One Percent™ Leadership – 52 Management Competencies

Sometimes, three hours on a flight with spotty internet service is a good thing. It allowed me to start and finish Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching, and Keeping the Best People. In the text is a list of management competencies – 52 in all. Gee – 52 competencies, 52 weeks in a year – sounds like the stuff that make up lists and to-do action items. Or, perhaps, it’s a checklist of sorts to continue growing as One Percent™ Leaders.

Here’s a straightforward way to build our proficiencies as leaders. Print, sync, cut, copy, paste – your call – the list below. Look it over. Think it over. Each week, pick a competency that could use an upgrade. Then, determine one simple change, task, or habit that builds your success in that competency. When the week is done, you’ll see progress – and new skills to build upon. Check that competency off this list and move along. This time next year, your One Percent™ Leadership skills will secure your spot as an A-Player, a chief spotlight of this book.

Enjoy your One Percent™ Results.

Intellectual Competencies

1. Intelligence.
2. Analysis skills.
3. Judgment.
4. Decision-making.
5. Conceptual ability.
6. Creativity.
7. Strategic skills.
8. Pragmatism.
9. Risk-taking.
10. Leading edge.
11. Education.
12. Experience.
13. Track record.

Personal Competencies

1. Integrity.
2. Resourcefulness.
3. Organization/planning.
4. Excellence.
5. Independence.
6. Stress management.
7. Self-awareness.
8. Adaptability.

Interpersonal Competencies

1. First impression.
2. Likability.
3. Listening.
4. Customer focus.
5. Team player.
6. Assertiveness.
7. Oral communication.
8. Written communication.
9. Political savvy.
10. Negotiation.
11. Persuasion.

Management Competencies

1. Selecting A-Players.
2. Coaching.
3. Goal-setting.
4. Empowerment.
5. Accountability.
6. Re-deploying B- and C-Players.
7. Team-building.
8. Diversity.
9. Running meetings.

Leadership Competencies

1. Vision.
2. Change leadership.
3. Inspiring.
4. “Followership.”
5. Conflict management.

Motivational Competencies

1. Energy.
2. Passion.
3. Ambition.
4. Compatibility of needs.
5. Balance in life.
6. Tenacity.

One Percent™ Sales – The C-Level Meeting

Congratulations, you secured the sales/consultation/lobbying meeting with the C-level leader. You garnered the leader’s curiosity, hence the meeting. Now, it’s time to acquire his or her attention, engage his or her intellect, and begin a successful professional partnership. It’s time to be the one who succeeds when 99 others settle. Here’s your checklist for the meeting.

1. Prepare. It’s not enough to be just prepared with knowledge of your information. Knowing your “stuff” is Sales 101. Knowing the other party’s “stuff” is graduate level. Review their website. Read their newsletters. Quote their leaders. Follow their tweets. Find ways to understand a day in their lives.
2. Be confident. The C-level leader did not open up his or her schedule out of the goodness of his or her heart. You had something fine to offer. You suggested the meeting. Take that identical level of confidence to the get-together.
3. Be thankful. Not everyone gets the meeting. Demonstrate honor, present respect, and thank him or her for the meeting – twice (to begin and close).
4. Build trust. If your meeting is about making a sale, the C-level leader sees an expense and cash outflow. If your meeting is about improving the C-level leader’s sales, operations, influence, and more – the C-level leader sees an asset and business multiplier. Be the latter by building trust.
5. Ask and listen. Relevant, insightful questions will give you the information you need to make suitable recommendations. You can plan many of these questions in your research from # 1 above.
   
6. Trust your gut. If the meeting is going well, you’ll know. And, if the meeting has run its course, you’ll know. Move in the direction you both want to go; and, sometimes, it may be your respective ways.
7. Be courageous. Shoot straight with the C-level leader. If you can help grow revenue, lay out the plan. If you can build more commitment, show the strategy. Now is not the time for figuring out a way to make it all work; it’s time to prove your worth and begin helping the C-level leader prove his or her worth, as well.
8. Present a big idea. C-level leaders like C-level ideas. How can you help to double sales? How can you help to dominate market share? How can you help to sway conventional thinking? If you were the C-level leader, what big idea would – intentionally – keep you up at night? Bring that idea to the meeting.
9. Know your close, but don’t recite your close. Ever rolled your eyes when someone is, clearly, reading from a script? We all have. Know what you want to say (and sometimes it comes to you in the meeting) and make your statement part of your personality. You’ll be much more genuine – and trusted.
10. Play to win. Okay, football fans – Prevent Defense does what? Prevents you from winning, they say. You will not be good by deciding not to be bad. You will not succeed by deciding not to fail. And you will not win by deciding not to lose. You will be good when you decide to be good. You will succeed when you decide to succeed. And, you will win when you decide to win.

