Here’s part two of my interview with Jim Blasingame on the Small Business Advocate® Network.
© 2011, The Small Business Advocate® Network.
© 2011, Terry Murray.
Monthly Archives: August 2011
Creativity and Competitive Advantage ~ Jim Blasingame Interviews Terry Murray on The Small Business Advocate® Network (Part Two)
Your People Are Your Competitive Advantage ~ Jim Blasingame Interviews Terry Murray on The Small Business Advocate® Network
I had the privilege to speak with Jim Blasingame, the creator and award winning host of the nationally syndicated radio broadcast, The Small Business Advocate® Network this morning. Jim’s show is the only daily radio show dedicated to the small business owner. Forbes magazine ranks Jim as one of the top 30 most influential people advocating the interests of small business owners and the Small Business Administration recognized Jim as the Journalist of the Year in 2002. Jim is also recognized as one of the top 100 most influential talk radio hosts in the nation.
You can listen to a podcast of part one of our conversation on the player below:
© 2011, The Small Business Advocate® Network.
© 2011, Terry Murray.
The Power of Partnering ~ Five Key Questions to Ask When Evaluating Cross-Organizational Relationships
Key Concept ~ Many entrepreneurs feel a sense of isolation in their endeavors. Mindful partnering can help alleviate this while building competencies, addressing weaknesses, and accelerating success. But poor partnering can also derail a small business. Here are five key things to consider prior to partnering outside of your company.
As we wind down our summer Western swing and head for home, I’d like to share some thoughts on successful partnering. The intention of our trip, which has taken us north through Wisconsin, west to Missoula, and back south through Denver, has been to invest in strategic relationships. Relationships that contribute to our flourishing, preferential advantage in our marketplace.
In today’s noisy world, authentic relationships are more important than ever. Networking, and in particular, social networking, is only valuable if the connections it creates is serving your strategic relationship pipeline. Why? Connecting is cognitive. Co-creating authentic relationship requires engagement on a deeper, more emotional level. The research from Applied Behavioral Economics illustrates the critical nature of this depth of engagement. Seventy percent of economic decision making is emotionally-driven, with the remaining 30% cognitively-driven. In addition, research published in the Harvard Business Review demonstrates companies that engage both their associates and their customers on an emotional level enjoy a 240% improvement in financial performance (if you’re interested in the research, drop me an email and I’ll gladly send it along).
Our trip has been remarkably successful, expanding our capabilities in a variety of strategic areas. But this wasn’t our first trip down partnering lane…and not all of our attempts to build business relationships have born fruit. Here are five key questions to ask yourself as you contemplate partnering with another organization…hopefully these will save you time, money, and accelerate your success!
1.) Is intention in alignment? This is the first, most critical element for success in partnering, and it isn’t always obvious on the surface. The key question to ask is “do we share a similar mission and/or purpose?” How organizations function is greatly influenced by leaderships’ values, beliefs, and vision. Organizational culture must be in alignment for cross-functionality to work across organizational boundaries. Keep in mind, things can change over time, too. What appears to be a great partnering opportunity today may evaporate tomorrow.
2.) Is the relationship accretive? The term accretive refers to the growing together of separate parts to create a whole of greater value. Put simply, it means 1 + 1 = 3. Does the bringing together of the separate, organizational key competencies create a multiplier effect in value creation? Does partnering contribute to the strategic advantage of both organizations in ways they could not execute themselves? If not, you may want to reconsider the partnership.
3.) Are you meeting halfway? Think about any important relationship you have in your life and you’ll know the importance of this question. Authentic relationships are truly co-creative relationships. Everyone must have a skin in the game for things to coalesce.
4.) Are you ready for one another? Entrepreneurs and businesses evolve over time. The motivational factors that drive engagement need to be moving at a similar pace as well as in a similar direction. If not, one partner will lag behind the other and frustration can lead to friction.
