Results tagged “management” from stevenfeinberg.com
There are five pivotal platforms of perception. Each of these platforms provides an opportunity for you to get your point across skillfully. I've found that most of us, moi included, inadvertently bungle opportunity, or don't see possibilities that skillful eyes spot almost immediately. This is especially true when it comes to influencing others.
First, Product Influence: nuances in messaging can turn customers on – or inadvertently turn them off. This applies to your Point of Purchase, new product introductions, or similar activities. One message shift achieved a 545% increase in sales, and reduced mistakes that were driving away customers. The company wasn't placing the product in the right context for the customer to consider. First establish the context before you make a request.
Second, Promotion influence: tapping naturally occurring ‘decision triggers’ motivate customers to buy now, not later. One easy shift, based upon seeing what was missing, produced an immediate 45% increase in sales. This had been overlooked in plain sight.
If you would like the full report send me an email at steven@stevenfeinberg.com It is an 8 page step-by-step of how we did more with less, achieving unexpected results, and how you might also.
Fourth, Perpetual influence: targeting the “moments of truth” that influence your customer experience and drive brand perception every single day. This is where customer decision triggers impact in-store experience and customer facing interactions in most any industry, online and brick and mortar. We performed an influence audit and recommend ways to manage the customers experience.
Fourth, Perpetual influence: targeting the “moments of truth” that influence your customer experience and drive brand perception every single day. This is where customer decision triggers impact in-store experience and customer facing interactions in most any industry, online and brick and mortar. We performed an influence audit and recommend ways to manage the customers experience.
Fifth, Personal Influence: your professional ability to influence others shouldn't be overlooked. You must know how to influence people. Are you perceived as influential? Your leadership is at stake. You probably weren't born with the complete tool set although you were born equipped to learn it fast. Acquiring the Advantage-Makers secret tactics to instant influence will change you from loser to winner.
I'm just finishing up the new book on The Secrets to Instant Influence: Revealing the Advantage-Makers Influence Tactics.
Board members -
Do you have the right folks running the business?
While working with a Director of Marketing the question arose, not about their immediate boss but the management team. It's a fair question. We are placing our bets and our livelihoods on their know how and good judgment.
Consider the Big 3 Automakers. We certainly can't have more of the same expecting different results.
There are on doubt competent people in management and it may not be their fault for this crisis.
However, the same managers will unfortunately make similar decisions, unless they are Advantage-Makers.
Let's not pretend Advantage-Makers never make a mistakes. It's simply that the are profound learners.
They learn faster, make mistakes quicker, engage more fully in unexpected solutions, work the probabilities and the possibilities and rearrange the scope to create value. Their thought process systematically leads to game changing decisions.
Do you know if your management team are Advantage-Makers?
Assess their ability to shift time:
Does the executive know how to shift rapidly in these trying times or are they using the same words doing the same old same old. Are they acting like Eeyore, woe is me. We all feel it but how are they acting. These folks are not strategic, nor are they using tactical ingenuity. They are duck and covering. Survival is at stake. Defensive moves are important. But if they are only driving defensively you will be at an even bigger disadvantage. Time shifters are able to rapidly adjust to the circumstances, resolve issues early, and shift time horizons. For Advantage-Makers, 'there is no time like the present to create the future'.
Assess their ability to shift interactions:
Does the executive know who to change the game. Do they know how to uncover viable options in the midst of all the cost cutting. Are they just cutting across the board or are they focused on specific strategic interactions and spectific tactical decisions that they adjust to move with the winds of change. This is no time for platitudes, like stay the course. But it is time for rapid adaptation and knowing how to uncover viable options.
Assess their ability to shift perception to influence outcomes:
Does the executive know how to persuade the remaining employees to reengage? Do they know how to make the case compelling for your products and services. Are they leading? Have they differentiated your brand in the minds of the prospects? If your company is not differentiated your company is failing now. Everyone is paying attention to your leaders command presence in this time of crisis. Both the advantage they create in products as well as their non-verbal, their tone of voice, and the language of influential leaderships.
Assess their ability to shift structure to shape behavior:
Does the executive know how to create structures that succeed? I'm not speaking about the org chart. I'm speaking about the forces at play that drive behavior, make decisions, produce momentum, align the teams and generate movement. Has the executive made command decisions that root out structural conflict, that is, competing objectives between teams and departments that are causing delay. If your executives are not determining the hierarchy of importance and making the hard decisions they are contributing to a structure that will fail.
If they are Advantage-Makers, keep them, endorse them, support them.
If not, change them or get them help now.
Now is the time for the Board to act, for the executives to perform, for the leaders to lead.
Cost savings is sound business. We shouldn't argue that point. But executive cost cutting may be going overboard and it may not be their fault.
Every executive I've partnered with has consistently said there is always fat, and on an ongoing basis we should find ways to do more with less. No brainer. The economic shock has managers cutting across the board. Is that wise or otherwise?
Throwing good money after bad practices is what you want to cut. But you don't want to let the GM finance people design the cars. They've actually done that in the past, cut costs and no one bought the cars. Saving money is not the game. Making cars that make money is the game winner.
Our economy works because of cash flow. If everyone or enough people take their money out of the flow it not only reduces the existing cash flow, it makes it harder to rebound. Fear takes hold and accentuates the original problem.
Structurally there are some fundamental shifts that must be made. I think the new Obama administration has an economic team that is sharp enough (pragmatists rather than ideologues) to reduce the rate of the fall and build confidence to get people and companies into the game again. That's step one. The next step is the time frame. How long will it take and how will you respond in the meantime?
20% cuts across the board will provide expense controls. Even in academia, department heads and program heads are being asked to simply cut. But from where? If you want to drive more business, cutting marketing and sales seems like a counterproductive practice, unless you don't think you have new customers. The innovators will create value, the Advantage-Makes will spot the opportunities.
CFO's are the keeper of the cost control levers. They know their job, and the great ones are particularly skilled at managing the ROI. The problems is short term controls that manage cash flow now, but reduce or worse miss opportunities that pay for themselves over time.
Too many company executives are inadvertently contributing to their own pain by playing duck and cover. Again this might not be there fault given that they won't get beat up for following orders. Take for example a client who typically get a 3% response rate from a marketing campaign to the Fortune 100 CEO's. If they took the usual route they'd play duck and cover, and be glad they achieved the 3%, who could fault them. But on the other hand, working with the Advantage-Making principles we devised a campaign that actually achieved a 30% response rate.
From 3% to 30%. Which result would you pay for? And more importantly you must invest in your people who are Advantage-Makers. Not all people operate the same. This is akin to the old 80/20 rule. Your stars will shine now.
The disadvantage of cost cutting with Advantage-Makers is treating everyone equally. It's really important to consider what is an expense that can be cut and what looks like an expense that is actually an investment and will keep both the Advantage-Makers in your company and your company in the money.
Getting rid of 'dead wood' whether people who aren't rowing with you, or processes that are logjams, or organizational practices that are redundant or create role conflict, or products and services that don't produce are all solid cost cutting practices. But please be careful of playing duck and cover, rather than creating advantages that generate cash flow and revenue.
Two shoe salespeople go a foreign country to sell their shoes.
The first shoe salesperson calls up headquarters and says,
“They don’t wear shoes here I’ll be on the next plane home.
The second shoe salesperson calls up headquarters and says,
“They don’t wear shoes here, send all you can!”
This story illustrates the difference between accepting the givens or taking advantage of the givens.
One salesperson has a long tiresome plane ride home, the other salesperson spots opportunity.
Who would you want on your team? Which salesperson are you?
An Advantage-Maker’s judgment begins with questioning the givens.
Are you just going along with your circumstances?
To be able to see solutions that others don’t even know exist you must first question the givens.
When it comes to creating advantages it pays to know what you are after.
2. Easier - Is it easier to use your product than the competitors? ie. Mac's vs. PC.
There are 4 major criteria that should guide your efforts.
1. Faster - Does your product/service accelerate the sale? Retailer use accelerators all the time.
Does your leadership accelerate the needed change?
2. Easier - Is it easier to use your product than the competitors? ie. Mac's vs. PC.
As a manager are you making your messages easy to take action on?
3. Simpler - Does your offer simplify the lives of users? It's been said that the future belongs to the simplifiers.
This does not mean simplistic. Google makes internet search simple, easy, fast.
