by Art McNeil

What’s your end game?  Business owners seldom have an answer to that question—they usually lament about being too busy to even consider possibilities.  It’s an undeniable fact that your game will end.  Will you sell the business…turn it over to the next generation…or perform a daily grind until you die—leaving your family and the government to sort things out?

When transfer time arrives, what will your business be worth?  Ignoring this critical issue means you probably behave like you own your job…not the company.  Unfortunately, potential investors have no interest in buying a job.  The introduction of management and leadership disciplines will make your company more profitable, secure, and valuable—you might even reclaim more of your personal life in the process.

We have entered what futurist David Hule calls “The shift Age.”  The ground is and will continue moving under our feet and there’s no going back.  You were either raised in the industrial age or influenced by people who were.  That makes you vulnerable.  Remnants of that bygone era still exist in many companies—showing up as profit and growth inhibiting attitudes and behavioral patterns that typically exist below the CEOs conscious awareness.  A corporate exorcism may be required to eliminate industrial-age ghosts that are haunting your halls.  While reading the following, think of me as your “corporate exorcist”.

Step #1: Applying leadership discipline:

…starts with clarifying cultural values in a way that generates corporate energy and launches a powerful profit tool that is actually used by everybody. All too often, value efforts regress to become meaningless words stored in desk drawers or on lobby walls.  Values-directed leadership by contrast, inspires people by answering fundamental questions like: what’s special about us, where are we going, what do we believe, how solid is our ethics platform, and what are the performance consequences?  For example, Integrity is a cultural value used by my company.  Its related ethical platform “we never miss a commitment or fail to tell the whole truth” clearly draws a behavioral line in the sand.  What companies say they believe is irrelevant.  True corporate values are expressed by what the CEO tolerates day in and day out.  And they’re on display for everybody to see.

The largest determinant of how employees perform today is their conscious or below conscious expectation of what the future holds in store.  A major problem is that people will not see what they don’t believe.  Subsequently, vision is the future tense of values.  Energy is generated by focusing the company’s vision—but before a critical mass of employees will see possibilities, they must observe from a shared platform of the company’s cultural-values.

Once cultural values have been action-oriented, mastery of two leader skills are essential to keep it going.  The good news is that skills (#1 how to recognize a cultural-values contribution…in a way that inspires, and #2 how to correct problem-performance…in a way that disciplines) can be taught in less than an hour.  The bad news however, is that their ongoing application depends on the CEOs willingness and capacity to hold management toes to the fire.

Step #2: Applying management discipline: (disciplined leadership  is a prerequisite)

…means aligning employees behind the total experience of the customer.  This is accomplished by managing strategic processes rather than departments.  Process autocracy (not the supervisor) tells people what to do.  Personal authority is redirected towards ensuring that tasks are executed properly and that objectives are met.  Management discipline minimizes waste and rework, focuses the sales effort, improves cash flow, establishes meaningful measures, introduces performance consequence, encourages effective hiring and firing, develops the CEOs capacity to forward think, and engages employees in continuous improvement.

During a stint in telecommunications, I was assigned the responsibility of helping executives and senior engineers bridge a huge performance gap as they transitioned from monopoly to a competitive marketplace.  In spite of extensive training, many talented people remained stuck in denial—navigating from a mental map of a world that no longer existed.  The experience taught me that ”knowing is not doing”.

As an executive coach I experience senior team dysfunction—more a norm than the exception.  CEO behavior is often the root cause of problems such as; attachment to the status quo, less than stellar decision making, poor morale, departmental turf wars, CYA defensiveness, and debilitating levels of stress.  Successful CEOs accept a classic line from the comic strip POGO, “we have seen the enemy and he is us.”

In Conclusion:

If you are values directed and have the tenacity to follow process, you can take your company to the next level while at the same time creating transferable wealth.  Before proceeding on such a venture, I strongly recommend that you join a group of non-competing CEOs such as Vistage.  Personal coaching from a trained chairperson (most of whom have been CEOs themselves) and having fellow members hold you accountable for meeting commitments is an invaluable performance enhancer.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 1:20 pm and is filed under Uncategorized and with . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.