If you want to grow your business and especially if you want to be remarkable –you need to innovate. Otherwise you will float rudderless in the sea of sameness.

Many business owners we talk with misunderstand the idea of innovation. They think they have to come up with something big and new: a new product, a new service, a brand new something. Well fortunately, innovation doesn’t require new; it requires better; it requires meaningfully different. In etymology, the word innovation derives from the Latin word innovates which is the noun form of innovare “to renew or change“. We believe this is an important clarification regarding the common confusion between innovation and creation / invention,

Simply put, innovation can be:

• A better approach to customer service
• Faster response time
• Less errors
• More efficient process that reduces cost without impacting service quality – and may even increase service quality
• A branding approach that resonates with potential buyers
• Having a person answer the phone!

If you sell insurance for example, why should someone do business with you and not another agent? If you sell a training program, why should the client choose you? What makes you special; what makes you stand out; what draws clients to you that represents more valuable to them than what your competitors provide?

Remember that when you innovate you will end up doing something different. It may be a small re-calibration that will pay great dividends. Something better in the mind of the customer, but different from the way you’ve done business in the past.

Innovation is the ability to change and transform your business practices within your company. To innovate successfully you must impact the two sides of innovation: the customer facing side and the employee delivery side. Leave one out and all you have is an unsuccessful project.

For additional information on innovation and other topics on Business Growth see our blogs, free articles, white papers and videos at: www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com

Copyright 2012 Kubica LaForest Consulting

While this seems a simple question for employers and business owners—it is loaded. Because, how you see and reference your employees is a window into how well you compete and how effectively you grow your business.

What’s in a word – a lot!  Based on the word you use your behavior (and expectations) are markedly different.

You manage expenses; you control expenses; you minimize expenses. You focus on productivity – how many things get done per unit of time. Employees do what they are told and stay in their sphere of “efficiency”. Independent thinking is not encouraged as it may increase expenses.

Investments on the other hand are what you do to develop new ideas, to be creative and innovative, to find new (and novel) ways to do things – to grow.

We have been blogging on Talent Gravity Organizations and how they lead to growth. And based on our work with clients, a common point we see is:

• how you see your employees (as an expense or as an investment) defines who you hire and how you treat them;
• and who you hire and how you treat them defines your culture, retention, customer service, quality, and growth.

As we have said before, high quality talent has choices. And one choice they choose not to make is to be seen as an expense.

For additional information on key issues and topics on Talent Gravity Organizations and Business Growth see our blogs, free articles, white papers and videos at: www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com

Copyright 2012 Kubica LaForest Consulting

Planning can be fun. At least it is most of the time. The executive team or management group gets together and talks about what is and what could be for the company.

And here’s how the process usually goes:

• You look at the current state of the company
• You discuss and spend time on the daily issues and micro-issues within the company (aka – side bar conversations)
• You start looking at what you need to do as a company
• You create a list of all the things you mustdo – usually on a white board or flip chart – the list is long because there is so much to do
  • Oftentimes the list of “must do’s” is not based on actual data: (employee surveys, client/customer surveys. market research – but on the general impressions of the people in the room)
  • You assign people’s names to things to do
  • Everyone walks out with their list

Next day, everyone goes back to their job and it’s business as usual. There may be a few follow-up meetings. But the reality is that there is way too much day-to-day work to do.

And here are snippets of conversations we hear in the meetings, at the breaks and afterward back on the job:

• How can we possibly do all this when I have too much to do already
• Things really aren’t going to change around here – it’s just the same ole – same ole.
• Tell me what I shouldn’t do
• These actions really won’t help and I don’t think they are worth spending my time on (uttered by people who disagreed with the conclusions and the go forward action plans)
• If I do what they propose, I’ll be out of a job (frequently a complete misconception)

And another year passes.

What we’ve just described are businesses that lack discipline, focus and effective leadership. These businesses may or may not be affected by the economic conditions in the marketplace, but they are all infected with a disease we made up called complacertiaosis (complacency and inertia).

Now just to be fair, there are organizations that do an outstanding job with planning and they do it the right way and their follow-through is exceptional. These are usually the more successful companies.

As a business owner or executive, planning, and then implementing the necessary changes to realize the plan, takes thoughtfulness, time, leadership and courage. And your people, the ones who will be charged with implementing your plan, are by far the potential weak link in the planning chain. How you prepare then, how you support them, and how you reward them will directly relate to how successful you are. Miss this and you have wasted money, wasted time, disrupted the organization, and maintained business as usual.

For additional information on key issues and topics on Strategic Planning, Leadership and Business Growth see our blogs, free articles, white papers and videos at: www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com

Copyright 2012 Kubica LaForest Consulting

Peter Fuda and Richard Badham wrote a fabulous little piece that we’d like to expand upon called How Leaders Spark and Sustain Change (Harvard Business Review, Nov. 2011). We find this particularly helpful for CEO’s and emerging leaders to not only consider but also ideally internalize to assist them in being successful leaders. And Fuda and Badhan go so far as to say that in studying ineffective CEO’s, they find that these ineffective leaders can in fact transform themselves into successful leaders through actionalizing four common metaphors.

