021 Evaluating Methods of Training Employees and Business Leaders
Welcome to the Bottom Line Top Line Podcast with Carol Bartlett, Jol Hunter, and Chris Spurvey.
This week, we talk about ways we can train our employees and ensure their long-term development. These methods include courses, conferences, conventions, coaching, and mentorship. We also talk about how effective these methods can be in improving our employees and our businesses.
The goal is to help you evaluate where you should allocate your resources, including your time, to help your employees and your business.
Listen to the full episode!
To download the document, scroll to the bottom of these show
notes and fill in the form.
Why Conferences May Not Be Helpful
I suspect we’ve all been guilty of this: We go away to a conference on a Thursday and Friday and get excited and inspired. But then, by 10 o’clock on Monday morning, the realities of the world have kicked in and we’re trying to catch up on the things that we didn’t do while we were at the conference. All of the learning and excitement goes out the window and we sink back into our familiar ways.
The issue isn’t that that the conference was poorly done—that the content wasn’t relevant or presented well. The conference may have been wonderful. But conferences don’t include mechanisms to help you apply their content in the workplace. Most people have fun at conferences but don’t get much career benefit from them.
Ensuring That Development Programs Contribute to Employee Growth
For long-term growth, I think it will be helpful to learn about how adults learn things. The second thing would be supplementing those programs with mentorship, executive coaching, and by giving feedback—and doing them effectively.
When you take a course, keep in mind the aspects of the course that inspire you and that you think are relevant. Talk about those aspects with your employees, focusing on how they can be applied, and then build those aspects into an ongoing supportive process with accountability.
Benefits of Taking a Course Along With Your Employees
Taking a course along with your employees can be beneficial if the course is consistent with your organization’s strategy.
Having taken the same course, you and your employees can work together to find ways to apply what you learn from the course. The key is to set up an ongoing process that includes accountability so that you can evaluate whether you have applied what you’ve learned and whether the learning is still relevant to your business and its goals. With such processes in place, we and our businesses can be successful.
To learn more about these topics, please listen to the episode.
Welcome to the Bottom Line Top Line Podcast with Carol Bartlett, Jol Hunter, and Chris Spurvey.
This week on the podcast, Chris, Jol and Carol talk about the profit formula, what it means to the client, and the effects of cost-cutting on the business.
To download the document, scroll to the bottom of these show
notes and fill in the form.
A Mathematical Perspective on Business
One way of looking at your business is as the mathematical formula for creating profit. If you think about the profit formula from a mathematical point of view and then think about the elements of the formula, you can figure out what you can do to make the result what you want.
Purpose of Increasing the Profit Margins
Every strategy in every business, if you peel it all the way back, is designed to do one of two things: increase payments to the company or decrease payments out of the company.
One way or another—and it may be a long route— that’s what businesses are designed to do.
Low-Margin Businesses vs. High-Margin Businesses
In low-margin businesses, processes are usually very well developed and look at the cents and the seconds. These businesses set their units of measurement so that everybody in the company is very aware that it takes a lot of volume to make any amount of profit.
The oil & gas industry usually is a very high-margin business. But during the economic downturn we had to look at every single expense line item. The problem is that we had to define the cause of each expense, so it was no longer good enough to look at, for example, the office supplies category. Instead, we had to look at the detail of pens, paper, etc. and figure out what we could eliminate. In other words, looking at the expense category was no longer sufficient. We had to break it down further than that. And that required discipline.
To learn more about these topics, please listen to the episode.
Welcome to the Bottom Line Top Line Podcast with Carol Bartlett, Jol Hunter, and Chris Spurvey.
In this episode, we talk about the importance of processes and how to identify and implement them in your business.
To download the document, scroll to the bottom of these show
notes and fill in the form.
Business Processes in a Fortune 500 Company
When you grow up in a Fortune 500 company,everything is driven by process and discipline. It’s recorded, and there are metrics,and you live and die by the quarter.
The oil & gas industry does this
superbly. But process is one of the things that every organization looks at and
struggles with. Even Fortune 500 companies struggle to make themselves more
efficient or more profitable. But when you translate that and step out—as Carol
did—from a publicly traded company to a private company, it changes a little.
I think private companies have the most
opportunity to grow in this area. Putting into place strong processes and
getting people to buy into those process is, ultimately, where we’re going to
see profits grow.
Carol’s Definition of a Process
Process, to me, is where you say whatyou’re going to do and then you do that.
