Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

Leadership

CLO: Positioning the Business to Lead

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CLO Circle Both

Pre-order Chief Leadership Officer

The Chief Leadership Officer is charged with two primary responsibilities:

  • Positioning the business to lead in its chosen field
  • Positioning people to lead in their lives and work

In both responsibilities the role begins with positioning.

Today, let’s explore the first of these two charges. Positioning strategy is an essential duty for the CLO. If the organization is not in the position to do business, then it won’t remain in business. The CLO needs to have the business acumen and people savvy to place the business in an opportunity to win at its game.

The term, “chosen field” applies to businesses large and small, even teams or departments. CLO-led top performers have a chosen field, a place where he or she can do more of what you do best more profitably. For businesses, there are many dimensions and options for deciding this. As this video offers, there’s the strategic aspects of the heart, head, hands, and honor or purpose, vision, mission, and values respectively. Think of it as a place where one is making a mark, a position of ownership and top of mind dominance for its selected customers.

Earning such an esteemed position in the hearts and minds of customers demands every bit of hustle, heart, thinking, soul, and sweat available. Decide on your chosen field, even if it is just an aspiration today. It will focus and align every aspect of your business.

For example, in most urban areas there are probably 30 pizza or Italian restaurants within a 5-mile radius of your work or home. How does one stand out from the other? This often translates into a tagline for customers but it is rooted in The On-Purpose Business Plan. For example

  • The best cannoli (or tiramisu) this side of Italy
  • Fresh family cooked Italian for your family
  • Deep dish pizza in the Deep South

Positioning your business to be a leader in the chosen field will demand every skill and talent you have. It will also be rewarding by every measure.

Chapter 1+ of Chief Leadership Officer

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CLO hard book cover openChief Leadership Officer promises to be a most positive organizational development and business leadership disruptor. This message and method of leadership anticipates where business is headed and where you want to be regardless of your position in the company.  Below, dig into the Prologue and Chapter 1.

Prologue

Step into the future. You’re running or maybe starting a business. Aside from the normal challenges and opportunities of business ownership and development, you’re as unsettled as you are excited.

Aware of your situation, a business colleague introduces you to the first-known Chief Leadership Officer. A conversation ensues. Questions are asked and answered. A story centuries in the making is told. A relationship is built. An informed decision needs to be made:

Will you be a Chief Leadership Officer?

Chapter 1

Why Chief Leadership Officer?

The task of the executive is not to change human beings. Rather, as the Bible tells us in the parable of talents, the task is to multiply the performance capacity of the whole by putting to use whatever strength, whatever health, whatever aspiration there is in individuals.

Peter F. Drucker

The Effective Executive

1967

“Being a Chief Executive Officer is wrong for my business … and wrong for me!”

I remember the exact moment I first put voice to this proclamation. It was at the 100th birthday celebration of Pops, my great-grandfather. At the time I was twenty-five. I couldn’t tell you why being a CEO felt antiquated and dysfunctional for my business and me. It just did.

There was something beyond my youth leaving a bad taste in my mouth for saying I was an “executive,” as in Chief Executive Officer. Disdain had slowly welled inside me for what the position and my employees were requiring, dare I say, expecting of me. My CEO trajectory was rich with opportunity but seemingly marred with compromise to what I most treasured in my life and person. At some level, it creeped me out to realize who I was becoming as the CEO.

Today, at thirty-five, I can and will tell you why I am a Chief Leadership Officer, and how I got to this title. It took two years of investigation to psych out this more meaningful and satisfying way of being in life and in business. Now I’ve lived it for eight years. The precepts I’ll share are just that—guidelines, not directives or a formula. You’ll need to decide what’s right for you.

Each and every business is different. Yet, there are commonalities and markers indicative of an organization led by a CLO, just as there are for CEO-led businesses.

I’m often asked, “What’s the difference between a CEO and a CLO?”

Let’s be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong or evil with a CEO-run business. In fact, many CEO-run businesses exhibit characteristics of CEO-led companies. This traditional system and style of management has been around for over a century. That’s both its advantage and its disadvantage. It was tried and true in its day, but, for a variety of reasons, the sun is setting on that day.

