Tag: Vistage

Leadership Quote: I Am Part Of All Whom I Have Met….

June 24, 2012 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

This month’s leadership quote: I am part of all whom I have met. – Alfred Lord Tennyson.

One of the greatest lessons I have learned since becoming a Vistage Chair is this one. How many times do we as leaders say to ourselves, “I am different, they are different, that is the reason we cannot communicate.”

What if instead, we asked ourselves the following questions when dealing with a difficult communication challenge:

What can I learn about the person I am dealing with that will give me insight into them as a human being?
What life experiences do we share?
What personality traits, interests, passions do we share?
How might what we share, help us to communicate?

Does A Business Have To Grow?

June 3, 2012 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

This is a topic often discussed amongst my Vistage members. Some want to grow, others like the idea of maintaining a controllable size. There is no one-size-fits-all answer. What I do know is that businesses are organic, and therefore static is not sustainable. We’ve all seen businesses disappear over time when the owner was not engaged, unaware of changes in the industry, lost a key employee, a new competitor entered the market with a game changing idea, etc.

If you accept that static is not sustainable, what to do?

If you find that you like the entrepreneur culture, with everyone playing a part in the business, be intentional about it. While you may not want fast growth or a large company, a business has no choice but to continue to evolve and grow, even if it is at a steady pace. If you are in this place, here are my questions for you:

Do you have a diversified client base?
If not, what steps are you taking to diversify and reduce this risk?
Where is your business and your product(s) in the business life cycle? If you are in a mature industry, with mature products, what is your “digital camera” and what are you doing about it? see March 11, 2012 blog, Innovation vs Discipline: Kodak vs Fuji

If, on the other hand, you have the opportunity to scale and want to, be intentional about that as well. The challenge for many entrepreneurs who want to grow is making that transformation from an “entrepreneur culture” to a professionally managed culture. If you are an owner with a growth plan, here are your questions:

Do you want to be the CEO of a professionally managed company? Does the thought give you energy and play to your genius?
If you would rather leave the management to someone else, is there someone on your team that could be your COO?
Are you open to accepting that your business is going to change and some of the people will have to change as well?
Are you willing to invest the time and the money to get there?

Whichever path you choose, make it an intentional one.

Leadership Quote: The Key Is Not To Prioritize What Is On Your Schedule..

May 27, 2012 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

This month’s leadership quote: The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities. – Stephen Covey

We often hear time management tips about taking time to plan your schedule. What we often hear is to prioritize what is on the schedule. What Stephen Covey reminds us with this quote, is to pause, choose our priorities and then schedule them.

As a leadership coach, I recommend the following 5 step approach to my Vistage members and coaching clients:

Start with the wheel of life, what are my “spokes”?
What do I need to feel in balance with each of the spokes on my wheel? Remembering that balance is different for each person, see 2/5/12 blog: The Ever Elusive Search for Work/Life Balance
What are my 3 or 5 year goals for each spoke?
What actions do I want (need) to take this year to move me toward those goals?
Each day, when planning the day, ask this question: How do I want to spend the 16 hours I am not sleeping so that I complete the actions I set for myself this year?

Why "Big Picture Only" Leaders Fail

May 13, 2012 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

As discussed in last week’s blog, there is a difference between management and leadership. Leadership is “doing the right things” and focusing on the big picture certainly falls into this category. That said, when leaders focus solely on vision and strategy and not on execution, put simply, nothing gets done.

Successful leaders know that they must set a vision so there is a destination that their team can rally around.

Once the vision is defined, setting a business strategy to achieve the vision provides guidance for evaluating opportunities. With a strategy in place, we can ask the questions:

Is this opportunity consistent with our strategy?
If not, AND there is a reason to do it anyway, what do we need to adjust in our strategy?

The final step is goals and action plans and a monitoring process to ensure results. It is this key step that is often missed and leads to failure. This is why Vistage members share their vision, strategy and goals and are accountable to each other for all three.

Robert Sutton, best selling author of Good Boss, Bad Boss, says it well:

“While managers are people who do things right and leaders are people who do the right thing, I argued this distinction was accurate but dangerous because it distorts how too many bosses–at all levels–view and do their work. It encourages bosses to see generating big and vague ideas as the important part of their jobs–and to treat implementation, or pesky details of any kind, as mere “management work” best done by “the little people.” Even if left unsaid, this distinction reflects how too many bosses think and act. They use it to avoid learning about people they lead, technologies their companies use, customers they serve, and numerous other crucial little things.”

For more from Robert Sutton, click here.

Leadership Vs. Management – Does It Matter?

May 6, 2012 by Elisa Spain5 Comments

Recently, one of my Vistage members asked the group this question: “What is the difference between leadership and management?”

