Bob Schultek In a market where customers have many options available to them, “promising” an outcome, and then delivering it, is a differentiator. A promise is more than a commitment to produce products or services. It’s intimate and specific to each customer. It conveys an obligation to put your customer’s needs and aspirations ahead of your own, based on an appreciation of their circumstances and what they value, as well as your probability of success. Fulfilling a …
Increasingly, the discussions I’m having with leaders focus on how to better leverage their culture to improve performance. We’ve experienced more change in the past few years than we’ve ever seen before. The work to be done is evolving, it’s different; so, the way we get it done must be different. Culture is how a business gets things done. It defines who you are as a company and what you believe. While your purpose or …
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
“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 …