Here is a quick synopsis of my keynote delivered in front of 600 Alberta mayors, reeves and councillors in Edmonton, Alberta following a provincial election in 2001, covering the Seven Laws of Leadership.

Example – people need to be able to depend on your leadership

Today more than ever, people are looking for leaders who will lead by example in their dealings with people, and their lifestyles.

Communication – people need to know what you are saying

Today more than ever, people are looking for clarity and consistency in our written and oral communications. They are looking for honesty and openness in the dialogue they have with us as leaders.

Ability – you need to be capable of leading other people

Today more than ever, people are looking for more than a slick appearance. They want content and proven ability they can trust to get them through the increasing challenges of the 21st Century.

Motivation – you need to know why you want to be a leader

Today more than ever, people want to know why you are doing what you are doing, and so do you! A simple ‘trust me’ won’t cut it.

Authority – people need to respond to your leadership

Today more than ever, people want to be able to see demonstrated commitment and power in your decisions and authority in your actions.

Strategy – you need to know where you are going

Today more than ever, people want to know you have a plan, and one that is well thought out, covering all the contingencies and challenges. And they want to know the details of that strategy before they agree to follow you.

Love/compassion – you need to care for the people around you

Read More

In 1975, the city of New York was on the verge of bankruptcy, and due to this precarious position the main bank partner was in danger of going under too. In an effort to correct the situation, the president of the bank left the bank to join a group of financial experts, whose joint task was to steer the city out of trouble…which they eventually did. This is just about the most extreme case imaginable when it comes to defining the role of management: the president had to leave the bank to save the bank!

In everyday modern terms, the lesson is that two inexorable forces drive the best managers. The first is that they work ‘outside in’ and the second is that they work ‘inside out’. To work ‘outside in’ means that the manager’s thinking and focus starts with the market to be served. All organisational revenues, and indeed a company’s reputation, flow from the market to the business. Customers are not conscious of this special power that they possess, and nor do they need to be, but the fact remains that customers, and they alone, determine the success or failure of companies, their shareholders and staff. So, when I say that the best managers work ‘outside in’ to start with, this refers to their consistent concern for the external world of customers, concerning what they want (in service) and need (in results). These managers then work ‘inside out’ to ensure that the internal world of the business is designed to be a perfect match for the external world of the market.

Conversely, the worst performing managers just work ‘inside out’, with little or no appreciation of market dynamics. These menial managers attend endless, meaningless meetings, and engage in interminable admin work, because this is their vision of management duties.

Read More

Women in the Boardroom, and Beyond
Over the past several decades, women have gained a far more prominent position on the American business scene.  Once relegated to roles of subservience, as viewers of the AMC television series “Mad Men” can attest, female corporate executives have continued to assert themselves in boardrooms across the country.  The business magazine Fortune has, for the past twelve years, created an annual listing of the 50 most powerful women in business.  Some of them hold the top spots in their respective companies, while others are well on the way to that position.  The characteristics they share are hardly different from their male counterparts - vision, persistence, and intelligence - but many will privately attest to the fact that reaching this point in their careers took extra effort.  As much as we would like to believe in an egalitarian world of business, there is still an extra thrill when a woman manages to “make it in a man’s world.”  One measure of success - when the list premiered in 1998, only two women of the 50 was a CEO or its equivalent.  This year’s list includes 13 CEOs.

Most Powerful Women in Business
Fortune has selected fifty powerful women for its annual list; here is an in-depth look at the top ten:

1. Indra Nooyi (PepsiCo); Chairman and CEO
This is the fourth year that Nooyi has topped the Fortune list.  She led this food and beverage conglomerate to $43 billion in sales and led the drive to buy out the company’s two largest independent bottlers.  That move alone is expected to save the company close to $300 million a year.

2. Irene Rosenfeld (Kraft Foods); Chairman and CEO
Remaining at the number two spot, Rosenfeld helped increase company revenue 15 percent and saw her company become part of the Dow 30, a highly influential position.

3.

Read More

We all want that sense of achievement that comes with reaching our goals. Whether we are working for ourselves or working within a larger organization, we get a deep sense of satisfaction when we accomplish what we set out to do. Some people seem to achieve their objectives without much effort. Others never quite seem to get there. Have you experienced frustrations such as these?

• Only half of your managers are using the new system after spending over one million dollars on its implementation.
• The incidence of customer complaints continues to rise even after the latest product redesign.
• Members of your department continually change focus so nothing gets finished.

If so, then you may need to revisit how you set goals and plan for their accomplishment. From my years of working in a number of organizations and on a variety of projects, I have condensed the lessons I have learned into a simple five step process. I call this process the Five Cs approach. This approach does not use any rocket science, just the basics needed for getting things done in your organization. By using the Five Cs process steps you will improve the chances of achieving your and your organization’s objectives.

The Five Cs approach can be used for activities as basic as organizing your team’s leave calendar to the more complex planning and rollout of your organization’s annual fundraiser. The approach consists of these five basic steps:

Create   >>   Commit   >>   Communicate   >>   Carry Out   >>   Check

The steps in the process are essentially sequential, meaning that you will need mostly to complete an earlier step before proceeding to the next. Shortcutting steps in the process will only increase the amount of rework that you will need to do later on.

