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I never get why so many of us in business look for easy answers - a black or white declaration of where our business focus should be resting.

“It’s either productivity or excellence - which do you believe is the most important?”

Here’s what I think: it’s both.  And the tension of insisting on putting the emphasis on both forces us through the easy answer to find true insight.

Let’s set the parameters of this debate in the areas of:

• Managing results
• Activity management

Numbers or quality? The Two Sides

Managing results: No one is going to argue that results are essential and that it is critical that we set objectives and manage/measure to them.

The argument is that too often results are the only measure that gets focused on.  Basically, custodians of these businesses are driving while only looking in the rear view mirror.  It’s uncomfortable, you can’t go as fast, control of the car is harder to manage and you can only see where you have been.  Who knows what is in front?

Activity management: Business is quantitative, correct?  So let’s set numbers goals for activities.  The more activity, the more likely we are to get the desired results.  And as a general rule, that is the case. 

The risk, however, is two-fold:

• The team goes out with results-focused activity… every contact is a nail and they are the hammer. Ouch! Always being the “nail” in a conversation with a “hammer” leads to the risk of conversation-averse clients and potentials.
• Lots of activity…but is it the right activity?

Numbers or quality? The Pat Riley Approach

Pat Riley was a NCAA basketball player who was schooled at the University of Kentucky by Adolph Rupp.  Rupp was one of the most successful college coaches ever.  He was evangelical about excellence through fundamentals.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolph_Rupp

Pat had a journey man career including playing with the Lakers, winning the NBA championship and finally playing with the Suns. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Riley His coaching career was much more successful.  He has coached five NBA champions and is currently president of Miami Heat, who won the championship in 2006.

Pat had several key beliefs that framed his coaching philosophy:

• Players want to play at their highest level
• A good coach can count on players’ pride and their own drive to excel
• Every player knows their results, the league and the sporting press has reams of results data and statistics focused dominantly on results
• An unswerving commitment to focus on the fewest things that make the most difference

So his strategy fell out like this:

• Coach to the playbook
• Measure and reward “on target” performance and attempts
• Let results follow - professionals will succeed more than fail when they make attempts or “effort” at the right activities

He built a philosophy around “effort statistics”.  Once a team had the playbook down, he knew that solid, quality attempts would make the difference in end of game results.  Results and Activity. Productivity and Excellence.

So to get the most drive out of activity, he measured and rewarded:

• Attempted assists
• Attempted rebounds
• Attempted shots
• Attempted steals

Pat knew that the drive, competitiveness and professionalism of the players would be channeled through quality effort and as a consequence would drive results. If he gave positive feedback on the attempt, quality would eventually win out and results would follow.

Results are essential, but they follow. Excellence is driven through quality effort.

The key is knowing what to measure and not getting hung up on staring backwards at the results.

Smart attempts to steal the ball or bring down the rebound will pay off!

Put good things in and get good results out

I just read a Fortune article based on Q&A with Jim Collins of “From Good To Great“.It reminded me of something I had forgotten.

Who remembers this?: Eighteen of the companies Collins’ research team studied were Depression companies. FIFTEEN of them are still independent operations.

Timely to quote another key piece of work by Collins: something he calls Level 5 Leadership. It highlights a key component of the leadership required to create sustainable greatness.

“Level 5 leaders want to see the company even more successful in the next generation, comfortable with the idea that most people won’t even know that the roots of that success trace back to their efforts. As one Level 5 leader said, “I want to look out from my porch at one of the great companies in the world someday and be able to say, ‘I used to work there.‘ ”

To explore this further, read more at Jim’s Website

Just recently, I had the extreme pleasure of working with a leading edge financial services company.

Is their market tough? YES!

Has it pushed them into a corner? NO!

First, let’s see what they’ve got going for them:

• Young, creative, aggressive leadership
• A clear and compelling vision for the future
• A powerful business model
• Edgy products pushing the market boundary
• A commitment to deliver “value-added” knowledge and consultation AND positive, measurable financial impact
• A solid energetic team of field professionals who care about the business and its success
• Those professionals are totally committed to the value of consistent processes across their company and with clients across the nation

In the months since the CEO launched our project, we have been coaching selected of their producing leaders and sales professionals. We have also been adapting our tools to their marketplace and co-developing approaches to leverage the value of the company, the people and the products.

A few of the key things we have focused on:

1. Professionals who are hungry to perform well and achieve lots are an essential part of the recipe for success that:

• Builds on their strengths and individuality
• Builds on the identity and potential of the business
• Promotes them to “be your best”
• Helps them make “value-added” concrete and practical

2. To succeed, you need to give ambitious and motivated professionals a framework. These guys and gals want a consistent process because they know that puts the company tone and identity front and center.

3. It’s not either~or: being “strategic” and “value-added” is not enough - they also need to be “transactional” and “gets deals done”.

