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Using the right tools is crucial to laying the groundwork for your business’ future. Here’s what to look for.

by Guest Writter
written by Guest Writter
Vadim Katcherovski, Founder and CEO of Easy Projects.

Growth is paramount for any CEO. Yet scaling successfully and minimizing growing pains requires forward-thinking preparation and long-term planning – and tools that facilitate this. Unfortunately, many companies often use short-sighted solutions for immediate problems, without thinking of the bigger picture.

In fact, poor project performance has led to $122 million wasted for every $1 billion invested in the U.S. Clearly, many organizations are not making the kind of well-planned business choices that facilitate smooth-running projects and ultimately drive growth.

Many of these choices center around the kinds of tools an organization opts for in order to improve efficiency and productivity of projects. By choosing tools that do not scale with your company, you could face stunted growth and project setbacks. Let’s take a look into the kind of things you should be looking for in a project management tool to make sure to set your business up with the best chance for success.

Flexible Resource Management

Knowing the exact state of your resources and how much you can expect to dedicate to certain projects is crucial to pain-free growth. With an AI-enhanced project management tool, not only do you have real-time visibility into the state of your resources, but you can also see trends and make predictions accordingly.

Tools like this identify patterns and trends that humans cannot see on their own. For example, it could indicate to project managers at which stages of the project are they likely to need to scale up or down their resources (budgetary or manpower) based on learning from past project data. This allows for optimized planning, less wasted time, and fewer unexpected hurdles.

By tracking and recording data on employees’ workloads through a project management tool, you can also minimize the risk of someone becoming overworked. For example, let’s say you track the average percent (%) of workload capacity of each of your team members. Once you see that this average is in the high 80s or 90s, it’s a clear sign that you need to expand your team as everyone is almost at capacity at this point and wouldn’t be able to handle an increase in demand. And it’s no secret that a burnt-out team is not only bad for employee well-being, but it’s also bad for business, so avoiding this at all costs is crucial.

Demand Management

The busy CEO is no stranger to the prioritization of tasks. Nor should this be a foreign concept to the whole team. Ranking and organizing work translates into high levels of efficiency as less time is wasted on things that are not top priority.

Demand management is about balancing scope, budget, and resources. It’s about doing the right work, not just the requested work in any random order. Teams can achieve this by value-ranking and strategically aligning tasks.

Giving priority to the most important projects or initiatives without the help of a data-driven tool might seem simple a company just starts out, but as it scales, a manual approach becomes less realistic. Let’s say there are 50 projects or initiatives that you could work on, but you only have enough resources to work on ten. A lot of the time, executives make emotional decisions driven by factors such as the most unforgiving client, or which project manager vocalizes the most ideas.

However, these biases can result in a lack of efficiency, so it’s important to use a logical and scientific approach to help you avoid them. A way to assess which initiatives deserve priority would be to give each one a score based on different criteria such as the amount of resources required, its potential value, the risks involved, or future maintenance level. To make it even more accurate, you could add varying weights to each criterion based on its importance.

Going through this process manually might be possible if you are just dealing with a few projects, but as you grow, conducting “what-if” simulations in real time will become extremely time-consuming. That’s why choosing a tool that can help you with these kinds of strategic decisions is paramount to maximize efficiency.

Risk Management

As your company grows, the likelihood is that you will have to face more risky decisions. And – sorry to say – people are not naturally good at measured risk management. So investing in predictive tools is a great idea to understand when something could go off-track.

By choosing a project management tool that gives you metrics and reports on KPIs such as schedule performance, the average time to complete projects and tasks, as well as performance trends across the year, you can expect considerably more risk aversion than you had before.

These reports should provide an at-a-glance view of your projects, activities, and milestones to enable team members to identify risks and trends in schedule performance. Teams can understand when a deadline is likely to be missed by looking at past data to estimate end dates, allowing them to channel more resources ahead of time. And we all know that unexpectedly missing deadlines can deal a heavy blow to profitability, team morale, and professional image, so working with a project management tool to avert is sure to minimize these effects.

When just starting out, it’s understandable that company executives might be apprehensive about investing in tools that cater to future project management needs, rather than ones that act as a quick fix for immediate problems. However, the long-term gain in having tools that scale with your company will far outweigh the advantages of a cheaper short-term solution. By going for project management tools that give you and your team real-time, in-depth understanding of your resources, demand, and potential risks, you can efficiently scale your company, without the growing pains.

About the Author

Vadim Katcherovski is the Founder and CEO of Project Management software platform, Easy Projects. He has over 20 years of experience in the IT industry and has managed dozens of software development projects. He founded software development company Logic Software in 2000, followed by Easy Projects in 2003, with the aim to enable project managers to create, manage and update projects quickly and easily.

Vadim’s Linkedin

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EntrepreneurshipLeadership

Entrepreneurship for Company Leaders

by Guest Writter
written by Guest Writter
Derek Lidow, Author , Building on Bedrock: What Sam Walton, Walt Disney and Other Great Self-Made Entrepreneurs Can Teach Us About Building Valuable Companies

At crucial decision points for growing a business, leaders often find themselves in the position of fledgling entrepreneurs. They may have been tasked with launching a new business, entering a new market where past experience doesn’t apply, running a recent acquisition, or finding ways to revitalize an ailing product line. They may even have been encouraged to be entrepreneurial by the boss or the board. In those cases and others they can get ahead of the game by doing three things:

  • Understanding the two kinds of entrepreneurship
  • Recognizing that all successful entrepreneurs ultimately do the same thing
  • Hone the five core skills of the entrepreneur

Bedrock versus high-risk entrepreneurs

There are two diametrically opposed forms of entrepreneurship. Confusing the two can lead to disaster. At one end of the spectrum are the high-risk entrepreneurs familiar from the media—the wizards of Silicon Valley hoping to disrupt entire industries and grow exponentially, at least in valuation by potential investors. At the opposite end are what I call “bedrock entrepreneurs,” the often unheralded people who painstakingly and methodically build a business from scratch over a period of years. Neither approach is necessarily superior to the other. For a company leader seeking to grow a business or take it in a new direction, the important point is to know the difference and be clear about which one is being pursued and why.

Bedrock entrepreneurs, whose businesses are usually funded initially out of their own pockets and those of their family and friends, invest time and effort to minimize risks associated with the steps they must take to grow the business. Success often requires the painstaking cultivation of personal relationships—winning the initial trust of customers, retaining them through the inevitable hiccups of a new enterprise, and collaborating with them on improving the product or service. Company leader-entrepreneurs may not be quite so personally invested (certainly not in terms of their own money), but the success of their business may depend on building relationships, especially if the new business is far afield of the company’s core business. Taking big risks in those situations could jeopardize those relationships if the risks don’t pay off and leave customers holding the bag and it could tarnish the reputation of the manager and the parent company.

On the other hand, high-risk leader-entrepreneurs may also feel personally uncomfortable with great risk. But they may have no choice other than to take big risks if they want to succeed where they have chosen to compete. For example, where competitive advantages come from network effects or economies of scale the race is to determine who can reach a critical mass of customers first. Think of all the companies currently investing enormous amounts of money in autonomous vehicles. Not all of them can win. Indeed, Apple recently dramatically scaled back its push into autonomous vehicles.

Without Silicon Valley’s high-risk “shoot for the moon” model, the US would not be the world leader in enterprise software, semiconductors, social media, biotech, and ecommerce. These industries all started as audacious dreams. No wonder entrepreneurs are constantly told they must disrupt an entire industry. And, increasingly, companies are being told the same thing, which could tempt leader-entrepreneurs to take the high-risk route when the bedrock approach might be wiser.

All successful entrepreneurs ultimately do the same thing

Bedrock and high-risk entrepreneurs may take starkly different paths to success, but both ultimately succeed because they make their customers so happy that the customers gladly give them money in return. Entrepreneurship is often seen as the ability to think up entirely new businesses or come up with ideas that disrupt existing industries. But Henry Ford didn’t think up the combustion engine or automobiles, Thomas Edison didn’t think up incandescent light bulbs, Larry Paige didn’t think up search engines. These great entrepreneurs succeeded by working tirelessly to tune existing ideas and inventions in ways that made vast numbers of new consumers happy enough to hand over money in exchange for the new product or service. So whichever path—bedrock or high-risk—you determine is most appropriate in the circumstances of the business you oversee, you need to keep foremost in your mind the fundamental truth that all entrepreneurship is about making customers happy.

The five core skills of entrepreneurs

To successfully launch, grow, or transform a business, company leader-entrepreneurs must be able to do four things uncommonly well:

  • Maintain self-awareness. This is the ability to forthrightly acknowledge what you know and don’t know, what skills you have and don’t have: no illusions about your abilities, no faking it, no pretending a particular skill doesn’t matter. As soon as you realize you have a gap, such ruthless self-knowledge should spur you to acquire and practice the skills you need.
  • Build relationships. Entrepreneurial leaders virtually never act alone in getting the world to adopt their ideas—they build strong relationships with people who will help them achieve their vision.
  • Motivate others. You don’t need to be charismatic. You need to focus on making people feel good about themselves in the context of the work they are being asked to do. That means creating tasks that make people feel autonomous, masterful, and purposeful, and not controlled, insecure, or inconsequential.
  • Lead change. Going from fine-tuning an offering to expanding the customer base to becoming a profitable, self-sustaining enterprise requires constant, sometimes sweeping, organizational change.
  • Understand enterprise evolution. Enterprises go through stages of maturity, like infants becoming children, then adolescents, and then adults. In brief, those stages are: 1) validating a “customer” for the idea, 2) validating the value proposition around the idea, 3) scaling up to deliver that value widely and reliably, and 4) becoming a self-sustaining enterprise capable of innovating to stay competitive. As a company leader-entrepreneur you must understand where the business you are starting or that you have taken over stands in terms of maturity and then apply the right mix of skills at each stage to take the enterprise forward.

If you have been deemed the right person to guide a new business in your company you likely already have many of these leadership skills to some degree. And you no doubt understand the imperative to make customers happy. But when you harness those skills and that imperative to the form of entrepreneurship that is right for the enterprise you are leading, you can accomplish far more than if you simply paid lip service to the idea of being entrepreneurial and proceeded with business as usual.

About the Author

Derek Lidow is a successful entrepreneur, global CEO, researcher, innovator, and a startup coach. Today, he teaches entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation at Princeton University.   He is the author of Building on Bedrock: What Sam Walton, Walt Disney and Other Great Self-Made Entrepreneurs Can Teach Us About Building Valuable Companies” (January  2018) @DerekLidow

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EntrepreneurshipLeadershipManagementsales

Six Behaviors That Will Increase Your Emotional Intelligence

by Bill Benjamin
written by Bill Benjamin

Research at the Harvard Business School has shown that Emotional Intelligence (EQ) – the ability to manage our own emotions and connect to the emotions of others – counts for twice as much as IQ and technical skills combined in determining who will be successful in their career and in life.  This is true if you are a CEO, the VP of Sales or Finance, or an individual contributor.

So how do you develop your emotional intelligence? For our New York Times bestselling book, Performing Under Pressure, the Institute for Health and Human Potential conducted a research study of 12,000 people globally to determine what the top 10% performers were doing differently from the rest.

We found these six behaviors most highly correlated with top 10% performers and those who were high in Emotional Intelligence:

1) They are able to remain calm under pressure.  This doesn’t mean they don’t express emotions, it means they were are to regulate their emotions in order to express concern, excitement, frustration, passion, etc. in a proactive and skillful way,

2) They do not become defensive when criticized.  High performers seek out feedback as a way to improve. Even if the feedback is expressed as criticism, they are able to manage their emotional response in order to process the feedback as an opportunity to grow

3) They are able to listen without jumping to conclusions.  There’s two parts to this: they listen, not just waiting for their turn to talk or waiting to confirm their point of view.  Secondly, they don’t jump to conclusions, especially about the other person’s motives and intentions

4) They try to see things from another’s perspective.  High performers demonstrate empathy – when others feel understood and cared about by them.  It doesn’t mean agreeing with the other person or giving in, but as Steven Covey said: “people don’t care what you know until they know you care”

5) They are willing to admit a mistake.   We are all not perfect, and when someone admits their mistakes, it shows vulnerability and authenticity.  It also enables everyone around them not to feel like they have to be perfect

6) They air their grievances skillfully.  This is the most difficult of the six behaviors, and in fact, being good at the first five behaviors is necessary to being able to step into difficult conversations in an effective way.

We don’t recommend trying to change all six of these behaviors at once.  Identify one or two behaviors where you feel you have the best opportunity for developing your Emotional Intelligence and work on those for two weeks.  Then come back and layer in the additional behaviors.   In addition to having a positive impact on the people on your team, you will also be modelling these behaviors for them.

If you are a CEO, are you looking for that next step up in your career to the Chairman position? Well, in our research, not only do these six behaviors correlate with top 10% performers, they also were the behaviors demonstrated by people who had recently received a promotion!

To learn more about Emotional Intelligecne and what you can do to develop yours, please visit www.ihhp.com

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Leadership

The One Essential for CEO’s

by Guest Writter
written by Guest Writter
Diana Jones, Author, Leadership Material: How Personal Experience Shapes Executive Presence

Now you are CEO or in the C-suite, you may think you have ‘made it’. In many ways you have. As Marshall Goldsmith writes “What got you there, won’t get you there” – “there” being ongoing success. Contexts change, a new chair, boss or peers arrive, or key players in your team leave. These events can throw up behaviors which you and others don’t like. You might lose your effectiveness in key settings or with new stakeholders.

Staying calm under stress is as difficult for leaders as it is for anyone else. Leaders with presence might well react emotionally to a given challenge—they are human, after all. This is where there is a difference. Leaders with presence both feel strongly and are able to activate their thinking. If their emotional response is too overwhelming, they stand still, give themselves room, and take small steps until they are able to think with a clear head. The key thing here is leaders with presence stay in relationship with those around them even in extreme circumstances.

Unless we are fortune-tellers, our contexts will continually throw up unplanned events. How many times have you worked alongside a brilliant leader who gives good advice but burns people with their acerbic wit, harsh criticisms, and judgments? What about yourself? Might you alienate people when you are under pressure, express hostility, and alienate board members, staff, or peers?

When leaders flip out and act overemotionally, they disturb people. They might shout, blame, be unresponsive and moody, or slap papers on the table. Those around them become anxious and fearful. It’s as if the leader puts up a wall between them and people around them, or they ‘push’ people away. The organization becomes unsettled. When the leader is steering the ship, you want to know whether they can keep it together. How can leaders remain even keeled?

Of course, feeling upset, frustrated, disappointed, or stressed is normal. The problems occur if you as leader are frequently upset and stressed, and when you act from your emotions without clear purpose or thinking. And then, you realize you have uncovered a default response which is not fit for purpose. What to do?  In uncovering a default response, you have identified a development area for you as a leader.

Personal Development for Professional Success

There is an illogical yet direct, predictable and positive relationship between personal learning and professional success. Leaders who are unable or unwilling to work well with people incur substantial business costs. The time spent sorting out people problems takes focus away from leading, implementing strategy, and reporting results. The emotional toll negatively affects organizational culture, engagement, reputation, and results.

Leaders can learn to listen, navigate conflicts, turn relationships around, run productive meetings, empathize, give free and frank advice and provide direction. Finding productive ways forward among conflict and difficulties is essential.

How do leaders learn?

The traditional approach to adult learning is too simplistic for organizations. Emphasizing information, technical skills, and content over behavior short-changes leaders and diminishes their effectiveness. When people skills are thought of as “soft,”“touchy-feely,” or “illogical,” behavioral learning is devalued. Thinking that skills and techniques preside over behavior and relationships is outdated.

Behavioral learning is holistic and enhances our social capacities.  It utilizes our intuition, experience, vision, and curiosity to integrate thinking and feeling with action. Applying insights, reversing roles, having meaningful conversations, developing trusted relationships rapidly, acting on what is important, and responding relevantly are the results of behavioral learning.

Leaders capacities to respond productively are what creates their track record and reputation. Leaders with overdeveloped default behaviors create emotional churn. People might find them technically brilliant but dislike working with them.

Fear of conflict, lack of empathy, an inability to express yourself simply—will trip you up. You need courage to recognize things aren’t working and be willing to listen to trusted friends, peers, and staff. By identifying development goals, your curiosity is activated, your psychology and physiology are reordered, and you expand your presence. By imagining going beyond what you already know, you have immediately expanded your capacities. By imagining fresh possibilities, you are in new territory. Things that once held you back or tripped you up are no longer in the front of your mind.

About the Author
Diana Jones is a leadership coach and advisor, and author. Her book Leadership Material: how personal experience shapes executive presence (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2017).
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Leadership

3 Sure Ways Every CEO Can Increase Business Productivity Now

by Guest Writter
written by Guest Writter
Gustav Degerman, Founder & CEO, Portfoliobox

CEO’s are notorious for taking control and managing their business, but at the same token, it is important for CEOs to empower their employees in a way that increases productivity, and in turn increases the overall business development. What better time than the present or the new year for business leaders to reflect on their business model. So what works and what doesn’t?

Business Leaders Need to Still Continuously Learn

Continuous learning is instrumental to any business. CEOs should never be satisfied with a pre-defined framework for managing product development so looking at organization software tools like Scrum or similar methods as recommendations helps businesses streamline processes and adjust to needs. Many IT managers, are more focused on following every step of their method than the actual outcome. The productivity of a team depends on a wide range of factors and every process must be adapted to the individuals.

Hire Staff that is Well Rounded

Do not hire staff that is qualified in one niche. All developers should be full stack developers, which means that they are expected to work on all parts of the system. If we were to hire developers only qualified in one niche, the product manager will have to analyze every user request and divide it among the developers. Since developers, for instance, are engineers who are capable of understanding new user requests, extract the requirements and solve the complete problem. Hiring good employees also means that you are limiting management. Having senior staff lead the team and support their junior peers, means that junior leaders can grow within an organization and that the company is not top heavy or micromanaged. This is not only beneficial from a productivity perspective, but it also increases the knowledge transfer between the employees.

The Improvement of Team Productivity

The improvement of team productivity is one of his most important tasks as the CEO of the company. For your employees, studying the latest trends, undertaking research and constantly learning new information allows them to come up with new and innovative ideas which should collectively translate into a competitive edge for your business.

With the appropriate tools and education, any company can flourish. It just takes the gut and willingness to make the change.

About the Author

Gustav Degerman is the founder and CEO of Portfoliobox, a leading CMS and website development tool for photographers and other creative people. With close to 10 years of experience in the IT industry, Degerman has become a leading voice in the IT space, and specifically, as it applies to website design. Portfoliobox has grown to become one of the best online website builders in the marketplace. Prior to founding Portfoliobox, Degerman ran a private IT consulting firm focused on web development. Degerman received a Master of Science, Integrated Product Development from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

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EntrepreneurshipMarketingSelf GovernanceSmall Business

Why Every CEO Needs to Know About Marketing

by Guest Writter
written by Guest Writter
Gerri Knilans, President, Trade Press Services

            CEOs run organizations. They are the highest-level executive officers in the company, and their primary duties include driving revenue and profit, making major corporate decisions and managing the overall operations and resources of a company. Even if the company is small, there’s still only one person at the top responsible for those key functions.As business becomes more competitive, complex and global, the need for CEOs to expand their knowledge beyond finance and operations to sales and marketing is an imperative.

CEOs’backgrounds—then and now

            In 2013, 28%of the top Fortune 100 companies had immediate past experience in finance, and another 20% in operations.[1] However, according to a 2017 study a scant 4 years later, CEOs with marketing experience are becoming more in demand, with 25% of CEOs having marketing or sales background.[2]

            The trend is noteworthy. CEOs of the largest companiesin the U.S. were responsible for half the employment in this country in 2014.[3] However, the SBA counted 29.6 million small businesses (defined as fewer than 100 employees) in the U.S.that employed the other halfor 47.8% of workers.[4] Regardless of a company’s size, CEOs need to keep up with the times since any business entity faces the potential of becoming irrelevant when it loses sight of who they are, what they do and why it matters to customers.

What do CEOs need to know?

            Peter Drucker, often called the father of modern marketing stated, “Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two–and only two–basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business.”

            There’s no doubt that CEOs need to analyze and interpret data, attend to operations and focus on product development, but recent trends indicate CEOs are realizing they need to be more aware of sales and marketing functions.“Sales”brings in dollars. Marketing supports sales and business development.Functionally, marketing includes, but is not limited to, advertising, direct mail, promotional materials, telemarketing, tradeshow participation, public relations, webinars, websites and other specialized activities. Determining the right mix is especially important as marketing channels and preferred modes of communications evolve.

Four Ps of marketing

            The age-old 4Ps of marketing—Product, Place, Price, and Promotion—may have already been replaced with a modern-day interpretation:S.A.V.E., which stands for Solution (Product), Access (Place), Value (Price) and Education (Promotion) [5]. The need to interact with the customer is inherent in each instance of the old and the new acronyms, now handled in great part by the internet in every facet.

            Why does the customer buy? Without a leader knowing the answer to this key question, it is difficult to focus on marketing and innovation. Without this clarity, companies of any size will struggle.The emphasis on and attention to marketing, even though it has changed in form with content marketing and social media, still needs to address the future customer (prospect) without neglecting current customers.

A strategic marketing plan

            All organizations need functions provided by CEOs, CFOs,CMOs, COOs and CTOs, but the formula for sustainable growth requires devising a strategic marketing plan. Without a CMO as part of the executive team, the members of the“C-Suite” will need to take on that key role and work together to create the marketing direction for the company.

            A sound marketing plan starts with the vision and mission of the company, famously recapped on the TED stage by Simon Sinek, author of Start With Why. Smaller organizations can learn the value of a marketing plan in books on marketing such as Guerilla MarketingbyJay Conrad Levinson, who says simply, “Start with a plan. Commit to that plan.”

            Before developing a plan, leaders might begin with a SWOT analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, and move on from there.With a working knowledge of the results of the SWOT analysis, the marketplace in which the company operates and the competitive landscape, the CEO’s vision will form the basis for the additional components of a well-constructed, actionable plan. They often include: quantifiable goals and objectives, key strategies, tactics (activities and promotions), a budget, schedule, assignment of responsibilities, and monitoring and measurement functions.

Marketing plan pitfalls

            Creating and adhering to a marketing plan requires hard work, so it is critical not to fall prey to some of the following pitfalls in the process:

  • The belief and expectation that every marketing initiative can be measured.Some “softer” but very valuable metrics may not be easily quantified.
  • Just because the plan is written, it will be followed. Sometimes marketing plans fall through the cracks because goals weren’t clear or team members didn’t know or understand their responsibilities.
  • The marketing plan does not link to the corporate brand. Muddy and inconsistent messaging confuses customers.
  • There is a lack of communication. Too often sales and marketing teams work in silos when they really need to be collaborating. In addition, if CEOs do not share the marketing plan throughout the organization, it decreases engagement and the desire to contribute to the company’s growth.
  • No one is keeping an eye on both the long- and short-term. It’s essential to keep focused on “low hanging fruit”while watching key indicators to make sure the big goals will be met.

The buck stops here

            The necessity for CEOs to get involved in creating and monitoring the marketing function stems from one basic fact: Every company’s survival requires fostering of 1) customer loyalty and satisfaction and 2) attracting new customers. And what better individual to do that than the person at the helm? As President Truman once said, “The buck stops here.”

            Without the leadership and commitment of the CEO to this core process, the sustainabilityof the company’s future might be in jeopardy. Yes, operations, finance, data analytics and human resources are all critical, but marketing is vital too. And to ensure on-target, relevant marketing, seek the answers to two fundamental questions: “Where do we go from here, and how do we get there?” Minus that mindset, today’s companies may be tomorrow’s distant memories.

About the Author:

Gerri Knilans is president of Thousand Oaks, California-based Trade Press Services. As marketing communications strategists, serving organizations of all sizes and types since 1995, the company provides writing, media outreach and general marketing support for firms whose internal resources are on overload. For additional information, please visit http://www.tradepressservices.com or send an email to gerri@tradepressservices.com.

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LeadershipSelf Governance

Most CEO’s Feel Like Imposters. Here’s What to Do About It.

by Guest Writter
written by Guest Writter
Andy Molinsky, Professor of Organizational Behavior, Brandeis International Business School

“Very few people, whether you’ve been in that job before or not, get into the seat and believe today that they are now qualified to be the CEO. They’re not going to tell you that, but it’s true.”

Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks

In 2014 Roger Jones, chief executive of Vantage Hill Partners, a London-based consulting firm, did a fascinating study of the things that CEO’s fear the most.  You may think you could quite easily predict the results: a failing economy… foreign competition… the price of labor… but as it turns out, their biggest fear was something far more personal and insidious:  it was the fear of failing – and, to be even more specific, the fear of being viewed as a fake or a fraud.

This feeling of being unworthy – and of having one’s unworthiness displayed to the world – is what psychologists commonly refer to as the imposter syndrome – and it’s a fear that plagues the vast majority of CEO’s interviewed in Jones’ sample.

CEO’s do what they can to appear confident on the outside – to hide concerns about their abilities, but on the inside, many of them are deeply insecure, wondering to themselves what right they have being in the position they’re in, running a major company, dictating the future of investor’s money, controlling the future of so many other people’s livelihoods.

What’s particularly problematic for CEO’s is that they’re not “supposed” to feel this way. After all, how could a person in such a powerful position feel incompetent to be making major strategic decisions… or developing a vision for the company… or delivering bad news.  And because CEO’s aren’t “supposed” to feel this way, it’s that much more tempting to hide one’s inadequacies from the rest of the world – to delay that product launch… to not making that key layoff decision… to have someone else deliver that key speech.  And with no supervising manager overseeing their every move, CEO’s often have the autonomy to avoid these uncomfortable tasks, at least temporarily, insulating themselves from stress and anxiety, but ultimately, of course, limiting growth potential for themselves and the companies they manage.

CEO’s aren’t going to stop having to learn and grow. The conditions they operate in aren’t suddenly going to stop being volatile, uncertain and complex.   The conditions will always be ripe for CEO’s to experience the imposter syndrome, but here are some scientifically proven strategies to limit its detrimental impact.

Tip 1 is to recognize that there can be some real benefits to being a novice, especially if you’re able to embrace these aspects of the process as opposed to feeling embarrassed by them.  For example, when you aren’t steeped in the conventional wisdom of a field or perspective, you can often ask questions that haven’t been asked before or approach problems in ways others haven’t thought of.   And, when coupled with a compelling mission, and a deep drive to figure out an answer, this novice perspective can end up being a tremendous asset for original thinking.  So, do what you can to embrace your novice status instead of feeling embarrassed by it.

A related second tip is develop what the psychologist Carol Dweck calls a “learning” mindset, where you see mistakes, and missteps as part of the learning process as opposed to evidence of your underlying limitations (and something to be ashamed about).  Of course, for those in the throes of experiencing the imposter syndrome, adopting such a mindset may be easier said than done.  When we’re anxious and self-conscious about our abilities, we often think in polarized extremes: that we’re a total failure, or that we’ll never be a successful CEO.  But the reality is that if you’re like the rest of us, you have some things you’re great at, other things you struggle with, and then a third set of things – probably most things – where you’re in the middle: neither a failure nor an expert, but, instead, in the learning process.  So, do yourself a favor and embrace the reality of this perspective. Don’t compare your inner struggles to other people’s highlight reels. Or as Tina Fey once quipped, “I’ve realized that almost everyone is a fraud, so I try not to feel too bad about it.”

The final tip is to find a group of like-minded people you can commiserate with in an honest way about your challenges and successes.  Of course, for CEO’s that old cliché that it’s lonely at the top can be very true – but make it a top priority to find a group of people you know and trust and can be vulnerable with.  I’m guessing you’ll be surprised at how similarly you feel.

No one said overcoming the imposter syndrome is easy.  But with a solid plan in place and the courage to take it forward, you’ll be surprised at how quickly you can chip away at your feelings of inadequacy and embrace a learning-oriented perspective.

About the Author

Andy Molinsky is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Brandeis International Business School. His forthcoming book, Reach: A New Strategy to Help You Step Outside Your Comfort Zone, Rise to the Challenge, and Build Confidence is to be published by Penguin Random House in January 2017. For more information visit andymolinsky.com and follow Andy on Twitter @andymolinsky.

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LeadershipManagement

The Modern CEO: Part CTO?

by Guest Writter
written by Guest Writter
Aaron Elder, CEO Crelate Talent

No matter what sector your company is in, the fact is that technology is now at the heart of most everything we do. Accordingly, 63 percent of CEOs surveyed by PwC in 2015 said they use digital tech for strategic decision-making and risk management.

However, the 2016 Watermark Board Diversity Index found that the number of CEOs who come from a tech background is surprisingly low – only 3 percent, as opposed to 55 percent with accounting or legal backgrounds.

The question is: does a modern CEO *need* to be a tech whiz?

Though I started as an entrepreneur at the age of 17, helped create three successful startups and shipped four successful products, and my resume includes stints as a lead developer for Microsoft and technical consulting for many Fortune 100 firms, I land more on the side of believing that a good CEO doesn’t have to be an experienced coder, but should understand the technology that makes their business “run” and can help ensure its success. I’m a real “know how stuff works” kind of guy, something I am sure I got from my father. But if you replace technology with whatever is at the core of your business, I believe the same is true: If you sell fruits, you need to know how the farm works; if you manufacture cars, you better know how to fill a role on the line.

It’s all about balance.  There are many truths in business. One of them is that the best product doesn’t always win (a competitor can out-market or out-sell you). Another is that the soundest business model doesn’t always win (financial wizardry works sometimes). And the most functional or well-engineered product might not be liked by customers (something prettier might win their hearts).  My background in design, technology, and product development helps me build value and I am fortunate enough to surround myself with business partners that know how to sell and operationalize a business.  As a tech-CEO, I continually look to grow my skills in the areas of fund raising, marketing, and sales.

That’s because I believe a good CEO is a better leader; more than just a good manager. It’s an important distinction: a leader uses technology and data to fuel inspiration and innovation, engage others, and empower them with information; a manager uses them to enforce policy, apply pressure, or even to surveil employees.

For a technology-centric business, a background that includes software design or other IT experience can be an advantage to a CEO because they know enough to be able to imagine what’s possible and to challenge people to make something great.  Talented people want to create great things, which is why I love product development so much – we are all collectively willing something beautiful into existence.  I need to be a part of that. In order to lead from the front, instead of manage from afar, I have to understand the challenges and constraints each member of the team is faced with – and use this to inspire them and myself to build something amazing and aspirational, while palpably within reach.

Big Tech Experience Not a Prerequisite

My time in the “big leagues” actually taught me more about how I don’t want to run things than how to build and grow a successful company. Large, established companies and the skills required to thrive within them are often at odds with those required to succeed beyond their boundaries.  There is overlap for sure, but applying what I learned within a “land of plenty” and making it work when bootstrapping a new venture has been one of my greatest challenges over the years.

How you use data is a good example: If the primary focus is on keeping tabs on employees, enforcing rigid rules, and incentivizing bottom-line thinking, it de-incentivizes the type of creativity and innovation that probably founded the company to begin with. I learned a lot about “managing up” during my stints with the big tech firms, but very little about how to create a work environment and culture that empowers people to take creative risks. Ask yourself, am I focused on data that shows me where I’ve been, or am I focused on where we are going?

Who says that the C-suite is the be-all-end-all of insight? CEOs should encourage transparency, decreasing the insulation between the employees, the corporate goals, and the reality of the business structure. Employees should have a direct connection with the C-suite because both can inspire the other.

360-Degree Management Strategy:  Using Tech, Data, and Other Tools to Lead

Some may think that a tech background is an advantage to a CEO because it serves as “B.S. detector.” In other words, you know enough to hold people accountable. But even non-techie CEOs can play this game by harnessing the right software to track the number of sales calls, measure quarterly revenue, and draw a link between the two. Using a carrot-and-stick analogy, this approach is more stick than carrot.

And, frankly, it’s looking in the wrong direction – data that tells you where you were is much less interesting to me than that which tells you where you are going, or makes clear where you should be going. As CEO, you can optimize information by sharing it quickly so that your employees can use it to make forward-thinking decisions in real time. If it takes six months to learn whether or not a certain approach is working, the feedback loop isn’t tight enough to be useful.

A background in tech might give you more insight into what types of software and systems to put into place to get this 360-degree view of your company, but your tech team is another great resource for this type of knowledge. Don’t hoard information; get it into the hands of your team and make them an integral part of business decisions.

Good leadership isn’t accelerated by the tools, but by the team having the right tools and information to do a good job. I’d rather invest in enabling my colleagues to do their job well than spend time finding ways to micro-manage them.

Tech Impact on Corporate Leadership

While not every technologist is suited for the C-suite, almost every CEO today can benefit from a good understanding of how much technology underpins their company’s day-to-day operations, how it can add value and support growth, and how quickly the tech landscape changes. Just as a company’s success is a target that moves as a company grows, so too the technologies that can hold it back or help it break through to the next level.

About the Author

Aaron Elder, CEO & Co-Founder of Crelate Talent, is an entrepreneur whose 20+ years as a developer included four successful products and three successful startups and the invaluable experience of serving as Lead Software Design Engineer at Microsoft. He and his partners pair their extensive experience in talent-based businesses with their technical expertise to create solutions that augment successful human engagement.

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Leadership

Are You Dancing with the Devil You Know?

by Guest Writter
written by Guest Writter
Chas Klivans

Like you, I’ve been reading about Roger Ailes at Fox News. I have no idea if any of the allegations about him is true.  But I do have an experience — one I’ve kept secret for two decades — that illustrates how different a CEO’s public image can be from his behavior in private.  And I have witnessed how a CEO’s supporters see a completely different person than his victims see.

Twenty years ago, as a young man with a wife and two small children, I urgently needed a job. I canvassed my friends for leads. One, a senior executive in human resources for a very large company, suggested I meet her former boss and dear friend who was chief executive of a large system of hospitals and physicians. I trusted her completely and knew if she said “Jack” was a great guy, I could take that to the bank! He was a living legend in the healthcare industry. Surely one person in his vast network would have a job opening.

My friend said she would alert Jack to expect my call.  Sure enough, he picked up the phone right away.  His days are very busy, he said, so he invited me to dinner. Meet him at his condo at 6 o’clock and we’ll leave from there. I wore my best suit and carried an updated resume.

His condo building was nondescript. I remember thinking that for a guy who makes over $600,000 a year, this is a really ordinary place.  Over the intercom Jack invited me up to his apartment for a drink. I was taken aback by being invited into his home without having first met him. He greeted me warmly and told me this was a beach place for him; his wife lived in their main home in the mountains. The place had little furniture and the walls were bare. I remember walking around the apartment with a drink, and Jack was constantly refilling my glass. I mentioned dinner, but he changed the subject. Increasingly, conversation felt awkward and I began to feel uncomfortable.

Finally, we drove in his car to a Japanese restaurant. He was very interested in me, but ignored my prompts to discuss job hunting. After dinner he drove us along the beach and showed me where he goes surfing. My discomfort rose. Seaside rides are not part of a standard job interview.

At the shore he slowed down to a walk and intensely watched the young boys hanging out by the bathroom. He told me he knew all of them, some very well. And, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, he nonchalantly gave me a running commentary on a group of kids who apparently were his boyfriends.

It hit me like a brick. As I sat next to him, this 52-year-old CEO was cruising for sex with boys 10 to14 years old, and had done so many times. The barebones apartment was a sex pad where he took the boys and maybe men like me.

He had carefully laid a trap for me.  I was young and hungry for a job. He was older, richer and in complete control of the situation. Starting with meeting me at his apartment, he had a superior dominant role and tried to use intimidation to force me to do as he wanted. On the long hour and half drive back home I was in total shock.

I have not talked about this humiliating event for a long time. Even though I had done nothing wrong, it has been my dark secret of shame.  I now realize that I did not at first read the signals sent out by predator Jack. He was highly successful, respected and even beloved CEO, but simultaneously he had a dark side to his personality. He was a bully without a conscience who knew how to sail through corporate hiring and promotion screens.

The Roger Ailes matter brings back these memories. Our society is built on a social contract that requires subordinates — in business, the church, the military or academia — to respect and obey their bosses.  The contract does not give bosses license to sexually exploit those subordinates. We expect everyone to follow the rules, and we cling to our culture’s myth that men in power behave the same in private as they do in public. Years after my encounter with Jack as a turnaround specialist working with many companies, I observed firsthand – that this striking duality in the personalities of corporate chieftains never ends well.

About the Author

Chas Klivans builds businesses and is based in Southern California.

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Business OpsLeadershipMarketingStrategy

Why Your CRM Implementation Will Fail

by Todd Williams
written by Todd Williams
Todd C. Williams, Founder & President, eCameron, Inc.

[NOTE: Mandarin version available here.]

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) implementations fail at an alarming rate. In fact, your implementation probably will not meet your goals either. I have heard of few that actually do meet their goals. Unfortunately, the primary reason is not software difficulties. Regardless of what Salesforce and Microsoft tell you, neither of their platforms are easy to implement.

More importantly than that, it is easy to tell when the implementation is going the wrong way. You can tell before the project even starts. For instance, you know when you hear arguments break out between IT and Sales and Marketing over who is going to drive the project.

Sales and Marketing

Sales and Marketing teams make a great case; after all, in classic business structures they “own” the customer and are the ones that drive the customer communications. They know that the minute anything goes wrong the account manager’s phone is the one that rings—whether the issue is with an invoice or an installation. They are the center of the customer’s world and need to sponsor and drive the CRM implementation. Or, so they say.

Information Technology’s Case

IT makes a strong case, too, by pointing out that for the CRM to be effective it needs to integrate with every system from Customer Support, to Sales, Invoicing, Shipping and Receiving, Engineering, Scheduling, etc. With this level of integration and the technological hurdles that must be cleared, IT clearly needs to drive the implementation or the resulting deployment will be a hodge-podge of interfaces where only some of the data required to deal with the customer is available across the organization.

They Are Addressing The Wrong Problem

The logic behind both of these arguments is sound; however, they are both flawed. With all their passion, they have unfortunately taken a myopic look that the problem and missed the big picture. The goal of a CRM implementation is to create a uniform treatment of the customer regardless of who in your company is addressing them. It should lean out the customer interface by allowing the customer to talk to anyone and get the correct answer.

For instance, if a customer is on credit hold, it wastes company resources to answer engineering questions, to prioritize their requests for proposals, look up replacement parts, ship them more product, etc. Everyone in the company needs to see the same data and have the same process to follow—in this case, politely tell them to talk to accounts receivable. Imagine a high-volume customer who is current on their bill getting second-class treatment to a delinquent customer. Although all of us want to treat customers with respect, we also need to reward our best customers.

The problem with Sales and Marketing’s argument is that the customer should not need to go through them to solve an issue. Every group should have the same data. Everyone in the company should treat the customer the same.

This is where IT is both right and wrong. A complete CRM implementation does touch every system in the company. It is a huge integration effort and IT will spend a significant amount of time and money making these interfaces work. However, technology does not solve the problem—it is only a tool. For a successful implementation, we must first change the attitudes of the people and process that they follow.

It Is A Cultural Project

Culture: the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought. That is what the CRM implementation project is really trying to affect. The company needs to change its culture around dealing with its customers. There is only one person that drives the culture of the company—the CEO. The CEO is the sole person that can drive a CRM project. He or she must define how to treat customer in every condition and ensure that the entire company lives that culture. Software is not a requisite to making this change. It requires leadership. Without painting the vision and leading your people to that better place, your CRM implementation will fail. The software only enables the culture. It allows you to share data from one end of the company to the other efficiently and accurately. It is only a tool and will just as easily (or with the same amount of difficulty) automate the wrong culture as it will the desired one.

It Is A CRC Project

CEOs need to take the CRM issue by the horns. Forget what your CRM vendor is telling you about how to implement it. They are only selling software to make their monthly quotas.

Rename the project the CRC Project—Customer Relationship Culture Project. You, the CEO, need to be the executive sponsor defining the culture. Each and every department in your company must be responsible for educating their people and implementing the new processes to support it. Only then can you look at how a software package is going to support it. It is all about a new culture. Oh by the way, you will get some software to help.

