Archive for category: Arlen Swenson

Managing for Success

September 21, 2022/in Arlen Swenson, Guest Bloggers/by Caroline Slee-Poulos

Managing for Success

Guest writer Arlen Swenson takes readers through what makes or breaks a product in the market with his blog post, “Managing for Success.”

Managing for Success

Most of us look for ways to be successful in our work and business careers, but what are the basics of getting there and then exceeding and continuing with that success? In most cases it depends on your approach to each situation and whether you solicit and gain input from others.

Certainly, you may already have good knowledge on a variety of subjects and management techniques, however it is always good to verify and insure you are up to date and aware of changes in the markets you serve and possible new areas of growth opportunities.

Checking new areas of growth opportunities is what I call developing a Pathfinder’s Mentality. In its simplest form is having an inquisitive mind about what is happening in your business and what changes or opportunities that might be available if better understood.

A more formal approach is forming an actual Path Finder Group charged with exploring identified business and market opportunities. The role of the group is to investigate those opportunities to determine possible fits and what would be required to attain those opportunities. Many times, it starts with looking at a product your company already produces but is not selling at the level required or examining new end-user markets that could be available to you.

The role of the Path Finder Group (PFG) is to study products and their use in various markets and determine what those markets are expecting of your product including comparison to existing competitive products and their strengths and weaknesses. To be accurate requires the PFG to go the field and study your product and competitive products in actual applications and hear from the voice of those users their opinion of the product’s strengths, weaknesses, and suggested improvements.

Depending on the geographical size of the product’s market and complexity may require several months of study by the PFG to develop an accurate picture of the best path to improving your product’s success in the marketplace. In the process the PFG will become experts in the product and obtain the voice of the customers using the product and developing detailed knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of both the product and markets it serves.

Certain discovery of basic market needs that your product needs improvement on would be communicated immediately to determine if basic design changes should be made now as part of the process. As the PFG develops its knowledge of product and market uses, actual testing of their discoveries should be field tested to determine the effectiveness of those discoveries if those discoveries would be implemented.

This requires the PFG conduct a firsthand study of their discoveries with the product in actual use in the hands of customers.

It requires hearing directly from the end user their recommendations and/or questions about your product and its proper application. In other words, why should your product be selected versus a competitive choice or a different method?

Gaining accurate data will require a formal approach to hands-on study.

How does your product compare to competition such as: size, operating ease, cost effectiveness, safety, reliability, serviceability, repairability, owning/operating cost, fuel economy, meeting OSHA standards, availability of parts and repairs, return-on-investment, customer support, customer knowledge of your product, customer misconceptions about your product, competitive mis reputations about your product, customer lack of knowledge about your product and various other market considerations.

All of this and more must be understood to determine the best steps to gain success with the product.

The PFG is charged with finding the right path to improve the product’s success in the marketplace.

The time to complete PFG study and recommendations may take several months and require detailed study and changes to the product or going to the market approach. However, sometimes proper solutions found by the PFG can be quickly implemented and they are economically viable.

At the conclusion of Path Finder’s Group’s market/product study a detailed report would be provided to management for approval of changes recommended to improve the product’s success.

The recommendation could include moving in a different direction, changing the design of the product, changing distribution of the product, expanding the product line offering or even elimination of the product.

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Gaining Business Success Through Your Employees

August 23, 2022/in Arlen Swenson, Guest Bloggers/by Caroline Slee-Poulos

Gaining Business Success Through Your Employees

Learning Without Scars is pleased to introduce our new guest writer, Arlen Swenson. He makes his blogging debut with LWS in “Gaining Business Success Through Your Employees.” Arlen is a seasoned, dynamic, competitive, influencer, motivator Sales and Marketing Executive. Track record of success recruiting, building, motivating, and managing highly effective teams, developing and implementing product marketing strategies to capture market share.

Success includes being Vice President of North American Governmental Sales & Marketing for John Deere Construction Equipment with annual sales of $255,000,000 while increasing sales 17% annually and reducing selling costs by more than 15% and improved gross profit margins by more than $38,000,000.00.

Gaining Business Success Through Your Employees

Many equipment dealerships struggle meeting or exceeding their business goals due to unforeseen or unknown barriers within their organization. Sometimes top management will make adjustments based on their experience or knowledge only to see negative or lackluster results even though employees are doing as directed.

But the answer to improving business performance is available if management is willing to ask from the right sources and that starts with their employees – all of them – all departments – all branch locations. This will require an open door by management to receive employee input in a constructive manner without threat of consequences for providing input.

This can be accomplished by conducting an open employee meeting with representatives from all departments and branch locations at each meeting conducted. The basic rules of the meeting include hearing input and recording on a flip chart that input from each meeting participant. The other rule is when an individual is providing their input they cannot be interrupted or challenged by the other meeting participants. The meeting chair or person entering the comments can ask clarification questions to make sure they are recording the input correctly.

This part of the process will take some time to accomplish and when each flip chart is filled, and line separated for each person’s comments each filled flip chart is then pasted on the meeting room wall. At the end of the process, you will have several flip charts pasted on the wall. It now time to gain group consensus on what are the top four items recorded on the flip charts that should be addressed immediately and solutions obtained. The remaining items will be addressed and resolved in descending order later, and all reported back to the employees.

To obtain group consensus each meeting participant is given four different colored pasty dots to place on the flip charts entries they believe are the first importance (red dot), second (green dot), third (yellow dot), and fourth (blue dot). Placing of the dots is done in quiet and no talking among the meeting participants. Management will than assign the four dotted items to two meeting participants for each colored dot to work with management on the best solutions for solving the business issue successfully. Progress on completing the top four issues is communicated back through the organization with frequent updates and announcement of completions. The other issues in descending order will be resolved with frequent updates and announcement of completions.

This open exchange of solving problems will become habit and add to the success of the business.

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April 2, 2024

Leadership

This week, our guest writer Christopher Kiely writes about the ways in which Leadership can become more effective when it comes to people.

$366 billion dollars. If you spent $366 billion dollars on training only to obtain negligible to non-existent results you might start thinking you were wasting money, or at least most people would. Not corporations though. In 2019 an article by Chris Westfall for Forbes magazine¹ put the yearly global Leadership training expenditures at $366 Billion, yep Billion with a B. You can use your Doctor Evil voice, it is appropriate. $166 billion of that is apparently spent in the USA alone. The article goes on to claim most of that training does not work and then cites another article from Chief Learning Officer Business Intelligence Board² that says 94% of corporations “plan to increase or maintain their current investment in leadership development.” Wow!

Let’s recap, $366 Billion spent, mostly on ineffective training, but the vast majority of corporations plan to continue spending on the ineffective training. This is a condemnation of leadership training in and of itself. Who has the gumption to point out the emperor has no clothes (a leadership trait BTW) when it comes to leadership training? Apparently, almost none of the people that had $366 billion spent on them.

If you Google “effective leadership” you will be presented with lists upon lists of “characteristics” and “qualities”, those seem to be the two prevalent terms used, some lists will be 6, some 10, others 12. There seems to be variation in how many qualities are required. Just as there is variation in what those qualities are, but a few do stand out. Listening, empathy and being “authentic” come up a lot. Not sure how you train those things to adults and apparently after billions spent neither do leadership trainers.

I have been in the communication courses where we learned what designated colour or shape everyone was and how their colour or shape changes how we communicate with them, I was a blue square, for what that is worth. I have taken the course where we all learned each other’s Meyers-Briggs personalities and how to effectively work and lead different personality types. I have taken part in different forms of empathy training and team building initiatives. None of them changed anything, the next day we all went back to being ourselves and doing as we do… which is what people do, because it is what people want. They want to be themselves, warts and all.

If you Google “define leadership” you get “the action of leading a group of people or an organization”. A not infrequent case where a form of the word being defined (i.e., leading) is being used to define the word (i.e., leadership). A leader leads. Ahhh… got it, thanks for that Google.

What even is a leader? How does one become someone that takes part in the “action of leading a group”? Most people are simply designated leaders. Paying big bucks for some MBA or other C-suite qualifying degree from some fancy business school makes you a “leader” apparently, then you move up the leadership ladder chosen not by those you will lead but those that designate you to be the leader. Seems dubious to me.

Some people are leaders, and some are not and most of what is learned about the basics of leadership characteristics is learned young. Most the “characteristics and qualities” used to define effective leadership are developed during youth or they are not developed or even developable at all. If billions down the drain with little to no positive results proves anything it is that training adults to be leaders doesn’t really work. Sure, you can perhaps blame some bad training, or cliche training programs with more sizzle than steak and even a leadership development industry that is more about personal branding and making money than developing leaders. There are plenty of all three.

