3 Areas to focus on to improve effectiveness
Most leaders pride themselves on the number of hard hours they work. They will tell you about their trips, the problems with airlines, the weak performers they have to deal with, the trouble acquiring and training new people, and the burdens of HR functions such as performance reviews. These leaders are good people who work hard and are the foundation of any company. Unfortunately, they aren’t as productive as they could be and in many instances may actually hurt their performance by being so focused on their role as leader.
As we enter a new year and start to prioritize and focus on our upcoming goals and objectives, I took some time to speak with a number of executives who I consider the best of the best for their insights and thought on this. All of them agreed – and did quite a bit of self-reflection – that there are significant dangers in “just leading all day.”
The overwhelming consensus is that “just leading all day” pushes people into bad habits that disconnect them from the business and more importantly the real value proposition being offered to customers. Remember, customer aren’t buying your leadership style; they are buying your products and services. Your leadership style is just the execution of your business strategy that delivers the value proposition to your customers. When you lose sight of that, you will have big problems sooner rather than later.
Based on our dialogues with executives, research, and own experiences here at Advantexe, we came up with three things that leaders should consider that leverage both Business Acumen skills and Business Leadership skills integrating into their priorities and schedules to become more effective.
Spend more of your time with customers
A COO of a Fortune 500 company told me that he thinks every leader should spend 25% of their time directly working with customers. For some, that may seem like a lot, and for others that may not be enough. Your own personal answer is a function of your leadership role, business model, products/services, etc. Sales leaders may spend more time, functional line managers (R&D, Production, Manufacturing), may spend less. Whatever the right balance, they key point is that you need to spend more time with customers. You need to listen, learn, and adapt to them so you can be a leader of the business and a leader of the people doing the business.
Analyze competitors
“One of the biggest mistakes hard-driving leaders make is being so internally focused they forget to think about competitors. If there is one thing for certain in business is that there will always be new competitors and your existing competitors are adapting and changing to beat you. Sometimes they listen to their customers and sometimes they replicate you with lower process, but there are always there. Effective leaders understand what competitors are doing and then share and coach others in the company on how to react and manage the competition. But it doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
Think about innovating your product/service
Effective leaders who are working with customers, analyzing competitors, and paying attention to the business will see things nobody else will see. “My Executive Leadership doesn’t do enough to encourage innovation and that’s something that will starve a company” shared one of the leaders I spoke with. He shared that every day leaders don’t even have it in their thinking to find ways of making their companies better either through new products, enhanced services, or better operational efficiencies.
In summary, too much traditional leadership of “just following people around” and coaching them isn’t enough. Effective leaders must think beyond leading all day and focus more on customers, better understanding the competition, and making their products better through innovative thinking.
