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Five Strategies to shift from a Cost Cutting to a Business Growth mindset through Operational Excellence – Business Operations

Five Strategies to shift from a Cost Cutting to a Business Growth mindset through Operational Excellence – Business Operations

by | Nov 20, 2012 | Business, Business Operations, Leadership, Management, Performance, Productivity

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Do more with less is a common refrain in any margin focused organization. But this management guidance should come with a big “Handle with Care” sticker. In the enthusiasm to meet cost cutting targets, sometimes organizations forget the “doing more” part and only focus on the “with less” part. By the time, the realization sets in that the growth engine has stalled, it is too late. And most likely, you are left with an organizational culture where “fear” rules supreme and “fun” is a word that belongs outside the work-place. Result – Bottom line improves in the short-term but starts declining after reaching a threshold. With stagnant or diminishing top-line, no amount of cost cutting can help improve profits dramatically after a certain point.

High performance is multi-dimensional – putting the entire organization’s focus on just costs is counter-productive. While margin improvement is crucial, good solid revenue growth is even more important to build a sustainable, profitable business. And these two goals should not be in conflict with each other. With some discipline and mindset changes enforced in day-to-day business operations, one can successfully do the balancing act so that the organization does not lose its focus on growing revenues while keeping a tight control on costs.

The entire business framework that you work in can be used to influence changes in the right direction. Here are five strategies that I have seen business leaders use successfully to shift the organization to a revenue growth mindset in no particular order:

Strategy 1: Budgeting – Put your money where growth is – The key to building a high-performance and growth focused culture is to make sure you consider “‘what“ and “how“ you will get to your destination – the clear guidelines of what you need to do now to reach where you want to be in a specific timeline. And, what better place to define this than in your annual business budget. For example what are the core competencies that you need to develop in the current year so that the growth for the next two-three years are secured? What investments of the previous year have not achieved desired results and needs a change in strategy? What partners and channels needed to be cultivated in current year to be able to stay competitive in the market? While a lot of attention is given on the cost items to achieve the top line for the current year, not much attention is given to the few investments that are needed to accelerate the growth for the longer term. Budgeting is a great tool to ensure that the organization is well prepared and aligned for growth.

Strategy 2: Granularity of Growth – Identify the Growth Drivers –  Research shows that having multiple avenues to growth pays off during good times and bad.  In the book – Granularity of Growth (Wiley, April 2008), the authors identified that increased market-share is seldom a driver of growth. They contend, instead, that growth is driven by where a company chooses to compete: which market segments it participates in and how much merger-and-acquisition activity it pursues in these markets. The key is to focus on granularity, to breakdown big-picture strategy into its smallest relevant components. To uncover pockets of opportunity, executives need to dig down to deeper levels of their businesses and organizations. And of course, get the execution plan in place for the opportunities identified.

Strategy 3: Clarion Call – Aligning the Organization to the Vision – It is critical that every employee knows and understands the vision of the organization and the strategy for growth. Re-orienting people is not an easy job but it can be done if the leadership can clearly articulate the problem statement behind the vision and the urgent changes that are needed to get everyone on the board. The idea here is to get people really involved and committed to growth – logic and reason have their place, but in initiatives like this the emotions of people have to be tapped. Hence the need for a clarion call (en.wiktionary.org/wiki/clarion_call – Appeal, urgent call to action).  And also the need for a re-organization too – to move your best people (sales, operations, delivery) from low growth or stagnant business areas to high growth areas to leverage your talent and shake off the inertia.

Strategy 4: Platform for Ideas – Make Innovation more than a buzz word – Innovation is the Petri dish for exponential growth. But without a specific team accountable for innovation (which could be new product ideas, new business models, new markets, new acquisitions or new competencies) the focus on exponential growth is lost in the day-to-day block and tackle for meeting the short-term business targets. One person in the senior leadership should have the mandate to lead this team and the authority to champion and approve initiatives that are separate from the company’s core business and to execute on these initiatives. This provides an ecosystem of a structure, time and resources for a “start-up” within the larger organization to help move beyond the comfort zone and also future-proof the business against risks to existing business.

