3 Questions You Must Answer to Know if You’re Setting Your Employees Up for Success

If you’ve ever had employees work for you then you’ve likely been in the situation where you have to decide whether or not to let them go for poor job performance. How did you get there? What led that employee to perform poorly? If you’re in a leadership role your job is to set your people up to succeed; to give them what they need to do what you hired them to do.

There are legitimate reasons to fire someone little to no notice. For me that would involve willful or gross negligence, or criminal activity. In those cases the answer is fairly simple – termination is warranted right then. There are other factors, as well, that would rightly lead to ending their employment with you.

But, if you have an employee that is struggling to do what you hired them to do and you are considering letting them go, there are three questions that you must answer before you make that decision:

1.      Did the employee know what was expected of him/her? It seems like a simple question but I have worked with a few clients that had let people go without knowing if the person knew what was expected of them. If your employee doesn’t have a clear understanding of what is expected of them, then how could they know what they were supposed to do?

2.      Was the employee properly trained to perform their duties? There have been many times when I have seen people thrown into a job or a task without adequate, or sometimes any, training to do the job. That seems incredulous in this day and age but it happens more often than you would think. If they haven’t been shown the proper way to do the job, how can you expect them to do it properly?

3.      Does the employee have the right tools to do the job? This is the last question I ask. If they know what is expected of them, and have been properly trained to do the job, were they given the appropriate tools? If the employee’s job is to drive nails into the wall, sending them out with a spoon is of little help. Why weren’t they given a hammer?

Our job as leaders is to set our employees up to succeed. The calculation is simple – our success is dependent upon their success. If you can’t honestly answer ‘YES’ to each of these questions, you have set them up to fail. And in that case, you have failed as a leader, too.

Make sure you can answer each of those questions with a resounding ‘YES’.

For more information about employee engagement, or to see how The Cobalt Group can help you with this or any other 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 © 2018 The Cobalt Group LLC. All rights reserved.

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.

Roadblocks to Results

What keeps you or your business from being successful? What keeps you from achieving the results you set out to achieve? This is a topic that books have been written about but I will try to address at a high level view in this post. My list here will not be all inclusive. There are too many independent variables in each situation we face to list them all here. The ones I will discuss below are ones that seem to be more prevalent in my experience and observations. So what are some of the Roadblocks to Results?

·         Having no goal. If we don’t start with the end in mind then it is more likely that we will not get there. As simple as that seems it is not too uncommon that I run across situations where there is no real goal.

·         No long range planning. Too often we worry about the near term requirements to the neglect of the long term goal(s). We then make decisions based on what are more immediate needs vice the longer term needs we have. That doesn’t mean that near term needs aren’t important. But don’t make all of your decisions based on the more immediate issues to the neglect or impact on your long term goals.

·         Lack of adaptability. Another roadblock is being unable to adapt to changes in the business environment. Things change and unless we either predict the change or adapt quickly we run the risk of getting left behind.

·         Getting sidetracked. Seems obvious but letting other distractions interfere can keep you from achieving your goals. If you pursuing a certain goal and another shiny object appears it takes good business discipline to stay focused. There may be times when you want to change direction and go for the new opportunity but it needs to be weighed heavily and it needs to align with the long term goals.

·         Relying on technology to solve problems. We all love technology and the way it is supposed to make our lives ‘simpler’. But there are problems out there that technology doesn’t solve. A look at your goals and the objectives you laid out to reach them should indicate whether your problem is a technological problem or business problem. One example is…will that new CRM database help you achieve your goals? Or will it create unintended consequences across the company? Often, it’s the basic blocking and tackling that leads to victory.

·         Looking for other examples to emulate vice solutions for you. Don’t look to the example of others to simply cut and paste a solution into your environment. They may have had a very similar problem but the cause of the problem may be different. Make sure it is an exact fit before just copying a solution used elsewhere.

As I said, this topic has had many books devoted to it. My aim is not to write a book about it but to get you to take a hard look at what Roadblocks to Results are keeping you from achieving your goals.

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.

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.

To Pursue or Not To Pursue

That is the question. We all want to grow our business to some degree. Regardless of whether we sell a product or a service we are looking for more opportunities to win. The issue then becomes what opportunities should we pursue to do this. Not every deal is a good deal. You may have all the requirements nailed and it can still be a lousy deal for you. So how, then, should we decide which deals To Pursue or Not To Pursue?

