Month: May 2010

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Leadership Approaches

Illustrating leadership using a game of chess

Introduction to Leadership Approaches

In a recent blog entry an overview was provided of some of the more common leadership theories. It resulted in a lively discussion about the role that these concepts should play for people that are in positions of leadership, or for individuals that work with leaders as consultants, coaches, human resource partners, and so on. My plan is to revisit these theories in more depth at some point in the future. For now I would like to spend some time examining a number of approaches to leadership (aka leadership models). These approaches, while no doubt grounded in one or more theories of leadership, can be distinguished from theories in that they attempt to place the concepts into more applied frameworks. That is, they attempt to describe leadership theories in a way that is meant to facilitate the application of the ideas.

The Seven Approaches to Leadership

I am planning to spend some time reviewing and critiquing the following seven leadership approaches/models:

  • Transformational
  • Charismatic
  • Authentic
  • Servant
  • Dynamical
  • Adaptive
  • Strategic

This list is not exhaustive of the different frameworks that could be considered legitimate leadership approaches or models. Some of these approaches (e.g. transformational leadership) are typically considered full-fledged leadership theories in their own right. And some of the frameworks (e.g. strategic leadership) might be viewed more as a specific leadership competency or leadership role rather than a framework. I happen to think that these seven are some of the legitimate contenders for categorization as distinct approaches to leadership.

Other Approaches?

Do you agree with this list? I want to encourage readers, as we examine each one, to chime in whether you think the different approaches have real value. Also, please feel free to advocate for other models that you think warrant consideration as a proven and valuable approach to leadership.

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Where to Look for Good Venture Ideas

Photo of a library

It’s not hard thinking up venture ideas. Often they seem to come out of the woodwork. Get some folks together for an hour and you’ll come out with a couple dozen of them. Include some entrepreneurial people from outside your group and you’ll get some new ideas that you might have missed.

But also step back to take a look at what your group or organization has to offer. Start with any services or products you’re already offering, even if they don’t make any money for you. What could you do to improve financial impact through them? Perhaps increase your prices, lower your costs, or sell more to existing customers. Is there anything else you need? Next, look at what else you could provide to these customers, based on what you know about them or could find out by asking them. Do you want fries with that burger?

After that, explore where you might find additional customers for your current products. Best thing to look for: customers who are similar in some fashion to your existing customers. Seek out similar demographics or organizations in different locations. How do we get our customers to refer us to others? Finally, consider new products or services you could provide to new customers, but only do that last. This represents the most difficult, riskiest strategy. But in entrepreneurship, anything is possible. Just don’t spend too much time discussing the least likely to succeed ideas.

I often use the Venture Brainstorming Pyramid as a tool for working through these options. Start at the bottom and work your way up. In a future blog, we’ll discuss effective strategies for evaluating the ideas you come up through feasibility testing.

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Needs Assessment

Man looking through documents

The First Step

A Needs Assessment is a systematic exploration of the way things are and the way they should be. These “things” are usually associated with organizational and/or individual performance.

WHY design and conduct a Needs Assessment? We need to consider the benefits of any Human Resource Development (HRD) intervention before we just go and do it:

  • What learning will be accomplished?
  • What changes in behavior and performance are expected?
  • Will we get them?
  • What are the expected economic costs and benefits of any projected solutions?

We are often in too much of a hurry. We implement a solution, sometimes but not always the correct intervention. But we plan, very carefully and cautiously, before making most other investments in process changes and in capital and operating expenditures. We need to do the same for Human Resource Development.

The largest expense for HRD programs, by far, is attributable to the time spent by the participants in training programs, career development, and/or organization development activities. In training, costs due to lost production and travel time can be as much as 90-95% of the total program costs. Direct and indirect costs for the delivery of training are about 6% of the total cost, and design and development count for only about 1-2% of the total. Realistically, it makes sense to invest in an assessment of needs to make sure we are making wise investments in training and other possible interventions.

Friday: 4 steps to conducting a Needs assessment.

Happy Training and comments, concerns and guests are welcome

Leigh

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For more resources about training, see the Training library.

– Looking for an expert in training and development or human performance technology?
– Contact me: Leigh Dudley – Linkedin – 248-349-2881
– Read my blog: Training and Development

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Uses of Social Media for Disaster Response

Mobile phone displaying a bunch of social media platforms

The recent use of social media by the Coast Guard as part of their response to the BP oil spill, and by the Rhode Island Department of Transportation with regard to flooding in that state, are both discussed in recent posts by Erik Bernstein at the Bernstein Crisis Management Blog.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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Short Is Beautiful

Person working on a brief and simple business plan

Good business plans do not need to be long business plans. With rare exceptions, keep your plan to no more than twenty pages, including financials and appendix. If you can say what needs to be said in fewer pages, that’s even better. It’s unlikely anyone will actually read a longer plan, so don’t waste your time writing it. Short plans get read.