Strategy 5: Metrics and Rewards –Targets breed Performance – Coming to my favorite topic, setting metrics and commensurate rewards is an important lever to quickly drive and arrive at the behavior needed to go beyond just incremental growth.  For example – setting a target of 5% revenue growth year on year with a slightly higher target for profits is quite acceptable but this can be achieved by a little more push on existing services or products. There is no compelling need to look for completely new sources of revenue or new business models. What is needed here is BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals), metrics that can be used to track and measure not only the results but the investments, resources and behaviors that are needed to achieve the goals and of course, equally Big rewards to excite and enthuse the teams to think differently, get out of their comfort zone and act like entrepreneurs.

Profitable double-digit growth can become a possibility and not just a fluke. By thinking proactively and building growth into day-to-day business operations, the cost cutting trap can be avoided. A growth oriented mindset can indeed become part of the organization culture when the management plans and puts in place the systems to ensure that growth opportunities are identified and pursued as diligently as costs are controlled.

What have I missed? What growth strategies have you seen work? How and what have you factored in your plans for next year to enable double-digit growth? I would love to hear back and learn from you.

Picture courtesy : http://www.flickr.com/photos/ytueresburroyyomemonto/2687124044/

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From Idea to Execution: Five Pointers to Getting Things Done in Complex Organizations – Business Operations Performance Management

From Idea to Execution: Five Pointers to Getting Things Done in Complex Organizations – Business Operations Performance Management

by | Nov 8, 2012 | Business, Business Operations, Career, Leadership, Management, Performance, Productivity

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Don’t tell me why this is difficult to do, just go get this done ASAP please. The please is usually an afterthought. This is the kind of challenge that no self-respecting operations person can resist – there is a certain joy in translating an idea into flawless execution cutting through all the challenges and complexities of a large organization. And in my role of running business operations, I have been on the receiving end of this challenge many a times. The corporate/senior management realizes they have a business problem, have a good idea of what the solution could be and there comes a mandate for a directional change that may involve a lot of shake up implementing a new process or changing existing processes to meet the end goal.

In today’s scenario, we no longer have the luxury of time, complete clarity, a free rein and big budgets to get that magic solution – which will solve the big business problem – visualized, planned, experimented, and then implemented. Every solution has to be aligned to growing profits leading to one or both objectives – revenue-maximizing and cost-cutting. Operational agility and operational excellence are all the more important now to turn corporate priorities into focused actions more quickly, effectively, and consistently.

Here are five pointers that I have found useful in getting things done – “more done with less” to achieve the desired results quickly:

Pointer #1: Understand the need behind the want – A clear understanding of the desired outcome is necessary so that you don’t end up with a flurry of misguided activity. For example the stated want maybe “reduce bench costs”. To arrive at a solution, you have to go to the source of the problem to see what the real need is – it maybe that the reported data on bench is inaccurate leading to wrong conclusions, or that there is inaccuracy in forecasting leading to an increased virtual bench size or the demand-supply balancing is inefficient. Not knowing the source here and just taking action on reducing bench by reducing headcount would be dangerously counter – productive. Understanding the outcome needed also allows the defining and implementing of a solution instead of just executing on a task blindly which may not give the expected results. And before you move to the next step, put it in writing – the problem statement, the current state and the desired state when the planned solution is in place. This is very important to not only clarify our own thought process but also help you ascertain the skills and timeline needed to execute.

Pointer #2: Get the right working team on-board – You could do it alone but almost any deliverable in a work setting will get done quicker and better if you involve others with the skills, background and experience in the area. You don’t need a committee (the death by committee danger there 🙂 ) but creating a virtual team gets the work done easier. Pick the brains of subject matter experts, tap into the larger functional teams across the organization, and get volunteers from your teams. Almost everyone would be happy to get involved in learning something new or breaking the routine of their everyday assignments. Being able to work in a matrix structure is quite a useful ability here.

