Saw this one in CIO magazine (no, not my usual read but I like this)

Former Sun Microsystems CFO Michael Lehman’s philosophy on employee development  as helped land at least eight of his former employees in major-company CFO positions, and numerous others into corporate controller roles at such high-profile companies as Apple and Coca-Cola. Lehman, currently the CFO at venture-backed Palo Alto Networks, is currently testing how to maintain the focus on building employees’ skills with a leaner staff, fewer resources, and a much smaller budget for such endeavors. The cost to implement these seven tips, according to Lehman, is largely the time it takes out of a worker’s schedule.
Step one is to set up a feedback system, which can begin as small as a one-page employee self-evaluation followed by conversations to discern where employees want to go in their career and how they can get there. Second, if the company is
planning to hire, share with the search team how the organization will likely change over the next year and give them an idea of what opportunities might be in the pipeline. Third, build communication skills by regularly asking people in the group to stand up at staff meetings and deliver a brief overview of what they are currently working on. Fourth, help staffers craft a two-minute “elevator pitch” on the company, and have them present it to the finance team for practice. Fifth, have a finance staffer tag along when the CFO makes customer visits. Sixth, have all finance personnel regularly help with certain tasks that might otherwise go undone. And finally, encourage workers to ask their managers, “What’s on your plate that you don’t want to do?” and then find a way to get it done. asfdasfda

You may not like all of those but you cannot dispute the ease with which some of these can be done. The key is to expose people to new situations and help them increase their capacity for new positions.

NFL NFC conference championship in San Fran this weekend. Winner goes to the Super Bowl.

The 49ers are led by first year head coach Jim Harbaugh. Let me quote from an article on MSN today. The words in italics are from the article, the words that follow the quote are my comments.

No problem. “He’s authentic,” Smith said. “He’s an honest coach, and he coaches everybody the same way, no matter who you are.” This is from Alex Smith the quarterback. A couple of things in that comment. First, authenticity – be yourself. Second, integrity, Harbaugh is honest. Third, fairness, he is consistent with all players.

San Francisco is built to play working-man’s football under Harbaugh’s exceedingly intense yet nurturing guidance, Of course we see that Harbaugh has high standards and pushes the men hard but he is nurturing. Nurturing? Absolutely! Remember that leaders take care of people.

“Such a great group of guys, coaches and players. I think we love coming to work every day; I know I do. And we’ll get one more week at least. I’m loving it.” When you have an energized and engaged workforce great things happen. In sports we measure that with wins, in business we look at morale, turnover, production, customer satisfaction and then the financial measures.

The comparisons between sports and business can often be overdone but when we talk of the principles of successful leadership being universal we are on safe ground. When I say universal I dont mean they work all the time for everybody. Let’s face it. Sometimes you do all you can and the follower chooses not to follow. By universal principles of leadership I mean they work on most of the people  most of the time. They work in the Marines, they work for the 49ers and they will work for you.

Operate with integrity, set a good example, be authentic, take care of people, have direction, and have fun. There are others but this is a good start.

THIS JUST IN…….

More than half of U.S. employers surveyed by the staffing firm Manpower Group last year said they were having trouble filling job openings because they couldn’t find qualified workers. That’s a huge 38 percentage point jump from 2010, when only 14 percent said they were having trouble filling positions.

here is another reminder from the world of business about how hard things can be….

The maker of Twinkies, Sno Balls and Wonder Bread is trying to lose the fat. Hostess Brands is hoping to cut its high costs as it heads back into bankruptcy protection for the second time in less than a decade. Hostess has enough cash to keep stores stocked with its Ding Dongs, Ho Hos (I LOVE THOSE THINGS) and other snacks for now as it battles rising labor costs and increased competition. But longer term, the 87-year-old company has a bigger problem: health-conscious Americans favor yogurt and energy bars over the dessert cakes and white bread they devoured 30 years ago.

The other day we talked about the king of beers now being the prince. Best Buy, Netflix and even Blackberry -those recent darlings of the business world – not looking so good these days…

But let’s forget about firms and let’s get personal. This is all about you and your skills and your future. What have you done lately to get better at what you do? Think back through your career and you can name the people who are no longer around, the ones who failed to change, the ones who wore their character faults like a badge of honor. The ones who got complacent, the ones who got laid off/downsized/fired.

