I am indebted to Mark Fritz, a regular speaker with ACE, for sending me this link from Stanford University’s Entrepreneurship Corner.
A concise [<5 minutes] and eloquent talk about what makes an Awesome Team. It is uncanny how often and regularly we end up discussing problems with teams in the “Board you could never afford” part of the CEO Forum I run. So I sense there should be an appetite for this video clip!
At the January meeting of ACE47, the Chief Executive Forum serving Bristol, Bath and Swindon we had the great pleasure of having Andy Hanselman leading a workshop on this topic. A measure of Andy’s success is that no less than 5 companies present are getting Andy back to work with their Senior Management Teams in March! So what are the 10 Barriers?
A focus on turnover not profit
A lack of understanding of profitability by product /service and customer
A lack of proactive management control
An unwillingness to say “No”
Staff have no understanding of their own impact on profit [positive or negative]
No Profit targets
The measurement of the wrong things
A lack of managed pricing policy
The “numbers” are left to the accountants
No Profit improvement plan
For more information on how The Academy for Chief Executives is “Growing Leaders. Transforming Businesses” contact Jon Penn.
Yves Doz, the Solvay Chaired Professor of Technological Innovation at INSEAD, shares strategic tips on transforming a business from a short-term creature of habit into a flexible and agile success.
In 2004, Yves Doz was approached by Mikko Kosonen, the CIO and key strategist at Nokia, to carry out some research on the business. Kosonen was worried: on the outside Nokia was perceived as a very successful company but internally it had lost direction. Kosonen thought that unless the business changed, it would be in danger of hitting a wall – a fear that was realised just a few years later. Doz worked with Kosonen and together they began to investigate what makes a business successful. The result of their joint research was the book, ‘Fast Strategy: How Strategic Agility Will Help You Stay Ahead of the Game’. Published in 2007, it became an instant bestseller in the business world. Since then, Doz has used his agility strategies to turn other businesses around and help them succeed.
Strategy is not something you do once a year – “What happens is that businesses fall victim to approaching strategy as a periodic process and they lose their strategic skills by not doing it often enough.”
Strong leaders should recognise that they may be the ones holding the business back – rather than the CEOs single-handedly shaping the business strategy on their own such leaders should be wary of thinking they know everything.
Adapt to survive – adapting to change and reacting to it in real time, being well-informed by improving your foresight and insight and understanding your market (Nokia didn’t understand why people would want touchscreens or sleek design, whereas Apple did)
Getting everyone on board – if you feel like your business is floundering, then take a leaf out of the agile book: start to bring your employees in on the business strategy, and make sure it’s on the agenda every day, and not just once or twice a year.
The Academy for Chief Executives works with leaders and owners of mainly SME businesses, via monthly peer group meetings – Growing Leaders. Transforming Businesses. ACE47 CEO Group serves Bristol, Bath & Swindon. Future months meetings will cover
The following are some interesting extracts from Daniel Pinks excellent book “Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us” regarding incentives, goal setting and the risks of short term incentives.
Substantial evidence demonstrates that in addition to motivating constructive effort, goal setting can induce unethical behaviour.
The examples are legion, the reseearchers note. Sears imposes a sales quota on its auto repair staff – and workers respond by overcharging customers and comleting unnecessary repairs. Enron sets lofty goals – and the race to meet them by any means possible catalyzes the company’s collapse. Ford is so intent on producing a certain car at a certain weight at a certain price by a certain date that it omits safety checks and unleashes the dangerous Ford Pinto.
The problem with making an extrinsic reward the only destination that matters is that some people will choose the quickest route there, even if it means taking the low road.
The seven deadly flaws [of inappropriate goals/incentives]:
They can extinguish intrinsic motivation
They can diminish performance
They can crush creativity
They can crowd out good behaviour
They can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behaviour
They can become addictive
They can foster short term thinking
Its amazing how often we hear in discussions in our Academy peer group [also known as a CEO Forum) in Bristol about motivation schemes, and unintended consequences!
These are the current go to phrases for the Government and media alike, but I would like to make an objective assessment of where we are and make a subsequent informed guess as to how next year might turn out.
Let’s start with the definitions:
Confidence: Being certain that one’s hypothesis or prediction is correct.
Optimism: Hopefulness about the future or the success of something.
What is going on?
There has been a recovery in consumer spending on cars, eating out, hotels and construction projects. This has been financed by debt, windfall gains from the mis-selling of employment protection insurance, and a reduction in the savings rate. All economic recoveries are consumption led, and this one is no exception.
As it stands the recovery is not sustainable – for sustainable growth we need average weekly earnings to grow from the current 2.3% growth rate to 3.5% – 4%. We also need the Government to move towards a balanced budget, net exports to grow, and a recovery in investment spending however financed.
The chart shows UK retail sales by value … to read the full article with charts go HERE
On November 21st Gü founder James Averdieck will be leading a workshop for the Academy for Chief Executives group that serves Bristol/Bath/Swindon on Brand Coaching, The Gü story, Managing Hyper Growth, Making Business Fun, Passion about your Product, and much much more!
The Gü story is well known. From seed capital of just £65k, James grew the business from nothing to become an international brand with the business selling for £29m six years later – one of the largest returns ever achieved in the food industry.
This will be James’ first time working with a group from The Academy for Chief Executives. I am sure it will be a fabulous session.
If you are interested to attend and discover more about ACE, you need to be the owner or MD/CEO of a business that employs from a few tens to a few hundreds of staff.
You need to be ambitious to grow your business, and develop yourself as a leader. You also need to not conflict with any of the existing members, so to discuss eligibility and possibly secure one of the very limited number of guest places available for this meeting, get in touch with me by
A recent study by the Stanford Business School found that nearly two-thirds of CEOs don’t receive executive coaching or leadership development. And almost half of senior executives in general aren’t receiving any, either. Paradoxically, nearly 100 percent said they would like coaching to enhance their development, as both Bloomberg BusinessWeek and Forbes reported in recent articles.
So, why do CEOs and other senior leaders say they want coaching but don’t seek it?
I think the answer lies in what they’ve learned to think coaching provides, in contrast to what they think they need. Both views create a gap between desire and action. Ironically, that gap is unwittingly supported by most coaching programs, themselves.
That is, most omit or misconstrue the core coaching element that CEOs need to grow their skills and effectiveness: Increased self-awareness, honest self-knowledge, about one’s motives, personality capacities and values. The consequences of this absence play out in ways that diminish the relevance of coaching in the eyes of most senior leaders.
Self-awareness is crucial to leadership and it can be heightened through coaching. To explain why and how, consider the obvious but insufficient explanation for the paradox that CEOs want coaching but don’t pursue it. Stephen Miles, CEO of the Miles Group, that partnered with Stanford on the study, pointed out that to CEOs, “coaching is somehow “remedial” as opposed to something that enhances high performance, similar to how an elite athlete uses a coach.” Moreover, CEO’s say they’re most interested in such skills as conflict management and communication. Yet they put the need for compassion, relationship and persuasion skills far down on their list. They think of the latter as “soft skills,” ancillary at best.
I heard this quote [by Carl Jung] for the first time at a recent conference and it epitomised for me what The Academy for Chief Executives is all about.
Whether it is the insights from a steady stream of world-class experts that make us consciously aware of whats going on with Branding, Motivation, Team dynamics, Leadership, the World Economy, Communication Skills, Engagement, Alignment, Negotiation or a thousand other topics. They take us to a new, higher level of conscious competence [see below].
Working in peer groups with mutually trusted and respected owners of other businesses, bigger and smaller, and from an eclectic mix of industries, provides robust feed back on issues that will make it very clear if we are “in the groove, or just stuck in a rut”!
Mentoring 1-2-1 sessions provide time and space to explore our performance and our world; and a mirror is held up so that when we are thinking something is “fate”, our mentor may provide the reflection that allows us to see consciously. When a behaviour repeats unconsciously it’s usually a rut not a groove!
Retreats to focus on longer term life goals and dreams also bring the unconscious forward to the conscious level, providing a context for more short-term decision-making, while the groups hold members to account on specific actions to move towards their dreams.
the person achieves ‘conscious competence’ in a skill when they can perform it reliably at will
the person will need to concentrate and think in order to perform the skill
the person can perform the skill without assistance
the person will not reliably perform the skill unless thinking about it – the skill is not yet ‘second nature’ or ‘automatic’
the person should be able to demonstrate the skill to another, but is unlikely to be able to teach it well to another person
the person should ideally continue to practise the new skill, and if appropriate commit to becoming ‘unconsciously competent’ at the new skill
practise is the singlemost effective way to move from stage 3 to 4
2 – conscious incompetence
the person becomes aware of the existence and relevance of the skill
the person is therefore also aware of their deficiency in this area, ideally by attempting or trying to use the skill
the person realises that by improving their skill or ability in this area their effectiveness will improve
ideally the person has a measure of the extent of their deficiency in the relevant skill, and a measure of what level of skill is required for their own competence
the person ideally makes a commitment to learn and practice the new skill, and to move to the ‘conscious competence’ stage
unconscious
4 – unconscious competence
the skill becomes so practised that it enters the unconscious parts of the brain – it becomes ‘second nature’
common examples are driving, sports activities, typing, manual dexterity tasks, listening and communicating
it becomes possible for certain skills to be performed while doing something else, for example, knitting while reading a book
the person might now be able to teach others in the skill concerned, although after some time of being unconsciously competent the person might actually have difficulty in explaining exactly how they do it – the skill has become largely instinctual
this arguably gives rise to the need for long-standing unconscious competence to be checked periodically against new standards
1 – unconscious incompetence
the person is not aware of the existence or relevance of the skill area
the person is not aware that they have a particular deficiency in the area concerned
the person might deny the relevance or usefulness of the new skill
the person must become conscious of their incompetence before development of the new skill or learning can begin
the aim of the trainee or learner and the trainer or teacher is to move the person into the ‘conscious competence’ stage, by demonstrating the skill or ability and the benefit that it will bring to the person’s effectiveness
The world has just received an unforgettable lesson from a sixteen-year-old – in both speechmaking and in courage, and I bet you still recall it a few weeks later! Why is that?
Malala Yousafzai was already a great communicator and already a heroine when she stepped onto her school bus in Pakistan’s conflict-riven Swat Valley last October.
She had become internationally famous for running her campaign to combat the Taliban’s insane drive to prevent education for girls.
She was already the youngest ever nominee for a Nobel peace prize.
But when the Taliban sent what most be the must be the most inept assassin of all time to silence both her and her campaign, they not only failed spectacularly.
They managed to propel Malala’s status as a heroine and superstar to stratospheric heights.
After the attack Malala came to Britain for a multiplicity of life-saving operations involving a titanium plate in her forehead and an implant in her ear.
She has since left hospital and resumed her campaign for female education at a level which must give anyone afraid of women – such as the Taliban – the worst of nightmares.
So it was fitting that Malala celebrated both her recovery and her sixteenth birthday, not with the conventional wild teenage party, but with a speech to the United Nations in New York.
Malala at UN
Apart from Malala’s obvious rare courage and determination, there are several ways that her UN speech is to be admired from a performance perspective.
And we don’t have to have the world as our audience in order to pick up invaluable tips from her presentation skills.
For a start she had a clear message…something that all speeches need, but many lack.
Malala’s message was that education is not the problem which the Taliban fear – it’s the solution.
She didn’t want to retaliate against the Taliban with the same crude kind of weapon they used on her.
Malala said that even if she had a gun in her hand and the Taliban representative who shot her was standing in front of her she wouldn’t pull the trigger.
I believe her.
Instead Malala declared: “Education is the only solution.”
And she wrapped up her message in a powerful image with the simplest of wording: “One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world”.
Many are fearful about giving a talk to a small number of people in their own company or to a panel of prospective buyers.
Malala addressed international leaders and the world beyond with a calm inner confidence based on the quiet unpretentious certainty which underpins the wisdom of her approach.
And rather than dwell on her own troubles and pain, Malala focused her attention on the challenges of others.
It was all done with an overwhelming positivity.
Malala spoke slowly with confidence, clarity and courage.
The couple of times she made a teensy verbal slip she kept cool and then came up with the correct version.
Check out Malala’s style, and the speech in full:
This blog was courtesy of Michael Dodd, Communications expert, and regular coach at my CEO Group meetings in Bristol. www.michaeldoddcommunications.com
Within the Academy for Chief Executives we tend to talk about “1-2-1” ‘s rather than Coaching or Mentoring. I was struck recently by the power of 1-2-1 from a couple of directions simultaneously!
First through some contact with the Growth Accelerator programme I saw statistics they publish regarding the effectiveness of Coaching and Mentoring:
Businesses who seek external advice and information are 14% more ambitious and 50% more successful than those who don’t. (BIS2010)
Coaching is proven – 92% said it has a positive impact on the bottom line (CIPD)
80% of businesses that sought external advice expect to grow in the next 2 to 3 years, compared to 67% of businesses that didn’t. (BIS2010)
Secondly through some “de-brief interviews” with my own members:
Hector [who owns & runs a sales intelligence business] said “ACE get excellent high quality speakers who are informative and current. This combined with the mentoring and issue sessions have had a real long-term benefit to my business and justifies the cost of membership.”
Julian, who owns and runs an internet trading business said “I regard my monthly day away from my own business as something of a working holiday. It helps me relax, informs me that I am not as inept as I sometimes think and is an invaluable element in the time I seek to set aside for trying to see the whole wood rather than head butting an individual tree.”
The 4 elements of Academy membership are:
World class business experts leading monthly workshops
The peer group for holding members to account, reviewing issues, best practice, KPI, business plans, practice presentations and much more [also known as The Board You Could Never Afford!]
The annual Goal setting retreat
a programme of 1-2-1’s with the group chairman, both an experienced and practicing business man, and also a formally trained and accredited business coach/mentor.
To discuss mentoring or Coaching or 1-2-1’s in the Bristol/Bath/Swindon areas contact jon.penn@chiefexecutive.com or call me on 07980 486512
chiefexecblog 