5.) Are expectations explicit and understood? Most importantly, make sure each party’s expectations are understood at the outset. Even the most strategic of partnerships can rapidly unwind through miscommunication and unanticipated surprises. Hammering out the details upfront, examining various contingencies, and ensuring you’re both on the same page at the outset can save enormous pain down the road.
© Terry Murray, 2011.
Filed under Getting Started, Leadership, Marketing, Productivity, Strategic Planning
Fresh Horizons and Perspectives in Self-Awareness
Key Concept ~ Mindful reflection can elevate our entrepreneurial Self-Awareness. Cultivating a fresh perspective elevates our understanding of how we might best create a flourishing, preferential advantage in our target market.
Those of you that follow this blog may have noticed the posts have been a bit light as of late. August has taken us on the road, juggling radio interviews, the needs of our wonderful clients, shooting a new video series, and finding a little bit of quiet time we all require to tap into our creative spirit. We’re rolling across the northern plains…heading west to Missoula, Montana for a series of Transformational Leadership workshops. There’s something about the prairie that draws one into a place of reflection. Perhaps it’s the empty space, green fields broken by a thin, rolling ribbon of asphalt with barely a speed limit to slow one down. Vibrating along at 80 miles per hour mesmerizes the mind in this endless horizon. As we whooshed past the small sign that stated, “Continental Divide, Elevation 1,490 ft.”, I felt a shift occur. We were now flowing towards the Pacific, leaving the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico a half a continent behind.
The recent blog I wrote regarding the leadership crisis we’re experiencing in Corporate America gnaws at me as I drive. As a seasoned market researcher, it is rare to find research report after research report that all point to the same painful conclusion. A shift in consciousness needs to occur…on a certain level, it wants to occur. As we sped through seemingly endless fields of sunflowers, on the surface a beautiful, cheerful sight, I couldn’t help but feel what was lost in this prairie to make room for these flowers. What was taken, by force, disease, and hatred from the indigenous people that once roamed this land, following the vast herds of buffalo that were a sea of nourishment, culture, and mythology? It is a broken beauty…
How far have we come from this old perspective? From the research, it would appear we’re still pretty much stuck in this old mindset. A perspective of exploitation; of using up every raw material we can, as quickly as we can, whether it is land, people, talent, or our natural resources. The mindset of Henry Ford, Alfred Sloan, and the robber-barons of the 19th century apparently is alive and well.
The fact of the matter is, value today is created by commercializing creative, innovative ideas. Intellectual property is the driver of entrepreneurial value. How we see ourselves, how we understand our strengths, weaknesses, and core competencies guides our positioning in our target markets. In order to fully unleash our creative spirit, we must move across the Continental Divide of our consciousness…We must allow ourselves to flow towards the pacific.
The Rocky Mountains call before us as we continue our journey west. I think I’m ready for the elevation.
© Terry Murray, 2011.
Filed under Leadership, Marketing, Strategic Planning
Innovative Organizational Structure For Creative, Entrepreneurial Technology Companies
Key Concept ~ How we structure the organization is a reflection of how we perceive function, and once established, how we function is highly influenced by our organizational structure.
I read an interesting article last week about the hyper-growth of internet technology companies in the Bay Area and the challenges they are having maintaining their creative cultures as their organizations grow. Even the most highly innovative entrepreneurial endeavors can fall back into old, hierarchical patterns as the demands of the organization flourish.
Here’s an excerpt from my book, “The Transformational Entrepreneur” that may offer a solution that is as innovative as the companies themselves!
While conducting market research in 2005 I became intrigued with the concept of convergence; of how biotechnology, information technology, and nanotechnology were coming together to create a new generation of products and capabilities. As I discovered compelling opportunities to converge companies with specific core competencies to create breakthrough technologies I also saw barriers that would challenge this vision. The barriers emerged from two areas; Company hierarchical structure resulting in silos that challenge internal coordination (never mind external convergence); and the intellectual horsepower of Ph.D.’s that were remarkably expert in their area of application but were no more insightful than a college science graduate in the complementary technologies. From an investor’s perspective, how could one converge the silos and create an environment of cross-pollination of the science and technology?
