​According to a recent Twitter post by Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Associates, the two most significant barriers to good decision making are your ego and your blind spots. He says, "that together, they make it difficult for you to objectively see what is true about you and your circumstances and to make the best possible decision by getting the most out of others." 

Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella, declared in 2014, the new game was to be a "learn-it-all" company rather than a "know-it-all" one. Nadella is quoted as saying, "A learn-it-all company makes the decision that every day will be a new day, with learning, exploring and experimenting as the norm."

That's' great advice. As a CEO or leader in the C-Suite, you do not need to be a know-it-all. 
Who says you must have all the answers. Is this an area where your ego can hold you back? 
Do you believe you should have all the answers? 

In the early days of my career, we chose what we thought was the best distribution channel to go to market. But after disappointing results, we ended up leapfrogging the norm of selling industrial products through industrial distribution channels and decided to sell to the end-user directly via direct marketing. 

Our founders had run successful businesses, but direct marketing was very different.
We were blessed with owners that highly supported growing, experimenting, and learning. Every day at work was a new adventure. Because we were new to building a direct marketing business, we reached out to gurus. We were in learn-it-all mode. 

We invited Don Libey, Al Ries, Laura Ries, Simon Synek, Robert Fritz, and many more to central PA. Throughout my 30+ years, we engaged multiple experts in all the critical areas of our business. 
It's funny to think back to the mid to late 1980s; there was no internet, no YouTube, no Google, so knowledge was obtained in the old fashion way. 

What benefits were we expecting? Initially, it may have been survival. Still, it was our wish that meeting with the gurus would accelerate our learning, minimize potential mistakes, and set us on a stable business growth trajectory. I believe having this growth mindset and desire to seek help, fueled our business success. But we had to admit (let go my ego) that leadership didn't have all the answers. Investing in consultants who had been down the road before and had engaged with many successful direct marketing companies, we believed, would accelerate our financial and people growth. 

When I reflect, I'm thankful for people who encouraged me and supported my learning. 

Ask yourself the following: 
Are you "out over your skis"?  
What experience, insight, & knowledge would be impactful?
Who are the gurus that could help?
Then go and do some research, choose a guru, and make the call. 

As business coaches, we believe that "as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company." 
The world is changing and changing rapidly. There is a lot to learn. 
So as a leader, don't let the ego get in your way. Don't be afraid to ask for help — model to your leadership team the value of being curious and humble. 
Learning is a never-ending journey.
So as Nadella said, " a learn-it-all beats a know-it-all." Which do you want to be? 

Don’t be blindsided.

As we finish out the year, most of us are spending at least a few hours in strategic planning sessions. They can be impactful, or they can be something we have to check off our to-do list. If your organization has some things that need to change, annual strategy sessions can be the beginning of launching your company into your best year ever. Spending some money on the correct format for the meeting is worth considering.

Meeting format means that your agenda and engagement, and even location and set-up need to have some thought put into them. For most C-suite leaders, the issues with creating and executing a strategy are that you need to engage in the meeting and plan. If you are also part of running the meeting, you lose out. Even if you try hard not to be, you are also often involved in office politics. You will deal with who gets to speak the most, whose opinion carries the most weight.  According to a study published on NCBI, “Facilitation is an approach that can be used by individual and team change agents to help build capacity and support practice change within organizational contexts.” If something needs to change in your organization, giving the job to an outside facilitator - you may win big.

More importantly, once the meeting is over, you need to implement it. That means accountability to the ideas you flushed out. The right facilitator is fully engaged - they will create a follow-up process to ensure that you get the biggest bang for your time and money.

Here are the top 6 reasons to spend some extra money on a facilitator.

1. Experience a proven process that works. The right facilitator will have a proven planning and execution process that's worked for thousands of other C-suite leaders worldwide.
2. Ensure that 100% of your team is engaged. With an internal facilitator, presenters lose the ability to participate fully in their organizational planning.
3. Receive completely unbiased coaching. The right facilitator has no desire to choose sides or get involved in office politics.
4. Bring in an outside perspective. The right facilitator will ask different and hard questions composed from a broad scope of research.
5. Introduce new concepts. As a result of a professional facilitators' continuous learning, you experience the best strategic planning concepts.
6. Make accountability part of the process. A facilitator should not be just a facilitator. The best will bring in a continued accountability process that includes touch-points and "homework."

