IN THIS ISSUE:
"Five Surefire
Recovery Strategies" Microsoft Web Seminar
May
11, 2004 from 9-10am PT (12-1pm ET)
This free seminar will help you assess how ready you and
your team are for the next growth wave.
Special guest: Jim Cathcart, best-selling author and Founder,
Cathcart Institute
Register
now to qualify for a free bonus valued at $445!
Audio Conference with Special Guest Marshall Goldsmith
Registration Fee: $59 (includes streaming audio replay)
Topic: "Help Your Best People Get Better"
Do you know what behaviors get in the
way of your own success?
Do you know what specific things you can do to achieve positive,
long-term changes for yourself, your teams, and your bottom
line?
Marshall's philosophy is that all successful leaders (like
you) succeed because of a specific set of beliefs and behaviors.
Here's what you'll gain in this session:
- Why the same beliefs that make you
successful can make it hard for you to change
- How the feedforward process which is
being used by leaders around the world can help you improve
yourself and those around you.
- Techniques for "Team Building
without Time Wasting"
Marshall has been recognized in The Wall
Street Journal as one of the top ten executive educators,
Forbes as one of five most-respected executive coaches,
and Fast Company as America's preeminent executive coach.
Marshall has published 18 books on leadership.
Registration limited to first 100 respondents.
Marshall's corporate workshops
are worth thousands--you get to experience his wisdom for
a fraction of that
fee!
You cannot afford to miss this opportunity
to spend an hour with Marshall. Join us on June 1 from 2-3
pm PT/5-6 pm ET. Register
Online Now!
"Long Live the New Services Culture"
The decade-long streak of "companies
behaving badly" is gradually ending. Many of us wisdom-seekers
who track services industry trends, have been quietly praying
for the day when the bad behaviors would subside.
"Growth at any cost" values
-- highly predictable behaviors and beliefs found in many
fast-paced industries throughout the 90s -- no longer sustain
companies or their performance. Here are the hopeful signs
that "lose/lose" values are going out of style
and "win/win" approaches are taking their place:
"Show me the money" Behavior
is Dissipating.
Three functional areas -- engineering,
finance and sales -- conspired to build cowboy cultures
of winning sales at any cost -- even if it meant making
promises that could not be delivered.
Engineering at some companies relied on
their customers -- often unwittingly -- to "beta test"
their software for them. Microsoft has been accused of using
this product launch strategy for years. How many copies
of Windows have you tried to install before they got most
of the kinks out?
I think back to the halcyon days of selling,
when I was asked on a regular basis to use discounting as
a method of closing business. At one sales kickoff meeting
in Houston, our VP told us "we will do whatever it
takes, and consider discounts up to 65% to defeat our archrival."
Sadly, "whatever it takes" too often meant lying
to customers to close the deal.
Many finance groups faced similar pressures.
The VC community had a tendency to squeal through the due
diligence process. Speed to funding was worn like a badge
of honor. I remember interviewing Michael Robertson, founder
of MP3.com, about five years ago. He reveled in how he secured
his first round of funding after presenting a two-page business
plan to a gang on Sand Hill Road - all in less than 35 minutes.
Return on Investment Is Cool Again
I've seen no fewer than ten articles on
how to measure ROI last quarter. Even CEO of HP, Carly Fiorina,
raised the topic at the World Economic Forum last January
in Davos, Switzerland.
Industry analysts and respected consultant
Amir Hartman, author of "Ruthless
Execution," offers supporting evidence that ROI
is back in vogue. "When we surveyed 500 companies,
we learned that only 12% of their IT investments delivered
the ROI they expected. Worse than that, cost overruns of
25-50% were very common in the majority of IT projects."
"Whatever it takes", then, also once meant lying
to shareholders and the Board.
With consolidation and offshore outsourcing
currently monopolizing the media, vendors realize they cannot
afford to close sales at any cost, nor rely on yesterday's
hiring and retention models to grow their companies. Our
IT services study revealed that 2003 billing rates for services
firms have declined in the U.S. by as much as 20%.
Through sheer necessity, leaders have
to re-visit the values that will pave the way to future
growth. I'm convinced that Gateway icon Ted Waitt was strongly
encouraged to step down as CEO when the new Emachines acquisition
was consummated. With the additional 2,500 job cuts announced
in March, the new Gateway method of doing business will
look very different, indeed.
Employees' priorities have shifted.
Most of my clients are shocked when I
tell them the number one attraction for job-seekers. According
to a 2000 study by the Radcliffe Public Policy Center, earning
a high salary came in ranked as the sixth highest priority
for professionals. For respondents in their 40s, challenging
and rewarding work was their top priority. No matter what
age group we fall into, we all want to make a contribution.
Here's more evidence of workforce priorities.
Career website Vault.com
saw a sharp rise in hits to their sites that provided data
on a company's workplace quality last year. And compared
to the first half of 2003, web traffic to sites covering
diversity and corporate culture grew 20%. Hiring managers,
are you listening?
Employees don't want to work for companies
that lie to customers, shareholders or them.
According to Doug Smith, author of On
Value And Values: Thinking Differently About We In An Age
Of Me, "the future of the planet now rests on how
well people in organizations integrate concerns for value
(money) with concerns for values (social, political, family,
spiritual, technological and more). Organizations are where
people experience an everyday sense of "we" and
seek meaning in what they do.
As Smith writes, companies who begin to
understand and link "the way we do things around here"
to performance results have the highest potential to embrace
the new, emerging services culture. As illustrated by Smith's
Ethical Scorecard, win/win cultures benefit customers, shareholders,
and employees. And here's another bonus: their values inspire
the children of the people who work for them.
These shifts are a wake-up call for companies
who want to move from industrial-era greed to a collaborative,
win/win culture. Next month, we'll share with you how best
selling author and business icon, Dr. Stephen R. Covey,
suggests we begin the winning journey.
Until then, ask yourself: What are the
first steps to designing a winning culture in my life, and
in my company?
