The Executive Coach

Does your company have the ability to see around the corner?

Do you remember when you were a kid and you can order all that cool detective and surveillance gear from the back of your favourite comic book? My favourite gadget was the mirrored tube that let you see over walls and around corners. How are you at looking at around the corner at what you and your company may be facing in the near future?

Linear, process driven, stepped thinking will result in marginal progress and survival for only the fittest. To prosper in todays hectic, globally linked, low barriers to entry business world, you need to see what’s coming at you outside of your current: industry, market segment, controllable factors, or geographical location. The following metamorphosis needs to take place:

FROM: Linear Thinking TO: Around the Corner Thinking
FROM: Benchmark Best Practices TO: Create Next Practices
FROM: Top Down Strategic Setting TO: Bottom Up / Customer Input
FROM: Set Realistic Goals TO: Set Stretch Goals
FROM: Define Your Rules TO: Disobey Your Rules
FROM: Hire Highest Caliber People TO: Hire the Weird and Creative

Putting It Into Action:

No matter what your level, you can begin practicing around the corner thinking, get results and get the attention of others in your organization. Focus on ways to co-create new ideas by soliciting input from customer service employees, customers, suppliers and competitors. Champion this new thinking throughout your organization. These same principles apply if you are in career search mode. Create your own position where you can be a visionary standout by always looking at what is coming at you around the corner.

With you along the path towards success,
Joseph

How do you estimate CEO worth in today’s business climate?

Global stock markets are returning historically higher than average returns. The thirst for IPOs and Mergers and Acquisitions seems unquenchable. Record levels of wealth have been created for shareholders on a global basis. How are you supposed to balance all this liquidity with the need to satisfy employees, shareholders, media, institutional investors, securities associations and others cries to bring run away CEO compensation under control? Look at the astronomical golden parachute that resulted from forcing Nardelli out of Home Depot for his salary compared to lack luster stock performance.

The keys to an effective pay review are:
1) Compensation should come from strategy. Build the following in this order: vision, mission, strategy, human capital strategy, executive compensation plan.
2) Consider employment market issues and specific and relevant data.
3) Strategically use all of the components of total compensation, not just salary.
4) Tie compensation into desired market position; are you a follower or leader?
5) Align pay with performance objectives.

The SEC, OSC and other securities bodies and governance watch dogs are demanding publicly traded companies to have more: disclosure, transparency, documentation, justification, tie into a performance formula.

Putting It Into Action:

Try to get yourself assigned to an executive compensation review team at work. Failing this, get involved in Boards where you can play a role in the Governance, Compensation, CEO Review or Finance/Audit Committees. Research annual reports, prospectuses and other publicly available reports on executive compensation. The more knowledge you have in this area, the better. This issue will remain a very visible and sensitive issue that will provide you will great visibility.

With you along the path towards success,
Joseph

Is market disruption good or evil?

Disruptive forces are threats to those people who don’t like change and can’t embrace the future. Hopefully you find that disruptive forces cause wonderful opportunities to provide new products and services.

Five trends that are now mainstream are:

1) Two Way Web
2) Destruction of Mainstream Media
3) Micropreneurship
4) Virtual Communities
5) Gargoyle Culture

The first trend is a complete 180 degree reversal from just a few years ago, where the audience is the content (eg. Blogs, discussion boards, Wikipedias). The second trend is rewriting the advertising industry:
-if traditional media is chosen, it is watched on own time and usually without commercials
-articles from magazines and articles are read increasingly on-line rather than in print
-information is coming from non traditional sources like Blogs and Wikipedias and other media. In the last US Presidential Election, many Gen Xers and Ys got their election commentary from the Jon Stewart Show, a mock news show.

Micropreneurs have emerged and have changed the rules of business. They are winning business with the new tools of the trade: a laptop, an Ebay account, a PayPal account, a strong network of contacts and a Google ad. They don’t have overhead costs like warehouses, inventory or employees. They transact almost entirely on-line as the needs arise. They have no need for employers or a traditional workplace. Virtual communities are becoming larger than physical communities. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg correctly turned down a $1 Billion offer to sell to Yahoo. X-box Live, Wii and virtual reality gaming and software thrive with on-line communities. As a business person, do you have a Linked In profile? The rise of a gargoyle culture was made vivid when Sadaam Hussein’s assassination video was caught and posted on websites. It was not CNN, it was someone’s cell phone that caught the vivid images.

Putting It Into Action:

Your personal brand or employers brand must embrace and act on these important opportunities. You should register your personal name as a domain name, build your personal website and begin blogging. You should surround yourself with teenagers and twenty somethings who thrive on this new on-line virtual culture. Rethink your advertising and recruitment strategies to use these alternative communication channels and consider viral marketing, event marketing, lifestyle marketing and funky interactive, content rich ways to drive traffic to you and your company’s websites.

With you along the path towards success,
Joseph