 

One Percent™ Service – Falling for Fallon

Last week, I was prepared to title this post, “Barnes & Noble is Stealing My Money.”

To put it briefly:

Two years ago, I purchased a first edition nook®, Barnes & Noble’s e-reader. It’s a splendid product; but, I needed enhanced graphics for my electronic versions of business and academic periodicals and journals.

So, I picked up an iPad – a magnificent product, as well. Now, there’s no sense in keeping two subscriptions of the same publication on two tablet-style devices, right? So, I cancelled all periodicals delivered to the nook®. Or, so I thought.

For the next eight months, I continued to witness my bank account being charged for a Wall Street Journal subscription that I no longer took via the nook®. I attempted to cancel the subscription online – monthly. I called Customer Support – monthly. I spoke with supervisors – monthly. I was assured my incident was “taken care of” – monthly. And Barnes & Noble charged me – monthly.

Heck, I even tried blockade maneuvers: eliminating the authorized credit card, deregistering the nook®, and issuing stop payment orders with the bank. And, I began to write this post with a different title.

One last time – for good measure and since the monthly rate was due to increase 22 percent – I gave Customer Support a ring. As expected, I needed to make my way past the first level to “Escalation” status. And that’s when Fallon took the call.

Long story short? Fallon understood the matter, was concerned about the lack of resolution, and promised me that she – personally – would see that this was put right. More often than not, I’m a sucker for a pleasing voice with a side helping of eloquence, appreciation, and kindness. And I wasn’t buying it one bit. Once bitten, twice shy.

So, Fallon said she would send me a personal email in order for me to, individually, correspond with her regarding this matter. I’d been left at the altar before and figured a “no-reply” email was headed straight my way. I asked for Fallon’s direct email address. She gave it to me. I sent her an email. It didn’t bounce. She actually replied.

At the end of our 15 minutes of nook® Digital Support fame, Fallon assured me that: she would personally tend to this matter; my subscription would be cancelled; and, my months of payments would make their way back to my account. Yeah, right.

Well, I’ll be damned. Two days later, Fallon emailed me. She discovered the predicament, cancelled the subscription, and authorized my refund. And, the money’s back. Turns out, Barnes & Noble didn’t steal my money. Most important, what Fallon said she would do – she did. Isn’t that the very core of One Percent™ Service?

Each day, we have opportunities to prove our integrity (to do what we say we will do) to our customer – with products, services, experiences, and – sometimes – righting wrongs. At the end of each of these opportunities is a conclusion reached by our customer – to buy again, to buy more, to recommend, and the opposite of each mentioned, as well.

One Percent™ Service is, without doubt, a level that rises above the rest. It’s an echelon of service that few reach. Even more, One Percent™ Service is choosing to succeed when 99 others will settle.

Fallon chose to do what she said she would do. Fallon chose to lead. Fallon chose to succeed, and not settle. Fallon chose One Percent™ Service.

The nook® gets re-registered tonight.

 

 

 

 

One Percent™ Governance – The Mind of Your Board

I’ve heard it; perhaps you’ve heard it; maybe you’ve whispered it – “My Board of Directors has a mind of its own.” So, why not capture the mind of your Board – through mind mapping – and develop strategies and tactics that allow your management team to deliver the class of results your Board believes is appropriate for your institution?

At your next strategic planning session, consider setting aside Day One to co-create and develop a map of the mind of your Board. It’s an engaging, change-of-pace exercise that strengthens the reciprocal relationship between your Board and CEO. Here’s how.

1. Use mind mapping software. Get rid of the flip charts, vibrantly colored markers, easels, and torn-off pages that never remain lightly glued or taped to the walls. In their place, put on view a map of your Board’s mind, projected on a large screen or visible on laptops throughout the meeting room. Many software programs exist, most offering online and mobile access for single and multiple users, all for a reasonable price.

    

2. Let the thoughts, observations, and ideas flow. Mind-mapping, by design, is a bit disordered – at first. One way to add a little structure to a day that needs to be a bit “higgledy-piggledy” is to organize the topics for discussion. Like you would in a mainstream analysis, discuss everything – mission; financials; products; delivery; technology; markets; economics; competitors; business model; and, more. Most important, gather your Board’s broad-spectrum views and desires, placing them on the mind map.

