………….Continuation from 20th November Education Times
A willingness to take risks
New Product development - No one had done it before except the company that did the prototype. I talked the customer into letting us do one. It was successful, and the company got a lot more business and raised itself to a higher plateau. I was in charge of the team that did that job. I think I wanted to do it because it was such a challenge, such an interesting project. I love that sort of stuff. It was fun to do.
Whenever I tell someone else what to do to shape their career, I say do something to be noticed, something that makes a difference in the company. It’s how I worked my way up at Dyncorp.
At first I was put in charge of a couple of small projects, and they were very successful. I took a couple of not-so-good customer situations and turned them around. I was just young and gutsy enough to try. It did not feel like that big a risk to me, like risking your company or risking an investment. There is no handbook on how to evaluate risk. A lot of it is intuitive. Very seldom has it failed, regardingpeople. You develop a sense when you’re around long enough, when something feels right or dosen’t.If it doesn’t feel right, you had better not do it or you had better get some information first. That’s what leader does: provides an opportunity for managers, teams, and employees to give you all the facts concerning a situation that you need in order to evaluate and decide what the best course of action is. You have to sort out fact and fiction, or fact and opinion.
CREATE BUY-IN – Grow with Acquisition
– (Real Life experience)
We always give the management team veto rights on a deal. We don’t sell that many units, but when we do, we always do that. After our company went private in 1988, I immediately sold of the electrical contracting business we had built from scratch into a $300 million enterprise. We brought a buyer into the picture but the management team rejected it. So we didn’t do the deal. We sold it to someone else, someone they wanted. The smart companies do business this way.
It’s a fatal mistake when a corporate office dictates what to do to those who have responsibility for business units.
WHAT ARE THE MAIN CHALLENGES / ISSUES TODAY’S LEADERS FACE?
HOW TO LAUNCH CHANGE
I may be from the old school of management as a one-company man, but I am not averse to change. I‘ve implemented plenty of change. I work hard to prepare people and the organization for a constant change.
It’s important not just to react but to initiate change. We’ve changed the company at least 10 times. We’ve made major structural change as well as change to our business and our client base. It was different then. Change did not occur as rapidly. We did not have the technology tools we have today. Those technology tools are what’s changing rapidly.
Our incentive programme provides opportunities to motivate people to be change agents.
At the beginning of the year we sit down with employees and managers and agree on what their personal objectives are for the year and discuss change---what’s going on, what will be different a year from now other than higher profits. What about the structure, people, clients, market, expansion? Those are all aspects of change. How are you going to get there, to create competitive advantage that you do not have now, because the competitive advantage you have now will be stale then? You have to assume your competitors are smart and are going to figure out a away to beat you, You won’t win every single time, but you had better win most of the time. It’s our management incentive plan.
Beyond that, effecting change is not just tied financial rewards. You have to build an environment in which people understand that they are managing change. You do not that in your communications, It’s important to build a company that can be little bold, to look around them at what’s going on in the world, not just little world but the whole world.
TRACKING COMPETITIORS
AND INDUSTRY TRENDS
Fifteen years ago, Contractors did business with the U.S. government through the U.S. mail. Officers would be swimming in mounds and mounds of paper. Today it is becoming more and more electronic. Some agencies of government through e-mail and the Internet, Workflow, E-document, you won’t do the business with them. This is radical change ------ it’s almost unbelievable. That means there are lots of opportunities for managers to change their processes. If you have an executive who has his feet stuck in the mud, saying this e-commerce doesn’t make sense that business won’t be around very long. In this case, the customer is changing the way we do business. I have to figure out how to get a competitive advantage out of it.
DOING BUSINESS ELECTRONICALLY
Doing business with the government electronically is just one small piece of electronic commerce. Doing business electronically also means the way you present your proposals and credentials is done electronically, and in person, which is major change marketing techniques, In the past, we wrote lengthy proposals, sometimes thousands of pages, sent them in boxes, and the government had people sitting around a table reading these volumes. Most government agencies have done awaywith that. Now you must walk in with your management team----- those who will manage project -------- and the management team orally presents its plan to the government. How do you turn that into a competitive advantage? This is a major change in the way business is done in a huge market. In the past the government might never have seen the management team.
They might have met a project manager, but never the team. So now we are preparing managers to present themselves properly and professionally to the customer. That caused us, and every other company, to train managers is presentation skills, which we never had to do before. You have competitive advantage when your team can very professionally present their plan. Companies that piece of business that cannot get through an oral presentation today probably will not get that piece of business. We just train our people better. With the help of electronics, we also make sure we present a better proposal, with better graphics, a video tape or multi –media CD-ROM. These are ways to get a competitive advantage.
- PMI Colombo Chapter in association with AMA studies.
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