Art Petty on Management

Seven Key Questions for the Ambitious Aspiring Leader

Note: the Seven Key Questions are presented in Practical Lessons in Leadership by Petty and Petro.  The content here is expanded based on feedback received since the book's publication in July '07.

One of the fundamental tasks of any leader is to identify and develop his/her leadership bench strength.  In the ideal situation, the leader is watching her associates for signs of effective informal leadership skills, and then providing developmental assignments to those individuals interested in moving into more formal leadership roles. In this case, the aspiring leader gains valuable context for the role and challenges of leading and the manager is able to provide feedback and coaching.

Another scenario occurs when individual contributors or early career professionals recognize the potential benefits of a leadership role (usually it's about money or title), and declare to their manager that they are ready to lead a team.  Ask any experienced leader if they have been on the receiving end of someone walking into their office and making this declaration, and the leader will likely smile. 

In either situation, the leader in charge can benefit from some simple but powerful questions to guide the ensuing discussions and activities. 

Is it time to expect more from your Marketing function?

Too many top executives in B2B organizations still equate the function and value of marketing with marketing communications.  While the field of marketing has advanced considerably in the last two decades, the view that marketing equals leads, tradeshows, press releases and a web site is still fairly commonplace in the B2B world.  This narrow view of marketing leaves money on the table in terms of what organizations should be deriving from a properly conceived approach to marketing.  It all starts with setting the right expectations.

Our future leaders are at your kitchen table.

Today's posting jumps a bit off of the business path and in the spirit of the season and its emphasis on youth, offers some perspectives on the future leaders sitting at your kitchen table. 

We all probably remember our teachers telling us at some point early in grade school that we are the future leaders of our country.  I remember hearing those words and thinking of what it would be like to hold national office or serve as a judge on a high court.  What I didn't realize at the time was that the teachers held a broad view of leadership, knowing full well that most of their students may never hold national office, but that they will almost all have a leadership role to play in their communities, churches, charitable organizations, and of course with their families.

Great leadership habits are formed in youth through observation and participation.  The next time you sit down to dinner with your family, take the time to offer encouragement to your future leaders.  You might just have a prospective President or Supreme Court Justice asking you to pass the mashed potatoes.

Leading the Generations-An Example of What Not to Do!

I attended the family holiday party this weekend and while munching on too many cheesy ryes and catching up on the lives of the out-of-town relatives, I was stopped in my tracks by the story of the job change that my gen X second cousin described. It was a stark description of the gross mismanagement of the generations at a unique time in history when we have four very distinct generations in the work force.

Leadership in Marketing Communications-In Search of the Relentless Promoter

There are many good B2B Marketing Communications professionals and teams, but a few individuals and teams stand-apart from the crowd as great.  While I suppose "great" is subjective, after working with and around many teams and professionals in 20 years as well as conducting Marketing Audits for companies and clients, it's easy to spot extraordinary teams and individuals. 

The commitment that Relentless Promoters bring to their work is infectious, and the impact that they have on their company is material. 

If you area a marketing leader, it is your goal to populate your team with these individuals, provide them the resources that they need to succeed and stay out of the way.  And while it would be easy to slip into a nature versus nurture debate (are great marcom professionals born or made?), here are some suggestions for both scouting talent as well as helping develop it with the team you have in place.  I suspect that there is a bit of nature and a lot of nurture to produce a Relentless Promoter.

Leader, are you the problem with your team's performance?

Your leadership tactics just might be at the root of your team's less than stellar performance

As a leader looking for ways to improve the performance of your team, it is important to spend some time examining the impact that you have on the working environment and productivity of your associates.  Effective self-examination might just help identify some opportunities for your own development that will spur the performance of those around you. 

In case you are reading and thinking, "It's not me, It's... ," think again.  I've often been invited to work with executives and managers on team performance issues, where it quickly becomes clear to everyone that many (not all) of the issues reside at the top of the food chain.  Some great leaders that I've worked with or for have embraced the reality that they have culpability for poor team performance, made the necessary changes and subsequently jumped back on the high-performance track.  Of course, some leaders are in perpetual denial about their own faults--there is only one solution in this case.

