Category Archives: Grow

Increase value, impact, and opportunity.

Six P’s to peak meeting performance.

October 27, 2023 Peter DiGiammarino 1 Comment

Transform the way you participate in board sessions, executive reviews, operating meetings, design and code walkthroughs, All Hands meetings, interviews, and more! Adopt the **Six Ps** for enhanced individual and group performance.

Prepare

Read materials sent in advance with enough lead-time to reflect on their content. If you are the meeting owner, make it easy for attendees to prepare, and for you and your team to step-back and develop perspective, by distributing background materials at least two days ahead.

Show uP

Attend! You cannot contribute if you do not attend both physically (even if electronically) and mentally. The most common reason meetings under-perform is that key participants, usually the most senior, are called away at the last minute to attend to urgent matters. There is no better formula for increasing the odds that the matter covered in the meeting they missed will someday cause its own urgency instead of smoothly performing to its highest potential.

Remember that all meetings start before they begin and end well after they are over. Those that come late and leave early may successfully convey how busy and important they are but at the high cost of missing more than they realize in terms of what they get, and what they could give, in order to ensure the best possible results.

Pay Attention

When someone talks: listen. Stay in-the-moment and concentrate to understand fully what is said. Do not allow your mind to wander, check for messages, or go on mute to simultaneously take another call or address other matters on the side.

Once a key thought or two have passed you by, it can be difficult to get back into the flow of what is being said. The more senior you are, the higher the stakes are to paying attention. Doing so ensures you will not waste the group’s time catching you up on what has already been covered when you re-engage and it is the only way to ensure that important opportunities to provide input and guidance are not missed.

To concentrate, it helps to write-down the exact words being said as they are spoken. Do not generalize, paraphrase, or add value; just write what you hear to stay focused. Another method is to play-back silently in your mind words spoken as they are heard. The objective is to hear and understand only what is said.

If what you hear does not make sense or otherwise leaves you with a question, check with the speaker to be sure you heard correctly. Chances are that if it helps you to check it out, it will help others as well. It also encourages the speaker to know they are being heard and listened to carefully.

Clarifying questions generally increase the odds that the group will reach a higher level of insight and understanding before offering recommendations, conclusions, or moving on to another point.

Think Powerfully

Give serious consideration to advance material, what is shared in the meeting, and what is said. Internalize, organize, and consolidate what you take in and compare with your own store of knowledge and prior experience to reach levels of insight and understanding that might help push the group’s work forward.

Develop a Point-of-View (PoV)

Push to go beyond taking in information and analyzing it in order to have a Point-of-View on the matter under discussion. If you need more information, ask for it. On the other hand, do not lock-in to a point-of-view too soon.

Be sure to listen to all sides, ask clarifying questions, think powerfully (i.e., critically), and then develop a Point-of-View. Both developing a PoV too soon and not developing a PoV at all, may signal laziness, lack of self-confidence, lesser ability (and that you may not belong in the meeting), and contribute to your own, and the group’s, under-performing.

Participate

Don’t just sit there … say something! That said, it is not a good use of the group’s time for you to think out loud or to speak just to hear yourself talk. Speak once you have paid attention, asked good clarifying questions, thought powerfully, and developed a Point-of-View worth sharing. Before speaking, edit what you plan to say in order to speak efficiently and not take too much air-time.

There is a lot going on inside the head of every participant at every meeting. No one gets all this right every meeting but it helps to have a plan and a method to consciously follow. Helicopter-up from time to time to reflect on how things are going. If you are not engaged and participating then why are you there at all?

If you wonder how it is that someone like you could be in a position to contribute in such a forum, remember that the meeting organizer asked you to attend because they wanted your input and participation. Give yourself permission to be present and to participate fully. Try it, notice how it feels to participate, learn from the experience, and know that you will get better and find it easier and easier with practice.

Finally, push yourself to share what you have to say in the meeting and do not wait to whisper thoughts to one or two other attendees with whom you are most comfortable after the meeting ends and when it is too late for the group to benefit from what you have to share.

Conclusion: Make Every Meeting Count

Embrace these principles and notice the difference in your participation and the meeting’s outcome. Remember, your input is valued, so give yourself permission to be fully present and engaged.

