Presupposition for Business and Leadership

A presupposition is something you believe that it is true without any proof. Your actions are based on the presupposition. As a business head, you need to have some presupposition about your business.

Given below some of the presupposition I use to insist on my client's business when  I interact with them. That works well in relooking their beliefs and the way they conduct the business.

No individual is important than the organization

         Separate family relationship and business accountability

         Set the policies or processes whenever there is ambiguity

         Leaders should do what he expects from others. People are watching.
 
      Treat all the stakeholders equally

        All the business at the end of the day is to serve the customers and make money. So, No business is special.

       Being the Leader is a privilege. Leverage it for serving.

     Irrespective of your age, designation, and authority, in your given area, you are the leader. Feel the responsibility.

Pl add if anything else

Why as a leader you need to be more disciplined?

One of the phrases i often hear from most of the business heads of a small, emerging business is “My people are not disciplined”.

When  i  go in-depth on this conversation, i  realize that the business head himself is not disciplined enough and i can correlate the people’s behavior in the so-called discipline aspects.

Let us understand what is meant by discipline in the organizational context.

Most of us relate the word discipline with personal conduct or in more specific to the punctuality to the organization and to the meetings. I accept this as a discipline, however, in my opinion, this is a must for any individual, but this is a low order of discipline. This must-have adhered 100 % and no compromise on it.

What is a high order level discipline that is  really required for the organization?

1.       Consistency in doing in any activities

2.       Alignment in what is being told and the action being done

The above disciplines must be demonstrated by the leaders.

There only the leader’s role comes in a big way.

I know one CEO is very punctual to the organization and not consistent in other business-related activities like conducting reviews regularly, frequently switching on and off on any new initiatives, not adhering to his commitments to the team. When he is not disciplined enough, the team also behaves in a less disciplined way because people are watching their role model always. In the organizational setup, the business head is a role model.

People and organizational culture will be in line with the leader’s way of working even though the leadership team can preach many motivational contents to the team.

As a leader, you need to be more disciplined, that is maintaining consistency in your thoughts, behaviors, and actions because people are watching you!

Learn the art of conducting Business Review Meeting

In the organization, one of the effective forums for engagement or one of the time-waster can be  REVIEW MEETINGS !. The conclusion depends on the way the business head or the leaders conduct the meetings. 

Conducting a purposeful and Result driven review meeting is an art, and the business head and other leaders can learn with conscious effort.

Let us discuss some of the insights about the review meetings and the solutions approach to make it effective.

Mindset related to review meetings:

some people look at the meeting as wasting of time and believe that the meeting is not going to help. Eventually, they never conduct any meeting, and even if it requires some decision to be taken, they use to call the individuals over the phone or 1-1 conversation and again convey the discussion to someone else. In this process, actually, the business head or leader's personal productivity is getting affected.

I observe that the mindset behind this, the business head is not interested or has not learned the art of conducting review meetings. The reason can be fear of facing people in a forum, not able to hold the review meeting effectively. This root cause needs to be understood and challenged.

Hence, the mindset and belief about the meeting need to be changed. Meeting need to be seen as a forum of related people to discuss, take decision collectively, and in the process, communication issues, the time delay can be avoided. Once the mind shift happens, the leader is in a position to learn the art of conducting reviews.

Fixed Meeting Reviews as much as possible :

In a smart organization, one good pattern, we can see is the fixed meeting reviews on a daily / weekly basis. For example, the sales review meeting will be every Monday at 2pm, Production review meeting every day at 9.30 am, and so on.

When you have a habit of fixing the meeting reviews on a daily / weekly basis at a fixed time, it improves the planning process of all the stakeholders, and the accountability to the meeting outcome will improve eventually as the agenda, and people's responsibilities are almost fixed.

When you call for ad-hoc meetings, the people may not be prepared for the agenda, data may not be available; eventually, the effectiveness of the meeting will also be less. It does not mean that we should not have an Adhoc meeting, as it depends on the business situation. It needs to be understood from the right perspective.

Be clear on the meeting purpose - Business or Technical Review?