Sales and Marketing-It's time to improve your performance on the trade show floor

Hey, sales and marketing manager(s), have you evaluated your team's trade show performance recently?  If not, it's time to get out and walk the floor, work the booth and listen and learn. 

In my own B2B experience, trade shows were important components of an overall program to build thought-leadership, strengthen industry and influencer relations, and of course, generate leads.  It's too bad that many companies flush valuable money and time right down the proverbial toilet, by failing to execute properly on the show floor and throughout the event. 

You can avoid this problem by paying close attention to this short-list of trade show best practices:

#1:  Who's Staffing the Booth?

The booth staff must be knowledgeable, well trained on your firm's offerings and capable of conducting professional floor demonstrations/explanations as well as be competent at probing for qualifying questions.  Many organizations mistakenly put an inexperienced and mismatched crew on the floor, often bowing to internal pressures to avoid "booth duty" from more experienced sales and marketing professionals.  This is a mistake.

The floor staff should include a mix of senior and junior associates, as well as a cross-section of sales, product management and technical professionals.  The goal is to ensure that visitors to your booth are treated professionally and ideally, engaged for follow-up on potential projects.  Fielding the right booth staff is essential to floor success.

#2: Who's Managing the Booth?

While ensuring that the booth is up and functioning and that necessary services are in place are all responsibilities of the company's Trade Show Manager, managing the floor staff is the responsibility of sales and marketing management.  The Booth Manager must manage schedules and breaks, to ensure that visitors are properly served and to keep the staff focused on their floor responsibilities.

I encourage firms to rotate this responsibility between Sales Managers, usually opting for the territory manager where the show is located.  Everyone working the floor is responsible to the Booth Manager during show hours, and expectations for support should be communicated in advance of the event.

#3: What's Our Message?

For a fascinating experience in communications, walk up to almost any booth on a trade show floor, read the signage and then ask several of the booth staff these simple questions:

-What do you do?
-What's new here?
-Who are your competitors on the floor?
-Why are you better than your competitors?

Most of the time, you will receive unintelligible, cliché filled answers with little substance.  The more people you ask the in the same booth, the more confused you are likely to become.

A key to trade show success is ensuring that your entire staff is educated on the core messages well in advance of the show.  I encourage clients to develop a simple, clear message map as a supplement to an internal "Show Planning Guide" that provides the basic answers to each of the above questions as well as other important show message points.  The message points should be reviewed at a pre-show group meeting, and the Booth Manager and senior representative from Marketing are responsible for monitoring floor discussions to ensure that they are being used throughout the event.

#4: What do we need to know from show visitors?

For a fleeting moment in time, you might have the attention and interest of someone that controls a large budget and has a need for your products or services.  Or you are engaged in an animated discussion with someone gathering information for a competitive report.  Or you are talking with someone that has no ability or interest in buying what you are selling, but they liked the new flat-panel screen in your booth or they wanted a t-shirt.  Which one is it? 

Next to ensuring that everyone understands the core message points for the show, teaching your floor staff the right qualifying questions as well as how to capture that information is critical.   This is where the rubber meets the road at trade shows, and the better you are at qualifying and classifying the visitor's needs, interests, ability to decide and time-frame, the better-armed your marketing and sales teams will be to beat competitors to the punch during and after the show. 

Failing to qualify properly is like dropping the football on the one-yard line after mounting a long drive: a lot of energy goes into the drive and you cannot afford to come away without putting points on the board. 

#5: Where are the leads?

The value of a lead reduces in half (or more) for every day after the show that the lead is not followed up.  Many organizations are rightfully protective of paper and electronic leads, and of course many sales representatives rightfully covet the "hot" inquiries.  Take too long to get the leads back out to the field after a show and you risk frustrating your sales associates and losing out to speedier competitors.  Fail to watch your leads closely and they will end up in the well-intentioned pockets of your sales members.  Good lead management processes are essential to avoiding these problems.  Here's how I advise clients:

-Ensure that all leads are properly collected in the booth—during and at the end of the day.  Sales representatives and the Booth Manager should have a procedure for flagging "hot" leads and ensuring that the Rep has a copy of the information for immediate follow-up. 

