The Hot Wash

Almost every evolution that occurred in my Navy career was hot washed. That is a military term for reviewing the lessons learned. We debriefed every flight, every exercise, and almost every evolution. We looked at what we did right and what we did wrong. It never made us perfect at what we were doing but when those lessons learned were incorporated into the next event, it made for fewer and fewer mistakes. This especially helped in the planning phases.

Since joining the corporate world I have not seen that done very often. In my first job as a sales rep I went to my boss after the first win to see if she wanted a debrief. She asked me if we won and I said yes. Then she asked what there was to debrief. Being new to the corporate world, I guessed that winning meant not needing to review things. I was used to hot washing everything so I figured it was how things were done. After my first loss I went back with the same thing and the response was about the same with the exception of her asking what I would do differently the next time. That was the extent of the hot wash.

In successive jobs I have had much the same experience. Most of these were not small companies but big multi-billion dollar corporations. Even the company that had a process for what I call a hot wash did not enforce it, nor did it ever really even ask for one. I offered to do one and while they did agree to it, I would have thought that they would have been more interested to know why we lost a $30M+ opportunity. So I put the presentation together and gave it. They were grateful and said all the right things, but nothing really changed.

So why should you do a hot wash? That could be a rhetorical question, but worth addressing nonetheless. All of our lives we should learn from our mistakes. We all make them and nothing is perfect. But, if we don’t take a look at what we are doing right and what we are doing wrong we will set ourselves up to possibly repeating the same mistakes again. And in business, those mistakes make us look bad, at best, and can cost a lot of money, at the worst.

Hot washes shouldn’t be finger pointing exercises either. Establish a formal process to review every bid you make. Look at what you did right. Reinforce those actions. Give praise to those responsible for it. Next, look at what you did wrong. Don’t adopt the zero defect mentality over these errors. Figure out what you need to do to keep from doing it again the next time. No phase of any business venture goes perfectly. Some mistakes may not have had any impact this time, but it doesn’t mean that they may not hurt you the next time.

Take the time to establish a process for reviewing your business successes and losses. Be objective and be honest in your critiques. Leave your egos out of it too. That is the only way to get better. And in the long run, doing a hot wash will pay big dividends.

Happy New Year to you all and our wish is for much success for you in 2015!

We want to hear what you think. Leave a comment and let’s start a discussion.

Copyright © 2015 The Cobalt Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

Are We Going to Abilene?

We've all been there. We are in a discussion about something and we sense that the path we’re taking is the wrong direction. Either through what we believe the evidence to be or by instinct, we know that the decision being made is going to be a bad decision. But then, we just sit there and say nothing.

Right after I received my Wings of Gold in the Navy I was sent to their Leadership, Management, Education, and Training (LMET) course. This was the first course on leadership and management that I received in the Navy and it was a good course. I was a young Ensign and had already been a supervisor before joining the Navy. In one of the sessions we were discussing what I mentioned in the first paragraph and they had us watch a short movie called ‘The Road to Abilene’. As I recall, it was about a group of people that were sitting around, bored, on a hot Friday or Saturday afternoon trying to decide what to do when someone suggests that they take a trip to Abilene (about an hour away) for dinner. No one really protests but no one really wants to spend the hour on a hot and dusty car trip. When they get to the cafe, the food is just as bad as the drive. Then they drive back home and are exhausted.

One of them says, "It was a great trip, wasn't it?" The others now said they would rather have stayed home but went along with it since the everyone else seemed so eager. Then they all sit around and try to figure out why it was that they together decided to take a trip which none of them wanted. They each would have preferred to stay at home, but did not admit to it when they had the chance to say so.

I have experienced this in the Navy and in my corporate career. Someone comes up with what they think is a good idea and the rest of us aren't really sure, or know we shouldn't, but we all just go with it. No one wants to speak up and be the voice of reason or dissent, and challenge the group think or momentum that the idea is beginning to build. There have been times when I was in decision meetings on what tactic to use to destroy a target, or what opportunities to pursue, and I knew inherently that the decisions being made were bad but I didn’t speak up. In the Navy some of those could have life or death consequences, while the corporate consequence was usually fiduciary. Regardless, I should have spoken up. Why didn’t I?

It is hard for a lot of us to say no in these circumstances. Perhaps we aren’t sure of our reasoning. Perhaps we fear the group pressure that would follow. Maybe we fear not being seen as a team player. The reality is most people want to be liked and perceived as part of the team so at times we seem to agree to things even if we think the decision is bad. Whatever the psychology or the reason is, the fact is that by agreeing to going down a path that is undoubtedly wrong is detrimental to you, your team and your organization. And they deserve better from you.

