As the CEO of a business how do you develop a momentum within your team? How do you create an urgency to move things forward? I believe the key is simplicity of objective. It could be Safety – see my post on the Ballad of Paul O’Neil at Alcoa. It could be Product Innovation as evidenced by Apple’s relentless drive. What matters to you? Maybe it’s as simple as growth. But whatever it is you need to translate that big audacious goal into something that matters to every team.
As an example to get you thinking here are some items from one of the niche manufacturers I’m helping to scale. The key objective – aggressive but safe growth. Let’s look at each area and how growth is translated:
Sales
- Each direct sales director is given sectors to develop and is encouraged to consider whether he is growing those sectors from year to year.
- The manager driving foreign sales is encouraged to drive sign ups of qualified resellers to drive growth in key regions.
- The retrofits manager is driven to build his map of older branded machines to allow marketing to target potential retrofit customers.
- Trailing 12 sales graphs are posted showing growth or decline.
Marketing
- Sales leads generated by sector, by account director, by campaign are all graphed and compared with last year to calibrate growth.
- Site traffic to our revamped web site is compared month on month with last year.
- Historical response rates to trade shows and all marketing campaigns are measured and tracked to evidence progress.
Production
- Shipped $ amounts are graphed and compared with targets and prior year numbers – all to show urgency, progress.
- GM% are tightly managed to show small but vital incremental growth movements.
- Unit sales figures are shared with production to demonstrate leaders and laggards and facilitate discussion on changes needed.
Velocity does not happen by chance it happens by design. Go create some velocity!
