Business Learning Blog

Don't make this BIG mistake

Do you have a competitive edge?

Is it based on a clever strategy? or a new technology? great locations? or some other key business advantage?

Chances are that whatever it is, it may be fleeting and temporary at best. The reason is that the pace of change is getting faster and faster and the competition is getting better and better.

Take a look at the Global Forces video we showed at the Lean Conference at Garrett College yesterday and you will see what I mean.

So what is the BIG mistake?

Thinking that these "intangible" competitive advantages can be successful just because the CEO or senior team wants them to.

The big mistake is not investing enough in PEOPLE! None of these strategies or systems can happen with people.

People properly trained to think differently in this "new normal". People trained to be future-minded, flexible, and able to find opportunities amid the ambiguity. People capable of performing well under uncertainty and high stress environments. 

What have you done to build resilient leaders who are capable of working in the "do more with less" era. Capable of inspiring the people they lead to give us that discretionary effort that separates the good from the great.

We think the answer lies at least in part with BLI's latest program - Energy Rich Leadership which will be included in the latest editions of the leadership academy for Garrett County, the AICPA, and others.

The Energy Rich Leadership Course focuses on individual leadership and organizational leadership and is based on three main modules - 1) Know yourself; 2) Manage yourself; 3) Lead yourself. Take a look at the presentation below.

BLI Energy Rich Leadership - Garrett County Lean Conference

View more presentations from Tom Hood

Here is more background on our Leadership Academy which has been developed for the AICPA and customized version in Maryland and Utah.

So next time you are thinking about implementing that new "strategy", ask yourself if you have invested in the PEOPLE you will need to make it happen. Don't make the BIG mistake.

More information on our people-first collaborative approach to strategic planning and our future forum process. 

Here is our recommended reading list from our leadership academy  Download Reading List Maryland Leadership Academy

Read the whitepaper on Leadership in 2023 from our leadership academy 2011 alumni here.

What keeps CFOs and finance pros up at night?

That was the topic at our Business and Industry Roundtable last week. The issues may surprise you.

Here are the top 10 trends and issues facing CFOs and finance professionals:

1. Communicating effectively (new tools vs. face-to-face)
2. Talent / training / succession planning
3. Economic environment
4. Generational / work-life balance
5. Supply chain / rising costs
6. Strategic planning in uncertainty
7. Financial literacy about business
8. Increasing government regulations
9. IT security / privacy
10. Multi-tasking and increasing workload

These were developed after hearing updates by Tom Foard (an AICPA Board of Directors member and past chair of the MACPA and the AICPA BIEC) and Joeslin Martin (chair of the MACPA's Business and Industry Committee). The group also came up with some brainstorms for MACPA to help them deal with this increasingly complex and uncertain environment.

Here were some of my favorite insights from this engaging dialogue:

• The CFO as CAO (Chief Alignment Officer): More and more, the CFO is being called on to make sure the organization is aligned around the business strategy and linkages to the business model, budget, etc.
• Financial profesisonals must go from bean counter to bean growers, helping the business manage both the top line and bottom lines.
• The CFO as a strategic partner driving the business. (Joselin brought in an article titled 10 Questions for Quest CFO Scott Davidson that highlights this trend.)
• Tom Foard highlighted the need for "success skills" like those the MACPA has developed through the Business Learning Institute -- communications. leadership, strategic and critical thinking, and more.

Here is a copy of the meeting notes:

MACPA Business & Industry Roundtable - August 2011

View more presentations from Tom Hood.

Here is our CPA Career Video

How are you dealing with this rapidly changing environment?

Leadership secrets of Napoleon

"First I get all of my men facing the same direction." - Napoleon Bonaparte when asked what the secret of his success was.

Easier said than done and even more critical in these times of permanent whitewater. This was my opening of my session at the DigitalNow Conference this past Saturday.

Despite all of the changes swirling around us, the fundamental job of leadership revolves around four main themes:

1. Engagement
2. Alignment
3. Commitment
4. Accountability

and the most important piece is Hope and Inspiration!

So, how can you accomplish these, while innovating, and when you don't know what is going to happen five minutes from now?

Our research & experience show four major themes:

1. Making your thinking visible to others
2. Leveraging the power of We (collaboration, participation and engaging stakeholders)
3. Finding your edges and pulling the core towards them
4. Making your strategy a continuous process and not episodic

If you do these right, you will begin to turn that "flywheel" of making your strategy real and allowing for innovation and change as you go.