-Electronic leads should be uploaded nightly to corporate and someone responsible for entering them into a database or CRM system the next morning.  Paper leads must be forwarded to corporate at show close.

-Good internal qualifying and lead disposition processes will have leads entered and a course of action for every single lead determined and this information shared between marketing and sales.   I encourage clients to use a qualifying process that ensures that someone makes contact with every booth visitor immediately following the show.  If this additional qualification step calls for sales action, the lead moves accordingly to the right rep, while many will become important entries into a corporate database for incubation and follow-up over time.   However, in all cases, timeliness is essential.  Chances are that your competitor has this same lead. 

Don't let clunky lead processes jeopardize your show success.  Move the leads from the floor to the right party to take action as quickly as possible and you will avoid the battle cry of, "Where are the leads?" heard so often in organizations that haven't thought through this critical step in the event management process.

The Bottom Line:

Trade show marketing remains an important part of promotion and lead generation, and it is surprising how many firms spend money for presence but don't take the time to execute on the floor.  Take the time to plan your show staffing, management, messaging, qualification and lead disposition processes and you will dramatically improve your return  on your trade show investments. 

Is it time to rethink your strategy chessboard through lateral thinking?

"You cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper."  Edward De Bono

I was preparing for a strategy program with a client recently and came across some notes on one of the more invigorating topics on creativity: lateral thinking.  The term and concept of "lateral thinking" was coined and popularized through the writings of Edward de Bono, the famed and very pedigreed author and consultant. de Bono offers the following non-technical explanation for lateral thinking:

With logic you start out with certain ingredients just as in playing chess you start out with given pieces. But what are those pieces? In most real life situations the pieces are not given, we just assume they are there. We assume certain perceptions, certain concepts and certain boundaries. Lateral thinking is concerned not with playing with the existing pieces but with seeking to change those very pieces. Lateral thinking is concerned with the perception part of thinking. This is where we organise the external world into the pieces we can then 'process'.

I've observed in both my corporate and consulting lives that organizations and management teams frequently get stuck in a strategic rut, assuming that the premises and forces that guided their market(s) historically, will prevail in the future.  This assumption can lead to disaster whereas the leap of faith required for a laterally developed strategy might be filled with risk, it can lead to rich rewards as well.  Consider some examples:

• A Japanese electronics company invented both the first electronic cash register and the first credit authorization terminal and had a big head start on some notable competitors.  Convinced that the markets for these products would develop in an orderly fashion according to well understood rules, the company's management failed to see the mass adoption opportunity that developed around low-cost models sold through alternative methods of distribution.  Within a few short years, the company moved from innovator and inventor to almost non-existent.  Within a decade, the firm withdrew from the markets that it created.

• Two companies of approximately the same size in the same capital goods business each dominate a specific market segment.  Both covet their competitor's respective market and both invest considerably but to no avail to unseat the other.  Competitor "A" recognizes the futility of this approach and completely rethinks its business along non-traditional lines.  Instead of creating more of the same capital goods at different price points, "A" recognizes the tremendous opportunity that exists to extend their products and services along the value-chain.  "B" resists value-chain extension due to their lack of expertise and perceived risk factors.  Fast forward 8 years and "A" has grown revenues 20X and "B" is slightly smaller than it was at the time that "A" changed the game. 

• In another technology/systems business where the ultimate sale was to a small group of powerful franchisees, one firm recognized the futility of competing purely on the basis of price and performance and decided to redefine the rules of the game.  This firm chose a strategy of customer intimacy, investing considerably in creating forums to identify and help solve issues important to the large franchisees, even though many of the issues were fundamentally unrelated to the firm's products.  The competitor could never match the level of intimacy that the firm developed and withdrew from the market.

Opportunities for the application of lateral thinking in our daily professional lives are plentiful, and one needs to read no further than the cover of any daily newspaper to both see examples of traditional and lateral thinking at play.  Consider the geopolitical situation in the middle east, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea the approach of the U.S. to the challenges and the evolving approaches to terror and torment of the bad guys.  One begins to wonder why the wrong side seems to have the monopoly on lateral thinking, while we go about solving problems we don't quite understand against adversaries that we definitely don't understand, using very traditional approaches. OK, sorry for the segue...back to business.

As you look at your environment and think about your business strategies, it is reasonable and proper for you to consider approaches that not only change the rules, but that fundamentally change the game.  Last year's market dynamics are ancient history--don't let them guide tomorrow's strategic choices, or you might just end up like several of the firms that I described above.   At the risk of being redundant with another recent posting of mine, it's good to follow the advice that the author/philosopher Ayn Rand drummed  into her students during her lectures and debates: "Always check your premises."   A dose of lateral thinking might just be appropriate for your situation.

Marketing Leadership-An Oxymoron?

This is a return to one of my favorite rants-marketers giving marketing a bad name.  In my 2007 article, Marketing Misunderstood, I described the struggle that many top B2B executives have in trying to understand the value that marketing contributes to their business.  While there is ample blame to go around for why the nature, purpose and outcomes from this valuable role in an organization are unclear, at least part of the responsibility for this marketing value confusion falls on the shoulders of the top marketers themselves. 

Some marketing professionals have a bizarre tendency to shoot themselves in the proverbial foot by displaying one, several or all of the following tendencies:

• Marketers understand the impact that they are supposed to have on a business (direction, strategies, brand, visibility, leads) and some take themselves a bit too seriously.  I've observed marketing leaders that viewed their professional existence as a slightly higher calling than those laboring in other functions.  This elitist attitude comes through loud and clear to the rest of the organization-with obvious impact.

• Instead of ensuring that marketing activities are transparent to the organization and other executives, marketing metrics are often self-serving, non-existent or confusing.  Additionally, they are often not integrated with other functional metrics to provide proper context.  This is especially common when evaluating lead metrics and attempting to connect them to changes in the sales pipeline.

• In some organizations, I've observed a silo or even bunker mentality where marketing has grown tired of taking shots from the rest of the organization and has retreated into its own world.  An "us versus them" mentality exists from the top of the marketing food chain to the bottom.  This usually spells a death knell for the marketing leaders.

• The "What Were They Thinking?" trap.  A major B2B technology company recently brought in a new marketing team that immediately identified the most abstract, costly and non-value add thing that they could do--they rebranded the company.  Shame on top management for letting it happen, and shame on the B2B marketer that pulls out the re-branding tactic as their start-up tool.  The effort burned money (a lot of it), time and valuable energy.  Shortly after the roll out of the new identity, the company was sold.  There was no cause and effect.

Before you jump down to the "Post a Comment" button to highlight your disgust with my anti-marketing diatribe, let me give equal time to the other side of this coin.  I've had the pleasure of working for, with and around some tremendous marketing professionals that managed to avoid the above bad habits.  Here are a few of the best practices of really great marketers that I've observed:

• True marketing leaders understand that "marketing" is much more of a philosophy and a set of tools than a function.

• Top marketing professionals work hard to make certain that everyone understands their agenda, their activities and their outcomes.  Metrics are developed in concert with other areas of the business and they are refined to help provide a clear and complete picture of marketing outcomes.

• The best marketing professionals understand that their role is to cross boundaries not to create them.  Their egos are checked at the door and they understand that they play a valuable role in both educating and learning from others in the business.  Great marketers build bridges.

• While innovative marketing professionals and teams push the boundaries of creativity and experimentation, they also understand that their efforts must add value to the firm.  For example, re-branding may be a necessary step, but it is  never the step that is chosen as a reflex action or as a means of self promotion. 

Like any profession, there are great, good and lousy practitioners and marketing is no exception.  Philip Kotler, the distinguished professor of marketing at Northwestern University and the father of modern marketing, is reported to have said: "Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department."  Great marketers intuitively get what Kotler meant and conduct themselves accordingly.   

First-time leaders and the wonderful world of ambiguity

I had just finished reading a great article in the December 4, 2007 Wall Street Journal, entitled: Welcome the Millennials, when I sat down to check e-mail and was excited to see a note from a long-time associate (and great person) describing her latest career step.  After a number of years as a superstar soloist (an individual contributor), she has been promoted to her first management role.  Thinking about my associate's great news and the article about the new generation of professionals moving into the workforce, I found myself wondering what one piece of advice I would like to pass along to every new leader. 

I settled on a purposefully vague answer.  It would be: learn to embrace and leverage ambiguity. Strange perhaps, but that is my final answer.

We live and work in a world that is inherently ambiguous and seemingly more-so every day.  Whether you are dealing with the unique challenges of working with and leading individuals from more diverse generations than at any point in our history, or you are challenged with plotting business choices in a world where everything changes in the blink of an eye, one thing is certain: few decision paths are crystal clear.  Leading others, choosing strategies, responding to disruptive change-these are just a few big examples of where there will always be many options and few if any guarantees.

A few years ago, I attended an executive leadership program at Kellogg (Northwestern) entitled: Reinventing Leadership-A Breakthrough Approach.  This remarkable experience (I highly recommend this program for many reasons-email me if you want to hear them) was filled with some fascinating exercises.  One in particular stands out in my mind. 

The Exercise:

There were 40 participants from 8 countries and all held titles of Director or higher.  It was the first day and we had run through introductions, the course overview and our first two small group breakout exercises.  After the second exercise, the instructors summarily chastised the entire group for lack of creativity in the solutions, poor team and time management, lack of role clarification.  Their criticisms were abrupt and the mood in the room went negative quickly.  We were sent off for our 3rd exercise--a fairly complex problem/situation and soon it was time for the report-outs.  The instructors sat silently during the report outs, no questions, no comments, no facial expressions and no eye-contact.  After the last group completed their report-out, the instructors continued their silent treatment.  People attempted to ask questions and draw them in and had no success.  This went on for the longest five or ten minutes I've ever been through.  People become agitated, vocal, sullen and even angry.  One person indicated that, "This is b.s." and left the room  for coffee.  At the peak of the discomfort, one of the participants jumped in with: "I think this is part of the exercise.  Pierre and Paul (the instructors) are looking for us to pull together as a team and come up with some creative and viable solutions."   

From that point onwards, the room of 40 professionals from a variety of cultures began to self-organize.  Leaders were identified.  Role players grabbed specific tasks and the process began to work.  Thirty minutes later, there were some compelling solutions presented.  After constructive debates, the group settled on an approach, looked at the instructors and said, "That's it."   They smiled, the silence was broken and the cloud lifted from the room. 

The lesson of course was all about ambiguity.  We were faced with a tough case, instructors who moved from almost angry at our prior poor performance to silent and stone-faced.  And we were on our own to sort out our structure, roles and approaches and to choose a path.  We were faced with totally unexpected instructor behavior (not something you will likely ever see in a classroom) and we went through the range of human emotions in response.  It was truly disorienting.  And brilliant.  Every participant understood that in the face of ambiguous circumstances, the leader must step up, sort through the emotions, provide context and help people orient on tasks and to develop solutions (that are not clearly visible as right or wrong).

The takeaway:

Back to my advice to the new leader.  Learn to leverage and embrace ambiguity. The lack of prior context or a pre-established path provides you with tremendous opportunities to lead, to create and motivate and inspire.  Ambiguity is the creative clay that you use to mold your situation to the benefit of your organization.  You will make mistakes, but the bigger mistake is to get frustrated and metaphorically do what one participant in our class did-give up and head out for coffee.  Don't expect the answers to be readily apparent, and don't expect the situations you find yourself in to look and feel the same.  As the author Ayn Rand indicated, "Always check your premises."   If the world goes silent on you, rethink what it is that you are supposed to do.