CEO Success Report -
March 2003
Back to the
Archive Index
This Newsletter is sent ONLY to people who have requested it. To subscribe or
unsubscribe, skip to the bottom for instructions.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
CEO Success Report
- March 2003
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Increasing the Effectiveness and Enhancing the Lives of CEOs and business
owners.
Contents of this issue...
.. Welcome - A few words from the publisher, Gary Lockwood
.. Thought-Starter - "Play to your STRENGTHS"
.. Guest article - "Making Money with ISO"
.. CEO Resources
.. Quotes to use in your staff meeting this month
.. Humor to lighten up the executive suite
.. Contact the publisher
.. Subscribe and unsubscribe instructions
See past issues of the CEO Success Report at:
http://www.CEOSuccess.com/archives
=================================================
WELCOME to this issue of the CEO Success Report!
=================================================
Hello again. I'm Gary Lockwood, President of CEO Success.
Welcome back once again to the CEO Success. I know you have
no shortage of material to read and I thank you for choosing to read our
newsletter.
We work hard to provide practical ideas, thought-provoking concepts and useful
information for you.
You (and about 1000 of your CEO peers), have honored me by being a loyal
subscriber. For that, I appreciate you.
Conventional wisdom says we should work on improving our weaknesses. What a
terrible waste of time, talent and opportunity! Highly successful entrepreneurs,
as well as top scientists, artists, athletes and entertainers throughout history
have achieved great- ness by focusing on their areas of strength.
My "thought-starter" in today's issue is to encourage you to play to
your strengths. Developing your natural talents is rewarding and motivating,
allowing you to continually realize higher levels of ability, achievement and
success.
May I ask a small favor? Please forward this issue to other CEOs and company
presidents who may be interested in receiving these messages. Thank you.
And now for our guest article this month; something a bit different.
Our guest article this month is from Roger Keranen, Principal Consultant, with
LeanISO. Roger offers an interesting reason to adopt ISO, the international
quality management methodology.
Roger outlines his thoughts on using ISO to strategically achieve planned profit
by applying seven controls. Read more about Roger at the end of his informative
article.
I hope you enjoy receiving these articles and ideas to
help you sharpen your thinking about being an effective CEO.
My wish is that you use the ideas in the CEO Success Report to get the results
you really want. If you want some help in putting them into practice, or if you
have questions, email or call.
As you know, our specialty is Increasing the Effectiveness
and Enhancing the Lives of CEOs and business owners.
Enjoy this issue with my compliments.
Sincerely,
Gary Lockwood
CEO Success
===========================================
This month's THOUGHT-STARTER
===========================================
Play to your STRENGTHS
by Gary Lockwood
"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world,
and that is an idea whose time has come."
Victor Hugo
Remember in school, when you signed up for subjects in which you were already
knowledgeable? How did this make you feel? "Great! This is going to be
easy." What advice did you get from your counselors? Probably, they
recommended you take classes where you were weakest.
What a drag!
While learning new subjects is a great idea, striving to develop weaknesses can
work against you. Conventional wisdom says you should work on improving your
weaknesses. This is a terrible waste of time, talent and opportunity.
Imagine what would have happened if Chopin, Einstein, Chris Evert, or Pavrotti
had followed that advice. All these people devoted their life to developing
their natural strengths. As a result, they each were tops in their field.
Highly successful entrepreneurs, as well as top scientists, artists, athletes
and entertainers throughout history achieved greatness by focusing on their
areas of strength.
Everyone has a natural aptitude in something. Yes; even you have a special
"gift". You may be especially good at:
Working with numbers,
Drawing pictures,
Teaching children,
Growing plants or
Caring for those less fortunate than you.
Your special talent may involve music, athletic ability, empathy, writing, or
working with your hands.
Chances are, you don't even recognize your own aptitude. You might think that
all of us can see and appreciate the subtleties of color the same as you. You
may not get that some of us are not as graceful as you. You might believe that
all people are able to effortlessly grow a beautiful garden.
The truth is that we are all very different. You are able to do some things
better than I can. And, I can do some things better than you.
How do you discover your natural talents?
1. Write down a list of those things that you do that seem easy for
you. These are the things that you can do that seem almost effortless. Often,
the tasks that are easy for us are those where we have a special aptitude.
2. Make a list of those things you do where time just seems to fly
by. When you are doing these activities, you may look up and realize that
several hours have passed without you even realizing it. This is a good clue to
activities where you have natural talent.
3. Write all the activities that make you happy. These are things
that make you smile. These are the tasks you would do just for yourself, with no
promise of gain, just because they're fun, interesting and fulfilling.
4. Look through the three lists to find the common activities.
These are likely to be the areas of your natural aptitude and talent. These are
the areas of greatest potential for you. Imagine if you could spend most of your
time developing and playing at something that makes you happy, where time flies
and where it's easy for you. Wow!
Don't get caught up in the old advice to work on your weaknesses. Hire someone
who is good where you are weak. Delegate tasks that you don't enjoy to others
who do enjoy those things. Automate the repetitious tasks. Contract out the
chores that you are not great at doing.
