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.

Why Shared Accountability

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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 …

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The Genesis of Trust

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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, …

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To Solve or To Sell

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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 …

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3 Questions People Ask About Their Leaders

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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 …

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Ensuring Your Message Is Heard

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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 …

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Self Interest to Shared Accountability

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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 …

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Shaping Leaders

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“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 …

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Better Discovery Boosts Business

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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 …

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Journeys That Matter

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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 …

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Developing Shared Accountability

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Shared accountability for delivering results is a quality that defines high performing teams. Under this principle, team members accept that they are accountable to each other for fulfilling the team’s mission or goal, sharing the responsibility for the commitment they made, including the consequences it creates. In addition to being accountable for their individual duties and goals, team members accept responsibility for the overall team goal as their higher obligation. Each team member holds themselves and then each other, accountable for delivering the …

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