Pointer #3: Get key stake-holders enthusiastic about the solution – Identify the people who stand to benefit the most from the solution and socialize the plan with them. Enlist their support early by showing them the “why” behind the plan and how they stand to gain from it. Create a sense of urgency to build momentum. This will help get their buy-in and reduce any resistance that you may come across when you go ahead with execution. People don’t like being handed with a “done deal” specially if there is any impact on their business as usual activities. Regular, sincere communication is a great lubricant to work through silos and organization hierarchies and boundaries. Just don’t make the mistake of trying to please everyone – just the ones that matter (for the success of your plan in action).

Pointer #4: Go! Don’t wait for all the answers and for the perfect plan – As Seth says, the real question isn’t whether you have all the facts. The real question is, “do I know enough to make a useful decision?” (And no decision is still a decision). If you don’t, then the follow-up question is, “What would I need to know, what fact would I need to see, before I take action?” Speed of decision-making is very important in execution – there is a time for analysis and a time for action. A perfect launch time, a perfect solution or perfect acceptance is unrealistic to expect. The best way to see if your solution is workable is to put it to work. Define phases of implementation if you can’t see the full path yet but begin the moment you are reasonably sure it will work.

Pointer #5: Don’t drop the ball after execution – Give yourself and the team a pat on the back and celebrate the success. But don’t forget these three important steps. Before you move on to the next challenge, get the process documentation, tracking mechanism and measurement metrics in place.  Create checklists for the activities, documentation of the changed or new process and training sessions as needed. With good processes defined and documented, everyone will always know what has been accomplished and how far have they gone ahead or fallen behind. Set up regular feedback and tracking mechanisms with the right set of metrics to have early warning systems that will help anticipate problems or the need to change the solution.

Summing it up, there is very little that is impossible to get done at work. Getting things done just needs the right mix of enthusiasm, effort, agility and persistence. And isn’t creating order from chaos, a lot of fun?

What are your secrets to getting things done in a complex organization? What have I missed in the pointers above? I would love to hear and learn from you.

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31732378@N02/3129967709/ by Jon.B

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Five Keys to set up a Successful Project Management Office – Business Operations Performance Management

Five Keys to set up a Successful Project Management Office – Business Operations Performance Management

by | Oct 22, 2012 | Business, Business Operations, Leadership, Management, Performance, Productivity

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Basically, there are two types of animals: animals and animals that have no brains; they are called plants. They don’t need a nervous system because they don’t move actively; they don’t pull up their roots and run in a forest fire! Anything that moves actively requires a nervous system; otherwise it would come to a quick death ~ Rodolfo Llinas, a neuroscientist from New York University School of Medicine.

An established Project Management Office (PMO) within an organization is the Central Nervous System of the organization. The PMO helps to optimize resource utilization across projects and initiatives, improve program execution which rises above organization barriers, enhance visibility and accountability and be better prepared from an information and knowledge perspective to anticipate and react to change. The Project Management Institute (PMI) Program Management Office Community of Practice (CoP) views the PMO as a strategic driver for organizational excellence and seeks to enhance the practices of execution management, organizational governance, and strategic change leadership.

Is establishing such a central nervous system within an organization a challenge? Yes, it is. In absence of crisply defined PMO goals, the risk is that the PMO can just end up increasing the workload for project managers without delivering on any of its stated objectives. As a result, PMO acceptability can get reduced and it can become just a reactive function within the organization, an incomplete nervous system with degraded reflexes and inability to anticipate external events.

So if you are lucky enough to have a senior / executive sponsorship mandating the requirement of a PMO, here are the five key factors to be considered to establish a PMO that truly rocks and becomes a strategic tool in keeping implementers and decision makers moving toward consistent and predictable business focused goals and objectives:

Key Factor #1 Clear Scope and Purpose of PMO – Lack of clear boundaries and objectives associated with the PMO, may result in overloaded PMO team and the disappointed customers. There are almost as many varieties of PMO as there are companies. There are strong PMOs and weak PMOs. Some companies rely on the PMO to be responsible for all areas of project management and project execution. Other companies only want the PMO to provide a consolidated reporting view of all the projects in the organization. Before you can jump in and start up a PMO, you must first gain clarity and agreement on what you are doing and why. Communicate this information to clients, stakeholders and your own staff so that everyone starts off with a common set of expectations. Second, provide a framework for the PMO to guide decision-making in the future. Along with the clear definition of which projects you will support, make sure that there are clear definitions of which services are and are NOT provided for all your customers.

