Monday, March 29, 2010

Best Models of Leadership for the Next Generation

by Mary Beth Matteo, Founding Director of the S. Dale High Center

Who best models leadership for the next generation? Not (usually) another family member. Leadership is something best learned from others.

There are many options for young successors.

  1. Work in another businesses: working outside the family business can be a tremendous opportunity, especially the experience of watching a leader who is not Mom or Dad. Even when the employment has not been entirely positive, we learn from negative examples as well as positive ones. Knowing what NOT to do can be just as useful as knowing WHAT to do.
  2. Find a mentor: nothing is better than the tutelage of a seasoned pro. Shadowing and coaching reap tremendous benefits. Louis Whitehead has a good article on finding a mentor.
  3. Seek volunteer leadership opportunities: chairing committees, serving on volunteer boards, and organizing special activities provide great opportunities for leadership. These are particularly useful for the next generation, because they’re away from the “spotlight” shone on family members. Kent Blumberg has a great article outlining the benefits of volunteer leadership, which includes finding opportunities that help you define your leadership style and getting things accomplished with few resources. Take a look.
Sum  and Substance: A final thought: identifying opportunities to learn leadership is the responsibility of both generations. The founding generation needs to think strategically about leadership training for the next generation and often knows, for instance, great mentors who are peers, or managers in the family business. But the younger generation is often very creative in developing their own leadership training ideas—only they know their passion and what will sustain it!

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Quote of the week

Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.



--George S. Patton

Monday, March 22, 2010

Leadership: Firing the “Marginal” Employee

by Mary Beth Matteo, Founding Director of the S. Dale High Center

Most of us have had to fire employees. We consider ourselves lucky when the case is clear cut: an employee commits an illegal act or exhibits egregious behavior that cannot be tolerated.

But most cases where firing is required are much more difficult. Any of the following lies in a gray area that frequently makes us put off the decision or avoid it altogether. A loyal, long-time employee who has contributed to the organization but can no longer make the grade. A family member who is not up to the task. A high achiever who creates dissention in the company. A well-liked employee who is coasting. The list goes on.

There are no simple answers to these cases but good leadership requires that we first focus on the organization and its people. No matter how nice, or well-liked, or loyal an employee has been, his or her failure affects everyone. It brings down morale. It destroys the idea of meritocracy. And most important: it requires other employees to pick up the slack. Favoring one person punishes the rest. When we focus on the rest, the decision becomes easier.

We know the options:
• Counsel the person out and assist him or her in a job search; or
• Move the person to another job in the organization to which he or she is more suited

And, lastly, don’t forget: you need a paper trail that documents the employee’s failure. This is one of the biggest mistakes we make. Especially with a likeable employee, or employee who seems to be trying, we tend to slide him a break with a decent evaluation. Needless to say, this will cause enormous problems down the road!

Sum and Substance: Being a good leader means making tough decisions in the best interest of the company. As the old adage goes, one bad apple spoils the bunch. A problem employee can be a bad apple who must be removed in order for the business system to thrive.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Can we measure leadership?

by Mary Beth Matteo, Founding Director of the S. Dale High Center

All of us want to hire “leaders” in key positions in our companies. Most of us want to train future leaders, either in our business, or our family.

How do we recognize leaders, or potential leaders? Usually we focus on the personality attributes of leaders and then look for these characteristics in specific individuals. There are a plethora of tests and training methods to identify and strength leadership characteristics whether employees or family members.

This is only one half of the picture, so let’s back up and look at the definition of leadership. A leader’s responsibility is to establish the conditions (the culture, the climate, the incentives) to enable others to take the right actions to succeed. If the top executive achieves the results himself/herself, the top executive is not a leader but simply a high achiever. If the top executive enables his/her employees (or family) to succeed, that is a leader!

Sum and Substance: So, how do we measure leadership? We measure follower behavior and the achievements of followers. Leaders get results through people!

Friday, March 12, 2010

Leading your lawyer (and when your lawyer should lead)

by Kim Decker, Partner, Barley Snyder, LLC, a corporate partner of the S. Dale High Center

Dealing with a lawyer - or any professional for that matter - is a mix of leading and following for both parties. Although the client is the “boss” in the relationship, there are times when, because of a lawyer’s special knowledge or skills or because of the needs of a particular situation, the boss needs to let the lawyer take the lead. The real trick is to figure out when you need to play the lead role, and when you need to let your lawyer forge ahead.

There are no black and white answers to who ought to lead on legal matters. A lot depends on your relationship with your lawyer and level of trust as well as your own personal leadership style. For instance, its often better to let your lawyer be the lead negotiator on adversarial matters where you want to preserve a related business relationship - let the lawyer be the bad guy and avoid any bad blood between the business people.

Similarly, where you have a good business relationship, but the legal issues don’t appear to be resolving between the lawyers, you may want to step in with your business partner to break through the impasse. The long and the short of it is, whether you are leading or following your lawyer, you should be the one setting the destination. Use your lawyer (and other professionals) - whether as advance guard or rear guard - to help you get there.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Quote of the week

“Rare is the company that truly understands what its competitors and their decision makers care about most, how they perceive their assets and capabilities, and what all this means for their strategies.”

--Hugh Courtney, John T. Horn and Jayenti Kar, Getting into your competitor’s head, The McKinsey Quarterly, February 2009

Monday, March 1, 2010

“Lean” -- not just a strategy just for manufacturing

 by Michael W. Van Belle, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of The High Companies

Lean is a continuous improvement (CI) philosophy and methodology more so than a strategy. The focus of lean is on eliminating wastes in an organization or process so that better results are obtained. The wastes, known by the Japanese word ‘Muda’, within a business that lean eliminates are:

• Defects

• Overproduction

• Waiting

• Transportation

• Inventory

• Motion

• Over Processing

Lean uses common techniques to help eliminate these wastes, such as Kanbans, setup-reductions, and 1-piece flow. While Lean is often a CI methodology started in the manufacturing and operations department in many companies, its applications can be used in just about any function or department.

At High Industries, our continuous improvement utilizes Lean mixed with other methodologies such as Six Sigma and Theory of Constraints. Together these methodologies allow us to improvements results by eliminating waste, reducing variation, and increasing capacity with minimized capital investment. More information on Lean and other CI methodologies is available at the following online articles:

"Types of waste targeted by lean methods"

"Lean six sigma cuts waste"

"Lean on these keys to success"

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