leadership – Bottom Line Top Line

March 11, 2019March 11, 2019

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.

Mentions

Connect with Carol, Jol and Chris on LinkedIn.

February 18, 2019February 25, 2019

018 Roles of the CEO

Welcome to the Bottom Line Top Line Podcast with Carol Bartlett, Jol Hunter, and Chris Spurvey.

This week on the podcast, we dive into the roles of the CEO and the key areas on which the CEO should focus to ensure the overall success of the organization. We also talk about the difference between a CEO and a founder, succession planning, leadership challenges, key relationships CEOs should nurture, and so much more.

To learn more about the role of the CEO and get some insights about leadership, check out the full episode!

To download the document, scroll to the bottom of these show notes and fill in the form.

Ensuring That Key Processes Are Working

The keyword is ensure—not do. Disciplined business processes are foundational to the organization’s performance.

Indeed, the set of business processes can be thought of as the engine of the organization. Ensuring that those processes are working may be simply a matter of determining and monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs). Regardless, the CEO must ensure that the processes are working and leading the organization toward achievement of its goals.

Identifying Key Relationships

Think of what relationships need to be managed the CEO must manage. Relationships are key in any size organization. In smaller organizations, a larger proportion of key relationships are managed exclusively by the CEO.

I encourage CEOs to think about those key relationships and assess whether they’re proactively managing them.

The more proactive they are in maintaining those relationships, the smoother things go when they encounter hiccups and the fewer hiccups there will be.

When you’ve shown what you can do for the client, your next offering to them can be of higher value and price.

The Importance of Building Solid Relationships

We have said many times that all businesses revenue comes from relationships. When you have a solid relationship with a client, you can be honest with that client and retain the business even when things aren’t going smoothly. And things don’t always go smoothly.

Strong relationships are critical for the long-term survival of any business.

To learn more about these topics, please listen to the episode.

Mentions

Connect with Carol, Jol and Chris on LinkedIn.

November 29, 2018November 29, 2018

008 Customer Intimacy

Welcome to the Bottom Line Top Line Podcast with Carol Bartlett, Jol Hunter, and Chris Spurvey.

This week on the podcast, we take a deep dive into one of the three competitive strategies for market leadership, as mentioned in the book The Discipline of Market Leaders: customer intimacy.

Chris, Jol, and Carol talk about the types of conversations you can have with your customers to enable you to learn their pain points, the opportunities that come from having an intimate relationship with your customers, and the importance of having an attitude of service.

We hope you enjoy this episode!

To download the document, scroll to the bottom of these show notes and fill in the form.

Getting into the Lives of Your Customers

Working at a Fortune 500 company, I learned how they get into the lives of their customers. For the business to be successful, we had to do that.

Scale is important. How much do you know about your customer? How many touch points do you have? How well do you know the customer’s business? What are its pain points? Businesses thrive on knowing as much as possible about their customers.

Customer Intimacy for Small Organizations

The organizations that I’ve worked with have many, many customers. In retail, you can’t contact all of your customers.

But you should have touch points for the customers who buy your products on a regular basis. You can automate some of that contact. Regardless, touch points can give you an understanding of where your sales are coming from and how you can increase them. Where is your market share coming from? What industry is giving you most of your customers? Do you know that industry extremely well, or do you need to learn more about its pain points?

A Structure for Diagnostic Conversations with Your Customers

As the relationship between you and your customer develops, a broader range of issues are introduced into the conversation. In this way, your opportunities to serve that customer grow. And so do your sales opportunities.

But how can you cultivate such a relationship? Talk about the aspirations of the person and the aspirations of the person’s business so that you can gather information and better understand the situation. Help him or her to articulate goals and then think through strategies and tactics for reaching those goals. Clearly articulate what is going well and what is not going so well. Out of a conversation like that, issues pop. The issues may be strictly business ones or may be related to personal matters. When the issues have been identified, the opportunities will flow.

To learn more about these topics, please listen to the episode.

Mentions

Connect with Carol, Jol and Chris on LinkedIn.

The Discipline of Market Leaders (book) by Michael Treacy & Fred Wiersema

November 8, 2018November 8, 2018

005 The Importance of Business Processes

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.

Mentions

Connect with Carol, Jol and Chris on LinkedIn.

Grit by Angela Duckworth (book)

High Performance Through Process Excellence by Mathias Kirchmer (book)

October 31, 2018November 2, 2018

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.

Mentions

Connect with Carol, Jol and Chris on LinkedIn.

The Courage to be Disliked (book) by Ichiro Kishimi & Fumitake Koga