Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

Strategy

Are You Managing Your Profits?

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Profits are the lifeblood of any business. Without them, the business dies. However, the body of the business is your strategy, structure, and systems that are organized and managed in such a way that profit is the natural outcome.

It is so easy to get focused on managing to a profit that we forget the body of profit creation. Avoid falling into the pit of managing numbers and forgetting that profits are the result of a team of people being well led and organized to serve a customer base with sufficient value to produce a profit.
profit

Your profit and loss report makes a statement about what matters most in your business leadership. “Follow the money!” was the advice of Deep Throat, the Watergate secret informer. Following the money reveals much about the priorities of the business leaders and managers.

Your definition of profit frames your leadership and management methods. If net profit is only about the dollars and cents, then your cost of doing business is likely too high because you’ll have high turnover of team members and customers. Profitability is a financial as well as a human measure for adding and creating value. Ignore either one and your P&L will suffer. Invest in both and you’ve increased your probabilities for profiting.

Everyone profits when we recognize it is profits AND people, not profits or people.

Yes, financial profits matter. Integrating people and profits is the role of leadership and management, respectively. So how are you doing?

In the long run, your business’s valuation will reflect the attitude and excellence of the corporate culture you’re establishing. Short-term fixes (coupons and discounts) to stimulate profits are drug-like highs and can often undermine or compromise the core values of a business. This sends your best employees scurrying to the doors because it signals leadership panic plus a loss of stability and commitment to the people and brand promise.

Want to increase your profits? Increase your contribution, capacity, and capability to add value to your employees, customers, and stakeholders. Always look for substantive ways to create fundamental improvements in profitability. Everyone profits when we recognize it is profits AND people, not profits or people.

 


What Do You Do? (The “Do Do Dialogue”)

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You’re at a business or social event and the inevitable question arises, “What do you do?” Now is the time for your “Elevator Speech” to kick in and smartly sell your product or service. Or is it?

Most often we tell the inquirer our job category (e.g., I’m an accountant, plumber, salesperson … ) or job title (VP, realtor, sales representative) and where we work. At this point, the conversation often goes relatively quiet as they offer an unknowing, polite, or perhaps perfunctory response about your work, “That’s nice.”

If you dislike your work, perhaps ending the conversation about your job plays to your advantage by avoiding a disheartening conversation. It may also be that the person was simply making polite conversation and has no real interest in your business.

The other extreme is the canned elevator speech where your tightly crafted unique selling proposition is flawlessly presented worthy of a Toastmasters’ award. You’ve rehearsed it over and over so now you’ve said it. What do you get in return?

“Oh! That’s nice,” again. Then the person walks away for fear of being sold or bored by a rehearsed jerk with robotic responses. You were insensitive to the person.

No one likes to feel stupid or feel like they are being sold. Under either approach, at best they only have a shallow concept of what you really do and how you truly make a difference for your clients or customers. In short, you’re either putting them to work figuring out what you do or you’re working them over with your sales pitch.

The Do Do Dialogue takes a bit of thinking on your feet mixed with some advanced preparation. The goal isn’t to sell or present. Rather it is to discover how you can help them, how they can help you, or what a referral or recommendation looks like for either of you. (Yes, some of us actually think that way from the start).

Assuming, however, that you are an on-purpose business person working in an on-purpose position, then you truly are interested in the on-purpose business approach of Doing More Of What You Do Best More Profitably. If that’s the case, then your response to their question just short-circuited an organic opportunity to earn a new client or gain a source of referrals or just make a friend.

Instead, what if you had a respectful and relevant response that actually got the person interested in what you do—or at least more interested—while providing a clear understanding of your on-purpose customer? 

In either a business or social setting, before you show up, think about where you’re going to be. Who you’re going to meet. This gives a huge clue as to appropriateness of response. If you’re at a neighborhood block party or the Chamber of Commerce Lunch, then you’re walking into different settings. Be wise to that.

Here’s the social setting response when asked, “What do you do?” I quickly assess whom I’m speaking with: a retired person, a young mom, an unkempt teenager, or a man in his working years.

“Do you know how many (retired persons, moms, teens, or working adults) often feel that their life is meaningless?”

Their response is typically, “Yes.”

Then I say, “I help my clients write their purpose in life and make decisions that are aligned with it so they are on-purpose rather than off-purpose.” The next question from them is typically, “How do you do that? Are you some kinda life coach?”

