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0. Opinion 1. Leadership Coaching 2. Career Development 3. Coaching 4. Management Tip
FURTHER NEWS * For upcoming seminars & events please visit: http://www.progressu.com.hk/ * For recent articles on Coaching please visit: http://www.progressu.com.hk/
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Contents of this Article 1) Definition of Organisms - Individuals vs. Organizations 2) Common habits and traits of outstanding individuals and organizations
3) Reflection on yourself and your organization - how to find and define your successful habits 4) From Reflection to Action -> Progress-Urself and your organization 5) Evaluation of Support Systems for organisms 6) Outlook for Success
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Home > Resources > Progress! Newsletter > "Progress!" Issue No1 / January 04 "Progress!" (Progress-U Leadership & Coaching) - Issue No1 / January 2004 Dear "Progress!" Reader, The (Chinese) New Year has begun and you may or may not have made any resolutions. For myself, I did not make any special resolutions, except to strengthen my determination to resolve all my issues in the best and fastest possible way. I am lucky to have a coach myself who helps me keep focused and deal with my issues more efficiently. My potential clients often ask me these questions: "Why should one spend a considerable amount of money for coaching? Isn't that something for losers who can't deal with their lives by themselves? Isn't that esoteric stuff or a waste of money? Isn't that like going to a shrink?" Whenever I try to answer these questions and explain what coaching
actually is, I realize that it is difficult to sum it up in just a
few words. Rather than defining coaching, it is much easier to highlight
the benefits of coaching such as faster progress; feeling better about
yourself; leading to increased motivation; discovery of new possibilities;
etc. However, as in any other profession, a coach also uses tools and methods (such as assessments, Neuro-Linguistic Programming [NLP], etc.) and, to be a great coach, he or she needs to be able to use the best tools for the particular issues at hand. As one person cannot learn and be proficient in all available tools and methods, a coach needs to specialize in certain client groups with their specific issues. Also, coaching may not be appropriate depending on the issues (e.g., dealing with psychological problems), so responsible coaches would always know their limits. I've discovered that the best way to explain coaching is to provide a coaching experience. I urge anyone interested in coaching to first give it a try by accepting one free pre-coaching session for clarifications and one free coaching session to experience coaching (for details, visit www.progressu.com.hk/coachingrates2004.htm). What would it take for you to get a good understanding of coaching?
Don't hesitate to write me. Yours sincerely,
1. Leadership Coaching 2.3) Create a Culture of Progress and Growth… relentlessly Company Y experiences 3 years of healthy growth in a positive economic environment. In year 4 the economy becomes weaker, but is still growing slightly. However, the business of company Y starts shrinking. And it continues to shrink, at best remaining stagnant for the following years even though the economy picked up again. What went wrong? I had the chance to experience very closely what happened there and I know that this is a quite common case. When the management of Y realized that the business is shrinking, they showed the typical reflex: sales down à cost down! We can't afford to run losses. Fair enough. Yet, what is the consequence? At first, a small number of staff is laid off and expenses deemed unnecessary by the management were frozen or completely cut. How do you think this affects the remaining staff? Working is not enjoyable anymore when necessary expenses are being frozen. And worse, fear is spreading among a large number of employees that they could be the next to be fired. How does that affect running the business? Less people with less motivation definitely means less output. Of course, the pressure from the management is increasing as they try to squeeze out more from what is left but with doubtful results. Quality problems increase, customer care becomes more and more a farce as the reduced team has to deal with increasing cases. This in return gives pressure on the sales organization, which has to face dissatisfied customer complaints about quality and service. What happens to the sales people? Besides reduced motivation and confidence in their own products and services (which is so crucial for successful sales), they feel like standing in the corner and fear to lose the account. As a reflex, they start increasing discounts due to their bad conscience. This puts further pressure on the margins (as if the slower economy is not already tough enough), and that leads to further cost-cutting and so on. The deadly spiral is in full gear! Why do many companies still survive in spite of this? Because the economy eventually gets better, pressure from the market decreases, confidence of the management increases which leads to expansion of the organization in order to be able to grab a piece of the growing cake. However, survival depends on the duration of the economic crisis and the financial strength of the organization. Have you noticed that there are some companies who don't have reduced sales in a slower economy and instead are growing even further? How does that happen? I was equally lucky to experience exactly