The fundamental difference is in orientation. CEOs manage and “execute” a company by driving its people to make a profit for shareholders. CLOs call upon people to be leaders and profit makers—serving the greater good of stakeholders. As Robert Frost might say, “And that has made all the difference.”

A Chief Leadership Officer commits to meaningfully and profitably integrating the following two broad missions:

  1. Position people to be leaders in their lives and work
  2. Position the business to lead in its chosen field

A CLO has a decidedly different posture from a CEO. A CLO has the head for profit of a business, the heart for service of a not-for-profit organization, the fortitude for commitment of the military, and the moral imperative of the church. The charge for “everyone profits” calls for mastery of management and leadership to integrate and produce such an abundantly positive outcome.

My story and the CLO precepts are meant to open your eyes, literally and figuratively, to an alternative way of leading an organization. So regardless of whether you currently run a business or aspire to lead one, you’ll have ample grist for the mental mill to grind as you decide if you want to be a person who runs or leads.

I never set out to be a business iconoclast. I knew there had to be a healthier, more whole way than operating as a CEO. I just wanted to benefit others and care for myself by doing right and by doing good while producing a fair financial profit.

In retrospect, I chose wisely. In the early days, I was a forerunner of a CLO. Now I am one of many CLOs. Individually and collectively, we’re becoming known as men and women who are a consistent force for good.

Perhaps you’ll want to join us?

How did this CLO approach come about? Remarkably, it was Pops, my then 100-year-old great-grandfather who guided me. During the last two years of his life he cajoled and coached me to blaze a trail into the frontier of leadership.

 

Chief Leadership Officer: Now!

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CLO 6.1.16 book cover

WINTER PARK, FL, 6.1.16 at 6:28 am (sunrise) the dawn of a new day and way for being in business officially launched with the pre-order campaign of the book: Chief Leadership Officer.

This sunrise officially ushers in the era of the Chief Leadership Officer™ (CLO™); the person who is ultimately responsible to position both the organization and people to be leaders in their chosen field and lives, respectively. The Industrial Age rise to power and prominence of the CEO as the top officer in companies is increasingly out-of-sync with serving society. Relative to the narrow focus of the CEO, CLOs are more complete leaders who take profit-making to heart.

At On-Purpose Partners, we’re committed to educating and training CLOs and helping CEOs become CLOs.

Pre-Order Your Book Today And Be Rewarded

During the month of June, 2016, Author Kevin W. McCarthy is offering readers the opportunity to participate in the CLO™ movement and book development by pre-ordering Chief Leadership Officer for as low as $20 for a single book and up to a $100,000 year-long coaching and consulting relationship. Learn More & Please Pre-Order Here.

Preview the Book: Chief Leadership Officer

Download a PDF preview of The Prologue and the first 4 chapters by clicking here: CLO Sample Chapters

 

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Define Humility

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The On-Purpose Proverbs are short bits of wisdom that I’ve been writing for over a decade. I keep saying I need to put them in gift book format. But for now, here is one of my favorites about how I define humility for many of my clients:

Humility is knowing self relative to God and understanding which is the greater.

A new friend/colleague asked me to pray for the CEO of his company. The business has been widely successful in recent years with millions of people’s lives touched by their products. Such massive growth, then crisis and now a more stable growth pattern has been a roller coaster of a ride.

My entire life and career it seems I’ve been around CEOs. As a kid I was blessed to attend Shady Side Academy in Pittsburgh, PA. (Trivia: I was the last class president when it was an all-boys school.) Many of my friends’ fathers were the Presidents, CEOs and/or Chairman of the Board of major corporations. When you see a CEO running around the house in his underwear asking his wife where she put his pants one naturally learns a different sense of the humanness of the person relative to the power of the position!

In my career I’ve continued to work with CEOs and business leaders of billion dollar businesses and brand new ones. Experience shows me that leaders who have the kind of humility described in this On-Purpose Proverb tend to make wiser decisions. In addition to holding themselves to a higher standard, they tend to decide based more from such strength of self-awareness and knowledge. It isn’t as lonely at the top when one gets humility at the bottom of the soul.

