Common Sense Approach to Culture

The Power of Company Culture : How any business can build a culture that improves productivity, performance and profits – Chris Dyer (Kogan Page)

All too often there seems to be the mindset that for something to be truly innovative business idea you have to develop some new, groundbreaking approach or plan. Every once in a while someone come along and drops a simple reminder of common sense things that you can apply to your business that can deliver an impactful, positive change.

One such great reminder comes in the form of PeopleG2 founder and CEO Chris Dyer’s new book The Power of Company Culture, which spells out tactical steps that you can take to drive your company culture and deliver bottom line success.

Dyer builds his approach on seven pillars, cornerstones of company culture that are pretty straight forward.

The Pillars

·       Transparency – What is one of the fastest and easiest ways to increase buy in? Keep your people in the loop and on task working for the common goal.

·       Positivity – By turning the focus to what is working well without focusing on the negative you can smoothly shift your team to fixing problems.

·       Measurement – This one is often over looked, but a true necessity; if you’re not holding your team and for that matter yourself up to a yardstick how can you ever hope to succeed. Keep and share a score card.

·       Acknowledgement – You literally cannot succeed without celebration; this one has been a touchstone for world class leaders. If you are concerned about the cost, just imagine what the cost of not celebrating would be.

·       Uniqueness – This one is different for culture, but every marketer knows well that unique value propositions can drive growth; so look for ways that you can transfer that mindset to company culture.

·       Listening – This is hands down one of the most important skills that leaders need to develop, because you really can’t have all of the answers. Encourage your team to listen as well, because your customers will often reveal opportunity that they have to be tuned into, which makes for low hanging opportunities for growth.

·       Mistakes – Everyone has heard the cliché about learning from your mistakes; I recently heard a multinational, Fortune 500 CEO make the comment “ learn for your mistakes, but don’t live with them.” Great advice.

Dyer gives you easily implementable action steps that you can put into play immediately and begin to impact your culture and your business.

The Battle for Talent

Talent Wins: The New Playbook for Putting People First – Ram Charan, Dominic Barton and Dennis Carey – (Harvard Business Review Press)

I recently wrote about a growing emphasis that is being placed by companies on their talent. With the available talent pool shrinking as more and more companies are hiring that focus has become more imperative in some sectors and industries. While there is more and more attention being given to the value of talent as a competitive advantage, there really has not been a go to guide for business to make this shift towards a talent bias.

With good people becoming harder and harder to find, there is a need for direction on how to transition to a talent-based value, hiring practice and avoid just filling holes in your team with warm-body syndrome. Moving beyond all the talk of talent and getting down to the nuts and bolts of it is the new book by a trio of skilled practitioners in the art of talent acquisition and development, Ram Charan, Dominic Barton and Dennis Carey, Talent Wins: The New Playbook for Putting People First.

In Talent Wins, the trio make the case that going down this road is not only pivotal in your future success, but that the first step in the process needs to be an organizational paradigm shift at the top; whether that is with the board or with the C-Suite.

The Buy In

Charan, Barton and Carey make the case that there is a proven, verifiable business basis that is at the core of the talent shift that makes the case for this change in direction for many organization. While it may fly in the face of ‘how we always did things” the fact is there is bottom line proof that is demonstrable for businesses that choose this path and do it well.

It shouldn’t be shocking to anyone that there is quite literally an actionable playbook (it is in the title!) that walks you through the process of developing your plan, your team that will lead the organizational shift, getting the internal buy-in, and even how to go about competing for talent and winning. There is even an operational checklist to utilize as you walk through the process. These guys almost make it easy…just kidding. Don’t be fooled, this kind of process will involve some very real world heavy lifting and you will likely run into a pile of issues that you will have to overcome, but in the end, something worth doing, is worth the effort it takes to do it well. Talent Wins: The New Playbook for Putting People First, will give you a leg up and a road map to run on going into this process.

Make No Mistake

The Book of Mistakes: 9 Secrets to Creating a Successful Future – Skip Pritchard – (Center Street)

There is an old saying that has a load of variations that goes something to the effect of “learn from your mistakes.” Then there is the extension of the phase that  goes “If you don’t learn from your mistakes you are doomed to repeat them.”

