Greetings!
As CEO or the leader of your company, one of your most critical directives is to get the best performance you possibly can from your people. In this economy it is especially crucial. Companies that have survived and have any aspiration of maintaining, or assuming leadership positions must have the right people and get the best from them. Today's edition of Monday Morning CEO features a white paper that I wrote following a presentation by Dan Barnett to the CEOs in my Vistage group several weeks ago. Dan happens to be the former COO at Vistage and and has served as CEO of for several prominent companies in food industry (where I also ran a company). Dan understands how to effectively drive performance like no-one else I've ever known. It's been said that the best way to predict the future is to create it. It's also true that the best way to manage anything is to measure the outcome. The trick to driving outstanding performance in your people, your workgroups and your company is to have a Forward Facing Dashboard (FFD) that identifies activities and how much of any activity is needed to produce the results you are looking to achieve. With metrics in place, you can set operating goals and budget resources in much the same way as you do for financial performance - for non financial goals. This includes R&D, product development, marketing, manufacturing operations and sales. The result is that you can manage performance in real-time - and not wait to see whether you've missed your objectives before taking corrective action. This not only helps create a culture of greater accountability, it also helps you top performers get the recognition they deserve and will help encourage them to become even better producers. You can read the entire Blog Post on Wordpress. My Blog is Strat4Vistage and you can link to the post by clicking this link: ( http://strat4vistage.wordpress.com/2011/01/12/forward-facing-dashboards-for-driving-non-financial-performance-heeding-mothers-advice/ ). You can also download a PDF of the post by CLICKING HERE. I also have some updates on the economy, the state of the world for the younger generation of people in the workplace and a look at how you can employ effective strategy behind your use of social media. Lastly, I highly encourage you to view the Simon Sinek piece linked-to in the header above! As always, wishing you a great week ahead.
Philip R. Liebman
Managing Director, Strat 4
Group Chair, Vistage International
PS - If you feel you need help improving the performance of your company, or your performance as a CEO, you should consider being my guest at my Vistage CEO meeting on January 26, 2011. You will see first hand why more than 14,000 CEOs turn to their Vistage Group every month to become betters leaders, make better decisions and get better results. I will have Mitch Goozé present his full morning workshop on "Effective Marketing - How to Get It or Tell if You Already Have It". I still have one opening for a new member of this group and will be launching a new CEO Board in February - and have begun to select members for that group. Please contact me right away to reserve one of the few remaining seats for guests.
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Bloomburg/BusinessWeek recently published an article on "Why the Private Sector Still Isn't Hiring. In my direct experience with Vistage CEO's it is clear that many are first slowly restoring compensation levels for those who have seen cuts, and sorting out how to contnue to do "better with less" and upgrade talent rather than simply add headcounts. The published article adds some broader perspective as it related to the state of the economy on the whole:
