Category Archives: Manage to Lead

Managed to Lead posts are organized into the categories below and are about what can be managed in order to be a better leader. There is a category for each of seven actions motivated by seven simple truths about leaders and organizations which, if followed, can help you change the world.

Finance Matters, Manage to Lead, Sales Matters

Three Steps to Selling a Work Plan

Follow the three steps below to prepare and present a professional services workplan for a prospective customer. Those who hire service providers should also study the steps to understand how the best providers think through what they propose to do for you.

To calculate a price for a body of work, first prepare a plan that spells out:

  • Tasks: what exactly will be done.
  • Personnel: who, with what skills and experience, will do what.
  • Time: how long it will take assigned persons to complete their tasks.
  • Cost: the number of hours for each assigned person multiplied by their billing rate and summed.

When the service provider presents the work-plan and the price to the prospective buyer, haggling  often ensues. The result is usually frustrating for both parties with the provider getting a lower price for the same work effort and the prospect feeling gouged.

The prospect wants the work at a price they can afford and the contractor wants a fair price given what it will take to perform the work. The problem is that both parties experience tension from their own frame of reference, and try too hard to close the deal in one step. Fortunately, there is a straightforward process to slow things down and, if followed to-a-tee, markedly increase the odds of a smooth progression to a signed contract.

Start with the list of the tasks required to accomplish a prospective client’s specific objective. Then follow these three steps precisely to maximize the chance of landing a project to perform the work at target rates:

  • STEP 1 – Agree on the tasks to be completed: Arrange a time to sit down with the prospective client to review: their objective, the value of achieving it, and each task required to secure it. Discuss each task thoroughly and without regard to who will perform the work and without any mention of billing rates or price. The focus at this point is entirely on what must be done to achieve the desired result and the enormous value of so doing. Get your prospect to add/change/delete tasks so that they develop a genuine sense of ownership of the taskplan.
  • STEP 2 – Agree on who will perform each task: Once the task-plan is agreed to, review the resources required to perform each task to completion with excellence and how long it will take a qualified person to perform them. Point out that less qualified people will take longer and not do as good a job but will be less expensive per hour. Do not dwell on rates or price at this point in the process. Only once the allocation of resources and durations are agreed to is it time to proceed to step three.
  • STEP 3 – Compute the price: Share  a schedule of hourly billing rates for the selected resources. Note billing rates for each person should be supported by evidence that other customers have paid the rates quoted for similar work by the same person. Multiply the hours required for each person to perform their assigned tasks by their billing rate and sum the result to compute the total price of performing the complete set of tasks.

    If the client balks at the overall price, revisit steps 1 and 2. See if there are any tasks that can be revised or resources that can be adjusted to reduce the scope and total cost, rather than just lowering your rates. Consider offering a one-time credit, but avoid permanently reducing your standard billing rates.

    Throughout the process, keep the focus on the immense value the work will deliver to the prospect. Position the cost as a small fraction of that value.

By methodically working through these three steps, you can build a strong, mutually-agreed upon foundation for the engagement – maximizing the chances of a successful sale at your target rates.

Prepare a separate exhibit for each step and go through them one at a time incorporating the edits from the preceding steps right then and there in the meeting. If the edits are too extensive, stop the process and go back to the office, make changes to what has been covered, and arrange another time to meet again to complete the three steps.

Throughout the process make sure it is clear to the prospect that  there is great value to the output of the planned work effort. Express the value in the form of a specific dollar figure. Get the prospect to share their perception of value before discussing the work plan so it will be easy to point out in step three that the cost of doing the work is but a fraction of the value.

Focus, Job Search, Manage to Lead, People Matters

Beyond the Summit: Crafting a Life of Fulfillment and Balance

Most of us seek in our professional affiliation what some call a state of flow or what others call happiness, exhilaration, satisfaction, or leading a fulfilled life. Along these lines see: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and The Doom Loop System by my long time personal executive coach Dr. Dory Hollander who passed away last year and who also told me and others that the secret to a fulfilled life could be summarized in just four words (which are shared inthe last words of this post!).

Job satisfaction, however, may, in the end, not be something you can pursue for its own sake. It may, rather, be something that comes about as a by-product when you try hard to accomplish something.  The best moments occur when body and / or mind are stretched to the limit in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.

When in a state of such exertion and accomplishment, there is a sense of pride and fulfillment that is both pleasurable and addictive.  Some who experience flow when climbing mountains scale a peak only to start preparing to climb the next even before leaving the summit and are doomed to repeat the experience over and over in a never-ending quest to bag the ultimate peak.

Many find something similar in their work lives when they lose themselves in a strong-minded pursuit of one single, all-consuming work goal after another, much like the mountain climber in search of the perfect peak.

While the career-minded person and the mountain climber may accomplish a great deal, their one dimension of focus might really be a copout. They have made life’s most important decision, how to spend time, too simple. That is, whenever there are trade offs between spending time in their area of focus and spending time on other things, the all-important quest compels them to always defer to their main line of pursuit.