They both became clichés, because like most clichés they are rooted in the truth. Lately I have noticed that there is a growing business buzz about mistakes, failure and even failing at a high velocity. There is even a book granting the permission to go out and screw things up. It’s almost to the point where I feel the need to go and mess up so I could check the box; as if it’s a resume enhancement.

While I certainly don’t think that making mistakes is a deal breaker or can somehow be avoided, but I think there are steps that we can all take as leaders to not only minimize mistakes but to help our teams avoid the pitfalls that we have all encountered along the way. While I have never been a huge fan of the business parable style, I find the new book by Skip Pritchard, The Book of Mistakes: 9 Secrets to Creating a Successful Future, is loaded with great advice/tips to help you not only steer clear of mistakes, but how to effectively and proactively take what you have learned and put it into action.

I found myself reading and highlighting sections of the book to share with my daughter. I think this book can provide great lessons for someone just like her; someone who is searching for direction, is uncertain of the right answers and for whom college may not be the best path. I have encouraged her to be courageous and pursue her dreams and have offered guidance towards that path. Pritchard end each section/mistake with a short recap and a track to run on for each one. His advice on Mistake #1 Working on Someone Else’s Dream really hit the mark when I shared it with my daughter.

I hope Mr. Pritchard won’t be offended that I have copied those 9 pages and created a simple poster to remind her and course correct her along the way. I think no matter where you are on your career path The Book of Mistakes, offers great insight or great reminders that we can all put into action for our future success.

CEO Playbook

The CEO Next Door: The 4 Behaviors That Transform Ordinary People Into World-Class Leaders – Elena L. Botelho and Kim R. Powell – (Currency)

Based on decades of experience, countless hours of direct interaction/interviewing leaders and in depth research culled from what is likely one of the most comprehensive leadership databases, Elena Botelho and Kim Powell have boiled things down to the secret sauce that goes into the making of a CEO in their new book The CEO Next Door: The 4 Behaviors That Transform Ordinary People Into World-Class Leaders.

The results are a playbook that is about more than just what it takes to get there, but also about succeeding when you get there. Along the way, The CEO Next Door, will have you thinking about the CEOs that you have crossed paths with or have worked with/for. Botelho and Powell have utilized evidence based research to develop the CEO Genome Project that identifies the 4 behaviors that are the building blocks of a CEO.

They include:

·         Decisiveness

·         Engaging for impact

·         Relentless Reliability

·         Adapting boldly

This list had me focusing on the CEOs I have worked with and advised over the past couple of decades. I found the chapter on relentless reliability the most intriguing, notably the list of underperforming CEO types because I had worked for The Seagull, who dropped piles of emails seemingly out of the blue; The Fireman, who managed crisis by crisis and The Hothead, who’s reaction changed based on today’s mood.

The CEO Next Door, goes a long way towards busting some of the myths that have been built up over time surrounding the proverbial corner office. It also goes a long way to help those who either have made the jump or aspire to the C-Suite with actionable steps that can be put into practice at whatever stage you are in, in your career arc.

The Need for Speed

Shortcut Your Startup: Speed Success with Unconventional Advice from the Trenches – Courtney Reum and Carter Reum – (Gallery/Jeter)

Former Goldman Sachs investment banking brothers Courtney and Carter Reum have evolved to become entrepreneurs, investor, and brand development gurus that has seen them score big with development, scaling and sell off of their premium spirits brand VEEV.

They have been involved in the investment or brand acceleration of a veritable who’s who of household brand names like; Lyft, Warby Parker, Shake Shack, Ring, Blue Bottle, Slack, Space-X and a seemingly never ending list of others.

The Reum brothers have distilled the knowledge they have acquired over the course of working with these high level projects into the book, Shortcut Your Startup: Speed Up Success with Unconventional Advice from the Trenches. They boil that distillation down to what they’ve dubbed their 10 Key Startup Switchups.

While much of the advice they arm entrepreneurs with is certainly success tested and offers insight that should be put into play by startups and existing entrepreneurial efforts, the ten switchups have the tendency to read like stand alone blog entries or articles that have been collected under one cover, rather than a cohesive, comprehensive strategy.

As with any business strategy book, I always like to look for even kernels of knowledge or useful ideas that I can put to use when developing (new) strategies. With business and particularly startups accelerating at such a rapid pace, it only makes sense to tap into the base of experience that the Reums offer to get you and your business up to speed.