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.

Precedents vs. Possibilities

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Two components define a company’s culture:  1.      Its perspective towards people interactions and coordination (codependence vs. independence).  A codependent culture emphasizes collaboration, managing relationships, and generating team success. Independent cultures value autonomy, individual action, and competition.  2.      Its response to change (stability vs. agility).  Cultures that favor stability prioritize consistency, predictability, and preservation of the status quo to drive efficiency and risk aversion. Those that value agility stress flexibility, adaptability, and receptiveness to change, prioritizing innovation, openness and a …

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Agile Productivity

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People are often a company’s most expensive resource. So, optimizing people’s productivity often means keeping everyone busy on their functional duties, increasing the likelihood that every employee, of every skill type, will be fully utilized.   The downside? No department’s workers know how their labor affects other departments in the operation of the business. One department’s productivity may be high, but the company as a whole may not be moving faster or with more flexibility.  In this age of agility, in which businesses need to respond faster, leaders …

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Cultural Capital – the New Frontier of Competitive Advantage

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We’ve begun returning to the office, emerging from months of virtual-only connectivity. Many leaders are discovering that the lack of in-person interaction has caused their company’s culture to fray.  Businesses are living entities, communities with cultures built and nurtured by all those whose energy and commitment have produced the company’s progress. Their culture binds them to one another, enabling the execution of strategy and achievement of goals, creating value for customers, the business and each other. Culture is how things get done.  Leaders have increasingly …

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Who Are You Competing Against?

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In this dynamic market, the most agile, growing businesses compete more against themselves than against any competitor. Competing companies, offering comparable solutions, struggle to differentiate themselves over time, resulting in declining prices and margins which impede sustainable growth. Your customers care only about the value you produce for them, and however you accomplished this last time, they will expect more next time. Producing more value than last time, without just reacting to what your competition is …

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Craving Dialogue

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Without dialogue, there can be no conflict resolution, no shared commitment, no progress.The word dialogue implies a two-way conversation as opposed to monologue. But this is misleading because dialogue is actually a contraction from the Greek words for “through” and “words” which suggests a focus on discovering meaning. The ancient Greeks learned that people reasoning together, rather than as individuals, are more likely to uncover the truth about an issue. By questioning each other, carefully …

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Employing Empathy

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Empathy, the capacity to understand another person’s perspective and feelings, is often described as the ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes. But don’t confuse empathy with making people happy or being nice. Empathy is a skill that enables leaders to scan large sets of data and establish priorities, sorting out what’s noise and what’s essential information by assessing signals, anomalies and novel patterns that compel their attention. For those who master it, employing …

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Resilience

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Today’s tech driven world tends to increase our sense of predictability, helping us complete our functional tasks on a timely basis, sustaining our competitive posture. Starbuck’s coffee is the same worldwide; Amazon will deliver your package as close as possible to tomorrow. But working against this predictability, and undermining the expected outcomes, is the continual disruption of routine, perpetual change that challenges us to reassess what is valuable. Change willcontinue to occur, with increasing frequency, …

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Doing To Improve

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In their pursuit for improved performance, leaders nurture a team culture that is comfortable challenging the status quo, and sharing the commitment and accountability for embracing change.  Recognizing their responsibility to develop those they lead, these leaders counsel that natural talents can only take a person so far. They promote change initiatives as learning experiences that expand knowledge, strengthen skills and open opportunities to make a difference. From their own experience, they appreciate that beneficial learning is best accomplished by …

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Assessing Culture

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Emerging from months of virtual-only connectivity, many businesses are discovering that the long-term lack of in-person interaction among their staff has compromised their culture.   Control, dependence and short-term thinking have grown more dominant over collaboration, risk-taking, initiative and more strategic thinking.  Businesses are living entities, with cultures built and nurtured by all those whose energy and commitment have produced the company’s progress. Their culture is what binds them to one another, enabling their execution of strategy …

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The Customer Experience Advantage

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The customer-driven market grows stronger every day, propelled by relentless disruption and change. Those who thrive in this market deliver exceptional customer experiences, synced with their product or service, and based on their awareness of customer goals, as well as needs.  Such experiences build enduring relationships which subsequently provide awareness about trends, changing customer demands, feedback on strategy, and innovation opportunities – all valuable inputs for decision-making and value creation.  Your company’s customer-service personnel, serving as …

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