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I sat with an executive in the telecommunications space a few weeks ago.  I realized afterwards that I have had similar conversations with executives in various verticals: in software, technology, marketing, financial services, law firms and in professional services firms.

The conversations go something like this:

• “Stop Selling & Do Something Valuable is very practical, it’s much more than the typical book that is all technique or all concept”
• “I really value a structured simple and powerful process for our professionals that really creates business dialogue”
• “So many approaches tell people what to do, not how to do it”
• “It’s organic - people can adapt it to their own style and that of their client”
• “I can’t remember the last time I read a business book cover to cover.  Usually all the value is in the first third and then it’s just repetitive”
• “This is a brilliant approach for the professional, the practitioner at the client facing level”
• “What’s next?”

Good question…what is next?  How do we help our clients move forward after “this” and build on the momentum?

So first, thanks for letting me share some of the great feedback I’ve been getting.  People encouraged me to write a book for a long time before I was ready.  That’s why I chose to focus so narrowly but so practically.

Make a real difference!  Engage the front line professionals serving clients.  Help them be their best.  Move along the business on its strengths.  I struggled with these challenges as a leader of professional.  It’s really rewarding to see individuals and businesses making a difference with the tools and approaches.  Let’s not talk conceptually about strategy and culture - let’s make it real!

Secondly, and most importantly, I want to start addressing the”What’s next?”

“What’s next” for me is helping leaders build a value-added platform with the SS&DSV philosophy and tools.  It can help services businesses enhance a strategy that is based on needs-driven, value-added relationships and helps drive revenue “now”.  Strategy, culture, metrics, ownership and alignment by executives and practitioners.  Here on this blog I’ll begin the conversation about implementing SS&DSV as an organizational and strategic vehicle.

SS&DSV delivers tools that are recognized as the beginning of a process:

• Applying the agenda builder focused on building shared commitment with the client or partner
• Targeted recap statements and targeted questions build the “Know Your Client Warm”conversation
• Both start to happen before the meeting
• The agenda confirmation call brings the client to the table and surfaces other issues and needs
• The meeting is less “event” and more a “stage in a process”
• Sets up powerful, insight rich follow up and follow through

Now the producing professional can measure impact.  New insight.  Increased pace of sale.  Increased awareness of other needs.  Increased commitment to solution finding.  Less competition.  Less focus on price.

Delivering value in tough markets!  Enduring approaches beyond!

Executives:build a platform of disciplined repeatable client excellence.  The sales will follow.  Profitability pressures will ease.

Expect that shared standards provide a foundation for innovation and excellence.  Stretch the folks who want to know you are not imposing a narrow ceiling of compliance on them.

Look for future posts tagged The Executive’s Guide as I explore ways to do this in your company.

So often leadership gurus talk about “either ~ or”

• Tactical or Strategic
• Operations or Human
• Profit or Social

Reach, grasshopper!

It’s both!

As a young executive, I was schooled and drilled in Kepner Tregoe’s ” Rational Management” approaches and tools.  They were awesome.  Then.

Twenty years later I was trying to figure out how to incorporate the qualitative and judgement aspects of leadership.  With KT, the best I could do was trick the system - use quantitative technique to measure qualitative dimensions.

I learned a lot about wisdom from Robert A. Johnson in his beautiful memoir “Balancing Heaven and Earth”. He made it so clear that wisdom and leadership is not as simple as balancing or choosing between contradictions - it is creating new spaces by reconciling the tensions in a what at first appear to be opposing factors.

One of the best organizational and business writers on this topic is Robert Quinn. I first encountered him when I read “Beyond Rational Management”, a book I highly recommend.

As We Move Through Tough Times…

…we need the confidence to navigate them - read Quinn’s ” Building the Bridge As You Walk On It” as a guide.

Remember, it’s not:

a) Bold or iterative

b) Directive or collaborative

c) Top down or participative

d) Aggressive or patient

The correct answer is (e) - all of the above!

Step through the ambiguity… create new insight.

Who else remembers the term monkey pile when they were kids?

Sometimes it was fun, sometimes it wasn’t.  Basically it meant to pile on.  In the school yard or on the playing field, when someone was down, we’d all pile on.  It could be fun (male sense of humor here) but it also could be mean spirited.  Bully like.

A few weeks ago I used the Big Three automakers in the States as an example of head-in-the-sand leadership and business focus in the wrong place.  This has been a favorite rant of mine for years.  How can such a poor product using a precious and finite source of energy then get so swept away with bigger, higher consuming products while we all knew the end was coming (supply) and we were supporting the hit of energy dependence on far away lands?

I followed with how their use of private jets to get to Washington to ask for money as an example of how their actions are disconnected from the kind of leadership that their organization and the public in general. It seems I’m not the only one who noticed.

I hesitated to post the second one because i worried I was “monkey piling”, picking on guys who were just oblivious.  Now I realize that there is a whole groundswell.  Did you see the Saturday Night skit?

SNL was hot on the same idea, since the comic possibilities were ripe for the picking, using the topic to generate an opening sketch this past weekend that zeroed in on exactly this type of leadership.

What’s interesting to me is that the Big Three “disconnect” in how they asked for money gives SNL unfettered permission to take hits at American car design in general. The leadership of these companies was compromised long before the current economic downturn and the need for a bailout - it goes back to what value their designs have been providing for the car-buying public in general over the last few years.

Whether deserved or not, SNL thought there were laughs they could get from poor user experiences with the product.

Now the blogoshphere is talking it up and wondering where the sketch in on NBC’s SNL site.  Conspiracy?  Parnoid neurotic auto execs puling sponsorship veto?  Limiting free speech?

How do they hear with their heads in the sand?

PILE ON!!!!

What product results from leadership on purpose?

In tune with the needs and values of the market.

Not.

Given the last post on being On Purpose, I thought I would give you some questions to ask of your organization - and of your clients’ organizations - that will keep you in purposeful motion.

Are the leaders of this company on purpose?

Are boundaries clear on zero tolerance issues?

Are ears and eyes open to adaptation and innovation?

New client needs emerging?

New improvised solutions?

Positively acting with target clients?

What’s needed now?

Just kidding. The post should really be titled “Spot the disconnect”.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/WallStreet/Story?id=6285739&page=1