CEO Liz leads a company with an outstanding product suite and market leadership, yet sales are missing the numbers due to market slow down and increasing price sensitivity. Liz believes that her last 3 sales managers have been incompetent.
Liz hired me to look into the Sales organization. I found a group of highly skilled and highly motivated people who were doing a great job under the toughest of circumstances.
When I presented my findings to Liz, she was upset. “I did not hire you to hear that”.
I have been working with Liz for 9 months. She has not changed her espoused opinion about the Sales organization, but she is happy with the work I am doing with her (about how she manages). I have not managed to change her views about how Sales is run, but I have changed some of her behaviours towards the Sales organization, Liz talks the same, but acts differently.
Here are a few things I have done with Liz,
- Used paradoxical interventions. “Liz, how about firing the whole lot of them now and biting the bullet. I’m sure you could turn this around in a quarter”. Or, “Liz, you aren’t busy enough, why don’t you run sales as a pastime?”
- Put Liz’s misunderstandings into context. Liz rose to the top quickly. She never failed. She prides herself on her spectacular career. She sees people as winners or losers. Once I understood this I could be more compassionate. (She sees me as a winner.)
- Winter driving techniques. Having learnt to drive in Montreal, I know how to get out of a snowbank, thanks to Mr Canning, my driving teacher. Back and forth-slowly. No force-just go back and forth. With Liz it’s same-same but different. Sometimes I entertain two opposite ideas, rocking her mind back and forth. because it’s stuck. “Liz, how about putting pre-Sales under a different manager, or setting up a technical pre-Sales department, or better localizing the Sales team”..Such sessions of “rocking her mind” are the ones she appreciates the most, subsequently settling back into rigidity.
- Giving Up. Sometimes I tell her that she looks at a giraffe and does not see its neck (an Israeli euphemism). That I cannot do anything. That she has defeated me. This gets her very angry, then she softens up.
- Humour. Liz and I share a sense of humour, Making her laugh about her own rigidity is very helpful.
- Understand the personal bias. Liz comes from a technical background. This is what we have cooked and it tastes great, Just sell it. Liz does not understand the complexity of other peoples’ non technical roles, yet.
Gems in intervention choices up here, as is now de rigeur of you Allon. Sets one wondering. Like …So, what does the board gain in a technically sound CEO and a non-technically blind one at that? Maybe beyond your brief, but, what’s your guess? What’s the system like at the level above the level in which your intervention is?
Private investors.
Board is strongly controlled by one person to whom I have no access…yet