Humility Is

 

 

Are You In The Midst of A Tough Shift?

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How would you like to have a 42% improvement in your overall well-being? Keep reading!

The more and faster that things are changing for you, the more you want that which is holding fast — that which is unchanging … your purpose.

Your purpose is permanent and unchanging. It can sustain you through your tough shift. There is remarkable hope within your current means and circumstances. As much as you may think differently, you lack nothing to live your life on-purpose.

Jihad, national politics, economies, and technologies are in a rapid swirl of seeming chaos that make it hard to wrap one’s mind around what is really happening in society and life. Context and meaning can become washed over in a sea of 24/7/365 news cycles, disappointments, and difficulties. We wonder:

  • Who can be trusted?
  • How will these changes affect my life, my job, and my family? 
  • Will I have gainful employment?
  • Does anyone really care?

Do you find yourself thirsting for answers and insights, but find your daily time and energy is like seeping water cupped in your hands just long enough to get a quenching sip of life through yet another day? Laying your head on your pillow at night, you’ve likely poured yourself into yet another day of routines and problems, yet you reflect if any progress has really been made.

Time is the currency of our lives and too many of us are spending our time instead of investing it. We wonder, Is redemption and restoration possible? Is it too late for me?

Take heart!

Being in a tough shift is one thing. Thriving in the midst of one is another. Regardless of whether your tough shift is in your personal life or your work life or both, the essential responsibility for safe and productive passage rests with one person — you! Nothing can replace or is as powerful to prepare you to prosper as assuming personal leadership of your life. The nuclear core of being true to who you are rests in knowing your 2-word purpose statement and then making a decision and taking actions in alignment with it — to be on-purpose.

Since the late 1980s we’ve been helping individuals and organizations to surf with success all kinds of waves and tough shifts by simply helping them to find answers to four “Who Am I?” questions and then design plans and actions to live into them:

  • Why am I here? (purpose)
  • Where am I going? (vision)
  • How will I get there? (missions)
  • What’s important? (values)
My On-Purpose Folder 3D cover
Newly Available: Everything You Need to Be On-Purpose!

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Absent answers to these questions, we’re practically, emotionally, and spiritually adrift. Regardless of the endeavor when our mind, body, and spirit are disturbed we’re at a strategic disadvantage. This impediment to our leadership directly ripples from our life to those around us. When we’re not who we were intended to be and become, everyone pays some price — our spouses and family, our co-workers and partners, and our fellow citizens. The old adage goes, “If you aren’t carrying your end of the log, then someone else is.”

Invest your time to actually think about your life and to answer the “Who Am I?” questions. Write down your thoughts, refine them, and review them. A survey of our clients who have done this work reported a 42% improvement in their overall well-being.

Tough shifts are neither positive or negative — they just exist. How we react and respond determines their influence. Holding fast to our purpose produces strength and resilience so we’re less susceptible to the ever transforming ebb and flow of the tough shifts.

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Answers to your “Who Am I?” questions for your business or your life are but a phone call (407.657.6000), email, or online order away. At On-Purpose Partners we provide a variety of products and services that include:

  • Business Advisory Services: Articulation of Purpose, Vision, Mission, and Values plus business design and planning
  • One-on-One Coaching: Individual help to become a better leader of your life and/or business
  • Books: The On-Purpose Person, The On-Purpose Business Person, and FIT 4 Leading

Facing A Decision? Got A Decision Making Process?

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Facing a DecisionAs a person or an organization matures, decisions need to be distributed across the team to those closest to the choice. In the absence of clearly articulated and communicated values (and a 2-word purpose) even the most well-intended person makes ungoverned decisions — typically on emotion rather than values.

Where is the root responsibility for such “ungoverned decisions?” If values are not “articulated and communicated” plus reinforced regularly, then leadership, not the person, has failed.

Consider the sheer number and importance of decisions made every day by every person associated with your organization. Every line item on your income statement reflects a decision. Ask: Do we have a specific decision making process in place that is introduced at orientation and is a regular part of our corporate conversation and storytelling?