We recommend taking a simple strategy framework and using across your multiple stakeholder groups (members/customers, board/leadership, and team members). It is like running around the "fireman's trampoline of days gone by" to keep the sides from dropping to the ground and catching all of your critical stakeholders.

Our response to this was to create our i2a: Insights to Action Strategic Planning(co-authored by BLI strategic partner, Gretchen Pisano of Sounding Board Ink) process which we have been using internally since 1999 and now using to help others.

These were the main points in my closing session at the DigitalNow Association Leadership Conference in Orlando last week.

Here is my preso:

DigitalNow 2011 - Leadership Takeaways - MACPA

View more presentations from Tom Hood

There are three strategy mapping tools we provided at the conference you can get here:

1. Our i2a: Big Ideas worksheet (go to this link, right sidebar and download - registration required)
2. Vision alignment grid (see page 31 in preso above - download from Slideshare)
3. Opportunity Portfolio (see page 32 in preso above - download from Slideshare)

Here is the one page strategy map we created for our parent organization, the Maryland Association of CPAs Download MACPA Strategy on a page and another we created for the CPA Horizons 2025 Project Download CPA Vision on a page.

and then there is the tweetbook Download DigitalNow tweetbook from the conference which has notes and reflections from three days of intense learning, re-kindled relationships, and inspirational thought leaders.

Based on the tweets, here are some of the most tweeted comments:

• Insight without action, one without the other is either useless or destructive
• Be present or absent, but not both
• A leaders job is to provide Hope & Inspiration
• Make your thinking visible to others in a way that they can easily grasp
• Engaged people perform better. Period.
• Sometimes you have to go slow to go fast

Some pictures from our own Bill Sheridan. Thanks to the whole DigitalNow community - you are my edge!

Also see our post on www.cpasuccess.com on Managing innovation is about...

So tell us how you are going to implement all of the great ideas from DigitalNow?

Top three strategies to thrive in the new normal

With all the uncertainty in the marketplace and the risks of a double-dip recession, I thought this was still very relevant. It is Succeeding in the New Economic Environment - Focus on Value, Opportunity & Speed from IBM's Institute for Business Value. In the study they have identified three major strategies for organizations to thrive amidst the economic upheaval. I think these make a lot of sense for all businesses, regardless of size. Here they are: 

1. They focused on value – Across the board, these companies did more with less, focused on their core offerings and had a comprehensive understanding of the needs and wants of their customers.
2. They exploited available opportunities – Winners captured share by taking advantage of weakened competitors, acquiring bargain-priced assets and focusing on growth markets. They invested in innovation and built future capabilities. And they changed their businesses through understanding their place in the new economic order, pioneering new approaches and partnerships, and taking advantage of new revenue models.
3. Winners acted with speed – They managed change, empowered their leaders, reduced risk and increased transparency.

Some very similar themes were featured by Harvard Business Review and covered in a prior post over at CPA Success, titled  How tp Beat the Odds and Roar Out of the Recession.

You can  Download Succeeding in the New Economic Environment to see the three strategic initiatives recommended under each of the three strategies - think of it as your "map" to navigate the whitewater economy (I used Mindmanager by Mindjet to create the map).

Related resources:

Look for upcoming learning opportunities about strategy and leadership in our BLI Learning Center

What can we learn from large corporations from CPA Success

Do you have a sustainable strategy?

[Editor's Note: This is guest post by BLI Strategic Partner, Gretchen Pisano, CEO of Sounding Board Ink. Gretchen is also the co-author of our i2a - Insights to Action Strategic Thinking System and co-developer of the Leadership Academy we developed for the AICPA.

This post came from a conversation we were having about creating a sustainable strategy and our recent tour of Zappos. The book Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh is one of our leadership recommended reads.]

"The problem with sustainability design today is the perception that it's pure mechanics - ...carbon impact, toxicity, and so on....(that's) wrong...objects that are lovable, that are well-integrated into culture, won't be trashed after five years, and so are sustainable.  The bottom line is that there is no replacement for emotional connection."
-Gadi Amit, NewDealDesign
designer of award winning technologies for Dell, Palm and Verizon
Top Honors 2010, Design Excellence Awards

Quoted from "Fast Company, 2010 Masters of Design, October 2010 issue"

This principle of sustainability is true for any thing - not just material design.  An organizational change effort that is well-integrated into the culture and that the employees are emotionally connected to is sustainable and will not be trashed easily; it is not just a question of mechanics, i.e., strategy design. 