Key Factor #2: Do not use the “One size fits all” approach – Implementing a PMO by exactly what books say without considering the organization in which it operates is not a very wise thing to do. Having a centralized source of information, templates and project management methodologies certainly brings value to the organization. However, forcing these to all types of projects (large, medium, complex, small) in organization may result in poor Project Manager willingness for their usage. A proper framework in place, with respect to project management models which allow tailoring of these templates and methodologies according to specific project/customer’s need, is the key for success here.

Key Factor #3: Define Data Requirements based on “need” and not “want” – Be careful of the data load that you put on the project managers, focus on being an enabler function and not an overhead. In most of the companies with a PMO, the perceptions of employees are more biased to it being an overhead rather than a useful service. One of the reasons for that is too complex requirement for the project managers to produce data which is very rarely used or even useful. The main focus of any project delivery is around Scope, Schedule, Budget & Resources, Quality and Customer satisfaction. A well defined metrics/dashboards for these important parameters can encourage PM to report the project status in correct and timely manner. This also aligns with PM’s usual activities for project tracking in day to day life and does not create additional bandwidth stretch for PMs. Project reporting can be around:  Status (red, yellow, green)—overall, as well as for risks, budget, scope, status trend, planned v s. actual budget, planned vs. actual time, business case forecasts vs. actual results, customer satisfaction survey results. How you further present reports depends on your audience, their needs, and the resulting actions your audience should take. Knowing your audience is very important here because the breadth and level of detail differs by audience. At higher levels, such as an executive board, reports should be broader in nature with less depth and frequency than at the business unit levels, for example. Business unit audiences desire more detailed information specifically focused to that business unit. However, the supporting detail should be available at all levels, especially for projects that may be in trouble, such as those with high budget or time overruns.

Key Factor #4 Metrics reporting – Data accuracy and completeness – If Reporting is a key dimension of the PMO, data accuracy and completeness is in turn a key dimension of reporting. According to Bryan Maizlish and Robert Handler (2005), “Research indicates that 90% of all business decisions are sub-optimal because of data quality. Ironically the biggest data quality complaint does not pertain to the accuracy of the data but the completeness of the data”. Accuracy and completeness is required for both simple and complex reports. For example, one of the most standard, simpler reports in PMO relates to the “health” of the programs in terms of project status (red, yellow, green). If the status of a project has not been updated in a timely manner, then the resulting program health report will be inaccurate leading to dated decisions. A suggestion here is to offer a service only if you have the proper tools to support it. Microsoft Excel is an excellent tool, still, there is only so much that you can offer in terms of analysis and forecasts if your project’s data are collected in an Excel file. Manual reports with embedded macros are good workarounds, but they are very time consuming and subject to mistakes. In addition, budgets and resources are really tough to manage manually in a consolidated and consistent manner, especially when your PMO is working on a global level. Have appropriate Project Management tools established based on your organization needs.

Key Factor # 5 Build a Strong marketing and communication strategy to drive PMO acceptance – Communicate, communicate, and communicate! There is no such thing as over-selling. Selling and re-selling the strategic project management office is necessary to gaining and sustaining the buy-in across all organizational levels. When you are setting up the PMO and do not have accomplishments to talk about yet, focus on building awareness about the PMO – its purpose, impact and benefits. The communication plan should include as audience, not only the executive and steering committee members and the stakeholders, but also the internal and external communities. Create a central repository for PMO documents, inform stakeholders the information is there and make sure that the information is easily accessible. Poor or non-existing marketing and communications revolving around the goal of the office and the services it provides, is one of the reasons for unsuccessful PMO setups.

So, to summarize, setup your PMO with well thought out strategies so that like a central nervous system, it can improve your organizational reflexes and performance. Such PMOs can enable your organization to get better/faster/cheaper and achieve more predictable results for their chosen projects.

