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Entries by Mike Figliuolo

The 4 Need to Know Approaches to Growth

November 16, 2020 /1 Comment/in Business Toolkit, Entrepreneur, Sales, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

Knowing your growth strategy and understanding four key growth approaches – organic, acquisition, new products, and geographic expansion – will help you be more successful in achieving the growth you desire. You have to ask yourself – how does your business grow? Is it geographic expansion? Are you selling new products? Are you selling the same products to new customers? Are you growing by acquisition and buying other businesses? What’s your overall growth strategy? You need to be able to answer this question. Look at your historical growth and where it came from. That’s usually a pretty good indicator of how your organization is going to continue to grow from here. Pull out your strategic plan and look at your marketing plan to see where the future growth is expected. Assess whether or not that sales and marketing plan is aligned with where the future growth is supposed to come from. Different Approaches to Growth There are some very common methods for growing and they all have very different economic profiles. Acquisition One way you can grow is acquisition. The economics of conducting an acquisition are you spend a lot of money up front to buy another company or portion of another company. You’re buying a large piece of the market when you do so. The way you make acquisition economics work out is you reduce the costs of the combined entities by looking at synergies. So, you bought another company. Congratulations! You have two HR departments now. You have two marketing departments. You have two Legal departments and two IT departments. You have two of everything! How do you consolidate those and reduce costs? That’s the first source of economic value in an acquisition. The second source of acquisition value is all about growth. Now you have a new […]

Authenticity Lies in Your Ability to Cut The Crap

October 26, 2020 /1 Comment/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Authentic means getting rid of the B.S. and buzzwords and layers of ‘protective’ crap. Sharing who you truly are is the best way to establish a connection and build trust with your team. Today’s post is by Mike Figliuolo, Managing Director of thoughtLEADERS and author of One Piece of Paper(CLICK HERE to get your copy). The only way I know to roll back the tide of all the meaningless jargon in our world is to say what you really mean. Words spoken from the heart and the gut are clear, concise, meaningful, and genuine. They help ground you and your team. They signal that you are willing to take a stand for something you believe in instead of watering down your beliefs with complicated words so you will not offend someone or so your simple thoughts will sound more important. It is imperative that you realize such approaches have exactly the opposite effect. Using buzzwords makes you sound less intelligent. Filling your leadership philosophy with obscure or difficult to define concepts diminishes peoples’ trust in you. Both behaviors are counterproductive and hinder you from reaching your goal of becoming an authentic leader. That is why you are here, isn’t it? Allow me to share a story that demonstrates the trouble jargon-filled leadership philosophies can cause, as well as how an executive avoided such a trap. I know several executives who were members of the same senior leadership team. After a reorganization, their new boss, Jared, worked hard to get the team to gel. After several months of effort, it simply was not happening. The team members were mistrustful both of Jared and of each other. Team meetings were painful and one-on-one sessions with Jared were even worse. The team was quickly devolving into chaos. Jared decided he would break through […]

How Avoid Mistakes When Doing Analysis and Making Recommendations

October 19, 2020 /0 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Communications, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Three major mistakes people make when conducting analysis are succumbing to confirmation bias, analysis paralysis, and generating weak results. If you’re mindful of these risks and approach your analysis rigorously and objectively, you can make a recommendation that will be easily approved. Today’s post is by Mike Figliuolo, Managing Director of thoughtLEADERSs and author of The Elegant Pitch: (CLICK HERE to get your copy). A hypothesis-driven approach to problem solving and making recommendations can be tremendously efficient. You create a hypothesis (something taken to be true for the sake of argument), conduct analysis designed to prove or disprove the hypothesis, then make your recommendation based on the results of your analysis. Typically your hypothesis is based upon prior experiences you’ve had as well as your knowledge of the subject matter you’re evaluating. I’ve personally used this approach for years. I refer to it as the Structured Thought Process. The method is both efficient and effective. That said, using this approach is not without risks. Risk #1: Confirmation Bias While it’s great to have experience and prove your hypotheses are correct, that same experience carries risk with it. Confirmation bias – the tendency to look for or interpret information in a way that confirms your preconceived ideas – is the biggest risk you face when using a hypothesis-driven approach like the Structured Thought Process. No one wants to be wrong so it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking disproving your hypothesis means you made a mistake. That fear of being “wrong” can lead you to wear blinders when you’re conducting analysis. You might ignore or dismiss facts contrary to your hypothesis. You might only look for data that proves you’re “correct” which can then skew your analytical results. Before you know it, you’re making a case based upon incorrect […]

