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Entries by Mike Figliuolo

What a Marching Band Can Teach You about Leadership

April 15, 2013 /10 Comments/in Leadership, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

I was lucky enough a few months ago to attend the Ohio State vs. Nebraska football game at Ohio State. It was a raucous affair in which OSU pounded Nebraska into submission. But that wasn’t the best part. The best part was the halftime show by The Best Damn Band In The Land. They showed me something that I knew I needed to share the minute I saw it. Now, I’m no huge band follower – I was definitely there for the football game. That said, I know something special when I see it and given I tend to look at the world through a leadership lens, I immediately saw this blog post emerge. During that halftime show, the OSU band demonstrated what true teamwork looks like and displayed the amazing impact that can be achieved when everyone on the team executes their role flawlessly. To that end, I invite you to check out the below video of the halftime show. To get the point I’m about to make, skip ahead to 6:35 into the video and strap yourself in because you’re about to be amazed. The halftime show was a tribute to video games and what the band pulled off with that galloping horse was nothing short of amazing. Imagine 100,000 people hanging out during halftime enjoying the show but also chatting with friends and eating hot dogs. All of a sudden, the horse takes form and people applaud. Then it starts galloping. The place went absolutely insane. And when the horse reared up on its hind legs, you would have thought OSU just won the national championship. This was teamwork art in action. You can learn a few things as a leader from their performance:

How Letting Go Can Strengthen Your Leadership

April 10, 2013 /7 Comments/in Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Today Reynier Lezcano, author of Executive Wisdom: Reflections for Today’s Leaders, discusses how letting go can make you a better leader. I have come to the conclusion that the overwhelming majority of business executives think of leadership as a bureaucratic function of business, requiring lots of academic formation and business exposure, along with an empirical approach. On the contrary, true leadership entails plenty of trust and dependability. Motivational leaders are the primary force behind organizational efficiency and effectiveness. The leader, more than a decision maker, is a motivator. Leaders motivate their followers to continue their legacy while they are present and during their absence, and to fulfill their vision for the organization. Motivational leaders make quick executive decisions; they craft a plan of action and carry it through without losing sight of their goals; and above all, they overcome obstacles with their initiative and charisma. As illustrated in the following story, it takes a true leader to motivate others to jump on board and take a business out of the red and into profitability. Leadership can come from anyone. It is not confined to the owner of the company or the CEO. As a matter of fact, academic erudition is not even a prerequisite to successful leadership. The following anecdote serves as a perfect example of what motivational leadership is all about. It was back in the 1980s when my friend Bobby took a job at his friend’s store in New York City. Bobby’s friend Artie had bought a small grocery store. Artie showed up sporadically, so he needed someone he could trust to manage the store for him. He hired Bobby, knowing that Bobby was trustworthy and dependable—key personal traits of true leaders. Bobby didn’t really have any experience in this type of work, but he was a fast […]

How to Pursue a Balanced Growth Strategy

April 8, 2013 /1 Comment/in Leadership, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

Growth is the lifeblood of your business. A leader’s job is to take that business to bigger and better places. The dilemma lies in how to get there. You’re often faced with a simple choice: keep growing your core or expand into new arenas. It’s a challenge of balance. By growing your core, you’re building what you’re already successful at. Customers have validated that product or service. It’s likely very profitable. And as you’ve heard me pontificate on before, strategy is inherently about saying “no.” On the flip side, your core can only get you so far. The ideas behind it might get stale or run their logical lifespan. Cool new opportunities and ideas spring up all the time. Many of those new opportunities are untested and unproven though therefore they’re riskier. Your job as a leader is to balance between strengthening and growing what you already do well while simultaneously finding new growth opportunities for your business. It’s challenging because you have resource constraints and can only invest so much time, effort, and money into building the core and expanding beyond it. You have to make this tradeoff effectively. This applies to you whether you’re a small business or a monolithic one. So how can you strike that balance?

How Being Relevant Creates Competitive Advantage

April 3, 2013 /3 Comments/in Customer Service, Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Today, Robert Murray, author of It’s Already Inside (CLICK HERE to get your copy) shares thoughts on how your organization can build a competitive advantage. Lots gets said and written about leadership and strategy. Complex theories and models abound. Leaders (usually the ones with some sort of inferiority complex) use really big words and acronyms that only confuse things even more. No wonder most businesses today languish in a constant state of mediocrity. I once worked with a PhD from one of the finest business schools in the world that would often say; “We’re not doing that. It’s too simple.” The results were a culture that was reduced to a toxic tar pit and a customer base that slipped 17% in one year – eroding $200MM in shareholder value. Here’s the secret sauce (so to speak) though – be relevant. Be relevant to your people, partners and your customers. It is the competitive advantage that will set you apart from the crowd. What does “being relevant” mean? When business leaders get complicated with their models and convoluted mumbo jumbo, it always comes from what they teach in business schools and it is all left brain thinking. People, on the other hand, make all their decisions from an emotionally based perception of their own reality, which is all right brain thinking. It is different for each individual – there is no one size fits all.