What are your experiences with PMO setup in your organizations? What challenges have you faced in PMO establishment? Please share so that we can learn from your experiences.

Today’s guest post is from Kavita Verma, PMP who is the Director – Global Program Office at a leading IT services company. She is a dynamic and outcome-oriented Program Manager with a fulfilling career spanning over 10 years of extensive industry experience in full software life cycle of requirements definition, architecture, design, prototyping, product implementation, integration and testing of Embedded Mobile Application and Platform Middleware.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Five Actions that can make your Sales Forecasts a Hit – Business Operations Performance Management

Five Actions that can make your Sales Forecasts a Hit – Business Operations Performance Management

by | Oct 21, 2012 | Business, Business Operations, Leadership, Management, Performance, Productivity

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A good forecaster is not smarter than everyone else, he merely has his ignorance better organized ~ Anonymous

If you are in business or sales, this time of the year is tough. It is the season for budgets and forecasts.  You are either looking back and thinking what went wrong or taxing your brains on how to get it right for the next year. Or you could be one of the lucky few who raked in more, much much more than you forecasted. Either ways, this is not a good situation to be in. Predictability is key to successful business outcomes. You cannot decide how much to spend and where to spend unless you know with great accuracy how much and where your revenue is going to come from.

What usually happens in the forecasting process is that the senior management asks their sales leaders for a forecast, the sales leaders check with their reps for a “gut feel” number. The sales reps come up with a number (maybe 10%-20% lower than their gut feel number, to play it safe). The numbers roll up to the senior management. At this stage, the management takes a look at the numbers and checks it with the number they have in their minds (the number that will satisfy the investors/owners), then either discards the sales numbers completely and make up their own numbers or if you are lucky, the numbers get approved. This is quite a hellish process as you can see with lots of stress and heart burn at every stage but no guarantees that the end result is the most accurate version of forecast.

Accurate forecasting is an art – there is no foolproof method or formula to get it right but there are a few steps or actions that business/sales people can keep in mind that can improve the accuracy of the forecast and make the process easier:

Action #1 – Understand what Forecasting Is and Is Not – A forecast is not an aspirational goal, nor a “quota” or a “crowd-pleaser” number, nor an administration activity nor a computer program output. It is rather a Projection of ACHIEVABLE sales revenue, based on historical sales data, analysis of market surveys and trends, and salesperson’s estimates. Many people at this stage confuse a sales plan with a sales forecast – this is disastrous as it affects the entire chain of the business cycle which depends on the achievable number to do its planning to delivery on the forecast.

Action #2 – Collaborate to Win: To make forecasts more effective, there must be a free-flow of information between all the functions to prevent duplicacy or contradictory data. There has to be respect for different point of views. Each function has its own insights – delivery timelines, ramp-up plans from engineering, capacity constraints from operations, campaign or events plan from marketing, customer satisfaction scores from customer support– all of these could have an impact on the end revenue results. Hence, it is important to have a strong mechanism in place to efficiently bring together different organizational functions to contribute their inputs in a spirit of collaboration.

Action #3 – Joining the Dots: A good forecast is never stand-alone. It takes into account trends from the past too like the previous year(s) sales in the same time period to account for the impact of seasonal buying patterns, a similar state of the economy, currency exchange rate fluctuations, availability of resources, marketing campaigns, etc. As Eugene O’Neill famously said – There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now. Given that a forecast has to predict the future, it makes good sense to base it on what is known – the past.

Action #4 – Reward Accuracy: Like in other management areas, what gets rewarded gets done. Sales people often have the mindset that their job is to sell and not forecast. This mindset is disastrous for the company bottom-line. Accurate forecasts have a huge impact on the company margins so why not put some of it back to reward the source of accuracy. It is important to put in place policies and practices particularly in the job performance evaluation criteria to reinforce the fact that forecasting is important for business success.