If you can record that and do it systematically,
it becomes a really good communication tool. But process isn’t so much about
being able to respond on the fly or be responsive to the industry’s needs. It’s
more a communication tool that enables everyone to know what one another is
doing and makes task progress measurable. And things that are measured get
done.
Identifying Your Processes
You
already have processes. You may not have thought of the things you do in terms
of a process, but you are doing things. You’re doing things this week that are
similar to the things you’ll do next week. The question is: Are you doing things
in the most organized, efficient way? Can you streamline and focus what you’re
doing, eliminating tasks that aren’t adding value or helping your business to perform
and adding or expanding tasks that are more important to your business?
To learn more about these topics, please listen to the episode.
004 Building a Strong Leadership Team in Your Organization
Welcome to the Bottom Line Top Line Podcast with Carol Bartlett, Jol Hunter, and Chris Spurvey.
In the first five episodes of this show, we take a deep dive into a manifesto that Jol Hunter wrote a number of years ago about his 500 or so visits with leaders of organizations throughout Atlantic Canada, the rest of Canada, and parts of the United States.
In that manifesto, Jol Hunter describes the four factors that cause that gap between businesses’ current performance and potential performance: CEO time, process discipline, relationships as the source of all revenue, and members of the senior leadership team being on the same page.
To download the document, scroll to the bottom of these show
notes and fill in the form.
In this episode, Chris, Carol, and Jol
discuss diagnosing problems within teams, having a third party do the diagnosis,
and what makes a well-functioning team.
If you have feedback on the show, by all
means reach out to any of us. Enjoy!
The Four Factors That Cause the Gap Between Actual Performance and Potential Performance
I’ve come to the conclusion that,
generally speaking, there’s a gap between our actual performance and our
potential performance as businesspeople and that this gap is caused by four factors.
When we work on these four factors, we close the gap. That’s what we’ve been
working through in this podcast.
The first factor is how the CEO of the
organization invests his or her time. This is the most significant determinant
of the business’s success.
The second factor is the discipline and
organization that the CEO brings to the business. A lot of business is far from
glamorous. It’s just doing the little things right, again and again. When I
asked business owners to rate the discipline and organization in their businesses,
on a scale of one to ten, the most common answer was three, so obviously
there’s room for improvement.
The third factor is the lack of deliberateprocesses in building and nurturing relationships. I’ve come to the conclusionthat all revenue in business comes from and grows due to relationships;therefore, we need to put constant effort into relationships even when wedescribe ourselves as busy.
The fourth factor is the degree to which
leadership teams are on the same page and working together rather than putting their
energy into different efforts or, worse, into counterproductive efforts.
Ingredients of a Well-Functioning Team
Be upfront about your integrity, that you’d
never say anything that would jeopardize them or their businesses. And, if you
can establish that very early on, every time you have a conversation it will be
open and honest.
Getting Everyone on the Same Page
Leadership is critical. This leads us back to the most significant determinant of the business’s success: how the CEO invests his or her time. That’s the first point.
The second point, which comes out of that, is the diagnosis process for determining how we can best operate together. There are various methods that you can use for doing that and for having honest conversations about it.
Welcome to the Bottom Line Top Line Podcast with Carol Bartlett, Jol Hunter, and Chris Spurvey.
In the first five episodes of this show, we take a deep dive into a manifesto that Jol Hunter wrote a number of years ago about his 500 or so visits with leaders of organizations throughout Atlantic Canada, the rest of Canada, and parts of the United States.
In that manifesto, Jol Hunter describes the four factors that cause that gap between businesses’ current performance and potential performance: CEO time, process discipline, relationships as the source of all revenue, and members of the senior leadership team being on the same page.
To download the document, scroll to the bottom of these show
notes and fill in the form.
In the previous episodes of this podcast, we
discussed the four underlying reasons that we don’t fulfill our potential and
our businesses’ potential. So far, we’ve focused on being on the same page with
our teams.
This week, we take a deep dive into building relationships with clientele as a way of growing revenue. We talk about having diagnostic conversations that build strong relationships, and we explore the six types of questions you should ask during these conversations.
You’ll gain a lot of value from listening
closely to the episode while following along with these notes.
If you have feedback on the show, by all
means reach out to any of us. Enjoy!
What Makes a Successful CEO
A diagnostic conversation is built on the premise that, if you go to a doctor’s office, the doctor doesn’t open his or her big book of pills and ask, “Which one would you like?”