The downside is that their success and fulfillment likely comes at great expense to family, friends, and ultimately also to themselves.  Work and work goals are important but only as one dimension of a life. Those who climb mountains always look forward to the next climb but can also have goals and aspirations in other areas including family, school, social, sports, and so on.

On their death beds, some who accomplished a great deal in life, but had shallow lives outside of work, reveal that every step of the way they always did what they thought they had no choice but to do or what they truly believed was right to do. Only after it was too late did they realize they could have chosen to spend time in other areas of life and been happier (see: Gordon Livingtston’s: Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now)

A more enlightened approach is to view work and work goals as important, but only as one dimension of a multifaceted life.  Those who climb mountains, for example, might always look forward to the next climb but also have goals and aspirations along other lines including family, school, civic, social, sports, and so on.

A way to think about it is in the form of a spider diagram, or Life Wheel, where a person is seen to manage an ever evolving portfolio of pursuits throughout their life. They set milestones and goals in each line of pursuit and monitor progress. At any time they have consciously decided which of these are of top importance and so get the majority of time and attention. When the time is right, they switch emphasis to another.

The “quality of the journey” across the portfolio of pursuits, is then revealed by the pattern of progress, actualization and recollection along all lines of pursuit — not just by how well things are going at work or on the mountain trail.

To pull this off, for each line of pursuit it helps to:

  • Have a specific, hard-to-reach but achievable goal
  • Work hard to reach the goal
  • Know what to watch to know where you are in terms of reaching it
  • Know you have, or will get, the skills and resources to be successful
  • Enjoy it so much that you lose track of time in its pursuit
  • Act intentionally on a chosen dimension to achieve a specific next stage of development
  • Focus on just one or two or three at any point in time because it is hard to make much progress on more than one or two pursuits at a time and pursuing many paths at the same time results in thrashing and in being busy, but with little progress
  • Concentrate on one or two or three for a specific period and then switch to another one or two at another time as feels appropriate.  E.g., in your mid-20s to late 30s you may focus on career and family then, in your 50s and 60s, work on travel, health and handicap.

To sum it up in four words, the secret to a happy and fulfilled life is to: Act Intentionally … Persist Variously!

Executive Transition, Get Aligned, Job Search, Manage to Lead, People Matters

An Action Plan for Executive Transition Into a Lead Role

Executive Transition into a Lead Role

One of the hardest things for a senior executive to do is break into an existing system of operation. At first there is an exhilarating air of difference. Everything is new and there is so much to figure out and to absorb. The opportunity to have a major impact induces a seemingly endless rush of euphoric excitement.

All too soon the feelings devolve into isolation and loneliness along with the realization that no matter what good things happen, everyone watching will wonder why there was not more.

The following steps, based on personal experience entering as a senior leader in eight separate ventures and studying those who have done well in similar circumstances at many others, increase the odds of a successful entry.

Open channels with team members

The successful new leader meets offline, at least twice, with each member of their new team, one-on-one for a couple of hours, in order to begin to develop a relationship and build trust. Meet off of the work-site and in low-stakes venues such as a leisurely meal, a golf outing, or a long walk in the woods, with the objective to:

  • Cultivate the sense that it is okay for each to be vulnerable (as described by Lencione in Five Dysfunctions of a Team) in front of the other.
  • Get clear about why each thinks they are here.
  • Get clear on what they want to accomplish individually and together, at work and in life.

A successful leader develops a unique relationship with each top team member. Quality relationships take time to gel and are hard to start once work pressures raise the stakes. Consequently, one-on-one time together to open channels are best held even before the first day on the job and again at least annually with each direct report.

Engage in critical business activity

A new leader must learn what is going on, how things work, and who does what, all while earning the respect of each team member.  Correspondingly, each team member needs to establish their own sense of individual strength and prowess in the eyes of the new leader. Each needs to know that the new leader understands and appreciates them for who they are, what they have accomplished, and for what they are good at doing.

A successful new leader surveys the landscape to select a high-stakes activity to become integrally involved with, such as a key sale or a difficult delivery project or product development challenge, in order to both move the business forward and, at the same time, provide a foil for everyone to establish themselves.

The new leader makes a specific contribution to the firm’s success and starts to earn a reputation for leadership while collecting valuable input towards a well-grounded picture of the way things work currently and a starting outline of how things need to work in the future.

Determine roles, goals, and rewards

The new leader meets with whoever is in charge of key delivery engagements, sales initiatives, strategic initiatives, and support functions to get clear on what each is trying to do and on how it is going and on how each describes what the organization as a whole is trying to do and how it is going. This provides a way to learn what is going on, who is doing what, and to develop (or verify) the unifying message that describes what the organization does and how it does it. It also provides the foundation for determining key roles, goals, and rewards. From these steps the current state-of-play becomes clear and the new leader develops a view about how they would like things to be and what needs to be done by whom in order to achieve a specific future state at a specific point in time.

