Category Archives: Get Clear

Know whose problem you solve, how, and how well.

Finance Matters, Get Clear, Uncategorized

At Your Service

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Service business ideas are a dime-a-dozen. The question is: Which ones will be successful?” One way to find out is to implement the idea. Another is to do the math before taking even the first step.

Watch this comic scene from Opportunity Knocks in which a businessman uses careful logic as he stumbles into a business venture.

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Click to see a short motivational scene from Opportunity Knocks.

Your service may not be what you think.

Consider, for example, how much would someone be willing to pay to listen to Beethoven’s Ninth symphony? Would it be:

  • $1 for an MP3 on iTunes?
  • $20 for the CD?
  • $200 to hear the NY Philharmonic live?

Continue reading At Your Service →

Get Aligned, Get Clear

How to develop leaders, teams, and organizations that perform to their potential.

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If you’ve been in charge for a while and it feels like performance and growth are not where you want them to be, you probably know that you are likely headed in the wrong direction.

Every leader, team, and organization eventually hits an inflection point. There IS a solution.

The first step is to take stock of how things are going, why things need to change, and how they would be if things were going well.

A management offsite is an excellent way to engage the top team along these lines. However, to prepare for and facilitate a high-powered executive offsite takes careful planning, data collection, analysis, and design effort.

Approach

Most leaders find it difficult to adequately prepare—assuming they even know how—for their offsite. Further, it is nearly impossible for a leader to facilitate and participate in, let alone also lead, their own offsite. A better strategy is to hire experts who use proven approaches, tools, and methods to prepare and facilitate.

Continue reading How to develop leaders, teams, and organizations that perform to their potential. →

Get Clear, People Matters, Position Descriptions, Sales Matters

Market Lead Position Description

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An organization counts on a Market Leader to:

  • Build and work with a top team to develop, maintain, and drive to achieve an annual plan for a well-defined portfolio of current and targeted customers.
  • Connect with established and emerging customers to develop a point of view as to where the market is and where it should go and then proactively and systematically drive towards those ends.
  • Develop, hold, and communicate a clear understanding of their organization, market, competition, partners, and market trends.

Over the course of a performance period, the organization counts on a Market Leader to always be able to present: Continue reading Market Lead Position Description →

Executive Reviews, Get Clear, People Matters

How to head off unwanted voluntary attrition and what to do when it happens.

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Exit Interview Form Icon - unwanted voluntary attritionWhen an employee departs voluntarily it is almost always unanticipated and unwanted. Too often, though, leaders rationalize that employees who leave voluntarily were marginal and will not be missed.

To keep the best on board, and to head off after-the-fact rationalizations, ask managers now to identify employees they would least like to lose. Go on to also ask what is being done to keep each and every one of them engaged and on track to success in the organization. Follow up to make sure what needs to be done is actually done.

When any employee leaves of their own choosing, assign a senior person with no stake in the case to speak with the departed. Use the survey questions in the form linked to the above graphic to draw out what happened, why s/he has decided to leave, and to be sure whatever needs to be unearthed and learned is brought to light. Continue reading How to head off unwanted voluntary attrition and what to do when it happens. →

Get Clear

How to make good decisions even in the face of unresolved issues.

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Background on Tough Decisions

How to make good decisionsIn any organization progress can be stymied by unresolved issues.  It’s counterproductive to keep rehashing the same question from week to week, perhaps making a decision today only to have it reconsidered and undone tomorrow.  An organization needs both a reliable method for making good decisions and the willpower to stand by them once made.

Milt Hess’s paper, Decisions – It’s a Tradeoff, offers a repeatable method for making good decisions even in the presence of ambiguity.  (Sorry, but no help here with the willpower thing.)  It includes techniques for identifying the best options and the relevant evaluation criteria, and for objectively characterizing the options in terms of the criteria.  Since a decision almost always represents a tradeoff among competing objectives, the emphasis is on presenting the decision-maker with the basis for making a decision that reflects his or her priorities.

Key elements of the approach

  • When evaluating the options, avoid vague terms like Excellent/Good/Fair/Poor. They’re subject to variable interpretations.  Instead, treat each criterion as a continuum from best to worst, and select four points along the continuum that can be described unambiguously.

Continue reading How to make good decisions even in the face of unresolved issues. →