Leadership

5 Tips in Changing Your Mindset About Profit

Andrew Cooke Business Growth, Continuous Improvement, Customers, Efficiency, Growth and Profit Solutions, Growth Solutions, Growths and Profit, Leadership, Management, Profit, Profit Solutions, Strategies, Uncategorized

 

Future Profit

A recently published book, Understanding Michael Porter: The essential guide to competition and strategy (Magretta, 2012), compiles and applies the work of management guru, Michael Porter.   Full of useful insights, here are five pearls of wisdom that can, if applied, create a more robust, more profitable and sustainable business.

Tip 1: “Strategy explains how an organization, faced with competition, will achieve superior performance. The definition is deceptively simple”

Performance is not about your competition, it is about achieving superior performance, every day, regardless of what is happening with your competitors or markets.

Tip 2: “Competitive advantage is not about beating rivals; it’s about creating unique value for customers. If you have a competitive advantage, it will show up on your P & L”

To create unique value is not about you beating your competitors, it is about you delivering (through superior performance) the unique value by focusing on your customers’ needs.

Tip 3: “Strategic competition means choosing a path different from that of others”

If you accept that the competitive goal is superior performance, then it makes sense to achieve that performance using methods different to the competitors. You have to be able to differentiate yourself not only in the customer’s eyes, but in how you achieve that differentiation – in how you deliver value to the customer.

Tip 4: “The value proposition is the element of strategy that looks outward at customers, at the demand side of the business. The value chain focuses internally on operations. Strategy is fundamentally integrative, bringing the demand and supply sides together”

Strategy is about achieving a position.  Here it is to achieve superior performance whilst delivering superior value to the customer.  You need to be able to focus on how you will drive that superior performance, and what this means in terms of superior customer value.  In this you need to continuously improve the efficiency of your internal operations.

Tip 5: “There is no honor in size or growth if those are profitless. Competition is about profit, not market share”

This tip serves as a reminder that we need to be the most profitable, not the biggest in top-line revenue or head-count.

Consider these five tips in context of your own organization. What should you do to meet the requirements of all five? Is your current strategy going to work for you in the coming next few years?

What has worked or not worked for you? Share your knowledge, share the wealth!

Share

The 5 Challenges Leaders Face

Andrew Cooke Coaching, Growth and Profit Solutions, Leadership, Leadership Development, Management, Management Development

What are the top 5 challenges for leaders globally, and how can you deal with them?

by Andrew Cooke, Growth & Profit Solutions

Leaders are under increasing pressure having to deal with more, with less, whilst having to handle the 5 challenges of the modern business world.

This article looks at each of the five major challenges in turn and identifies the key strategies that leaders need to develop to meet these challenges and, in doing so, become great leaders in turn and to develop leaders within the business at all levels.

Andrew’s 5 Challenges for Leaders

1. Dealing with the New Business Reality

2. Paradoxes Moving from “Either/Or” to “And”

3.Restore Confidence & Trust

4. To Collaborate & Empower

5. Building Individual & Organizational Resilience

Challenge 1: Dealing with the New Business Reality

The world for leaders is changing, and the rate at which this is occurring is increasing exponentially whilst its effects are being seen, and compounded, in 4 different areas:

  1. Volatility – the increasing rate, amount, and magnitude of change
  2. Uncertainty – the amount of unpredictability inherent in issues and events
  3. Complexity – the increasing amount of dependency and interac­tive effects between multiple factors and driver.
  4. Ambiguity – the degree to which information, situa­tions, and events can be interpreted in multiple ways.

For further information on this see How to Manage Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity – Part 1

To deal with these factors, leaders need to develop on an integrated basis, the following:

  1. Vision – having a clear picture of the purpose of your business and where you are going.
  2. Understanding – the leader takes the time to stop, look and listen to what is happen, this is beyond their functional expertise and beyond just their business.
  3. Clarity – the leader needs to spend the time and effort in deliberately working to make sense of the chaos that exists.
  4. Agility – the ability to communicate openly across the organization and to move quickly to apply solutions, the rapid prototyping of ideas & actions to develop solutions.

For further information on this see How to Manage Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity – Part 2.

