Business Performance: It Takes More Than Hard Work

Published June 28, 2016 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

I’ve got the brains, you’ve got the looks

Let’s make lots of money

You’ve got the brawn, I’ve got the brains

Let’s make lots of money

 

The Pet Shop Boys made it sound so simple back in the 80s.  But in the real world, achieving financial success in business is a little more complex.  I work for a publicly-traded company, so it is no secret that I am part of a leadership team at the helm of a company that has struggled to achieve the desired level of financial performance in recent times.

Leaders of companies that struggle to consistently show strong performance can become frustrated as they try and find the thing that will break the business free from the rut and set it upon a path of prosperity.  They constantly question what is at the root cause of the performance issues.  Is it the offerings or quality issues or economic headwinds or ineffective marketing or any one of a plethora of other reasons?  All too often one of the answers that pops up is “employee are not working hard enough.”

However, from what I observed at other companies and from what I have directly witnessed in my own career, the cause of financial performance struggles is rarely, if ever, the result of employees (at any level) not trying hard enough.    Several months back I ran into a former senior leader of my current company at a high school basketball game.  As we were talking he said “looks like you guys need to be working harder.”  I paused as he said that and then replied “if spectacular financial performance were as simple as having people work harder, I would have been able to retire years ago.”  He scratched his head for a moment and then told me I had a good point.

Unfortunately the premise of “we just need to have employees work harder” can easily lead to not recognizing and rewarding the work efforts of employees.  In fact during times of challenged performance, it common to see leaders blame employees’ lack of individual performance for the financial woes – alienating the very group of people that can get the company back on track.

One of the things I have been passionate about in recent years is making sure the recognition of employee efforts becomes and remains a part of the company culture.  Even in times when financial performance is not exactly celebration worthy, it is always time to celebrate the heroic efforts employees make to deliver for clients.  At the core of my current company’s employee recognition efforts is a quarterly awards program called “A Promise We Live.”  It is centered on the fact that we make promises to our clients and to each other to deliver what we sold; and that we have to live up to those promises every day.

The program involves employees submitting nominations for the efforts of their fellow employees. It is not a top down program where management determines those that are worthy of consideration; it is driven by employees recognizing the heroic efforts of their co-workers and taking the time to tell others about those efforts.  There is then a panel of managers that read and score the nominations using our published core values as the benchmark.  From that panel review, the best of the best efforts are selected as quarterly winners, but all those that were nominated are celebrated as well.

Each quarter I look forward to reading through the nominations to learn about the lengths our employees go to deliver on our promises.  I am constantly amazed at the level of dedication shown at all levels of staff and from all levels of tenure.  It reinforces for me the fact there are so many talented people throughout the organization and reminds me of all the early mornings, late nights, and week-ends employees sacrifice to service our clients.  It also provides data points that our issues are not caused by lack of effort by employees.  It were just about working harder, our stock price would be through the roof.

I may not have the brains (nor brawn) to know all the answers to all the questions about what holds back a company’s financial performance, but I have decided that simply imploring employees to work harder is not the solution.  I am also smart enough to know that taking the time to recognize and celebrate those truly heroic efforts made by employees every day is a key to performance success.

My closing thought to you is to recognize the extra efforts of those working around you.  Even if your employer does not have a formal recognition program in place, a simple “Thank You” can convey that efforts do not go unnoticed.

Time to Clear Out the Static

Published June 23, 2016 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

Getting nothing but static, getting nothing but static;  Static in my attic from Channel Z

Wow – it feels a little  like I have been living on Channel Z with the B-52s over the past year.  I know my blog has certainly been filled with static for way too long.

It has been right at 18 months since I last posted anything.  Life has been incredibly busy.  CEO changes and taking on new responsibilities at work have taken up much of my time and focus.  Throw in life with two teenagers at home and there has been no time and even less energy to sit down and write.

However, I can feel the itch to get back into the cycle of writing and posting coming on.  The good news is I have 18 months worth of random thoughts bouncing around my head that are begging to make it out.

Stay tuned…..

 

 

Where Everybody Knows Your Name: Getting Retail Back to the Future

Published January 22, 2015 Information Technology Leave a Comment
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Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got. 

Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot. 

Wouldn’t you like to get away? 

Sometimes you want to go  where everybody knows your name, 

And they’re always glad you came. 