Read More

Many organizations muddle through change. How is your organization progressing at implementing that new accounting system or moving to a new employee performance management process? Are your managers nodding approval in public but sabotaging the initiative in private? Are your employees shell-shocked and just giving up? Do you have no money left over for post-implementation support?

Whatever change your organization is trying to implement, knowing about and working through the necessary steps will go a long way to making your change initiative a success. I have distilled these crucial steps into a process model for change. The model is called the CHANGE Approach, with each letter signifying a step in the process. I have summarized below the key features of each step leading to a successful change transition.

Create tension
With this first step, articulate why change needs to happen and why it needs to happen within the planned timeframe. Many change programs start with a big bang, but then peter out ending in a whimper. Other programs struggle to develop the initial momentum. Think about the immediate force that will get your people moving in the right direction. This could be impending legislative changes, new entrants to the market, high levels of customer dissatisfaction, etcetera. Think also about the impacts of not changing, such as loss of market share or fines from regulators. To prepare your company for the impending objections, collect as much data as you can to back your assertions.

Harness support
Next, get on board the key decision makers, resource holders and those with the potential to subvert your change process. Start by identifying the key stakeholder groups; the people with something to lose or gain from your change proposal. Include in your analysis the end receivers of the new products or services, such as suppliers, customers and end users of software.

Read More

As a manager, executive or business owner your top priority today is exceeding company goals. You can’t do it yourself, so the best way to exceed your goals is to have what we call “High Performance Teams” working for you. Your goals may include growing your business, increasing revenue, improving business efficiency, doing more with less, creating competitive advantage, improving customer satisfaction, reducing costs or leveraging intellectual assets. Your team, which may include (sales, marketing, finance, strategy, HR, IT, operations, shop floor, etc.) represents a very powerful mechanism for getting significant results in organizations today.

High performance teams are a special class of team that has the ability to easily adapt in a rapidly changing environment and is an essential element for highly successful organizations. The first step in building a high performance team is understanding the essential team ingredients that create a recipe for success. Building high performance teams is a top priority for many executives. The benefits and value produced by these teams are very clear and being viewed as essential tools in their business strategy. High performance teams produce many benefits.

1. Increased sales revenue
2. Increased productivity
3. Improved customer service
4. Ability to do more with less
5. Increased innovation
6. Ability to quickly adapt to change
7. Ability to solve difficult, critical problems

Sales Team Essentials – The Ingredients

So where do you begin? Like a great chef making the perfect soufflé, you must follow a recipe that will deliver the best possible outcome. This recipe includes the ingredients, preparation and the process for making the perfect soufflé.

Read More

The ‘job for life’ is not a term often used now, but employers need to consider the importance of employee retention as it affects turnover, productivity and the business’s long-term success.

Here are some tips to help you keep your staff:

Recruit the right people
It seems a simple thing, but so many companies stumble by not employing the right person for the job. To ensure you have the best staff write a job description and key performance indicators before advertising the position. Think through the key interview questions and ask each candidate the same ones so you can compare ‘apples to apples’. Know the type of person you are looking for, what you want them to do and their employment conditions and you are off to a great start.

Favourable work environment and culture
Make your workplace flexible and supportive so employees feel comfortable in the environment. After all, they spend a third of their time at work so it pays to make it somewhere your staff want to be. Establish a system where employees can regularly express their opinions and ideas freely – and act on any that are good for the business.

Training, career development and feedback
It is very important that employees feel welcomed, wanted and that they are given the chance to succeed in their job. Put together a structured program where new people are brought up to speed quickly and continue it by allowing staff to develop to take on new challenges. Ongoing training means staff can grow over time to move into new positions and increase their value to you. Give your employees regular reviews and support so they know what to aim for, when they are doing well and when they need to improve. Without feedback your staff will perform below standard.

Read More

A contemporary theory of leadership states that there are three basic ways that people become leaders. The first two explain the leadership development for a small number of people, the third explains how most leaders find their way into leadership positions. These theories are:

• The Trait Theory suggests that some personality traits may lead people naturally into leadership roles.
• The Great Events Theory suggests that a crisis or important event may cause a person to rise to the occasion of leadership. Such great events bring out extraordinary leadership qualities in an ordinary person. This is a subset of the Trait Theory.
• The Transformational Leadership Theory teaches that people can choose to become leaders. People can learn leadership skills. This is the most widely accepted theory today.

Christians add a variant to the Transformation Leadership Theory that understands that successful leaders are called into positions of leadership, that the transformation required is a work of the Holy Spirit in the life and character of a person.

When a person decides whether to respect you as a leader, he observes what you say and do in order to know who you really are. That is to say that the fundamental leadership characteristic is integrity.1 Integrity is a matter of doing what you say you will do. It is the conformity of thought and action, or belief and behavior. Your integrity reveals whether you are honorable and can be trusted or are a self-serving person who misuses authority and position to look good and get promoted.

Self-serving leaders are lucky when their employees obey them. But even when they do, they get only minimal obedience. They do not inspire followers who are committed to the well-being of their leader.

Read More