One Percent Leadership™ — Investing in Your Community

How does a small- to mid-sized corporation make an enduring difference in its community? By unearthing a local cause and committing to produce THE difference.

My enterprise has been blessed in countless respects – magnificent clients, a pioneering industry, and increasing revenues and profits each year. Like scores of executives, I entertain calls and letters each month in relation to supporting this or that charity or community assemblage. One wants to lend a hand but, as a business owner, one also has restricted resources coupled with the aspiration to create a long-term difference (on balance, it’s in our blood).

Several years ago, my wife and her neighboring MOMS Club members required some support transporting donated food, toiletries, and everyday items to our local Settlement House, a community-based organization to be of assistance to disadvantaged families. We loaded up the SUV and down the hill we went.

At the Settlement House, my wife and now four year-old daughter helped me unpack the truck of the necessaries of life. As I stacked case after case of items from Sam’s Club, I made eye contact with a man who stood before me with his wife and four year-old daughter. For that instant in time, we were one and the same in all that matters most – two men doing their best to provide for their families. I immediately distinguished where my company could make THE difference in my community. For all of the $250 and $500 contributions made to numerous excellent charities, not any made such a difference as combining those amounts to repeatedly make THE difference for my home Settlement House. Rising Above Enterprises has made THE major difference since.

Where can your venture make THE difference in serving your community? Could you make financial arrangements so that three-fourths of your philanthropic resources go to one local charitable trust or foundation? There’s still room for some good quality mixed causes, but what a statement of leadership to truly distinguish THE difference your company can create. This year, settle on on a cause and make a colossal, if not THE, difference. You’ll observe more than your dollars and volunteer time at work; you will witness elite results from your focused efforts. That’s a resilient model of One Percent Leadership™.

One Percent Selling™ — Know Your Customer, Get the Sale

How many times have you finished a significant purchase personally or authorized a strategic possession for your business without trusting the salesperson behind the product or service? Chances are, your answer is nil. Features, advantages, and benefits are essential, but people – not specs – will constantly be the basis for determining who gets the sale.

Several years ago, I gave an opening keynote speech for a financial group in Montgomery, AL. In a letter of appreciation, my client commented on how far I went to become acquainted with more than the company’s fine points, but each senior executive in the room. Reading the company circular and knowing some up to date birthdays and anniversaries in the room did not hurt, either. The additional effort I made to be familiar with my client on a corporate and personal level, led to 13 spin-off engagements with the same client.

How much do you customers know you care? How well do you know your customers? Make a list of ten questions you will habitually ask your customers to get to know them. Who are their in-house corporate champions? What separates their best customers from their average customers? What major objective do they want to complete in twelve months? What are the prevalent obstacles in their way? How can you get them over that stumbling block? The list can go on; it’s up to you.

Make the effort to invest in your customer’s hearts as much as you do their minds and pocketbooks. You’ll find a great deal of success; the kind of success held in reserve for The Elite One Percent™.

E1 Living™ — October 2009

Where we are, and where we will be in life is a straight result of our decisions. It’s not chance, luck, or timing – it’s what we decided to do, or not do, that put us in the place we are today. Want that place to get better? To change? Here are ten actions you can take – right now – to move closer to the E1™ life waiting for you.