The first metaphor is “fire” and it represents a burning ambition. Far too many people lack or have lost the fire for what they do. This is noticeable and uninspiring to others and becomes apparent in their (under) performance. This means that leaders need to identify and align their efforts with what they do best and what they have passion for. No passion, no fire, results in a low burn in value and impact.

Second, is “a snowball”, and it represents a cycle of momentum. Jim Collins, in Good to Great, references momentum as a fly-wheel. Leaders need to demonstrate and create “mutual accountability that creates momentum for change”. We find that low accountability in organizations results in inconsistency and poor output. And worse, a culture emerges that results in a destructive environment of infighting and competition.

Third, is “the mask” and it represents the false persona that people adopt to protect themselves from vulnerability. Fuda and Badham state that leaders must reveal their persona that they believe conceals their flaws – thereby allowing authenticity and genuineness with others to emerge. We find this is a tremendous enabler for developing real relationships. And it’s real relationships that promote trust.

Fourth, and lastly, is “the movie”. This is an area that we preach and strongly believe in; it has to do with a process (not an event) of truthful self-assessment: reflection, evaluation, and course correction.

It’s a wonderful thing to know that strengthening your performance and being your best is really, fully in your control. And we believe that being a successful leader is congruent with being a “happily successful leader.”  Left unattended, you are likely to find yourself in the “unhappily successful” category, or worse, the unsuccessful/ineffective category. It’s your choice.

For additional information on key issues and topics on Leadership and Business Growth see our blogs, free articles, white papers and videos at: www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com

Copyright 2012 Kubica LaForest Consulting

We hear and read a lot about pay for performance. We see it in large corporations, in healthcare (physicians and hospitals) and even in small businesses.

And if you want to take one step toward mediocrity – put in a pay for performance system.

Now don’t get us wrong, pay for performance is a sound idea. Who in their right mind could or would be against the premise? The problem we have is that we don’t have pay for performance systems in many organizations that claim to. What we really have is a modified unearned bonus structure disguised as pay for performance. And the crux is that it all depends on how you define performance.

We have seen pay for performance ending up being an artificial intervention into an otherwise dysfunctional system to start. A system that can’t effectively perform on it’s own so we decide to pay for it (performance, that is). It’s like having your children behave badly in front of guests and paying them to behave nicely. And worse yet, paying them whether they behave nicely or not!

Another problem is pay for performance often becomes a dual cast system: those that get it and those that don’t. And when you end up paying for poor performance, as you often read about, just imagine how the employees feel when company performance tanks, jobs are lost, and “performance” is richly rewarded (for those executives on a pay for performance plan).

Now this certainly sounds like a rant. Perhaps it is. But we also want to reinforce that sometimes good and well-meaning ideas go terribly wrong; It’s what is referred to as the Law of Unintended Consequences.

We’ve written recently about becoming a talent gravity organization, about drawing high-potential talent to you. Well, there is absolutely no way you will do that if you have a pay for performance system that truly doesn’t reward good performance, or where performance is poorly defined, or if poor performance is really a cast system. Now change the “or’s” in the previous sentence with “and’s” and you simply have a bad policy in a poorly performing company.

If you truly believe pay for performance is a good idea, fine, put it in, but put it in for everyone. Clearly define performance as meeting or exceeding aligned company goals, as working together to focus on customer needs, as breaking down silos. But again, then you can just development a culture of alignment and performance and watch your company, careers and compensation grow.

For additional information on key issues and topics on Leadership and Business Growth see our blogs, free articles, white papers and videos at: www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com

Copyright 2012 Kubica LaForest Consulting

Do you have a clear idea what your employees think of you, your leadership team, and the organization?

Does it really matter? Should you care? It depends. It depends on whether or not you want to grow your customer base, increase the quality of your service, and gratify your customers.

It starts with asking yourself an important question: Are you satisfied with the results you are getting in your business?

Business owners and executives will answer this question differently:

• For a hospital it may be patient satisfaction
• For a retail business it may be same store sales
• For a wholesaler, it may be buying deeper into your product line offering
• For a service business it may be more business per client

The one objective all these businesses have in common is satisfying their customer (or in the case of the hospital – their patient).

And what happens if the owner or executive feels that the organization is not meeting customer needs? One example is patient satisfaction scores. (Many hospitals use a patient satisfaction survey marketed by Press Ganey). They immediately move to remediation actions – fixing it.

Millions of dollars are spent each year to improve how a business does business – or in the case of the hospital, improve patient satisfaction. We see process improvement in its multiple incarnations (lean, six sigma); we see improving information technology. What we don’t see very often is: understanding how the employees feel about their work and their organization.

Too many organizations miss the obvious – employee satisfaction. They take it for granted. We’ve heard some executives say “they ought to be thankful they have a decent job in this economy”. Rubbish. Dissatisfied employees don’t produce their best work. Regardless how good improvement initiatives may be, they will fail when the employees are cynical, distrustful, and lack commitment to their job, to their managers, and to the organization.