It is not always easy but if something isn't right about the direction being taken, or if it doesn’t seem right, speak up. There are ways to do it tactfully that won’t make you seem like a counterproductive member of the team. You just might be surprised at how many others feet the same way but chose, for whatever reason, not to rock the boat. And the last thing you want to do is waste time and resources on a venture that is likely doomed to fail.

So if you have a doubt, be the one to speak up and ask, “Are we going to Abilene?”

We want to hear what you think. Leave a comment and let’s start a discussion.

Copyright © 2014 The Cobalt Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

Where Does Leadership Begin?

For the last 35+ years I have listened to people in both the military and in the corporate world complain about how screwed up their leaders (upper management) are. 

And often times, they are exactly right in their views too. In truth, I have been guilty of it myself. 

But where does leadership begin? 

Does it begin with the CEOs? With the company Presidents? With the Vice Presidents? With the Directors or Program Managers? 

The answer is – NO! 

Leadership begins with each of us, from the entry level person to the highest ranking person in the company. 

We exhibit leadership when we take care of our own responsibilities and help others when we are able. If we all did that, how much better off do you think we’d be? 

But, nonetheless, it is common place to criticize those in leadership roles over us. Sometimes the criticism is warranted and sometimes it is a placebo to make us feel better about the things at which we are lacking or failing. 

When I got to my first operational squadron in the Navy I started a log entitled If I Become King. 

I would write down the things that I liked and didn’t like about a variety of things I saw, including my leaders and the things they did that made me shake my head in amazement. It's a good thing I had all the answers back then.

I kept that log until I became a Lieutenant Commander (O-4). Then one day when I was a department head I went back and reread that book. 

Actually, that was why I kept the book. I wanted to remember the things I liked and didn't like, and would do and wouldn't do when I Was King.

Wow! Over 75% of the things I criticized about leadership turned out to be more about my own misgivings than the leaders I was commenting about. 

That was when I started getting the idea (even after all of the formal leadership training I had received in the Navy) that leadership starts with me, not my leaders. Self Leadership!

It was up to me to do my part in the big picture. If I couldn’t lead effectively there, how could I expect to effectively lead when I got a bigger piece of the pie? 

Leadership starts from the bottom up! It starts with SELF!

For more information about how The Cobalt Group can help you with any business or leadership challenges you are facing, Contact us.

We want to hear what you think. Leave a comment and let’s start a discussion.

Copyright © 2013 The Cobalt Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

The One That Got Away

In the second year of my first sales job with a major IT company I was working the biggest deal I had in my pipeline to that date. 

It was going to be $8.5M over a five year period. The math was easy and even back then it would have been half of my annual quota for the next five years (assuming no yearly increases – yeah, right!). And with a deal that size I had a lot of help from upper management.

I was in tight with the customer. It was a small group and they were all of the decision makers. 

Fairly fresh out of many sales training courses, I applied all of that knowledge to every aspect of my capture plan for that deal. I met with the customer often, and a lot of those were at his request. 

I knew the requirements inside and out and we had a solution that answered it, and then some. The customer verified that our solution was a great fit, too.

Then, as often happens in government sales, the program was put on hold. The customer didn’t know for how long but felt that it was most likely till the end of the government fiscal year. 

I wasn’t too worried. That was 6 months away and I had two things in my favor – the first month of the next government fiscal year was also the last month of my company’s fiscal year so I thought it would be a great close out for that year and, secondly, I had a great pipeline that would take me over my quota if that deal happened to slip even further.

I told that customer that I would check in periodically and asked that if things changed to please let me know as well. 

I called about 3 months later and discovered that only weeks prior they had gotten their money and went with a competitor. I asked why they chose the competition and, in so many words, he told me that my competitor stayed engaged and sold them on their solution. 

I was mad at myself (and so was my management) for making such a rookie mistake – I quit selling!

From then on, I made sure that I never quit selling to any customer, even if a program was cancelled. 

That discipline paid off two years later when I closed the biggest software sale of my career, and the biggest one that company had that year – all because I stayed engaged with a customer that had another competitor’s solution selected and their customer didn’t like it. 

Because I was in contact on a frequent basis even after we weren't selected, they called me back and 19 months later I closed the deal.

As I learned more about the trade of selling I have made many other mistakes since ‘the one that got away’. I learned the hard way that in the field of sales 

– Never Quit Selling!

For more information about how The Cobalt Group can help you with your sales force, or with any business or leadership challenges you are facing, Contact us.

We want to hear what you think. Leave a comment and let’s start a discussion.

Copyright © 2013 The Cobalt Group, LLC. All rights reserved.