My response isn’t to directly answer their question, but to probe a bit further. “Why do you ask? Do you know someone who is looking to know their purpose in life?”

At this point they’ll talk about themselves or someone they know. Now I can probe further. “Tell me about that.” So rather than telling them I have a company that “does life coaching,” I model it for them by becoming interested in them.

In a business setting, I’ll assess the person but unless I know otherwise, I always assume they are a P&L business leader because that’s my clientele. I want them to get someone in mind who needs my help.

I’ll say, “Do you know how stressful it is for (business owners, sales people, executives) who are charged with making (a profit, sales, a budget)?”

Their response is typically, “Yes.”

My next “do question” is likely to be, “Does someone come to mind?”

Again, they’ll either self-identify or get someone in mind. Then, I probe further, “So what’s that story?”

Each of these series of questions has the potential to open up a powerful conversation about either the person or someone they know and just might introduce you to. 

Learn the “Do Do Dialogue” and you’ll transform small talk into engaging opportunities. Who knows, you might just gain a new client or a referral and truly do more of what you do best more profitably.

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CLO: When the Company & People Lead Alike

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Click the cover to pre-order CLO

In 1994, I sat in the corporate headquarters lobby of Tupperware in Kissimmee, FL waiting to see my appointment. On the table was a pamphlet that touched on a bit of the history of Tupperware.

Brownie Wise was the woman who took Earl Tupper’s products from the retail hardware store shelves (where it wasn’t selling) to the direct sales party plan model of business. She built an empire that today spans over 100 countries and over $2 billion in annual income.

At that point The On-Purpose Person was relatively newly released from 1992. The On-Purpose Business Person was in development stages. I had created The On-Purpose Principle years before either book was written. I used this guiding principle to help my client companies create healthy, sustainable growth that allowed them to do right by the business and people.

Brownie Wise QuoteWithin the pamphlet the following quote jumped off the page! Brownie Wise said, “If you want to build the business, build the people.” What a brilliantly simple way of keeping the priorities straight for leading a business. Brownie’s words breathed readily understood life into The On-Purpose Principle.

Her quote opens Chapter 8 of The On-Purpose Business Person. Clients hear me say it often. We’re all so susceptible to getting lost in the operational and financial details of running a business that we forget that without people to serve and to be served the business has no sustainable reason for existing.

As prior blogs posts have stated, the Chief Leadership Officer is charged with two primary responsibilities:

These simple, yet powerful two sides of the same coin are inextricably essential to the success of the enterprise. A Chief Leadership Officer can not achieve one without the other for the organization to be a true success. A business can be a leader in its chosen field, but if it burns and churns people, it will not sustain its leadership position. On the other hand, a business does need a myriad of disciplines and activities to integrate strategically and structurally into a productive whole.

This duality of positioning is a bit like the age old question, “Which came first? The chicken or the egg?” Except in their instance we know beyond a doubt that the people come first.

CLOs welcome this duality of leadership because they understand that one without the other inevitably creates a false positive success. Peter Drucker said, “The executive who works at making strengths productive–his own as well as those of others–works at making organizational performance compatible with personal achievement.”

While CLO may seem similar to CEO, they are only as similar as your current smartphone is to the flip phone you had a decade ago. It has some similar features and functions but it is so much more — a new category of leadership available to all.

Preorder Chief Leadership Officer

CLO: People as Leaders

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Will you rise to the challenge?

The Chief Leadership Officer is charged with two primary responsibilities:

In both responsibilities the role begins with positioning.

Today, let’s explore the second of these two charges. Positioning people to lead involves two aspects of their:

  • Life
  • Job

The prevailing “wisdom” of the Industrial Revolution was to compartmentalize your life and work. Keeping them separated reflected this era of efficiency and specialization of work. In essence, Corporate America was built on this notion. What a convenient rationale for the dehumanization of people as units of the production process. Think about it. Where do you think the term “human resources” came from? It was good for business to treat people badly.

Such poor treatment of people eventually gave rise to Labor Unions and strikes to counteract the negative effects of man’s inhumanity to man. Working conditions may have improved, but the dehumanization simply went underground and emerged whitewashed as “human resources departments,” a pejorative, yet accurate term if you really think about it.

