Bob Schultek

Bob has more than 30 years of service as a senior sales and business development executive, CEO and business owner. His expertise includes customer-partnered business development, strategic planning, sales management, customer service, operational alignment, lean process analysis and improvement, quality assurance, and performance management. He has worked in the energy, medical device, bioscience & pharmaceutical, discrete and process manufacturing, packaging and distribution, communications and information technology, and business-to-business service industries.

It’s What’s Possible, Not What’s Wrong

by

The work of leadership is to improve the business – its culture, its practices, and ultimately, its results – by transforming self-interest into shared commitment. To succeed, leaders must convince those they lead that they can make a difference, creating an environment that asks what’s possible, rather than what’s wrong. Before people will believe in a mission, they must believe in their leader. No one follows a leader from ‘me to we’ unless that leader is authentic. Trust grows …

Read more

Why Shared Accountability

by

Appreciating the significant impact of accountability on performance, many leaders seek to augment the individual accountability of each team member with an overall team, or shared accountability, in which all team members are responsible to one another, as well as to the leader, for achieving team goals. While the overall responsibility for an outcome is still the leader’s alone, establishing a culture of shared accountability places an expectation on a team that they are likewise …

Read more

The Genesis of Trust

by

Generosity is the genesis of trust. When enduring relationships drive your growth strategy, then earning trust is foundational. And often, the seed of that trust, the critical first impression of your company, is planted by those in your business who are your customer’s initial contacts. Your culture is revealed in these first connections. When generosity is a core value of your culture, your customer’s time has priority over yours. It’s more about listening than talking, …

Read more

To Solve or To Sell

by

Inflation and incremental supply chain issues continue to breed uncertainty for your customers, increasing their risk and their focus on price. If your strategy is to sell value creation rather than low price, then you’re likely finding that it’s more challenging to execute your strategy. Because increased volatility tends to shorten a customer’s planning horizon, each transaction is often assessed in isolation, for its short-term advantage. A price-first priority is helpful to customers since it …

Read more

3 Questions People Ask About Their Leaders

by

Leaders rely on feedback from those they lead as one metric to gauge their effectiveness. Whether this feedback is derived from an engagement survey, or via direct conversation, the responses fundamentally answer these three questions: 1. “Do you care about me?” There’s an old adage which states: “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Inspiring hearts and minds to invest their talent and energy relies on your ability …

Read more

Ensuring Your Message Is Heard

by

When there’s a serious message to deliver, we often ponder the words we want to use, redrafting them, and practicing how we’ll deliver them, until we think we have it right. But despite all our best efforts, many messages are not understood as intended. One reason this occurs is because we tend to communicate messages the way we like to hear them, without considering how our listeners might hear them. Combine this tendency with the …

Read more

Self Interest to Shared Accountability

by

Before there can be accountability, there must be responsibility. The responsibility of committing to a decision, of taking ownership of a challenge, of striving to make a difference. It’s the opposite of compliance – of just doing the job, of not taking a risk, of doing what everyone else is doing. What matters is a person’s willingness to see what’s wrong or what could be better, and then striving to do something about it. It’s …

Read more

Shaping Leaders

by

“Leaders learn best by leading in the face of obstacles. As weather shapes mountains, problems shape leaders.”~Warren Bennis Leaders perpetually face problems and challenges – it’s a responsibility that’s part of the job. Some are planned like change initiatives, and some arrive unforeseen. Some are familiar, and some are new; but every one of them involves barriers to be overcome and priorities to be sorted. Each challenge presents an opportunity for leaders to learn and …

Read more

Better Discovery Boosts Business

by

When a customer encounters a problem, they tend to tightly control the information shared with external suppliers in their quotation requests. There is urgency to resolve the problem, so these If your solution is more complex, offering to produce more benefits for the customer with a related higher purchase investment, then responding as the customer expects, with simplicity, speed, and minimal dialogue, reduces your chance to earn their business. Proposing your solution, without first discovering why resolving their …

Read more

Journeys That Matter

by

Wanting to do meaningful work, to make a difference, often involves sharing that pursuit with others. Joining with others to achieve a goal, to explore a novel concept, or to improve a process can be a transformational journey. This collaborative approach gets more voices in the room, more ideas on the table, increasing the probability of success. It creates a learning experience that bonds team members, enabling them to gain insight about their individual strengths …

Read more