Challenge 2: Paradoxes Moving from “Either/Or” to “And”

Leaders are having to make decisions and deal with increasingly juxtaposed areas: for example, do we mass produce or customise our offerings, do we focus on the short-term or the long-term etcetera. Usually this has been treated as an either/or choice or, at best,  achieving a blend between the two and effecting a compromise.  Either of these two ways are often sub-optimal and limit the future opportunities.

FROM

5 challenges for leaders - pic01 Leaders need to manage these paradoxical situations and to meet both sets of demands simultaneously to survive and thrive.  Leaders need to achieve a balance between multiple sets of demands, requiring them to be able to quickly weigh and evaluate the situation and to obtain multiple perspectives from others to incorporate in the development and execution of the appropriate strategy.

TO 5 challenges for leaders - pic02

Challenge 3: Restore Confidence & Trust

Research from Sirota has shown a steady decline over the last 5-6 years in the level of people’s confidence in their business, their leaders, and the future.

This is reflected in the 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer, with nearly two-thirds of people 5 challenges for leaders - pic03only believing what is said by companies having heard it three to five times.  This reflects both the high level of skepticism and the fact that messages need repeating to get through the ‘noise’ of the environment.

Leaders need to restore confidence and trust in themselves, the business and the future.  This needs to extend to include the external stakeholders, not just the only internal stakeholders (e.g. employees).  In doing this leader need to provide clear direction, clear and consistently understood the message, and that everyone is aligned with this by ensuring the core values are commonly understood and applied throughout the business.  This needs to ensure that the systems & processes and reward systems actively support this.

Challenge 4: To Collaborate & Empower

To lead in an increasingly challenging environment requires leaders, counter-intuitively, to loosen controls to gain more control.  Being able to adapt and anticipate to the new business reality requires leaders to review and refine their goals, and to create an inspiring vision which is clearly articulated and understood to all levels of the business empower-network-leverageinternally, and to external stakeholders.  In doing these leaders need to be open to new ideas and perspectives, and to extend their networks of relationships. They also need to ensure that the business has the right core values and that these are actively supported and built into how business is done.  This creates a strong, pervading culture that aligns people and what they do.

To drive better communication and coordination between departments, and to reduce internal turf-fights and conflicting objectives, the vision needs to be shared and cascaded appropriately at each level.  Furthermore, in doing this, leaders across the business and at all levels need to be empowered with the responsibility and authority to achieve their goals, to be equipped with the necessary skills and capabilities to carry them out, and enable them to perform by providing the necessary support to actively developing both their skills and potential as leaders and those of their reports.

Challenge 5: Building Individual & Organisational Resilience

In dealing with new business reality leaders need to help their people and their organization to build resilience and agility.  This includes the ability to move quickly, decisively. effectively and proactively whilst capitalizing on existing strengths, developing new strengths and identifying current strengths which may become weaknesses or liabilities as the business and market environments change,

resilience pictureThe importance of developing people resilience, including engaging people emotionally whilst growing and developing them, and providing them with a sense of purpose and belonging, is reflected in the findings of the 2012 American Psychological Association Workplace Survey reported.  In this, it reported that 41% (over two out of every five employees) of employed adults feel stressed out during the workday.

The top 5 sources of stress were identified as:

  1. Low salaries
  2. Lack of opportunity or growth or advancement
  3. Too heavy of a workload
  4. Long hours
  5. Uncertain or undefined job expectations

Furthermore, less than half of employees reported:

  • Being satisfied with the growth and development opportunities offered by their employer (46%)
  • Being satisfied with the employee recognition practices of their employer (48%).
  • Feeling they are receiving adequate monetary compensation (48%).

The importance of having employees who feel valued is also important:

  • Employed adults who report feeling valued by their employer are significantly more likely to report they are motivated to do their very best for their employer (93% vs. 33%).
  • They are also more likely to report they would recommend their workplace to others (85% vs. 19%).
  • On the other hand, those who do not feel valued are significantly more likely to report that they intend to seek employment outside of their company next year (50% vs. 21%).

Summary

In dealing with these five challenges leaders need to have an integrated and disciplined approach.  At its essence is the ability to empower, enable and equip people and leaders at all levels in the organization.  Critical to doing this is building the necessary skills and capabilities into their day to day work.

