Minneapolis Business Leaders, Become a Transformational Leader

Labor Dimensions

Leadership Dimensions

Multi-Dimensional Thinking

Develop instant leadership skills by asking great questions

Use the Transformation Matrix and become a transformational leader

 

Transforming from a manager or technician to a leader requires changing from having great answers to having great questions.  Questions designed to make your team think and inspire them to reach beyond the obvious answers.

 

I remember working with a CEO of a national construction firm.  During an initial meeting with a consulting group discussing ways to transform the company, the consultants made the mistake of stating ‘cheaper faster or better, you get control of your choice of two, we control the other one’.  The CEO ended the meeting rather abruptly by emphatically stating that in order to compete in his marketplace, his customer was demanding cheaper, faster, better AND more – and in order for him to be competitive he needed consultants ready to help him achieve improvements in all areas.

 

The simple solution for this CEO was to challenge his team to change how they perform their work to achieve gains in all areas – Cost (cheaper), Productivity (faster), Quality (better) and Capability (more).  These dimensions are the focus of technicians, engineers and skilled labor.  By creating trade-offs in these dimensions they create a balance of speed, performance, quality and capability.  What labor can’t do is achieve gains in all dimensions.

 

Leaders focus their attention in other dimensions.  Referred to as the ‘5 W’s of a leader; Who, What, When, Where, Why and how are the key dimensions great leaders relate to when considering any challenge or opportunity (see chart).  A transformational leader is able to combine these dimensions together to get powerful results.

 

Let’s say your team shows you a competitor’s new product that is significantly cheaper than yours.  Your team advises you that in order to match this, you’ll need to either decrease the quality or features or both and are asking for your decision.  What do you do?

 

Look at the combined chart.  Now you can ask transformation-based questions that cause your team’s thinking to expand.  Can you change ‘who” your customers are?  Can you change ‘where’ you get the raw materials in order to decrease your costs?  “What” additions can you incorporate into the product to increase the value?  “What” other uses are available for your product?  Can you change ‘how’ you manufacture the product by using different materials (plastic instead of steel)?  Can you change ‘where’ you manufacture the product – producing it on the customers premises – eliminating shipping and packaging costs? 

 

Using this matrix will allow you to lead your team to greater achievement in your marketplace.  Teaching this matrix to your employees and systematizing it’s use throughout your company will create a sustainable competitive advantage through continued innovation, which will turn your company into a transformational company.

 

Alan Hill is a business and executive coach in Minneapolis, Minnesota with ActionCOACH, the world’s number one business coaching company.  If you would like to learn more about him or to contact him for a private consultation, check out his website at http://actioncoach.com/alanhill  

Attention MN Business Owners…. Does Your Product or Service “Make or Break” Your Customers?

Creating compelling value.  Are you a transformational company?

 

Are you offering compelling value or just another ‘me too’ service?  Can you pick a client in an industry you serve and make them the dominant industry player because of your product or service? 

 

I know of a company http://www.internetbusinessseo.com that you might think of as a Search Engine Optimization company.  In reality, they decide who becomes the player in their industry because they determine who is ‘found’ on the Internet.  One of their customers is a roofing company.  If you look for roofing in a particular geography, you’ll find this client at the top of the search engines.

What does this mean for the client? Bottom line, more closed business.  

 

Internet Business SEO is a transformational company because their customers become industry leaders.  Who would you rather hire… a website developer who can give you a pretty website or someone who can deliver prospects to your business via the Internet?  Look over your suppliers and vendors.  Who among them have come to you with a compelling service to make your company the leading player in your industry? If you’re like most companies, the answer is ‘no one’. 

 

Can you pick a company and make them the dominant industry player by using your product or service?  If not, what changes or additions would you make to become the ‘king maker’?  When you’re the one that can ‘make or break’ your customers, you’re definitely not competing on price.  Even better, you get to choose who you want to work with, people who deserve to work with you.  Train your sales team to deliver this compelling message each time they meet with a prospect.  Sales becomes much, much easier.

