Newsletter: June 2009
4 Essential Components to Improving Organizational Performance
In 2008, the business of business was hit by a tsunami. Once successful businesses were caught up in wave after wave of bad news, negative market psychology and a fundamental breakdown in the economic underpinnings of our economy. Like all man made disasters, some businesses survived. And business growth will resume. When it does, there are four essential components that all business owners and leaders must consider and adopt as they move forward:
- A sound strategic vision
- Learning how to forecast and solve problems
- Good decision making, and
- Intense focus on implementation.
It will not be business as usual for a while. We have seen the effects of success blindness. This is a condition where success can be your greatest impediment to succeeding. Success hides many ills; it masks fundamental weaknesses in the business, and it leads to poor decisions â decisions that could end up fatal to your business. We've all heard the adage â they're throwing money at the problem. Well, money is scarce. Simply stated we literally can no longer afford to throw money at the problem. We need a better approach, and it starts with re-evaluating and re-affirming your strategic vision. Is your strategic vision still relevant in today's economy? Has your market changed? For the better or for worse? If you were selling subprime mortgages or providing goods and services to companies selling subprime mortgages, your market has changed for the worse. If on the other hand you are selling goods or services to retailers such as Kohl's and Wal-Mart, you may be doing reasonably well. The strategic vision should not only consider the markets you serve, but should include a broader context.
Key factors include:
Macro Environment
- Government
- Economy
- Social/Community factors
Corporate Issues
External Environment
- Resource providers
- Suppliers
- Shareholders (if applicable)
- Market
- Competition
Internal Environment
- Executive team
- Management team
- Business processes
- Issues resolution process
How have these factors changed for you and your business? Strategy is multidimensional and what was successful in the past may not be successful in the future.
Is your strategic vision still relevant in today's economy? Has your market changed?
Kubica & LaForest GROWTH without Sabotage⢠model for performance and organizational improvement will reduce or eliminate sabotaging behavior (the negative intangibles in business) and dramatically improve performance by decreasing cost and increasing profitability.
Blended Expertise, Synergistic Solutions
Without a strategic vision there is no direction for the company and forward momentum becomes unlikely. Defining a strategic vision is a starting point.
Problem solving is one of the most under rated and poorly executed management techniques. The more experienced the executive, the greater the chance that problem solving process will be done poorly. Why? Because of experience. It is very difficult to tell an experienced person that what they think may be happening, in the absence of clear evidence and valid data, may not be what's happening at all.
There are three components to problem solving: Is there a variation from what has occurred in the past? Is it unexpected? And, is it worth pursuing?
For example, if sales in the northeast represent 30% of all sales on a month over month basis but last month it represented 15% and there is no obvious reason why this occurred (i.e. it is unexpected) and it is worth pursuing â this represents a problem.
In the absence of observation and valid information identifying what is different now than in the past, problem solving is nothing more than a guess upon which money is thrown.
Decision making is the third critical factor in organizational success. Decisions can be routine and relatively low risk (i.e. whether to hold an offsite annual meeting considering the current economic climate) to the nonroutine and high risk (i.e. where to locate a new plant or which enterprise-wide software to buy). Like problem solving, decision making has three elements: defining the objective, identifying alternatives and evaluating risk.
Remember, wants never trump musts in the decision process.
The final criterion for performance improvement is implementation. Poor implementation is one of the leading causes of poor business performance. Effective implementation is the responsibility of the organization's middle managers. Executives set strategy with input from the middle managers and middle managers execute strategy (implement) with executive oversight and guidance. Too often implementation projects:
- Are underfunded
- Are too numerous (i.e. more projects than can reasonably done by the resources available within the organization including organizational time and attention)
- Do not have clear executive leadership
- Do not have clear and accountable project leadership
- Are chosen for political appeasement
Executives committed to leading their organization through these difficult financial times must address the four essential components to achieving success: strategic vision, problem solving, decision making and implementation. To use a sports analogy, the four essential components represent the basic blocking and tackling skills all football players must master to win. If the basics are weak, performance is weak. The same goes for businesses, and these four essential components represent the business version of blocking and tackling.
"You have been one of our most popular presenters. Your topic related to self sabotaging behaviors, is one that is rarely addressed...There was standing room only for you. You were one of the few that were specifically cited to present again, on this and other topics. We hope that this will be but one of the first of our conferences for which you will present." -Dallas-Lee Brower Project Director, Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope Planning Committee Consortia of Administrators for Native American Rehabilitation (CANAR)
Success Tip: "No" is an Oxymoron
Let's face it, rejection is tough. It hurts psychologically. Nobody likes rejection, Sometimes, and particularly during this period of economic downturn, our fear of rejection is so strong we hear rejection when it isn't there.
Quitting at no is a behavior we used to find most often in individuals new to business, new to sales, or new to client facing responsibilities. But it is also a behavior that we now see in veteran employees, especially since the word no is being used more often in these tough economic times. And, it is the responsibility of both the employee and the manager to understand how to relate to no. It is the responsibility of the manager to help and support the employees as they learn the behaviors required for success. Too many people feel that no is a rejection of them: personally. In business, no often is a reaction to your initial approach, a first meeting, a first discussion. It is also a common reaction when there is no relationship. Of course, no can in fact mean no, but we firmly believe that this is rarely the correct first interpretation. People and companies are still buying, but they are now making the buying process more challenging and at times daunting.
Learning how to interpret no is an important success skill. Many people think that an objection is a no. An objection is an objection - to an idea, thought, proposal presented at the moment. We believe it often is a sign of interest and an opportunity to continue the discussion. If you interpret an objection as a no, then you are responsible for ending the discussion. To learn more about how to deal with objection, we invite you to visit our website or call us.
