Growth & Leadership Insights

Sustaining Dialogue

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There’s never enough time. That’s why it’s difficult to slow down and recognize meaningful moments that require more attentiveness. Perhaps it’s a mentoring moment when your time is focused on developing the skills of a direct report. Or maybe it’s during a team meeting that’s considering a change initiative and you need theircommitment to the change.Whenever these moments occur, they are times for asking questions and listening, not assuming and telling. They are times when …

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That First Prospect Meeting

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When first meeting a prospective customer, the objective is to establish rapport, a personal connection, something you have in common, that can be the kindling for igniting a new relationship. The connection might emerge from the circumstances that caused you to meet, or from a shared experience, or from something you notice about the person. It’s what launches a conversation thatreveals your common experiences and values to one another, the human touch that enables trust …

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Astride the Fulcrum

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Improving business results can often feel like you’re sitting astride the fulcrum of a teeter-totter. One side of the seesaw represents the process and precedent that delivers efficiency, quality and risk aversion. The other side embodies a challenge to the status quo, a drive to innovate and improve which is mandatory for progress, customer retention and value creation. A leader has one foot on each side, striving for equilibrium. Sometimes leaders must put more weight …

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The Value of Doing

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The prime directive for leaders is to improve results. One way they accomplish this by nurturing a culture which understands what has produced success, challenges the status quo, and cultivates ashared commitment for embracing productive change that creates value for their customers and their business.  A key component of building this culture is recognizing their responsibility to develop those they lead. Their experience has taught that the most beneficial learning is accomplished by ‘doing,’ so these leaders …

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3 Steps for Resolving Differences

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Securing a team’s commitment to a direction, decision or action, typically requires the resolving of differences within the team to identify and agree on the best way forward. These 3 steps can help: 1. Employ empathy. As the discussion begins, listen empathetically to the differing perspectives, asking questions to clarify or confirm. If the dialogue stalls, use expressions of consideration and tolerance to remove any sense of threat so the sharing of ideas may continue. A typical comment would be: …

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Energy of the People

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It’s during the challenging moments that your people make the biggest difference. Each person in your organization is a source of energy, with a unique set of gifts to contribute, and the potential to leverage these together with their distinctive insight and experience, to convert products and services into strategic value for your customers. This energy is focused like a laser when employees share commitment to a common purpose and culture. And unlike other forms of energy, …

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Driving Change Amidst Turmoil

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Supply chain challenges and rampant inflation continue to disrupt businesses of all sizes, causing them to revise strategies and priorities as they adapt to new realities. Having navigated Covid shutdowns, and the subsequent transitions back to work, leaders are now compelled to control rapidly escalating costs that are crushing margins and constraining the achievement of revenue goals.   It’s one thing for leaders to drive proactive, productive change when the business is growing; it’s another when strategy and structure revisions are required in …

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Competition

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Competition is fierce and growing. The dynamic market and internet access to abundant information ensures that no technical advantage is sustained for long.   To keep pace with the market, competing companies react to one another by offering comparable solutions while struggling to differentiate themselves. Often this results in declining prices and margins. Monitoring your competitors is essential, but it tends to make a business more reactive than proactive, which can complicate goal achievement and cause you …

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Selling or Solving

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Rising inflation is driving a greater emphasis on price over value creation in negotiations. It’s not just the dramatic, unpredictable cost increases that are impacting your customers’ decisions, but also the sense of higher risk related to uncertainty, that cause the short-term, price-first perspective to prevail over the longer, strategic view in your customers’ buying process.  Focusing on price as the primary decision factor has the advantage of being clear, direct and easy to evaluate. Everything is …

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Finding Talent

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Businesses are struggling to find and hire talented people. Job postings cite requirements and experience levels, which translates to expertise. Companies hire for expertise.  But not all expertise is equal. Attracting and retaining the most talented people, those with the highest level of expertise, is expensive and time-consuming; and it can be risky if the person hired ultimately isn’t the right fit for the business. So, most companies design jobs that can be done reasonably well by a person …

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