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How to revamp your culture – Authenticity (part 3 of 3)

June 14, 2013 in Growing Companies, Leadership, Love with 0 Comments

Today’s post on authenticity is part three of a three-part series on “How to revamp your culture.” If you missed the first two posts, no worries. There is definitely something for you here. Read on!

Successful culture changes are created by changes in the authentic core beliefs throughout an organization. It starts not with a memo or conference call, but with a change in the behaviors and attitudes of the leadership. And where the head leads, the body tends to follow. But critical to the sustainable culture change is the authenticity of those beliefs and the behavioral changes.

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How to revamp your culture – Gratitude (part 2 of 3)

June 4, 2013 in Growing Companies, Leadership, Love with 1 Comment

Today’s post on gratitude is part 2 of a 3 part series on “How to revamp your culture.” If you missed the post last week, you might wish to read part 1 on Commitment.

The culture where Justeen and I live in the rural country is outstanding. In many ways, it really does remind one of Mayberry. Neighbors are genuine, generous, and they just…do things for each other. Last week our neighbor two doors down brought us a housewarming present. It was a framed aerial photo of our property taken in 1982! They saw the photo at a yard sale, knew we had just moved in, and bought it for us. How unbelievably nice is that? We are so fortunate to have moved to such an amazing country culture.

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Culture is made up of the collective attitudes and choices made by those in that particular community, company, or organization. Positive, negative, happy, unhappy, moral, and immoral. If the majority of the people are happy and positive, the culture is happy and positive. If a handful of people are unhappy and negative, it can be harder to maintain a culture which is happy and positive.

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Strangest of bedfellows: the CMO and CSO

April 16, 2013 in Growing Companies, Leadership, Sales and Marketing Strategy with 0 Comments

As recently as five years ago, few would’ve predicted the unification of Chief Sales Officers (CSOs) and Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs). They didn’t speak the same language, often with differing definitions of terms as fundamental as “what is a lead?” They fiercely competed for budget… the CSO wanting to hire more sales people and the CMO wanted to fund additional marketing programs. They blamed each other for shortfalls in revenue. The CMO was the creative type and the CSO was the customer relationship expert. Although they sometimes sat in adjacent offices, they couldn’t have been farther apart.

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So, what has changed that will finally unite CMOs and CSOs? Answer…The buyers are back in control. Today’s post explains what this means and the four steps CMOs and CSOs must take (together) to stay relevant.

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When do you burn the ships?

April 9, 2013 in Growing Companies, Leadership, Love with 7 Comments

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On April 21, 1519,  Hernando Cortés and just over 500 Spanish soliders arrived by ship near the site of Veracruz, Mexico. With conquest in mind, Cortez knew that his small force would encounter Aztec warriors, who outnumbered the spaniards by 300 to 1. To remove all thoughts of retreat from his men, Cortez burned his ships before taking his soldiers into the fight.  The message was clear: we succeed or we die.
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Four honest questions that separate a winning strategy from a losing strategy.

April 1, 2013 in Growing Companies, Leadership, Sales and Marketing Strategy with 3 Comments

When we are truly honest with ourselves during the planning process, we make better decisions and we create better strategies.

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Living in the country, its so easy for Justeen and me to get caught up in the excitement of 1,000 new project ideas to better our property. Ideas are a dime a dozen and have included: “Let’s raise chickens, so we can have fresh eggs every morning,” “Let’s plant an orchard, so we will have apples in the fall,” “Let’s move the kitchen to the great room, so it’ll be bigger,” “Let’s build a HUGE cut flower and vegetable garden,” and “Wouldn’t it be pretty to have horses in the pasture?” As we are learning (the hard way) it’s easy to focus on the benefits of the desired outcome, rather than to do an honest assessment of everything that it takes to achieve that outcome. More importantly, it’s easy to discount or dismiss all the obstacles that can and will arise along the way that will affect the outcome.

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Five words I gave myself permission to say…out loud

March 27, 2013 in Growing Companies, Leadership, Love with 6 Comments

Moving to the country and the road we traveled turned out to be so much more than a change in geography for Justeen and me. Our journey became one of discovery. Before two years ago, I never really gave any thought to the following five words. And, I probably never spoke them out loud.

  1. Love
  2. God
  3. Debt-free
  4. Meditation
  5. Vegetarian
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The Road to the Country

Perhaps its just a societal norm, but uttering these words can come with a fear of being considered “weak” or even “unmanly,” especially in a business setting. In the past year though, these words have become very strong change agents in my life and have shaped both my self-identity and leadership. Perhaps it was all the success associated with moving to the country that has opened my mind (or lowered the perceived risk) to considering a number of new ideas. Not only am I no longer ashamed to speak these five words aloud, they have become a critically important part of my relationships with Justeen and friends, my life, my client work, and now my writing.

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Four rules on building endurance

March 19, 2013 in Growing Companies, Leadership, Sales and Marketing Strategy with 15 Comments

While I was attending a conference in Charlotte last week,  an audience member asked one of the speakers, “How do you build endurance?” Honestly, I didn’t like the speaker’s answer, so I won’t repeat it here. But, while out riding my bike on Saturday, I gave it some thought.


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Here are the four rules I came up with on how to build endurance:

  1. Don’t stop to rest while pedaling uphill
  2. Don’t stop to rest at the top of the hill
  3. And, don’t stop to rest while pedaling downhill
  4. When approaching the next hill, repeat steps 1-3

Why?

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Love is a business term…finally

February 21, 2013 in Growing Companies, Leadership, Love with 12 Comments

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Leaders and aspiring Leaders,

About once every five years, I come across a book that makes a deep and lasting an impression on me. And that’s exactly what happened when I read “Love Works” by Joel Manby, president and CEO of Herschend Family Entertainment. Seriously. Whatever book you are currently reading, put it down. Start reading this book instead.  How deep an impression did it make on me? You need look no further than the menu at the top of this page. I made “love” one of the four cornerstone categories of suits2boots.net. How do I really feel about it? You’ll see when you get to the final three paragraphs of this post.

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I’d like to think that I’ve always been a practitioner of at least some of the principals in “Love Works”. So, I won’t say that Manby changed my leadership. He’s done something much more profound. He has wedged his foot in the mahogany boardroom door that I hope will forever change what happens inside. He attached a label to a leadership style  and had the courage to publish an almost forbidden word in business…that word is love.

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Hiring a Guard Donkey

January 15, 2013 in Growing Companies, Leadership, Love with 11 Comments

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My wife, Justeen, and I moved to the country about a year ago after 12 years of living in the middle of Atlanta. I learn new things every day about how things work…in the country. And I can’t help myself but apply what I learn to my client work. Here’s a good one.

Did you ever notice when you drive by a cow, horse, or sheep pasture, chances are there’s a donkey in there? I never thought twice about it, even growing up in rural Ohio where cows are a-plenty. I figured that the herds’ owners just happen to own lots of cows or horses AND a donkey. Well, I learned recently that there’s a reason for that donkey. They’re actually standing guard over the livestock.

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A lesson from Yale on business plan writing: dumb it down.

November 12, 2012 in Growing Companies, Leadership with 0 Comments

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Today’s post is a critical reminder for all those entrepreneurs seeking an investor to fund their idea. To get funded, you’ll need a business plan…one that investors can understand!

The best advice I ever received on writing business plans may have also been the most obvious.  The advice came from David Cromwell, a 30-year veteran at JP Morgan. For six of those years, he was the CEO and president of JP Morgan’s Private Equity division. He is now a professor at the Yale School of Management. Since my time at Yale, I’ve used his insights into writing business plans with great success

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