In addition, when people are en masse they seek to connect, replicate and magnify each others' emotion, seeking a common connector.  Whatever emotion is most strongly present, negative or positive, is what will be exaggerated by the group concentration.  This is why positive, strength-based leadership styles make an exponential difference. 

Tony Hsieh, and the positive culture he has created at Zappos, is a great example of this.  The Zappos' Values were a set of values initially collaboratively created, then fine tuned by Hsieh himself, and then deeply integrated into the Zappos team through recruitment processes, on-boarding training, team activities, and organizational efforts (including values-based performance appraisals).  Employees are regularly asked to make them real for themselves and for their teams in a visual and visceral way so they feel them in addition to think about them.  This emotional connection is re-invigorated each time the teams "change their sets" which is 3-4 times a year.

One might question whether or not this emotional connection can be created in the absence of deeply meaningful work, however, Zappos sells shoes and without any face-to-face customer interaction.  The meaning is found in the how not the what.

For more on culture see our posts over at CPA Success:

Culture counts. For proof, take a drive with Zappos by Bill Sheridan

Service revolution: 'Bigger than just getting paid' by Bill Sheridan

"Click and Mortar" - The revolution is coming to learning

I started off my presentation with Eric Qualman's inspiring video, Social Media Revolution.

I said the Social Media Revolution is coming to learning and it is time to pay attention!

"Click and mortar; physical and virtual."

We said these words in 1999 when we started the Business Learning Institute in response to feedback from the national CPA Vision Project which identified the top 5 competencies required for the future.

Our vision was to create a "center for facilitating the development and sharing of competencies and strategic knowledge required for leadership in today's rapidly changing business environment...  

A center - Click and mortar; virtual and physical; classrooms and computer screens are envisioned for BLI. But there is more to the concept of a center. It is an identifiable "place" understood as much for the context it provides, the kind of people who are found there, and the opportunity it offers."

That statement rings even more true today. It was also the focus of my presentation on the State of Informal and Social Learning that I gave at the NASBA CPE Conference last week.

The world is changing rapidly and so must learning. The three big mega-trends of globalization, technology, and workforce demographics are fundamentally changing the business landscape. We are moving quickly from a command & control environment to one of connect & collaborate or from push to pull.

That means we need to re-think learning from this new perspective. Learning is about creating communities of learners in engaging learning environments that foster collaboration. Where the learners are co-creators of the content and teachers are trusted guides and where leaders provide the context, physical and virtual; click and mortar.

 How is this accomplished?

With all of the free (or nearly free) social media tools we have today. Twitter for sharing the conversation before, during and after the event. Social networks like facebook or linkedin for building community and connecting learners and teachers and even thought leaders and authors. Blogs for capturing post-event conversations and comments. Slideshare, Youtube, Flickr and more for sharing resources.

What is even more powerful is that all of these tools are easily accessible "on demand" right in the palm of their hand via smatphones, iPods, iPhones, etc. They can be used to stimulate thoughts among particpants before, during and after the "formal learning event."

Spacing out the learning and making it accessible for questions and answers greatly increases the effectiveness and retention rates so real "deep learning" can take place. That is why I think this is a revolution that needs to happen - viva la revolution!

Listen to other learning leaders (T. Rowe Price, Sun Microsystems, and Booz Allen Hamilton) from the ASTD 2009 International Conference about the impact of social and informal learning.

Social media tools are the best thing that could have happened to learning!

Check out my presentation and let me know what you think?

Check out the Tweet book from the conference here (via TwapperKepper)

State of Social & Informal Learning

View more presentations from Tom Hood

Here are some more posts on the state of learning in the new normal:

The experience curve just can't keep up anymore

Can Social Media help you Learn?

Virtual worlds: Can they save us all?

How to get a bigger bounce in performance?

Ever drop a rubber ball from waist high? You get what is called a "reflexive bounce".

Now imagine dropping that ball from the top of your arm's reach over your head. What happens?

You get a much bigger bounce.

That is what our research about high performance organizations shows. Like the momentum from lifting the ball higher before you drop it, investment in leadership, management, relationship building, consultative selling, etc., will lead to a higher reflexive bounce. Your organization will gain higher performance and beat your competition and achieve higher performance.