To develop the necessary individual, team and organizational agility and flexibility leaders need to develop and embed the skills into how they work, allowing experiential learning to occur as they learn and apply the new skills in addressing and gaining traction with key challenges and opportunities.  Providing the on-going support to help the teams and individuals is essential to this, and by enabling people to teach what they have learned to their peers, team members and reports they can gain mastery and continue to deliver sustainable results.  This produces not only in-house skills and capabilities but creates leadership bench strength and an on-going leadership pipeline on which the organization can draw to meet current and future needs.

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

Answer At Your Own Risk!

Andrew Cooke Growth and Profit Solutions, Leadership, Leadership Development, Management, Management Development, Uncategorized

How executive coaching can help you in your business

Leaders and managers often need to give feedback to their teams and staff. Usually it is in the form of advice rather than feedback. Why is this? Advice can be packaged more easily, especially when you are dealing with a sensitive situation and/or individual, rather than feedback which is often perceived as being more critical in its nature. So how can we improve.

The Pixar Story

Virtually everyone knows Pixar , the animation studio that made Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Cars, A Bug’s Life, and which grossed more than $6 billion, and has won 24 Academy Awards. Here is the question for you – how many flops has Pixar produced? The answer is none!

One reason for it is that within Pixar they give brutally honest feedback.

Brutally honest feedback

At Pixar, when a director hits a snag on a film, they immediately call in the “brain trust.” This is a group of brilliant senior filmmakers who come in, look at the film in progress and give brutally honest feedback for about two hours.

Normally this is an uncomfortable process and, at best, only partially effective. But it works for two reasons:

  1. No authority – the “brains trust” has no authority over the person to whom they are giving feedback. It is up to the recipient of the feedback to do something or not. As such they are not under any obligation to take the feedback, and because of that they often do.
  2. No advice – people do not tell others what to do, they don’t offer advice; they offer experience. As such the recipient can learn from others, and can choose what to do or not.

As such, the less authority and power you have the greater the influence you can bring to bear. And the lower the requirement to act on the experience shared, the more likely people are to do so. This creates the opportunity for learning, development and innovation. Counter-intuitive? Yes, but it works. Share your experience – but remember we don’t have to learn from it, but then we probably will!

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

4 Ways to Manage for Long-Term Results (& Its Not About Profit!)

Andrew Cooke Business Growth, Efficiency, Employee Development, Growth and Profit Solutions, Leadership, Management, Performance, Profit, Uncategorized

Managing for profit can be detrimental to your business in the longer-term.  Discover the 4 guidelines to help your business thrive, not just survive.

We are in uncomfortable times.  Europe is facing a myriad of difficulties, China’s growth is looking to slow-down (albeit continuing), competition is more intense and customers are more demanding and better-informed. Yet amongst these difficulties there are companies who are not just surviving but thriving.

How are they managing to do this and what can we learn and apply from them?  Here are four guidelines for thriving, not surviving.

1. Manage for Value, Not For Profit.

You can’t manage profit – profit is an outcome of your revenues and costs.  You can manage your revenues and your costs, but you cannot directly manage your profit..

Successful companies look at managing value – they ascertain whether what they do creates and provides value both to them and their customers, or not.  You need to create value for both parties in order to be able to capture value for yourself.  Too many companies look at their relationship with their customers as a zero-sum game or as a win-lose opportunity i.e. we are dealing with a pie of a set size, so if I want a larger slice of the pie then the other has to have less and vice-versa.  This is a weak mind-set which immediately puts you in conflict with your customer.

Rather, look at your customer relationships as a win-win opportunity – the opportunity to create and grow value with each other.  This mindset allows the size of the pie to be increased, allowing you to capture more value, even if the split remains the same.  This enables you to collaborate with your customers and create long-term opportunities and relationships, rather than short-term gains at the cost of your customer relationships.

As such value is a driver of profit – the greater the value, the greater the opportunity to drive profitable outcomes.

2. Manage for the Long-Term

Too many businesses are driven by short-term considerations and take actions which, although they may provide relief in the short-term, destroy value in the long-term.  For example, investment in R&D may be cut now to save money and improve short-term profit – but it destroys value in the mid-to long-term as those assets which can create future value in the years to come are weakened, undermined or even destroyed.

3. Manage the Development of Your People

Every company claims that “people are our most important asset,” but few mean it. Frequently business’ investment in leadership development is cut during hard times – at exactly the time when it is needed most to enable and empower high-potential managers to lead the business to success and through these hard times.