Form core leadership team

No one does much alone. The new leader needs to build a core team of two to six other strong players who seek to accomplish the same thing overall and who have immense desire, drive, capacity, and competence to help accomplish it. With complementary skills, compatible orientations, and an innate drive to work with each other to accomplish their joint goal, anything is possible. Core leadership team members may be from the next level down on the organization chart and not everyone in the top level may end up in the group. Core leaders can be anywhere in the organization and it takes time to find them and to bring them into the inner circle. 

Set up leadership community

Define and schedule individual and group meeting forums and agendas to create consistent platforms for addressing strategic, operational, policy, and performance matters with a broad leadership community of 15 to 30 top players. This group will spawn the next generation of leaders who will support future growth.

Set targets

Develop target financial, cash, resources, and labor utilization business models consistent with the organization’s mission, vision, strategy, and in-line with industry benchmarks and rational  relative to past performance and  market conditions. Identify key performance measures, set target values for each measure, and develop a plan to achieve them over time. Build dashboards to track progress and tie incentive compensation and recognition directly to achieving, and even more for exceeding, targeted results.

Tap into outsiders

The wise new leader systematically finds, cultivates, and opens channels with people who have been successful at what the firm is trying to do in order to secure their expert counsel, engages a personal effectiveness coach to give feedback on how they behave in order to improve effectiveness, and convenes a forum of leaders in similar circumstances to their own in order to regularly share experiences and lessons learned in a safe and supportive environment.

Open channels with board members

Board members and others in their authorizing environment (e.g., bankers, lawyers, accountants, and fund managers) are in position to have an extremely positive or negative impact on a leader’s success. It is critical, therefore, to open, cultivate, manage, and use channels to board members, key investors and other stakeholders. The best plan is to identify those who are critical to success and bring them into the active working set of key players. Draw on their strengths, treat them as team members and proactively engage them to contribute their great strengths to advance the whole.

Meet weekly one-on-one with each direct report

Set up a regularly scheduled weekly one-on-one session with each direct report to review their top 3-5 priorities in the coming week, how things progressed on last week’s priorities, and to review the dashboard of key items you both use to track performance. Keep a conversational, problem-solving mindset, and work to understand what they are dealing with and how it is going. Look for and take advantage of opportunities to come alongside to push up their thinking, clarify priorities, eliminate roadblocks, and encourage peak performance. The best leaders also turn the tables to allow the direct report to play the same role with them as they cover the same topics for themselves. So doing is also an opportunity for the new leader to model target behavior.

Communicate

Virtually every employee survey reveals the need for more communication. Leaders take this to mean that they need to communicate more about what is going on to their troops. While more communication from the top is almost always welcome, usually what is meant is that employees have things to say to management and management is not listening.

Set up an anonymous channel for employee communication to the top leader and actively promote its use. Communicate broadly to the staff in a series of All Hands Update Bulletins that report on key activities, insights, progress, and plans. Hold small informal cross-functional, cross-level lunches with the leader and one or two others from the management team to create and institutionalize a forum for connecting the top-of-the house with the front line.

Schedule reviews of top projects, sales efforts, functions to provide a forum for leaders to show what they do, cross-share information, and to provide critical guidance and direction in a safe and constructive forum.  Hold All Hands sessions where all employees gather in a room or attend electronically for the entire organization to participate in a shared experience in which management reviews goals, progress, and plans; rewards targeted behaviors to encourage others to follow suit; and gives a forum for emerging stars to be spotlighted in front of their peers.

Monitor progress and celebrate even the smallest forward steps toward achieving  your vision. You and your team will be successful one day at a time, building brick-by-brick, to achieve your goals.

SEE ALSO

Do & Review, Executive Reviews

Eight Reasons Executive Review Meetings Underperform

The main reason things go wrong  is lack of management attention. Hence the importance of Executive Review Meetings! However, management reviews can also go wrong.  Here are eight common reasons why they often do:

# 8. The leaders did not prepare, so the meeting becomes the preparation and the review never materializes.

# 7. Too much time spent on history, story telling, and showboating. It is up to the leaders to be sure that whatever is really important gets covered.

# 6. The leaders talk right up to the end of the meeting and never created a space for the reviewers to ask questions, clarify, challenge, and then offer their best thinking.

# 5. Top management fails to create a safe environment thus turning the review into a sham (a.k.a. dog-and-pony show).

# 4. Management fails to really pay attention to see what needs to be seen and to deal with what needs to be dealt with rather than seeing what they want or hope to see.

# 3. Management fails to generalize what is learned to incorporate and reuse elsewhere

# 2. Management discovers during the review that things are in much worse shape than expected and, without intention, makes the management team feel inept by piling on and trying to help too much in the moment.

# 1. The number one reason why these meetings don’t go well is that the most important reviewers fail to show up due to last minute crises or they show up physically but not mentally.