For example, today human resources departments take great pride in the snake oil notion of work-life balance. This notion is simply the modern beat of the work-life separation song sung since the original pace of Taylor’s time motion studies. There’s cover when the company can shift the burden of blame or responsibility onto the workers for achieving work-life balance.

“We’re doing our part offering our Work-Life Balance Program,” says the well intended, yet misguided HR professional. In fact, they’re an unwitting accomplice to an archaic CEO-led system built upon people as things not souls.

Look around! Such objectification of life legitimizes the distancing of our thinking to the consequences of our behaviors and decisions. “In the name of business,” becomes a sacred altar for human sacrifice. We’re convinced our personal sacrifice on the job is a necessary evil for our resume building and career promotions–all in the name of doing it for our family or some other outside cause. Mastery of winning within a dysfunctional system has too often meant that we’ve lost our true selves in the process–a high price for a “cost of living” pay raise.

Have you read Gallup’s Report on the sorry state of Employee Engagement? Over two-thirds of employees are disengaged in their work. Of course they are. For generations, we’ve been schooled to disengage and deny our heart’s desire as frivolity. Denial of our destiny leaves us burned out and bummed out consuming a dulling drug of our choice ranging from chocolates to wines to entertainment to illegal substances. Our first-world problems will only get worse until we decide to get better.

Thanks to Chief Leadership Officer, the book and the CLO™ leadership style along with On-Purpose®, let’s close this experiment in history. Chief Leadership Officer is an upbeat awakening to those who feel called to lead a business, a department, a team, or even a family. The On-Purpose Person and My On-Purpose Folder are two simple, yet powerful resources for humans to become better leaders of their lives.

People who are more successful at leading their lives bring far less baggage, confusion, and disruption into the workplace. They’re also far more likely to be trusted and respected by their peers so they emerge as leaders with or without the formal title. The carry authority because they’re authentic.

On-the-job skills or technical training is the easy part! Mentoring toward leadership is difficult because few of us have had mentors or true leaders worth following. We’ve become such a specialized society that few can see the forest and the trees with appropriately accurate clarity.

Why do companies now want employee engagement? The power of the whole person — body, mind, and spirit — engaged in the purpose of the organization can move mountains. Treating people rightly is a return to our humanity. And it is good for business. It always has but it is back in fashion.

We’re not wired to live our lives in such neat, tidy boxes of personal indifference. Our lives matter. We want to make a positive contribution. The inherent value of people is the next frontier of business. CLOs, not CEOs, will lead us there in the decades to come.

CLO: Positioning the Business to Lead

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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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In The Year 2020 This Is What Business Leaders Will Be Called

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Pre-Orders are being taken through June 1- 30, 2016. Click the cover to learn more.

Update: As of 6.1.16 you may Pre-Order the book today at: http://www.clonow.com.

Every business book you’ve read and every class, seminar or workshop you’ve taken over the past 25 years or more was built on the basis of a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) being in charge. What if the effectiveness of that foundation is crumbling beneath you at an alarming rate? What will be different in the management and development of organizations? What is the impact on employees? What has to change for you?

In the future, expect your CEO to grow into or be replaced by a person known as a Chief Leadership Officer™ (CLO). This top leader in your organization will have two primary missions:

  1. Position the organization to be a leader in its chosen field;
  2. Position the people within the company (and beyond) to be leaders of their lives and work

All the business disciplines you’re accustomed to seeing, such as finance, marketing, operations, etc., will still need to happen.  CLOs, however, have a more complete orientation as to the roles and responsibilities of leading enterprise. Whereas CEOs focus on management and administration of the business for shareholder gain, CLOs focus on leading and navigating the company to be a profit-maker true to its purpose.

People in this present Digital Age and the coming Age of Purpose deserve and expect meaningful work, fair compensation, positive working conditions, and respect for their person. CLOs understand that cultivating these measures begins with a clear articulation of organizational purpose and the sincere desire to be positive difference making or contributors to societal improvement.

The Conviction of CEOs

Business leaders have a real problem: they profess innovation but they’re the last to innovate. The financial and human costs are mounting.

Something is wrong, seriously wrong in the state of practical affairs in for-profit and not-for-profit organizations alike. During my decades in business I’ve found the overwhelming majority of my client CEOs, C-Suite teams, managers and employees are good people with a desire to serve the customer while putting in an honest day’s work and then some.