In a recent survey of leadership globally, it was found that many of those countries with strong supplies of leaders today are facing a shortfall in the future – this includes countries such as the UK, Australia and Canada.  As such, business leadership is an important issue not only now but in the future (for further information see the blog “The Ticking Talent Timebomb”).

4. Manage your Focus – Be Customer-Centric 

Business needs to understand their customers in terms of what they need, what the business can offer, and how this translates into value for both parties.  As such you need to be able to properly address and craft your offerings to meet their needs.

Furthermore, you need to know not only what business you are in – but what business you are not in.  I have seen many companies grow and expand their offerings beyond what is their core business in response to meet their customers’ demands.  However, this has come at a cost.  As a result, management focus and attention is dispersed, scarce resources are allocated ineffectively and inefficiently, the business lacks the necessary skills to operate in these new areas, costs increase and margins reduce, and the business grows in an unstructured and  ad hoc manner which is difficult or impossible to consolidate.  All of which increases the level and range of risks to which the business is exposed, often beyond the gain that they might realise from this unstructured growth.

Summary

Don’t focus on profit – focus on value and you will achieve profit.  However, this requires discipline, courage and the willingness to invest in the long-term and in developing your people to ensure that you deliver what the customer needs and values.

What are you doing to grow your ability to create, share and realise value?  What has been stopping you and how have you overcome these barriers?

Share your thoughts and comments here.

Share the knowledge, share the wealth!

 

Share

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

9 Things Successful People Do Differently

Andrew Cooke Employee Development, Growth and Profit Solutions, Leadership, Management Development, Performance, Psychology, Uncategorized

9 tips on how to meet your goals and grow your capabilities

Do you think you can tell?
Do you think you can tell?

In Part 1 of this article, we identified why we are our own worst enemy when it comes to identifying how to improve ourselves.  Here we look at what we can do to help us, given the fact that we are not always the best person to do so.

Psychologist, Heidi Grant Halvorson, recently studied the science of success asking – Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? Decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do.  As such, in her ebook – “Nine Things Successful People Do Differently” – she identified the following:

1. Get specific. When you set yourself a goal, try to be as specific as possible. This gives you a clear idea of what success looks like and helps to keep you motivated until you get there. Also, think about the specific actions that need to be taken to reach your goal.

2. Seize the moment to act on your goals. Achieving your goal means grabbing hold of these opportunities to work on our goals before they slip through your fingers.  To seize the moment, decide when and where you will take each action you want to take, in advance. Again, be as specific as possible. Studies show that this kind of planning will help your brain to detect and seize the opportunity when it arises, increasing your chances of success by roughly 300%.

3. Know exactly how far you have left to go. Achieving any goal also requires honest and regular monitoring of your progress — if not by others, then by you yourself. Check your progress frequently — weekly, or even daily, depending on the goal.

4. Be a realistic optimist. When you are setting a goal, by all means engage in lots of positive thinking about how likely you are to achieve it. Believing in your ability to succeed is enormously helpful for creating and sustaining your motivation. But whatever you do, don’t underestimate how difficult it will be to reach your goal.

5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good. Believe you can get the ability to reach your goals is important.  , but so is believing you can get the ability. Many of us believe that our intelligence, our personality, and our physical aptitudes are fixed — that no matter what we do, we won’t improve. As a result, we focus on goals that are all about proving ourselves, rather than developing and acquiring new skills.

Research suggests that the belief in fixed ability is completely wrong — abilities of all kinds are profoundly malleable. Embracing the fact that you can change will allow you to make better choices, and reach your fullest potential.

6. Have grit – the willingness to commit to long-term goals, and to persist in the face of difficulty. Again, you can develop your ‘grit ability’.

7. Build your willpower muscle. Your self-control “muscle” is just like the other muscles in your body — when it doesn’t get much exercise, it becomes weaker over time. But when you give it regular workouts by putting it to good use, it will grow stronger and stronger, and better able to help you successfully reach your goals.

To build willpower, take on a challenge that requires you to do something you’d honestly rather not do. Start with just one activity, and make a plan for how you will deal with troubles when they occur. It is hard in the beginning, but it gets easier. As your strength grows, you can take on more challenges and step-up your self-control workout.