​
If you're ready to make 2020 different, start with your strategic planning. And do it differently.
If you are ready to hire an outside facilitator - we are still booking for November and December meetings. Email today at doug.hershey@thoughtiq.com.

Are you profitable? That is the question. For most leaders, at a basic level profit means that there revenue covers their expenses with some dollars left over. Pretty basic. The idea of creating metrics based on profit is not as basic.
​
When we dig into profitability, some questions deserve exploring.

• Are your expenses valid?
• Are your salaries or hourly rates what they should be and are they appropriately allocated? This question is especially necessary for generational family businesses.
• How satisfied are you with your COGS?
• Do you understand Gross Profit versus Operating Profit versus Net Profit Margin?

Digging into these questions will undoubtedly create additional assessments.

To truly understand profitability, you will need to dig into your current COGS calculation. There is no reason to tie metrics to gross profit if you aren’t sure that your COGS is accurate. While you may be thinking, “we better know that” there are reasons why your COGS may not be correct. Ultimately it may come from:

• Inaccurate Reporting of Labor
• Erroneous Reporting of Expenses
• Incorrect Inventory Costs
• Lack of understanding of how a “task” is associated with an item or service sold (this is part of determining Operating Profit, which = Gross Profit – (Operating Costs, Including Selling and Administrative Expenses)

If you are pretty confident that your COGS and operating costs are accurate and allocated adequately, then you can use Gross Profit or even Operating Profit as a critical metric.

However, most of us need to dive into the above bullet points to create metrics that drive true profitability. This digging is where the rubber meets the road.

Let’s look at four leadership discussion points that you may be able to use to create meaningful KPI’s (that drive profitability). 

• Validate your data and update your technology. For many companies, especially those manufacturing or distributing products, inaccurate reporting is the result of living in a spreadsheet nightmare, or with a homegrown system. Bad data and outdated technology lead to inventory mismanagement and improper COGS calculations. If this is you, it may be time to consider a new ERP system. Focusing on your data accuracy combined with the selection and adoption of new technology can dramatically improve your decision making. The better your data, the better your results. If you can’t get two years of data quickly – it’s time to upgrade. 

 

• Competitive Analysis. It may be time to get to know your competitors. What are they charging? If they aren’t charging more- is there a way to explore how they may be creating a similar output with fewer expenses? Build leadership KPI’s on exploring the competitive landscape and implementing what you learn. 

 

• Reduce Expenses and report them accurately. I’ve seen change leadership put into place for nothing more than finding ways to reduce costs. Task your leadership team by looking at their departments and bringing potential waste to the table with lean and six sigma. This process usually involves decisions like outsourcing areas where you are weak and re-evaluating any complex expenses. The sales process is always an excellent place to start. Tie KPI’s to expense knowledge and reduction. 

 

• Focus on profit by segment. This type of focus can engage your segment leaders. Please encourage them to compete healthily and build the understanding of profit by segment into their KPI’s. When you segment your business by product or service lines to find out which areas of your business have the best revenue and net income – you begin to use your data for decision making. Healthy companies rarely keep divisions because they’ve always had them. If salaries make up a big part of overhead, you can allocate them based on how much time they spend on each segment.

There’s no doubt that building metrics and, or KPI’s based on driving profitability benefits everyone in an organization. However, starting or finding time for these problematic leadership conversations can be a monumental task. Having an outside professional drive the discussions can take off the internal pressure. 

Ready to start the conversations? Get in touch today at doug.hershey@thoughtiq.com​.

As a business owner/operator, you do your best to please your customers, satisfy their needs, and take steps to keep them loyal to your brand. However, how can you be sure that your efforts bring desired results? What are you doing to interact with them to gain the information you need to make intelligent decisions? Your clients experience with your brand and organization isn't something you should be guessing. Their opinions about the experience of your brand are invaluable. This information can help you to analyze and adjust your business practices. Don't leave customer feedback out of the equation.

There are a multitude of ways to leverage customer feedback, but first, let's explore how to collect that feedback and how to utilize the information once it's in your hands.