Action #5 Track and Improve: At best, a sales forecast is an educated guesstimate built on the basis of certain assumptions. And the basis for assumptions as well as the assumptions themselves change rapidly in the business world. Hence it is critical to review the forecast on a regular basis (fortnightly at the very least) to check if the assumptions still hold good. Measure your forecast accuracy, develop mechanisms and metrics to identify and eliminate the sources of error and plough the learning back into your sales forecasting process. This will ultimately help build confidence in the forecasting process and improve the accuracy so that the entire organization can benefit from better planning.

“Business, more than any other occupation, is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight.”

Henry R. Luce (1898–1967), US publisher

What process or mechanism do you use to generate accurate forecasts? What other steps do you take to improve the predictability of your business? I would love to know.

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Five Ways Sales Operations can Enable Sales Leadership – Business Operations Performance Management

Five Ways Sales Operations can Enable Sales Leadership – Business Operations Performance Management

by | Oct 14, 2012 | Business, Business Operations, Leadership, Management, Performance, Productivity

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The job of a sales person is to sell – to focus every minute of his/her work day selling – because if he/she is not, then no one else is! But the expectation from a sales person is not just sales, there are myriad activities that are essentially non-customer facing but are necessary – sales strategy, planning, reviews, forecasting, reporting and logging in data in CRM tools, inter-departmental coordination, the list goes on… chipping away into the 2000 hours in the year that the sales person has to sell. Various surveys suggest that almost two-thirds of a sales person’s week is spent doing something other than selling. Less time in front of customer is equal to less sales – simple. And that is where the sales operations function can step in. Sales operation is essentially the processes, infrastructure and administrative support necessary to help a sales organization run effectively, efficiently and in support of business strategies and objectives. There is immense pressure on increasing the sales productivity given the drive for better top-line and bottom-line growth in all organizations, big or small today and the complex selling environment. A good sales operations team if properly structured and empowered can increase rate of sales and repeat sales, cut costs and improve margins all leading to a sales productivity increase.

Sales Operations can do the balancing act between strategy and execution from the annual, quarterly and monthly planning and analysis to the day-to-day support of the sales force – all the while enabling the front line salespeople to meet and exceed their sales and margin quotas. Here are five ways in which sales operations can be the sales productivity accelerators for the sales leadership:

Sales Enabler #1 – Identify the Focus based on the Goal: What is the company’s goal for the period – is it top line growth or bottom line growth? The Sales operations team can work closer to field-facing sales in times when top-line growth is the highest priority or work closer to internal organization-facing operations in times when bottom-line growth is the highest priority. The balance that has to be done here by the sales operations team is not to become a “sales prevention” team nor allow a “cowboy/cowgirl” style of unregulated selling. This is what will drive sales operations focus and roles (great inputs by Eryc Branham here) for the period to support and enable sales leadership. For example – field facing activities like account planning, RFP support, lead generation and field marketing campaigns could take precedence over commission planning, contract vetting and approvals and finance alignment.

Sales Enabler #2 – Provide Knowledge out of the Data: With all the CRM and Social Media tools and technology available to sales today, data collection is not a problem (if you have solved the technology problem that is – Enterprise resource projects are notorious for their low success rates for achieving the intended outcomes – another area where sales operations can support sales leadership in the selection of the right tools, in getting them to perform the way they should and in increasing tool usage and acceptability within sales teams along with ensuring data quality). What is needed is extraction of the right set of data, comparing it against trends and benchmarks and providing  recommendations to the Sales leaders to help them decide the strategic direction they need to take.  Sales Operations can be the expert on and the single source of authentic knowledge for the sales organization.

Sales Enabler #3 – Process Setting and Ownership:  An effective sales process can go a long way in improving the win rate and increasing the repeat sales. A sales process is effective when it balances the needs of three stakeholders – the needs of the customer, the needs of sales person to meet his/her numbers and the needs of the rest of the organization to be able to execute on the sale. The sales operation team can not only help in the creation of the process but also take ownership of its documentation, adoption and implementation and support the sales people through opportunity to a win-win for all stakeholders.