But a follow up article³ to the initial Forbes article was written by Kevin Kruse a year later, in it he gives 6 reasons for why the money was wasted. He begins to get to the heart of the matter with “Reason #2: Training Too Late”. If you are seeing the need to train adults how to “listen” have “empathy” and be “genuine” (i.e., don’t only think and listen to yourself and try not to be a phoney). It seems to me you don’t have a training problem as much as you have a narcissist problem. Leadership training is full of these sorts of nuggets. Harvard Business School online⁴ adds “Integrity and Accountability” with “…’high moral standards’ as the most important leadership competency.” I’m not sure “morals” are a “competency”. If you are planning to train morals into a bunch of 30-something C-suiters, good luck to you.

What has happened to create a corporate culture where hating one’s boss is common, where the phrase “people don’t quit their job, they quit their boss” becomes cliché? When it is already becoming difficult to attract young talent can we really persist with known issues of decades past? There needs to be a fundamental shift in the notion of corporate leadership. You may begin to notice I like the “fundamental” changes; we’re swinging for the fences over here folks, I need to make it worth the price of the ticket for you.

That same Harvard Business School online post that talked about needing morals had “Ability to Influence Others” as the number one characteristic of being an effective leader, stating:

“…influence is “the ability to produce effects on other people’s behavior.” Influencing others requires building a strong sense of trust with your colleagues. “This means [you] need to understand the types of resources people value when it comes to achieving safety and self-esteem,” says Harvard Business School Professor Julie Battilana.”

Uhm??? Not tell Harvard what-is-what, but that is kind of messed up. Leaders should not be seeking to “produce effects” on their employee’s behaviors by manipulating their “safety or self-esteem”, that is Machiavellian nonsense. Do we wonder why we have a narcissist problem? Do we really wonder why people hate their boss if this is what the elite schools are telling the C-Suiters? Enough with the designated top-down “leaders” and the billions wasted trying to turn adults in to caring empathizers with morals that then apparently will seek to “produce effects” on people’s behaviors by manipulating their self-esteem. What a colossal mess this whole corporate “leadership” notion has become.

I played a lot of youth sports when I was young. You know youth, when you learn empathy and morals. The best most effective team I ever played on was barely coached, it had no top-down leadership at all. We had a head coach that was always busy and a few dads that supervised us. We lost one game in two years of competitive rep-football. That team was successful because even at 12-15 years of age it had strong natural leaders, no billions needed. And they mentored a culture of caring and accountability. Where each and everyone of us knew the other had their back and would perform at the expected level and if we didn’t, we would call each other out on it, but only in the huddle and only ever that once. And if you needed help blocking the giant from the other team, you got it. All that leadership pre-Harvard business school. Wow, almost like you don’t teach that stuff…

I have spent 20 years now training various corporation’s employees all over the world. If you have been a mechanic’s trainer you know a lot of venting goes on in training sessions, perhaps this is unique to mechanics, but I don’t think so. When people are removed from their daily work environment they tend to talk, probably where the slang “talking out of class/shop” came from. They say as a trainer you learn more from the class than they do from you, it is often true. I have learned most people do indeed hate some of their bosses (there are layers) and often for good reason. I have learned some people are leaders and some are not, and some are active (in the moment) leaders, the doers, and some are passive (after the fact) leaders, the listeners. The main lesson on leadership I learned is that it is naturally occurring in almost all groups, a lesson I originally learned on the football field when I was 12.

What most corporations fail to do is recognize, legitimize and foster it and you don’t really do that by designating anyone “the leader” or by bringing in “leaders” with big degrees from outside the group, unless you have some serious problems with current group dynamics. You foster internal groups with a sense of accountability and caring that have people that are the natural leaders of the group acting as mentors, not designated top-down authorities. If done right, you are selecting the people the group wants in those positions, no authority is required. No one needs to be “in-charge” and these types of working groups if structured right will often self-regulate to ensure no one considers themselves such. If the quarterback of a football team suddenly starts thinking he is the main man-in-charge, the offensive line quickly reminds him otherwise. If the people who are natural leaders lack the business acumen or skills to be entirely successful in the designated rolls than corporations should be training those competencies and skills, not trying to train “listening, empathy and morals” to the tune of $366 billion a year, that is a lot of college MBA degrees.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chriswestfall/2019/06/20/leadership-development-why-most-programs-dont-work/?sh=636f883b61de

https://www.chieflearningofficer.com/2018/03/21/follow-the-leadership-spending/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2020/01/07/top-6-reasons-your-leadership-development-program-is-failing/?sh=764f7eea74fc

https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/characteristics-of-an-effective-leader

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April 4, 2023