers, on the other hand, are the “Geniuses.” Absorbed in their own intelligence, they stifle others and deplete the organization of crucial intelligence and capability.

The bottom line of their study: By extracting people’s full capability, Multipliers get TWICE the capability from people as do Diminishers. That’s a hugely significant finding in robust economic times, but even more so as businesses continually strive to do more with less. Can you imagine what it would be like if you could get TWICE the capability from your employees?

The bad news is that, statistically speaking, you and your management team are most likely Diminishers, whether you realize it or not. You’re not tyrants, you’re not bad managers, and you’re not hated by those on your team — you’re Accidental Diminishers. You try your best every day to do the right things, but inadvertently create a diminishing environment for your people.

If you’d like to know for sure, and also get a more specific idea about which of your leadership assumptions and behaviors have a diminishing impact, you can take the Accidental Diminisher Quiz created by the authors.

What can you do about it if you’re an Accidental Diminisher? 

First, read the book.  Next find ways to make it ok for you and your leadership team to begin calling out “genius” behaviors.  Finally, consider hiring a qualified coach to help you implement management and leadership practices that will generate consistent, profitable growth.

This finding seems to be a direct contradiction to the pattern we see at most companies, where executives and highly skilled people get big bucks and bigger incentives, and Wall Street rewards companies for squeezing and cutting people on the lower rungs of the ladder (even if this practice is proven to be at the expense of long term performance).

The study looked at companies all around the globe, ranging in size from 27 to 126,000 employees, from 2005 through 2009.

Results demonstrated that in most businesses, front-line employees drive 90% of the profits.  By increasing employee engagement you can cut staff turnover, find cost savings, increase productivity, and increase profits.  Here’s how you can do just that - by adopting some or all of the following practices:

• Provide more training and advancement opportunities for people on the lowest rungs of the ladder, which leads to lower staff turnover, easier recruitment, and increased efficiencies.
• Invest in the health of people by providing low-cost health insurance, on-site exercise facilities, and a more nutritious company cafeteria menu – which reduces absentee rates and boosts productivity.
• Promote from within to impact worker happiness and to reduce turnover.
• Offer employee ownership options, which increase revenue and the value of the stock options themselves.
• Practice open book management by showing front-line workers the monthly financials and inviting them to find and share in cost-saving initiatives, which increases profitability.
• Implement flex time for line workers, which allows firms to shift employees into more productive areas through the down times.
• Give line workers more say in the direction of their work, which motivates workers and leads to cost savings and efficiency increases.

This is yet another study with HARD DATA that increasing employee engagement creates positive outcomes and a return on investment for all concerned. It makes business better for everyone – for you, for your people and for your stakeholders.

Here are three businesses that are doing it right – check them out:

1.  The root causes of the “Growth Trap” that severely restrict profitable growth
2.  How to eliminate Sales Ghosts permanently from your organization
3.  How to dramatically improve the effectiveness of your sales hiring process
4.  How to get a free tool to calculate the cost of your organization’s Sales Ghosts

[Click Here to Listen]

The first is FEAR. Fear is internal; it’s in our head, however it is the great crippler of human potential. Fear can be divided into three basic categories:

• Fear of Failure – Not trying ensures failure.  A better perspective on failure is to equate it with learning.  When we stop failing, we stop learning.  No mistakes = no action.
• Fear of Criticism or Rejection – When you don’t get the sales order, it means you didn’t get the order, not that you or your product was rejected.  This can lead to feelings of “I’m not worthy.”  Your worth as an individual isn’t on the line – a business transaction is.
• Fear of Non-Conformity – This can rob you of your uniqueness.

Ask yourself: What are my fears and how might they be holding me back?

The second reason people resist change is because of EGO. The need to be right is a powerful human need. It’s a common problem with leaders, managers, and business owners who have had a taste of success.

Ask yourself: Is it possible that my need to be right is an obstacle?

The third reason why people resist change is to avoid CONFLICT. Because when you try to do something different and create change, you’ll create and get some conflict. And conflict isn’t fun, so many people just avoid it all together.

Ask yourself: How comfortable am I with conflict?

The fourth reason that people resist change is LACK OF PURPOSE. Without a sense of purpose, people become stagnant and complacent. They also tend to get burnt out.

Ask yourself: Have I created a compelling vision for my business?

The fifth reason people resist change is LACK OF INFORMATION or poor communication.  People deal better with change equipped with information, even if the information is negative.  You cannot lead unless you have a sense of purpose – for yourself and for your team. What’s your vision? Is it something that everyone understands and has a stake in?  How do you continually communicate and reinforce your vision?