Of course, it has to be compelling, credible, and well written. But all that doesn’t matter if they need to plow through fifty pages to understand what you’re talking about. Your business concept might be novel, but you shouldn’t need to write a novel to explain it.

Speaking of length, it’s also a good idea to keep your financial projections brief as well. Forecast out only three years at most, and put them on two pages – one page would be even better. All too often I see extremely long and complex excel spreadsheets with tiny print spread out across five, ten pages, with more pages of financial notes. Trust me, they won’t get read. Instead, create a one or two page financial projection summary, along with key ratios and metrics. Add a page of notes explaining key assumptions and you’re done.

Writing a short plan forces your management team to focus: a important criteria for success in starting or growing a business. And if you’re using your plan to seek financing, a short plan is more likely to get read. That will increase your odds of getting the financing you seek.

For business plans, short is beautiful.

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For more resources, see our Library topic Business Planning.

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Case Study: Viral Mobile Marketing Campaign Achieves 72% Click-Through Rate

Person Using Smartphone

Use Mobile to Engage the Customer and Build an Opt-in Database

When you create a marketing campaign that goes viral, you’ve hit the jackpot!

In this case study from the Mobile Marketing Association, we learn how the “Fly the Flag for Football” campaign created excitement around both the 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup and the 2010 FIFA World Cup, while building an opted-in database for future mobile advertising campaigns.

Use Mobile Marketing to Collect Profile Information and Refer Friends

The campaign had an astounding 72% response and click-through rate – the number of consumers who visited the mobile website, profiled themselves, answered the questions and referred three friends after engaging in a competition via SMS short code.

Viral Mobile Marketing Campaigns can be Wildly Successful

This case study proves that when integrated properly within a “traditional” campaign, incentive-based mobile marketing has an extremely viral effect. It must be well planned, integrated into your offline strategies, goals and tactics; and well executed – just like all your marketing efforts!

(Case Study excerpted from Mobile Marketing Association)

For more information, see the full article, Viral Mobile Marketing Campaign Passes with Flying Colors

For more social media “Marketing” tips and tactics, search these phrases:

  • Viral Mobile Marketing Campaign
  • Mobile Marketing
  • Case Study Mobile Marketing

Happy “Marketing” hunting!

Have you used viral Mobile Marketing Campaigns to build your business?

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For more resources, see our Library topics Marketing and Social Networking.

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ABOUT Lisa M. Chapman: With offices in Nashville Tennessee, but working virtually with international clients, Lisa M. Chapman serves her clients as a business and marketing coach, business planning consultant and social media consultant. As a Founder of iBrand Masters, a social media consulting firm, Lisa Chapman assists clients in establishing and enhancing their online brand, attracting their target market, engaging in meaningful social media conversations, and converting online traffic into revenues. Email: Lisa @ LisaChapman.com

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Hank’s Top Ten Fundraising “Musts” 1-5

a-funraising-writer-commenting-after-reviewing-a-proposal.

(Be sure to see “Musts” 6-10 in this blog, too)

5. Please, do not — you MUST NOT — write your own fundraising materials. And, if you insist on doing so, pay an experienced fundraising writer to review and comment on your writing.

Writing for fundraising is an Art. Most fundraising letters, case statements, grant proposals, etc, are nowhere near as effective as they could be. Many fundraising letters (and you’ve probably gotten some of them) are really terrible.

4. You MUST diversify your sources of funding for your fundraising program to be successful over the long term,

Every time the economy takes a hit, government, corporations and foundations reduce their funding of non-profits. The greater the number of individual major donors an organization has, the smaller the chance that an economic downturn will force you to reduce services to your community.

3. You MUST NOT assume that a special event will make everything better!! You can’t expect to create a special event and have it be instantaneously successful. An event most often requires a multi-year period to establish itself and begin generating enough income to do more than pay its own costs.

A great number of attendees at special events are paying for entertainment or to “honor” someone they care about. You can’t count on those people buying tickets every year. They may find an event that’s more entertaining or that has an “honoree” to whom they feel a greater connection.

2. All donors MUST be thanked/recognized for their gifts, but not every donor wants to be thanked/recognized in the same way. Some like seeing their names in print, some don’t; some like plaques, some don’t; the better you know your donors, the more appropriately you can thank/recognize them.

1. A successful fundraising program MUST be designed based on the needs of donors, not the needs of the organization. Donors give to satisfy their needs, not yours.