I have seen in many organizations, the business head diverts the review purpose by going in microanalysis or shifting the focus to technical aspects. For example, in one of the monthly P&L review meetings, the purpose of the review should be reviewing the previous month's sales performance, expenses, and profitability and to discuss the future action plan. The discussion calls for high-level decision making on specific business-related issues. Rather than focusing on the business issues, the business head and the engineer get into the details of rejections, tool design, and engineering dimensions, and the whole meeting purpose is defeated. The other people's time also was wasted. If the technical aspect is important and to be discussed, nothing wrong in that, that can be done offline along with the respective people in a detailed manner. The business head decision is essential in the business review meeting, and he must be conscious of his/her focus on business and technical aspects.

As a business head, you need to be conscious about working on macro and micro details and need to be aware of switching in and switching out.

The other disciplines of conducting review meetings:

• start on time and finish it on time
• Go by the data or fact, less on opinion and emotional aspects
• Respect each one to voice their concerns, ideas, and suggestions
• Focus more on the decision /actions
• Be patience when others are talking
• Learn the art of questioning and giving feedback with the intention of curiosity and improvements than finding fault and blaming.

The facilitation skill of the chair is important in making the meeting more effective or just time wasters. The good news is that facilitation skill can be learned through awareness and practice!

Business Head's Mindset for Sustainable Growth

In any business, there are peak and valley in terms of sales growth and profitability. However, a few organizations thrive well all the cycles and been in the business for a longer time, some organizations exist even beyond the third generation. 

When I observe those organizations, when I deal with them as a consultant and coach, there are some typical patterns among the founders or the business heads. I can call those patterns as the mindset of the founder or the business head, which makes the business to manage through all the struggles and sustaining the growth.

I can classify the mindset into three areas

1. Mindset towards the Business

2. Mindset towards the People or Employees

3. Mindset towards the Customer

1. Mindset towards the Business:

In a sustainable business, the business head looks at the business with a larger purpose than just survival alone. He/ she is looking at the business as a means to maximize all the stakeholder's interests or expectations. The stakeholder could be financial institutions, employees, customers, even the promoters, suppliers, government, and the society in which business is operating. It does not mean that profit motive is absolutely absent, they also realize that rich cash reserve only will do all the activities to maximize the stakeholder's expectation. The point is they look at the business more than themselves. Their thought process, behaviors and decision making are all pointed towards meeting or maximizing the stakeholder's interest.

2. Mindset towards the People or Employees:

In a sustainable business, the business head always looks at the employees as an Asset rather than Commodity. This mindset is essential in making decisions on development, training, allowing the people to experiment, taking the risk, empowering people to make decisions, and providing an opportunity for learning and to grow along with the organization. Alternatively, if the business head looks at the people as a commodity, he treats them also in a low-level dignity, because he believes that there is abundance in people resources, even if x leaves the organization, Y can be recruited quickly from the market. With the mindset, no effort would be taken towards people's development and engagement aspects. 

I know in one of the organizations, the CEO looks at each people as an asset, and some of the people are staying in the organization for more than 30 years and also had grown along with the organization by developing themselves and contributing to the organizational growth.

3. Mindset towards Customer:

In a sustainable business, the business head looks at each customer from a long term perspective even though there is a loss of monetary benefit in the short term. The focus of the business head would be meeting or exceeding the customer's expectation, maintaining a cordial relationship with the customer irrespective of the customer's representative that is changing at the customer's end.

As stated above organization, the business head works with only a few customers for more than 25 years and grown along with the customer. Even when the business head expands his business beyond the old customers, the customer is keen to work with the organization. The relationship is based on the long term, and the bonding helps both of them in terms of mutual growth.

The point is the business head's mindset towards business, customers, people make a significant impact on the sustainability of the business!

Enhance your Planning Window for Sustainable Growth

Most of the small, emerging organizations are working on the current month or week or day and may not have much clarity about the immediate medium term. This practice results in the scenario "always busy" or "firefighting" mode to serve the customers all the time. But as a business, it will lose the long sight vision or growth potential.

One of the ways to come out of firefighting mode is to enhance the planning window.

Planning Window :

Instead of planning for the current month, extend the planning horizon for the next 3 months so that the business head and the organization will have visibility about the sales potential, working capital requirement to buy Raw material, capacity availability vs. requirement. Also, this enhanced planning will give more time to RESPOND to uncertainty.

Tool for enhancing the planning window:

The simple, yet powerful tool is 1+3 planning format. This could be used for sales projection or forecasting, working capital planning, or even for profitability projection.

For example, let us take the case of sales projection into a 1+3 format.

In a 1+3 sales format, you need to fill the data with sales projection for 1+3 months timeframe.