Share your experiences and tips in the comments below!

How emerging executives can achieve high-impact with key players more senior than themselves.

May 4, 2023 Peter DiGiammarino Leave a comment

An up-and-coming executive engages with an important sales prospect, client, supplier, partner, or colleague on par with their degree of comfort and security with the other party. The more seniority the other is perceived to have relative to their own, the more anxiety and insecurity is induced, the less is said, and the less impact results from the interaction.

Pushing to engage at the highest possible level drives the best results and accelerates career progression. It helps to think of it as climbing a six-level staircase.

Take One Step at a Time

The first step is the most basic level of engagement, is easy enough to do, but adds little-to-no value. Each step is easier than otherwise when it builds off of the last, but is progressively more difficult and riskier to take.

The top step generates extraordinary value and takes the most effort and nerve to do, especially for the first time.

Take the Steps in Order

Take the steps in order, go as high as possible in an interaction, and then strive to achieve a higher level next time. With each experience and successful interaction, the executive matures, gains perspective, and gets on track to providing maximum value and career growth.

The steps are easier to climb if the emerging executive is more senior in terms of age or position than the other party. Less-experienced executives need to muster the courage and determination, early in their career, to move up the steps of engagement when given the opportunity.

Their instinct may be to demur and leave things to more senior players in their chain of command. Managers tend to jump in, thinking it is safer to take over rather than encouraging up-and-comers to interact with prospects, customers, suppliers, partners, and colleagues who are more senior. They are wrong … and should do just the opposite to create the opporutinity for learning and growth.

You Don’t Have to Wait or Take the Steps Alone

Not pushing to the next step may seem like the safer course but the limit of that strategy means hitting the top step only after many years of experience. There is no reason even for the earliest-stage executive to wait until their gray hair comes naturally to realize their full potential to generate great value. Anyone can climb the stairs at any point in their career. Sooner is better.

In the quest to provide top value, up-and-coming executives may wonder how they could possibly add insights, challenge points, and provide useful coaching, instruction, and advice (that is, climbing steps four, five, and six) with only a few years of knowledge and experience.

The good news is that no one, even the most junior professional, has to do it alone. The full breadth and weight of the organization’s experience and wisdom can and should be drawn on and put to work preparing for every high-stakes executive interaction.

Strive to Do the Most Good

Those who most effectively draw upon, internalize, use, and add to the broader capacity and competence of their organization’s collective knowledge and experience with each executive engagement will do the most good and earn the right to do even more the soonest.

Strive to operate in every situation as the best and most informed in the organization would if they could. Doing so is a highly coveted form of leverage that allows a person to perform at a far higher level than one would expect and serves their, and their organization, well.

More for Up-and-Coming Executives:

IntelliVen Manage to Lead Immersion Program

Seven Truths to Help You Change the World

Describe, launch, drive, and govern Strategic Initiatives.
Foster and achieve the change you want.
Become a better and more confident strategic thinker and leader.

Learn More

Editors Note: This post was originally published on October 8, 2012, and updated in 2020 and again in 2023.

Grow, Plan Change

Key to Operating Success in a Crisis

April 2, 2020 Peter DiGiammarino Leave a comment

With baby boomers entering their last stages, Private Equity invested in senior residences ahead of the certain increase in demand as an aging population would surely seek community, comfort, support, and safety from communal living. COVID-19 changed the calculus overnight. WeWork and Airbnb represent two more niches that are forever changed…as are many more.

The time-honored formula for managing operations in crisis is simple and straightforward:

Shrink to the size you can afford
Prepare to grow
Grow

Watch this video for an explanation of how to avoid “death by a thousand cuts” and come out strong instead in a crisis!

While shrinking to size takes force of will, it can be done by just deciding to do it. Preparing to grow is harder and takes careful thought and planning.

IntelliVen is management’s guide, especially in a crisis, to maturing operations in sync with stage of venture evolution to create maximum value in minimal time.

In this time of crisis, we want to share what we have learned with you and your team. Join us for a FREE online session.