Sales Enabler #4 – Metrics and Dashboards: One of my favorite topics and pet projects. Metrics need to be aligned to business strategy and objectives – metrics should not only measure the past performance but also act as leading indicators into the future and how it is developing over time. The selection of the right metrics (out of the many sales metrics that are used today) for the sales dashboards also depends on the audience. For example, leading metrics for the sales reps would need to be around their pipeline (sales cycle times and win/loss ratios per stage, etc. to determine pipeline volume requirements and key selling strategies). Sales Leaders would need to have consolidated pipeline and trend information and associated metrics (% of stuck opportunities, overall opportunity age, etc) so that they can help their teams achieve the desired outcomes. The sales operations team can model the data and propose the right sales metrics to the sales team and sales leaders based on what insights they need to meet and exceed their performance objectives.

Sales Enabler #5 – Be the Bridge between Sales and the rest of the Organization: The sales team has to be customer facing and focused on selling and winning deals. But, they can’t do this alone – they need the support of many functions (marketing, finance, delivery, legal, etc) within the organization to succeed. The sales operations team can be the liaison between the sales teams and other functions and help trigger a customer focused culture within the organization by reducing inter-function friction. The key here is of course to work towards driving a respect and trust based culture through providing the understanding of each other’s priorities and challenges. Sometime, sales operations will be the advocate and sometimes the buffer to balance conflicting pressures – a less stressed  happy sales engine will be the result.

So in the end, the sales leader should be willing to assign and empower the sales operations team so that they in turn can enable the sales leadership by giving them the gift of time and the necessary insights to achieve the balance between meeting short-term quarterly expectations and the long-term planning needed to ensure the next million/billion dollars.

Where else do you think the sales operations team can enable sales leadership and help the sales force be more effective ? What challenges have you faced as a sales operations professional ? I would love to hear back and learn from you.

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Five Actions that can Turnaround the Corporate Culture – Business Operations Performance Management

Five Actions that can Turnaround the Corporate Culture – Business Operations Performance Management

by | Sep 30, 2012 | Business, Business Operations, Leadership, Management, Performance, Productivity, World of Work

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This company is going nowhere; it is time to jump this ship; I am only here for the pay check; the more things change here, the more they remain the same; I don’t think management really cares about what I think – these are statements that are symptoms of a company that is dying a slow death due to a poisoned culture. This death may not be immediately visible in the top-line and bottom-line results but will definitely makes its impact felt sooner rather than later. In the Deloitte’s 2015 Global Human Capital Trends survey, employee engagement and culture issues exploded onto the scene, rising to become the no. 1 challenge companies face around the world. Organizations that create a culture defined by meaningful work, deep employee engagement, job and organizational fit, and strong leadership are outperforming their peers and will likely beat their competition in attracting top talent.  Exceptional organizations create and sustain a culture that engages and motivates their employees – 83% of executives and 84% of employees rank having engaged and motivated employees as the top factor that substantially contributes to a company’s success. There is a correlation between employees who say they are “happy at work” and feel “valued by [their] company” and those who say their organization has a clearly articulated and lived culture. To be an exceptional organization, companies must focus on the intangible elements of culture-building. So how does one achieve a culture turnaround?

There is still a divide between what executives and employees think influence workplace culture the most (reinforced by multiple survey findings)  – when considering what factors impact workplace culture, executives rank tangible elements such as financial performance and competitive compensation among the highest, whereas those factors were among the lowest for employees. In contrast, employees rank intangible elements such as regular and candid communications, employee recognition, and access to management/leadership highest. And here-in lies the areas where management will and intent can translate into tangible actions that can turnaround the corporate culture, no matter how far eroded, to a point that everyone can proudly say – This (the culture that you want) is in “OUR” DNA.