8. Don’t tempt fate. No matter how strong your willpower muscle becomes, it’s important to always respect the fact that it is limited, and if you overtax it you will temporarily run out of steam. Don’t try to take on two challenging tasks at once, or over-expose yourself to temptation.

9. Focus on what you will do, not what you won’t do. Plan how you will replace bad habits with good ones, rather than focusing only on the bad habits themselves. Research on thought suppression (e.g., “Don’t think about white bears!”) has shown that trying to avoid a thought makes it even more active in your mind. The same holds true when it comes to behavior — by trying not to engage in a bad habit, our habits get strengthened rather than broken.  If you want to change your ways, ask yourself, What will I do instead?

So what does this all mean?

To achieve your goals overcome the common mistakes above; build, develop and apply your abilities; and use this knowledge to your advantage from now on.

What has worked for you to help you reach your goals?  Have you tips or ideas of your own that you would like to share?

Share your ideas, insights, and experience – and share the wealth!

Share

About Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions (“GPS”)

Who Knows You Best?

Andrew Cooke Employee Development, Growth and Profit Solutions, Leadership, Management, Performance, Psychology, Uncategorized

Can you tell how good your performance is or how you can improve?  Read on to find out, you might be surprised…

Do you think you can tell?

Those of you who are Pink Floyd fans will immediately recognize the lyrics from the song, “Wish You Were Here”.  The first part of the song, for those of you not familiar with it are below:

So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

Let’s be honest – yes we can!  The difference between them is immediate and obvious, and we can all do this easily. Here is another question:

“Do you think you can tell who knows you best?”

If I was to ask you that then you would probably see one word – “Me!”  Yet you would be wrong. How you see yourself and how other people see you are only weakly correlated.

The research suggests that other people’s assessment of your personality predicts your behaviour, on average, better than your assessment does. The truth is, we don’t know ourselves nearly as well as we think we do. When it comes to performance, our surprising self-ignorance makes understanding where we went right and where we went wrong difficult, to say the least.

If you want to be more successful — at anything — than you are right now, you need to know yourself and your skills. And when you fall short of your goals, you need to know why. This should be no problem; after all, who knows you better than you do?

Why is this?

The problem is our brain.  Just because its our doesn’t mean we know what it’s doing – most of what happens is below our consciousness awareness, it’s not directly accessible to us at all.  As psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson described it our unconscious mind is like a Cray supercomputer processing everything at high speed, whereas our conscious brain has the power of a Post-It note – unable to handle much and when too much is asked of it, it starts dropping things.  This means when things start going wrong we often have difficulty in understanding why.

When you fail to reach a goal you try to establish why(for example, lack of innate ability, lack of effort, poor preparation, using the wrong strategy, bad luck, etc). Of all of these possible culprits, it’s lack of innate ability we most frequently hold responsible.  As such, innate ability is the go-to explanation for all of our successes and our failures.

Research shows that this is rarely the case – for either succeeding or falling short.  If we need to improve performance we need to know where to place blame.  As we can’t find it ourselves, we need to help to find the right answers.

How do we do this – we focus not on who people are, but what they do.

To find out more, and to read the second part of this article then “Do You Think You Can Tell?” – Part 2 at growthandprofit.wordpress.com

What have been your experiences?  What works for you? Share your ideas and thoughts, and share the wealth!

Share

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

3 Factors for Building Resilience

Andrew Cooke Business Agility, Business Growth, Change, Continuous Improvement, Employees, Growth and Profit Solutions, Leadership, Management, Managing Cost, Performance, Strategies, Uncategorized

How to assess and develop your organization’s resilience.

Resilience

*by Andrew Cooke, Growth & Profit Solutions

Resilience – a word more often abused than used correctly.  Resilience often is used to describe strength.   Although strength is implied in resilience, it is actually not a trait (a distinguishing quality) – rather it is a capability, something that can be used.

