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STREET SMART MARKETING
An Executive Committee of Equals
By Lou Lasday
How to market to marketers, direct the directors, teach the teachers and lead the leaders.
Think of all the glowing qualities and significant accomplishments that have brought you to this very point in your relatively distinguished career: the education, the experience, the charisma, the networking. Now, for the first time you realize the folks you are facing have gained a similarly distinguished career in their own leadership roles. In short, they are as sharp as you are; maybe sharper.
So, how do you market your thinking to marketers, direct the directors, teach the teachers and lead the leaders within your own Gulf Coast enterprise.
The classical business textbooks will suggest that you first develop and then communicate a corporate vision for your enterprise. Once your elite group understands where your corporation has come from and where you want to go, let them take you there! Your smart and talented leadership group will be rich in ideas and may actually be more productive than you. Collectively, these people along with your own interaction and input could begin a new winning initiative.
Here, your primary function to the leadership may simply be to ask the right questions, then sit back and listen. You can't actually dictate to your all-star leadership and you should not. You'll always have differences of opinion among your elite.
An important part of your function is to build consensus as you seek to establish a level of cohesiveness. Be aware, your all-stars will be fiercely independent in their thinking. Their involvement should allow them to not only be heard but they may want to take "ownership" for a concept, a direction, an initiative. That's great! Remember, these are the elite that hopefully need each other to perform their core task together. They may seize opportunities to create value that would otherwise elude them as individuals.
How it works
An integrated law firm, for example, by mobilizing the diverse talents and specialties of its members, can serve a variety of client needs. That would certainly generate more income for the firm than if each individual attorney continued to work with clients only in their own area of specialization and show no concern for problems outside that specialization. Lawyers get external referrals from clients and friends. What about internal referral among associates?
The senior management at a Gulf Coast community bank could have its highest rank mortgage all-stars consider how their internal trust and financial management team proactively come into play with every jumbo loan candidate or high end depositor. It's cross-selling at the top.
An architectural firm could be directed by its leadership board to low-ball its fee for the design of a high profile public building. Why? To present their work ethic to another leadership board for its influence in other more profitable developments.
These types of blockbuster strategic initiatives could be extraordinary internal initiatives from a leadership board of equals. It could be critical to igniting profit for any Gulf Coast enterprise as you plan for the new year.
Human capital
Admittedly, your elites don't really fear for their jobs because they can usually walk down the street and strut their stuff for a bigger piece of the action elsewhere. That's precisely what makes these independent elitists important assets to you, especially when you are able to harness their strengths and align them with your organizational goals. You can't give orders to these self-starters. You must rely principally on persuasion and negotiation. They require and respond to customize leadership that is one-to-one, eyeball-to-eyeball and heart-to-heart.
You'll characterize the team's challenge in such a way that it is in their own interest to act. Give them options to allow the best performance. In managing these elitists, Jeswald W. Salacuse, distinguished professor at Tufts University, writing in "How to Manage Smart, Rich, Talented People," comes up with these actions to develop trust and the ability to lead the leaders. (See sidebar.)
Articulation of vision is not enough. You must convince your stakeholders to accept it, improve it and implement it! They want that as much as you do. Look to motivate them, strengthen them and empower them to perform within your parameters.
Be open-minded about your mission. Remember, it must be their vision too. Every group is different but the same self-fulfillment process exists in all management initiatives of this type. You need to find and develop a process that will enable your Gulf Coast organization's all stars to participate enthusiastically in determining new potent directions.
Even if you are the chairman and CEO, elite followers take no comfort from and do not want a charismatic leader towering above them. Rather, what followers in high-talent enterprises expect is that their leaders are first among the equals. In the words of the biblical leader Hillel, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"
Lou Lasday, an independent marketing advisor residing on Longboat Key, creates action-oriented strategic marketing initiatives for Gulf Coast emerging companies. A career direct response executive, he has been a general partner of a major national marketing communications firm and regional president of the American Marketing Association. Lasday can be reached at [email protected]
TIPS
HOW TO LEAD LEADERS
1. Make the common interest of your organization's members apparent through continued meaningful involvement.
2. Understand the nature of the cultural difference that would divide your leadership's members. Then, seek to find ways to bridge the gap.
3. Focus on the needed process of communication and develop an ongoing strategy to accommodate them.
4. Deal directly with other leaders who spoil the process by converting or isolating them.
5. Demonstrate by both work and deed that you put the interests of the organization above your own.
Source: "How to Manage Smart, Rich, Talented People," by Jeswald W. Salacuse
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