You wanna be where you can see, our troubles are all the same

You wanna be where everybody knows your name. 

You wanna go where people know,  people are all the same, 

You wanna go where everybody knows your name

This is the theme song to the 80s TV show Cheers about a group of people that form a friendship centered on a bar in Boston.  The idea of people knowing your name at a bar is not that far-fetched even in today’s world.  There was a time when this same concept held true in American retail.  Back when most retail, even high-end retail, was mainly local single location family-owned stores. In that environment, store owners and professional salespeople had a true personal connection with their customers.  Customer were known my name and retailers had detail knowledge of each customer. However, as retail in the United States has evolved that feeling of connection between retailer and customer seems to have dwindled.

I have found myself on a bit of a book reading binge in recent months, mixing in insight from Harvey Penick’s books on golf with several books about various retailers.  My latest read is Minding the Store by Stanley Marcus.  It is the story of the founding and growth of specialty retailer Neiman Marcus.  While the book was filled with all kinds of anecdotes of unique customers and sales that have passed through Neimans over the years, there was one specific quote from Stanley Marcus in the book that clicked with me:  “As long as the customer is alive, you have a prospect.”  As the CIO for a team of passionate marketing professionals this notion resonated strongly with me.

The book also highlighted that back in the days before computers Neiman Marcus provided each salesperson with a clientele book.  The salesperson was required to record all purchases for each customer in this book, as well as birthdays, anniversaries and other information that might provide useful in contacting the customer by letter or phone.  The idea was that if properly used, the customer purchase history would make it easy to relate new merchandise to things the customer already owned.  This insight could then be used to directly contact that customer to drive new sales.  That sounds a lot like the direct one-to-one communication that we hear retailers say they want to achieve with their marketing activities today.

Sadly it feels like retailers, like Neiman-Marcus, have lost sight and/or proper execution of this simple concept.  I asked my wife, an occasional shopper at Neiman Marcus, if she received the same type of one-to-one relevant communications from that store today.  Her response that while the salesperson at the store usually asked for her name at the point of sales counter, she rarely if ever receives any kind of communication from the store and certainly nothing that she would consider one-to-one. Perhaps the lack of communication is due to her historical low (or so she tells me) level of total  spend at that store or perhaps it is just a lack of understanding of the value of the information possessed or how to use the information to establish a one-to-one connection that could drive more sales.  In any case, the result is retailers missing out on the value of that one-to-one relationship Stanley Marcus so wisely observed fifty plus years ago.

I am only using Neiman Marcus as an example because it was the topic of the book that got my mind thinking about this idea.  But there are retailers everywhere that fail to take full advantage of the information they possess on their customers. I think my wife is a member of just about every retail loyalty program ever created but rarely do I see what looks like true one-to-one communication from those retailers.  At best, I see messaging that has dropped her into some large segmentation bucket and even that is not done on a regular occurrence.  This perplexes me as I know these businesses have a wealth of information about her and her purchase habits; information that could allow them to create that same in-store (or online) experience of having a personal connection to the customer, much like that which customers must have felt at the Neiman Marcus store in downtown Dallas back in the 1950s.

The data are there; the technology is there; and there are smart marketers out there that know how to combine that data and technology to create that personal connection.  While some might find it slightly creepy, I for one can’t wait for the day to return when the salesperson at Neiman Marcus knows my name when I walk through the door – it will be a back to the future moment.

Beware of the Lime Juice Ship

Published August 28, 2014 Conscious Capitalism , Leadership Leave a Comment

If you want to join a merchant ship and sail the sea at large
You’ll not have any trouble if you have a good discharge
Signed by the Board of Trade with everything exact
And then you’ll get your months advance according to the Act.
So haul boys your weather mainbrace and ease away your lee
Hoist jib and topsails lads and let the ship go free
Shout boys shout I tell you it’s a fact
There’s nothing done in Lime Juice ship contrary to the Act
Now when you join the ship me boys you’ll hear your articles read
They’ll tell you of your pork and beef your butter and your bread
Your coffee, tea and sugar boys your peas and beans exact
Your lime juice and your vinegar according to the Act

These are lyrics from an old sailor song called the Lime Juice Ship. I know this is a departure from my typical use of modern music, but bear with me. As usual there is a method to my madness.
For Father’s Day my children gave me a book of “useless facts.” I assume because they know how much I love boring them with stories about supposed randomness. I took the book on a recent vacation flight, and quickly read it from cover to cover. While it was a purely pleasure trip, my mind couldn’t help but think about the world of business while I amused myself reading utterly random factoids.