The answer came to me visually and was a bit of an epiphany…lay the silos down upon their sides and introduce structural, cultural, and operational porosity to the previously isolated silos. In effect, overlap and transform them into horizontal conduits of cooperative, customer-centric, developmental process drawn together by a surrounding conduit of leadership, finance, and shared operational infrastructure.
Copyright Terry Murray, 2011.
The seeds of thought for this new structural approach germinated while consulting with Kevin Schimelfenig, Founder and Managing Partner of SalesForce4Hire®, LLC. Kevin’s company provides custom sales solutions for medical device and life science organizations. The company creates custom business engines that can be absorbed or dissolved by the client and operates with a core management and talent team that expands and contracts in accordance with the needs of the current client mix. The core management team is highly cooperative and works together to move their clients’ projects through a proprietary commercialization process. The focus is on process flow and the company’s differentiating value highly depends upon the efficiency and speed of value creation. In effect, the process is driven through a value creating pipeline. This value conduit is highly porous operationally, absorbing contract resources as they are needed and releasing them upon conclusion of a project. SalesForce4Hire maniacally focuses on their core competencies and outsources everything else. There are no hierarchies or silos that could place a drag on value creation or introduce the risk of becoming distracted by non-value creating activities.
Interestingly, as I began refining the conduit structure business model I discovered, quite by accident, the root meaning of the word “conduit”. The word conduit originates from the Medieval Latin conductus, from the Latin, past participle of condūcere, meaning “to lead together”. Many people say there are no coincidences, and I couldn’t think of a more appropriate definition reflecting the intention of this approach to organizational structure!
The fact of the matter is, hierarchical structure is two dimensional…it reflects layers of authority across silos of functionality. It does not reflect the human element so critical for success in today’s economy. Such structures emerged out of the industrial age, when process, function, and control were the key drivers of success…not creativity. Creativity flows from within; from within the great mystery that is the human spirit. By adopting a new perspective on organizational structure, innovative companies can continue to cultivate their creative culture as they grow and flourish in the New Economy.
© Terry Murray, 2011. Excerpt from Chapter Nine of The Transformational Entrepreneur ~ Engaging The Mind, Heart, & Spirit For Breakthrough Business Success.
How Entrepreneurs can Outperform Corporate Leadership and Seize Competitive Advantage
Key Concept ~ We’re witnessing a meltdown in corporate leadership that is opening the door for innovative, mindful entrepreneurs.
In just a little over a year, some sobering research has come to light regarding the effectiveness of contemporary, executive leadership. In a time, quite literally defined by economic uncertainty, the quality and importance of business leadership cannot be overstated. Yet, what is coming to the surface through the research of truly world class consultancies and institutions is nothing short of unsettling. For entrepreneurs, this opens the door for unprecedented opportunities to seize competitive advantage, even against the mightiest of corporations. A simple canvasing and triangulation of several recent studies reveals a meltdown in corporate leadership:
1.) In the most recent edition of The McKinsey Quarterly®, an article entitled, “Do You Have The Right Leaders For Your Growth Strategies?” combined two independent databases to evaluate and correlate leadership competencies with high growth, high performing organizations. The study identified the dearth in excellent leadership. Only 1% of the executives in the combined sample database (based upon 5,560 executives at 47 companies) achieved a competency score of 6 or 7 out of a possibility of 7 in eight key leadership attributes. Only 10% had an above average score of 5 out of 7. Ninety percent of “C” level, and one level down executives, score below average in critical leadership competencies that drive performance.
Not surprisingly, the research goes on to identify the correlation between executives in high performing companies scored higher, on average, than those in lower performing companies across all leadership competencies.
2.) A Maritz® Research employee engagement poll published in June, 2011 reported that only 10% of employees trust management to make the correct decisions during times of uncertainty. In addition, only a little more than on in ten employees believe their company’s leaders are honest and ethical. Only 12% of employees believe their employer genuinely listens and cares about their welfare. And sadly, only 14% of Americans report their companies’ values are in alignment with their own, personal values.