1. Let the good thoughts roll. For this moment, stop thinking about all of the “weaknesses” you’re supposed to be working on. All gain begins with accepting yourself: you are who you are. Make the most of you. Make a record of ten things you love about yourself. Each time you have an unconstructive, fix-that-weakness contemplation; substitute it with an affirmative thought from your list.
2. Get crystal clear. What, precisely, are you going to complete this morning? Today? This week? Now, stop planning for an instant. Until we master what we will do – accurately – in the present, we have no business planning for the future. How, specifically, do today’s and this week’s accomplishments fit into your monthly goals? You can achieve clarity on your life goals by first deciding what you will get done in the next several hours.
3. Stack your deck. List your three highest proficiencies and assess whether you are putting them to work for you. If you’re fantastic at sales, are you selling rather than managing? If you’re terrific with numbers, are you analyzing rather than shuffling files? If you’re the innovative one at your company, are you creatively destroying your business or competing for limited market share?
4. Be a control freak. Are there areas in life that you have let slide? Family? Health? Occupation? Wealth creation? Once you identify which aspect needs work, write out a single task for taking back control. Send your kids a text message that pizza is being delivered at 530 PM – be there! Enjoy fresh fruit instead of ice cream for dessert. Write an article for your industry’s leading magazine. Send half of this year’s raise straight to your 401(k).
5. Be extraordinary. Think of your best five clients. Do you know what they yearn for and could do with? Have you asked them? Can you help them pull it off? Write down the ways your business can help your clients prevail; update your clients of how you can help them; and, go get it done. Your extraordinary actions will go beyond your competitor’s run-of-the-mill dealings.
6. Do more by doing less. There is a huge difference between being busy and being productive. Have you ever worked one of those twelve-hour workdays and wondered, “What have I really done today?” Many distractions and few actions of discipline are typically to blame. What do you need to start doing? Send calls to voice mail for part of a day. Dare yourself to check email three times each day – over morning coffee, after lunch, and as you plan tomorrow. Hold meetings for decision-making only; leave the updates to Facebook and Twitter for the end of the day; and, spend less time on FarmVille and more time on what moves you onward.
7. Succeed on your terms, not others. Have you ever thought about success in life based on your description of success? What others want from us and what we want from ourselves are, characteristically, contrasting. This leads to dissatisfaction and tension. So, define success yourself and be gutsy enough to go get it. Skip “Guys Night Out,” record the game on your DVR, and roast S’mores out back with your family. Save money, borrow wisely, and focus on creating added cash flow rather than the most you can borrow. Eat right, exercise more, and look years younger. In short, look at how the majority classify success and run as far away from that description as you can. You’ll find that it’s tough to do what no one else will, but effortless to benefit from what no one else can.
8. Do some good in your community. A few years ago, my wife’s MOMS Club held a food drive to support our local Settlement House. I helped to deliver the food and necessaries to Settlement House. Unloading the goods, I looked at man with a daughter the same age as mine. The only genuine, fundamental difference between him and me? He needed a hand in life and I was helping to lend him and his family that hand. I found my cause for good in my neck-of-the-woods and committed considerable resources to aid, rather than a bunch of $10 checks to help an assortment of causes. Where can you and your business blessings make a giant difference in your community?
9. Be a model for your kids. Our kids observe – and model – us more directly than we believe. I learned this when Jayne, my wife, informed me that Molly, our daughter, has just finished lecturing “the damned cat.” Point taken, lesson learned. If we want our kids to be attracted to learning, they should see us reading books. If we want our kids to show consideration for others, we should advise them to get their ding-dong ditching finished before 830 PM. If we want our kids to appreciate that romance still exists in our marriage, we should hire sitters and enjoy a needed night out.
10. Spend time with your real friends. In excellent times, real friends rejoice with you. In hard-hitting times, real friends chip in where they’re needed. Odds are, you have three authentic friends – the ones who see you pleased, gloomy, enjoyable, angry, certain, and concerned. They still love you and what you add to their life. Call those three friends today; get together with them this month.

Do You Measure Up To Your Customers’ Expectations?

One of my more well-liked E1™ speaking programs is titled, “Beyond the Suggestion Box – How Your Customers Will Redesign Your Products, Services, Processes, and Business Model.” Fundamentally, the keynote speech is a dialogue about the course of engaging openly with your most loyal and fervent customers. It’s a very convincing, marketing catalyst that helps to enumerate the hard-to-pin-down links between satisfaction, loyalty, market share and profits. With personal and professional examples and familiarity from the likes of Starbucks, Hallmark, Harley-Davidson, LEGO, Umpqua Holdings, and more – it’s relatively apparent that the best companies (E1™ companies) listen to their customers officially and repeatedly.

Indeed, today, the CEO of a Nebraska-based bank client of mine advised me that a panel of the bank’s most loyal customers will be present at an offsite strategic planning session next month where I will speak and facilitate their meeting. Now that’s co-creating value with customers.

Just as significant as listening to your customers for what they desire in future products and services is listening to your customers for what they want you to measure in everyday transactions with your company. Your customers want to be involved in creating metrics that hold you accountable to them. Support is growing demonstrating how customers will not put up with the hurried and tiresome service that is all too common.

Earlier this year, we asked what measurements of service customers would like to observe companies quantify. From our findings, we designed an E1™ program to address – in hands-on detail – how to measure, manage, and implement each finding. Surprisingly, the metrics of efficiency – on-hold time, transaction time, calls dropped, etc – did not emerge. While the measurements of competence are – without doubt – important gauges, customers cared most about front line knowledge and first-hand resolutions. Moreover, the list of ten findings was more about slowing down than hurrying through a transaction, resulting in the type of service or experience that customers find objectionable.