Instead, the doctor asks a series of
questions in order to better understand the circumstances—what is going well and
what isn’t—so that together you can decide how to deal with the situation.
That’s a diagnostic conversation.
Trust
Trust is critical. All three of us (Carol, Jol, and Chris) are in businesses in which people open up to us in very personal ways. And it’s not a matter of us meeting a potential client and learning that everything is roses. It’s not usually like that.
But if we ask the six types of questions,
people open up. They say, “Hey, this is what I’m doing wrong” or “This is
what’s not going right.” They open up about their sales processes or their
competition or whatever else. Confidentiality is vital to these diagnostic
conversations and to the relationships that you’re building with these people,
because they’re relaying things that are deeply personal to their organizations.
It’s vital for us to maintain confidentiality and never ever mention anything out
of context. That’s how we earn respect.
Be upfront about your integrity, that you’d
never say anything that would jeopardize them or their businesses. And, if you
can establish that very early on, every time you have a conversation it will be
open and honest.
Best Practices for Tracking and Maintaining Relationships
There are oodles of CRM products that can
help you track and maintain your relationships.
The key is to be deliberate and forward-thinking
and set aside time to work at whatever system you choose. That way you’ll know
when you’ve lost touch and can more easily decide on your next move.
To learn more about these topics, listen
to the episode.
Welcome to the Bottom Line Top Line Podcast with Carol Bartlett, Jol Hunter, and Chris Spurvey.
In the first five episodes of this show, we take a deep dive into a manifesto that Jol Hunter wrote a number of years ago about his 500 or so visits with leaders of organizations throughout Atlantic Canada, the rest of Canada, and parts of the United States.
In that manifesto, Jol Hunter describes the four factors that cause that gap between businesses’ current performance and potential performance: CEO time, process discipline, relationships as the source of all revenue, and members of the senior leadership team being on the same page.
To download the document, scroll to the bottom of these show
notes and fill in the form.
Today we talk in detail about the first point – the importance of CEO time and the four areas successful CEOs invest their time in.
We also discuss these topics:
CEO personality types
CEO as salesperson
what makes a successful CEO
Is humility important for a
CEO?
You’ll
gain a lot of value from listening closely to the show while following along with
these notes.
If you
have feedback on the show, by all means reach out to any of us. Enjoy!
If you have feedback on the show, by all means, reach out to any
of us. Enjoy!
What Makes a Successful CEO
There are certain characteristics that make successful CEOs. Certainly, the ones that build a good team around them and depend upon that team—and how they do that—is one of the most effective things that they can do.
We always say, ‘Hire people that are smarter than
you.’ Not everybody does that. Not everybody’s comfortable in doing it.
I find the quickness of CEOs in their execution is
very telling.
If you sit with business owners and you are able to
articulate a savings of however much per year if they just modify this one
process according to corporate performance and best practices, and they’re
like, ‘Well, we’ll think about it,’. . . A very successful CEO won’t. That will
be executed in the afternoon.
The characteristics of timing, who they [the CEOs]
put around them, and the gratitude that they exhibit are very telling. When you
walk into a room, you know who you’re dealing with.
CEO Time
The most successful CEOs tend to invest their time in four areas. However, not all of their time will necessarily be characterized as CEO time. A CEO may have multiple hats that they’re wearing, but some portion of their time—and, in larger organizations, perhaps 100% of their time—could be described as CEO time.
He may be the VP of Production as well, so he’ll be doing some time in production. However, successful CEOs also have some very dedicated CEO time, be it part-time or full-time. Inside that, they seem to invest their time in four distinct areas in order to ensure the success of the organization.
Four Areas Successful CEOs Invest Time In
1. Ensuring that the business is ready for tomorrow. This involves two aspects:
Looking out the front window, deliberately, to seewhat’s coming
Doing what needs to be done to be ready for what’s coming
CEOs must gauge the market, stay on top of trends in
the industry, connect with other business leaders, and ensure that their organizations
are doing what needs to be done to prepare for the future.
2. Guarding the business’s values. An organization’s values are the agreed behaviors by its member which creates the organization’s reputation.
A CEO is the guardian of the organization’s reputation.
He or she needs to understand how employees, customers, and members of the
community experience the organization, review whether those experiences are
aligned with the organization’s values, and then make adjustments accordingly.
001 Four Factors That Cause the Gap Between Actual and Potential Performance
Welcome to the Bottom Line Top Line Podcast with Carol Bartlett, Jol Hunter, and Chris Spurvey.