Grow

The importance of executive leadership team meetings and how to run them

March 3, 2020 Peter DiGiammarino Leave a comment

ELTs Are Critical to Achieving Scale

Executive Leadership Team meetings are critical to a business achieving scale. Even with infinite grit, determination, drive, and brilliance, leadership responsibilities must eventually be assigned such that a system to keep things coming together for collective leadership attention is required.

With scale comes the need for leaders to specialize and focus their span of control. ELT meetings are for leaders to connect and align across their areas of specialization. Even the best run $20M business will plateau on the path to $50M if leaders stick with an ad hoc approach to operations and governance.

The objective of a well-executed ELT meeting is to keep leaders informed, in sync, and aligned.

As a business succeeds and gets larger, so too will the ranks of its top leaders and of the next level of leaders to include junior partners who may be geographically remote. In the face of expansion, the leadership team needs a forum and orderly process for information to flow up to, and out from, the ELT. The insights, agreements and decisions of the ELT flow throughout the organization, and need to be based on accurate and relevant decision making information from across the organization.

Proper Planning, Having Discipline, and Respecting Each Other’s Time Goes a Long Way

Schedule ELT meetings at a regular time that will, more often than not, be safe from the myriad of possible interruptions. Early Monday mornings is usually a good choice because there are usually few distractions at the beginning of the day and the week and it gives the rest of the week to follow up on meeting assignments. Monday mornings also give team members the weekend to reflect and to contemplate agenda items.

During meetings, it is critical to be disciplined. It is especially important for every member, especially the CEO, to make a firm commitment to stay mentally and physically present. That is: show-up and do not allow emails, texts, calls or any other interruptions during the meeting. Respecting each other’s time will go a long way towards building a high-performance leadership team.

Create an Effective Agenda

The CEO owns the ELT agenda, but each ELT member is co-author in that each has the responsibility, opportunity, and the right to add items to the agenda. Consider these tips to running an effective ELT meeting:

Send out a draft agenda a few days ahead of the meeting and invite comment and drive preparation.
Schedule time in each meeting to discuss topics that come up on-the-fly.
Every ELT member should agree to do their best to make meetings effective and to not complain about meeting content or how it is run.
End each meeting with a draft agenda of next meeting and invite members to comment.
Keep a running list between meetings of potential topics for up-coming meetings.

ELT Meeting Best Practices

Members must prepare for agenda items they are to lead. Submit materials in advance to someone assigned to gather and distribute two-days ahead of the meeting to allow time for members to read through and develop a point of view on each topic.

If it is unavoidable, reschedule or cancel a meeting, but do not make it a habit. Only the most urgent matters should disrupt the ELT process. For example, a pending merger or acquisition or an HR catastrophe might justify disruption, but not much else.

Keep meetings to an agreed upon length; 1.5 – 2 hours is plenty of time for a well-run ELT meeting.

Start and end meetings on time. Discipline is paramount, or chaos will reign.

Agenda topics are of two types: Routine and Non-routine.

Routine items: Things that are covered in every meeting with standard advance materials conveying the state of each compiled and distributed in advance:
- Upcoming key events.
- Metrics
- Headcount
Non-routine: One to three of the most important things going on in the business should be discussed in each meeting. Those leading each discussion need to be notified well in advance and have taken the time to prepare and distribute supporting materials in advance. For example:
- ELT member 1 – walk us through the LAP business plan.
- ELT member 2 – walk us through the BD plan for 2020 and 2021.
- ELT member 3 – walk us through the facilities plan.

Invite non-ELT guests to prepare and present to the ELT from time to time to give up-and-coming leaders a forum in which to shine and for them to get input directly from the top team.

Examples:
- Talent Management Program leader – walk us through the Talent Manager program and update us on how it is going relative to plans.
- Researcher – walk us through the research unit’s scale model.
- Project Manager – walk us through the implementation progress and update us on how it is going relative to plan.
Treat guests as guests (just because they are invited to one ELT does not qualify them to be ELT members). Coach them to prepare and to provide details on what they are doing and how it is going. This is a presentation and they need to take preparation and presentation seriously.
Once the organization sees how guests are involved, there will be a step-function increase in performance from the guests. It will be seen as important to be invited to present to the ELT.