One of the stories in this book of useless facts was answering the question: “Why are the British referred to as limeys?” According to this book (and I have not done any independent research on this to confirm), it all has to do with scurvy and the British Navy. Apparently in the 17th to 18th centuries the greatest killer at sea was scurvy which is caused by the lack of ascorbic acid in the diet of a sailor. In 1753, a Scottish naval doctor, James Lind, recommend adding lemon juice, which contains ascorbic acid, to the sailors diet to prevent scurvy. Initially the British navy ignored the recommendation due to cost concerns, but by the late 1700s lemon juice was compulsory aboard British navy ships and scurvy ceased to be an issue. However, at some point in the 1800s the British navy switched to lower cost lime juice, only to see outbreaks of scurvy return to their ships. Turns out that limes have a lower content of ascorbic acid than lemons and thus were not as effective at fending off scurvy. Other countries stuck with higher cost lemons or even oranges and did not see the return of scurvy. Sailors from other countries, particularly the Americans and the Australians, poked fun at the British sailors by calling them “limeys.”
Like most people who have held a position within companies for more years than you care to admit, I have seen my share of business downturns – either firsthand, through experiences with business partners, anecdotally through IT peers and acquaintances, or reading business-related articles. These downturns may be result of worldwide, national or local economic problems; product relevance or reliability; price pressures; the poor execution of business plans; or a host of other reasons. Regardless of the driver, one of the most common reactions taken by the management team of the business is to cut costs.

 

Now don’t get me wrong, I love an ongoing strong dose of expense management. Building in a recurring examination of your business’s cost basis is a good thing. Businesses are dynamic; and employees at all levels of an organization should be evaluating and challenging business processes and costs associated with the business all the time. This leads to a business where the right people are doing the right things, following the right processes at the right times. This results in an efficient business operation, something that is key attribute of high performing companies. I like to think of this as “natural” expense management that happens as part of following strong fundamental business practices.
However, during business downturns, what I have seen and heard from others so many times is what I call “unnatural acts” of cost cutting. Much like some Royal Navy admiral requiring the use of limes instead of lemons to save a few British Pounds, CEOs and CFOs go to department heads requiring an arbitrary and immediate cost basis sacrifice – especially from departments that are seen as support functions or ones oddly enough that are focused on driving sales. While these actions can prop up financial performance in the short-term, they can also cause longer-term harm (perhaps not death like the actions of the British navy) to the business.
Ring, ring….”Hey VP of HR, this is your CFO calling on a Monday morning. Look I know our overall employee count is forecasted to remain flat for the coming 12 months, but I need you to scale back your HR department cost basis by 10% to help make up for the recent 5% price decrease we did on our flagship product. No rush, just let me know Wednesday what steps you are going to execute on Friday to achieve the target.”
Knock, knock….”Hey CMO, this is your CEO stopping by to talk about a problem. As you know, our sales numbers are trending down and the full year forecast is bleak. We just can’t seem to get sustained traction with our new product line. Our customers just don’t seem to be aware of all the great features we introduced with it. Let me know by the end of the week how we take $2 million out of product marketing for the remainder of the year.”
These are completely made up interactions to make a point about the short-term decisions that occur all too often in businesses today. The focus on beating financial performance over an arbitrary 90 day reporting period compared to a year ago seems to be the norm in many companies today, especially those that are publicly traded. This can result in executing actions that are not in the best long-term interest of any business stakeholders. It seems the notion of focusing on long-term sustainability of a business that benefits all the stakeholders in a business – investors, employees, customers, suppliers, communities and beyond – is a forgotten idea.

Call me crazy, but I for one think we need to resurface that idea.

