Monthly Archives: September 2016

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13 Qualities of Successful Business Leaders

A few years ago I attended a keynote speech from Pat Williams, Senior VP of Orlando Magic. His topic was the “Thirteen Qualities of Winners”.

Williams has had an amazing amount of leadership experience in the sports world at different levels within multiple franchise organizations. Perhaps his biggest venture was establishing the Orlando Magic NBA team, which is where he was at the time of the speech.

After I reviewed his list, it became very clear that the 13 qualities he identified equally apply to business leaders. If a business leader does not have these 13 qualities, they and their business’ potential, will be limited.

I took the liberty of replacing the word “Winners” with “Successful Business Leaders” in the list of 13 qualities below. This list describes the attributes of a successful business leader!

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5 Steps to Turn a Business From Failure to Success

Greg Brenneman is one of the best CEOs that you’ve never heard of! He is responsible for the turnaround of firms like Continental Airlines, Home Depot, Burger King and others. He currently is the Chairman, President and CEO of CCMP Capital, an equity investment firm that specializes in making buyout and growth equity investments.

CCMP Capital look for underperforming and undervalued businesses and invest in them in a way that they can control them and turn them around. Although Brenneman is a “low key” leader and doesn’t seek the limelight, he is one of the best business leaders in the marketplace.

He has written the book Right Now and All at Once in which he describes the leadership philosophies that he uses to acquire, lead and turnaround businesses. One of the philosophies he describes is his five step plan to turnaround and grow a business. As he emphasizes in his book, this five step process should be used in all businesses, not just businesses in trouble!

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The Magic of Conflict

The book review for this week is The Magic of Conflict by Thomas F Crum.

Crum defines his method of conflict management through the lens of an Aikido martial artist which, all things considered, is a very interesting perspective. However, I was not a big fan of the book as it focused too much on expanding and contracting “ki” or “sources of positive and negative energy”.

My takeaway from this book is that I need to be more aware of the reasons behind a conflict.

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8 Easy Ways to Uncover Your Customers Wants and Needs

Wants and needs can be completely different! What I want for a car (fast, high horsepower, flashy) is far from what I need (gas efficient, low maintenance, dependable). Similarly, what your customer wants and what they really need can be worlds apart.

The success of your business depends on you understanding this difference and working with the customer to ensure what you provide meets or exceeds their expectations!

I wrote in a previous post about when I was brought in by a client to redo engineering work that another contractor had outsourced overseas. The contractor was looking to reduce project costs by sending the bulk of their engineering to a lower cost country. Unfortunately, they did not control this work close enough.

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Relentless Cost Cutting Will Kill Your Business

Eliminating waste and unnecessary cost inside your business is critical to its long term growth, profitability and success. However, primarily focusing on reducing cost will eventually kill your company.

As Gordon Bethune said, “You can make a pizza so cheap, nobody will eat it. You can make an airline so cheap, nobody will fly it.” The king of corporate turnarounds, Greg Brenneman, supported this with his statement “a maniacal focus on trimming cost can lose you more revenue than you gain.”

This was certainly my experience back in 1998 when I was brought in by a client to redo engineering work that another contractor had outsourced overseas. The contractor was looking to reduce their engineering costs by sending the bulk of their engineering to a lower cost country. Unfortunately, they did not control this work close enough. When the engineering was submitted to the customer, not only did it not meet expectations, it caused the client to loose so much confidence in the contractor that the contract for the work was pulled and awarded to another engineering company.