In 2015 Gallup Consulting reported that only 32% of the employees in the U.S. are engaged in their work. This isn’t necessarily an indictment of the employees. One might argue, very rightfully, that when 68% of the workers are disengaged the blame falls at the feet of the executives or employers.

This is only partially accurate. Each shares a measure of the responsibility.  If the employee is disengaged then it behooves them to go find work where it is engaging. If the employee base isn’t engaged, then management better look at their On-Purpose Business Plan for deep answers. Normally, however, they’ll take an expedient, more shallow approach and address the obvious points of “blame” such as hiring practices, on-boarding, training and such.  When in doubt, blame HR! Sadly, HR is dealing with the symptoms of an under-leading C-Suite.  To learn more watch this 9-minute video called: The On-Purpose Business Plan.

CEO-to-CLO

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is fast becoming the symbol of an antiquated title, mindset, and role that is increasingly missing the mark for profiting business and society … and getting worse by the day. This relic of the Industrial Age in the highest corporate office is the final holdout from innovation.

Our system of doing business, not the people, is broken and out-of-sync with our times. The Industrial Age ways and days of a CEO-run company are coming to a close.

Government intervention in business too often chains the self-correcting mechanism of the free enterprise system making matters only worse. The evidence mounts that more than a technical correction is needed. Such a reformation must come from within business.

What we face is a systemic problem—all of us are affected!

CLOs, Right For People and Society

The opportunity is remarkable. Business funds nearly every facet of modern society. The role of commerce and industry in society has never been as powerful and far-reaching.  It has also never been as short-sighted and squandering of the available talent and resources.

Those in the workforce are increasingly burned out, bummed out, or checked out. Such a widespread sell-off of dreams and hopes in exchange for a paycheck is killing our souls, all in the name of shareholder value and a flawed understanding of profit.

CLOs get that when The On-Purpose Principle is at work there’s an release of human potential and an unforced pace, productivity and commitment.  When a person’s heart is in their work, everything else is so much easier.

The Title Fight

Where are the leaders, the pioneering CLOs? Who will arise to lead in the Age of Purpose? On-Purpose Partners is leading this call to be about business differently.CLO Business Differently

Chief Leadership Officer is a future-facing story making the call for CEOs to replace themselves and become CLOs as the top officer in the company. CLO-led organizations actively elevate the prosperity of society to create win-wins.

Like it or not, being a Chief Leadership Officer (CLO) is what’s next in the career path of the forward-thinking CEO or start-up entrepreneur. Business leaders of tomorrow will operate decidedly different.

Chief Leadership Officer: The Book

This new book is a fast-reading narrative of a sage 100-year-old great-grandfather and his unsettled Millennial great-grandchild, the CEO of a 5-year-old tech firm. Together they launch a hero’s journey to discover a better way to be in business. First they must discover the precepts, promise, and purpose of a new manner and mindset for being in business. Chief Leadership Officer is the embodiment of their work.

Chief Leadership Officer respectfully enters the corner office of CEOs, challenges widely held norms, and calls for self-interested reflection.

  • Aspiring and current business leaders will be faced with making a decision: Will I be a Chief Leadership Officer?
  • Every employee will ask, do I work for a CEO or with a CLO?

Business persons, especially entrepreneurs to CEOs, are invited to embark on their own hero’s journey to take part in a CLO-led reformation. It is a team effort. Every reader has a chance to join the movement, to embrace an emerging manner of being in business today in order to profit tomorrow.

Join The CLO Cause

The CLO message is bigger than me. It needs a bigger platform than I can provide on my own. Chief Leadership Officer will also be a seminal work impacting generations to come. Be a part of breaking new ground and setting a healthier, more wholesome course for people and companies for decades to come.

Starting June 1 and running to June 30, 2016 you can pre-order the book at Publishizer.com, a crowd-funding platform for authors. Funds will go toward production and promotion. There you can download the first few chapters and get a read on the story line.

Write to me. Give me your feedback. This will be a collaborative writing project. Advanced readers will be able to offer insights and ideas that may work their way into the book.  Visit www.ChiefLeadershipOfficer.com.

I can readily self-publish this book on my own; but the message is too big for me to handle alone. The book needs the clout, resources, and reach of a traditional publishing house partner. Therefore, I’m seeking a capable and committed publisher who is as visionary and excited as I am about what we can do together. Pre-orders are a form of proof that readers are interested.

Please join me in this cause to positively reform business for this and future generations by pre-ordering the book for future delivery.

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin