Our reader poll today asks: Have you ever been through a merger/acquisition process during your career?
Yes, I’ve had my company be acquired by another: 45%
Yes, I’ve been at a company that acquired another one: 35%
No, I’ve never been involved in one of those situations: 19%
Merger challenges. 80% of you have been involved in mergers either as the buyer or the bought. They’re extremely challenging and stressful situations. One of the most challenging aspects of any merger is managing the culture combination. Processes, technology, products, operations, financials… those are all relatively straightforward to sort out. The big leadership challenge is creating one new culture from the two that came together. Failure to do so creates great risk for the organization and can definitely adversely affect the merger’s outcome. As a leader, stay focused on cultural issues. Pay attention to brewing culture conflicts and get in front of them. Define the culture you want to build and find every opportunity you can to reinforce it. Pointing out actions that are or are not consistent with the desired culture helps people understand what you’re building toward. Your team can handle the operating details – they need you focused on combining two cultures into one successful one.
Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!
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Identify your organization’s major threats and opportunities by assessing these five aspects of your market.
As you begin your strategic planning process, it’s important to assess the market you’re competing in. A classic tool for doing so is Porter’s five forces. Dr. Michael Porter, who’s a professor of strategy, came up with this set of five forces to evaluate all the different dynamics that can affect your organization. Read more
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Our reader poll today asks: Who has had the greatest impact on your leadership development over the years?
A boss I’ve worked for: 64%
A peer: 7%
A member of my team: 5%
A family member: 8%
A leadership coach/expert/speaker/author: 12%
A business personality (CEO, well-known executive): 4%
Bosses by far. The vast majority of you have been most impacted by a boss you’ve worked for in terms of developing your leadership skills. Let’s flip that around – if you’re a manager, what are YOU doing to develop your people? Clearly bosses have a disproportionate impact on team leadership skills development. Are you spending enough time on it? Are you creating development opportunities for team members? Are you investing in their skills through training, resources, and most importantly, giving them your time and attention? A leader’s job is to create the next generation of leaders. Make sure when your team members answer a poll like this in their future that they’re thinking of you and selecting their boss as having had the greatest impact on their leadership development.
Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!
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Learning how to build goals from the bottom up connects individuals to the broader mission.
In addition to building your goals from the top-down, a useful exercise is to build goals from the bottom-up. It helps get team buy-in and it can identify new opportunities for upside. For bottom-up goals, start with what the team thinks they can commit to. What they can deliver. Ask them what they can stretch to. Then work from those individual drivers, those individual goals, up to the bigger metrics that matter for the organization.
If you have an organization that’s trying to drive sales and you have a team full of sales reps, you may look at the individual bottom-up goals of number of calls that they’re going to make in an hour. Those then roll up to the number of calls that they’re able to connect on in an hour, which rolls up to a broader goal of the number of pitches that they’re making to customers, and a goal above that of how many pitches are being accepted by the customer. That can tie to a bigger goal of the number of contracts sent and pricing being achieved, a bigger goal of number of contracts being closed, and ultimately, end up in the big organizational goal of how much revenue is being generated.
Working from the bottom-up ties the individual to the broader mission. In terms of identifying new opportunities, I found this out firsthand. I had a team where I went to all my team members and I asked them for their profit goal for the year. One team came back to me with five times what I would have expected. I would have given them a goal of say, $5 million. And they came back and said, we’re going to get you 25. I was shocked and I asked them, where did you get this? They showed me they had found a huge new opportunity I wasn’t aware of. When I went to commit to my boss, I only committed 3x of that 5x they had found. I learned on the back end they had sandbagged me, and the number was 10x what I would have asked for them in the first place. They left upside for themselves and had hedged their goal to me. They were excited to exceed that hedge but they made sure they didn’t over promise to the organization.
Building from the bottom-up in that situation was great because it brought forth a new opportunity and we were able to roll it into the broader organizational goal. When you go through your goal setting exercise, go to your team and work from the bottom-up, from those low level metrics that tie to the higher level organizational goals. Look for buy-in from your team in terms of the goals that they’re going to set, and try and identify new opportunities for upside. That bottom-up goal setting process is going to give you tighter goals that are more closely tied to the broader organizational ones and hopefully help you find new opportunities to pursue.
Want to learn more about setting goals? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to set better goals. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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Our reader poll today asks: How effective are the leaders in your organization at coaching their team members?
Extremely — They’re great coaches. 1.6%
Very — They do a solid job of coaching. 11.9%
Somewhat — Their coaching skills could use some improvement. 36%
Not very — They rarely coach and when they do, they’re not effective. 30%
Not at all — They have no idea what coaching is. 20.4%
Development requires coaching. It’s pretty scary to see 86% of you responding that your leaders need better coaching skills and that 50% are pretty bad at it. A leaders’ job is to build the next generation of leaders. If you can’t coach your people, it’s pretty hard to help them develop their skills. Take a hard look at your own coaching skills and those of the leaders working for you. Do you need to improve those skills? What are you doing about it? When are you going to do it? Hold yourself accountable to improving in this arena. Read a book. Take a course. Find a mentor who is a great coach and ask them to help you build your coaching skills. The sooner you start building your coaching skills, the sooner your people will get the leadership and development they need from you. You owe it to them to improve your abilities in this arena.
Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!
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Learning how to build goals from the top down ensures that everyone’s work is headed in the same direction.
Goals shouldn’t just tie from your strategy down to the individual goals. When you add your goals up, they also need to align from corporate goals down to the individual. Ensure everyone’s work is headed in the same direction and people know how they fit in—how their work contributes to the broader goals we’re trying to achieve. The way you do this is you work from the vision down to subcomponents, then down to subcomponents below that, all the way down to individual goals. Goals should cascade from the highest levels down. And when you add them all up, hopefully, it’s more than you’re trying to get to at the top level. Why? Well, you want to make sure that you hit that goal. By over-allocating that goal across the organization, you’re going to increase the chances that you hit the big goal.
I worked for an operating division at one point, and we had a goal of $200 million of revenue. There were five regions in the organization. Each region was given a goal of $42 million. Now, that’s $210 million. Within those regions, each branch was given a goal. And when you totaled up all the branches, it came to $215 million worth of goals. We then looked at the individual sales reps, and every sales rep was given a goal. When we totaled up all the sales rep goals, it was $220 million. Adding up those individual goals exceeded the division goal by 10%, by $20 million. The reason we did this was to ensure that we hit that top level, $200 million goal.
Over the course of the year, obviously, some sales reps exceeded their goals, some met their goals, and some fell short. Working from the top-down ensured the primary goal was focused on. Everyone was focused on driving sales. And by over-allocating that goal from top down to individual helped us achieve that goal. Now, when you do this, if you’re going to go with an over-allocating approach to setting these goals from the big goal down to individuals, be careful about over-planning that hand because you may make it such that that goal is not achievable.
One time I’ve seen this dynamic is when I was in the Army and we had to be at formation at a certain time. Our company commander would say, “I want everybody at formation at 6:00 a.m.” The lieutenants would then go to the organization and say, “I want everybody at formation at 5:30 a.m.” The platoon sergeants then went to the teams and said, “I want everybody in formation at 5:00 a.m.” The squad leaders then said, “I want everybody in formation at 4:30 a.m.” The next thing you know, you’ve got this Corp private standing out there in a parking lot at 4:00 a.m., waiting for a formation that happens two hours from now. Bad things can happen when you over-allocate a goal down to the individual level.
So balance it out. Look at the high-level goal, break it down into subcomponents, and look at the individual goals that are going to add up to that broader goal. Make sure the goals you set at the individual level are still achievable and they’re directly tied to the broader goal you’re trying to achieve. By doing so, people know how they contribute, how they fit in, and you’re going to make sure that you hit those top-level goals if everybody hits their individual goals.
Want to learn more about setting goals? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to set better goals. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!
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