There are two definitions for resilience that can be used here:

  • “the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress”
  • “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change”

The Three Factors of Resilience

Resilience relies on three factors:

  1. Flexibility – how flexible is your business in terms of how it works, how it is structured and how it is organized in producing the same outcome result?
  2. Adaptability – how can you apply what you do and how you do it to produce different outcomes or results.
  3. Learning – how good is your business, at an  individual and corporate level, in learning the lessons from having to adapt or be flexible so that you can avoid repeating them (hard , painful lessons) or you can leverage them in the future (where you have had success) and understanding why you were successful or not.3 Factors for Resiliency - Overview

Flexibility Factors

  • Elasticity – can you easily expand or contract the business in whole or part
  • Alternatives – are there many ways in which you can achieve the same result, or are you locked in to one or only a few ways?
  • Interchangeable – how easy can different building blocks (people, assets, processes) be used in a different sequence and/or configuration to produce the same result or outcome?

Adaptability Factors

  • Reusability – can your core people, processes and assets be used to produce different outcomes and results with little or no difficulty?  For example, a consulting firm can reuse many of its existing people, processes and assets in delivering a new service.  However, the Boeing factory production line can only produce Boeing airplanes – it cannot produce other products without significant changes in people, assets and processes.
  • Speed – how quickly can you move from producing one set of products and outcomes, to produce new products and outcomes?
  • Capacity for Change – how prepared and able are your people to make the necessary changes? 

Learning Factors

  • Measuring – how good are you at being able to quantify or qualify the changes that have occurred, their implications and the associated outcomes?  Are you able to identify where the greatest impact, positive or negative, has been realized?
  • Applying  – can you clearly ascertain as to where the lessons learnt can be applied?  Do you understand what caused the problem and how it was solved, or where and how the opportunity was capitalized on?
  • Anticipating – how good are you at being able to replicate or avoid the lessons learnt?  For example, if you are an engineering consultancy who tried to enter a new market unsuccessfully then can you identify why?  Was it the lack of a local partner?  Cultural differences? Inability to deliver?

These 3 factors apply equally to the individual as to the business.  For real success you need resilience both personally and corporately – if you lack the resilience you may not survive the change, even if the business does.

Resilience is not about just meeting the current challenge, or having met the challenge just past, but it is about putting yourself in a better position for the future – not just going back to your original shape or form before the challenge occurred.  To be resilient you need to be flexible, adaptable and to learn from your experiences.

Two out of Three Ain’t Bad – But It’s Not Enough

So what does it mean if you only have two out of three, let’s see below.

  1. Flexibility & Adaptability – you can meet the challenge in the short- or even mid-term, but your inability to learn from your experience and apply will mean that you will be overtaken by the competition and quickly become irrelevant
  2. Adaptability & Learning – you can diversify into other areas, but you are not at the forefront of your market being weak at delivering in alternative ways.  You are at risk of being out-maneuvered by competitors and being a market follower rather than a leader.
  3. Learning & Flexibility – you are efficient at operating in your particular niche, but you are a one-trick pony, and you are at the whim of industry pressures.  You are more reactive than proactive, and your ability to become diverse, grow and spread the risk is weak.

For each of the 3 factors, and for each of the 3 components for each factor, how do you rate yourself?  Score yourself out of 10 for each component (1= Very Low, 10=Very High), and rate how strong or weak you are in each factor and relatively.

Resilience Worksheet

Which are your strongest and weakest areas?  How can you leverage your strengths to offset your weaker areas and reduce the associated risks and implications?  Are you really as resilient as you thought?

Share

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

What a Lack of Trust Can Cost You

Andrew Cooke Growth and Profit Solutions, Leadership, trust

Trust “Taxes”, the Costs of a Lack of Trust

Trust taxes are costs that you incur when there is little or no trust. When trust goes down, speed also goes down and cost goes up.  This is a “tax” – and this tax can double the cost of doing business.

There are 7 types of “trust taxes”:

  1. Redundancy & duplication with smaller spans of control – if there is less trust, then you will find that tighter control develops over smaller areas, and that there is unnecessary duplication of resources to offset the increase in perceived risk.
  2. Bureaucracy – with less trust so procedures and systems become more cumbersome in order to bridge the perceived gap between what is needed and what is available in providing security and consistency in the work done.  In the US there is Nordstrom where its high levels of trust are reflected in its one card operating manual: on one side of the card it says – “We have one rule… – on the other side it says “use your best judgement in all situations“.
  3. Politics – more silos develop and turf wars become more prevalent.  Less trust results in individuals putting their agenda ahead of others and the business overall, it also creates a “fixed mindset” where people see the pie as fixed, so that they only way they can get a larger slice of the pie is at the expense of somebody else e.g. different departments negotiating for budget allocation will compete against each other for it.
  4. Disengagement – a lack of trust reduces staff engagement as they do not believe that their leaders have their interest at heart.  This is reflected in research which shows that 96% of engaged employees trust their leaders, whereas only 46% of employees who are disengaged.
  5. Turnover of Employees – as disengagement increases, so staff perceive roles and jobs elsewhere as more attractive which, previously, they might not have considered.
  6. Churn – low trust also extends to customers and other stakeholders who now see other businesses as more attractive and less risky.
  7. Fraud – with lowering levels of trust there is a lower level of integrity increasing the likelihood of fraud being committed within the company.

If you have a lack of trust, then you are likely to incur some or all of these taxes.  If you have a lack of trust then you need to address this. This is the subject of another blog.

To view or download a PDF version of this blog click here.

If you found this article of use or interest please don’t hesitate to share it with others.

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

The Real Costs of Poor Management & Leadership

Andrew Cooke Business Growth, Leadership, Management, Performance, Productivity, Uncategorized

The Cost of Management & Leadership Shortfalls

by  Andrew Cooke, Growth & Profit Solutions

The costs and risks associated with having weak managers and leaders are often overlooked.  What does it mean to you?  How can you overcome it?  And what are the benefits of doing so?

A recent report from the UK’s Department for Business, Innovation & Skills Leadership and Management Network Group (LMNG), showed the UK’s economy has been negatively impacted by a lack of training and support for new managers.  Across 18 management practices by country the UK ranked 6th, whilst Australia ranked 9th – behind France and just ahead of Mexico.  This strongly suggests that the findings for the UK are equally applicable to the Australia and that there is a stronger sense of urgency.

John Hayes MP, UK Minister of State for Further Education, Skills, and Lifelong Learning, suggests that effective leadership is what makes the difference for successful, innovative companies. “Strong leadership and management is a key factor in fostering innovation, unlocking the potential of the workforce and ensuring organisations have the right strategies to drive productivity and growth.”

However, in the UK the research shows that effective management is the exception rather than the rule.

“Too many of our organisations, both private and public, are failing to achieve their full potential: managerial shortcomings and a lack of strategic thinking are holding them back. Overcoming these weaknesses and improving our leadership and management capability is fundamental to creating a culture where more organisations have the ambition, confidence, resilience and skills to respond to the current economic challenges and compete successfully both nationally and globally.”

By providing more comprehensive management training and development for budding leaders, companies can gain the edge over competitor firms.

Key Findings of the UK Research:

  • Ineffective management is estimated to be costing UK businesses over £19billion per year in lost working hours.
  • 43% of UK managers rate their own line manager as ineffective – and only one in five are qualified.
  • Nearly three quarters of organisations in England reported a deficit of management and leadership skills in 2012, contributing to the productivity gap with countries like the US, Germany and Japan.
  • Incompetence or bad management of company directors causes 56 % of corporate failures

Quite simply, improving leadership and management capability is an issue that no organisation wishing to achieve long-term success can afford to ignore. There is no question that good leadership and management can have a truly significant impact on organisational performance, both in the immediate and longer term.

  • Best-practice management development can result in a 23% increase in organisational performance.
  • Effective management can significantly improve levels of employee engagement.
  • A single point improvement in management practices (rated on a five-point scale) is associated with the same increase in output as a 25% increase in the labour force or a 65% increase in invested capital.

Business’ long-term success is dependent on developing these management and leadership skills, these  are crucial to ensuring high performance working and business success. This is especially true as more new managers and leaders will be needed over the next decade as the number of experienced baby-boomer managers and leaders who are retiring increases.

Why are businesses underperforming when it comes to developing their talent pipeline in management and leadership?  There are a number of reasons including relatively low levels of training, shortages of key skills, the failure to apply skills strategically, and employer concern about the relevance of training provision, have also been identified as potential reasons. Other factors include difficulties in recruiting graduates with the right skills, particularly for small and medium sized companies; a perception that leadership and management skills are something you “pick up” on the job; and lack of clarity about the specific leadership and management skills and behaviours managers need to display.