3.) Gallup® has been conducting research on employee engagement levels on an regular basis for more than a decade. Currently, approximate three out of four employees are emotional and cognitively disengaged from their employer. Only one out of every four employees shows up with passion and enthusiasm for their work. The critical engagement factor is emotionally based. The report goes on to indicate, companies that engage both their employees and their customers on and emotional and cognitive level enjoy a 240% improvement in financial performance.
4.) The 2010 IBM® CEO Study (of 1,500 global CEOs) identified the single most critical attribute they are looking for in future leaders is creativity and the ability to cultivate creativity throughout the organization. In addition, fewer than half of the interviewed CEOs indicated they were successfully handling the growing complexity of the global business environment.
5.) A peer-reviewed study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, and the Indian School of Business that was published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology demonstrated up and coming leaders that express creative thinking are often passed over for promotion and side tracked from opportunities for greater levels of responsibility. The paper, a culmination of three separate studies and scenarios summarized that, “the negative association between expressing creative ideas and leadership potential is robust and underscores an important but previously unidentified bias against selecting effective leaders.”
Do you see where I’m going here? Clearly, there is a serious erosion of leadership skills that have resulted in mistrust, disengagement, and a growing malaise that threatens future productivity, revenue growth, and the once entrenched competitive advantage of many companies.
This leadership crisis is exacerbated by the fact that value creation in today’s economy emerges from the commercialization of intellectual property. Human talent is the raw material of our age. Single-dimensional, managerial competency (meaning technical management skill) is no longer sufficient for creating value…that began fading away with the passing of Henry Ford, Thomas J. Watson, and Alfred Sloan along with the emergence of our information and technologically based economy. Differentiated performance now demands authentic leadership talent be strategically developed in preparation to take the helm. The mission-critical attributes of market insight, strategic orientation, adaptability, creative thinking, team engagement, and organizational development; grounded in customer-centric, results oriented thinking must be cultivated.
A new perspective must emerge; a perspective of transformational entrepreneurship! A perspective that embraces the value of multi-dimensional, mindful leadership; of developing one’s self as a true generalists that can engage, inspire, and adapt in real time. This is our challenge as entrepreneurs. The fact is, we can seize the day and adopt a competitive mindset that aligns and integrates our leadership with strategy and organizational culture to create a flourishing, preferential advantage in our markets. I encourage you to invest in yourselves, develop these attributes and skills, and leverage the opportunities this fracture is opening for those of us that wish to see a different future for ourselves, our firms, our associates, and communities!
1.) “Do You Have The Right Leaders For Your Growth Strategies”, Katharina Herrmann, Asmus Komm, Sven Smit, McKinsey Quarterly®, July, 2011.
2.) “Maritz Research Hospitality Group 2011 Employee Engagement Poll”, Research White Paper, Maritz® Research, June, 2011.
3.) “Manage Your Human Sigma”, John H. Fleming, Curt Coffman, James K. Harter, Harvard Business Review®, Reprint R0507J, with compliments of The Gallup Organization®.
4.) “IBM 2010 Global CEO Study: Creativity Selected as Most Crucial Factor for Future Success – Fewer than half of CEOs Successfully Handling Growing Complexity.”, IBM® Press Release, May 18, 2010.
5.) “Recognizing Creative Leadership: Can Creative Idea Experssion Negatively Relate to Perceptions of Leadership Potential?”, Jennifer S. Mueller, Jack Goncalo, Dishan Kamdar, Cornell University ILR School, IRL Collection, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, January, 2010.
© Terry Murray, 2011.
Filed under Leadership
Tron Simpson Discusses “The Transformational Entrepreneur” with Terry Murray on KCBR Radio, Colorado Springs
I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Tron Simpson on KCBR Radio in Colorado Springs this morning. I wish to thank Bob at the Pineaire Resort, just outside of beautiful Land O’ Lakes, Wisconsin for letting me use his telephone land line for the interview today! You can listen to the interview by clicking the player below:
Thoughts On Harvesting the Low Lying Fruit ~ Or the Zen of Berry Picking in the North Woods
Key Concept ~ Authentic relationships have supplanted traditionally opportunistic approaches to sales for today’s entrepreneurs.
One of the first priorities I was taught, both as a salesman and later as a corporate strategist, was to move fast in the market and harvest the low lying fruit. This of course referred to capturing the most immediate opportunities that lay before us. To move, with a burning sense of urgency, to close the business that was ripe for the picking. The opportunities that would require the least amount of sales expense, time to cultivate, and effort to bring to fruition. Only then would we look beyond the immediate, to implement our push/pull sales strategies in order to dig deeper into the market and broaden our share.
Oddly enough, these thoughts came to me this morning while I was literally harvesting the low lying, wild raspberries along a quiet woodland path in northern Wisconsin. The berries have ripened late this year, and they tend to ripen from the bottom of the bush up. Gently lifting away the foliage, bent low, scanning for the bright red bursts against the deep green background, brought back memories of my childhood in New Hampshire. Berry picking was an annual ritual with my parents, one that would occur three times each summer as the wild blueberries, raspberries, and finally the black raspberries, would come into season.
The trick to picking the ripest berries is to gently pull upon them. If they do not immediately release into your fingers, they are not quite ready and not nearly as sweet as the mature berries. As I meandered through the briars, I found myself nearly mesmerized by my task. It was as if my ancient, mitochondrial DNA was awakening from the myst of my primordial, hunter/gatherer ancestors. I became solely focused upon my task in the moment, falling into a near meditative state as the birds chirped in light chorus, not noticing the mosquitoes that were busily engaging in their own harvest upon my bare legs.
In this moment of quiet, a thought surfaced within my consciousness. Of how the corporate mindset and traditional approach to building business has been so thoroughly engrained upon my psyche. Of how I occasionally find myself falling back into these old, predatory habits that have been conditioned into me. Of losing sight of the mindfulness that is the differentiating factor I have discerned from my work, coached and consulted upon, and consistently observed as the spark for breakthrough performance. For those of us that have made the transition from employee to entrepreneur, we are often susceptible of carrying these conditioned behaviors with us into our own concerns. Of forcing the issue, or in this case, of pulling on the berry before it has ripened.
The business world has changed dramatically since I first went in search of the low lying fruit in the burgeoning biotech world of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Gone are the days of easy access to prospects, of being able to walk into a business off the street and find one’s self welcomed into the prospect’s workplace. The halcyon days of opportunistic sales and simple hustle paying the bills are as archaic as gathering wild fruit and hunting game are in today’s technological economy.
Today, successful entrepreneurship requires a thorough, mindful, strategic approach to developing relationships with key opinion leaders, buying influences, and of course, final decision makers. It requires moving beyond simply connecting to fully engaging these critical individuals, both cognitively and emotionally. Authentic relationships built upon being a valuable resource, a consistent contributor to their value proposition and competitive positioning must emerge to create sustainable success.
This is where I see the missteps in today’s internet-driven sales and marketing efforts. Technology, in and of itself, is not the answer, especially when it is tethered to the the old world, corporate mentality. Blasting emails to lists of unknown, unqualified prospects, attempting to friend or link in to tens of thousands of strangers, or offering secrets and shortcuts on landing pages in exchange for email addresses, do nothing to build authentic relationships. These are only tools. Tools that are only as valuable as the content and intention they transmit. Relying mindlessly on these tools only adds to the noise of the more than 5,000 marketing messages most of us are subjected to each and every day!
If you want to rise above the noise, to differentiate your value proposition from the thousands of shills popping up on the internet every day, you need to build your value proposition. Cultivate yourself and your business as a resource. Invest in building authentic, meaningful relationships within a well targeted niche that will resonate with your business and your intention. Only then will the fruits of your labor ripen…and the berry will slip gently into your hand!
© Terry Murray, 2011.