Finding Inspiration in the Words of Great Leaders

April 1, 2013 /7 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Communications, Innovation, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

So many brilliant people have turned such wonderful and inspirational quotes over the years and we would do well as leaders to learn from them. I’ve compiled a few of my all-time favorite quotes in this post and encourage you to share your favorite ones with the members of your team. Heck, go crazy and print a bunch of them out and post them on your office bulletin board. There’s something special about a great quote. It captures an idea in the span of a few short words and that idea is so much bigger than we would expect. It inspires. It stirs the soul. It elicits unexpected emotions from the depths of our being. There’s a reason we love quotes: they work. So without further preamble, here are some of my all-time favorite leadership quotes: – “Never mistake a clear view for a short distance.” – Paul Saffo – “Equality is not only a right, it is also a noun.” – George Merriam of Merriam-Webster* – “Veni. Vedi.” – Marcus Salvius Otho Caesar Augustus after the Battle of Bedriacum* – “Egalitarianism is so much more than a value; it is the system by which they govern.” – John James Audubon*

7 Proven Steps for Increasing Sales

March 27, 2013 /1 Comment/in Books, Guest Blogger, Sales /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is by David and Marhnelle Hibbard, authors of Soar Selling (CLICK HERE to get your copy). Many salespeople have a love-hate relationship with sales. They love the profession, but they often hate bringing in net new logos. It’s the classic case of wanting to have it all without the most dreaded aspect of the process. If you’ve been in the business of selling for many years, you know that most of your new business will come from old clients, repeat customers, and a referral here and there. But isn’t it time to go beyond just doing well and instead create exceptional results? Of course it is … and that means making “the call”—the dreaded cold call, that is. Why is a simple phone call so dreaded? Why is calling into a new account so hated? So resisted? After two decades of leading sales pros, we have found that if there is no pain “I am doing just fine the way I manage my business” or there is no vision of what is possible “I am comfortable to stay with business as it is”, then there is no change. However, if you want to create new results, you need to get out of your comfort zone and into a new way driving your business. So the question begs itself, do you want to create substantial results this year? How much is substantial? Do you want a 5% increase, a 30% increase, a 50% increase? No matter what the percent of increase, if you are interested—NO, DRIVEN—to create exceptional results, you need to take a fresh look at a technique that will rock your world and deliver on your efforts. That technique is cold calling. Go ahead and say it: “Cold calling is an out-of-date approach to finding new business,” […]

Decision Making: You’re Doing it Wrong

March 25, 2013 /1 Comment/in Communications, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Organizations are terrible at decision making. Yep. I said it. And you know it’s true. There are some pretty understandable reasons why we’re so bad at making decisions. We are afraid of being wrong. There are costs with being wrong (e.g., getting fired, not getting a promotion, etc.). We don’t want to upset people and have them feel left out. We don’t want to hurt their feelings by not asking for their opinions. But decisions still need to be made. All the above issues lead us to a place where every decision is based on consensus. Consensus-based decision making takes forever. And even if we use a consensus-based approach, we still risk groupthink. On top of that, the slow pace of consensus exposes us to the rapid pace of today’s business environment. If it takes us forever to decide whether to launch a new product, we create the risk of our competitors beating us to market because they made a decision more quickly than we did. We must get better at decision making. Now. Two of my favorite perspectives on decision making come from General Patton and RUSH: “In case of doubt, ATTACK!” – General George S. Patton III “If you choose not to decide / You still have made a choice.” – RUSH, Freewill So how can you break out of the infuriatingly slow paced environment in which you’re operating now? It’s actually pretty easy.

The Crazy, Backward Sales Technique That Will Make You Rich

March 20, 2013 /3 Comments/in Communications, Guest Blogger, Sales /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is by Robert D. Smith, author of 20,000 Days and Counting (CLICK HERE to get your copy). Here’s Robert… If you’re in sales, you like the word “Yes” a lot more than the word “No.” “No” is just a word you’ve learned to live with. You tolerate it as a reality of the job, as a permanent obstacle you will always have to work to overcome. But what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if, instead of pursuing the “Yes,” you dedicated all your time to seeking out the “No’s”? What if looking for “No’s” actually got you more conversions than you ever saw when you worked so hard chasing down the “Yes”? Well, forget “what if.” Here’s the truth—“No’s” will make you rich. Let me explain.

Why Kicking Up is a Great Way to Lead

March 18, 2013 /3 Comments/in Books, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post focuses on the importance of standing up for the members of your team. It’s an excerpt from One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership (you can get your copy here). Leadership is not a popularity contest. When I share my thoughts candidly, I remove uncertainty for the people around me. Because I articulate my leadership style to my team and back that up with my words and actions, my reaction in almost any situation will be highly predictable. My views on how I expect people to approach work and team leadership are well-established and my actions are consistent with those beliefs. After being in leadership roles dating all the way back to my teens, the sum of my experiences, both positive and negative, have shaped how I behave, what I expect of my leaders, and what my team should expect of me. My natural style maxims center on how I will treat and take care of my team and how I expect them to behave. Those maxims are: – Kick up. Kiss down. – Don’t bring me problems. Bring me solutions. Kick up, kiss down was taught to me by two bosses I had at different points in my career. The first boss lived it but never explained it. The second boss both explained it as well as lived it. The basic premise is a leader’s job is to keep “higher ups” mindful of how their decisions affect the leader’s people and give the higher ups a pointed kick when they negatively impact the team. The second part about kissing down reminds the leader to praise and encourage the team whenever the opportunity arises. It is obviously the opposite of the “kiss up, kick down” doctrine that can be alarmingly prevalent among managers. A […]

How Power, Authority, and Obligation Impact Your Leadership Abilities

March 13, 2013 /3 Comments/in Guest Blogger, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is by Allen Laudenslager and Bryan Neva Sr. You can learn more about them at the end of the post. “Noblesse Oblige” is an old French phrase that literally translates as “nobility obligates.” It means that those who have power and authority, or who are privileged, rich or famous have a moral responsibility to display honorable, charitable, and exemplary behavior towards those less fortunate or to those dependent on them. In other words, whoever claims to be noble must conduct themselves nobly. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. summed it up nicely when he said: every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty. The idea of “Noblesse Oblige” was created out of enlightened self-interest. The nobility had serfs who were dependent on them for land to farm, a place to live and protection from bandits. In medieval times all the land belonged to the nobility; the enlightened noble recognized that while he owned the land, without someone to plant and harvest the noble had no income. Seeing to the wellbeing of his serfs was his “noble obligation.” The good old days of companies treating their employees as their most valuable assets have been set aside in favor of expecting them to work harder for the same pay and fewer benefits. In place of rewards they’re told they should be glad they still have a job. Corporate management has developed an entitlement mentality (like the old French nobility) by remembering their privileges (power, prestige, perks, and pay) but forgetting their obligations to their employees. So what does this mean for you?

Quit Being a Critic and Go Create Something

March 11, 2013 /26 Comments/in Books, Communications, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

In my line of work, I’m exposed to a fair number of critics. Whether it’s comments on this blog, reviews of my book, or critiques of my performance as a speaker, there is no shortage of criticism of my work. Some is glowing. Some is marginal. Some is downright ugly. As leaders, we’re often in a position where our opinions and criticism carry great weight and those perspectives can positively and negatively affect the lives of those around us. Unfortunately we’re not always careful with our criticism nor are we mindful of the corresponding responsibilities that go along with our words. I’ve been meaning to write this post since about 2008 (okay… so I got a little behind in my work). The Disney Pixar movie Ratatouille came out around that time (and if you haven’t seen it, you MUST!). One villain in the movie is Anton Ego – the food critic. Hell-bent on taking down Gusteau’s restaurant, Ego makes a point of going out of his way to stage a dramatic food tasting with the intent of writing a final scathing review that dooms Gusteau’s to irrelevance once and for all. Anyone who has seen the movie knows Ego is blown away by the meal he enjoys there. To his amazement and chagrin, he realizes he must write a review worthy of the wonderful meal he was served. The beginning of his review was poignant and carries a lesson for all of us: “In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand […]

Innovation is Easy… When You Know Why

March 6, 2013 /4 Comments/in Books, Guest Blogger, Innovation /by Mike Figliuolo

Today’s post is by Dr. Liz Alexander, author of #Thought Leadership Tweet: 140 Prompts for Designing and Executing an Effective Thought Leadership Campaign (CLICK HERE to get your copy). Here’s Liz… When focused on a problem, how quickly do you launch into solution mode? Do you ever consider whether you’re answering the right question first? Einstein once said that if he had an hour to solve a problem that his life depended on, he’d spend 55 minutes determining the right question to ask. Then, within 5 minutes, he’d have the answer. Answers are one thing—but how about innovative advantage? Check out these examples to discover how powerful the right “why” questions can be: Countdown in Bangalore In a city of close to 8.5 million people driving almost 4 million vehicles, the installation of countdown timers at major junctions in Bangalore, India has helped minimize noise pollution and exhaust emissions, and reduce commuters’ consumption of gas. This simple device, like all successful innovations, relied on a good idea; what facilitated that was asking the right question. As Bangalore mushroomed in size and vehicles increased, so the time that Bangalore drivers had to wait at red lights extended beyond the limits of their patience. Had city officials asked, “What can we do to alleviate our traffic problems?” they’d still be scratching their heads or have come up with the usual answers: build more roads, increase car taxes, or introduce some other punitive and unpopular measure. Instead they focused on why drivers cause so much pollution (noise and emissions) when waiting at traffic lights. The real problem meant addressing the fact that drivers want to know how long they’ve to wait before the light turns green again. Once the countdown timer was introduced, most drivers began shutting off their engines until it was […]