 

Once you determine how you add compelling value to your customer – work on how your services make and create entire industries.  This allows you to achieve incredible and sustainable growth in your company regardless of the market trends because you’re irresistible.

 

Alan Hill is a business and executive coach in Minneapolis, Minnesota with ActionCOACH, the world’s number one business coaching company.  If you would like to learn more about him or to contact him for a private consultation, check out his website at http://actioncoach.com/alanhill  

 

MN CEO’s: Tired of IT Project Expenses?

Minnesota CEO’s –  change the employement game for your employees to bring more value

 

Problem: Frustrated, unappreciated technical talent that doesn’t understand their value.

Solution: Treat them like the talent they are, like top producing movie stars.

 

I believe that the troublemakers are the ones that bring opportunity.  Someone who’s frustrated in their work is frustrated because they believe it can and should be better – they just may not be able to express the desired change in a way that others are able to understand and act upon.  For example, I heard the story of a manager at Sun who many years ago complained to the owner that he was frustrated and leaving.  The owner asked exactly what he felt needed to change and received quite an earful.  The owner told him something to the effect of ‘looks like you have a big job to do implementing these changes, you’d better get busy’.  The owner knew how to change the frustration into action.

 

The story about the coming to a particularly ugly head of the bitter dispute between network admin Terry Childs and his managers (see http://www.cio.com/article/444526/Tech_Workers_Smoldering_Discontent), is about a frustrated employee and a supposed ‘incompetent boss’.  I believe the question is how to change the rules of employment so as to prevent frustration.  This is a similar situation in many ways to the labor movement in the US that created unions.  Employees felt they were being taken advantage of and so they unionized in order to create a better work environment for themselves.  Today technology workers are experiencing similar frustrations yet they reject the notion of unionizing, they perceive themselves as different from the ‘union mentality’.

 

Where then, is a workable solution to this quandary?  In the entertainment industry there are talent scouts – they ‘lock up’ the best talent by securing an exclusive representation agreement.  Interestingly enough, the way top talent is ‘sold’ is by reputation and by potential draw power, i.e. this star has a phenomenal box office draw and the movie will make you more than what you pay them.  Imagine bringing this model to the ‘frustrated tech industry’.  

 

If I were a recruiter I could package up a superstar team of the best database analyst, best web developer and the best Project Manager etc., pick a target company and ‘sell’ them.  The pitch is this team is able to get the job completed in ½ the time because they already have the experience and code components ready to go.  Now I’m selling the best solution economically, not just a body or a team.  Repeat this process for an entire IT shop – now IT workers are finally focused on delivering real hard dollar business benefits instead of chattering on and on about buying more IT hardware for no clear or understandable purpose.  They are finally able to show they are worth more than they are being paid. 

 

However, just like in the entertainment industry, if an entertainer doesn’t want to do the project then they don’t take the gig.   It’s up to the talent scouts to find the best replacement.  No more frustration for the IT worker, they pick the companies they want to work for. 

Smart IT talent would understand that the code they create is theirs to license out to their employer.  As they grow their experience they also grow their application base.  They can then offer reusable components and start selling those to other companies.  This would have to be negotiated, hence the value of the talent scout to the formerly frustrated IT worker. 

 

For example, a company may want to expand internationally.  They turn to their IT department managers and hear a bunch of IT speak on language conversions, database redundancy and security, etc.  The CEO turns to the talent scout who says ‘yes, I have a team that’s developed international applications and they have most of the application you need already designed and coded.  It will take them less than 3 months to deploy (one business quarter)”.  “Oh, yes, this team already works for you on contract but I own the rights to them and their code’.  Would you like me to have them move forward with this new project?”

 

Same thing for support teams.  Clearly identify how they are providing more value than they are charging in the form of their paycheck.  These people are now sold as an insurance policy against downtime.  Keep metrics on their downtime and return to service metrics – now when the discussion comes to ‘lets make support cheaper’ you have a value metric.  Team A has this downtime metric, Team B has another downtime metric. Cheaper equals this much more additional downtime risk.  Is your business ready to assume that additional risk?   It also gives a competition metric for the support team. How well do they stack up against global support?  What areas do they need to improve upon?  How much have they improved system uptime?  Is that trend increasing or decreasing? What about new systems, are they deployed faster and more stable? 

