Because the growth potential and risk factors associated with your company are two key measures investors use to predict their profitability (and yours), the successful growth of your organization will absolutely hinge on your company’s organizational effectiveness – your company’s top-down ability to consistently achieve organizational goals!

It’s critical to always be assessing, developing, and measuring your organization’s effectiveness at achieving organizational goals in five core areas:

1. Management
2. Marketing
3. Sales
4. ‘Customer’ Experience
5. Executive Leadership

Part 1 of this article focuses on managerial effectiveness.

Demonstrate Organizational Effectiveness with your Management Team!

Although important, go beyond the track records and professional experiences of your management team and closely examine their managerial talent: their proven ability to increase the amount of profitable behaviors in your company.   Right now, can you make a list of all the profitable behaviors that take place in your company?

If you are a manager, ask yourself these additional questions:

• How am I effective at increasing the amount of results-driven behavior within my company, team or department?
• How have I been able to achieve and show measurable results that directly impact the strategic direction of my organization?
• What is the strategic direction of my company?
• When have I provided clear, strategic direction for my department?

One of the biggest challenges your management team will face is creating an environment where people are excited to perform for the results of the organization!  Managerial talent is proven through effectively…

• Leading in response to a variety of situations
• Setting goals to establish direction, define actions, and measure results
• Turning solutions into goals, and goals into actions
• Achieving Production, People, and Time Management Goals
• Planning with a clear and communicated purpose
• Making decisions employees can become committed to achieving
• Getting desired results from people
• Communicating in a way that cultivates knowledge and acceptance
• Dealing with negative behavior vs ignoring it or upholding its root cause

So how does your management team rate in managerial talent and effectiveness?

If there’s room for improvement, consider adding these concepts to your annual or quarterly performance appraisals, OR ask your management team to rate themselves in each of the above competencies prior to their reviews.  Follow-through with setting goals to improve and develop your team.

Sound like a lot of work?  It is!  That’s why the best companies are the best.  They’ve earned it.  Again…we have choices!

Only talented managers can create a profitable environment that demonstrates organizational effectiveness, and thus presents less risk to investors!

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Do you sometimes wish the world would just slow down for a minute?  Just one delicious minute!  But the reality is our world is moving at breakneck speeds of change, teasing us to keep up with new rules, customer demands and technology.

It’s no wonder big pharma and large biotech’s see an advantage in adopting smaller business models, operating many smaller, independent units and outsourcing every non-core operation possible. Businesses today need to be quick on their feet to swiftly adapt and keep an edge on their competition!

But as surely as there is constant change, many executives will face much difficulty with adjusting to- and managing it.  After all, change is disruptive, and it’s natural to prefer a state of equilibrium. Yet this is the leadership challenge: to grow a prosperous enterprise in the face of constant, lightning-speed change.

YES or NO?  Consider the following statements as they pertain to the leadership in your company:

• My organization quickly responds to opportunities

• My organization has a challenging, innovative culture

• Everyone in my organization is inspired to improve operations and methodologies

• There is excellent communication between departments in my company

• There are step-by-step processes for every operation in my organization

• There is a strong sense of teamwork and collaboration amongst my workforce

• My organization is not ‘stuck in the past’

• My workforce positively adapts to change

• My workforce knows and personally implements the company’s vision for success

You truly want to be able to answer YES to all of the above.  As executive leaders, we must strive to create an organizational culture that has our people positive and fired up to carry out the company’s next big goal.  They should be champions of change and producers of results!

This is LEADERSHIP.  Are you up for the challenge?

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Over the course of my career in biopharmaceutical sales, I’ve learned much about people, leadership, success, failure, sales, management, problem solving, teams, and growth!

To kick off my first post on the Roxx Consulting blog, I’d like to share a few of the many lessons I’ve learned about my passion, organizational effectiveness, during my tenure in the biotechnology industry. 

Business lessons I will not forget:

1.  Customer Loyalty: Customer loyalty is to your business what vitamin D is to your body: you have to go out of your way to get it, and without it you cannot survive.

The pivotal words here are “go out of your way”.  Maybe it’s just me, but I’m easily dazzled when a business goes out of their way for my convenience.  I tell everyone in my circle about the fantastic experience I had as I complement the management there. 

