Executive Wisdom Blog

Take a purposeful pause and improve your business

Thu, 10 May 2012 07:12:00 GMT

Last week I wrote in my Friday Redux that we need to Allow Time to Notice.

On the weekend at a friend’s barbeque afternoon, I was asked how I was able to continually generate ideas, thoughts, solutions and if it is hard to do. One person even commented that I must spend an inordinate amount of time on such matters.

Actually the opposite is true. We need to allow the Muse to whisper in our ear.

Doug King (the poet) said: “Learn to pause … or nothing worthwhile will catch up to you”.

What problem, issue or project are you working on that could benefit from a pause? Find your little piece of paradise, pull up a seat and admire the vista.

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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

Is your business thinking dead or alive?

Thu, 10 May 2012 07:01:00 GMT

There was a curious plague which beset a primitive village centuries ago. When afflicted, the victims fell into a coma so deep that they were mistaken for being dead. And, within 24-48 hours they did in fact ultimately die.

The issue was that these primitive villagers were unable to positively determine if a victim was actually in a coma and alive, or in fact already deceased. Of course, it had to happen that someone ended up being buried alive. After discovering this tragic circumstance, a town meeting was convened to account for the terrible happenings and determine what action, if anything could be taken.

The majority of townspeople living in the village, voted to include rations of food and water in every coffin, hoping to save lives.

Other members of the community suggested an alternative solution … install a sharpened stake to the inside of the coffin lids. The stake was to be positioned such that it was directly in line with the occupant’s heart. When the lid to the coffin was closed prior to burial, any doubts about the victim’s condition would vanish.

What differentiated the solutions were the questions used to find them. The first group of villagers questioned, “What if we bury someone alive again?” the second set of people asked, “How can we be certain everyone we bury is dead?”

As you attempt to solve the problems in your organisation, take two shots at the issues. The second should be from a completely different perspective.

How might you change your business thinking perspective?

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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

Ric’s Friday Redux No.3: Allow time to notice

Thu, 10 May 2012 07:09:00 GMT

An architect designed and built a collection of office buildings surrounding a central green. When the construction was concluded, the landscape contractors asked where the sidewalk paths were to be laid.

“Just lay out and plant the grass solidly between all buildings.”

At the end of the first summer season the new lawn was tracked with trodden trails between the buildings. These trails twisted in easy curves and were sized appropriately according to the traffic flow.

In the autumn, the architect simply paved the trails. Not only did the trails have a design beauty, they responded directly to user-desires.

Sometimes we tend to force things in business without allowing time to notice what the environment is showing us.

Are there areas where you may be able to take your foot off the accelerator to not only admire the vista but recognise what it’s showing you? What are you forcing that you really don’t need to or shouldn’t?

Don’t force it, relax and wait to see what your customers are telling you about where they want to go.

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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

Ric’s Friday Redux No.2: 5 targets for management focus

Thu, 10 May 2012 07:01:00 GMT

Extraordinary business breakthroughs can be elicited by intelligent questions.

Who and what are your targets? Do you have any unique targets of focus that share certain common characteristics?
What do your targets need and want? What outcomes and results are they seeking?
Where will you find these targeted buyers?
Who or what influences your targeted buyers? What’s their ecosystem? — People or places that influence how they think, what they do, and how or what they buy?
How do your targeted buyers want to engage with professionals like you? How do they like to interact that makes them most comfortable?

It is understood we all want answers; my challenge for you is to seek the best questions.

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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

Focus your thinking to attract client’s attention

Thu, 10 May 2012 05:44:00 GMT

“Hello Ric, Alan from Sydney here. Trevor from PwC said you could help me. I’ve had a great business for ten years but the current economic climate has really knocked us around. How can we get through this?”

– What’s different from before?

“Clients are cutting back on recruitment costs, new job orders have almost stopped and the ones we do get are arguing about our fees. It’s murder out there.”

– What’s your business?

“We offer specialist recruitment services where we do psychometric testing of all applicants, then we fully research …” He went on much more than this but I have no idea what he said. I had to interrupt.

– You try to find applicants for your client’s job vacancies?

“Well, we’re different to most other recruitment firms, but that’s essentially it.”

– How are you fundamentally different?

“Like I said, we do psychometric …” Life’s too short, I interrupted, again.

– There are a plethora of fine recruitment firms delivering all of those services and value-adds. And, Alan, if it takes you as long to explain your value-offering to prospective clients as you have to me, you’re losing their attention fairly quickly.

Lesson learned: we must articulate how we provide value and a return on investment for clients. Why else would they want to engage us? No matter what your profession.

What are the three most important reasons people are buying (and should continue to buy) from you?
How will your clients measure the ROI you provide for them? And, how can you show this to them so that your offer is so compelling they must invest in you, right now?
Is your communication style clear and concise?

Any business can make money in the good times. The best businesses are the ones that will continue to grow and thrive during the tough times.

Articulate your value proposition in the form of a business outcome.
Show your clients the ROI in having you on board.
Continue to market. It’s not your client’s job to remember you, it is your obligation to ensure they don’t forget you.

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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

Strategic Planning isn’t Planning for Contingencies

Thu, 10 May 2012 05:38:00 GMT

We live in uncertain times, and people talk about all sorts of planning. But, as someone once said, “if you want to give the gods a real belly laugh, just make a plan!” How valuable is it, then, to make plans? Are there different types of plans?

Strategic planning often seems to mean that a company or business owner examines the future based on today’s variables. Depending on worst, best, and likely case analyses, the planner then develops a cause and response plan. This type of planning differs from tactical planning in that it usually goes out farther into the future. Tactical planning tends to be more about “how” will we do something. Strategic planning is more toward “what if” something happens.

That being said, we also see plenty of examples of long-range plans failing to take into account some unexamined event. In fact, one example is where the company has contingencies in place for twenty different problems, never expecting that all twenty events will take place simultaneously. Problems and crises have a way of coming in bunches, making planning more of an art than a science.

So what’s a person to do? Should we never bother to consider possible problems and disasters? What about considering success beyond all expectations, as with an exponentially larger number of orders or clients? Do we make plans, cross our fingers, and simply hope for the best?

Consider the entire concept of planning: At its foundation, a plan is a way to adapt to future circumstances. We can say that the better someone is at adaptation, the more successful their plans. To develop a comprehensive set of plans, one would need to be omniscient and clairvoyant. But to be skilled at adaptation requires only ordinary human capabilities, and requires much less specific planning.

An important part of adaptation is flexibility in processes. Yet many business owners don’t have a solid grasp on all the processes taking place in their business. In fact, many business owners and executives don’t actually know the key processes and critical dependencies of their core business. If that’s the case, then strategic planning ends up being more like a shotgun blast of plans, with no particular organization.

Knowing how to adapt, and making the business highly responsive to changing circumstances is a better way to prepare for the future. Explorers throughout history didn’t know what they would encounter in new places, but they did know how to survive, how to adapt, and how to quickly assess entirely new events. Along with strategic planning, why not have a rapid-response team in place?

To better prepare for the future, it makes sense to first lay out the many processes involved in the current business. Then determine the most critical processes and what they depend on outside the company’s control. But instead of devoting full attention to setting up contingencies for failures in the dependency chain, examine how quickly each process and its function can be entirely changed.

Think about the process of setting up an order from China. The process begins with inventory management, which in turn causes an order to be generated. The critical dependencies include transportation systems, remote politics, and raw materials. Rather than developing a contingency for transportation failure (e.g., a ship sinking), a local war, or a factory burning down (taking with it all the raw materials in stock), how can this process be dramatically changed?

Suppose all three events take place at the same time—war delays the ship leaving port; an explosion destroys the factory; then, even partially loaded, the ship sinks in the Pacific. If contingency plans are in place, what happens if the necessities for those contingencies also fail?

How quickly can the source for orders be fundamentally shifted from China to another country? It isn’t important which country; it’s important to know how quickly the process can be changed. Is it possible to redirect the entire order process, perhaps setting up an immediate delay notification to all waiting customers?

Substitution is an adaptation process, and it’s been around for a long time. Rain checks are a form of substitution. Regardless of what part of a process fails, or if it goes down completely, the adaptive response is to offer a substitution. That’s not the same thing as having a specific backup product or service stockpiled as a contingency. We don’t yet know what we’ll substitute, but we know that we can come up with a substitution quickly.

Contingency planning assigns a specific response to a particular event or circumstance. Strategic planning examines possible events or circumstances that might require contingencies. But process analysis with adaptation capabilities in mind is a third option. People don’t succeed because they know how to do everything; they succeed because they know how to change and adapt to circumstances, taking advantage of evolving opportunities.

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Guest post by my friend: Craig Landes of Batavia IL, USA

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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

Tried it, didn’t work

Thu, 10 May 2012 05:35:00 GMT

If you offer advice as part of your business model, you no doubt have heard those mercurial words, “Yeah, we already tried that, didn’t work!”

I am adamant that the value in my consulting-business-smarts is about the questions I ask rather than the answers I give. And, here is another typical example. The response by your clients to your advice needs to be diagnosed. Yes, diagnosed. They may genuinely have tried your recommendation, but exactly when, exactly how, and what was the outcome they hoped for?

Do not assume that the client knows what you are intending, or that they understand precisely how it should be implemented. When they give you this typical response, it may be for any of three reasons:

They are resisting change.
They are annoyed that you are smarter than them in offering your suggestion.
They’re just an aberrant wise-guy (and I don’t mean this in the Mafioso sense, either)

How do you handle this, however, when it happens? Ask intelligent questions:

When, specifically, was it that you attempted this in the past?
How are the conditions (environment) different today?
What was the exact outcome when you tried this?
How did you measure and evaluate the results?
Who did the measurement and evaluation?
Why, specifically, do you think it didn’t work?

By asking these questions you can establish if perhaps what was attempted, was not exactly as you are now recommending today. You will also have the client clearly articulating how the business environment has changed since then (which may effect the resultant dynamics in today’s conditions); or that the analysis of the results and outcomes back when it was previously attempted were flawed or at least ineffectual; or that YOUR assumptions may not be appropriate now that you have this additional background information!

Never assume the client is damaged – establish the facts to verify your assumptions. The upside is that the client may become more willing to consider your suggestions after answering your questions (and gaining that blinding flash of the obvious), or the questions in themselves may actually lead you to providing an even better recommendation after receiving the answers.

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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

Leadership Essential for Purposeful Performance

Thu, 10 May 2012 05:26:00 GMT

Exemplary leadership is essential for purposeful and positive people performance. While walking through a general office area with a national executive manager of an organisation that has me on retainer, he pointed to a department manager seated in a corner office. “His work has been disappointing for months and it’s time we did something about it.”

Are you about to confront him right now?” I inquired.

“Confront him! Certainly not. You and I are on our way to see his boss. If anyone under my purview isn’t performing, it’s the fault of the direct superior. A poor performer has to be developed, moved to other work, or let go. If one of those three isn’t being successfully undertaken, the boss is failing.”

Rightfully so …. it is never the poor performer who is the real cause of the problem, it is essentially poor leadership. We are all aware you cannot solve a problem until you find cause. When people are lost, it’s more likely the leader who got them there.

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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

8 Strong reasons why clients will engage with you

Thu, 10 May 2012 04:46:00 GMT

Here are 8 strong reasons why clients will engage with you. How many are you actively developing and regularly marketing through your Willmot’s Whirlpool?

1. Repute & common ground
2. Genuine value
3. Showing a real interest in them
4. Circumstance & proof
5. Point of legitimate difference
6. Appealing to their self-interest
7. Inference of benefit by the client
8. Appreciating that they will learn, benefit, or gain an advantage because they have you

It’s not enough to know you’re good, you have to understand why you’re good and have your market-space acknowledge it to be true.

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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

Ric is in Melbourne CBD 21 March 2012

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:04:00 GMT

Ric will be in Melbourne CBD on Wednesday 21 March 2012 and has some available time.

If you would like to meet with him during his visit, get in touch by telephone or e-mail and we can arrange a mutually convenient time around his schedule for the day.

Telephone: 07 3395-1050

E-mail: ric@executivewisdom.com

Marketing Strategy Preparation

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 22:55:00 GMT

In preparation for creating your marketing strategy here is a checklist of questions required to make the process efficient and valuable. Have you thought these questions through in developing your marketing strategy?

Who are your customers?
What services do you provide to them?
What proportion of your time is attributed to genuine marketing and sales efforts?
What percentage increase could your business handle without significant capital expenditure or increases in your numbers of employees?
How much growth or otherwise have you experienced in the last twelve months?
What growth do you expect this (financial) year?
What do you anticipate will contribute most to this growth?
What do you ultimately want out of your business and how do you plan to get it?
What are your customers biggest frustrations?
What problems are they solving when buying from you?
What is your biggest marketing challenge?

Before you spend money on advertising, social media, business networking events, corporate golf days, business breakfasts, etc., consider what should be your strategy. Implementing marketing tactics before you’ve established your strategy is fallowed.

The marketing tactics need to underpin and support the strategy.

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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

Stop the psychometrics in the workplace

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 22:52:00 GMT

HR appear driven on utilising psychometric tests and analysis in the workplace. Mostly, I believe this is to explain away behaviour rather than attempting to improve behaviour. HR ought to be focusing on:

Creating alignment among every position and corporate strategy.
Marrying succession planning to career development and ensuring “bench strength”.
Proactively helping line management with greater efficiencies and productivity.
Optimally focusing resources on the product, the service and the relationships with customers.