Improving our leadership and management capability makes sound business sense. Helping managers at all levels to develop the right skills and behaviours will ensure organisations have the ability to adapt, innovate and evolve, and seize the growth opportunities that lie ahead.

So what are you going to do?

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.

Why Customer Satisfaction is Irrelevant

Andrew Cooke Coaching, Employee Engagement, Employees, Leadership, Leadership Development, Management, Management Development, Uncategorized

Don’t assume that because your surveys show that your clients are satisfied it will mean that they will be loyal…

by Andrew Cooke, Growth & Profit Solutions

A common mistake to make is that client satisfaction and client loyalty are positively correlated i.e. that higher the level of client satisfaction the higher the level of client loyalty. customer loyalty satisfaction

Working in a harder and more competitive environment often results in businesses focusing on marketing and selling to get new clients. While continuing to bring in new clients is necessary for a business’ survival, so is keeping your current clients loyal to your firm.

Satisfaction vs. Loyalty

How loyal are your clients?  And how loyal are your “very satisfied” clients?  The answer may surprise you, your clients might be more likely to switch to a different provider than you think. In a 2009 study, across professional service industries, it was found that:

  • Only 48% of clients are “very satisfied” with their service provider

and that

  • 60% of these clients would consider switching service providers

Results by Industry

satisfaction vs loyalty

So what does this mean?

It means that fewer clients are loyal to you than you think.  It also is likely that your perception of the real situation as regards your clients’ loyalty is significantly over-optimistic.

For example, a legal firm that equates client satisfaction with client loyalty would assume, on the basis of the above numbers, that 50% of its clients were “loyal”.  The reality is that of this 50% of “loyal” customers over half are likely to switch to another provider. This means that only 25% of the firm’s clients are loyal – it has over-estimated the number of loyal clients it has by a factor of two!  This has a significant on its ability to maintain and grow business, and the strategies and plans it needs to have in place.  In all likelihood, because people do not realise this, the firm will probably be following the wrong strategies, and this can be put the firm at risk.

As the competitive environment continues to intensify, it’s likely that other firms are marketing more aggressively to your own clients and, as this data suggests, a good portion of your clients may be open to having these switching conversations with your competitors.

Why do we make this mistake? It is because people confuse the two concepts of satisfaction and loyalty. The difference is like that between “like” and “love”. Let’s look at them separately.

Client Satisfaction

Client satisfaction is a tactical concept and measurement, and it speaks only to one moment in time – typically, right after a client has completed an interaction such as a purchase or has a problem solved. So measuring customer satisfaction merely tells you if you are doing your job, from the client’s perspective.  Clients express satisfaction in an intellectual and rational manner. In doing this, it makes people think. satisfaction guaranteed

Many organizations should be performing up to their customers’ expectations.  This is really just the basics.   While these days consumers are in the driver’s seat, the mindset tends toward “what have you done for me lately?” as opposed to “that transaction went well so I’m a customer for life.”  Thus, good customer satisfaction does not guarantee that you will continue to keep those customers.  How many times have you bought goods “satisfaction guaranteed”, yet gone to another product or provider even though you had a good or even excellent experience?  All of us have done so at one time or another.

Client Loyalty

Customer LoyaltyThis is a much more reliable and strategic measure.  True loyalty – much harder to earn than mere satisfaction – tells you that your customer wants to stick with you over the long haul and that they will share that feeling with others.  Loyalty derives not from “good” transactions but from exceeding the customer’s expectations on a repeated basis. Loyalty engages your client emotionally and makes them want to tell others about their experience of working with you and your relationship.  As such, emotions make people act!

Next Steps

It is much easier (not to mention more cost effective) to retain and grow your current clients than it is to continuously have to fill the pipeline with new prospects.   It is enough to get people to think, you need to get them act.  You need to engage them both intellectually and emotionally.

Have a look at your existing client base and assess their level of satisfaction. If you are not sure, then use this as an opportunity to ask them for constructive feedback, listen and learn.  Then begin to think, from their perspective, whether you have done enough to earn their loyalty – be specific about what you have done or not done as the client perceives it.  Do this individually and then come together as a group to discuss your scores, perceptions and to share insights.

Next Week

So, what does it take to build the type of relationships with your clients that keep them loyal and coming back to your firm year after year? We look at the 9 questions you need answered in next week’s blog.

Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.