Not the top, not the bottom: the first strategy for middle management

The First Strategy
Hire people in the middle who have aspirations, who want to grow and develop and are mobile. Thus you have leaders who are eager for opportunity. They are attracted to moving and working in a new location is attractive for them, and they are excited about establishing a new beachhead for the company.

Create a process in which, as one of its yearly goals and objectives, top leadership has to develop and take courses. In one company I worked with, if you could not demonstrate to the CEO that you had improved your skill set and thinking abilities in the last year, you were not eligible for a raise no matter how well you had performed. In another company, if you aspired to be a director, you had to get an MBA. These policies can supported a company in dramatically growing both revenue and profits.

For more information about CMI's process for improving your leadership team click here.

Building a G.R.E.A.T. Company

Components of Great Companies
Now that we have defined a great middle market company, what components make up greatness? They can simply be found in the acronym G.R.E.A.T.

G: Generous and Growth. The dictionary defines generous as “liberal in giving or sharing; not petty or mean; magnanimous; abundant and ample”. These are also apt descriptions of a great company’s culture. Great companies provide space for people to grow and develop. They accept human foibles and allow mistakes to be made. Great companies are not mean-spirited or punitive. They have rules, but only a few. They are willing to give and bend, and they come from a mindset of abundance while avoiding notions of scarcity.

Generosity enables Growth. Growth causes all the progress and wealth of a company but it also causes all the problems and pain. Without growth, a company stagnates and becomes internally focused. Great companies use growth as the engine for their internal and external development.  
Want to create a generous and profitable work culture at your company?  Visit the CMI website.

Book as Compost

My view on books is that they can transform culture and refocus a business. Books, like compost, get good ideas to grow in organizations. Reading specific, specially selected books can create an environment conducive to creating organizational change and development. When management groups read the same book, it is like they’ve shared an experience with a common language. So, what does that get you?

Reading the same book gets executives of the company on the same page. They now share a common vocabulary. Groups reading together enhance understanding and the acceptance of innovation and change. Even when the leadership team does not agree on the book's message, the executives now have parameters from which to debate and explore issues.

Case in point: One company I worked with, after reading Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard, started using a survey that not only asked their customers: “Are you satisfied with our service? Yes or no? And why?” but also, “Are you one of our raving fans? Yes or no? And why?” This type of survey gave employees lots of feedback. It also focused them on converting their customers into “raving fans.”

Front Line Heroes: Battling the Business Tsunami While Developing Performance Oriented Cultures has the power to do this. Ok, I am biased and with that said I am also quite proud of the difference that this book is making.  It is getting great reviews.  Front line Heroes even made the top 100 management science books on Amazon.  The book was recently reviewed in the Daily Herald Business Ledger. My request is that you start a Book Club and read the book with your staff and fellow executives. The ideas and techniques of this book when applied will make a true and measurable difference to the performance of your company. You can hold me to that promise. Discounts are available for quantities of book ordered above 10 copies. Please let me know your thoughts and I look forward to hearing from you about this “book club” idea.

The Sixth Rule of Planning

El fantastico numero sies is that the planning group has to be able to actually work and create together. For good productive work to be done, there can be no pretense here. The group has to be able to implement the plan. They have to perform together.

This has to be much more than “plays well in the sandbox” kind of behavior. The planning group needs to be creative, generative and able to move quickly to implement change. They have got to be collaborators, problem solvers and be change agents within their organization.

Implementation is the key to planning success. This is not about producing a document that is pretty and will sit on a shelf. This is about implementing actions and activities that will steer the company in a healthy and profitable direction.

Committed action is key to the success of the planning endeavor. Part of the process is to focus the leadership team on becoming a high performance team. This is done by experiential exercises and measuring for high performance team behavior.

A company running with a high-performance team has many advantages over its competition. I have a particular client in mind. This company has done a remarkable job of growing in very challenging business conditions. I have seen them change marketplaces and customers.

Recently, this company had growth at 60% and they continue to hire and retain great people. Part of how they have done this is by having a fun committee and by paying attention to whether or not their people enjoy their work and being at the company.

There is trust in this planning team. People can speak their minds. This communication is taken as straight communication about the business and not taken personally. They are playing a business game of growing a great company. This team is not engaged in petty issues, nor are they interested in who gets along with and agrees with whom.

Their corporate culture is not a smelly, gossipy political environment. This type of focus gives their leadership team a great advantage when competing against other business leadership teams that are rife with gossip, mistrust and miscommunication.

For more information about CMI's planning process visit our website: www.cmiteamwork.com

The fifth rule of planning

The incredible rule number five is facing the brutal facts that confront your company. This is a distinction that is given to us by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great. It means honestly confront the issues that confront your organization and truly dealing with them. Do not deny them or sugar coat them. Deal with them in an intelligent way.

Your planning team can do this by defining critical issues facing the growth of the company. These are issues that will be, or presently are, confronting the company.

“Examples puleeeees!” you demand. Coming right up.

• How is the organization going to transition from our old CD-ROM technology to the new “streaming” technology? How are we going to fund this transition?
• What new products are we bringing out in the next year?
• How are we going to grow 20% per year for the next three years? 
• What improvement do we need to make in the plant for us to reduce costs by 10%? 

Typically these types of critical issues are addressed through the writing of a white paper. “What is that?” you ask. “Good question!” I respond and if you had not brought it up I simply could not have continued to write this book, so thanks for the question.