Ideally, no one should have a career insulated in HR. I recommend to CEOs in my Mentoring & Coaching Program that they routinely rotate HR into other areas of the organisation so that HR gain first-hand knowledge and experience of what the staff face in their specific roles. Of course, the colour usually drains from the faces of HR people in the room when they hear me say that to their boss.

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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

Enthusiasm and zest for work

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:06:00 GMT

Life balance is not only about play, family, fun and alike. Life balance means having an excellent working life, as well. To achieve a positive, fulfilling life balance you must ensure that your work is sustaining your enthusiasm and zest.

What do you need from your work to generate high levels of enthusiasm and zest for what you do?

An A-Class client list?
A preponderance of high-level, quality projects?
Access to the tools, resources and support you require to do good work?
Highest standards requested, expected and embraced by all members in the business?
Organisational brand and repute that helps the individuals within the firm reach the marketplace?
Working with like-minded professionals who share the same drive for quality, ethics, mutual support, collaboration, cooperation and values?
Intelligent and energetic colleagues?
An organisation driven by principle, not expediency?

What would you add to this list for you personally?

How do you and your firm measure up?

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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

Do you focus on your expertise or the client’s results?

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 10:50:00 GMT

Which target do you have in your sights?

How professional services firms interact with their clients will determine how well the business relationship develops. Accountants, lawyers, financial planners, business coaches & consultants, recruiters, et al believe they need to become ever more technically better to attract more and/or better clients. But that’s not always what the client is seeking.

The relationship between client and professional is about two people working together as peers, mutually evaluating the worth of one another in the partnership. If developed in a positive environment of improving the client’s condition, there will be a bond that is created that will weather the test of time and competition.

Open, honest two-way communication is required by both parties; yet in many instances, good communication is absent.

Accountants, lawyers, financial advisers, recruiters and alike sometimes lack the ongoing, proactive communication their clients would appreciate to build an ever stronger bond. In my consulting life, large numbers of professional service firms seek my counsel in improving their marketing strategy, business development and fee/revenue growth.

During the initial enquiry analysis and research, I commonly discover similar results:

The professional services firm is exceptionally good at clearly explaining their costs and methodology, supported by qualifications, skills and experience. What is not so well done is articulating the results and outcomes for the client (both tangible and intangible) in language common to the client.
Professional service firms are in an age of relentless competition. Pressure to continually lower prices comes from the clients. Pressure to continually raise revenues and profits comes from the principals and partners, while pressure to reduce costs comes from CFOs and Practice Managers.
Professional service firms can rise above the mire to stand out from the crowd by focusing on service, quality, innovation … a broader approach.

This can be achieved by speaking to the client about what interests them, in a language the client can understand. What’s important for your client? Being in a better position today than what they were yesterday because they had you working on their behalf.

So, what target do you have in your sights? The technical issues? The fees and prices? Your qualifications? Or the results, value and outcomes to be achieved for the client? Hit the mark and watch your business grow.

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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring

Business opportunities are knocking

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 00:24:00 GMT

A leading business university undertook research into their graduates. It was discovered that their past students were successful during the early part of their careers after graduating, but ten years on, they were superseded by a more street-wise, pragmatic group.

The professor who undertook this research explained that the education the graduates had received was in “problem-solving”. What was more important was the ability to recognise opportunities.

Innovation trumps problem-solving.

Pragmatic thinking beats university degrees.

Action is the only precursor to success.

Are you looking for the opportunity in this current economic environment? Honestly?

I shared coffee with the owner of a business consultancy firm bemoaning the terrible circumstances that have decimated his business revenues. He was worried, distressed, more distressed than a consultant should be faced with such slight contretemps.

I also had coffee with the partner of a mid-tier accounting/auditing practice who relished in dissevering himself from the doomsayers. “Ric, we’ve been using your approaches to pricing, marketing and client-evaluation. Just yesterday, an existing client called to explain one of our competitors had proposed to do their audit at half the price we’ve been charging and would we reduce our fee. Remembering your advice, I calmly reiterated our value, our expertise and the significant levels of service delivery we provide which equate to greater ROI for the client. They stayed with us. Overall, we are 40% ahead of budget for this year.”

In the current business environment, there is an absurdity in the gap between the pragmatic, opportunity-thinking of successful professionals and the trivial reasons others adduce for failing.

Opportunity is knocking … do you hear the sound?

How can you answer it?

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Ric Willmot
Improving Organisational Performance
Providing Strategy Consulting & Mentoring