Ask yourself: How would my team rate me as a communicator of my vision?

In today’s world, we face more change in a year then our grandparents may have faced in their lifetime.  It can be overwhelming; it can be scary; it can be frustrating, or it can be exhilarating. Regardless of how you view change, the fact remains that it is very real, it won’t go away, and your business’ growth depends on it.  In his book, The Renewal Factor, Robert Waterman says, our “willingness to understand and exploit change is a powerful competitive weapon.”

Ask yourself: How well do I actively seek and exploit change?

The first step is always the most painful. To get your employees to accept and embrace change, you must first lead by example. That means that you must demonstrate your willingness and ability to change before you can expect them to change!

A simple, yet powerful way to accomplish this is to do the following:

1. Ask your direct reports (and, if applicable, your boss) to list the top three things that you could change to make you a more effective leader. Don’t accept any fewer than three answers, because the third is usually the most important one.
2. Compile the list of suggestions and share it with your team, then pick 2 or 3 items from the list and make a commitment to change.
3. Share your progress with your team and ask them to help you hold yourself accountable.
4. As you progress, it’s time to ask your team to follow in your path and complete the same exercise for themselves.

The fundamental truth is this: As goes the leadership team goes the rest of the firm.  Whatever strengths or weaknesses exist within the organization can be traced right back to the executive team and their levels of cohesion, trust, competence, discipline, and willingness to change and adapt.

Ask yourself:  Am I modeling the thoughts and behaviors I expect from my team?

Your answer to that question might not be comfortable, but it will explain precisely why your organization either is or isn’t performing the way you want.

As we approach the end of of Q1 2010 it’s time once again to look at the scoreboard to see how your sales team is tracking toward your revenue goal. How are they doing? And how are you doing holding them accountable to deliver?

Here are some thoughts about improving accountability from Dave Kurlan, thought leader in sales effectiveness and salesforce development, and author of Baseline Selling (www.baselineselling.com).

A priest was sharing his frustration over parishioners who took shortcuts and left church early. At a parish he was assigned to earlier in his career, parishioners received the host and exited via the side door without returning to their seats for the remainder of the service. He wondered how many of them had simply developed a bad habit and challenged them by saying, “The next time you find yourself leaving early, ask yourself, ‘why am I doing this?’” A lady approached him after the service and felt terrible about all of this. She said that she had been leaving early to tend to her sick husband. The Priest said that this didn’t apply to her, she was already making a sacrifice by attending, and she should care for her husband. She paused and finally said, “but he passed away three years ago!”

This story got me wondering about the widespread misuse of the sales process. There are certain steps that must be executed at specific times to assure a successful outcome. However, undisciplined salespeople are often tempted to skip steps when prospects ask for prices, quotes, proposals, demos, references, and presentations much earlier than the process allows for. Once in a while these salespeople get lucky and get the business. And then they start skipping the steps they’ve been trained to follow because, after all, they are more comfortable and confident at presenting, proposing, quoting and demoing, than they are with listening, questioning, probing and identifying compelling reasons to buy. Like the lady with the sick husband, they take steps that aren’t necessary or desirable, simply out of habit.

Sales Management’s number one priority is to assure that salespeople don’t fall into old habits, take shortcuts, get lazy, or avoid steps in the sales process where they aren’t as skilled or comfortable. Once your customized, optimized, integrated sales process is in place and introduced, my top 10 rules for all sales processes, strategies and tactics are:

1. This isn’t voluntary
2. There are no exceptions
3. We live it and breathe it
4. Hold them (and yourself) accountable to it
5. Coach to it daily
6. Reinforce it
7. Point out what happens when they skip steps
8. Show them what happens when they execute
9. Non compliance has consequences
10. Practice daily

What bad habits have taken hold with your salespeople?  Follow Dave’s 10 steps to strengthen your sales leadership, to reinforce the fundamentals, and to bring out the best in your team.

Here are 5 (invisible) reasons why your salespeople will underperform in 2010:

1. They have a need for approval
Many people choose sales after being told they have a perfect personality for selling. While that could be true, many of those same people feel complete only when other people like them. Salespeople who are easily liked have a great advantage, but salespeople who need their prospects to like them often make that a priority over getting the business. Salespeople with need for approval have difficulty asking tough questions, have a fear of rejection, and avoid confrontation.

2. They become emotionally involved
Salespeople who think, analyze, create, strategize or otherwise talk to themselves when prospects catch them by surprise become emotionally involved instead of remaining in the moment. When they are emotionally involved, their listening skills tend to be self-focused rather than prospect focused, causing them to miss important points and lose control of their meetings.