Having reliable customer satisfaction data is a crucial component in being able to address customer retention, evaluate your team's customer service efforts, improve products and services, and review other vital areas. Let's see how we can understand your customers journey through interacting with your products, services, and relationship management processes.What is customer feedback?
Top performing companies understand the role customer feedback plays in their business and strategies. So, what exactly is customer feedback? It's information regarding clients satisfaction or dissatisfaction with your products, services, and overall experience they have had with your company. Their feedback is data for improving customer experience and adjusting your planning and ultimate actions to their needs. This information is collected using surveys or direct communications (prompted feedback). 
You can also find opinions and reviews that your clients post online, utilize internet monitoring tools to understand user activity. (unprompted feedback) A combination of these and other methods are essential components in seeing the big picture of how your clients perceive your brand. Let's break it down a bit and focus in on some core reasons why you should be getting feedback from your customers:

• Customer feedback helps improve products and services

When you launch a new product, brand, or service to market, you probably have an idea about customer needs. You have more than likely conducted some market research that provided a snapshot of what potential customers would be willing to pay, as well as ways to ramp up or customize your goods or services to meet needs. Only after customers use your product or service can you uncover tangible successes, flaws, and can track and note their experience, aka the customer journey.
After that initial launch, needs and expectations will evolve with time. You can have the best widget in the industry, but this expertise will never be more valuable than customer insights. Keeping your eye on your customer's experience will serve you.

• Customer feedback helps you measure satisfaction

Customer satisfaction and loyalty gives insight into a company's financial performance. When broken down, it is directly linked to market share and higher (or lower!) revenue. 
There is a direct correlation between customer satisfaction and business performance. 
If you want to know you need to ask! A simple survey can reap many benefits! An accurate method to measure, manage, and improve customer satisfaction is determining your NPS (Net Promoter Score). This metric includes a straightforward question - "How likely are you to recommend us to a friend?"
A good time to ask this is after they purchase or when they contact customer service.
To do this effectively, you need a Net Promoter Score questionnaire or process and a scoring scale.
If you are using a scale of 1-10, then those that respond with a 9 or 10 are promoters, a 7-8 are passives, and a 0-6 are detractors.
Once you have your responses, you can add up your "promoters," "passives," and "detractors." For the NPS score – you subtract your detractors from your promoters. If 85 people responded and you had 60 promoters, 15 passives and 10 detractors, approximately 70% are promoters, 18% are passive, and 12% are detractors. When you subtract your detractors from your promoters, you get your NPS% of 58%. In this case your NPS = 58, which would be excellent. Some tools can calculate this for you – but it all starts with an excellent customer survey process.

• Collecting customer feedback shows how much you value their opinions

Reaching out to your clients for feedback communicates that their opinion matters to you. 
When you include them while shaping your business, they feel more connected to your company. Listening to their feedback helps you create stronger ties with them, and they with you. This engagement is the best way to gain valuable brand ambassadors who will spread positive word-of-mouth for you, which is a priceless commodity.

• Customer feedback helps you create the best customer experience in your vertical

Today's marketing requires creating a personal experience for individuals with your products, services, and brands. Keeping the focus on providing the best customer experience at every touch-point establishes brand loyalty. Moreover, the most effective way to give them a fantastic experience is by asking them what they like about your service and what should be improved.

• Customer feedback helps to improve customer retention

When you understand your customers level of satisfaction, you can intelligently evaluate the service you provide and uncover any areas that may need improvement. Hearing some negative commentary? Use it as an opportunity to address issues head-on! Keeping the flow of information keeps you in tune and on top of your game.

• Customer feedback is a reliable source for information to other consumers

Social media and the internet have paved the way consumers interact with brands. 
According to Inc. contributing writer, Craig Bloem, Research shows (click here to check out the numbers) that "91 percent of people regularly or occasionally read online reviews, and 84 percent trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. Opinions provided by other customers who have already used a product or service carry much weight!" 
Do you incorporate a review system into your strategy? 

Putting your buyers at the core of your business model and treating their feedback as a valuable source of data for decision making should be a crucial part of your overall strategy.  
Their pleasure in your service is your success, so give them a voice at the table and listen carefully! 