Staying Safe on the Highway to the Danger Zone

Published June 23, 2014 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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Out along the edges

 Always where I burn to be

 The further on the edge

 The hotter the intensity

 

 Highway to the Danger Zone

 Gonna take it right into the Danger Zone

 Highway to the Danger Zone

 Ride into the Danger Zone

 

Back in 1986, Kenny Loggins belted out these lyrics on a song that became synonymous with the movie, Top Gun.  I am pretty sure I have visions of being Maverick and flying my F-14 through the skies like a wild naval aviator.  And I know that in the late 80’s I had no thought that there would be a different kind of “Danger Zone” that almost all of us encounter on a daily basis.  The Danger Zone we call the Internet.

The headlines about security vulnerabilities seem to be popping up at a faster pace than ever.  Issues with Adobe Flash, Internet Explorer, PayPal and eBay have made “front page” news in the mainstream media in recent weeks and Heartbleed Mania seemed to grip the world for several days back in early April.  All these reported dangers make you want to just go offline and avoid the Internet.  However, going offline is not an option for us in our work lives and for many is not an appealing option in our personal lives. 

Fortunately in our work lives we have IT departments that are focused on keeping us safe online while carrying out our daily work tasks.  Every day information technology professionals are making sure our anti-virus software is up-to-date; deploying security updates to web browsers and other software packages; forcing the change of passwords on a regular basis; monitoring network traffic and blocking that traffic when it looks suspicious; preventing access to websites that are known to be compromised or used as launch points for installing malicious software on your computer; and reviewing daily notices of potential security vulnerabilities.  Most of these activities happen behind the scenes without a need for any action on our part.

Unfortunately in our personal lives we do not have a corporate IT team to keep an eye on protecting us.  Each of us has to take actions to protect our own personal computing environment.  The actions you take help protect not only you but also your employer since in many cases we use personal devices for work purposes as well.  Here are 10 things basic things to do with your personal computing that will help protect you and potentially your employer and their customers:

  1. At a minimum, use separate usernames and passwords for work vs personal sites and applications
  2. Where possible, use a unique username and password for each site. A password manager such as Lastpass or Keypass can aide in securely keeping track of those accounts and passwords.
  3. Change your passwords on a regular basis.  A good guide is to change once every 90 days.
  4. Make sure your personal computers have anti-virus and anti-spyware software installed and that updates are applied to the anti-virus software on a regular basis.  These updates can typically be set to happen automatically.
  5. Make sure to install operating system and application (like Microsoft Office) updates on a regular basis.  These updates can typically be set to happen automatically.
  6. Be aware of the websites you visit.  If you click on a link and end up someplace that does not look right, exit from your browser.
  7. Be extremely cautious when asked to input payment and personal information; make sure the URL matches the site you are using and the connection is secured.
  8. When clicking on links via email make sure the link matches the intended destination and does not include a hidden link. 
  9. Only download software/applications from the software publisher’s website or a site the software publisher directs you to for download.
  10. Install Pop up blocker and ad blocker plugins for your web browsers

 

While we can never be 100% secure when online, the steps taken by our own actions can reduce to chance of being impacted by the dangers that exists online.

Till Gabriel Blows His Horn

Published April 16, 2014 College , Life Leave a Comment
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The eyes of Texas are upon you

All the live long days

The eyes of Texas are upon you

And you cannot get away

Do not think you can escape them

From night till early in the morn

The eyes of Texas are upon you

Till Gabriel blows his horn

Those are the lyrics to the alma mater for The University of Texas at Austin. As you may have figured out by now, I received degrees from there many years ago. For many this is just a song set to the tune of I’ve Been Working on the Railroad, but for Texas Exes it serves as a reminder that what we do with our lives is seen and felt by many people – perhaps not the entire State of Texas or the world, but more people than one would imagine.

A friend and former business associate recently died as the result of a seemingly random traffic accident. He too was a proud graduate of The University of Teas at Austin. While we did not talk as often as we did when we worked at the same company, we exchanged texts throughout the year about the ups and downs of the various Longhorn athletic teams and how things were going in our professional careers.

When I attended his funeral in the small Texas town of Ballinger, it struck me just how many lives one person could touch in their lives. The church was overflowing with people wanting to take a part in honoring his life. As I listened to the eulogies, it also struck me that he was a person that truly lived his life knowing that the eyes of Texas were upon him. As the stories were told of his childhood and on through to his last day, it left no doubt that he had an eye for business from an early age, that community was important to him, and that love of family and God were at the center of every part of his life.