The workplace requires new skills everyday but it also requires good old fashioned people skills. Employers want employees who do more than the minimum and do it with a positive attitude. Just yesterday I had a large (and new) client tell me how much better I was to work with than the incumbent consulting firm I had just displaced. The core of his comment was that I was easier to work with AND worked harder to understand their business and to tailor my message to their needs. In other words, it was all about them and not about my billable hours. I have learned that the billable hours will follow when I do the right thing for the client.

Sure, we all worry about ourselves but what are you doing to make yourself more valuable tomorrow than you are today. Still not too late to put some goals in place for 2012. Do some action planning and set some targets.

I never realized all that beer I drank would lead to a major business news headline. You probably didn’t either.

Coors Light is the new number two beer in America. It is behind Bud Lite but just displaced Budweiser – the King of beers in the number two position. Oh, the agony. Isn’t it bad enough that the King was sold to a foreign firm a few years back but now the King is barely a Prince.

It can happen to youuuuuuuuu…..put that to music. I don’t care how iconic your brand, or how strong your customer relationships, or seemingly secure your market position…you can be beat. and you will be beat if you do not work to stay in the lead position.

I had a client once who remarked he was worried. He was now the leader in his market. He said, “for years we were Avis, we tried harder, but now we are Hertz. What now?” Great question.

The King isn’t even Avis anymore…where are you in all this. Personally? Professionally? your business?

What are you doing to stay on top of your game?

I first learned of this quote from a Roman General when I was in the Marines…It stuck with me. I decided to find it again when challenged by work with a client who seems to specialize in reorganizing their org chart every couple of months.

“We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.”

Upon further review, as the saying goes (and with the power of the Internet), I learn that it is improbable that Gaius Petronius Arbiter uttered these words. Too bad. It sounds better from Roman times but this is an eternal truth. The attribution remains murky, there are a few possible sources but that doesn’t matter for us today. Whoever said it, they were on to something and we have all seen it.

Reorganizing is sometimes important and valuable. It can often be confusing, inefficient and demoralizing. When we deploy as Marines as part of a Marine Amphibious Ready Group we generally combine the team 18 months prior to deploying. We get to know the other players on the team (the Marine Air Ground Task Force) as we come from different areas and we learn to work together. Within our own squadron we had combat crews, groups of pilots who flew most of their time, and all actual missions, together. My first float I was the copilot for Beetle and my second float I was pilot and Nuts was my copilot. We were a team. We could act and know what the other would do. We were highly efficient because of it.

Extend this to the workgroups in your firm. Cohesion can be defined as when the values/objectives of the group transcend that of the individual. In other words, total buy-in to the mission. Total understanding of what is required and who can best deliver it. This is leverage and it wins in business just as it wins in battle.

What steps can you take now, as the year begins, to bring stability to your teams, crews, job-sites, work groups etc? The payoff can be substantial and I encourage you to go for it.

Talk about a tough thing to measure. We face the same challenge when we talk about leadership ROI. But today let’s stick with marketing. Now, don’t expect me to talk to you about it. I am a leadership guy but my friend David Stone is THE guy when it comes to marketing and business development in the built environment. Here is an article he just posted. Thought you would like it. After all, nothing happens, and no one gets to lead until somebody sells something!

CEO’s and CFO’s are asking hard questions of their marketing teams on the spending of scarce dollars to win new work. And so they should! As much as the marketers might squirm under the spotlight, the questions are legitimate and need to be asked. If spending can’t be justified with a clear return it should be cut off.

That said, marketing ROI (return on investment) is traditionally hard to measure since it’s very difficult to assign clear results to any particular undertaking. That new client may have first heard of your firm from an award you won, then learned more about you through your direct mail program, been impressed as one of your team members spoke at a conference, then made the final decision when your well-written proposal was competitively priced. While each of these initiatives contributed to the win, it’s impossible to allocate the exact amounts that resulted in the win.

Nonetheless there are very clear guidelines that will help you get the most from your marketing dollars and there are useful ways to measure your return.

