Sales Leader’s Steps to Instill Hopeful Realism
Are you getting tired of me talking about the relationship between leadership and getting tractors unstuck yet? 
Here’s what I’m concluding:
Unearned optimism, unfounded pessimism, and stuck tractors that stay stuck are the results of failure to accurately assess all the facts of any given business – or personal – situation. So the first steps in an action plan to bring hopeful realism to bear on your organization’s problems is to:
Take stock of your situation from as many viewpoints as possible. One of the biggest reasons that the facts of a business challenge are distorted or even absent is that business leaders haven’t yet leveraged all the human creativity, ingenuity, and experience available to them. In a way, it’s like trying to think with 2% of your brain. You don’t want to miss any of the features of the problem or any of the resources at hand. Don’t cloister your organization’s management together behind locked doors until they solve your problems. Light up your entire organizational “brain” and shed light on all facets of the problem and all the talents and other resources available to solve them.
Work the problem transparently. Once you’ve developed an accurate picture of your entire situation, don’t “black box” the solution. In other words, open up the entire problem-solving process through memos, emails, meetings, state-of-the-company presentations, and other communication efforts. Use the feedback you get to generate better solutions faster.
Break solution steps into manageable chunks, assign them, and then get out of the way. Even a masterful solution to a problem can fail when a business doesn’t use all the resources at its disposal. Farm out your solution in bite-sized chunks to those best equipped to implement each piece. And once you do, give the solution implementers enough space to do their jobs. After all, they were handpicked for their particular mix of talents and aptitudes – give them the autonomy to let those talents and aptitudes flourish.
Use the results of your solutions to seed the next generation of solutions. This is a key efficiency that many businesses miss. Once your organization has designed and implemented a solution – whatever the ultimate results – feed it back into the system with the same transparency you developed it with. That way, you’ll build a sort of organizational knowledgebase that grows over time, helps to institutionalize the hopeful realism midst, and roots out both unearned optimism and unfounded pessimism wherever they can be found.
I’m looking forward to your feedback and insights!
Sales Management Leaders and Responsibility
I just got back from a July 4th at the TTT Ranch. Of course, If You’re Not From the Prairie, it’s difficult to understand the many unique dilemma’s ranchers face.
However, as I contemplate further, I realize that ranchers face many of the same challenges that we face is sales management.
My father saw quite a few tractors stuck back when I was a kid. Yet he never made excuses, never blamed anyone or anything, and never, most importantly, never settled for a stuck tractor. He did what he had to do to get it out and put it back in service. Sometimes, that meant solo shovel work, but more often it was a joint effort of family and friends. My father was a man who didn’t pick and choose the facts of a given situation. He accounted for all of them. And he always found that the simple fact of a stuck tractor – literal or metaphorical – was no match for the internal and communal resources at his disposal. It wasn’t blind optimism and it certainly wasn’t pessimism of any stripe. Rather, my father’s attitude toward adversity was one of hopeful realism.
Remember the construction company president I mentioned earlier? The one who saw the facts of a challenging economy and stiff competition? The one whose response was to lay off 50% of his workforce? In many ways, my father’s attitude toward adversity is much like that of another construction company president I had the pleasure of speaking with just 24 hours after the first. Same market, same economy, yet this president said, “Yes, the next 18 months will be extremely difficult. However, this is a time for us to operate wisely as well as to open new channels to our clients so that we’re poised to capture market share.”
Remember James Stockdale, the POW who knew exactly how bad his situation was – and exactly how he was more than equal to it? Like my father, like James Stockdale, this company president didn’t ignore either the negative or positive facts of his situation.
And – this is crucial – they communicated all of those facts to their organizations. My father never hid the facts of what we were up against. He always reminded us that our resources were greater and that we were more flexible. James Stockdale communicated a clear, realistic, and hopeful assessment of their shared situation – using code when he had to. And the construction company president who sees an opportunity to capture market share while markets are shrinking makes sure everybody in the company sees it, too.
Research into the challenging economic cycle before 2002 conducted by Watson Wyatt Worldwide found that companies which kept employees in the loop saw profits 200% higher than those which didn’t.
Such is the power of hopeful realism in the hands of many.
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