What Do You Think?

In this month's Corporate Report Wisconsin, Editor Laurie Arendt polled CRW's subscribers about the political environment and its effect on business. This lead to five questions that have been asked of the two Senate candidates, Senator Feingold and Mr. Johnson. Surprisingly, neither has responded. So my questions is "what do you think?"

Here are the five questions:

• Our readers, all of whom are business owners and executives in the state of Wisconsin, are very concerned about the spending that is going on by our federal government. What is your opinion of the current federal spending levels and what must our country do to reduce our debt burden?

• In your opinion, has the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act been a success or a failure? Why?

• What is your opinion of cap and trade and similar type of policies? What do you believe is the real impact on American businesses if this type of mandate is implemented in the United States?

• Many of our readers have responded to the current economy by hunkering down. They have stopped hiring because they are concerned about the cost of mandated health care coverage; they are concerned about the effects and costs of cap and trade. What do you believe our country’s leaders need to do to get business running again?

• What defines a Wisconsin pro-business candidate, and which candidate comes closest to this definition?

So what do you think? Keep these questions in mind when you select a candidate and vote on November 2.

Click here for the link to the editorial.

Sustainable Recovery?

The Institute for Trend Research, headed by Brian and Alan Beaulieu and Jeff Dietrich, has long been recognized by TEC as an accurate source of economic forecasts.

Recent poor economic news has once again fueled speculation that we may be headed for a "double dip" recession. Alan Beaulieu disagrees. In an article published in the August 2010 issue of Automation World, Alan states that the U.S. and global recovery is sustainable.

He says a sustainable recovery "... has been our outlook and that remains our outlook going forward, despite the increasing clamor of the double-dip alarmists. Yes, there are real dangers out there that threaten our well being, but we have taken them into consideration when putting together our forecast."

"However, it is expected that the rate of recovery in the United States will be milder than most of us would like and milder than we had anticipated 15 months ago."

While the news is not great, there does seem to be a light at the end of this long tunnel we are now in.

Click here for the complete article.

Getting Constructive Solutions from Front-Line Employees

Well run manufacturing companies have long known that some of the best ideas for process improvement come from front line employees. Many, if not most successful companies have a process that takes a quality, safety or customer service problem or incident, finds the root cause and takes preventative measures that ensure that the issue does not occur again. A key part of the success of this process is having a culture in place that encourages participation throughout the organization.

Harvard Professors Julia Rose Adler-Milstein, Sara J. Singer, and Michael W. Toffel, recently completed a study titled "Speaking Up Constructively: Managerial Practices that Elicit Solutions from Front-Line Employees".

The authors report "This study is among the first to develop and empirically test theory about how specific management practices can encourage employees to speak up about operational problems they witness. Our findings provide evidence that (a) employees speak up more often and offer more solutions when managers promote this behavior through information campaigns and through their own engagement in problem-solving activities and (b) these managerial behaviors may be considered substitutes." In other words, either an information campaign or managerial engagement will work.

The authors further state that "By identifying specific managerial behaviors, this study empowers managers to adjust their approaches to engaging workers in problem solving, which in turn can provide them with new sources of information about opportunities to improve work systems. In organizations that can learn from mistakes, this information can spark a virtuous cycle of performance improvement."

These results are no surprise to us in manufacturing. I found it interesting that the study was of the health industry, suggesting that practices common to manufacturing have much broader application.

Click here for the complete text of the study.

Leadership Characteristics

Jeff Blackman, TEC/Vistage Resource Speaker and business growth specialist, listed in his July 2010 Newsletter, 12 characteristics that are shared by great leaders. I wanted to share them with you.


Great leaders:

1. create a culture of trust and integrity

2. are flexible and willing to change, improve, enhance and upgrade

3. make tough decisions...knowing some folks "ain’t gonna like it"

4. value their people and their knowledge, creativity and enthusiasm

5. challenge the status quo

6. are highly disciplined, especially about time or self-management

7. delegate to others who can “do it” faster, better or smarter (and then get out of their way)

8. make today meaningful, yet always have a vision for tomorrow

9. seek honest and hard-hitting outside counsel, (they know what they don’t know...and want to hear what they haven’t heard)

10. are focused on the acquisition, satisfaction and retention of quality clients, customers and employees

11. listen, listen, listen

12. ask intelligent questions...to generate significant results

Click here to visit Jeff's web site.