Protecting Yourself When You Make a Tough Call

September 23, 2020 /3 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

I can guarantee you’ll face a major moral/ethical dilemma situation at least once in your career. Even if you make the right decision, you’re still at risk for bad things happening. Here are some tips on navigating those sticky situations. Today’s post is by Mike Figliuolo, Managing Director of thoughtLEADERS. When I was a cadet at West Point, we learned the Cadet Prayer. We didn’t learn it as part of some religious education but rather because there were points in it about ethics. The one line that stood out for all of us was “Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong.” Sounds awesome in theory, much tougher in practice. There have been times I’ve lived up to that and others I’ve fallen miserably short. I’ve had friends, colleagues, and clients have similar experiences. While it sucks to choose the easier wrong and deal with the consequences later, it’s even worse to choose the harder right and still get screwed over when bad things happen to you as a result. I’d like to offer some thoughts on how you can protect yourself when you’re choosing to follow the moral high road. It’s a funny thing – when you’re walking up on the high road, you make yourself a nice, big, target silhouetted against the skyline. In situations where you’re doing the right thing, someone else is probably doing the wrong thing. Those are the folks who will try to take that shot at you while you stroll along the high road. If you don’t protect yourself, you’re going to find bad things happen to you. Sometimes those people taking the shot will walk away from the situation unscathed. Now that is a bad outcome. Here’s how to avoid it. Be Right If you’re going to make […]

Using Stretch and Commit Goals to Drive Performance

September 21, 2020 /0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Entrepreneur, Leadership, Sales /by Mike Figliuolo

Goal setting is tricky business. You’ll get much better performance if you set two goals for your team. Once you’ve done so, paying for performance is more of a math equation than it is black magic. Incentives can, and have been, a topic of great discussion but one thing that is hard to argue is this: you want to complete a goal, incentives work. Sometimes incentives are money. Incentives can be salary increases or bonuses. You may offer stock or options. Other incentives can be awards, time off, or promotions. Incentives need to be something that’s meaningful and exciting to your team, collectively. When you set the incentives, make a direct linkage between the goal and the reward. I’ve always liked setting “commit” and “stretch” goals. The commit goal is something where folks are signing up to deliver it no matter what. There’s zero bonus associated with hitting a commit. It’s the “you did your job” level of goal. A “stretch” is the furthest point that folks think is in the realm of possibility. They have an idea for how they’ll achieve 70% of it but no clue where the last 30% will come from. And to be clear – that first 70% will take a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to hit. With a stretch goal, people can max out their bonus. If you have a commit goal and a stretch goal, put the bonus on a sliding scale between those two instead of creating an all-or-none scheme. A “commit” goal is the minimum that someone will deliver to the organization. At the “commit” the bonus is zero. A stretch goal is a high level of impact that will take a tremendous amount of effort to achieve. If someone hits their stretch, the bonus should be 100% of […]

Why You Need a Wookiee on Your Team

April 17, 2019 /1 Comment/in Leadership, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

Leaders can learn a few things from Chewbacca the Wookiee. Leaders who have people that are loyal, team players, skilled, and action-oriented will be more successful than leaders with team members without these qualities. Today’s post is by Mike Figliuolo, Managing Director of thoughtLEADERS, LLC. GRRNNHHNNNHHNN! WOOKIEE! Every great leader needs their own Wookiee. They’re extremely useful. They can carry around robots, knock out stormtroopers, and co-pilot wicked awesome smuggler spaceships. On top of that, they usually have long, luxurious brown hair (how has Chewbacca not landed a shampoo/conditioner endorsement yet?). Some of you longtime readers have seen this post before, but it was time it be revived from the archives once more, it truly is that good. Read it again. It’s good stuff. New readers – read it. This is one of my favorite posts ever. No, I haven’t lost it. All leaders need their own Wookiee. First, allow me to explain the characteristics of Wookiees that leaders will find attractive and helpful, especially for those of you who haven’t jumped on the Star Wars bandwagon in the last couple years. Second, I’ll explain how you can unleash those Wookiee talents for the good of your team. When you figure out who your Wookiee is, let them know that, in a matter of speaking. You should share your assessment with them so they understand what you expect from them and how valuable they are to you as a member of your team. If you want to expand your Star Wars leadership skills beyond managing a Wookiee, you can read this post about what Han Solo can teach you about leadership (a real flashback for any of you who’ve been with around since the beginning). There are five things you’re looking for in your Wookiee:

Two Keys to Getting Tough Decisions Executed Well

April 10, 2019 /0 Comments/in Communications, Entrepreneur, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Large decisions carry plenty of execution risk. To increase the chances that your decisions are executed the way you want them to be, focus on clearly explaining the decision and actively managing change. Today’s post is by Mike Figliuolo, Managing Director of thoughtLEADERS, LLC. If you want to make a successful decision, communicate the rationale for the decision to the broader organization. Lay out the context you’re making the decision in. Tell people what the decision was and why it was made. Explain the goals for making the decision. Tell people how you’re going to monitor execution. And also that you’re willing to make new decisions as you get more information. Perhaps even tell them what some of the contingency plans are. Explaining the Decision The better people understand why you made the decision, the less they’re going to second guess it and the more they’re going to support it. Their support is critical to reducing execution risks in making the decision. It helps you get the decision out and executed quickly because they’re bought into it and there are not going to be obstacles. For example, at one company I worked for, we did a large layoff and those are always difficult decisions. Most of the time, layoffs are kept quiet and people don’t know they’re coming. This CEO did it differently. He laid out a complete presentation that explained the rationale for the layoff. He explained the strategic implications and the market dynamics that were driving this change. He also explained what might happen if we didn’t act. People didn’t necessarily like this decision. Their friends were going to be laid off. Some of these people were going to be laid off. But they understood the strategic rationale for making the decision and they supported and executed the […]

The Secret Method for Getting Your Recommendations Approved

April 3, 2019 /0 Comments/in Books, Communications, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Getting to “yes” is one of the biggest challenges you’ll face on a daily basis. Whether you’re making a case for more budget, more people, more time, or approval of an idea, you’ll need to communicate in a clear and compelling way. Here’s the secret method for doing just that. Today’s post is by Mike Figiuolo, Managing Director of thoughtLEADERS. “We’re sorry but your recommendation wasn’t approved.” We’ve all heard those words; it’s a sentence that slaughters your hopes and crushes your confidence. Getting ideas or projects approved and securing the resources needed to implement them is one of the greatest challenges business leaders face. With multiple stakeholders, constrained budgets, and competing agendas, it’s difficult to cut through the clutter and garner the required support. I’ve been teaching folks this method for years as part of our Structured Thought & Communications Course (and if you’d like me to come teach you and your team, I’d be delighted to do so – just contact me and we can discuss the program). After teaching the method for over a decade, I finally put pen to paper to make it available as a book. The Elegant Pitch: Create a Compelling Recommendation, Build Broad Support, and Get it Approved was published a few years ago and has helped business professionals, across multiple industries, create successful pitches for all their business needs. If you’ve ever been a participant in our Structured Thought & Communications Course, the book is a wonderful complement to what you learned in class. The Elegant Pitch provides a simple, proven process to go from idea to approval more quickly and effectively than ever before. This is the same method used by elite strategy consulting firms such as McKinsey & Co. and Bain Consulting. But you don’t have to be a high-priced […]

Leadership Lessons from Tragedies, Near-Misses, Hardships, and Mistakes

February 13, 2019 /0 Comments/in Books, Communications, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Great leaders learn from even the worst situations – perhaps especially the worst. Find out what some great leaders learned from holding a man’s hand as he took his dying breath at work, a falling crate smashing to bits on the factory floor a few feet from visitors, a painstaking walk across the entire country of Spain, and a lost driver’s license that threatened to derail an entire 2-day business trip. Today’s post is by Paul Smith, thoughtLEADERS principal and bestselling author of Lead With a Story and Sell With a Story. Here’s an easy way to learn some new leadership skills – in easy-to-digest podcasts you can listen to at your convenience. These podcasts are based on interviews with 100 executives, leaders, authors, and experts at dozens of companies around the world. Each episode brings you an important leadership lesson through a single compelling story. Does customer service this amazing ever happen at your company? If so, would you even know it? Probably the most outrageously positive customer service story I’ve ever heard. Maybe too good. You decide. Then ask yourself these five questions… Compensating Behavior: A Leader’s Guide to Finding Problems You Don’t Know You Have The most dangerous problems are the ones you don’t know you have. Here’s a creative way to find them. Two Leadership Lessons from an American Author’s Walk across Spain

Is Your Executive Team Stressed? Then Move!