As many of us do, I find myself caught up all too often in the daily work grind. That grind seems to have the ability to consume all our energy, leaving very little for the other much more important things in our lives. The grind gets in the way our relationships with friends and family; it becomes the excuse to not be involved in activities to help those in our community; it even begins to interfere with our faith. In short we let work define our lives. We reach a point where we live to work. What we need to do is work to live.

My friend had it right; he strived for success in his career in order to be a better husband, father, and member of his community. He wanted to make a difference in people’s lives – and I think the evidence is there that he did. I can learn a lot from his short 35 years of life, and the last lesson is to remember what matters most, never lose sight of it and live every day like it is your last chance to impact a life.

Till Gabriel blows his horn…………

I Found Help (and Hope) in Orlando: And I Wasn’t Even Looking For It

Published January 23, 2014 Community , Leadership , Life , Uncategorized 1 Comment
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Help, I need somebody

Help, not just anybody

Help, you know I need someone

Help

“Help” is one of my favorite songs from that lovable British boy band, The Beatles.  As you start reading this you will more than likely be thinking  “what do these lyrics have to do with these ramblings?”, but stick with me.

I had to attend a company conference this week in Orlando, Florida.  And quite frankly in the days leading up to the conference, I was less than 100% enthused to be attending.  I was going to miss several of my kid’s activities during the week; my wife was going to have to play single parent for most of the week; I was on the agenda to present; and overall I thought “been there, done that.  I’ve seen this show before.”

There is still one day left in the conference, but my attitude has changed.  The feel of the conference; the content of the conference; and what I am getting out of it is much more than I ever imagined.  But that doesn’t make a great story, nor is it what spurred me to write about it.

As part of the conference agenda, we had a social responsibility event.  But unlike some other charitable exercises at these types of events, this was not just going out and picking up trash, or working on a house, or beautifying a park.  Now don’t get me wrong, these are all fine things to do.  However, the event at this conference was geared around leveraging the collective marketing expertise that the employees of our company possess.  The event was to create marketing plans for 8 Orlando-area charities, and to then compete in a marketing strategy throw-down in an effort to win $10,000 in marketing services for one of the organizations.

I had the good fortune to be on a team working with Shepherds Hope, a faith-based organization running 5 medical clinics providing free medical services to the uninsured  – and yes despite ObamaCare and all it’s promises there is still and will continue to be a large population of people without medical insurance – in the Orlando area.  The story of the inspirational start of Shepherds Hope, the heart-wrenching stories of patients saved by the services provided, and the thousands of hours of service donated by area medical professionals were awe inspiring.  I think each of my colleagues on the team were brought to tears as we learned about what this organization does in the community.

What changed my attitude was the passion that was exhibited by my fellow co-workers as we in 2 short hours put together a marketing plan for this great organization.  Most of us on the team were not from Orlando, and several were not even from the United States, yet we all felt an immediate connection to this organization.  I was inspired by the collective talent of the group; each of bringing unique skills to the table in an effort to make a difference in the lives of people we will never even know.  To the last person on the team, we all wanted to help Shepherds Hope by providing them the seeds for a marketing plan to attract more medical professionals, attract more and larger monetary donations, and in the end to help them improve the lives of so many people.  This wasn’t about closing a sale for our company, or hitting some financial performance target; it was about using our special talents to help others.

Well it turns out that our team did not win the marketing pitch show-down, but our company graciously donated $7,000 in services to each of the 7 “losing” organizations and the members of my team (without provocation or threat from anyone) all committed to donate personal hours to supplement the $7,000 so that we can help make Shepherds Hope’s dreams for more medical professionals and more donors a reality.

What I thought was going to be just another charitable event where I and others without much effort, thought or connection to help a community, turned out to be so much more.  It turns out, I was the one helped.  I was helped by the dedicated staff of Shepherds Hope and the other charities that reminded me that there are measures of operational success much more important than revenue and OI.  I was helped by my fellow co-workers that reminded me of the passion that we all have within us and the immense amount of marketing talent we possess within our company.  This helped me realize, that while things may not be perfect in our company, we have the passion and the expertise to make it so much better.  I didn’t fly to Orlando thinking I needed help, but I did, and fortunately I found it.

If you would like additional information on Shepherds Hope, you can visit their website (hopefully soon it will be a better site) at www.shepherdshope.org and you can follow them on Twitter @shepherdshope

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