4. Multipliers - this is the king of advantage-making, creating leverage and your edge. How can you leverage your existing resources? What is a 180 degree shift from the conventional approach that will fundamentally change the game?
Ipods bring more value to the users.
Do you want a cup of coffee or do you want Starbucks?
Barack Obama's Presidential campaign mobilizes millions of young people through Facebook. One supporter can make multiple contacts in seconds, and its rallying and engaging the youth of America.
Recessions put most at a disadvantage.
Accept the disadvantage or become an Advantage-Maker.
Take advantage of the recession and leverage your resources. Think about tactics that can multiply and make customers and followers lives easier, faster and simpler.
Remember MEFS (multiplier, easier, faster, simplifier).
The 'R' word.
'Recession' is on the back of most of our minds. Everything was going along just fine and then boom the worry machine starts.
A rule of thumb is that a recession is two consecutive quarters of shrinking GDP. Are we in one now? We won't technically know for another few months. But listen to your TV news reporters patrolling the stock exchanges, see the worldwide tumbling of stock markets, and feel the effects of your stock portfolio shrink and it's no longer academic.
You are on the roller coaster and you didn't even know you bought a ticket. Today the market plummeted 300 points and closed plus 300. A 600 point swing. That's volatility.
How did the sky begin to fall (if it did at all)?
Is a recession a structural problem or a psychological problem?
Certainly, when fear takes hold, perception drives behavior and we head for the exits. But underneath that there is the structural issue.
Structure drives behavior. Just as a river has an underlining riverbed that shapes the behavior of river the underlying structure shapes the behavior of the US economy and your business.
Structural forces can strengthen and weaken the economy. Growth, productivity, value creation, fiscal and monetary policy must contend with the housing market slowdown, the subprime mortgage debacle, oil prices skyrocketing, the weak dollar, rising food prices, overextended credit card delinquencies and job losses that are immediately felt. These forces are driving the behavior of the markets and your decisions. They effect our time horizon and what we think is possible.
I asked my stock broker if the sky was falling and he said this is the cycle, history will repeat itself, things will get better, but it will be rocky for awhile. But I didn't want the history lesson. I wanted the structural forces lesson. What and how were the structural forces at play so I could make an informed decision now, instead of a reactive emotional issue to my stock portfolio dropping.
A recession is both structural and psychological.
To take advantage of the situation
Advantage-Makers shift perceptions and work with the structural forces at play to form their judgments, or use their influence to change the structural dynamics.
The stimulus package of fiscal and monetary policy, by the President, Congress and those proposed by the Presidential candidates must address the underlying structure. Short term and long term solutions must reduce structural impediments and structure us to be competitive to be able to win. Otherwise, a 75 basis point rate reduction by the Fed generates fear and uncertainty instead of stability.
We look to our leader for structural solutions. Specifically, their ability to spot the structural forces and influence them for the common good.
Think as an advantage-maker.
I've been asked, "How do you define leadership?" a thousand times.
While my answer has refined over the years, from my vantage point:
leaders create advantages that encourage followers.
And followers can be customers, employees, stakeholders or the voters.
Your leadership becomes obvious and irresistible when you shift the odds in their favor by producing leverage for followers.
Just because you are in charge or have a title doesn't mean people will follow you willingly.
When you create or endorse advantages that encourage followers you know you have a winner.
The ipod and iphone engaged a community of users.
If you are a supervisor, do your strategies and tactics create advantage for your employees?
Do you know how to shift the odds in your favor in the best of times and the worst of times?
Imagine that you are a commander of a fortress under a daily siege for six months, your supplies are down to two bags of grain and one cow. You have no way to communicate to the outside world for help. What would you do?
Expecting to hear the expected – ration as best you can, you can empathize with the quartermaster’s surprise and shock when told to stuff the cow with grain, and catapult it over the wall during the next attack.
What would you think of this bovine assault if you were on the receiving end? The field officer interpreted the counter attack as an act of disdain and defiance. There must be plenty of supplies - since the cow was well fed...
The result? Fearing a long, drawn-out battle, the enemy ordered an immediate retreat, ending the conflict.
As the leader, would you have been able to shift the odds in your favor under the duress of battle? More importantly does this have any application to 21st century leadership?
That's the subject of my book, The Advantage-Makers: How Exceptional Leaders Win by Creating Opportunities Others Don't. It's also the subject of this blog.