So what matters need measurement, according to customers?

1. Have well-informed employees – 65%.
2. Attend to my needs on first contact – 64%.
3. Treat me like a valued customer – 62%.
4. Express desire to meet my needs – 54%.
5. Promptly retrieve my information – 49%.
6. Provide good value for my money – 49%.
7. Have well-mannered employees – 45%.
8. Be a company/brand I can depend on – 43%.
9. Deal with me practically – 38%.
10. Provide me with pertinent/custom-made service – 31%.
    

To achieve the most excellent appreciation of what customers truly experience, customer service managers should draw on an assortment of information resources: customer satisfaction surveys; net promoter scores; customer segment analyses; behavioral data; recorded customer-to-staff member conversations; and informal communications with customers. From this information, consistently gathered and evaluated, managers can embark on a plan to better recognize and lead the most important facets of the customer experience – those received directly from the customer.

In dissecting, designing, measuring, and improving your customer’s experience with your product or service, your company can transform its image and brand, making you more essential – more indispensable – to your customer’s life.  With clearly-defined and well-implemented front line leadership behaviors, the “how” of “wow” is delineated, allowing you to understand and demonstrate your distinctiveness in a jam-packed marketplace.  In a world where first-rate customer service is the expected norm, it’s time to abandon being just competitive and concentrate on becoming a required, central part of life.  Won’t your competitors wish they were you?

Corporate Boards – The Shortfall of Conventional Wisdom

Much like the conventional thoughts of how Board’s operate, there exist conventional ideas of who makes for a good Board member. The following list describes common beliefs (in bold) about the requirements to construct a high-quality Board and the regular practices of an elite Board.

1. Board members should be current or former CEOs. The skills required of a CEO are unlike than those for a Board member. CEOs must be hands-on and ready to execute strategy. Boards are more hands-off and oversee strategy. Further, only a small fraction of Board members regularly acquire education on governance expertise. While valuable to a Board, members who are external CEOs should receive schooling on successful governance skills.
2. The past CEO should be on the Board. Assuming the previous CEO resigned or retired on fine terms, some Boards keep or place the former CEO on the Board for historical reasons or stability of leadership. The principal challenge is the de facto passing on of leadership to the current CEO. Does the previous CEO’s presence help, hinder, or hurt the leadership influence of the existing CEO? Do the Board and former CEO ruminate on “how we did it in the past” versus what the present CEO believes should occur in the future?
3. Board members should be more seasoned. Many Boards are made up of members who have been on the Board for many years, sometimes many decades. While age is not a limiting factor for serving on the Board, does your Board adequately represent the demographics of your customer base? Some Boards may press to add greater numbers of youth to the Board as a balance measure. Does this take away from experience? The key is to discuss, as a Board, how your ideal Board might look, in a demographic sense. Then, over time, work to nominate or appoint Directors who fit that need.
4. Being financially invested in the company is a reliable qualification. Equity involvement does not always equal complete commitment. A very large segment of Board members for Fortune 500 companies hold very small proportion of their investable assets in the stock of the company they serve as a director. And while using your company’s products or services extensively demonstrates consumer commitment, it doesn’t mean much in terms of governance skills.
5. Regular Board meeting attendance equals appropriate governance. A popular motivational phrase might read, “99 percent of life is showing up,” but that is not the case as a measurement of successful Board habits and skills. Being physically present is extremely important; however, how one engages during a Board meeting is more essential.
6. Large Boards and committees make for better governance. A large number of Board members may add defense for a diverse Board argument, but it usually ends up as a case study for too many “hands in the pot.” The optimal size for most Boards is seven since it is large enough for an assortment of viewpoints, yet small enough to manage properly. Boards larger than seven in number work best when each Board member is wholly engaged and committed to following the tasks where the Board wants most involvement.
7. Independence makes for best governance. In principle, the lion’s shares of all Boards are independent. The accountants and examiners can verify it in their annual reports. However, because a Board is independent does not make that Board engaged and effective. Many of the publicly-traded company disasters of the past decade were businesses with an, officially, independent Board. Only the habits of progressive, engaged Boards make for the best levels of governance.