I have gone through quite a lot of organizational changes myself some of which impacted the culture positively and some that had disastrous consequences. Here are the top five actions that did/do work in triggering afresh energy, enthusiasm and effectiveness in the workplace to turnaround the corporate culture:

Action #1: Figure out what aspect of culture needs to change – And to do this, you have to start with an assessment of your company vision statement. Is your vision statement still relevant to inspire the cultural changes you want? Do people still believe that it is an attainable vision for the company? People need to have hope for the future – is your vision (and core values and desired behavior’s) a common rallying point that are meaningful enough to give people hope and a passion for their work? Don’t make the mistake of acting on perceptions instead of reality. Management and employees need to have a common starting point for a successful outcome to this journey. Do an ANONYMOUS, simple employee engagement survey (you can refer to the kind of questions asked in the Deloitte survey link above) and respect the results.  This will help you influence the organization’s response to your vision statement and values and yield the areas where change is needed to transform into a winning culture.

Action #2: Identify the Influencers in the organization and bring them “in” – Who do people look up to in the organization, whose views do they listen to, who do they respect ? If you can convince these informal influencers on the need for a cultural change and the sincerity behind your intent to change the culture, your battle is half-way won. There will be a cascading effect as Seth Godin says: If you take a group of people, a subgroup of the larger population, and expose them to focused messages again and again, you will start to change their point of view. If you augment those messages with exposure to other members of the group, the messages will begin to have ever more impact. If the group becomes aligned, and it starts acting like a tribe, those messages will become self-reinforcing. And finally, if you anoint and reward leaders of this tribe, single them out for positive attention because of the way your message resonated with them, it will become fully baked in.

Action #3: Start Walking the Talk in Small Steps – Culture is a combination of many small things. It is the way the organization works internally and responds externally. So what better way to reinforce the culture than demonstrating the cultural change that is needed by how you work and respond in everyday interactions? One step at a time. Don’t try to change the entire company at once. Start with one process or workflow and begin the change there through your actions (and resulting success) and then say “This is how we respond together” to drive the change. This is where the business operations team can play a key role to drive the cultural changes in a rapid way by defining and getting the team aligned and in agreement regarding goals, processes and metrics in a way that works for the company and what it stands for.

Action #4: Be Courageous in Weeding out Behaviors that do not align with the Company Culture – Set a time period for the culture changes to take effect. And during this period and especially after this period, be quick, decisive and consistent in addressing the negative influences. As they say, one bad apple spoils the basket – not only do you need to ensure that you hire, promote and reward people not just for skills or performance but for attitude and behavior that aligns with the culture that you want to foster but also help people who are not aligned to be aligned or move them quickly out of the organization. When valued behavior’s are not demonstrated, no matter where he/she is in the hierarchy, there should be consequences that demonstrate that such behavior is no longer acceptable in the organization. This is important to establish accountability.

Action #5: Communicate and Celebrate the Winning Culture – People need to know they are part of something special and unique. And this is where sustained messaging comes in – there are so many inexpensive ways to do this apart from the standard blog, intranet and collaboration tools. Culture is also built in-person with live conversations and interactions.  Creating and retelling of the stories about the company (how it began, turning points, big wins) are important and so are establishing traditions that allow staff to let off some steam, relax and just have some fun (Maniac Mondays, Fun Fridays, Annual Days, Spot Awards – get creative !). Creating an atmosphere that not only fosters but actively promotes open, honest dialogue, transparent communication and great team-building opportunities goes a long way in achieving the culture turnaround that is needed.

You will know your efforts have yielded results when every employee in the organization can state the company’s mission and core values in their own words, when your customer net promoter’s values (NPV) rises, employees praise and encourage each other, internal escalation and long email cc lists are a rarity, and leaders are “connected” to the rest of the organization. Or just walk down the corridors and count the number of smiles that you can see 🙂

“I believe that in a leadership company most people will like their work. But the company will be an even more enjoyable place to work if the culture is designed to make it that way. Leading fosters a working atmosphere that stimulates an open exchange of ideas and fosters dissent. People should show a genuine concern for one another and treat one another with fairness, as peers and friends. With such an atmosphere it should be a pleasure to come to work.” – Marvin Bower, considered as the Father of modern management consulting.

Have you been part of a cultural transformation effort ? What worked and what didn’t to turnaround the corporate culture? I would love to hear and learn from you.

Pic Courtesy : http://www.flickr.com/photos/madfamily/2817211497/

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