Advantage-Makers see things differently.
Military analogies have their uses and limitations when it comes to business. What matters here is the illustration of changing the game.
The Advantage Maker Strategy is a radical new tool that changes the game by helping you see what your competitors do not, and act on these insights to gain and sustain the leadership position in your field.
Your ability to consistently create superior outcomes when a wall is placed in front of you separates the leaders from the followers, the advantage-makers and the disadvantage-acceptors.
Advantage-Makers consistently transform challenging situations (whether its competition, customer, organizational, team or people issues) into the best possible outcomes more often. Perhaps you are not under the harsh conditions of war, but your ability to strategically shift in the face of constraints is called into action repeatedly.
Derek Gordon (the CMO at Clorox) tells me “that’s what we have to do, to deal with the walls, and get over them.”
You have walls placed in front of you, how do you relate to them? Advantage-maker or disadvantage-acceptor?
Our fortress commander didn’t get over the wall, he tossed the cow over the wall.
Advantage-Makers see solutions others don’t even know exist.
It’s not news that the best leaders are those able to spot opportunities, create benefits, and influence outcomes.
What is new is knowing what is going on behind the curtain, what strings they are pulling to see opportunities where others see only problems, move forward when others are stuck, and create successes where others fail. It almost looks like luck, but it isn’t.
Advantage-Makers aren’t any more creative, intelligent, or determined than you. Advantage-Makers do not possess any specific personality type or traits. In fact, it’s not about positive or goal-oriented thinking, although there is nothing wrong with those things.
Advantage-makers are in a different league.
How do they do it? There is a secret code Advantage-Makers share and use. If you wants to play in their league this blog will help you learn the code, play and succeed.
Imagine that you are a commander of a fortress under a daily siege for six months, your supplies are down to two bags of grain and one cow. You have no way to communicate to the outside world for help. What would you do?
Expecting to hear the expected – ration as best you can, you can empathize with the quartermaster’s surprise and shock when told to stuff the cow with grain, and catapult it over the wall during the next attack.
What would you think of this bovine assault if you were on the receiving end? The field officer interpreted the counter attack as an act of disdain and defiance. There must be plenty of supplies - since the cow was well fed...
The result? Fearing a long, drawn-out battle, the enemy ordered an immediate retreat, ending the conflict.
As the leader, would you have been able to shift the odds in your favor under the duress of battle? More importantly does this have any application to 21st century leadership?
That's the subject of my book, The Advantage-Makers: How Exceptional Leaders Win by Creating Opportunities Others Don't. It's also the subject of this blog.
Advantage-Makers see things differently.
Military analogies have their uses and limitations when it comes to business. What matters here is the illustration of changing the game.
The Advantage Maker Strategy is a radical new tool that changes the game by helping you see what your competitors do not, and act on these insights to gain and sustain the leadership position in your field.
Your ability to consistently create superior outcomes when a wall is placed in front of you separates the leaders from the followers, the advantage-makers and the disadvantage-acceptors.
Advantage-Makers consistently transform challenging situations (whether its competition, customer, organizational, team or people issues) into the best possible outcomes more often. Perhaps you are not under the harsh conditions of war, but your ability to strategically shift in the face of constraints is called into action repeatedly.
Derek Gordon (the CMO at Clorox) tells me “that’s what we have to do, to deal with the walls, and get over them.”
You have walls placed in front of you, how do you relate to them? Advantage-maker or disadvantage-acceptor?
Our fortress commander didn’t get over the wall, he tossed the cow over the wall.
Advantage-Makers see solutions others don’t even know exist.
It’s not news that the best leaders are those able to spot opportunities, create benefits, and influence outcomes.
What is new is knowing what is going on behind the curtain, what strings they are pulling to see opportunities where others see only problems, move forward when others are stuck, and create successes where others fail. It almost looks like luck, but it isn’t.
Advantage-Makers aren’t any more creative, intelligent, or determined than you. Advantage-Makers do not possess any specific personality type or traits. In fact, it’s not about positive or goal-oriented thinking, although there is nothing wrong with those things.
Advantage-makers are in a different league.
How do they do it? There is a secret code Advantage-Makers share and use. If you wants to play in their league this blog will help you learn the code, play and succeed.