No matter how hard you try, it is unlikely you will ever be more than average in
areas where you do not have an aptitude. Always working on your weaknesses
undermines your self-esteem since you will focus mostly on your deficiencies.
On the other hand, working to develop your natural talents is self-rewarding and
motivating, allowing you to continually realize higher and higher levels of
ability, achievement and success.
Invest your time and energy in being GREAT at something. REALLY great. You will
be happier. And the recipients of your work, your customers, will reward you for
your excellence.
What a combination! You do what you love and people pay you for it!
Play to your strengths. Experience the immense satisfaction that comes with
being superb at something.
C Copyright 2001 BizSuccess All rights reserved. No duplication
About the Author...
Gary Lockwood is Increasing the Effectiveness and Enhancing the Lives of CEOs,
business owners and professionals. Get the Free BizSuccess newsletter -
http://www.bizsuccess.com/newsletter.htm
or send any blank email to mailto:subscribe@BizSuccess.com
==================================
Guest Article
==================================
Making Money with ISO: the Seven Controls
Roger Keranen, Principal Consultant, with LeanISO
What is a better reason to adopt an international quality management
methodology? The purpose of adopting ISO is top management's desire to
cascade quality management behaviors down the organization to a habit strength
level. The goal is to manage employee behavior well without direct daily
supervision. The effect is to stop costly problems. The following seven
controls are offered to show how the organization can strategically achieve
planned profit:
1. Procedures
This is the weakest of all the controls if you consider them as a stand-alone
tool. Start with them as the initial step making money. ISO Standards
require you to have a preventive action procedure. The method for planning
to prevent problems is the documentation of quality assurance procedures based
on the cumulative knowledge of what goes wrong in organizations, namely, the ISO
Standard itself! Consider why each of the requirements in the Standard is there.
They are the corrective action plans to prevent what went wrong in the past!
Make money by being consistent. The key purpose of this control is to KNOW
EXPECTATIONS.
2. Training
Plan to prevent problems by training employees on their responsibilities and
authorities to exercise quality management in their day-to-day activities. Teach
them to receive well (or reject and document), to do well, and to release well.
Teach them how to react to the unexpected. Make money by preventing the
costs of crisis. The key purpose of this control is to PLAN TO PREVENT PROBLEMS.
3. Have auditing
ISO requires internal auditing of the Quality Management System (QMS). Your
training class on QMS procedures ends with statements like:
An auditor will test your ability to follow the procedures that touch your job.
Should a problem arise, the get well plan is another documented training class.
All audit findings must be verified later that the retraining corrective action
was effective.
Unspoken, here, is the fact that auditing will identify individuals who are not
following procedures on a daily basis. Who wants to be discovered three, four,
or five times? Have the Business Management System take over in those
cases of repeated poor behavior. Make money by confirming employees are
doing well. The key purpose of this control is employees have to PASS THE
BEHAVIOR TEST.
4. Permit rejection
ISO requires in-process monitoring. Can you agree that any enterprise can
be described as a series of receiving, doing, and releasing work until a
customer is happy and pays? While monitoring the releases from prior
activities, there is a chance employees may find suspect or nonconforming or
unexpected incoming work. Your training guides them on how to behave to
the unexpected and reject it back as unacceptable! Require your employees
to use their experience and judgment to not accept or pass along problems.
Make them responsible to follow their monitoring procedure and the reaction plan
should the unexpected occur. Permit rejection. It is the only way to
stop crisis management later. Make money by stopping bad product early in
the process before more value is added. The key purpose of this control is
the AUTHORIZATION delegated to employees to manage their work, to prevent crisis
and unwanted costs, early in the process.
5. Document Incidents
ISO requires documentation of nonconforming incidents. Have an
enterprise-wide method to document incidents of the unexpected. Authorize
receiving employees to document or advise supervision to document these
incidents. Determine during Internal Audit that employees can and have
documented the things that go wrong without being fired or disgraced.
Gather data, maybe for the first time, to permit analysis and corrective action.
Something magical begins to happen when employees are authorized to document
unexpected incidents. Upon finding poorly released work, they have a chance to
bring it to the prior activity informally without public documentation. The poor
releaser has a chance to take it back, repair the problem, and hurry it back
into the work stream. An effective mini personal contract is established due to
the delegated AUTHORITY to reject and document. Yes, the procedure is not
being followed to the letter. I contend this mini contract is ideal as it
allows for an occasional human oops and cements the concept that employees own
and practice quality assurance without direct supervision. Of course,
repeat offenders are usually disclosed. Make money with first time good
work. The key purpose of this control is the IDENTIFICATION OF KNOWN
PROBLEMS.
6. Have analysis
In control #5 you established the enterprise-wide incident reporting method or
methods. Now is the time to provide effective resources to analyze the
collected data for corrective and preventive action. Most of the time,
re-training is the expected corrective action. The rest of the time, more
effort is required. Organizations use regression analysis to track back in
the process to discover the root cause of the current problem. In
manufacturing organizations, problems reside in one or more of the following
domains: man, machine, material, method, or environment. The root cause,
or causes, are in these domains.
