If you follow pro-football, and if you don’t please don’t be scared off as this will make sense to you too, the latest buzz is the trend by the Miami Dolphins in using what is called a “Wild Cat” offense. This play is to swap out offense players in an unconventional way. It is working quite well for them right now and more teams are trying the same strategy. There has been vigorous debate as to whether or not this play is a gimmick and when it will stop working. One of the Sunday commentators on CBS’s NFL today football show made a statement that was so profound that I instantly knew it was the perfect analogy for this blog. He said that the Wild Cat is not a gimmick for the Miami Dolphins because they have the perfect combination of talent to make it successful. For other teams, it would be a gimmick because they didn’t have the proper talent to make it work.
“Combination of talent” - the same holds true to achieve business acumen! A significant part of business acumen is to know your players and how to best utilize them. We need to develop our business strategies based on the talent we have NOT the latest business buzz words.
Here is an example of how this happens in everyday business. Take a minute and think about the conferences or seminars you might have attended at some point in your career. It might have been an association event, like the Direct Marketing Association, or a software seminar or just a workshop on leadership. Do you remember walking out and thinking – WOW – we can try this or do that! It is an energizing feeling. You walk into your office ready to make sweeping changes based on the take-aways from the learning experience. You try to share your newly acquired knowledge with anyone you can trap into listening. It may go as far as to have meetings on setting the changes into motion.
Then, in many cases, the steam runs out. Problems arise, other priorities take hold and those sure-fire ideas flame out. It’s even worse when it is your supervisor or a higher-up. THEY come back all fired up and expect YOU to make it happen. Now, I am not saying these events aren’t important –they can be – but I want to focus on the take-aways. Those take-aways are like the Wild Cat offense. They will work for some but not for others. In order to achieve business acumen, you need to know the capabilities of your talent and judge whether or not you have the right combination to make it a successful strategy.
My goal for the next few weeks is to offer some ideas and strategies for knowing your capabilities and those within your business. It is the theme that I will focus on and until then I encourage you to read Strength Finders and to take the assessment. Check out the website at: http://strengths.gallup.com/110440/About-StrengthsFinder-2.aspx. I found this very enlightening about myself and will try to use it as the foundation for next week’s post.
As always please post your comments and tell your coworkers and friends about this blog. Let’s find our successes together!
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
What is business acumen anyway?
In the weeks since I started this blog the question of “what is business acumen” has come up numerous times and from some surprising sources. One such question even came from a person who has an MBA degree! This really made me see that I should take a step back and describe business acumen and how I am going to use it as the basis for this blog so here it goes…
If you “google” business acumen there are 1.7 million search results. Clearly we don’t have time for that! I found a definition at CEO Online that really fits the intent of this blog: “Organizational business acumen is maintaining focus on business opportunity by building the capacity and motivation of staff to meet clients’ needs and maximize investor return.” This description shifts the focus away from strictly a financial view to a wider perspective. Often business acumen is tied to financial issues but a business’s lasting success relies on more than just numbers. My goal is to explore the wider perspective to highlight how we can make the most out of our business lives and I will use the aforementioned definition as a roadmap to meet that goal.
Why should we strive for business acumen? There are many aspects to this answer and I will cover many of them in the weeks to come. Until then, here are some questions to ponder:
As leaders, how can we expect our employees to serve the needs of our clients if we do not attend to their needs first?
What if as a leader or a subordinate, you don’t meet your own needs? Is that really going to move the business forward?
Are you so entrenched in your processes that you can’t see clear enough to take advantage of opportunities that are passing by?
Do you dread telling your staff about an upcoming change, knowing that you will be faced by negativity and resistance?
How often do you communicate your ethical standards to those around you and do you trust them to uphold those ethical standards?
These questions just scrape the surface of business acumen. If you have a staff of one or one thousand it is incumbent on you to ensure that they have the motivation and tools needed for success. AND – it’s not just for leaders to pass down! As noted in the CEO online article: “Staff who can demonstrate their business acumen are more successful in developing their career.” By sharpening our business acumen, we can add value regardless of our professional level! If you are an hourly employee or a CEO, there are benefits to be gained by honing business skills.
Just as I followed the theme of “believing” for a few weeks, as I write this blog I will continue to choose themes to sharpen our awareness of business acumen. Hopefully these themes will help us to answer the questions above and many more. To get you started, please check out the article I quoted in this post. It’s titled Building Business Acumen that Adds Value written by John Cleary of Blue Chip Consulting Group and can be found at: http://www.ceoonline.com.au/expert_talk/marketing/competitive_advantage/pages/id30001.aspx
It includes more questions you should ask yourself in judging your own business acumen. Please post a response or send me any questions about this or other business topics you might have.
Let’s all find our successes together!
Monday, October 5, 2009
Believing part 4 - Moving on...
Discussing the concept of believing over the past few weeks has been very motivational for me and hopefully for you as well. It is inspiring to think of achievements and success stories and it is exciting to imagine untold possibilities. However, I would be very remiss if I didn’t go back to finish my thought of two weeks ago. I was recounting the story of a presentation and an audience member who had fallen into the trap of negativity. I wrote that “clearly the audience member lost faith in the organization and its audience. He refused to believe that any effort was a good effort and instead thought that whatever the organization tried was a waste of time.” This story was to serve as the baseline for the flip side of believing – it is the ability to understand when it is no longer realistic to believe.