that, too. In fact, at the time of the Asian crisis in the late nineties, as International Sales Director, I was responsible for sales and marketing in this region. When the first strong signs of the crisis emerged in 1997, I realized that there might be tough times ahead. However, I had no idea how tough it would get… Anyway, for me it was clear that our sales in the region would not go down, that we would grow further despite the crisis. And we did. The key to success was the mindset of the organisms. I gathered the managers of the Asian sales organization in Seoul in early 1998 and we performed a workshop on how to keep our growth up in these difficult times. Before doing so, I made sure that everybody was ready to believe that it is possible to grow. From there, together we discovered the possibilities and implemented an action plan. Again, the key to our success was communication. I did not stop repeating that the crisis won't harm us, that we would grow further and that we don't care whether the business of other companies go down. 2.4) Leave the beaten track - those who copy, lose There are tons of books and articles available about successful companies and outstanding leaders. There have also been some ambitious attempts to find the common characteristics of these organisms. Unfortunately, most of these publications focus on organisms which have been extremely successful in recent years. The downside of this is that if you look into books like "In Search of Excellence" written by Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr., 10 years or so after the appearance of these books, only a small number of the stars of that time are still successful. Some of the companies even totally disappeared. So-called hidden champions, i.e. organisms which have been producing consistently positive results and growth over several decades are hardly known in the public despite their continuous outstanding performance. They teach us a different lesson: "Be different, or die". They realized that it's not possible to overtake competitors by copying them. There are also some well-known examples of companies with successful business development over several decades: Microsoft, Cisco, SAP, Intel, Toyota and others. Who did they copy? They became strong and big because they did NOT copy anyone, but developed a very unique corporate culture. This took years to develop and seems to remain the basis of their continuous success. Why are certain business leaders successful for many years despite the fact that they don't follow the popular leadership principles? Think of Larry Ellison, the CEO of ORACLE, for example. His leadership style is for sure not in line with popular teachings. Yet, if anyone would want to copy his style, a failure would be almost certain. It can be concluded that it is a strong and unique personality that make people like him successful. Competition is a process of continuous discovery of new possibilities to market products and services. According to Schumpeter5), the entrepreneur is a pioneer who revolutionizes the market. It's the entrepreneur who is ready to develop new ideas and to accept that they may fail when implementing them. There are many organisms out there that try to copy successful pioneers. It is a strategy that certainly will not lead to the top. Copying the behavior of a successful individual will not necessarily lead to the same success because of different personalities. For companies it will only lead to a decrease of profit margins, hence pushing the successful pioneers to further innovations in order to stay ahead of their peers. Innovation is hard work and you better don't trust anyone who says that they can do it for you.
2. Career Development Recently, a friend of mine was informed by his boss that, due to their company's financial problems, they had to terminate my friend's employment. As they were satisfied with his performance, they provided him with an unusually long termination period of 4 months. This way, he would have a better chance to find a new assignment without being unemployed. Understandably, he was quite devastated and somewhat angry that he was among the "losers." He then started to look for a new job and, after 2 months, found a new assignment in a smaller company in a business segment that was not his first choice. Also, it offered a lower salary. With the fear of joblessness in his mind, he chose to accept the job and start working for the new company as soon as his current employment was terminated. Then, a few days later, his current employer approached him and offered him a management position due to the unexpected departure of the current manager who had to take a maternity leave. The offered position would have been a promotion, both in terms of management level and salary. Still angry that he was fired, he wondered whether he should accept the offer. On one hand, he liked that kind of work much more, and the pay and position were better. On the other hand, he was upset that they first asked him to leave and they wanted to promote him now. He also admitted, after I asked him some dedicated questions, that it was a matter of pride for him. This was the conversation that followed (F = my friend, C = Charlie):
From our conversation, my friend came to these important realizations:
At this point, I recommended viewing the situation from this angle: Your hard work for your employer has been already rewarded with your salary. It is healthier and more realistic not to expect anything beyond that. Whatever else you receive is a "bonus" that you may not take for granted.
