4 essential questions for the new leader to ask

4 essential questions for the new leader to ask

Jul 17, 2017 | Governance, Leadership

Taking the top job in a new organisation is a stressful experience. No amount of planning and research can properly inform you of the cultural  DNA of the organisation you will be taking over. That knowledge will only come over time, and only if you go actively looking for it.

In many cases, new leaders do  not go looking, and as a result usually do not know what it is they are changing by their presence, and often do not care, to their cost.

Nothing is as resilient as a culture that perceives itself to be under threat from a new leader who ignores it.

In the course of coaching leaders, I encourage them to be absolutely transparent, to never shy away from those often difficult but clarifying conversations that are the daily menu of leadership. For the new leader taking a role in a new organisation, I encourage them to act like a sponge in the first few weeks, and understand the nuances of what they are really getting into.

Four simple questions can be very useful, and I encourage you to ask them of every senior employee you can in that very first familiarisation encounter, and if possible to communicate the questions beforehand, to allow them to think about the answers.

  • What three things do you think we should change.
  • What three things should we leave absolutely alone
  • What three things do you most want me to do
  • What three things would you encourage me not to do.

After you have asked as many of the existing employees as practical the same four questions, you will have a pretty good picture of the way things are around the place, and what the pressing issues are.

It is a bit like learning to swim.

You cannot do it from a book, you have to get into the water to experience it for yourself, and in this case the four questions are similar to learning to dog paddle, and to stick your face under water for the first time.

Cartoon credit: Hugh McLeod @ Gaping Void.

The value of an engaged employee.

The value of an engaged employee.

Jul 14, 2017 | Branding, Customers, Marketing

We all talk about the necessity of ‘engaging employees,’ but rarely truly achieve it, or see it in others. However, when  we do see it, we just know in our guts that we are looking at the way we would always like it to be.

Yesterday I spent 90 minutes in a suburban McDonalds store killing time between appointments, reading the daily rag, drinking an excruciating coffee, and fiddling with the language in a client report. All this time I watched a young bloke in the store make everyone he came into contact with feel special, even great.

He was just a casual employee, whose job it is to clean the tables and mop the floor. He did this, but he also did much, much, more. He opened the door as people were coming towards it, he high-fived the little kids, he helped a lady fold a stroller after extracting her baby, he joked and pranced, and he did all this with a huge smile on his face.

Every single person he interacted with smiled back, and had a word, he threw some light on everyone’s day.

As the store manager delivered a meal to the person at the table next door, I observed to him that this young bloke was worth much more than they were paying him, to which the manager responded, ‘We give him as many shifts as he wants, and we love having him here’

Despite the excruciating coffee, and other sometimes annoying human traits on display from time to time at Maccas, I know I will be back at this one, and hoping to see this young bloke loving his work, and making the day of others again.

 

 

 

Sustained Marketing success requires managed mindset change

Sustained Marketing success requires managed mindset change

Jul 12, 2017 | Change, Leadership, Marketing

We marketers, and usually sales people talk endlessly about putting ourselves in the shoes of those to whom we are communicating, and seeking to serve. It is absolutely right that we do, but then we stuff it up.

We do that by the way we define the industry we are in.

Go to any network meeting, and I (almost) guarantee nobody will define the industry they inhabit from the perspective of those they are seeking to serve.

They are lawyers, or Architects, or Insurance brokers, and so on. None will define what they do by the outcome for their customers.

Examples of the great miss-definitions abound, but two stand out.

Kodak was in the late nineties one of the great successful companies sitting on a mountain of cash, dominating an industry they defined as ‘Film’. They were so successful their advertising slogan persists to this day, we all know what a ‘Kodak moment’ is, well all over 40 do anyway. In 1975 Kodak engineer Steven Sasson invented the first digital camera, which Kodak patented, and later collected billions on the royalties until expiry in 2007. They even commercialised the technology for Apple under the brand ‘Apple QuickTake’, and even then failed to see the writing on the wall. In 2012 Kodak was made bankrupt, although it has since emerged as a different company.

Blockbuster, what a Lulu of failed strategic sight that is, although it is always easy with the benefit of hindsight. At their height, Blockbuster had 50 million members worldwide, thousands of stores, and were a critical link in the movie money making chain. In 2001, the fledgling  Netflix approached Blockbuster, seeking to sell their business into them, and run the online part of Blockbuster, for just $50 million. CEO John Antico had been looking at ways to experiment with on line delivery, and supported the idea. He had made some changes to blockbuster,  like removing the profitable late fees that penalised customers, but failed to get the deal with Netflix through his board, and it ultimately cost him his job. His successor led the business into oblivion by bowing to  the board, reintroducing the hated late fees,  and allowing the power of incumbency, and the aversion to change, to prevail.