Pictured above is an example of a Competency Ladder for CPA Firms that we developed that shows the progression of a career and the "high performance" bounce from investing in the development of the right skills for the right job levels.

Notice the point where the "ball" hits the ground?

This is the critical "reflexive" point or the shift in direction as the team member moves from the world of technical competence (concrete and verifiable) to the new world of strategic and intangible. This is the point where the job view becomes much more outwardly focused. Where the job requires much work with and through others - a completely new skill set.

This is also the area where investing in development of your people makes the biggest "bounce".

Yet, our experience continues to show a reluctance to invest in these skills, which when combined with the retiring Boomer generation could result in disaster as there are less than one in three people in the next generation to replace those retiring leaders!

Add an era of rapid change and increasing complexity and you can see why skills like leadership, strategic thinking, engagement and inspiration are even more critical.

Consider these recent examples that support this case:

• A recent study by Grant Thornton identified "soft skills" as the number one issue (and need) identified by CFOs. The study said, "55% of respondents thought that the lack of employees with the necessary “soft skills” – communication, critical thinking and problem solving abilities – was the most significant challenge..."

• Tim Sanders talks about ROI of people development in his post Why People Are the Heart & Soul of the Information Age where he talks about research cited in the book Information Masters that identified ROI on several major categories in business and found the investment in people=related areas got the least investment, "2% investment in people, 1% on culture development and 1% on leader (training)..." and produced the most value, "this small batch of cash produced 50% of success in terms of productivity, ROI and customer value (emphasis added)." 

I think the conclusion from a recent article in CLO magazine titled, A Look Ahead: Learning in 2011 sums it up well, "One of the expected business results is increased net promoter scores from customers and candidates, demonstrating improved satisfaction. Happier, more engaged employees with the opportunity to increase their skills can have a direct impact on revenue and margins. In addition, offering learning solutions to customers as a way to engage their employees can generate top-line revenue for the organization and build customer relationships that lead to greater commitment."

Or to paraphrase Tom Peters, "Soft is HARD (results) and Hard is SOFT!" 

and as we like to say, the BLI - the Hard Edge of Soft Skills!

So what are you doing to get the "bigger bounce" in your team performance?

Download High Performance Competency Model

3 ways to capitalize on complexity

One thing everyone agrees with is that the world is getting more complex, everyday! You don't have to look far outside and inside the business world to see evidence of our rapidly changing and interdependent world. This brings up the next question, what can leaders do to navigate this increasing complexity?

Here are three ways you can capitalize on complexity (image is from IBM's report):

1. Embody creative leadership- Facing a world becoming dramatically more complex, it is interesting that CEOs selected creativity as the most important leadership attribute. Creative leaders invite disruptive innovation, encourage others to drop outdated approaches and take balanced risks. They are open-minded and inventive in expanding their management and communication styles, particularly to engage with a new generation of employees, partners and customers.
2. Reinvent customer relationships- In a massively interconnected world, CEOs prioritize customer intimacy as never before. Globalization, combined with dramatic increases in the availability of information, has exponentially expanded customers’ options. CEOs said that ongoing engagement and co-creation with customers produce differentiation. They consider the information explosion to be their greatest opportunity in developing deep customer insights.
3. Build operating dexterity- CEOs are revamping their operations to stay ready to act when opportunities or challenges arise. They simplify and sometimes mask complexity that is within their control and help customers do the same. Flexible cost structures and partnering capabilities allow them to rapidly scale up or down.

According to the IBM Global CEO study which is based on face-to-face interviews conducted with over 1,500 CEOs spanning 60 countries and 33 industries. IBM's CEO Sam Palmisano sums up his insights from the report as follows:

• The world’s private and public sector leaders believe that a rapid escalation of “complexity” is the biggest challenge confronting them.
• They expect it to continue — indeed, to accelerate — in the coming years.They are equally clear that their enterprises today are not equipped tocope effectively with this complexity in the global environment.
• Finally, they identify “creativity” as the single most important leadership competency for enterprises seeking a path through this complexity.

And I liked how HBR framed up the new leadership imperative around creativity in this post, Why are Creative Leaders So Rare?. See the post for the eight tenants of creative leadership.