Needless to say, he accepted the offer to stay in the company and is now quite happy with his new assignment.
3. Coaching This serial is about the areas of Executive Coaching which are the focus of Progress-U. We live in a world of rapid changes - nobody can deny that. To me,
Hong Kong is a constantly evolving city and dealing with change is
part of our daily life. Research on Change Management in companies revealed that thorough change in organizations happens only top-down. That is, only when the entire (!) top management is fully committed to the change and is able to get the entire (!) middle management committed as well, can real change happen across the whole organization. As a consequence, Progress-U developed a package consisting of an initial workshop (or a series of workshops, depending on the dimensions of change) with follow-up coaching of all workshop participants. The workshop tackles the following:
These kinds of workshops are not the first of their kind, and certainly offered by many consultants. The key difference is that Progress-U offers follow-up coaching of all (!) involved managers, thus:
Because the same coach who facilitated the workshop will also perform the follow-up coaching, he will be more able to assist the management in implementing the change strategy.
4. Management Tip Have you ever tried to sell something? What is the most common response you get? "This is (very) expensive," "The price is too high," or something along those lines. What would your normal reaction be? Defensiveness: "Oh no, this is not expensive, look at the features …" or something of that sort. Did you ever consider that the potential buyer has a hidden agenda? That the price is actually not too high for him? So why would a buyer say otherwise? Because it is easier to complain about the price than to explain the real issues he has in mind. Of course, you can't challenge the truth of the buyer's statements-that would be rude and offensive. But you can start probing the issue with questions like, "In relation to what?" or "What would it take for you to believe that the price is adequate?" This would give the buyer a chance to raise the real issues, if there are any. Otherwise, if price is the only problem, you will find that out as well. Research shows that less than 30% of the buyers have a real issue with price; in more than 70% of cases, a higher sales price would have been possible if the real issues were addressed. Can you imagine what that means for the bottom line? This kind of hidden agenda is not specific to sales and can happen in any life situation. Here is a real example from my previous employment: I met with the purchase manager of a customer because they wanted to return a recently bought machine due to technical problems. I asked for details of the problems and he mentioned some minor problems that could have been easily solved by our engineers. So I committed that we would get it fixed within the week. Then he added that they didn't have confidence in the machine because it was a secondhand machine and they were not properly informed about it. I told him that it was not a secondhand machine - it was a demo machine that was exhibited but was never used otherwise. Hence, the machine was practically good as new. After which, he said, "I am really sorry, but our top management asked us to return the machine to you." When he said that, I started to sense that there was some hidden agenda because he mentioned different reasons for the same demand and the reasons were hardly coherent. This is very typical when people try to hide the "real reasons." Then I said, "OK, I understand that you must return this machine to us. What if we replace the machine with a brand-new one? Is there any other way that we could remain your supplier?" "Our top management doesn't want your machine, I am really sorry." I could feel that he became more and more uncomfortable with the situation until finally, he could not hold back anymore and said, "Please keep it, I feel very embarrassed about it. The operators actually want to keep the machine; they are quite happy with it. However, our boss asked us to replace it with the competitor's machine. When we bought the machine from you, we did not realize that our boss is a close friend of the boss of your competitor's distributor. We are really sorry about that but can't do anything about it." There you go! If I didn't pursue the issue deeper, we would have wasted a lot of time and resources and most likely would have still taken back the machine at one point. With the "true" information, I made the correct decision immediately, i.e., to take back the machine. We negotiated a penalty for taking back the machine so that our cost was at least covered.
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