ISO requires quality objectives to be established at relevant functions and
levels within the organization. Measurements and data come from monitoring.
Seek ISO continual improvement. Resources provided to analyze data for
root cause and preventive action should achieve the required continual
improvement. Would you believe there are companies that do not analyze and
repair known problems? Make money by not repeating problems. The key
purpose of this control is ROOT CAUSE PREVENTION OF KNOWN PROBLEMS.
7. Have communication
The twist here is effective communication. Some folks have said that
ineffective communication is the root cause of all problems. ISO sees
communication as a control for planning to prevent problems. Control begins with
the training on the procedures that touch your job and the authorization to
reject and document unexpected incidents.
Internal audits test for employees doing well and communicates they are
quality assurance managers OR they need retraining support to get on track.
Design and Development organizations have planned design reviews that are
communicated to the customer as well as affected parties inside the organization
to prevent customer rejection at the end of the process. During the
contracting process, organizations are expected to add to customer requirements
to better provide a product or service that is fit for use.
Don't forget the communication to sales reps and customer contact employees that
they are NOT authorized to promise or accept new or changed business without
passing the request through the contracting process. Scope creep and
friendly extra work has to stop in favor of investigation for possible billing
opportunities. Stop to analyze every communicated customer complaint
against the original contract because a complaint may be a billable change
request. Make money by billing where you can. The key purpose of
this control is to communicate EFFECTIVELY, TO AFFECTED PARTIES.
These seven controls are universally applicable as planning to prevent problems
so every enterprise can make their target profit margin. Use them or take your
chances.
C 2002
Roger Keranen the Principal Consultant in the firm of LeanISO, www.leaniso.com,
specializing in ISO-9001:2000, ISO/TS 16949:2002, ISO-14000, Skills
Management Process, and customized training. He can be contacted at
1-877-554-7831 or by email at roger.keranen@leaniso.com
The company's client base has service and manufacturing organizations from 15 to
1500 employees.
=============================================
RESOURCES for CEOs =============================================
The Executive Committee - Chief Executives Working Together http://www.CEOSuccess.com
** Attention CEOs
Business leaders are choosing a new way to better their companies and themselves
- through membership in TEC, an international organization of CEOs.
Imagine the benefits of meeting regularly with a small group
of company leaders in your area to share experiences, exchange ideas and solve
common problems.
Thousands of chief executives turn to TEC for a learning experience they cannot
get anywhere else. We are committed to connecting CEOs with the people, ideas
and information they need to help them improve their businesses and enhance
their lives.
Check it out at http://www.CEOSuccess.com
===================================================
QUOTES to use in your staff meeting this month
===================================================
"If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days
of sorrow."
Chinese Proverb
"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."
Michelangelo
"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything."
Alexander Hamilton
"And while the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the
individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the
fittest in every department."
Andrew Carnegie
"If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is
favorable."
Seneca
===================================================
HUMOR to lighten up
the executive suite ===================================================
Just in case you weren't feeling too old today...
The people who are starting college this fall were born in 1984.
They are too young to remember the space shuttle blowing up.
Their lifetime has always included AIDS.
Bottle caps have always been screw off and plastic. !
The CD was introduced the year they were born.
They have always had an answering machine.
They have always had cable.
They cannot fathom not having a remote control.
Jay Leno has always been on the Tonight Show.
Popcorn has always been cooked in the microwave.
They never took a swim and thought about Jaws.
They can't imagine what hard contact lenses are.
They don't know who Mork was or where he was from.
They never heard: "Where's the Beef?", "I'd walk a mile for
a Camel", or "de plane Boss, de plane".
They do not care who shot J. R. and have no idea who J. R. even is.
Michael Jackson has always been white.
McDonald's never came in Styrofoam containers.
They don't have a clue how to use a typewriter.
Do you feel old yet? Pass this on to the other old fogies in your life.
***excerpts from: http://www.joker.org/ ***
=================================
CONTACT CEO Success
=================================
Gary Lockwood is the publisher of the CEO Success Report.
Email: mailto:Gary@CEOSuccess.com
Office: (800) 272-1575 (USA) * (909) 739-7444
Fax: (909) 494-4314
========================================
Your Comments, please?
========================================
I appreciate feedback, corrections, and comments about the
CEO Success Report. Please send your thoughts to:
Gary@CEOSuccess.com mailto:Gary@CEOSuccess.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Visit http://www.CEOSuccess.com/newsletter.htm
To subscribe, send a blank message to subscribe@CEOSuccess.com To unsubscribe,
send a blank message to CEO-off@CEOSuccess.com To change your email address,
send a message to CEO-change@CEOSuccess.com
with your old address in the Subject: line
To contact the list owner, send your message to
CEO-list-owner@CEOSuccess.com
Copyright © 2003 CEO Success All rights reserved.