He heard a lot of responses and the one that said it best was this one…

“Leadership is doing the right things, management is doing things right.” from management guru Warren Bennis

What does it mean to do things right? Here are my top 5:

Leadership is setting the direction
Leadership is inspiring when there are tailwinds and when there are headwinds
Leadership is being intentional about your culture
Leadership is accountability
Leadership is making tough choices

And here are my questions for you:

What else would you add to this list?
If you and your leadership team did your job well as leaders and managed the agreements you have with your team, how might the role of management evolve?

Leadership Quote: We Are What We Think…

April 29, 2012February 2, 2023 by Elisa Spain1 Comment

This month’s leadership quote: We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. – Dhammapada

We hear quotes like this from Vistage speakers, about the power of positivity, about trusting the universe and focusing on what we want to accomplish, about being mindful of how we show up.

The power is there; the challenge for us as leaders is to remember that what we think does, in fact, make our reality.

Here are some questions to consider:

Am I taking time each day to focus on the outcomes I want?
Are my thoughts consistent with the outcomes I want?
What am I doing each day to be mindful of how my thoughts become my outcomes?

What Makes For A "Best Place To Work"?

April 8, 2012 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

Last week, Crain’s Chicago Business published their annual list of “Chicago’s Best Places To Work”. As I read through the list, I was struck by the differences in the companies that made it to the top ten. The list included Fortune 500 companies, companies with less than 100 employees, technology companies, financial services companies, manufacturers, etc. etc.

In short, the list was very diverse. The diversity of the list is what caused me, as a leadership coach to pause and ask “What is the leadership lesson?”

My sense is the answer lies in the wisdom we gained from Edgar Papke, a Vistage Speaker who spoke to several of my groups in the last month on the topic of Alignment: How to Build and Lead High Performing Teams and Organizations. We learned from Edgar that it isn’t about one culture being “better” than another. Rather, the goal is to align your customer needs and your unique selling proposition with your culture. Companies that achieve this alignment, according to Edgar, consistently outperform their competitors.

Extrapolating from Edgar, what makes companies “winners” as best places to work, are those that achieve this alignment.

So, before you start adopting the practices of the companies you read about in the list, I encourage you to pause and ask yourself:

What is the culture of my company?
Is our culture in alignment with our customer needs?
What gaps in alignment can we address that will make this a “best place to work”?

To read the Crain’s article click here.

For more on Edgar Papke and Alignment including measurement tools, click here.

What Leadership Lessons Can We Learn As Undercover Bosses?

April 1, 2012 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

The popular TV series “Undercover Boss” has ignited conversation about the value of walking in our employees’ shoes – or perhaps they in ours. It’s a rare company where you can accomplish this “undercover” and yet the opportunity is still there to learn from our employees who are on the line.

In family-owned businesses it is common for the children of the owner to do every job in the company before taking on a leadership role. Similarly, this happens naturally in entrepreneurial businesses because everyone has to be able to do every job in the early days.

Then companies grow, employees move from generalists to specialists, we hire leaders because of what they know and can add, the demands are high and we “don’t have time” for anything more than what we do every day. And yet, Vistage members know the importance of taking a day away to work on their business by attending their Vistage meetings. What if we took this day away to another level?

As a leadership coach, I wonder about the following:

What inspiration and strategic insight every CEO and their leadership team might gain from a day, or more, away from the leadership job?
What if instead of your job, you did one of the customer facing or customer impact jobs in your company? What leadership lessons might you learn and what results might you achieve?
What would happen if you gave your employees a forum to be boss for a day and share what they would do if they were walking in your shoes?

Here is a WSJ article to get you started thinking about the potential results: How to Be a Better Boss? Spend Time on the Front Lines.

Vistage Confidence Index: What Do Vistage CEOs Have To Say About The Economy?

March 28, 2012 by Elisa SpainNo Comments

The quarterly Vistage CEO Confidence Index is now available Here are some highlights:

The Vistage CEO Confidence Index was 105.1 in the 1st quarter 2012 survey, up from 98.8 in Q4 and 83.5 in Q3 of last year.

75% of CEOs say their sales revenue will increase in the next 12 months.
60% of CEOs expect their firm’s profitability to improve during the next 12 months.
59% of CEOs believe recent data showing economic improvement signals a longer-term trend toward economic growth.
60% of CEOs believe that overall economic conditions in the U.S. have improved compared to a year ago.
84% of CEOs have learned to make their business more productive with fewer employees.
57% of CEOs expect their total number of employees will increase in the next 12 months.
30% of CEOs said that if they could start their business over again, they would chose to open it in another state.

Click here for the full report.