Friday, February 29, 2008

Too much trust

In a business world where there is maybe more need than ever for trust between people, it is a paradox to find too much ‘trust’ in some relationships.

One MD said “Well I leave all the finance to the accountant.” Another decided not to be involved in the crucial website design but to “Rely on the expert.” Yet another really does not “have the time” to speak on behalf of the company. She would rather delegate that to someone in the marketing department.

And when, somewhere down the line, it all goes wrong, people say “Well I really trusted that person.”

But were those relationships really based upon trust? Because trust is a two way process where both parties agree to a level of engagement.

Or was it more about abdication of responsibility?

posted by Tim @ 10:42 AM 0 Comments

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Ninety percent of CEO’s


Ninety percent of CEO’s would say that they have a handle on the money, or at least they employ someone, who they think has a handle on the money. Ninety percent of CEO’s have very little handle on either their time or their energy.

The tragedy, for that is what it sometimes is, is that the money belongs to the organisation whereas the time and the energy belongs to the CEO. Every week there are 168 hours to allocate between our work, our family, our hobbies or leisure and our community. It won’t figure on the Profit and Loss account or on the Balance Sheet. There are no KPI’s for this analysis.

Ninety percent of CEO’s who do this exercise find out that there are some things in their life that they would like to keep the same; they are happy with the way they allocate their time and energy in these areas.

And then there are the bits that they would like to change.

posted by Tim @ 9:28 AM 0 Comments

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Getting to know you

It is a paradox but the longer we spend developing relationships in business, then the better the quality of referral work that results from it. Some say that you have to ‘touch’ someone seven times before a meaningful business relationship develops.
Last year my speaking mentor said to me “You‘ve been working with many of your clients for twenty years so why don’t you ask them to refer you as a keynote speaker to their Trade Associations?” So in the following couple of weeks I put that question to the MD of a brewery, an optometry practice, a 163 year old hardware store and a leisure park.
All four MD’s agreed to contact their Trade Association on my behalf; all four Trade Associations were happy for me to approach them and all four have booked me as the keynote speaker for their next convention.
The lesson for me is that although everything in this global knowledge world seems to be moving faster, whether it is the product and service life cycle or technology itself, some things are moving at exactly the same speed that they have always done.

posted by Tim @ 5:20 AM 0 Comments

Unresolved conflict

Successful organisations have a deliberate strategy to try and resolve differences between people, especially at the top, at the earliest possible opportunity.

I have started working with a business where the directors talk to each other fairly regularly, but nobody hears. They are trying to move forward on jugular issues such as new product development, business planning, marketing strategy and finance. But they are effectively going round in circles.

Every dispute, every antagonism, every sarcasm between people absorbs limitless time, energy and money. The more senior the culprits, the more costly this is. As time goes by the cancer spreads through the organisation, damaging relationships as it goes.

There is so much external competition in the market place, the last thing any organisation needs is any form of unresolved internal competition.

posted by Tim @ 3:37 AM 1 Comments

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Speaking for CEO’s

Because we are all engulfed in a rising tide of knowledge and information, it is important that the key messages about our own organisation are not drowned.

We have to get our message across to potential customers whilst at the same time reinforcing relationships with our existing customers. The first step is to identify our expertise. Generalists in the market place are ten a penny, but in the knowledge world people are looking for high trust relationships with experts.

There are two ways to demonstrate expertise: one is to write and the other is to speak. The top speakers:
1) Have something of genuine value to share with their audience
2) Structure their talk in a way that enables the audience to use the information. For example, you make a point (expertise), you tell a story (the most powerful way to engage your audience) and you explain the application. Point:story:application.
3) Are authentic. Their words and their voice and their body language are all saying the same thing. In other words they are congruent.
For a CEO, making the decision to speak at carefully chosen industry conferences, events and exhibitions is part of the journey towards being a ‘thought leader’.
Becoming a ‘thought leader’ in ones chosen area of expertise is a hugely valuable investment in both personal and organisational intellectual capital that we are taking to market.

posted by Tim @ 12:10 AM 0 Comments