1 - a month is the current month, mostly firm / confirmed order

3 months can be for the next 3 months projection with firm/ confirmed order and then tentative  orders

Advantages of extending planning horizon :

1. When you see your sales projection data down the line 3 months from now, you will come to know the order position vs. target gap. That will give you response time to reach out to existing customers for more orders or pitch-in new customers for new orders
2. Since any new order requires time for approaching the right customer- processing inquiry - price finalization- proto proving- getting bulk order, this 3 months time horizon will give the flexibility and sufficient response time

3. If you know the projection for the next 3 months with some level of accuracy, that will help you to utilize your capacity well, manage the cash flow proactively.


The thought process of the business head must be proactive and beyond the current day or month for sustainable growth. This 1+3 projection will help to stimulate your thought process!

Factors for Next Level Growth

Each organization is striving for next-level growth from its present status. The next level of growth could be

1. An exponential increase in Turnover
2. Getting into new market/customer
3. Getting into new  product line/services


Factors for next-level growth


Potential + Strategy + Leadership mindset + Practices = Next Level Growth

Potential:

the potential is a measure of the market size for the product or service, the unique value proposition of the product or service to the customer and the evergoing demand for the product or service not only in the existing customer or in exiting demography, but scalable to new customers and demographics

In my opinion, all the business is highly potential, given the worldwide customer base unless the product/service is made obsolete through technology.

Strategy:

A strategy is nothing but clarity on the resources, competency requirement, and action plan to get into next level growth. It is more about internal organizational capability development to cater to higher level growth. The action plan must answer the typical questions as below.

1. Resources required in terms of the fund, equipment, infrastructure, and people
2. Plan to reach out to new customers/ developing new product or services
3. Personal and organizational competency required to manage the challenges in the growth phase


Leadership Mindset:

This aspect is one of the prerequisites for any organization that looks for next-level growth. Mainly, the business head or CEO's mindset is essential. When I refer to mentality, it is more about the aspiration and belief of the business head is vital. For example, in one of the client operations, the service they offer is scalable to the global level due to their quality and price point. However, the founder is not interested in going for international reach as he believed that his organization is capable of serving only the local market. Even though he is very passionate about his product and service,  his contentedness and beliefs never allowed him to grow exponentially.

Practices and Action:

Even though the organization is highly potential, aspiration, and strategy, if the methods and actions are not in line with the plan, the organization will never get into next level growth. While aspiring for next-level growth, the organization should learn to give up some of the legacy practices and to learn new practices.

To sum up,

when the leader is aspirational, believed in the potential of the product or service given the global market, if the organization draws the master plan and adapts itself to change to new practices and action, NEXT LEVEL growth is always possible one.

Balanced focus on Value addition and Value creation

In most of the small, emerging organizations, the business head is comfortable in dealing with day to day routine management activities and some extent, in improving one side of the business, that is on value addition or effectiveness improvement initiatives. Nothing wrong in developing in operational capabilities, however in this process, the other side of the business, that is on value creation activities get back seat.

Value creation activities include customer pipeline development, new product development, or improving NPD activities, working on strategic initiatives.

As long as the existing customer gives sales order and business also grows along with a few customers, there is no problem for the business head and his organization. The real problem starts when the current customer slows down in their business due to the economic cycle or reduces the share of the business; the business head feels the impact directly in terms of low sales turnover, profitability and cashflow challenges.

It is always prudent and proactiveness to focus equally on value addition and value creation for both survival and sustainable growth of the business.

The balanced approach calls for the mindset to come out of the comfort zone of the business head during good times.

Shifting the focus from Product Quality to Process Quality

In most of the small and emerging organization, we are observing that people spend enormous time, energy, effort in ensuring product quality through inspecting(in some cases 100 % inspection!) the final component both on functional and aesthetic aspects, segregation, rework and documentation.This kind of focus on a product only leads to “somehow” pushing the product to the customer with high manpower cost and long lead time. Moreover, this will set the belief in the organization that defects are unavoidable and the role of quality function to detect, correct and send it to the customer. Ownership also shifts from production to quality function on both delivery and quality. Eventually, the organization does not improve its problem-solving capabilities and culture of problem-solving at the source.

Instead, the organization can shift the focus more on the process quality than product quality. This shift can be demonstrated by ensuring the product quality at the source of production like pre-inspection of material before the process, providing process parameters through standard operating procedures,implementing mistake proofing devices either to prevent or detect the error at source of production, applying statistical process control, making the operator responsible for production and quality.

This focus on process will help the organization to reduce time, effort, energy in reactive product inspection processes, improve the problem-solving competency across the organization and reduce the lead time.

Shifting towards process quality from product quality, to start within the manufacturing process will be the first step towards total quality management in the organization.

Why need to elevate the operator's role in SME organization?

In the entire value chain, most of the value addition happens in shopfloor while converting the input into output. Mostly value addition is being done by the operators. 

Some of the common complaints or problems faced by the management team are

1. Difficult to source the skilled operator 
2. Cost of operators is increasing 
3. Operators not  staying for long 
4. Rejections/reworks are more and being identified by the Quality inspectors before despatch

Even though skill gap, supply vs. demand of skilled people are external to the organization, some of the factors are being governed by the organization, and if the organization focus more on those factors, the above problems can be managed well.

some of the problems like cost/quality issues/retention are all influenced by the internal environment, culture and the management related.

For example, driving efficiency and bringing down the cost of engaging operators is management driven. One of the pitfalls we observe in most of the organization is the defining the roles and responsibility of the operator from day one. Operators are being recruited as the person responsible for operating the equipment only. He is expected only to perform loading and unloading the components. Quality of the output is not expected out of him, and there are other agencies or inspectors are in charge of the quality control of the product produced by the operators. 

Also, the operators are not encouraged to keep the workplace right regarding housekeeping and checking some of the basic equipment parameters on a daily basis.

A shift is required to position the operators as the complete in charge of production output as per standard both on quality and efficiency. He has to be trained and instructed from day 1 as complete in charge of his workplace.

Benefits of redefining or elevating the role of the operator:

1. Engagement and ownership increase as human beings expect more challenges, responsibilities, and appreciation.
2. It is easy to improve the quality when the issues are detected and corrected at SOURCE and by the PRODUCER than by any other person, at the remote location and time period.
3.when the efficiency increases, cost of operation comes down

The point is to elevate the role of operators to reap the benefit of reducing the operations cost and increasing the engagement!

Why is business (head) transformation equal to business transformation, especially in SME’s?

There are several factors contribute to the success of the business regarding profitability and growth. Those factors could be type of products or services, talented employees, competition, positioning, market, economic environment and so on.Those are all common factors prevailing for any business in which some organizations are doing successfully, and others are struggling.The crucial differentiating factor between a progressive organization and stagnant or struggling organization is a business head especially in small, emerging medium size (SME’s) organizations.The business head could be the founder or the director of the firm.The business head's beliefs, quality of thinking, business practices and leadership style determines the organizational success amidst the common factors as listed.

As I had a privilege to work with more than 100 small and medium-size business heads on different occasions, one profound truth that I have realized.That is, irrespective of industry, business nature, product, manufacturing process, marketing environment and competition, the growth of the organization primarily depends on the business head ‘s thinking process or mindset, leadership style, his business practices or daily management processes and how he is directing or guiding his team.

Predominately his belief or how he looks at the business determines his leadership style, enables him to choose the right business practices or processes and ultimately reflects on the profitability and growth.

Most of the business heads as I observed, look at their business with either one of the two beliefs like survival orientation or growth orientation.

In survival orientation, he looks at his business and customers as a mean to make profits; he tends to make a profit somehow, with little or no emphasis on adhering to process, ethics, considering the interest of all stakeholders, future growth aspects and long-term sustainability of the business.Those organizations struggle with profitability issues, low employee engagements, frequent customer's turnout.

In growth orientation, he looks at his business and customers as a purpose to enhance the value of all stakeholders, including his motivation. This mindset will improve his thought process towards long-term sustainable business decisions. When he has the purpose of the business, his approach and thought process would be on building a solid foundation for the process, systems, technology and talent management, in turn, his visionary approach would be long-term oriented even though sometimes he loses in the short term. His growth mindset enables him to choose a set of business processes or practices on a day-to-day basis, which promotes positive organizational culture, business results, and long-term growth.His enhanced mindset enables him for creating sustainable wealth creation from his business to meet all stakeholder's expectation.

In our business transformation engagements, we have witnessed that whenever the CEO or business head understands the desirable behavior gap or the business process gap and then works full heartedly along with us, the business results used to be extraordinary. 

