Leadership Quote: Vision Without Action

Leadership Quote: Vision Without Action

Opt 8 July 27

This month’s leadership quote:

“Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.”

-Joel A. Barker

When leaders focus solely on vision and strategy and not on action, put simply, nothing gets done. Successful leaders know that a vision is a destination that their team can rally around. They also know that while the vision is their job, it is a team effort to develop a strategy for getting there.

At the same time, once the vision and strategy are defined, results only happen with implementation. And only succeed with the monitoring and evaluation that follows.

In my experience, leaders who see their only job as generating the big ideas and abdicate their leadership role when it comes to execution are dreaming.

At the same time, action without vision just passes the time. Vision gives us and our teams direction; it enables us to make choices and to focus. Without it, we are only left with activities that may or may not lead to results.

Bring it all together, Vision with action can change the world.

Elisa K. Spain

In Good Governance, When Does Culture Come Ahead Of Revenue?

In Good Governance, When Does Culture Come Ahead Of Revenue?

Opt 4 July 20

A few weeks ago in my blog about Leading Isn’t Easy, I talked about the hard choices we sometimes must make as leaders. Especially those choices where neither outcome is a good one.

As we continue this series on Governance Design, I am reminded of my 2014 theme for my Vistage groups, “All That Matters Is Culture”.

For this reason, once we define our business objective, for me the most important question is, “What are the cultural implications of our goals?”. If we are intentional about our culture, and ruthless about enforcing it, everything else will follow. And it isn’t easy.

Sometimes we have high performing employees who don’t fit the culture. So hard, to say goodbye to someone who is getting the job done, sometimes, doing it better than anyone else, brings in the big deals but just doesn’t fit. She may be a bully, or he may cut corners or spread negative energy.

When it is an employee, we can often rationalize to ourselves that the performance of the team will improve when the person who doesn’t fit is gone. The net result will be higher performance overall.

But, what if it is a customer who doesn’t fit the culture? Here we are talking a real dollar impact if we separate. This brings us back to Leading Isn’t Easy.

Recently, I had to make this hard decision. It became clear to me that a long time member of one of my groups didn’t fit the core values of the group. This member contributed in many positive ways and yet, I knew that to take the group to the next level, it was time for this member to go. After a few sleepless nights, we had the Fierce Conversation, and I have already begun to see the change. What I realized was, to achieve the business objectives and the long term growth, the temporary dip in revenue was worth it.

 

Elisa K. Spain

Is Governance Leadership?

Is Governance Leadership?

Opt 3 July 13

This week begins a new series on the topic of governance in growing businesses.

Governance is not a term typically used by business owners and business leaders. Rather, we hear this term most often in the context of corporate boards, both public and private.

Yet, Wikipedia defines corporate governance as, “the system of structures, rights, duties, and obligations by which corporations are directed and controlled.

  • Governance provides the structure through which corporations set and pursue their objectives, while reflecting the context of the social, regulatory and market environment.
  • Governance is a mechanism for monitoring the actions, policies and decisions of corporations in alignment with the interests among the stakeholders.”

In short, governance is the DIME method that I have talked about previously. Design, Implement, Monitor and Evaluate.

Beginning with “D – Design”.  In my experience, businesses initially develop without much regard to design. And as Vistage speaker Jim Alampi reminds us, while bootstrapping works up to a point, as businesses reach critical milestones of growth, what we were doing up to now, doesn’t work anymore. At this point it is time to pause and ask two sets of questions:

First, the 5 key internally focused questions:

  1. What are our business objectives?
  2. What are the cultural implications of these goals?
  3. What are the financial implications of these goals, revenue, expense, cash and capital needs?
  4. What structure and infrastructure, i.e. key functions and processes are needed to achieve our objectives?
  5. Who on our team is qualified to fill the key roles? Who may not fit? Who will we add?

And, equally important are the 5 key externally focused questions:

  1. What is happening in our industry? Competition, innovation, regulation?
  2. What is happening amongst our customers? Growth, consolidation, innovation?
  3. What are the gaps that provide opportunities for us?
  4. What are the threats to our continued growth?
  5. What diversification opportunities exist?

 

Elisa K. Spain

Vistage CEO Confidence Index: Hiring Is A Top Concern in Q2 2014

Vistage CEO Confidence Index: Hiring Is A Top Concern in Q2 2014

q2 2014

The quarterly Vistage Confidence Index is now available.

The latest Vistage survey found that CEOs continued to feel confident about today’s economy, as the Vistage CEO Confidence Index was virtually unchanged from the levels recorded in the prior two quarters. The Vistage CEO Confidence Index was 101.0 in the 2nd quarter 2014 survey, nearly identical with the 101.3 in the 1st quarter and the 101.5 in the 4th quarter of 2013. This was the best three-quarter performance since 2005. The constancy of economic optimism is all the more surprising given the drop in GDP during the 1st quarter, indicating that CEOs discounted last quarter’s decline as an aberration due to the harsh winter.

Below are some key highlights from the Q2 2014 Vistage CEO Confidence Index (all members surveyed):

  • 73% of CEOs expect increased revenues over the next 12 months.
  • 57% of CEOs planned on expanding their payrolls, just below last quarter’s 58%, which was the highest level since the start of 2007.
  • 30% of CEOs report that hiring new staff is the top business issue that they now face.
  • 46% of CEOs plan increases in investments in new plant and equipment.

Elisa K. Spain