A white paper is a three- to five-page paper that addresses the critical issue. It is written between planning sessions by the members of the leadership group that are best suited to address the problem. This group can also have members outside of the planning team who have useful knowledge and thinking to contribute .

The paper should deal directly with the issues. It is, with research and analysis, the “answer” submitted by the group. The entire planning team will read the paper prior to the subsequent session and then debate it during the session. Problem solving ensues. Everyone is invited to bring their feedback, questions and concerns to the next session. This is where the critical issues are dealt with and a direction is hammered out.

For more information about CMI visit our website: www.cmiteamwork.com

The Second Rule of Planning

The second golden rule of planning is to, “make sure the design of the planning is one that will get you a good result. I am not a believer of leadership teams locking themselves in a room at a resort for two to three days. This type of planning may be sprinkled with some golfing, gambling or other type of “fun” stuff. From this design, a strategic plan is supposedly born and created.

The problem with this design is that it curtails critical thinking. This process begins to smell of “plan in binder” syndrome. Poke me in the eye with a hot stick. If you do all your planning during one session you risk just doing more of what you are doing in the present. There is no opportunity for research or involving others within the organization who are not at the planning session.

Here is what to do. The process should take place over two to three months and take three to four days. It is predicated on white papers and dialogue. Listening and understanding are critical. Better research ensures better debate and thinking. “What is a white paper?” you ask hysterically. “Hang tough,” I say. That is covered in rule five.

For more information about CMI's planning process visit our website: www.cmiteamwork.com 

The first rule of planning

The first rule is “always pick the right team for planning.” This poses the question of who should be part of the planning team. This is an important question. It is important that planning team members are people who are committed to, and can add value to the conversation about the growth of the company.

The only exception is if there is a key employee or manager you want to develop. If you want them to better understand the strategic issues facing the company, then it might make sense for them to be a part of the process.

In addition you can have members of the planning team who are outside of the leadership group. These could be sales people and other key employees. It important that you vet them and ensure that they are of the quality and stature that is required for being a part of the planning group. It is also important that they are all getting their jobs done and are employees of stellar standing within the company.

A number of times over the years I have seen the wrong leaders and key employees involved in planning and their participation actually hurt the effort. Pray give us an example you ask? Ok, well there was Jason who in the middle of the year abruptly left the company.

After an investigation it became apparent that Jason was not returning customer’s calls. In fact, lots of work around Jason’s customers was not getting done. Yet we spent a lot of time in planning on improving customer service. Jason had actually taken on being a Champion in and working on improving customer service. Then we got to see what he was actually doing—talk about a buzz killer. It was enough to make me want to use that aforementioned pointed stick.

How did this happen? What allowed Jason to be on the team that was led to this dark place? Clearly there was a lack of supervision. His manager was not providing oversight. What was really going on you ask? This could be the subject for an article or book and that is for another time.

Then there was an HR manager at a manufacturing plant who took employees into her office and gossiped about managers. A number of times she would run out of the planning session crying. Again a buzz killer. Then she left. Thank GOD and music please!

After her departure, the CEO added Lucinda to the team. She was young, energetic, knowledgeable and clearly had a vision of what the company could be. Her role was completely different than the first HR manager. Lucinda’s addition to the planning team was constructive and positive.

So, the message here is pick wisely and selectively. Members of the planning team must be able to maintain complete confidentiality and be fully engaged in the growth and well being of the company. Select the employees who are passionate about growing the company, developing an extraordinary organization and being the CEO’s partner in accomplishing those things. Don’t have people be part of the planning process only because of their position or accept mediocrity.

For more information about CMI's planning process visit our website: www.cmiteamwork.com

In my thirty years of conducting planning processes, I have never seen a healthy company maintain long-term growth without ongoing planning. Planning is about growing and improving your company. At best, when you don’t plan you get maintenance of the status quo. At worst, you ignore problems and challenges that significantly damage or destroy your organization.

The time has come to present a streamlined list of CMI’s most critical rules for planning. There are only 120 of them. As you can see, we have really pared them down. So, music please! What?OK! OK! Simmer down! Take it easy! (You get overwhelmed so easily.) Next week we will go with just seven rules for successful strategic guessing/planning. Is that better?

For more information about CMI's planning process visit our website: www.cmiteamwork.com

Who Plans on an Annual Basis?

It always shocks me how many businesses do not formally plan. Recently, at a conference, I asked a group of CEOs, “Who plans on an annual basis?” Only a quarter of them raised their hands. I was shocked. In addition, when pressed on why they did not plan they said they were too busy fighting fires to have time for that.

They then complained about low growth, no profits and blamed the economy for their problems. I felt better at that point with their clearly powerful and insightful analysis. Clearly they were Dunderheads. These CEOs did not make the connection that planning helps you deal with the economy and the issues that challenge your business. I am getting my pointed stick dipped in organic monkey dung to deal with these guys. It is organic dung because they are CEOs after all.

It is true. Many small- to mid-sized companies do not plan formally, just as many adults do not exercise. Yet we know exercise is good for you. It helps you live an improved quality of life. Routine exercise allows your body to maintain its health and vitality. Strategic breakthrough business guessing/planning works for businesses in much the same way as exercise does for the individual. It does not guarantee health, but exercise certainly dramatically increases the likelihood of having it.

For more information about CMI and Business Planning visit our Website: http://www.cmiteamwork.com.