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LeadershipStrategy

Five Neural Leadership Practices for CEOs

by Michael Vaughan
written by Michael Vaughan

It’s an exciting time for brain science, which has become a source of buzz in CEO circles. As CEOs grapple with tight competition, workforce issues, slimming margins, technological advancements — all while trying to filter out interfering noise from the Internet, smart phones, and various media — many are turning to neural leadership practices to keep their businesses on the fast track to productivity and profitability.

Neural leadership is part of brain science, which studies how the brain works and how business leaders can leverage brain function in themselves and their teams to create a more robust work environment.

New insights and discoveries about brain function are being made every week, and the focus on neural leadership is forging the way. According to Dr. David Rock, editor of the NeuroLeadership Journal, neural leaders use their own gray matter to gain insight into what their teams need psychologically to be more productive and successful. Consider these insights as you craft your own neural leadership style:

  1. It is better to be fair than to be right. Neuroscientists have discovered that when people believe they have been treated unfairly, activity in the amygdala, which performs a primary role in processing memory and emotional reactions, creates memories of that treatment. These memories run deep, so create relationships that foster respect, acceptance, and equality. A fair environment will spur synergy among your employees.
  2. Value a social culture. Our brains are predominantly social organs, so they crave socially driven interactions and goals. Most workplace cultures, however, focus on optimizing results instead of improving social interactions among employees. The unintended consequence is that, over time, even top performers will feel devalued, less secure, or even unfairly treated. Inspire your teams to collaborate in solving problems and completing tasks. A collaborative team is an engaged, productive team.
  3. Rest up for enhanced performance. Inventor Thomas Edison and many prominent thinkers in history have encouraged work over sleep. Yet if Edison had slept more, he may have made fewer mistakes. During sleep, neuroscientists believe our brains consolidate memories, make new connections, conserve energy, and chip away at problems. Neural leaders recognize that well-rested workers do a better job. Encourage your people to get their 40 winks, and, during the workday, to take breaks or go for a short walk to recharge their brains. Finally, recognize your teams for a job well done. Their brains will release dopamine, a natural energy booster.
  4. Complete one task at a time. When multiple tasks compete for the same limited mental resources, the quality of the results of all tasks is diminished. In other words, the benefits of multitasking are overrated. Empower your people to focus on one task at a time so they can fully process it.
  5. Stop predicting. We are wired to try to make sense of situations by predicting what will happen next. The danger—most predictions are inaccurate or incomplete, and they may stop you from seeking new perspectives. Coach your people to stop jumping to conclusions and suspend judgment long enough to entertain alternative solutions.

 

Michael Vaughan is the CEO of The Regis Company (www.regiscompany.com), a global provider of business simulations and experiential learning programs. Michael is the author of the books The Thinking Effect: Rethinking Thinking to Create Great Leaders and the New Value Worker and The End of Training: How Business Simulations Are Reshaping Business. Contact Michael at mvaughan@regiscompany or follow his blog at www.thethinkingeffect.com.

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LeadershipStrategy

Why Executive Coaching? The 5 Compelling Outcomes

by John Mattone
written by John Mattone

There is nowhere to hide. Not even the executive suite is safe from the changes sweeping business today. In fact, the impact of those changes is felt most keenly at the executive level. CEO’s, COO’s, CFO’s, and senior VP’s—like everyone else—have to hit the ground running and keep running fast. Stockholders and stakeholders demand fast results. Teams must work more efficiently under greater pressure. Leaders at all levels need to be developed, and high-potential and emerging leaders need to be identified and developed earlier and more effectively. Business savvy—always important—has been taken to new heights. Add to this the quest for job satisfaction and life balance, and you have the dynamic tension that creates the vital need for executive coaching in most organizations. Given this backdrop of the compelling need for executive coaching, I am often asked by prospective clients, “what can we expect in terms of tangible outcomes”? Here are my answers:

The 5 Compelling Outcomes of Executive Coaching:

  1. Is a professional process that will link a leaders’ individual effectiveness to the organization’s operational metrics and success.
  2. Is a strategic process that will help the organization continue to attract and retain great leaders, who will be further prepared—through executive coaching, to drive breakthrough operating results now and into the future.
  3. Will enable executive teams to improve individual leadership and team performance.
  4. Will support the organization’s C-level executives responsible for making crucial business decisions and achieving outcomes.
  5. Will provide the “shock absorbers” on the sometimes bumpy road of accelerated pace, rapid growth, innovation and change.

The powerful advantages in the leadership development process, particularly in areas where achieving performance goals are almost always a “stretch” and “challenging”, often moves executive coaching to become a “top-of-mind” business imperative for operating executives and HR leaders alike. Yet, in most organizations, there is still a tremendous gap between what is expected of executives and the available resources to help them acquire both the “inner-core” attributes and “outer-core” skills and competencies required to achieve those expectations. Executive coaching can help close that gap and equip executives with the tools they will need to drive consistent greatness in themselves, their teams, and the organization.

About John Mattone

John Mattone is the president of JohnMattonePartners, Inc., a global leadership consulting firm. He is a sought-after keynote speaker, trainer and coach to many leading corporations and government agencies. John has been recognized by the prestigious Thinkers50 as one of the world’s leading management thinkers and by Leadership Excellence Magazine as one of the world’s top leadership consultants, speakers and executive coaches. Johnis the author of seven books, including the best-selling, Talent Leadership: A Proven Method for Identifying and Developing High-Potential Employees (October, 2012) and Intelligent Leadership: What You Need to Know to Unlock Your Full Potential (April, 2013-Foreword by Marshall Goldsmith). He lives in Orlando, Florida. John can be reached johnmattonepartners@gmail.com. Website: www.johnmattonepartners.com.

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About Nick Vaidya 

The Host Of The CEO Show at The CEO Magazine. A serial entrepreneur, whose previous roles include managing a multi-billion dollar product line profitability for Dell and an Executive with Razorfish. Nick’s work is influenced by his doctoral research in empiricism, a wide variety of business roles, and the study of the ancient wisdom of the Vedanta.

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