You Can Raise Prices in a Downturn

In turbulent times like the present, the common wisdom when demand is down and competitors are fighting for every order is to cut prices, right? Not always.

If you and your customers understand the value of your product and/or service, you can—and should—charge more for delivering more by using "performance pricing".

This idea comes to me from work done by Harvard Business School Professors Frank Cespedes and Benson P. Shapiro who joined with former McKinsey Consultant Elliot B. Ross, President of the MFL Group, to write the paper "Performance Pricing in Tough Times."

Cespedes says, "Pricing builds or destroys value faster than almost any business action, especially in tough and uncertain economic conditions when price is a key and visible strategic choice. Conventional wisdom has firms cutting price in these circumstances. But most industries typically allow few firms to build a sustainable, low-cost business model, and once established, the very success of those low-cost competitors makes it difficult for others to duplicate."

In their paper, "Performance Pricing in Tough Times", the team of Cespedes, Shaprio and Ross describe their research of the many companies that don't compete on absolute cost advantages and low price. These firms can and should compete on the basis of initiatives for which their customers willingly pay higher prices.

Can this apply to your company?

Click here for the complete article to learn more about performance pricing. It's worth the read.

Teamwork - "The Wisdom of Wolves"

In his recent blog, Mac Anderson, founder of Simple Truths and Successories, Inc. (see www.simpletruths.com) comments on "The Wisdom of Wolves" by Twyman Towery. In his book, Towery describes a society where teamwork, loyalty and communication are the norm rather than the exception. As CEOs and business owners, we can learn from the wolves regarding team building as we strive for success in our businesses.

Here's an excerpt from his book:

"The attitude of the wolf can be summed up simply: it is a constant visualization of success. The collective wisdom of wolves has been progressively programmed into their genetic makeup throughout the centuries. Wolves have mastered the technique of focusing their energies toward the activities that will lead to the accomplishment of their goals.

Wolves do not aimlessly run around their intended victims, yipping and yapping. They have a strategic plan and execute it through constant communication. When the moment of truth arrives, each understands his role and understands exactly what the pack expects of him.

The wolf does not depend on luck. The cohesion, teamwork and training of the pack determines whether the pack lives or dies.

There is a silly maxim in some organizations that everyone, to be a valuable member, must aspire to be the leader. This is personified by the misguided CEO who says he only hires people who say they want to take his job. Evidently, this is supposed to ensure that the person has ambition, courage, spunk, honesty, drive - whatever. In reality, it is simply a contrived situation, with the interviewee jumping through the boss's hoops. It sends warnings of competition and one-upmanship throughout the organization rather than signals of cooperation, teamwork and loyalty.

Everyone does not strive to be the leader in the wolf pack. Some are consummate hunters or caregivers or jokesters, but each seems to gravitate to the role he does best. This is not to say there are not challenges to authority, position and status - there are. But each wolf's role begins emerging from playtime as a pup and refines itself through the rest of its years. The wolf's attitude is always based upon the question, "What is best for the pack?" This is in marked contrast to us humans, who will often sabotage our organizations, families or businesses, if we do not get what we want.

Wolves are seldom truly threatened by other animals. By constantly engaging their senses and skills, they are practically unassailable. They are masters of planning for the moment of opportunity to present itself, and when it does, they are ready to act.

Because of training, preparation, planning, communication and a preference for action, the wolf's expectation is always to be victorious. While in actuality this is true only 10 percent of the time or less, the wolf's attitude is always that success will come-and it does."

This and other great books on leadership are available at www.simpletruths.com

How Do You Weigh Strategy, Execution, and Culture in an Organization's Success?

Recently, Harvard Business School Professor Jim Haskett asked this question of CEOs and Senior Managers - How Do You Weigh Strategy, Execution, and Culture in an Organization's Success?

To me, all three are important. A strategy without execution is nothing more than a document on the bookshelf. Execution of a poor strategy can be disastrous. Yet a solid culture is required for both the development of sound strategy and its execution.

So I would agree with the respondents who ventured to place weights on the determinants of success who gave the nod to culture. And those respondents did so by a wide margin.

So what do you think?

For a link to the study click here.