Each company will have their own qualification and bid/no bid guidelines to help make that decision. But the basic questions that I feel need to be answered are:

Is the opportunity real? Not every opportunity you come across is a real opportunity. Liken it to job boards. I had a recruiter once tell me that 80% of job postings are not real. I don’t think that this is the case with business opportunities but everything we come across is not a real deal. That is what the qualification process is about. Is there a real need? Is there a budget? Is it truly a competitive deal?

Are we competitive? Just because we have some relevant quals and experience doesn’t mean we are competitive. Do we have a viable solution? Can we differentiate our solution? Can we afford to compete?

Are we aligned to win? Assume we are competitive. Do we know the customer? Do we have any relationships with the customer? Are we credible to the customer? Do we have customer confirmation that our solution would be acceptable? Just having quals and experience doesn’t necessarily mean we are positioned well to win.

Is it worth winning? To my statement above, not every opportunity is worth winning. There are risks involved with any business. Are they mitigated and are they acceptable? What is the ROI/profit? Can we make money doing this work? Is there a strategic value? I have pursued deals in the past that our group knew would not be as profitable as we wanted, if at all, because there was a strategic value in pursuing it. I have also walked away from opportunities that were right up our swim lane because we determined, for a variety of reasons, that it just wasn’t right for us. It’s not always a simple thing to decide.

Now these are just high level, basic categories of thoughts and questions. Each of these categories has a dozen or more other questions to help qualify the opportunity and decide on whether or not to pursue it. And as basic as it may sound, whatever your company uses to for this bid/no bid process is useless unless it is objectively applied. Not following your qualification guidelines usually results in wasting resources (time, material and money) that could have been better used on an opportunity that you had a better probability of winning. Or, it would have led you to walk away from what looked like a good deal but could have ended up being a nightmare.

Just like customers are looking for the right provider of a good or service, providers should be looking for the customers that are a fit for them. Not all customers are necessarily good customers for you. So the question is…To Pursue or Not To Pursue? What are some of the things you use to make that decision?

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.

Chasing Light

It doesn’t matter if you are a sales rep, a business developer, an operations line manager, senior business executive, or entrepreneur, one of the measures of the health of your business is your pipeline. 

Having a robust, qualified pipeline is the goal of any business that wants to stay in business. 

A weak pipeline may be due to many things. 

But it seems the common knee-jerk mindset is that to increase your pipeline you just need more activity. 

And everyone knows that more ‘activity’ always leads to opportunities that fill a pipeline.

Remember back in elementary school when the teacher would take a box and cover the opening with black construction paper? Some light source would be put in the box and the classroom lights would be turned off. 

The teacher would take a pin and begin to poke holes in the construction paper. Out of these holes came little rays of light, usually intending to simulate the constellations. 

It was cool. And the more light beams that emanated, the cooler it seemed.

In business it’s sometimes like being back in that elementary school classroom with the lights off. 

When it’s dark in the room every little ray of light catches your eye. The tendency is to grasp for that ray of light. 

Then, the next beam catches your attention and you reach for it too. And then the next, and the next and the next. 

And when you are in the dark (struggling to build your pipeline or show progress toward your goals) reaching for every ray of light (i.e. activity) seems the quickest way to get out of the dark.

The problem with this is that not every activity or new opportunity are beneficial. 

Activity, for activity’s sake, usually does little for the bottom line. It may make you and upper management look and feel like you are being productive, but it seldom does anything else. 

For it to be productive, that ‘activity’ needs to lead to actual ‘opportunities’ which must be then qualified as real or not. And usually, very few opportunities are added to a pipeline by just having ‘activity’. 

What I mean here are meaningless marketing and customer activities and management ‘directed’ activities that historically produce no results; and/or filling a pipeline with deals that may turn your activity dashboard green but that you know won’t lead to no new revenue.

Regardless of the pressure you are under, real or perceived, your resources (time, people, money, etc.) can only be spread so thin before they become ineffective for any of your opportunities, especially the ones that are winnable. 

So the discipline that is needed is to not reach for every ray of light but to determine which ones are the right for your business. 

The sales and BD reps should know their waterfront well enough to know what activities interest and benefit their customers. 

They should also know which activities don’t lead to better market awareness of what you’re selling, gain more customer intimacy or increase in the size of the pipeline. 

Management, as well, needs to trust that their front line reps know their market well enough to understand what works and doesn’t work to fill a pipeline with opportunities to pursue.

So then, when you have chosen which rays of light to reach for, a disciplined qualification and prioritization process, if followed, will help you stay focused on what actually works and help prevent you from just Chasing Light!

For more information about how The Cobalt Group can help you and your sales or business development 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.