Immediate results don’t happen.  If they do, they are rarely meaningful.   It takes time to create meaningful results.  Yet, in times of crisis the cry for immediate results comes fast and furious.  The push happens.  The threats rise.  The rallying cry is sounded.  By carrot or stick the expectation of immediate results is created.

The problem is, results aren’t immediate.   Results are the sum of effort, decisions, failure, commitment, focus, drive, partnerships, discussions, analysis, and most important time.

Looking for immediate results will get you results, but meaningful results, that’s a different story.

Everyone has their own philosophy on hiring and what they determine to be the key skills in an employee.  The one that is most important to me is coachability.

Coachability is how flexible someone is.  It’s how well they respond to criticism, critique, new ways of doing things, and fresh ideas.   Coachability is a persons ability to grow through others leadership, direction, and insight.

Only 50% of sales people met their quota in 2009.  (source: Bridge Group’s 2010 inside sales metrics survey) I have to believe that many non sales people also missed their objectives and goals in 09.  I’m sure some of this can be attributed to the economy, but I also believe much of it is a leadership and people issue.

The only way to turn around an underperforming company, team or organization is through the people.  We only have two options when it comes to people; get new ones, or bring up the existing.   I prefer the second and that’s why I put so much emphasis on finding and hiring coachable people.

Coachable people embrace new ideas.  They are open and actively seek out criticism and critique.  They are often focused on personal development and growth.   Coachable people tend to be more secure.  They are less attached to the status-quo and see change as necessary and good.

Relationships with coachable employees are different too.  They are rooted in discussion, assessment and evaluation.  Relationships with coachable people are less hierarchical in nature.  I’ve found them to look and feel more like partners rather than supervisor, subordinate.   I’ve found when managing less coachable empolyees the conversations tend to be more combative, data driven, and defensive, as less coachable employees are very sensitive to criticism, and change.  They are often insecure and look to defend their position rather than explore new opportunities for growth.  Less coachable relationships are more hierarchical.  They are more top down.   I find it hard to work with less coachable people.

Coachabilty is a softskill.  It’s hard to measure.   But I know it when I see it.  Coachability is at the core of change.  It is at the core of growth.  It is at the core of personal interaction.  It is critical to development.   Coachable people bring a flexibility and openness to situations that enhances success.  I like to look at it like being a coach for a tennis or golf pro.  Imagine how difficult it would be to get Andre Agassi or Tiger Woods to win if they weren’t coachable.  Imagine every time you suggested a change in Tiger’s swing he argued or pushed back.  Imagine letting Andre know his performance in the first round of Wimbledon was awful and that he wasn’t playing well, and he’d complain to “HR”.

The coachable get that being pushed, challenged, and coached is the key to their success.  They actively seek it out and surround themselves with coaches that don’t let them get complacent.  I believe the same thing holds true in the business world.

There are a lot of brilliant, talented, experienced, people out there.  People with amazing skills who can get things done.  But for me, more important than experience, talent, and brilliance is their ability to adapt and grow and the coachable are far more capable of growing and adapting.

Business changes faster than it ever did.  Companies are no longer entitled to a 100 year span on top.  Microsoft, less than 30 years old is now loosing to Apple.  Google, only 10 years old is being challenged by Facebook.   Adaptability is the new success trait.   To be adaptable you have to be flexible and a team of coachable engineers, sales people, product people, marketers and more is at the core of that flexibility.

For me, hiring coachable people has been the difference between success and failure.   What do you think?

Chase Bank just updated their new iPone app and it’s exactly the kind of customer experience all companies should strive for.

The new Chase app does a few cool things.  It allows you to transfer money, pay bills, send money to anyone with just their email address, pay credit cards and more all from your iPhone.  It’s a pretty slick app.  But the killer new feature in this app is the ability to deposit a check right from the phone.

I used it today.  I deposited a $10 check and a $150 check.   It was a fairly easy process.  I logged into the app, typed in the amount of the checks, took a picture of the front of the back and submitted.   That was it.   About two minutes later I had an email confirmation that the deposit was made.