For a personal evaluation of how your organization can better utilize leadership tools, such as customer feedback, contact me today. ​

A sound strategy should produce sustainable and growing revenue. You have great execution when you have drama-free processes and industry-leading profitability.
This type of strategic planning separates strategic thinking from execution planning. Too often we do capture where we want to go, but we overlook clearly stating what needs to be done by when and by whom. Execution is often overlooked or placed on the back-burner.

 Why? 

 It's overwhelming.

 We suggest you start by breaking your strategic planning into bite-size pieces. Think first (strategic thinking 12+ months and longer), then execute (execution planning) — 12-month priorities broken into 4 quarters with key performance indicators. So often leaders come up with great ideas but fail to close the loop with clear execution plans.

Strategic thinking allows you to deliberate beyond your current daily action items or knee jerk reactions. Where do you want to be in 18 months, 3 years, and 10 years? Execution planning builds on that vision and allows you to focus on your 90-day "rocks" – those big, highly essential priorities that must be accomplished in the current quarter. When you combine these two components – you are well on your way to effective strategic planning.

Ready to get started? Let's incorporate 7 items that launch your strategic planning into the stratosphere.

 1. Form your strategic circle or council, if you will, of 3-5 people.

Start by committing to weekly meetings. Spend 1.5 - 2.0 hours together exploring trends and creating ideas around your future direction. Think innovatively. These ideation-only discussions are for learning and formulating. The tactics come later. Strategic councils give you opportunities to see and hear from your leadership circle in ways you just can't on a day to day basis. 

 2. Build the right team. 

Involve at least one outside industry expert on your strategic council, and select internal leaders that fit your outlined criteria.
Don't know how to build your criteria?
Pick those who are visionaries.
Pick those who are passionate about the future.
Pick those who challenge the status quo and value change.

 3. Think longer term.  

Begin to create a 3-year plan that includes critical financial targets. 
That plan should generate 12 months rolling-quarter milestones. Use those milestones to keep you on track. Build them into KPI's and other internal employee assessments. 
Create a 10-year inspirational and measurable goal that gets you and your employees excited. Do you want to give bonuses, stock options, a dream conference based on these goals? 

 4. Put it in writing. 

Your plan should be written in an easy to read one-page format. 
Think 6th-grade format. No, your employees aren't dumb – but digging through a large planning document isn't high on their priority lists. 
Post it throughout the organization.
Every employee should understand how their role fits into and ultimately contributes to the plan. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it should be a dynamic and ongoing process.

 5. Be sticklers on the execution of your plan.

Don't worry about employees getting sick of your plan. Too many great strategies fall by the wayside due to unwanted feedback. 
All your documentation, meetings, and internal communications should reiterate the 3-5 initiatives that live within your 12-month plan, along with your "Critical Number" for your most crucial yearly initiative. 
These initiatives become your internal language.

 6. Conduct quarterly meetings that drive accountability towards the achievement of quarterly "Rocks."

Break your 12-month strategy down in quarters. 
Engage everyone in the wins and losses. 
When we don't share with our employees, we create a "they/we" mentality that defeats the purpose. 
When an employee completes their rocks – we celebrate. 
When the company hits theirs, we celebrate bigger. 
It's a joint effort, and it's joint accountability that works. 
All employees should know their 90-day rocks and be able to answer whether they accomplished them or not.

 7. Consider hiring an outsider to facilitate your strategic planning meetings. 

​When an internal leader facilitates, they become caught up in the process of facilitating and not as engaged in innovation and thinking "future." An outside facilitator takes off the pressure. There is a cycle that can happen within an organization that leads to "if we do this –we create more work." The right executive coach can facilitate, create tasks, and lead accountability efforts. 

If you know the coach returns in 13 weeks – you tend to accomplish more. 

Ultimately, this allows your team to learn and use a repeatable process for consistency and effectiveness. One that you can use well into the future. 
 
 So, take this all into consideration, but know that effective strategic planning is a habit that happens weekly; it's not a one-time event.

Why not get a taste of what a clear long term vision combined with a great plan of execution can do for your organization? Schedule your FREE discovery call below. ​