Instead of thinking about marketing as one non-stop endeavor, the ‘win work’ effort should be viewed as a series of four consecutive steps that ultimately lead to a new client and a fifth step that will ensure they stick around in a long-term relationship:

1. Strategic and marketing planning (note from Wally, there is other planning too, like HR etc)
2. Brand building
3. Responding to RFPs
4. Negotiating
5. Customer Service

While your ultimate goal is a client with signed contracts, not each of these steps will produce that result. So your return on
a brand-building effort, for example, shouldn’t be measured by the number of new projects you sign in a year. Each step has its own clear goals and your measurements should focus on how well you achieved that goal.

You can see more from David at his website, www.stoneandcompany.net. His article above is part of a series so I will keep you informed as more come out.

Not sure if you are a Mark Cuban fan. Some people admire him and some people despise him. What you cannot do is dispute his success. Here is his take on that…

In sports, the only thing a player can truly  control is effort. The same applies to business. The only thing any  entrepreneur, salesperson or anyone in any position can control is their  effort.

I had to kick myself in the ass and recommit to  getting up early, staying up late and consuming everything I possibly could to  get an edge. I had to commit to making the effort to be as productive as I  possibly could. It meant making sure that every hour of the day that I could  contact a customer was selling time, and when customers were sleeping, I was  doing things that prepared me to make more sales and to make my company  better.

And finally, I had to make sure I wasn’t lying to  myself about how hard I was working. It would have been easy to judge effort by  how many hours a day passed while I was at work. That’s the worst way to measure  effort.

Effort is measured by setting goals and getting  results. What did I need to do to close this account? What did I need to do to  win this segment of business? What did I need to do to understand this technology or that business better than anyone? What did I need to do to find an edge? Where does that edge  come from, and how was I going to get there?

The one requirement for success in our business  lives is effort. Either you make the commitment to get results or you don’t.

This comment is from his new book: How To Win At The  Sport Of Business: If I Can Do It, You Can Do It. I havent read the entire book but I liked the comment on effort. Good advice for all of us as we enter the New Year…

Yes..there really is a competition for this…we visited last week. The winners were are on Good Morning America. Amazing Sugar Art – yup..sugar artists…

Anyway, excellence in anything takes time and effort. The winning creations required HUNDREDS of hours of work. HUNDREDS…it has been said that mastery takes 10,000 hours of proper practice. Throwing hours at something doesn’t make it better. Investing time and applied effort can help one get better.

Let’s move the conversation to you. At some point you were a doer. You were charged with getting a task completed and were probably individually responsible for the task. You did well. Then you moved into supervision where you are expected to get things done through others. You are  leader or manager….How many applied hours (hours of conscious effort and thought to get better) have you invested to become a better leader and manager? I am guessing not many. Too many supervisors move into that role based on technical expertise (on the hundreds of hours of applied effort) but then do little to get better at the supervision thing.

Thousands of hours to gain mastery… If you are like me, you still have some hours to put in….What is your plan fr 2012 for that applied effort?

BIG crowd in the gym today….that will not last..
Will you last on the things you set out to do this year?

First of all. I am not going to tell you what it is…YOU are going to tell you..

Do you remember the 1991 movie City Slickers? Billy Crystal was a street-wise city dweller on a cattle drive vacation in the American west with Jack Palance as the leathery old cattle hand. Crystal was in search of meaning for his life. Palance offered this advice, “Remember the one thing.” Of course, he never told Billy–or us–what that one thing was. But deep down, each of us has a one thing we must remember, the one thing that gives meaning to our lives, and we probably already know what it is. Our business life is similar.
What is the one thing that, if you did it, you know would yield superior results for your life or your business? It is something that, done right, would profoundly impact your bottom-line. It might be inventory variance; it might be increased customer satisfaction, or increased production. Losing weight, communicating better….What one thing, if you and your people really focused on it, would make such a positive impact on your life or your business you would be negligent not to do it?
Like I said, you probably already know what it is. But, for some reason, you haven’t made the effort to act on it. This one thing may have been a bullet point on the last several business plans, but it fell through the cracks in the day-to-day. (Be careful: if you say something is important and then don’t do anything about it, you are putting your credibility and integrity at risk.) Now that you have it in mind, what are you going to do about it?
This is the perfect time to commit to your one thing….One for your personal life and one for your business life…you get the idea….
Now is the time to re-commit to your plan, and elevate the one thing to the highest level. And watch it make your life and business soar!