Remember: discipline is paramount, or chaos will reign.

About the Author

Eric Palmer has 30⁺ years of outstanding success as a lead operating executive in private, public, private equity owned, and venture capital backed companies. He is particularly adept at strategy formulation, operational execution, International operations, M&A, leveraged debt, IPOs, and working with professional funders.

How to increase the odds of success with a strategic acquisition or alliance

September 19, 2019 Peter DiGiammarino

Posted 6/10/2012, Updated 9/19/2019

Most acquisitions and alliances severely underperform relative to expectations set at the time of their inception. No matter how great they look on paper, it is always a lot harder to make things come out anywhere near where they were meant to be than it seemed at the start. Fortunately, based on first-hand practical experience and learning from the experience of others, there are things that can be done to raise the odds of success.

Why Acquire or Ally

The reason for one organization to acquire or ally with another almost always boils down to one or more of the following three:

To obtain new products and services to sell to existing customers.
To secure access to new customers for existing offerings.
To acquire needed new resources such as technical skills, leadership, or industry knowledge.

Why Not Acquire or Ally

There are also three basic reasons for one organization to decide NOT to acquire or ally with another:

Most require the buyer to pay a premium price except in distressed situations in which case a bargain price is offset by high risk.

Integration and assimilation of people, processes and systems is time-consuming and difficult. Time and effort spent to overcome cultural differences is enormous and rarely successful. Despite management’s best intent, the wisdom of working together on the front-line is lost, without a lot of attention from the top, in favor of protecting turf, in-fighting, and favoritism.

Acquisitions and alliances require alarmingly high concentrations of management attention to consider, plan, execute, launch, and nurture to success. Once the deal is done, even greater amounts of time from the most senior managers is required to plan and guide the integration of people, products, services and administrative processes which diverts management attention from other important matters.

Watch video of PeterD discussing
Alliance by Design at ab Intelliven Learning Community Session.

There are three steps to successfully acquire or ally with another operation with the intent to merge it with existing operations (i.e., as opposed to operating as a separate unit):

Determine whether the nature of the relationship between the two organizations is to be transactional, collaborative, innovative, or identity-shaping where who they are is defined by their relationship to each other.

Develop a picture of the way things will work when operations come together as envisioned, including:
- A multi-year financial plan that lays out the target financials which justifies the terms and to serve as the foundation for performance goals.

- An operating model to show who will do what to deliver the joint entity’s products and services with excellence, on time, and on budget; systematically and programmatically sell the venture’s products and services; and develop its capacity to fuel growth.

- An organization and governance model to show who is responsible for doing (see: post on every top leader getting at least one thing right) and reviewing (see: post on connecting top leaders to the front-line ) what initially and over time.

Assign an individual leader from each organization to work together to identify issues, perform analysis, and recommend actions consistent with the goals of the partnership. Success or failure to achieve targeted results must be a primary component to these individuals’ personal performance assessment and bonus compensation for the performance period.

Success Factors

Three things that dramatically improve the probability that two organizations will be successful as partners in an alliance or acquisition:

Mutual Clarity: It must be clear to people, particularly the leaders, in each organization why they have decided to work together (see: Mastering the Merger). The rationale must be written down and shared with others in both organizations each from their own perspective AND from the perspective of the other. For example, people in Organization A must be able to say why it makes sense for Organization B to have entered into the relationship as well as why it makes sense for their own organization to do the same … and vice versa.

High Stakes: There must be a lot at stake for both parties. This means there must be a lot to win if the goals are met and a lot to lose if they are not.

Accountable Leadership: Each organization must assign a senior person to represent the interests of their respective organization. This individual needs to be a leader who personally stands to gain or lose a great deal both from a financial, career, and professional perspective depending on the fate of the venture. Their number-one goal has to be the success of the initiative. They serve as gateways to their respective organizations to facilitate the success for their counterpart who would otherwise be in a hopeless position of having to navigate how to work effectively in an alien organization. Those assigned to this key role have to be senior, seasoned, well-regarded executives who can move mountains in their own organizations, as needed, to make things work.

IntelliVen

Category Archives: Grow

Six P’s to peak meeting performance.

Prepare