Friday, September 24, 2010

Simple, eloquent, practical--author Bo Burlingham inspires with six precepts for great businesses

by Gale E. Martin, Director of Marketing, S. Dale High Center for Family Business

Someone once relayed an anecdote about a well-respected navy admirable, much admired for his military acumen, for his courage, but above all, for his leadership. What was the secret to his success, he was asked.

The admirable relayed the following story: Every day, he goes to his personal safe, takes out a piece of paper, unfolds it and reads this message:

Port-left. Starboard-right.

So, there you have it. Simple precepts reinforced daily made this navy man one of the most admired leaders in our modern day.

In the same way, Bo Burlingham, author of Small Giants: Companies Who Choose to Be Great Instead of Big, identified a half-dozen qualities common to the great businesses he studied. He shared them with his signature blend of credible enthusiasm during his presentation to the S. Dale High Center membership yesterday at a breakfast seminar at the Lancaster Marriott.

Were the guiding principles that Bo shared unwieldy and complex? Were they radically different messages for seasoned business leaders? Frankly, they could not have been more simple. Most likely, many of them have already been intuited by business leaders who have enjoyed a measure of success.

Yet, according to member evaluations, they found Bo's simple message compelling and reaffirming. Basically, Bo said that the businesses he explored for Small Giants all had an off-the-charts kind of "mojo," or business charisma, resulting from the synergy of six factors:
  1. The leader factor--owners and leaders know who they are, what they want out of business and why
  2. The community factor--the companies are rooted in the communities in which they do business.
  3. The customer/supplier factor--the companies enjoy close personal relationships with their customers and suppliers.
  4. The employee factor--the customers come second. Employees come first.
  5. The (missing) margin factor--the companies have a sound business model and protect their gross margins.
  6. The passion factor--the owners and leaders are in love with what their companies do.
None of those precepts is complex though I'll admit one of them is provocative. I'd never heard the counsel to put employees before customers though it is apparently the central premise of the book Nuts: Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success by Kevin Freiberg and Jackie Freiberg.

By embodying the six factors Bo identified, the small giants he studied surmounted incredible odds and obstacles felling other good and near-great businesses--challenges such as competition from giant corporations, the humblest of humbling beginnings, and crushing debt, to name a few. 

Following Bo's talk, in response to the question, "What did you find most valuable about the presentation?" attendees said things like:

  • A great perspective on the importance of culture in making a great company;
  • Bo's confirmation of the importance for community involvement;
  • He reinforced the need to maintain and grow company culture; and
  • After listening to Bo, he made me feel as though I can move forward as a leader in a small family business as an employee not family member.
More than a few guests mentioned the practical wisdom of Bo's presentation.

Sometimes, keeping your family business on course to success, to realizing its potential, can be as simple as reminding yourself daily of what's truly important: Employees. Community. Customers/Suppliers. Leadership. Passion.

Leading a family firm might simply be a case of telling yourself "port-left; starboard-right" more often than you think anyone needs to hear it.

For slides of Bo's presentation from the S. Dale High Center website, click here. For a link to another great summary of Bo's presentation by Scott Heintzelman, "The Exuberant Accountant," click here.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Quote of the week


“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.” 
-- Jack Welch
 
           

Thursday, September 16, 2010

3 things values can do for family businesses

At a recent meeting with a third generation family business, it became apparent that the values that drive their business—the organizational culture around how they treat customers and employees, i.e., what’s important in the workplace—had never been set down on paper. When questioned about it, they explained that everyone at their place of business understood their values intuitively—that writing them down hadn’t been necessary.

Occasionally, when led by a strong first generation family business leader, businesses can get around clearly articulating your family values with little negative impact. However, when leadership passes to the successor generation without intentionally articulating and sharing their values, that company risks a scenario where the employees are all marching in different directions, as if to different drumbeats. If that’s disastrous for a marching band, it takes an even heavier toll on any family business’ ability to compete and be successful.

To put it simply, everyone within your organization needs to know the drumbeat. They need to know how to march. Just as surely as the drum major must lead with his baton, it is the responsibility of family business leadership to move from intuitive to intentional by driving organizational values into their organization, especially in successor generations.
How can strong organizational values impact your family business? Here's three ways:
  1. It can improve your top line. What do customers want? Unless they are buying a commodity product, they want to be treated well and with respect. And that only happens when your employees feel as though they are treated well and with respect. Contented employees equals happy customers. Happy customers want to do business with organizations that make doing business pleasurable. If customers and employees are treated well by a company, it is no coincidence. These companies have a really strong culture built on a foundation of well defined values.
  2. It can improve your bottom line. Good values also reduce costs by improving productivity and reducing turnover. Firms that have strong values and deliberately drive those into the business have less turnover than their competitors. Values-driven companies have significantly less turnover than their competition. There is a clear bottom line impact from reduced turnover. The cost of turnover has been reasonably estimate at 150% of salary because of expenses such as recruitment, training, low productivity and new hires.
  3. It can make you feel great about where you work. What could be better than coming in the door every day to a place you want to be, where you feel passionate about the work you're doing and where meaningful relationships are growing right alongside profitability.
Values-based organizations support a vision for the kind of workplace in which you and your employees want to spend the better part of your day and the best years of your lives. It isn't easy to uphold your organizational values day in and day out. It means making tough decisions in terms of hiring, firing, incentive structures, and employee compensation and evaluation. But the outcomes justify the extra effort.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Some final thoughts on Social Media

As summer gasps its last breath in the US Northeast, it's about time to conclude our Social Media Summer posts on "High Ground." Before we resume more conventional topics for a family business blog, it is worth mentioning that even if family businesses, most especially B2B's, don't see a lot of potential for social media marketing in the near future, they need to be aware of what other businesses, large and small, are doing and why.

Here's a handful of great articles from a fantastic website called Social Media B2B: Exploring the Impact of Social Media on B2B Companies worth your perusal:

This concludes your summer reading from your friends at High Ground!

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Quote of the week

“Those who ignore the party/conversation/network when they are content and decide to drop in when they need the network may not succeed. It’s pretty easy to spot those that are just joining the network purely to take – not to give. Therefore, be part of the party/conversation/network before you need anything from anyone.”
– Jeremiah Owyang, Web-Strategist.com

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