You do not have to be a huge business to be caught by this definitional challenge that pervades the way you think, unconsciously driving the decisions you make. A client of mine is a printer, a modest sized family business that has been around for 60 years. They see themselves in an industry that has been significantly disrupted by digital, and while there is still plenty of printing being done, the volumes are modest compared to those of a decade ago, and  the prices and margins are very slim. They acknowledge they are printers playing a role in the communication industry, but they still think and act like commodity printers. At least however, they have made a start in the mindset change which drives behaviour, and which eluded Blockbuster and Kodak.

Blockbuster saw themselves in the video rental industry, not as a part of the entertainment industry to the end, and Kodak was in the film industry, not the memories industry, until they weren’t.

Marketing Myopia, a term coined in 1960 by Theodore Levitt in his seminal HBR article of the same name remains alive and well, just harder to recognise.

 

 

 

 

Are you pushing rope?

Are you pushing rope?

Jul 10, 2017 | Leadership, Management

Activity for the sake of activity, ‘busywork’ that does not contribute to an objective associated with creating value for that ideal customer group, is as useful as pushing rope.

Ever pushed rope?

No matter how hard you push your end, nothing happens at the other end, all you get is rings of rope somewhere close to your hand.

Useless.

The only way to move rope is to go to the other end, and pull it towards the objective.

In most organisations there are barriers to grabbing the end of the rope:

There is no budget

The boss will not like it (worse, the boss’s wife will not like it)

We have not done it before

I am too busy

It is not my job

There are a thousand reasons people push rope, and there is really only one way to change that.

Empowering every employee to stop doing non-productive activities in favour of doing stuff that counts.

Then we need to celebrate the changes made, or the elastic nature of ‘the way it has always been done’ will kick in, and you start pushing the rope again, as it is usually more comfortable than pulling it.

 

How big is the Strategic deficit of Australian FMCG retailers?

How big is the Strategic deficit of Australian FMCG retailers?

Jul 7, 2017 | Customers, retail, Strategy

Strategic deficit is the amount of time, capability, commitment, and energy necessary to bridge the gap from where you may be right now, compared to the most advanced of your current and potential competitors.

A few weeks ago, if asked the question of Australian retailers, particularly the FMCG retail gorillas,  Woolworths and Coles, I would have said several years and more resources than they seem to be prepared to allocate, but more importantly, there is a complete shift in mindset that is required.

Now, if asked the same question, with the news last week of the $US13.8 billion purchase of Whole foods by Amazon, I would suggest the strategic deficit has just doubled, perhaps tripled overnight. Not only has the deficit blown out, but  the rate at which it is accumulating is accelerating given the huge $16 billion investment Amazon made in ‘Technology and Content’ in 2016, the horse has not just bolted, it is over the hill. Not all of that $16 billion will be directly impacting their ability to deliver groceries, but a fair chunk of it will be applicable, and the rest will be learning in other areas that they will be able to leverage over time.

Back in August 2013 when Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post for $250 million cash, many were asking “What does he know about the newspaper business’?

The Post had been one of the icons of journalistic excellence, one of the true ‘newspapers’, but had crashed into successive losses in the face of digital disruption.

Bezos bought the Post, not for Amazon, but from his own funds, it is a personal investment, and therefore perhaps better even that Amazon itself as a signpost of his commitment and what may come elsewhere.

In this National Public Radio report on progress at the Post, there are some useful signposts that may be applicable to Amazons recent purchase of Whole Foods. However, it can be summarised into a few words:

Technology that makes the customer the absolute focus of every single decision and action is the essential foundation for success.

Now, many of the same people are asking ‘What does Amazon know about the fresh produce retail business?  My response is ‘Wait for the implementation of  Amazons brand of technology directed at the produce consumer, and we will find out”.  I would be pretty sure that Amazon has a range of pretty good ideas to be tested at Whole Foods, that will see the hurdles of home delivery of fresh and frozen food overcome.

I am sure Coles and Woollies will be watching, but so was the newspaper business watching technology eat its lunch for a decade before they had any idea of how to address the challenge, and even now, seem incapable of doing anything about it.