 

Compare this to the revenue this system brings in.  Now business owners and managers have a way to appropriately size support.  High revenue systems get high value support and less downtime risk.  Low revenue systems get low cost support and take on more downtime risk.

 

As these support teams create innovative support solutions, automated support tools and a knowledge base, these are owned by the team, not the company.  This would require a talent scout to negotiate on their behalf so that the value is retained by the team. 

 

Business owners would finally be able to quantify the value of their IT team and they’d be able to finally have an IT group focused on creating real business value.

 

Really smart companies would lock up the rights on their own talent before they ‘unionized’ by signing exclusive representation agreements with talent scouts.  Imagine your Human Resources team out there ‘locking up’ the rights to the top IT talent.  Not just hiring them but getting exclusive representation rights (yes, a contract). 

 

Bottom line, IT workers are not able to sell their value.  It’s why they need someone to negotiate on their behalf. 

 

Alan Hill is a business and executive coach in Minneapolis, Minnesota with ActionCOACH, the world’s number one business coaching company.  If you would like to learn more about him or to contact him for a private consultation, check out his website at http://actioncoach.com/alanhill

Attention Minneapolis Business Owners: Are You Ready To Succeed In Business Without Fighting the Competition?

 

Recently I saw a CEO of a national coffee chain claim that his company’s market position was all about the beans – in other words, all about the taste of the coffee.  Unfortunately for him, his competition has also staked out that territory.  Even worse, a quick trip to any coffee shop reveals that customers are there for the environment and experience, not the coffee.  From business movers and shakers to teens who are looking for a place to hang out, coffee is just rental fee for the use of the space. 

 

Think about it – when was the last time you saw someone in a coffee shop actually savoring the taste of their coffee?  Perhaps you’ve noticed as I have that no-one curls up to their coffee cup.

 

So, why is this important?  Because great tasting coffee is not a differentiator.

 

This CEO is about to spend a LOT of money trying to buy his way into the minds of people who’ve already made a decision.  And he’s going to try to do it based on parameters that his potential customers already expect.  By the way, I’ve tried his coffee and he’s right, they do have good coffee – just like everyone else, including McDonalds.

 

I asked myself why do I go to a coffee shop?  It’s because I’m meeting someone there.  So the coffee is backdrop.  While I don’t want to meet someone where the coffee is tastes bad, I’m never there because of their coffee.  It seems some are there to meet others, like me.  Others are there for a retreat – reading a book or newspaper, or doing work on their computer, but I noticed no one was enjoying the fact that their coffee was excellent.

 

So I started to wonder what would make this a different, better experience for me?  What would make me drive out of my way to meet people at a particular shop?  Well, if I’m there to get work done, what about a mini office supply store?  Or if I’m there to ‘retreat’ then stock the latest books (audio and paperback)?  Or what if they had computer support help?  A Geek onsite to fix computers and sell you software, downloaded on your computer right there.  That’s what I’d like.  A paring of Kinko’s and coffee.  Ah, but see, this is not about the coffee is it? 

 

I can hear this CEO now, ‘That’s straying away from our core competency and our brand identity’.  You know what, it is.  It’s ‘straying toward’ your customers and away from a brand that says ‘me too’.  Maybe Kinko’s should think about adding coffee to their stores.  That should do wonders for increasing their store traffic.

 

So how about you?  What business are you in?  Is your brand identity saying ‘me to’ or does it say ‘I know why you’re here, I know what you want, and we’re the only ones who give it to you’?

 

You should not be expected to spend a lot in advertising and marketing promotions to get this type of compelling market position.  This is the real power creating a unique brand identity.  And you don’t have to fight anyone to get the market share you deserve. 

 

Alan Hill is a business and executive coach in Minneapolis, Minnesota with ActionCOACH, the world’s number one business coaching company.  If you would like to learn more about him or to contact him for a private consultation, check out his website at http://actioncoach.com/alanhill.