    

3. At the same time – expand, organize, and enhance your Board’s mind map. This is the job of your facilitator – insider or outsider – to direct the results of your Board’s thinking into collaborative solutions. Fresh ideas will stem from existing thoughts and observations. Relationships between ideas will unfold. Connections will be, both, established and unknotted to illustrate the relationships that can drive your institution onward. Your Board’s mind map begins to look a lot like a route map in the back of an airline magazine. Yet in all of the routes, stops, and destinations, hubs materialize. These hubs, centered amongst all of the commotion, are your foremost business objectives and drivers.

    

4. Ultimately, your Board will build consensus, a shared vision, and a depiction of their beliefs and views about your institution. Your Board will have visibly articulated what it believes is possible, probable, practical, sustainable, and – most important – relevant. Now, it’s up to Management to carry out the mind map, your Board’s outline and explanation of its exclusive strategic thinking. 

    

5. Print your mind map and spend Day Two setting detailed objectives and building potential strategies from Day One. Management, at a range of professional levels, is intensely involved with the design and delivery of the plans for the specific, strategic issues in sight.  Insight, experience, access to data, and original research allows Management to fuse your Board’s mind map into attainable plans, goals, metrics, scorecards, and results that your Board approves and oversees as Management implements.

Great Boards have an admirable, give-and-take relationship with their CEO. The CEO depends on the Board for guidance and the Board depends upon the CEO for execution. A map of the mind of your Board helps to ensure continuity and communication in the strategic planning and execution function at your institution.

For a complimentary mind map, from a genuine Board strategic planning session (free of institution specifics), send an email request to jeff.rendel@RisingAboveEnterprises.com.

Great by Choice – and Practice.

Include these excellent books in your Christmas List – heck, just order them without hesitation. You’ll be delighted you did – Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck – Why Some Thrive Despite Them All by Jim Collins and Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everyone Else by Geoff Colvin.

Both of these books strengthen every One Percent™ thought, choice, and action that I’ve written, you’ve read, and both of us have acted upon with grand success. To condense, those who thrive where others fall short or just manage follow four chief principles.

1. They are fanatical about discipline.
2. They are empirical in their creativity.
3. They are paranoid about their productivity.
4. They practice, practice, and practice – 10,000 hours’ worth, to be exact.

Regarding fanatic discipline. Have you mapped out a strategy for success over the next three years? Can you illustrate your plan for success? Is it visible to you anywhere you go? Have you determined what’s essential to move forward in the next year? What about this month? Are your monthly goals tied to the larger plan? Weekly projects? Daily deliverables? Hourly tasks? What you will discover in common – in both books – is that every step taken (plainly and symbolically) has a specific intent based on the greater, complete strategy.

Regarding empirical creativity. Several years ago, the Harvard Business Review published an article describing the value of innovation. The article showcased that nearly 98 percent of the value of innovation comes from imitation. “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door” is an oft misquoted phrase that comes to mind. The mousetrap exists (innovation); improve it (imitation), and you harvest 98 percent of the value of the innovation. How can you distinguish your product, and the problems it solves, in your crowded market space? What services might you offer and improve that can better the lives of your customers? Empirically, where do you have the greatest chance of sustained success? Are you maximizing this statistically significant opportunity?

Regarding productive paranoia. Are you positioning your resources – financial, time, people – in a manner that is of utmost strategic value? Are you investing in markets and projects that amplify your company’s intransience in your market? Are you committed to – and scheduling – a method that situates your intellectual firepower in the most strategic of places on an hourly, daily, weekly, and more basis? Are your right people in the well-known right seats on the recognized right bus?

Regarding practice, practice, and practice. The 10,000 hour rule is pretty clear-cut: invest 10,000 hours in the practice of your craft and you will be a One Percent™ world-class performer. You may believe, “I don’t have 10,000 hours to practice” or “10,000 hours is a long time; I need results now.” Wrong – you do have 10,000 hours. What you do with the 10,000 hours is the difference maker. Ten thousand hours divided into a 50-hour workweek is 200 weeks. Two hundred weeks divided by a 48-week work year (come on, we need vacations and holidays) is just over four years. Four years.

Think about your own work day. How much better of a CEO, vice president, or sales leader could you be with more discipline? With more statistically sound creativity? With the best use of your time in productivity? Could you do it for a day? How about a week? Make it a month? Could you practice that course of action of discipline, creativity, and productivity for another month? Yes, indeed. And in about four years – you, your company, and your market presence can be great by your choice and separate from everyone else.

That’s a One Percent™ difference that begins with your thinking, choices, and actions.