"To thrive in this turbulent world, Dr Kalam argued that corporations as well as nations desperately need what he calls "creative leaders," a new breed of visionary and empathetic leaders who act less as commanders and more as coaches, less as managers and more as facilitators, and who foster self-respect rather that demanding respect."

Underlying all of this is the ability for individuals and organizations to COLLABORATE. In our leadership research here at BLI, we see a major shift from Command & Control to Connect & Collaborate. The IBM study is itself an example of connecting and collaborating with their customers (and potential customers) as they engage over a thousand global CEOs in face to face interviews about the future.

You can download the full report at this landing page (registration required to get the full report) which I highly recommend!

See a related IBM post titled, New Skills for New Times, Here's how to grow  by Bill Sheridan over at CPA Success 

Innovation = Creativity + Connection + Collaboration. Period.

What do you think?

 

Your formula for Success and Happiness in the New Year

As 2010 recedes into the past and we look ahead to 2011, it is a great time to pause and reflect. a Time to assess how you are doing against your personal "strategic plan".

Our big question for the new year is, are you happy with your success equation?

In our leadership development programs we spend some time working on the individual leadership skills and inevitably the question of "balance" and success always comes up.

What does Success really mean? How do you achieve it? What does it mean to be happy with your work and your family?

At BLI we think of it as a life well-lived and integrated very much like this quote from Forbes.com:

"In a life well lived, each succeeding day becomes better than the last. Each day, each year, each experience does not stand alone; it cannot be separated from what has happened before or what may happen after. Yesterday determines today, and today helps determine tomorrow.

- John Homer Miller

In our M2M-Mind to Matter Leadership programwe emphasize an integrated approach - your work life, personal life, and family life should be intentionally developed and focused on to achieve happiness and success. Instead of balance, we prefer an "integrated life."

The formula pictured above is used by BLI strategic partner, Gretchen Pisano to show the four elements of a successful, "happy" life:

1. Positive Emotion - satisfaction and pleasurable experiences
2. Relationships with Others - "the connected life"
3. Meaning & Purpose - belonging to something greater than yourself
4. Positive Accomplishments - your own measures both subjective and objective

They are shown as elements like a molecular equation and the "weight" is a total (16) that you must distribute among each element. The picture shows a "balanced" molecule, when the reality is that the weight per each element is often unequal. Each element contributes to well-being, is pursued for its own sake, and is defined and measured independently of the others.

The key to success is consciously managing the allocation of the "weight" you are giving to each element at any point in time and throughout your life.

For example, suppose you are totally focused on career accomplishments at the expense of the other three elements? That would look like Pe1 Ro1 Mp3 Pa11. This is the person who wakes up one day very successful but lacking in the other three elements and suddenly does not feel successful anymore.

What would happen if you were all about Positive Emotion (Pe)? This is often some form of addictive behavior when it is not balanced with the other elements.

The key is knowing when and why you are unbalancing the elements and then carefully reallocating the weight over time.

So, what does your success equation look like for last year? What should you be focusing on for the upcoming year? Do you need to reallocate or re-balance?

This work is comes from the latest research on "happiness" from Martin Seligman and the Positive Psychology Movement at UPennwhere Gretchen finished up her Master's in Applied Positive Psychology.

Look for our M2M: MInd to Matter workshop and our Leadership Academy programs to learn more. I hope some of our recent participants will post some of their thoughts below.

Wishing you a very Happy New Year in 2011! 

Leadership in the New Normal - it's about the network

In our work with leadership development and strategic planning we have been exploring what it takes to lead in the "new normal".

As the pace of change accelerates and complexity increases, it is harder for leaders to know everything they need to navigate this new "permanent whitewater" environment. To lead in the new normal is to be a Network Leader.

My colleague Gretchen Pisano and I define a network leader as the ability to impact multiple systems across traditional boundaries of authority, expertise or reputation. That is up, down, all around, and even outside the organization. 

The Network Leader embodies the new leadership principles of connect and collaborate abandoning the old model of command and control.

What does it take to be a Network Leader?

The five P's:

1. Perspective - thought leadership
2. Predictability - continuity especially to those who follow you
3. Presence - word of mouth and reputation
4. Portability of Ideas - easily carried messages that people "get"
5. Positivity - Link and build and providing hope and inspiration

For more on leadership in the new normal see our prior posts:

Our 'sister' blog at CPA Success  http://www.cpasuccess.com/leadership/

Our earlier post Is Leadership Changing?