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Have a question about starting or expanding your fundraising? Email me at AskDCA@Major-Capital-Giving.com. With over 30 years of counseling in major gifts, capital campaigns, bequest programs and the planning studies to precede these three, we’ll work to answer your question.

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Customer Service Strategies…Self-Help is IN

Smiling young man on headphones

Help Thyself. It is the ‘it’ strategy these days. It makes good business sense. Outstanding content can divert call and email volume. It can improve the Customer Experience. As technology has evolved so have self-help presentation options. Long, static user guides are quickly becoming passé as quick guides, indexed documents and how-to videos become ubiquitous.

Which Customer Self-Help Strategy is best for you?

First, think of self-help as just one of the cornerstones of your Customer Experience. Self-guided learning works great, but only for those customers/users who would rather find the answer instead of waiting for an email response or to make a call.

When you ‘walk’ from the outside-in through your Customer Experience, do you discover ways to teach your customers how to best use your product or service? Can you think of ways to encourage your users to better understand how your product or service can add value for them?

Self-Help options should be a natural extension of how a customer learns to use your product or service. If there are a lot of visual references required, then video is a solid option to include. If a quick reference guide of steps 1 through … makes sense, then don’t use a video. The user would have to write down the steps instead of having that quick guide in hand. Or better yet, pair the two together if that enhances understanding and ultimately utilization.

Comprehensive product manuals are somewhat of a necessary evil. It’s likely they are not fully used and they take a lot of time and resources to create and keep current; but, you can’t get away without having one. (Side note-have your new employees use the current manual to learn about your product/service as well as to identify what may be out of date.)

Does your self-help content include references to how your customers will use your product or service? User-based, topical presentations are the secret to user traction. To improve comprehension and utilization, present your information with when and why content.

I am a big fan of ‘bite-sized’ learning. If you have a complex service or product, then try to segment your Self-Service offerings to facilitate quick, incremental learning. Create short, topical content based on how the product or service will be used.

Create content based on the Who’s-on-First perspective: WHO should do WHAT, WHY and WHEN; and, don’t forget the HOW to ensure those who will try self-help, can find the answers.

Exceptional Self-Help strategies will divert inbound customer requests; but, they will not be effective as the only Customer Service strategy. Create your self-help content and presentation strategy as one of the pillars of your overall Customer Experience.

Amazon, Netflix, Go-To-Meeting are a few examples of outstanding self-help strategies. What are your favorites?

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From Vertical to Horizontal

Colleagues-working-on-a-project-together

We live in traditional organizations that are functional and vertically managed. The design is similar to creating and operating a “marching organization.” Work is aligned by function and managed vertically up and down the line. When errors happen, they are pushed up to the next level of command. A control structure reinforces the hierarchy of power. The traditional structure has worked historically when the environment around the organization was less complex and certainly more stable than today.

Today our organizations are flat and horizontal. Work is being organized by process as much as function, it is managed by multi-functional teams, which are quicker in producing customer driven results. Are you seeing these?

I guess we all need to get quicker, better and faster but it seems like we are taking a long time to get there. The problems we face, or the opportunities I might add, is the change in culture that is necessary in most significant organizational change efforts.

From vertical to horizontal is an example of a vision that might be valued. The challenge is cultural and political, not technical.

But then we see an example of all the various law enforcement agencies involved in capturing the person who threatened the people of Times Square. The cooperation and collaboration of all of the people involved is an awesome reminder of what is possible in organizational learning and adaptive action. The integration of their information and decision making process transcended mere structure.

What do you think?

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For more resources, see the Library topics Consulting and Organizational Development.

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Jim Smith has over 40 years of organization development experience in a wide range of organizations.

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Strategic Planning or Business Planning?

Creative planning techniques for an organization

It seems that the two phrases “strategic planning” and “business planning” are used interchangeably, much more than ever. I believe it’s better to see the phrases as different than to generalize them as the same.

Strategic Planning Should Be Organization-Wide

Strategic planning is best viewed as clarifying the overall purpose and priorities of the organization. There are many different ways to do strategic planning, and the contents of the plan vary, depending on the purpose of the planning. However, the focus of the planning should primarily be organization-wide.

Business Planning Should Be Product- or Service-Specific

Business planning is best viewed as planning for a specific product or service. The customers and clients for a particular product or service might be very different than for another product or service. You wouldn’t advertise or sell race cars the same way you’d advertise or sell minivans. Each needs a different business plan.

What do you think?

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Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD – Authenticity Consulting, LLC – 800-971-2250
Read my weekly blogs: Boards, Consulting and OD, Nonprofits and Strategic Planning.