In my opinion, business success factors like technology, effective asset utilization, expanding into new markets, managing the competition, talent management and fulfilling the customers’ requirements are relatively easy tasks if the CEO or business head tune up his mindset and thought process towards growth orientation.

The real transformation has to happen at a business head level from mere survival mindset to a growth mindset.Business transformation starts from an individual and that too from the head of the organization. If that change happens at a business head level, I firmly believe that business is also equally transformed.

How to develop problem-solving competency inside the organization?

Irrespective of industry and size of the organization, one of the common scenarios we observe in most of the organization is the inability to converge into the solutions approach for the chronic problems. Alternatively, we can say that most of the organizations lack on the problem-solving competency. When we say competency, it encompasses the knowledge of recognizing the problem, analyzing the causes from the reliable data, proposing the actions plan, implementing the measures and ensuring the problem does not recur.

Organization differs on the level of competency steps. If the senior management brings this one competency across levels and functions, then the organization sails through any business challenges.

In most of the organizations, we observe that lack of problem-solving competency prevails not due to lack of awareness on the problem-solving methodologies or tools and techniques. In fact, most of the organizations are aware of structured problem-solving methodologies like QC tools and its applications, 8D approach, A3 approach, six sigma methodologies, etc.

In my opinion, the inculcating problem-solving competency is more of mindset and culture building issues rather than on awareness issue. It is due to the lack of conducive environment or winning mindset culture as developed by the senior leadership team.

Clarity on the term “problem.”

Any gap between the target or desired status and reality or current status is a problem. The problem can be into tangible targets vs. actual as in sales turnover, profitability, launch timeline, etc. or in intangible areas like people expectations and the reality.

Whatever may be the gap or problem case, people across the functions and levels of hierarchy in the organization must have the mindset, competency to solve the problem. But in reality, in most of the organizations, senior leadership team struggles to bring the culture of continuous problem solving inside the organization.

Reason for not able to create the problem-solving culture

Some of the factors or behaviors of senior leadership team do not allow the people to get into structured problem-solving mindset.

1.    Not realizing the problem or trend 
2.    No structured, authentic data 
3.    Culture of jumping to quick solutions, once problem is identified
4.    Busy in firefighting and “somehow” resolving issues
5.    Hesitate to conclude the solutions approach or options
6.    No facilitation on arriving solutions approach
7.    No risk taking or rewarding risk takers

Solutions approach to create problem-solving mindset and culture inside the organization 

Obviously, the people have to be given education exposure to different problem-solving methodologies, tools, and techniques. Assuming that education or awareness part is taken care, the senior leadership team has more responsibility to create a conducive environment or demonstrate consistent behavior towards solving problems. The following solutions approaches are recommended

1. Building an environment to collect authentic, consistent data from source
2. Encouraging discussion based on facts rather than opinions.
3. Creating a routine forum or reviews to discuss the problems and solutions approach
4. Encouraging open debate and idea generation by keeping ego aside
5. Allowing others to talk and listen more for insights
6. Encouraging people to take risk and experiment with solutions approach
7. Differentiating and recognizing problem solvers 

In today’s competitive environment, one of the differentiators and competitive edge for the organization is to create more problem solvers and to create a culture of problem-solving mindset across levels and functions!

Growth Vs Survival Mindset

     As head of the organization, your belief  about your business either as growth oriented or survival oriented  determines your business growth.

     If you look at your business only as profit making motive, you tend to make profit somehow, irrespective of adhering to process,ethics,considering the interest of all stakeholders, long-term sustainability  of business.

      Instead, if you can change your perspective  to look at the  purpose of business as to  “Enhance the value to all stakeholders”. This will improve your thought process towards long-term sustainable business decisions. As there are many stakeholders like employees, customers, suppliers, banking finance institutions, promoters, Government ,society etc  and each stakeholder has different interest or value expectation from the organization. For example , as employee, the value expectation would be good pay, learning, and growth opportunities, as customers, the value expectation would be best product or service for the money, as suppliers, the value expectation would be regular orders, on time payment etc. It is your prime responsibility to enhance the value to stakeholders in a sustainable basis for which sustainable wealth creation is the path.

     If you have this perspective about the purpose of the business, your  approach and thought process would be on building solid foundation on process, systems, technology and talent management , in turn your visionary approach would be long term oriented even though sometimes you lose in short term. That is the Growth mindset of a a CEO of successful organization in the world.