January 30, 2019 /0 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Books, Communications, Entrepreneur, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Our brains are under constant assault from stressors. To reduce the amount of stress you feel and to improve your resilience, move. Move around physically. Exercise. Walk while on conference calls. Move. Movement has huge benefits in terms of stress reduction and resilience. Today’s post is by Jon Wortmann, thoughtLEADERS principal and author of Hijacked by Your Brain. He’s our primary instructor for our Building Leadership Resilience course. A data breach impacting millions. A failure of your core systems due to too much volume leaving users stranded. Two key executives leaving without successors in place. If you are a leader, imagining each of the aforementioned, true, situations, is enough to double your heart rate. And it should. Thinking about attacks, major human errors, and poor planning triggers the region of your brain that causes stress. Your amygdala, which I call your alarm, is a tiny, almond shaped region in the middle, left, and right sides of your brain. Bears have alarms. So do iguanas. Our ancestors a thousand years ago did too. Animals and old-timers needed their alarms to stay safe. To avoid danger, they had to be able to run and hide from nastier creatures or avoid the wrong food or water. Our problem today is that too many moments in life feel like a Sabre-tooth tiger approaching, as we sit safely in our offices, drive comfortably in our cars, and have full fridges of healthy, nutritious food (in addition to cake, wine, and cheese). That’s why you and your execs are stressed. Their alarms are on all the time. The risk from hackers has never been higher. Our technology is more powerful and more complicated than ever, and only continues to become more so of each. Our teams are made of independent, smart colleagues who will take a […]

Can Resilience Differentiate You as a Leader?

January 23, 2019 /2 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Resilience is the ability to maintain flexibility and focus when dealing with massive change. Leaders who possess this skill can differentiate themselves and lead their teams more effectively. Today’s post is by thougthtLEADERS principal Maureen Metcalf. In times of uncertainty, resilience is one of the most important skills for us to have. I define it as “the ability to remain flexible and focused when facing change.” As leaders, we are facing a higher level of volatility across the business environment than we previously faced. In the U.S., we are still dealing with a major political change. This transition exposed division that was not previously evident on the surface in families, offices and communities. Such division can be healthy if addressed with a spirit of curiosity and grace. Yet, how can that happen when we view our previously trusted colleagues and even family members as “the other,” or worse? While the political environment is the most obvious example right now, we are also seeing unprecedented volatility in financial markets and uncertainty in many sectors such as healthcare. Some of this is caused by politics, some by technology, and some caused by the fact that we live in a world that is much more interconnected than it used to be. We are dealing with situations we’ve never seen before. There is no return to the prior level of control so as leaders, we need to learn to be more agile. Take Bill, a university director, responsible for physical and technology security. He came into work on a normal Monday morning, got his coffee, and started to plan his week. At 9:10 his world was interrupted. A young student drove off the road and onto a sidewalk trying to hit other students. The student emerged from his car and began attacking others. It was […]

11 till Whenever – How to Stay Disciplined when Freelancing

January 21, 2019 /0 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Books, Business Toolkit, Career, Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger /by Mike Figliuolo

The freelancing and entrepreneurial lifestyle seems like it has so many benefits like flexibility, setting your own hours, and doing your own thing. That flexibility, however, presents very real challenges to your efficiency and effectiveness. A few good habits can help you stay on track and get your work done. Today’s post is by Ed Jones of Inspiring Interns. To some, the freelance lifestyle sounds like paradise. Late starts, long lunches and working in your jammies? It’s the stuff of dreams. But the perks of freelancing can sometimes inhibit productivity. With no one pushing you on, how can you ensure you stay focused, determined and disciplined? Keep Office Hours Ditching the 9 to 5 can reinvigorate your career but it’s important not to lose the sense of structure the working day brings. Starting at 9 means you’ll be in line with most corporate clients and allows you to put down tools at a sensible hour. It’s no use starting at 3pm if you’re then working till midnight. Keeping office hours will also help you split your time between business and pleasure. Clocking off in the early evening keeps that all important work-life balance in check. Dress to Impress While the thought of emails in your dressing gown sounds idyllic, dressing for business installs a sense of professionalism to your day. Even though you may not be dealing with colleagues and clients face to face, maintaining your physical appearance naturally encourages discipline. Find a Productive Workplace