I am a Chase customer and I love this type of customer experience.  In an industry many consider commoditized, Chase is creating ways to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

It’s this type of creativity that drives differentiation.  More companies need to do this.  I would have love to been sitting in the meeting or around the table when the Chase employe with the idea said, “What if we allow people to deposit checks from their phone?”   How would your company respond to such a creative suggestion that challenges every notion of what your industry considers secure?   Such outside of the box suggestions are too often met with –”yeah, great idea but.”  The but is then followed with every reason why it can’t be done.

Way to go  Chase for getting rid of the “yeah buts”.

This app is game changing.  Right now you can only deposit a check up to a thousand dollars and no more than three thousand a week.  I suspect as they work out the kinks the limits will go up and I will have one less reason to go to a branch . . .  and one more reason to stay with Chase.

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Yesterday’s post got me thinking a bit more about culture. So, I figured I’d do another post on it.

Culture comes from the top. I’ve been in companies with phenomenal cultures where I bled the company red and I’ve worked at companies where the culture made me want to vomit.

I’ve been personally successful in developing cultures. I’ve built a few cultures where we were the envy of the organization. To this day we still talk about “the good old days at . . . ” I’ve also made some mistakes and failed at building cultures.

I am passionate about culture and understand what it takes to build them.

It’s simple: LEADERSHIP

Culture starts at the top. I’ve worked with leaders who felt creating and managing a culture was not their job, but the employees. Needless to say none of these leaders are still in their positions — and they shouldn’t be.

If companies with strong cultures outperform companies with shitty cultures then it seems to reason a good culture is key.

It starts with the CEO. He or she owns the development and reinforcement of the culture. If they don’t have the leadership to implement and create a winning culture, they are not fit for the job. Unfortunately, few board of directors hire, fire, have metrics, or implement processes to measure a CEO on their ability to create a winning culture.

I am aware of only one instance where culture was a key metric measured by the board; where the CEO was held accountable for the environment he created for customers and the employees.

In a business world that increasingly looks like the professional sports, with winners and losers changing places every day, culture is increasingly becoming a critical element to winning.

Apple and Google are great examples of where culture is at the heart of success.

A CEO, like a coach, is responsible for creating a winning environment. For me it’s not enough to deliver the numbers by themselves. Numbers with a shitty culture are a house of cards. As soon things get difficult or the river changes direction, the company will be unable to respond.

A CEO’s job is to drive growth and improve shareholder value. I submit this can not be done over the long haul with a shitty culture.

Culture is too important to the success of companies. Companies with good cultures make better products, have happier employees, and create better shareholder value.
I think more boards should add a culture component to their key metrics. I think they should add “culture development and execution” as part of the hiring process. I think they should create metrics to measure culture. I think they should hold the CEO and the executive team accountable for the culture and in the end if a CEO can’t oversee a good culture. The board should fire them . . . I would.

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I don’t think anyone would argue about how important culture is to success. From family, to school, to business to country, culture, — the behaviors that are expected from the participants and the behaviors that are reinforced — creates success or failure.

We see and talk about this most often in sports. Sports allows us to see, in short order, the relationship between a great culture and success. We talk about the chemistry, the unselfish behavior, the team play etc. All of these are cultural elements.

The best and most recent example of a winning culture is the New England Patriots. Bill Belichick has built a culture on teamwork and unselfishness. The Patriots expect everyone to play multiple positions. They won’t bring on high-priced free agents etc. This strong culture has won them 3 Super Bowls in less than 10 years.

Jim Collins and Jerry Porras wrote, In Built to Last, about how culture was the key difference in company performance over the long haul.

Culture is important.

The problem with culture is it can’t be mandated. Culture is the voluntary behaviors people embrace and demonstrate. Culture is how people chose to behave. Culture is a choice.

Too often organizations mandate behavior in order to attain their desired culture. It doesn’t work that way. Culture is opt in.

Don’t confuse culture with compliance. If your employees are demonstrating the behaviors you are looking for but they’re doing it because it’s been mandated and doing it out of fear, you don’t have the culture you want, you have a culture of fear.

People don’t comply with a culture, they embrace it. Culture is how people chose to behave, good or bad. There is ALWAYS a culture. There no such thing a having no culture. There are bad cultures and good cultures, but a culture is always present.

As leaders it’s our job to create the culture we want. It’s up to the leaders to create an environment where people choose to participate. Leaders need to demonstrate the value of the culture, what people get by adhering, what the advantages are, what the disadvantages are etc. Leaders need to reinforce the behaviors they expect by rewarding those who exhibit them. The leaders need to demonstrate the behaviors themselves. Those who don’t choose to embrace them need to be moved out. The culture needs to be at the center of every new direction, every new product, every new hire, every promotion, every decision has to be measured against the culture.

By putting the culture at the center of business people begin to embrace it. They see why it’s important. They understand how it will benefit them. They understand why it’s in their best interest to participate and they choose to do so.

You can’t mandate culture. Yet, a good culture is critical to success.

Reaching goals, outperforming the competition, gaining market share, attracting employees etc. happens when you have a great culture. To have a great culture you have to define it, then you have to create an environment where people WANT to participate. If they don’t; making them, through compliance isn’t going to amount to a hill of beans.

Create success with the culture and the rest of the business becomes that much easier to manage.

Don’t confuse culture with compliance. People need to choose to participate not be forced. The best teams, groups, families, and companies choose to participate in a way that benefits the entire organization.

If people are complying, your not heading in the right direction.

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When it comes to competing with established companies, start-ups have one HUGE advantage; they have nothing. They have no history. They are historically broke. They have nothing to protect.

One of the challenges established companies face is fear of losing what they have. Established companies have revenue, customers, market share, and historical performance. Having stuff like this creates and interesting tension. It forces a difficult question. What do you focus on, protecting what you have or working on getting more.

Start-ups have one singular focus — growing. They don’t have to worry about protecting what they have. There is no fear of losing what they have–they don’t have anything. This singular focus is a HUGE advantage. The tension established companies have doesn’t exist.

You see this a lot. Companies faced with diminishing revenue, lost customers, eroding market share focus on how to stop the bleed, how to protect themselves from losing. Goals, investment, efforts, and rallying cries focus on how to stop the bleeding, how to not lose. They stop trying to win.

I think this is an interesting dynamic. It’s the competitive underpinning to why start-ups can be so disruptive. They have a “nothing to lose” mentality. This allows them to place big bets, take chances, shun the status quo and more; all the things that make innovation possible. There is nothing tethering their thinking. They have a singular focus — grow!

When you have something to protect, innovation, taking chances, creativity, put at risk what you have. Because of this we avoid them. The result, less innovation and creativity.

Like a team down 3-0 in a best of 7 series, start-ups have nothing to lose. This puts them in a very competitive postion. It’s an advantage.

If establish companies could keep this in mind, it would allow them to keep the advantage they have of being an established company.

I think Apple thinks this way. However, now that their market cap has surpassed that of Microsoft, will they stay that way? Will Microsoft keep trying to protect what they have or look forward.

Having nothing is a great advantage. Having something can be an albatross if you let it.

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When it comes to selling we should be doing everything we can to make a good product. We need to think about the customer experience, the value our customers get, and the utility our products and services bring. A lot is written about building and selling good stuff.

What we seem to forget is, it’s not only how good the product is or what it does, but what our customers EXPECT from it. When you confuse us, you don’t meet our expectations and that’s a problem.

At dinner last night I ordered a chile relleno. It was good. But, It wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t deep fried, there was no deep fried crispy shell. The chili relleno was wrapped in egg. It was more like a chile relleno omelet. I liked it. I ate it. But I was confused. It didn’t meet my expectations. BigE was even more frustrated. It’s not a chile relleno she said. Maybe not to her or me, but it was to them and that’s the problem.

It didn’t matter how it taste, it didn’t meet our expectations and therefore negatively affected our experience.

