Tag Archives: Big Picture Thinking

The Spark Behind The Business: The Secret To Success

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What touchstone moment sparked your business into existence? 

For me, the moment came while I was working for a high profile consulting firm. I had become very frustrated on a number of levels but the proverbial straw was when I was very publicly demeaned in front of a client. My response soon after was to resign my position, making the decision to go out on my own at age 35. That was 14+ years ago.

What did that spark morph into? 

“What excites me the most about starting a brewery is not that I will always have tasty beer on tap and ready to go, but that it will help change the lives of generations of people and allow them to prosper! Our consumers are people who love great craft beer, but more than that they have a sincere desire to help other people and shopping socially is one way they do that.”

Client Brio Yiapan, Founder & CEO of the social enterprise Bush Baby Beer
http://bushbabybeer.com/

“We exist because books change lives. Books are a form of relaxation, escapism, art, and we get to be a part of raising the awareness of the general public to great books everywhere. And, because I’m personally passionate about the media and books, PR by the Book is the marriage of both fabulous worlds.”

 

 

 

Client Marika Flatt, Co-founder & Co-owner, PR By The Book
http://www.prbythebook.com/

But how far can that spark really take you? 

http://www.bilconference.com/videos/toms-shoes-blake-mycoski/
“Our goal was one village, 250 kids”
Blake Mycoskie, Founder-Tom’s Shoes

http://www.inc.com/articles/201105/small-business-success-stories-amys-ice-creams.html
“Our Mission is to make people’s day” or “Ice cream is magic”.
Amy Simmons, Founder – Amy’s Ice Cream

After several rather lengthy emails and a phone call, a prospective client decided to go another direction. That’s corporate speak for they chickened out. Ive seen it time and time again; a company and/or owner in pain that desperately need that spark, that special something that will skyrocket them to next level. Instead, they settle for vanilla and utterly institutional solutions. If you truly seek a wildly successful firm then you might want to consider getting a little wild yourself. Find your spark or better yet, THE SPARK and settle for nothing less. The dividends to such an approach will be well worth it.

Food For Thought-
Bob Olmstead

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Mountain Top Time

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If we are to effectively contemplate the issues before us, the things heaviest on our hearts and minds, then we need slow down and claim a space for this sacred work. We claim space when we create calm and nourishing environments from which to experience our contemplations. Our cell phones and email programs are always turned off. We work and explore uninterrupted for a designated period of time, which can range from an hour to several days.

There are many kinds of Mountain Top Time and thus many kinds of spaces that can prove useful. A local coffeehouse or a favorite lunch spot that you can sink into might work well for shorter-term sessions. A cozy chair with great food at home for half a day or a weekend at a low-key spa that is designed to facilitate longer work, can be game changers. The key is to create worlds that you can disappear into on a consistent basis for effective and meaningful contemplation.

 

 The Journey Begins: A Template For Executive Contemplation

What do I need to let go of? Although leadership ideals continue to mature, strong cultural influences remain that evangelize the idea that true leaders should be lone wolves, heroes and saviors. And so we hold onto any number of issues, personality conflicts, bad feelings, events and other things largely out of our control. The Wise Minded Leader knows how to let go and does so frequently.

What am I missing? Often the very best solutions to a problem are simple, to the point and right in front of us, if we could just slow down long enough to see the light of day. But instead we dig in; we draw hard lines and eliminate options. Truly opening up to new perspectives is essential to effective leadership. Thinking outside the box needs to be more then just a cool cliché; it needs to be something that you live every day.

Where are the solutions? In adopting a steadfast commitment to being a solutions driven leader, you do yourself and those around you a great service, for in being solutions driven you all but remove personality from the equation. The focus is not on the drama or all the myriad of things that you cannot control. Rather then get sucked into all of that, your obsession is crafting well thought out, intelligent solutions that show imagination and generate results that benefit all concerned.

How can I have impact? Cherished and revered are those leaders who not only get results but do so in a way that builds strong, lasting relationships. People skills, emotional intelligence, these are the hot commodities of exceptional leadership. Auditing your solutions and strategies to insure they are people centric helps to insure sustainable buy-in.

Food For Thought-
Bob Olmstead

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Crazy Sales Productivity – Dynamic Incentive Based Compensation

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How do you go about driving sales? If you’re like most firms, the focus tends to be solely on making a budget and/or hitting a number, versus truly building your business. Driving sales in the moment is a vastly different mindset than a sales process that serves a far more global vision for your firm.

Is this you?

In the former, the sales process can make you feel like the proverbial rat forever stuck on a wheel that never seems to end. Work becomes all about perpetually running the race versus building a better wheel, the kind of wheel that will lighten your load without sacrificing results. Put another way, your sales process at its core should be a set of well polished gears that serve your business machine as a whole. I call those gears “automatic sales triggers”. And one of the biggest sales triggers out there, is your compensation plan. Is it vanilla or is it Rogue?

Sales Trigger: Dynamic Incentive Based Compensation
It would take ten or more blog posts to properly cover this very powerful concept. The fundamental thing to understand is that human beings, regardless of what they tell you, are driven by a deep need for purpose and accomplishment. Your compensation plan should play to this truth in an honoring, ethical way that benefits all parties involved. Sadly, most compensation plans are incredibly generic and lack any manner of imagination. As well, most only focus on superficial measurements, such as hitting a sales goal and typically, are offered only to sales and management personnel. If you want to explode as a business then you absolutely must Go Rogue when it comes to your compensation plans. I highly recommend the following case study on SAS, a software company well known for it ability to think outside the box when it comes to company culture.

CLICK: SAS Case Study Link

Key Elements To Creating A Dynamic Comp Plan

  • Everyone should be on some form of incentive based compensation, regardless of their position within your firm.
  • Layer your measurement of performance to be both quantitative (hitting a specific number, for example) and qualitative (accomplishing a specific thing, like launching a community outreach program or getting a professional certification of some sort).
  • Layer your measurement of performance by levels of performance such as Unacceptable, Below Average, Average, Above Average and Exceptional.
  • Compensate based on an employee/manager’s level of accomplishment in three core areas of your firm: accomplishment levels that relate to their job responsibilities, accomplishment levels that relate to them advancing the firm’s values, mission and vision; accomplishment levels that relate to their professional growth in areas that add value to the firm in some way.
  • Insure your incentives offer the greatest rewards for broad based accomplishments  like sustaining high level performance over several quarters, excellence in all of the three areas being measures and for accomplishments that go way above and beyond what their job requires.
  • Mix up your rewards. Little things like gift cards for small accomplishments, can go a very long ways. Public recognition, awarding extra time off, paid travel perks, covering childcare expenses are but a few examples of the many ways you can compensate strong performance.
  • Reward above average to exceptional performance in powerful, meaningful ways that genuinely have impact while offering only cost of living increases to consistently average performance.
  • Always pay your team slightly above the industry average, rapidly removing team members who consistently deliver below expectations.

The idea of giving people a great deal of incentive to perform at high levels is such a simple concept and yet, most companies will never take the leap. Ironically, those very same companies will spend huge amounts of money on trying to create and keep revenue, totally ignoring the fact that treating people well is the most cost efficient way there is, to make money. The result? Penny wise and yet pound foolish.

Food For Thought-
Bob Olmstead

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