4. Confirming and demonstrating that tools and processes do not have to be “ceilings for compliance” - that they should be firm to act as foundations for innovation and for enhancing the clients’ appreciation of individual and company strengths and style.

5. The power of repeatable patterns of dialogue and coverage will drive more meaningful conversations about client business priorities, heighten client expectations of us and create unassailable defenses against more transactional competitors.

It was one of the most gratifying and exciting workshops I have facilitated in years. I’m excited to observe how they make it their own and drive new results through the next few phases of coaching and integrating.

Now watch ‘em go!

When Walmsley & Co. meets with potential clients, whether they be selling professionals with responsibilities in a business or firm or independents with their businesses at a certain level of growth, we identify them as “Producing Leaders”.

What is a Producing Leader? Most people get “producer”- someone who produces great results. Most people get “leader” and think of it conventionally as a formal leader.

If I transported you to a floor of a services business or to get an helicopter view of professionals leading with their clients, engaging and influencing peers, service and delivery professionals… you would immediately recognize the “producing leaders” when you saw them in action.

They have drive… they have enough information to move the ball forward… they are fun and easy to work with … they make their clients and their colleagues successful… people want to be around them and they know that they will be more successful as a result!

So What’s a Producing Leader?

A Producing Leader is the high-performing selling professional who holds the responsibility for bringing in business results through sales and client relationships. They may be the head of an entrepreneurial company, a professional like a financial advisor or an specialist consultant, or someone who is the company “rainmaker” even if he or she also does the company business… i.e. a lawyer who also lands the clients, or a the head of a recruiting company who also does the placements, an executive who demonstrates the strategy every day rather than just talking about it.

You can tell the Producing Leader because he or she has some distinct responsibilities and drivers:

• Leads through results
• Leads the growth of the business
• Is Client focused
• “Makes it happen”
• Service, fulfillment and delivery professionals want to work with them and feel more successful when they do
• A producing leader’s team is explicitly focused on supporting the Producing Leader in creating results.

The Producing Leader holds the key expertise that is the trusted center of the business.

Producing Leaders have highly effective ways to connect with the lifeblood of the business - that being client relationships - while still reaching out to new ones, knowing each client is receiving the kind of care and attention needed to feel they have made a good choice.

They have a simple, effective process in place to be sure everyone is being “touched” regularly, and also “heart”… meaning that those “touches are meaningful exchanges” with clients, future clients and colleagues. The heart is where profit, pride and purpose connect; where the Producing Leader and staff are engaged and motivated.

They are positive AND progressive. People get engaged on passion and stay engaged on urgent, vital execution.

Are you a Producing Leader?

If so, ask yourself: is your business “heart” connected and engaged or are you too often going through the motions just to keep up with day-to-day business?

In future posts we’ll talk more about how to keep in the “heart” without losing effectiveness.

Romance with Australia

Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. In many ways, I have a romance with Australia in the same way I have a romance with Texas. There are similarities… the ranching background, the hard scrabble land, the outsized attitudes and good nature. I know, me, Hugh Jackman and Baz Lurhmann.

A long time ago I read a beautifully written book by Bruce Chatwin. He spent a lot of time with a community of Aboriginals and learned of the passing of their elders’ custom and wisdom. These are the people who invented the “walkabout”.

Navigating without maps

There were no maps. There was a solid belief that they could sing in a rhythm with the environment. The young would learn chants for their area… “walk this way, turn toward the sun at the rock that looks like a fox” and so on.

The magical thing was that when they walked for 30 or 40 days, they found their way back. As they walked, and ventured into new turf, somehow they picked up the rhythm of the land and their chants revealed the paths and navigated for them.

Ok, Steve, you’ve lost it now

What does this have to do with strategic sales and relationship building?

A relationship has to be navigated. It’s an analytical and an intuitive process. It is dynamic. To keep in an engaged conversation, we need to be sharing stories that help guide our clients’ expectations and behavior, as well as giving us clues as to what they need. No singing necessary… think stories rather than songs, storylines rather than songlines.

Because really they are the same thing. Songlines are stories that are passed from person-to-person to give guidance and structure to an otherwise unknown route. In business we can tell stories to our clients that can evoke trust and understanding, guide interactions and make a stepping path into the future. Narrative is a powerful way that humans understand each other. If you can tell a relevant story of your business to a client, there is a much higher likelihood they will recognize your worth and trust you than if you just promise them value and service. It also gives them a path as to how to interact effectively with you.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to see if your organization is actively creating “storylines” that lead you and clients forward:

1. Do you tell stories to new and potential clients that illustrate a specific, concrete experience with a client who got value and results from your service?
2. Do you establish a long arc for the storyline so you can set a strategic frame for each episode?
3. How do you continue to build that story from specific stories and from more abstract value and advisory situations?

Where are your relationships going?