Many business owners will nod their heads in agreement regarding “focusing on the customer” and, “improving the customer experience”; yet, they take minimal to no action! This is a far cry from going out of their way. Think of the missed opportunity for free advertising and gaining an edge on your competition!

Sadly, I know too many companies right now that are slowly dying because of their inability to implement effective customer management
systems. They are aware of the problem (poor customer service), they say they must do something (how about a new marketing campaign?), and then they do nothing to address the real issue. Big mistake. Eventually, their organizational ineffectiveness will consume them from the inside out (although it appears to be from the outside in).

2.  Time Strategies: Time strategies are the ultimate litmus test for top talent.

Time management is always a hot topic for discussion, as well as popular measure for performance. For as much attention as it gets, why is it not the star interview question or the first category on a performance appraisal?  It really should be. 

Effective time management reflects one’s ability for hardcore problem solving.  Because, as enjoyable as life is, each day presents it’s fair share of creative problem solving for our enhanced enjoyment. By now, we’ve all had the opportunity to “show our stuff” in this key area.           

So take a close look (and I mean a really close look; spend some time on this one) at that interviewee’s time strategies, or your
employees’ level of performance as it relates to navigating through daily problems.  I bet you’ll find that your top talent (you know, those who always seem to get results come hell or high-water) is a master time strategist aka problem solver.

If a position requires lifting heavy problems, hire a master time strategist!

3.  Sales and Marketing: It’s an entirely new ecosystem.  Adapt!

I come from the land of Sales Force Oz where big marketing budgets reign supreme and the sales force is treated like bronze (platinum in the earlier days) and handed expensive, yet typically ineffective, tools for sales conversion (although every now and then we would get a “winner” tool my teammates and I would jokingly ask, “Where’s the magic wand?  Can we expect that in our next quarterly shipment?)

It’s very different now. An expansive (and expensive!) sales force with elaborate brochures and a fancy pitch is no longer as effective as it once was more than a decade ago. Marketing and sales have officially converged online where information marketing – on the customer’s terms – is a basic requirement.

Here’s the good news: you can save sales and marketing dollars AND successfully grow your business!

4.  Team Leadership: Create many specialized “organelles” within your organization.

I think of teams much like the specialized organelles within a cell. Their job is to carry out advanced functions for the optimized performance of the whole (the organization and the cell, respectively).

What’s important to your organization?  Innovation?  Customer management? Fresh marketing content?  Put together a specialized team for each goal category verses suffering through organization-wide communication problems due to a lack of accountability. 

Create each team to function as an independent whole with a qualified leader, manager, and roles and responsibilities for each member as it pertains to that unit.  Measure performance and reap targeted results!

5.  Management:  Practice superior quality control by obliterating ineffective management early!

I’ve witnessed in awe how bad management slows results.  Awe because little-to-nothing is often done about it – bad managers are allowed to run rampant!  This is way too costly for an organization to tolerate.  Only the best people shouldbe managers.  “Best” meaning healthy-minded individuals with superior leadership ability.

If you know someone has an obnoxious ego or presents with a personality disorder, don’t promote him/her into management!  It will only get worse. You’ll reduce organizational effectiveness for achieving goals. 

Bad management is an insidious disease.  Cynicism is the side effect to look for in your people.  Identify and obliterate. The growth of your company depends on it!

6.  Leadership:  If leadership is results, then by all means…culture it!

Highly effective organizations ooze leadership.  It is developed from the top-down on an ongoing basis so that no matter what a person’s position or function, they can be depended upon as a leader in their unique role for producing results.

Some organizations take leadership development lightly or not at all.  Another mistake.  The truth is, leadership begins with the founding culture of the organization. That culture needs to be infused throughout the company through strategic development and used as a filter for hiring and retaining the right talent.

Continuously develop your people’s potential for leadership and you will optimize results and organizational growth!

7.  Executive Leadership: The marketplace has an affinity for effective organizations.

The more effective your company is at all the various business management functions, the more attractive you will be to the market. 

A top scientist seeking employment will experience an aversion to organizations known for high employee turnover.  Investors will be leery to invest in an organization with no real vision and true purpose to guide its people toward achieving critical milestones.  And no one will want to partner with a company that has bad managers chronically debilitating performance and results.

A word to the wise: your best marketing will not attract the market if your management is less than stellar.  Bad management will show up in you measure of customer loyalty and your slow demise will begin.

Improve effectiveness; increase attractiveness!

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