Tough stuff! When do you draw the line? As employees, how many of us have left for work in the morning thinking “I can’t stand my job” and wishing for a way out? Whether it is a supervisor that we perceive as being difficult, a job function that doesn’t inspire us or a company that has different values from our own, there are many different reasons why most of us, at one time or another, have “hated” our jobs. If you are in that “mental/emotional” place, it is nearly impossible to turn off that negativity so as to believe. This also applies to other areas in business besides being an employee. As leaders, have we ever done a task because we didn’t believe our employees could handle it? Do we assign tasks not because we believe it will add value to the organization but because it was assigned within the chain of command? As members of our various business communities, are there people within our communities that have lost faith and openly express their negativity? These situations are more prevalent than we either realize or that we want to admit. To do so would force us to face the stark reality of deciding to move on.
Moving on - it is a complex and powerful thought. When is the appropriate time to cut the ties? For the sake of clarity I am going to try to offer examples of moving on in the following three paragraphs:
In the situation of my presentation, it is pretty clear to me that it is time for that member to leave the organization. Not because he is a bad person – he’s not. Not because he disagrees with one issue –it is bigger than that. He needs to move on because he has gone as far as he can with the organization. He doesn’t believe. To thrive, organizations need people to believe as much as people need a place where they can believe and therefore thrive. It is a circle that has points along the arc. If a point is broken, the circle is not complete.
In my own career, I have been in the broken circles. I lost faith in an organization that I had a successful career in. I was staying because I believed I had to – I owed it to the company that had done so much to get me started. One of the hardest situations I have ever faced was acknowledging that there was no going back – the organization had changed in a way that conflicted with my own values. I couldn’t believe in it so therefore I couldn’t stay there anymore. In these situations it is very easy to second guess yourself. Maybe it will get better. We start to ask: What if I try to change my attitude? Should I just put up with it and not care? Where would I go? How do I begin again? Looking back, if I had stayed another year or 10 years, the end result would have been the same. I was sinking into misery and negativity. It was a fast and hard downward spiral. My only regret is that I didn’t leave a year earlier than I did. The signs were clearly there – I had to move on.
Finally from a leadership perspective we owe it to ourselves, our organizations and to our employees to carefully consider whether or not it is time move on. Moving on at this level might include cutting product lines, taking a different management strategy or simply letting a non-believing employee go. These might be among the hardest topics within the concept of “moving on” because our decisions to improve situations might actually seem like we are harming some people in the process. However, if it is done ethically and with honest intent hopefully it will lead to a better future for all who are involved.
This leads to my conclusion: part of the decision process of moving on is the determination to believe in a better future. Moving on is the commitment to take action that will bring more value to ourselves and our organizations so that we may be as successful as possible. As daunting as it may seem, it can and should be done. If being successful means believing, then we owe it to ourselves and the people around us to believe and to be prepared when it is time to move on.
Tough stuff! When do you draw the line? As employees, how many of us have left for work in the morning thinking “I can’t stand my job” and wishing for a way out? Whether it is a supervisor that we perceive as being difficult, a job function that doesn’t inspire us or a company that has different values from our own, there are many different reasons why most of us, at one time or another, have “hated” our jobs. If you are in that “mental/emotional” place, it is nearly impossible to turn off that negativity so as to believe. This also applies to other areas in business besides being an employee. As leaders, have we ever done a task because we didn’t believe our employees could handle it? Do we assign tasks not because we believe it will add value to the organization but because it was assigned within the chain of command? As members of our various business communities, are there people within our communities that have lost faith and openly express their negativity? These situations are more prevalent than we either realize or that we want to admit. To do so would force us to face the stark reality of deciding to move on.
Moving on - it is a complex and powerful thought. When is the appropriate time to cut the ties? For the sake of clarity I am going to try to offer examples of moving on in the following three paragraphs:
In the situation of my presentation, it is pretty clear to me that it is time for that member to leave the organization. Not because he is a bad person – he’s not. Not because he disagrees with one issue –it is bigger than that. He needs to move on because he has gone as far as he can with the organization. He doesn’t believe. To thrive, organizations need people to believe as much as people need a place where they can believe and therefore thrive. It is a circle that has points along the arc. If a point is broken, the circle is not complete.
In my own career, I have been in the broken circles. I lost faith in an organization that I had a successful career in. I was staying because I believed I had to – I owed it to the company that had done so much to get me started. One of the hardest situations I have ever faced was acknowledging that there was no going back – the organization had changed in a way that conflicted with my own values. I couldn’t believe in it so therefore I couldn’t stay there anymore. In these situations it is very easy to second guess yourself. Maybe it will get better. We start to ask: What if I try to change my attitude? Should I just put up with it and not care? Where would I go? How do I begin again? Looking back, if I had stayed another year or 10 years, the end result would have been the same. I was sinking into misery and negativity. It was a fast and hard downward spiral. My only regret is that I didn’t leave a year earlier than I did. The signs were clearly there – I had to move on.
Finally from a leadership perspective we owe it to ourselves, our organizations and to our employees to carefully consider whether or not it is time move on. Moving on at this level might include cutting product lines, taking a different management strategy or simply letting a non-believing employee go. These might be among the hardest topics within the concept of “moving on” because our decisions to improve situations might actually seem like we are harming some people in the process. However, if it is done ethically and with honest intent hopefully it will lead to a better future for all who are involved.
This leads to my conclusion: part of the decision process of moving on is the determination to believe in a better future. Moving on is the commitment to take action that will bring more value to ourselves and our organizations so that we may be as successful as possible. As daunting as it may seem, it can and should be done. If being successful means believing, then we owe it to ourselves and the people around us to believe and to be prepared when it is time to move on.
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