The highly likely answer is, “No. In fact, with everything else I need to get done, this hasn’t even been on my radar.” The problem is you’re too busy making decisions that could be better done by someone who is closer to the problem who is trained, tested, and trusted.

Experience tells us that this leadership “oversight” undermines sales and profits by 25% annually. Run the numbers — now you know the price of poor leadership!

Better Decisions = Better Business

Values seem well below the surface of the daily waves of activity. In fact they are on the surface of every decision made by every team member. Coming to terms with this hard reality in the busyness of the day can be a daunting, humbling, task for the leader.

On-Purpose Partners helps clients to define, share, and activate their purpose, vision, mission, and values (PVMV) so better decisions are more consistently made across the company.

Follow our 3-step ACE decision making process to align and improve the decision making quality, speed, and effectiveness:

  1. Articulate: Purpose, Vision, Mission, and Values (PVMV). These “On-Purpose Statements” can typically be identified, refined, and written in less than a week for most organizations. For smaller businesses they can be completed in less than a day.
  2. Communicate: Find authentic stories within the organization that reflect the values. Create an open dialogue to introduce them to the larger team so ownership of them spreads into the hearts, minds, and guts of those who engage.
  3. Exercise: Put your On-Purpose Statements to work by creating decision matrices across the organization. Here are just a few places decision-making is improved using On-Purpose Statements:
    1. Strategy & Planning – It is easy to get mechanical and analytical about strategy and planning but your PVMV keep it real on a human level.
    2. People – Employment, engagement, and retention of team members are profoundly influenced by PVMV. This is where “The Tingle Factor” comes from. See The On-Purpose Business Person to learn more about The Tingle Factor.
    3. Financial management – Complement the ROI, NPV, or IRR analysis with your PVMV analysis.
    4. Vendor/sub-contractor selection – Does the vendor demonstrate similar PVMV? Have you shared what you value as a part of right business performance?
    5. Operations – Are the people and processes informed and aligned with the PVMV to create the performance needed to grow the business? If not, then you’re producing a flawed product.
    6. Marketing & Branding – Truth in advertising matters. What, however, determines “truth”? Your PVMV keep the company true to what matters most.

The power of On-Purpose® is profoundly relevant to execution and profitability — but only when the CEO or leader decides it is. Otherwise, it is business as usual.

Business as usual or business on-purpose? Now you’re facing a decision!

How Convincing Are You?

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We’ve become a contentious and polarizing culture. What place is there for hard edges and righteous attitudes in the course of civil conversation?

Does convincing work? No!

Is it more important to be right or to be in a right relationship? This doesn’t mean that you become a doormat for others to wipe their waste on your thinking or person. Rather it means that you maintain your dignity and decorum as others debate and argue. You need not be defensive or offensive, simply be an adult who doesn’t get drawn into the fray unnecessarily.
Conversing

To influence another person’s thinking there must be a basis of some trust and respect, period.  Those qualities of leadership only come within the context of relationship where conversation, not convincing takes place. Stop convincing. Start conversing!

This approach is much easier said than done. A great technique is to say to someone, “Look, I know I’ll never convince you to change your position, nor you mine; but I would appreciate understanding your rationale, perspective, and opinions on the matter.” Then sit back, ask questions, and learn what the other person is thinking. Then sincerely thank them for sharing and walk away better informed and prepared to understand a different point of view. Build the relationship!

 

What Do You Do Best?

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As A New Year Rolls Around: What Will You Do Best in 2016?

The On-Purpose Business Person
Here’s the new cover to The On-Purpose Business Person since this classic OP Business Minute was recorded

This simple, yet highly clarifying question from this Classic On-Purpose Business Minute carries strategic value and importance to every aspect of your business and life. Your answer matters. Don’t get hung up on the perfect answer. Have a written answer that is in the ballpark. That alone will powerfully direct and clarify many decisions you face today and will face in the New Year.

The subtitle to The On-Purpose Business Person provides an important strategic statement that is so simple that one might miss the power and potential to transform your career and/or business. 

Consider the centerpiece of the subtitle: Doing More Of What You Do Best More Profitably. It can transform your life, career, and business.

Have you read The On-Purpose Business Person? You’ll learn how to do more of what you do best more profitably.