3. They rehearse self-limiting beliefs
Every salesperson has as many as 60 beliefs that either support the selling process (“I have the ability to be effective with company presidents”) or sabotage it (”I don’t like making cold calls”). Ineffective salespeople often have 10 or more of these self-limiting records playing over and over in their heads while more effective salespeople have very few.

4. They have a non-supportive buy cycle
The buy cycle refers to the salesperson’s own personal buying habits and how they make major purchases for themselves. Most ineffective salespeople have non-supportive buy cycles: they think it over before making a decision, they comparison shop, they shop for the lowest price, they perform research or perceive that a relatively small amount of money is a lot. When their prospects engage in this very same behavior, the salesperson unconsciously understands (has empathy), and their techniques for handling stalls and put-offs of this kind are either not used at all or are used ineffectively.

5. They are uncomfortable with issues involving money
Many salespeople are uncomfortable escalating a question about budget or whether a prospect can afford the product or service being offered to the next level. Their discomfort prevents them from helping a prospect figure out how to pay or even (more creatively) where the money could possibly come from. When prospects don’t have the budget, can’t envision increasing the budget or don’t know how they can find the money, the salesperson empathizes as opposed to digging deeper, asking questions, and making suggestions to resolve the monetary shortage.

Of the 21 dimensions we use to assess sales effectiveness and develop salespeople, these 5 are the most common and significant inhibitors to sales success. They are also the most challenging to detect and remedy.

You can stack the deck for 2010 in your favor by proactively developing current sales staff in each of these 5 dimensions and by modifying your sales recruiting process to screen for them before you hire. And by the way, if you don’t, the costs associated with an endless recruiting, training, and turnover cycle for your sales team could hurt you even more than the lost revenue!

Want more sales in 2010 and a stable, productive sales team? Then eliminate the 5 (invisible) reasons why your salespeople underperform!

In other words, he’s worth your time!  Take just over 2 minutes (2:04) and get a dose of Tom Peters to spark your thinking.

I recently heard from my colleague Vern Harnish – author of “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits” – that in his 27+ years of educating executives of growth firms the best predictors of success are a voracious thirst for learning and a bias for action – that is, “learn fast, act fast.” It’s why Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, has created a habit of shutting off his Blackberry over the weekend and reading a book or two.

Happy reading!

Stony was working in the New York area for 9 days replacing all of the hydraulic lines on the largest dredge on the planet, which was temporarily dry-docked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  Its next assignment: hitch a tow to Central America and then deepen and widen the Panama Canal.

His employer is the largest hydraulic maintenance contractor in the US.  As we conversed during our flight, it became clear to me that Stony was highly experienced, well trained, motivated, and clearly proud of and very good at what he does.  For his organization, Stony represents the “tip of the spear,” or the front line – where the heavy lifting, blocking and tackling, and money of the business is made.

I asked if he had time during his stay to visit Manhattan.  He answered, “No – and it’s too bad, because I’ve never been in the city and I’d really like to see it.  We worked 12-15 hour days, so there wasn’t any time.”

When I followed up and inquired where he stayed while working in Brooklyn, he told me that his team stayed in a hotel in New Jersey approximately 50-60 minutes from the work site.

“Wow,” I said. “You were working 12-15 hour days and had to commute an hour each way? I’m sure there are plenty of reasonable accommodations much closer to the Brooklyn Navy Yard.”

Upon hearing this, Stony paused, thought for a moment, and then through a frustrated smile said: “Well, you know how Corporate works.”

The truth of Stony’s situation is his belief that “Corporate” doesn’t care.  Unfortunately, there is ample evidence to support him.  After all, who in their right mind would put a work crew in a hotel an hour away from a 12-15 hour per day job when there are plenty of closer (and affordable) alternatives?  To his credit, he never complained to me about it; he just shrugged it off as if resigned to his fate.

As our flight touched down smoothly in Houston, I knew that there had to be much more to the story.  I wondered what else Stony knew that none of the people at “Corporate” cared to ask him about – and I wondered what that lack of open communication was costing all of them.

Who are the “Stonys” – the most experienced, most valuable, most dedicated front line employees – in your organization or department?  What can you learn from them?  Do you have mechanisms in place to regularly solicit their input and feedback or does communication in your organization tend to flow only 1-way – from top to bottom?

High performing organizations have deliberate 2-way communication and feedback mechanisms in place to tap the collective wisdom of their front line staff.  Find the Stonys!  Then start asking the right questions to further engage them and learn from them.