It’s like trying to bake a loaf of bread and forgetting to put in the yeast. Try as you may, you will not be successful. The results will be just as flat as improvement initiatives are without employee commitment.

Understanding how the employees’ feel, what they believe is important, and what they believe will improve the business are critical ingredients to a successful organization. So if you are dissatisfied with how things are working in your business, if customer satisfaction is low, if growth is flat – there is a high likelihood that you have a dissatisfied workforce – and no initiative, short of addressing employee issues and concerns, will work for long..

For additional information on key issues and topics on Leadership and Business Growth see our blogs, free articles, white papers and videos at: www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com

Copyright 2011 Kubica LaForest Consulting

Being a middle manager is challenging; being a middle manager in healthcare is in a class of its own.

Middle manager’s, by definition, must balance the needs and wants of their superior with the needs and wants of their employees, while at the same time maintaining positive relationships with their peers.

In healthcare, it gets a little more complicated. Middle managers must balance the needs and wants of their managers, the needs and wants of physicians, the needs and wants of their employees, and maintain positive relationships with their peers. And with their peers, they may also have to deal with what we refer to as – “profession clash”. For example, nurses and pharmacists clashing over their professional responsibilities, and who sits higher on the hierarchy of healthcare professionals, or who is more important and influential in the care process.

Middle managers are critical to improving the care process, improving quality, and reducing overall cost. This is one reason why it’s so ridiculous to fire managers to reduce costs. And those executives who use the “firing card” will quickly discover that all strategy is supported from the middle. Tactics are developed from the middle, integration occurs from the middle, and tactics are executed from the middle. Without middle managers, progress slows to a painful crawl. And if there is a need to “fire someone”, remove the recalcitrant middle manager that cannot understand that their role is to be the integrator and not the isolationist or aggravator.

Great middle managers are not the ones who only have exceptional technical/clinical skills and good business skills; great middle managers have good technical/clinical skills, good business skills, and good intrapersonal and interpersonal skills, including:

• A good reputation within the organization
• Influencing skills
• Communication skills
• Political skills
• Interpersonal relationship skills
• Problem solving skills
• Tolerance for ambiguity
• Team building skills

And they also are good team players.

The paradigm of who makes a good middle manager, what skills are most important, needs to change. The challenge for hospital executives is to find and promote into middle management, individuals who have strong intangible skills because in our experience, it is the intangible skills that drive long-term success.

The complexity of healthcare demands it.

Successful healthcare organizations will figure this out – some are making great strides in this direction (Cape Fear Valley Health in Fayetteville, NC).

For too long, healthcare middle managers have been marginalized. As the demand for better quality and better care models accelerates, the veil needs to be lifted and healthcare middle managers need to be positioned to lead the change initiative effectively from the middle.

For additional information on key issues and topics on Leadership and Professional Development see our blogs, free articles, white papers and videos at: www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com

Copyright 2011 Kubica LaForest Consulting

In October 2011, we started to address the issue of talent shortages in some industries. High-tech industries are one key example. The intent was to create an awareness of logical and reasonable steps you can take to make your business more attractive to top talent. (http://www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com/blog/2011/10/small-business-growth-at-risk-addressing-the-talent-shortage-by-establishing-a-talent-gravity-organization/)

Positive examples always help and serve to demonstrate that these ideas really can work and they really do make a difference. Google is an example of a talent gravity organization.

Negative examples also work, and sometimes they work even better because they show what happens when anti-gravity takes over. And usually we find, this is due to lack of attention.

Yahoo is currently a great example of an anti-gravity organization. But don’t take our word for it. In a recent article by Amir Efrati in the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204083204577078403954893904.html), Yahoo’s woes were featured.

Mr. Efrati talked with Greg Cohn, who left Yahoo to start a company. But it’s the comments Mr. Cohn made that are so instructive:

• If you’re not growing;
• If you’re not giving people challenging things to work on;
• If you’re not holding out the promise of creating some personal wealth during one of the frothiest technology markets in modern history; and,
• If your people don’t ultimately believe in your ability to deliver across that whole spectrum – you’re toast.

No more need be said.

And these comments don’t apply only to high-tech. They apply to every industry in the country. Sure some organizations may not (or cannot) provide the promise of creating some personal wealth, but the other points are spot on.

So, how do you think your employees feel about working for you? Would they say:

• We’re growing around here and the excitement is palpable
• One thing we don’t lack for is challenging work to do
• And our management, they sure can deliver

Or would they respond like Mr. Cohn did? It matters and it matters a lot.

And please don’t start with the “we’re different” excuses. You really aren’t different. And thinking you are different is an excuse not to act and to justify your non-action. And that in-attention will cause “anti-gravity” to have an impact on your employees, employee candidates, clients, and prospective clients.

The choice is straightforward. You can either work to build a talent gravity organization or not. We strongly recommend you decide to build a talent gravity organization. The economy will improve, opportunities will be created, new markets will be created, old markets will once again support growth. The economy doesn’t stand still; nor should you.

For additional information on key issues and topics on Leadership and Professional Development see our blogs, free articles, white papers and videos at: www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com

Copyright 2011 Kubica LaForest Consulting