52 Observations

In search of opportunities

Opportunities exist everywhere in organizations, because businesses are constantly changing in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways. We spend a lot of time observing organizations of all shapes and sizes, and it is truly fascinating to see how they operate.

What are specific management behaviors?

Management behavior is a critical issue in organizations. However, the meaning of the term itself is often a little fuzzy.

What does changing management behavior really mean?

We often say it’s tough to change management behavior. Universally, executives nod their heads in agreement. But when we all say it, what do we actually mean?

The problem with management training

Observation #49 In the relatively early days of our company, a few partners took a high-speed driving course on an ...

A specific target is better than a range

When we work for a company, we always do our due diligence upfront to pinpoint a specific improvement target for the project. Well, almost always...

How many managers does an organization need?

Sometimes we do a study that we call the "Span of Control" analysis, where we look at how many subordinates report directly to each manager in an organization. It's a more difficult study than it sounds, because the way organizational charts are drawn is not always how they really are.

The difficulty and importance of managing “shoulder periods”

Many industries experience "shoulder periods." These are the time periods leading up to and away from the peak volumes. Figuring out how to manage these periods can be a difficult task for managers, but it’s also very important for realizing performance improvement gains.

What are your three key indicators?

Over the years, one of the things we've noticed is that each new manager tends to create new reports, for whatever purpose they have at the time. Old reports are not eliminated, so over time there are a mountain of available reports – and a mountain of performance indicators -- in the system.

Grow with your customers

Growing sales volume with existing accounts is sometimes referred to as "increasing your share of wallet," but it's actually not a very good description -- or even objective.

Don’t raise your price, optimize it

Pricing is the most powerful way to improve profit without the need for large-scale culture change. It is often said that a 1% improvement in price is worth a 10% improvement in productivity.

Where are the Glengarry leads?

There are only two basic ways to increase your sales volumes: find more customers and/or sell more to existing customers. There is a little more complexity when you dig into the numbers...

How do you clone your best salespeople?

How to improve sales performance is a challenge for most businesses. Companies try many things to improve the average selling skills of their organization. They try training programs, special incentives, head hunters, one-on-one coaching, and sophisticated CRM systems.