We all have a vision of what we expect to get when we buy something. If it isn’t met, we’re not happy. Regardless of how good it is.

When you sell, set the right expectation. If you don’t all your good efforts will be wasted.

It was a good chile relleno, but all we can remember is it wasn’t what we expected.

If you want to make a BIG change, don’t focus on changing a few big things, focus on changing a bunch of little things.

It’s the little things that make the biggest difference. The little things are embedded into our day to day. It’s hard to forget the little things. If one little thing fails, the entire effort doesn’t fail. Little things are repetitive. They build on themselves. The little things act as building blocks for the big things.

Too often we swing for the fences when we are trying make a change. It feels good to make big, sweeping changes that are going to bring in a new era of something. The problem is, BIG is too hard for most of us. It’s overwhelming and scares us.

A lot of small changes can make BIG happen.

If you are looking to make a change, don’t make a few big changes, make a whole lot of little ones, they’ll add up to big change.

I have never hired for courage before. I have looked back at my past job descriptions and the word courage is no where to be found. This bothers me.

I’m going to start hiring for courage. I’m also going to start looking for more of it in my relationships and the people I commit to.

Courage is a powerful trait. Courage is the fuel that enables a lot of things. It takes courage to:

Say no to a customer
Not to come down on price
Disagree with your boss
Suggest a new product
Show your weaknesses
Start something new
Start over
Try a different approach
Fire a customer
Take risks
Hold your ground when you believe you are right
Admit your wrong
Not go with the crowd
Highlight errors and mistakes
Express unpopular opinions
Call out the elephant in the room
Be accountable for your mistakes (it’s easy to be accountable for your successes)
Put others first
Try new things
Accept criticism
Start a business
Be different
Be uncomfortable
Try
Fail

Courage is at the heart of all great efforts. Courage allows us to do the hard stuff. It allows us to be OK with being uncomfortable.

All the great successes I have witnessed have come about because someone had the courage to do something different, to challenge the status quo, to take a risk, to be willing to fail.

Change and growth can not take root without courage. Knowing this why aren’t we all looking for the courageous?

I know I’m going to start!

What did you say you would do? Did you do it? What happened? What are you going to do next? Why? Repeat

To be successful in sales and to run a successful business these questions have to be asked, literally, every quarter.

I’ve have participated and still participate in a lot of review meetings, monthly business reviews, quarterly business reviews etc. (MBR’s, QBR’s) and think they are informative. Review meetings are critical to connecting the business stakeholders with what is going on. It’s important to keep the team informed and give them visibility to what is happening and what the future looks like. The problem for me with most review meetings, is they are just that, review meetings. They rarely focus on the execution. They primarily focus on the results.

To be effective, I believe you have to review the actions the team took, not just the results.

The best way to do this is everyone must commit to not only numbers but to actions. By committing to actions, it is easier to see the failures in what is being done and change course.

In my quarterly sales plan and business reviews we start with what we said we would do, then what we actually did. We outline our actions from the quarter, discussing what steps we took, what approaches we employed, what happened and what the gaps were. We talk a lot about the how. It’s only in the context of what we DID that we talk about the results.

After we’ve reviewed what we did and the results we then evaluate if what we are doing is working. We discuss as a team if we need to change course, if our efforts are providing the return we need, if our plans our working. From there we map out new actions, reaffirm those that are working, outline why we believe the new choice of actions are right and list the expected outcomes.

I’ve been doing this approach for years. It has worked very well for me. It gives accountability to planning. It focuses on execution.

I’ve been part of teams that don’t do this and on teams that do. I’ve learned that the teams whose effort focuses more on results and less on what people are doing are far less apt to achieve their goals.

Reviews where the focus is on what we said we would do are more successful. They are engaging and energetic. They connect our actions with our goals.

If you are a Sales Manager or a General Manager, think about changing your reviews. Start with: what did you say you would do? Did you do it? Did it work? What do you need to do different? Why? Then go from there. The results will speak for themselves.