Carol Bartlett is a
senior level executive with broad experience in Oil and Gas and Transportation
industries managing $200M+ annually in sales.
Using a combination of proven techniques, Ms.
Bartlett focuses on growth results. She bridges theoretical business principles
and philosophies to strategic actions that give profitable results. Deploying
integrated proven strategies, she adds value to companies looking for sales
growth and increase in profits.
Jol Hunter has spent
a lot of portion of time as a partner with the national firm of chartered
accountants and business advisors. In the last few years, he has been a
business owner of a fairly substantial Atlantic Canadian business with three other gentlemen, and is currently
experiencing the joys and challenges of ownership and operation of a medium-sized
business.
Chris Spurvey spearheaded the growth of Plato
Consulting to
the point it was acquired by one of the largest management consulting firms in
the world (KPMG). In the process, he sold over $300 million in consulting
services.
Following the
acquisition, Chris turned his focus to helping other “non-sales sellers” find a
way to grow their revenue in a consistent, stress-free manner. He published It’s
Time to Sell: Cultivating the Sales Mindset, founded Make Sales
a Habit University and today is a growth advisor to business owners and their management
teams throughout the world.
The Manifesto
In the first five episodes of the show, we deep dived into a manifesto that Jol Hunter had written a number of years back, following his 500 or so visits with leaderships of organizations throughout Atlantic Canada, the rest of Canada and some in the United States.
In the manifesto, he talked about the four factors/themes that cause that gap
between current and potential performance in businesses.
In this episode we gave an overview of the manifesto that you can download when you scroll down to the bottom of the show notes. And in the next episodes we talk about each point in detail.
There’s a lot of value to gain a from listening and listening closely, and also following along the document. You’ll find some excerpts from the show below.
If you have feedback on the show, by all means, reach out to any
of us. Enjoy!
Growing Business
Manifesto
So over a period of 4 years I had the immense
privilege of visiting approximately 600 businesses across Canada. A little
while into that journey I clued into the fabulous privilege that was and in
most cases included very intimate conversations with the owners of those
businesses.
After a little while I started to pay more attention
to the themes that were coming out of those conversations.
I essentially came to the conclusion that, collectively, we are not performing to our potential. To put more positively, there’s a bunch more upside potential in our businesses, and the gap between our current performance and potential performance was essentially wrapped up in four themes/areas that perhaps if there was more attention paid to them, that gap would close.
Digging into the findings
Let’s think in terms of four creators of a gap between
actual performance and potential performance.
Of course, not all of these exist everywhere. And this isn’t the only potential four gaps, but it’s four creators of the gap that seem to recur, and therefore perhaps it’s helpful for folks to be thinking about them.
So number one is all wrapped up in how the CEO invests his or her
time in the business.
It’s my belief that the single biggest determinant of how a business or an organization will perform rests around the behavior of the CEO, the nature of investments the CEO makes with his or her time, and the shadow culture created by the behavior and attitude of that CEO.
So it really behooves the CEO to be thinking in
terms of what is the best use of my time, how do I apply it? What’s the culture
I want to create through that time? And really thinking about that
strategically.
There’s a couple of
offshoots to that. One is, in small businesses a person
may not be a full-time CEO. They may be a CEO and also a production manager, or
a CEO and something else. However, a portion of their time is CEO time and that
CEO time needs to be thought through very strategically.
The second thing that flows out of it is many CEOs have not really thought it through and they’ve just been tossed hither and yon by whatever comes along, versus thinking deliberately about being in control of it – both the nature of the time and the culture they create through how they interact through various things.
That was the first gap creator that rose to the surface through these conversations.
Averages of how we spend time
We are the average of what we spend time on as an
accumulation of every day, that wraps up into a week, that wraps up into a
month, that wraps up into a year.
It’s everything from what we eat, how we exercise,
how we learn and who we interact with.
If we can average up the quality of that time then we lift the whole organization with us.
I think that can be done very simply by doing one thing at a time. I don’t even think that it has to be a dramatic change. I’ve just been experimenting in my own life by just adding one extra thing and the compounding effect of that is just amazing.
When you look at the averages of that coming out, I
think it would be phenomenal to implement that throughout an organization. It
would really be phenomenal if we implement that in the organization.
Looking at organizational performance you would want to take it as a whole but if you’re just looking at just one thing and incrementally effecting that everyday then you would have huge effect over the year. People will notice that there’s something different about the organization and that will start to have a compound effect on their time and performance.
